BACKGROUND Organism biomass is one of the most important variables in ecological studies, making biomass estimations one of the most common laboratory tasks. Biomass of small macroinvertebrates is usually estimated as dry mass or ash-free dry mass (hereafter 'DM' vs. 'AFDM') per sample; a laborious and time consuming process, that often can be speeded up using easily measured and reliable proxy...

The construction of 3D anatomical shape atlas has been extensively studied in medical image analysis research for a variety of applications. Among the multiple steps of shape atlas construction, establishing anatomical correspondences across subjects is probably the most critical and challenging one. The adaptive focus deformable model (AFDM) [16] was proposed to tackle this problem by exploiti...

B frame bi-directional predictions and the DIRECT mode coding of the H.264 video compression standard necessitate a complex mode decision process, resulting in a long computation time. To make H.264 feasible, this paper proposes an image backtrackbased fast (IBFD) algorithm and evaluates the performances of two promising fast algorithms (i.e., AFDM and IBFD). Evaluation results show that an ima...

This paper presents a methodology of creating a statistical atlas of spatial distribution of prostate cancer from a large patient cohort, and uses it for designing optimal needle biopsy strategies. In order to remove inter-individual morphological variability and determine the true variability in cancer position, an adaptive-focus deformable model (AFDM) is used to register and normalize prosta...

We explored N2 fixation and alkaline phosphatase activity (APA) in periphyton from a N-limited stream ecosystem by coupling measurements of these processes with nutrient diffusion substrata (NDS) experiments. We measured periphyton biomass accumulation (as ash-free dry mass [AFDM] and chlorophyll a [CHLA]), N2 fixation, and APA to evaluate the relative importance of N2 fixation as an N source t...

Despite a rich taxonomic literature on the symbionts of ascidians, nature these symbioses remains poorly understood. In Egyptian Red Sea, solitary ascidian Phallusia nigra hosted symbiotic amphipod and four copepod species, with densities as high 68 mixed per host. Correlation analyses suggested no competition or antagonism between symbionts. Ascidian mass, ash-free dry mass wet (AFDM/WM), both...

In the natural environment, microbial community structure of river biofilm is controlled by biotic and abiotic factors. This study explored the capacity to manipulate the structure of microbial communities by modifying environmental conditions during the course of biofilm development. River epilithic biofilm was cultivated in situ on artificial substrates placed parallel to river water flow. Su...

Sanderlings (Calidris alba) are long-distance migratory shorebirds with a non-breeding range that spans temperate and tropical coastal habitats. Breeding in the High Arctic combined with non-breeding seasons in the tropics necessitate long migrations, which are energetically demanding. On an annual basis, the higher energy expenditures during migration might pay off if food availability in the ...

Transport of coarse particulate organic matter (CPOM) derived from forest litterfall has been hardly studied in rivers, unlike fine (FPOM) or dissolved (DOM). Yet, many rivers are dammed run into lakes, and there is growing evidence that CPOM accumulation river delta participates substantially ecological processes such as greenhouse gas emissions lakes reservoirs. We investigated the transport ...

Artificial streams were set up to test the relationship between near-bed water velocity and periphyton growth. Periphyton community samples collected from a Japanese stream were incubated for 44 days under a light intensity of 252 ± 72 μmol·photons/m2·s, a temperature of 20–25 ◦C, and three near-bed water velocity classes: low (<17.9 cm/s), moderate (17.9–32.8 cm/s), and high (>32.8 cm/s). A lo...