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This study examined nationally televised marathon coverage of three major U.S. marathons (the Boston Marathon, the Bank of America Chicago Marathon, and the Tata Consultancy Services New York City Marathon) to understand how able-bodied men and women, and men and women using wheelchairs were represented. Just under 8 hr of coverage was analyzed for clock time and the descriptions of athletes divided by divisions of able-bodied men and women and wheelchair athlete men and women. Able-bodied women received the majority of clock time in Boston and Chicago, while able-bodied men received the majority of clock time in New York City. Athletes using wheelchairs, both men and women, received much smaller amounts of coverage, especially in New York City. Women received more announcer mentions in all three races, with a heavier focus on their background, coaching, and emotion, although the only statistically significant category was emotion. Experience and race strategy/training were heavily emphasized for all divisions. Through this analysis, race producers have more guidance on how to cover future marathons in a more equitable and appropriate manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Community Broadcasting Codes of Practice (the Codes) play an important role in shaping what Australians listen to and how they engage with their local community radio station. In a sector defined by grassroots participation and a non-professional, volunteer workforce, the Codes aim to model best practice in terms of content, community participation and governance. Several sections apply specifically to news and current affairs (NCAF) coverage, yet there is no independent research that explores the sector's alignment with the Codes in this area. Drawing on a content analysis of 572 community radio NCAF stories broadcast on nationally syndicated programmes, and interviews with journalists and news producers, this research sought to critically analyse NCAF coverage on community radio in light of the Codes of Practice. The results of the research suggest that NCAF coverage on community radio broadly aligns with the Codes of Practice, yet there are mixed interpretations of what can be considered 'views not adequately represented' elsewhere. Part of this uncertainty stems from the reliance on media students as volunteer journalists. This article interrogates this tension between the sector's role as an informal 'training ground' for aspiring media workers and its remit to provide alternative NCAF coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Podcasts have long been perceived – and in part still are – as a ‘new’ medium (Cfr. T. Bonini, Il nuovo podcasting, come e perché cambiano i media, «che Fare», 12 novembre 2021, https://che-fare.com/almanacco/societa/tecnologia/podcast-media-bonini/, ultima consultazione: 1° ottobre 2024), despite their origins dating back to 2004. In Italy, the starting point can be identified with Veleno (2017), hosted by Pablo Trincia and Alessia Rafanelli, which was followed by a book and a TV series. This case, by no means isolated, highlighted a bidirectional relationship between podcasting and narrative works, both fictional and non-fictional. This paper aims to investigate the transcodification process in Gianrico Carofiglio’s La disciplina di Penelope (2021) and in Morgana. Storie di ragazze che tua madre non approvrebbe (2019) by Michela Murgia and Chiara Tagliaferri.

We introduce a novel LoRa-based multi-hop communication architecture as an alternative to the public internet for earthquake early warning (EEW). We examine its effectiveness in generating a meaningful warning window for the New Zealand-based decentralised EEW sensor network implemented by the CRISiSLab operating with the adapted Propagation of Local Undamped Motion (PLUM)-based earthquake detection and node-level data processing. LoRa, popular for low-power, long-range applications, has the disadvantage of long transmission time for time-critical tasks like EEW. Our network overcomes this limitation by broadcasting EEWs via multiple short hops with a low spreading factor (SF). The network includes end nodes that generate warnings and relay nodes that broadcast them. Benchmarking with simulations against CRISiSLab's EEW system performance with internet connectivity shows that an SF of 8 can disseminate warnings across all the sensors in a 30 km urban area within 2.4 s. This approach is also resilient, with the availability of multiple routes for a message to travel. Our LoRa-based system achieves a 1–6 s warning window, slightly behind the 1.5–6.75 s of the internet-based performance of CRISiSLab's system. Nevertheless, our novel network is effective for timely mental preparation, simple protective actions, and automation. Experiments with Lilygo LoRa32 prototype devices are presented as a practical demonstration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hot news has enormous value and as the name itself describes, it is new as well as hot which makes it highly exploitative commercially. The growing economic significance of the broadcast industry has intensified the competition among the broadcasters to exploit hot news. The craving for hot news amongst the masses sometimes stirs the competitors to free ride over the efforts of the original gatherer. The disputes arising out of this fact led to the birth of "doctrine of hot news" in the United States of America, which injuncted the free rider from misappropriating the hot news. Indian courts acknowledged this doctrine protecting the broadcasting organisations until 2013 when the position was overturned and dissemination of the hot news by free riders was legitimised. To understand the present as well as the correct position of hot news, the actual character of hot news and its relevance, the paper analyses the broadcasting laws of India vis-a-vis the protectability of hot news. The research finds that various laws, having a bearing on the Broadcasting Sector, including Copyright Act, Contract Act, Tort Law along with the Constitution of India contain enough provisions for protection of hot news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a shift in K-12 educational delivery from primarily in-person classroom instruction to remote learning. Developing broadcast instruction is one way to provide learners who experience barriers to contemporary forms of remote learning, which are typically provided over the internet, a way to access quality mathematics instruction. Producing classroom-style video lessons for children is not as simple as recording a lecture, and ways to engage and interact with learners are limited. There is a little interplay between design principles used in mathematics-focused broadcast television programmes and mathematics classroom pedagogy. More research is needed to understand how teachers may adapt mathematics education design principles to develop broadcast lessons. We utilized an exploratory case study design to investigate how teachers conceptualize, enact, and reflect upon mathematics pedagogy in a broadcast environment. Data from created lessons, videotaped feedback sessions and semi-structured interviews were collected and analyzed. Results yielded three themes related to the instructional design, barriers and challenges, and equity: (a) Goal-focused planning and delivery, (b) Centrality of discourse, and (c) Time. We discuss the results in relation to prior work at the intersection of mathematics and broadcast pedagogy and share implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radio is an auditory medium (it can only be heard), but it is cheap, popular, and can be brought or listened to anywhere. Radio serves as a medium of expression, communication, information, education, and entertainment. The KLINIK 24 program was created to present information about trending beauty tips, trends and innovations in lifestyle, and health to listeners in the Geronimo FM segment. The material discussed in the program is about health in the form of physical, facial, internal medicine, psychology and much more about Health which is discussed in the KLINIK 24 program. This study uses a descriptive qualitative approach. Data collection techniques using observation, interviews, documentation, and literature review. The theory used to analyze is the theory of Susan Tyler Eastman's strategy. The results of this study indicate that the broadcasting strategy used by the KLINIK 24 program is a mass attracting strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces a novel seven-step methodology designed to incorporate podcasts as qualitative data sources in academic research, addressing a notable gap in current literature. The purpose of this methodology is to harness the unique and timely insights offered by podcasts, thereby enriching academic studies with diverse, real-time perspectives. The design of this approach includes a meticulous selection of podcasts based on relevance and credibility, comprehensive ethical considerations, strategic sampling methods, robust data collection and analysis techniques, and recommendations for applying best research practices. Key to this methodology is the use of weighted scoring systems to mitigate biases and the establishment of ethical guidelines specifically tailored for podcast data. The results of this study indicate the high potential of the proposed methodology in employing podcasts as an additional source of data, providing dynamic and current perspectives often absent in traditional research sources. Future studies are encouraged to delve deeper into refining and standardizing the proposed methodology, focusing on enhancing the weight metrics through advanced statistical techniques and exploring new technological tools for more efficient podcast data extraction and analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An independent broadcast on a graph G is a function f : V → { 0 , ... , diam (G) } such that (i) f (v) ≤ e (v) for every vertex v ∈ V (G) , where diam (G) denotes the diameter of G and e (v) the eccentricity of vertex v , and (ii) d (u , v) > max { f (u) , f (v) } for every two distinct vertices u and v with f (u) f (v) > 0. The broadcast independence number β b (G) of G is then the maximum value of ∑ v ∈ V f (v) , taken over all independent broadcasts on G. We prove that every circulant graph of the form C (n ; 1 , a) , 3 ≤ a ≤ ⌊ n 2 ⌋ , admits an optimal 2 -bounded independent broadcast, that is, an independent broadcast f satisfying f (v) ≤ 2 for every vertex v , except when n = 2 a + 1 , or n = 2 a and a is even. We then determine the broadcast independence number of various classes of such circulant graphs, and prove in particular that β b (C (n ; 1 , a)) = α (C (n ; 1 , a)) , except for C (n ; 1 , 2) , C (2 a + 1 ; 1 , a) , or C (2 a ; 1 , a) with a ≠ 2 p and p ≥ 0 , where α (C (n ; 1 , a)) denotes the independence number of C (n ; 1 , a). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An i-packing in a graph G is a set of vertices that are pairwise at distance more than i. A packing colouring of G is a partition X = {X1, X2,... , Xk } of V(G) such that each colour class Xi is an i-packing. The minimum order k of a packing colouring is called the packing chromatic number of G, denoted by χρ(G). In this paper we investigate the existence of trees T for which there is only one packing colouring using χρ(T) colours. For the case χρ(T) = 3, we completely characterise all such trees. As a by-product we obtain sets of uniquely 3-χρ-packable trees with monotone χρ-colouring and non-monotone χρ-colouring respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the high demands of data communication, the broadcasting system streams the data daily. This service not only sends out the message to the correct participant but also respects the security of the identity user. In addition, when delivered, all the information must be protected for the party who employs the broadcasting service. Currently, Attribute-Based Broadcast Encryption (ABBE) is useful to apply for the broadcasting service. (ABBE) is a combination of Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) and Broadcast Encryption (BE), which allows a broadcaster (or encrypter) to broadcast an encrypted message, including a predefined user set and specified access policy to install the authorization mechanism. It is desirable to hide all the information when producing in the ciphertext, which has not been considered in the previous works of ABBE. Motivated by the above issue, we devise a solution to achieve anonymity for the ABBE scheme, which not only hides the access structures but also anonymizes the user's identity. In this work, we propose two schemes as Anonymous Key Policy (AKP)-ABBE and Anonymous Ciphertext Policy (ACP)-ABBE with supporting multiple access structures by using OR / AND gates. Specifically, we present the generic constructions of AKP/ACP-ABBE on the building block of the Inner Product Encryption (IPE ), which enables the hidden user's identity and complex OR / AND -Gate access structure. We show that our proposed schemes are secured under the standard models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A broadcast on a graph G = (V,E) is a function f: V - {0, . . . , diam(G)} such that f(v) = eG(v) for every vertex v V, where diam(G) denotes the diameter of G and eG(v) the eccentricity of v in G. Such a broadcast f is minimal if there does not exist any broadcast g = f on G such that g(v) = f(v) for all v V. The upper broadcast domination number of G is the maximum value of P vV f(v) among all minimal broadcasts f on G for which each vertex of G is at distance at most f(v) from some vertex v with f(v) = 1. In this paper, we study the minimal dominating broadcasts of caterpillars and give the exact value of the upper broadcast domination number of caterpillars with no trunks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crop production in Afghanistan suffers from limited phosphorus (P) availability, which severely hinders national agriculture sustainability. This study hypothesized that deep fertilizer placement could significantly enhance the uptake of immobile P and, thus, tissue P accumulation and crop yield. A two-year pot experiment growing two maize (Zea mays) hybrid cultivars (Xida-789 and Xida-211) was, therefore, conducted to test these hypotheses under three contrasting fertilizer placement methods (broadcast, side band, and deep band). In doing so, P concentrations in both maize tissues and soils were compared at 45, 60, and 115 days after sowing (DAS) under nine combinations of nitrogen (N) and P fertilizer rates (kg ha−1: N112P45, N112P60, N112P75, N150P45, N150P60, N150P75, N187P45, N187P60, N187P75). Results have shown that deep band placement significantly increased P uptake efficiency, leading to greater P concentration and accumulation in maize tissues compared to the other two fertilization methods. This improved P uptake was attributed to several factors associated with deep placement, including reduced P fixation, enhanced root access to P, and moisture availability for P uptake. Additionally, deep band placement combined with higher N application rates (N187 and N150) further enhanced plant P uptake by promoting P availability and utilization mechanisms. Deep band placement also resulted in significantly higher total soil P, Olsen-P, and P use efficiency than broadcast and side band methods, indicating a more efficient P fertilization strategy for maize that can improve growth and yield. This study also found positive correlations between P concentration in plant organs and soil Olsen-P, highlighting the importance of adequate soil P levels for optimal plant growth. Overall, our results have shown that deep band fertilizer placement emerged as a superior strategy for enhancing P uptake efficiency, utilization, and maize productivity compared to broadcast and side band placement. The outcome generated from the deep band fertilization by this greenhouse study can be recommended for field practices to optimize P fertilizer use and improve maize production while minimizing potential environmental P losses associated with broadcast fertilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Potassium (K) fertilization guidelines often oversimplify, overlooking factors like soil mineralogy and K application methods. This study aimed to evaluate the influence of K fertilizer rates and application methods on crop yields and the forms of K in soils with different textural and mineralogical features. In 2020, two field trials were conducted to evaluate the impact of varying K rates, added through band or broadcast methods, in Planosol and in Ferralsol. Soybean yield was evaluated in both trials, while flooded rice yield was evaluated only in the Planosol. Soil samples collected from the 0–10 and 10–20 cm layers and soil K content was determined using Mehlich-1, nitric acid (HNO3), and sodium tetraphenylborate. In the Ferralsol, K desorption by HNO3 in the 10–20 cm soil layer was 1.4 times higher the in band application (171 mg kg−1) compared to broadcast method (92 mg kg−1). The Mehlich-1 extractor proved insensitive to detecting K rates in the Planosol (91 and 43 mg kg−1 in the 0–10 and 10–20 cm layers, respectively), while it exhibited responsiveness in the Ferralsol, demonstrating positive increases with K rates. Using a proper chemical extractor is crucial for accurate detection and recovery of applied K in the soil. Grain yields were 4.50 Mg ha−1 for soybeans in the Ferralsol and 9.72 and 5.55 Mg ha−1 for rice and soybeans, respectively, in the Planosol. The findings reveal that applied K distributes into preexisting pools, persisting in the applied location, thereby reducing the anthropogenic K gradient with band reapplication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The intra-ovarian presence of ootids, i.e. female gametes that have completed meiosis, is considered exceptional in the animal kingdom. The present study explores the first such case to be reported in a sea cucumber (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea). In the overwhelming majority of animals, including holothuroids, oocytes (i.e. immature female gametes) that are developing in the ovary undergo a primary arrest at the prophase stage of meiosis, which may last from days to decades. In free-spawning taxa, this arrest is normally lifted only during or shortly before transit in the gonoduct, when gamete release (spawning) is imminent. However, oocytes of the holothuroid Chiridota laevis were discovered to have resumed the second meiotic division including the completion of germinal vesicle breakdown and polar-body expulsion inside the ovary, effectively reaching the ootid stage concomitantly with ovulation (i.e. escape from follicle cells) prior to spawning. The potential drivers and significance of this exceptionally rare case of full intra-ovarian oogenic maturation are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bylye Gody is the property of Cherkas Global University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Southern stem rot (SSR) is caused by Athelia rolfsii and is an economically important disease of peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.). Application of protectant fungicides is an effective management component for reducing levels of this soil-borne disease. The majority of peanut hectarage in South Carolina and Mississippi is rainfed. Timely precipitation has the potential to aid the movement of foliar-applied fungicides through the canopy and into contact with soil interfaces where SSR infections occur. Questions have arisen as to the quantitative relationship of post-application precipitation and fungicide-active ingredient efficacy in managing SSR and protecting associated pod yield potentials. To examine this, fungicide efficacy experiments were screened for inclusion in a meta-analysis, from which eleven experiments conducted from 2015 to 2023 were selected and paired with environmental data from nearby weather stations. Precipitation during the two days following fungicide application was associated with significant reduction in SSR incidence (logit rate of −0.0039/mm) and increased pod yield (log slope of 0.0028/mm). Active ingredient interactions with precipitation among pod yield but not SSR incidence data were present for benzovindiflupyr plus azoxystrobin, flutolanil, and tebuconazole. Fungicides with the greatest levels of control per application at maximum label rates were inpyrfluxam (18.8%), benzovindiflupyr plus azoxystrobin (15.4%), flutolanil (12.3%), and prothioconazole plus tebuconazole (10.5%). Micronized sulfur neither contributed to SSR control nor pod yield increase. Tebuconazole was associated with the greatest % SSR control per fungicide product cost (0.47%/$/ha/application) but was also the treatment with the least amount of control (3.5%) at its maximum label rate. Maximum label rates of benzovindiflupyr plus azoxystrobin (USD 637) and inpyrfluxam (USD 548) were estimated as conferring the greatest returns over the chlorothalonil-only control. Results serve as a helpful reference for farmers and practitioners in selecting fungicide management options and targeting application times, as feasible, to utilize natural precipitation to improve management outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of MATRIZes is the property of Universidade de Sao Paulo, Programa de Pos Graduacao em Ciencias da Comunicacao and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The most recent and elegant solution to address the problem of scalability in network-on-chip (NoC) architectures is WiNoCs (Wireless NoCs).WiNoC, a wired-wireless hybrid architecture in NoC designs, is becoming increasingly popular for its fast unicast message delivery. However, modern applications often require multicasting and broadcasting messages instead. In the proposed work, the widely used simulation tool BookSim is employed, which offers reconfigurability and openness and it enables the analysis of both wired and wireless NoC architectures. This paper proposes a Tree-based Wireless NoC architecture approach incorporating MDND (message duplication in non-destination), which provides multicast support for WiNoC by exploring the inherent broadcast-type communication of wireless connection. Additionally, the proposed work supports the configuration of various aspects, including its multicast injection rate, enabling or disabling its multicast capabilities, and determining the number of multicast recipients for each packet. The proposed Tree-based approach showed a significant improvement in average multicast transaction latency compared to the traditional NoC. There is a noticeable reduction in the average network latency, the flit latency, and the total power. The analysis also shows a reduction in average packet latency for unicast messages and average packet latency for broadcast messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the mid-1990s, Democratic Party leaders attempted to counter the popularity of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk radio hosts following the Republican sweep of the 1994 midterm elections. President Bill Clinton appeared on shows around the country, his White House began a national radio outreach initiative, party strategists proposed creating their own radio program, and some congressional Democrats visited popular shows such as Imus in the Morning. Meanwhile, former Senator Gary Hart of Colorado and former governors Mario Cuomo of New York and L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia launched their own talk radio shows, while former New York City Mayor Ed Koch continued his program. This study examines the impetus for these Democratic broadcast efforts between 1994 and 1996, the content and style of the different shows, and the reasons they failed to overcome the Republican advantage in talk radio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the adoption of deep learning models in several domains and for various tasks has increased, correspondingly amplifying the number of model layers and parameters needed to achieve the required performance. Accordingly, the amount of memory required for model training has increased, advancing the adoption and exploration of distributed training. Generally, model parallelism techniques require a large amount of memory for training during distributed training. Among them, layer pipelining, which involves dividing the model into layers and configuring the stages on the devices, has attracted interest. Activation recomputation is a popular method for efficiently utilizing pipeline parallelism while minimizing memory consumption. However, it can lead to a decrease in training throughput due to redundant operations. Therefore, this study introduces a forward propagation technique that employs a linear pipeline broadcast method to decrease memory consumption while mitigating training throughput reduction by partially integrating recomputation in PipeDream-Flush. The proposed broadcast-based forward propagation offsets the overhead caused by activation recomputation by optimizing network communication between pipeline stages and reducing bubbles in the warm-up phase of the pipeline. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed technique reduces memory consumption by approximately 36.0% at peak training throughput for GPT2 than PipeDream-Flush, without a significant decrease in training throughput. Compared with that for PipeDream-Flush, the proposed method achieved peak training throughputs of 14.6% and 12.6% higher for the ResNet152 and VGG19 models, respectively, while consuming 30.1% and 12.0% lesser memory.

Summary: This article presents a highly compact printed radiator for direct broadcast satellite (DBS) systems that exhibits good gain and left‐handed circular polarization. The inferred pattern is accomplished by etching two isosceles triangles, one from each of the four corners of a square. From the center of the newly acquired structure, a circular geometric design is made up of 16 isosceles‐scaled triangles has been etched. This arrangement induces resonance in the antenna, aligning it with the desired frequency. The proposed antenna is designed using PCB laminated Rogger 5880 material and simulated in a CST EM simulator. The antenna under consideration exhibits a significant size reduction, achieving a miniaturization ratio of 21.03%. The LHCP antenna resonated at 12.61 GHz and offered a decent LHCP gain of 7.95 dBic. It gives 0.56 GHz CP bandwidth, which covers the DBS service band entirely. It also provides 96.43% radiation efficiency and 44.27 dB/m correction factor, respectively. All the measured findings of the prototype agree with its simulated one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the use of seamless high-speed worldwide network connectivity in future, it is anticipated that the integrated satellite-terrestrial network (ISTN) will be a possible option. Due to the inadequacy of topological data and the close coupling of data and control planes, deploying optimized rules on routers is difficult. The important factors in ISTN networks are routing rules and policies, link failure, and high-bandwidth communication. Software-defined networking (SDN) is an open innovation approach that enables programmability from a central location. The controller handles the complexity of the network, whereas the infrastructure layer devices relay the packets. Thus, we investigated the broadcast by dynamically adjusting routes for fault tolerance and energy efficiency of the ISTN using distance between nodes. In addition, using dynamic source routing, this study examines the competence functions of all managing nodes in a network. The routing design is distributed among all nodes to create numerous collective paths. For LEO satellite networks, the ant colony optimization-based routing algorithm is an improved version that considers the probability of faults and low-energy consumption. The proposed simulation ensures a seamless transition in the event of failures and avoids the requirement for an additional coordination service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Named-Data Networking (NDN) over Low Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs), employing IEEE 802.15.4 communication technology, is projected to provide native support for mobility and efficient content delivery for the emerging Internet of Things (IoT). While many interest forwarding strategies have been proposed for NDNs over LLNs, most existing studies have relied on software simulations to evaluate their performance due to the lack of analytical modeling tools. This paper introduces the first analytical model for estimating the Interest Satisfaction Ratio (ISR) in NDN over LLNs, which is a crucial metric for assessing the effectiveness of interest forwarding strategies. We develop the analytical model specifically for the broadcast forwarding strategy, which has been extensively studied due to its simplicity and ease of implementation. Simulation results confirm that the proposed model predicts the ISR with reasonable accuracy. The model is then used to elucidate the strong interaction between the CSMA/CA parameters of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard and the achieved ISR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservation is particularly challenging for species that are highly sensitive to disturbance and negatively affected by monitoring procedures. Australia's ecologically and culturally significant ghost bat (Macroderma gigas) has suffered substantial population declines, in part due to disturbance and loss of roost sites. This sensitivity poses impediments to studies of the ghost bat's ecology and behaviour, which in turn inhibits evidence-based conservation and management of the species. We used full-spectrum acoustic playback, in combination with thermal video recordings and netting, as a novel method to investigate the behavioural ecology of this enigmatic bat. We tested whether ghost bats are responsive to conspecific social vocalisations and, if so, whether responses differ according to signaller and receiver characteristics. Individuals were attracted strongly to two of four vocalisation types, and responses depended on sex, thus providing the first experimental evidence that the ghost bat's complex vocal repertoire has multiple functions. Responses did not differ with geographic location, indicating that our method can be used across the species' range. We discuss how full-spectrum acoustic playback helps improve our knowledge of the behavioural ecology of this species and highlight the applicability of our methods for targeting specific conservation needs in bats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context. The conservation of the threatened ghost bat (Macroderma gigas) is currently hampered by a lack ofstandardised survey methodology for detecting the species away from known roosts. The low amplitude of the species’ echolocation call, together with only sporadic production ofsocial calls while foraging, means that acoustic detection is unreliable. However, the ghost bat is known to be physically responsive to full-spectrum playback of its own social calls when these are broadcast in close vicinity (~100 m) to known roosts. Aims. Using a two-phase investigation, we aimed to establish whether playback could be used to detect ghost bats away from the roost, in open woodland habitat in the Northern Territory. Methods. In phase one, a trial of paired (active treatment and control) call playback experiments was conducted at three distances (1 km, 2.5 km and 5 km) from four known roosts using the ghost bat’s ‘squabble’ social vocalisation. Call playback, distance, roost and moon phase were used as explanatory variables in an information-theoretic approach using generalised linear models. In phase two, a 65 010-ha survey area was broken into a grid of adjacent hexagons with centroids spaced 5 km apart; replicate surveys using call playback were conducted at each centroid. An occupancy model was used to determine detection probability for the method in the survey area. Key results. Ghost bats were successfully detected. In phase one, one model had substantial support and this contained only one variable: that of the presence or absence of the ‘squabble’ vocalisation. In phase two, ‘hotspots’ of ghost bat activity were detected in a region for which records were scant and predominantly historical. The occupancy model identified that 72% of sites were occupied and established a detection probability of 0.505, which provided a cumulative probability of 0.75. Conclusions. Our results show that call playback is a reliable method of detecting the cryptic and threatened ghost bat at a landscape scale in the Northern Territory. Implications. We suggest that call playback could be used as a standardised survey technique across the range of the ghost bat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essential dimension of the journalism school experience is the hands-on training that takes place in studio courses and workshops. Learning to troubleshoot and adapt in real-time situations is as important as gaining experience with industry-standard equipment. As useful as video conferencing platforms like Zoom and Google Meet have been for some forms of remote teaching, they are not ideal solutions to replicate the collaborative experiential learning that happens in our campus newsrooms and broadcast studios. Through much exploration and experimentation with different digital platforms, instructors and technical staff at the Toronto Metropolitan University School of Journalism were able to continue leading live TV and radio news courses and real-time training workshops while our campus largely remained shuttered from Spring 2020 and into 2021. We sought out tools that were agile, accessible and as user-friendly as possible. Many of these tools have proven to be so effective and versatile that we continue to use them even as students return to classrooms, offering more hybrid approaches to broadcast journalism education. In this commentary, we discuss some of these tools and show how they work in short videos, with the goal of supporting other journalism or media instructors building collaborative virtual newsrooms and studios simply and quickly.

We introduce a novel LoRa-based multi-hop communication architecture as an alternative to the public internet for earthquake early warning (EEW). We examine its effectiveness in generating a meaningful warning window for the New Zealand-based decentralised EEW sensor network implemented by the CRISiSLab operating with the adapted Propagation of Local Undamped Motion (PLUM)-based earthquake detection and node-level data processing. LoRa, popular for low-power, long-range applications, has the disadvantage of long transmission time for time-critical tasks like EEW. Our network overcomes this limitation by broadcasting EEWs via multiple short hops with a low spreading factor (SF). The network includes end nodes that generate warnings and relay nodes that broadcast them. Benchmarking with simulations against CRISiSLab’s EEW system performance with internet connectivity shows that an SF of 8 can disseminate warnings across all the sensors in a 30 km urban area within 2.4 s. This approach is also resilient, with the availability of multiple routes for a message to travel. Our LoRa-based system achieves a 1–6 s warning window, slightly behind the 1.5–6.75 s of the internet-based performance of CRISiSLab’s system. Nevertheless, our novel network is effective for timely mental preparation, simple protective actions, and automation. Experiments with Lilygo LoRa32 prototype devices are presented as a practical demonstration.

Let P = { p 0 , ... , p n - 1 } be a set of points in R d , modeling devices in a wireless network. A range assignment assigns a range r (p i) to each point p i ∈ P , thus inducing a directed communication graph G r in which there is a directed edge (p i , p j) iff dist (p i , p j) ⩽ r (p i) , where dist (p i , p j) denotes the distance between p i and p j . The range-assignment problem is to assign the transmission ranges such that G r has a certain desirable property, while minimizing the cost of the assignment; here the cost is given by ∑ p i ∈ P r (p i) α , for some constant α > 1 called the distance-power gradient. We introduce the online version of the range-assignment problem, where the points p j arrive one by one, and the range assignment has to be updated at each arrival. Following the standard in online algorithms, resources given out cannot be taken away—in our case this means that the transmission ranges will never decrease. The property we want to maintain is that G r has a broadcast tree rooted at the first point p 0 . Our results include the following. We prove that already in R 1 , a 1-competitive algorithm does not exist. In particular, for distance-power gradient α = 2 any online algorithm has competitive ratio at least 1.57. For points in R 1 and R 2 , we analyze two natural strategies for updating the range assignment upon the arrival of a new point p j . The strategies do not change the assignment if p j is already within range of an existing point, otherwise they increase the range of a single point, as follows: Nearest-Neighbor (nn) increases the range of nn (p j) , the nearest neighbor of p j , to dist (p j , nn (p j)) , and Cheapest Increase (ci) increases the range of the point p i for which the resulting cost increase to be able to reach the new point p j is minimal. We give lower and upper bounds on the competitive ratio of these strategies as a function of the distance-power gradient α . We also analyze the following variant of nn in R 2 for α = 2 : 2-Nearest-Neighbor (2-nn) increases the range of nn (p j) to 2 · dist (p j , nn (p j)) , We generalize the problem to points in arbitrary metric spaces, where we present an O (log n) -competitive algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the following network model motivated, in particular, by blockchains and peer-to-peer live streaming. Data packet flows arrive at the network nodes and need to be disseminated to all other nodes. Packets are relayed through the network via links of finite capacity. A packet leaves the network when it is disseminated to all nodes. Our focus is on two communication disciplines, which determine the order in which packets are transmitted over each link, namely Random-Useful (RU) and Oldest-Useful (OU). We show that RU has the maximum stability region in a general network. For the OU we demonstrate that, somewhat surprisingly, it does not in general have the maximum stability region. We prove that OU does achieve maximum stability in the important special case of a symmetric network, given by the full graph with equal capacities on all links and equal arrival rates at all nodes. We also give other stability results, and compare different disciplines' performances in a symmetric system via simulation. Finally, we study the cumulative delays experienced by a packet as it propagates through the symmetric system, specifically the delay asymptotic behavior as N → ∞ . We put forward some conjectures about this behavior, supported by heuristic arguments and simulation experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WiFi is a widely used wireless technology for data transmission. WiFi can also play a crucial role in simultaneously broadcasting content to multiple devices in multimedia transmission for venues such as classrooms, theaters, and stadiums, etc. Broadcasting allows for the efficient dissemination of information to all devices connected to the network, and it becomes crucial to ensure that the WiFi network has sufficient capacity to transmit broadcast multimedia content without interruptions or delays. However, using WiFi for broadcasting presents challenges that can impact user experience, specifically the difficulty of obtaining real-time feedback from potentially hundreds or thousands of users due to potential collisions of feedback messages. This work focuses on providing accurate feedback to the Access Point about the percentage of users not receiving broadcast traffic correctly so it can adjust its Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) while transmitting broadcast multimedia content to many users. The proposed method is comprised of two sequential algorithms. In order to reduce the probability of a collision after transmitting each message, an algorithm searches for the best probability value for users to transmit ACK/NACK messages, depending on whether messages are received correctly or not. This feedback allows the Access Point to estimate the number of STAs correctly/incorrectly receiving the messages being transmitted. A second algorithm uses this estimation so the Access Point can select the best MCS while maintaining the percentage of users not receiving broadcast content correctly within acceptable margins, thus providing users with the best possible content quality. We implemented the proposed method in the ns-3 simulator, and the results show it yields quick, reliable feedback to the Access Point that was then able to adjust to the best possible MCS in only a few seconds, regardless of the user density and dimensions of the scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Balanced nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) rates, coupled with rational fertilization methodology, could promote crop N accumulation, N use efficiency, and yield production, particularly in semi-arid and arid regions. To test these characteristics, a two-year (2018 and 2019) pot experiment was performed by growing summer maize in a rain-proof glass greenhouse under nine combined N (112, 150, and 187 kg ha−1, urea) and P (45, 60, and 75 kg ha−1 calcium superphosphate) rates and three contrasting fertilizer placements. The fertilizers were placed by broadcast on the soil surface (Broadcast), a side band on a 4 cm strip of soil surface within 7 cm from the sowing line (Side band), and a deep band on a 4 cm strip below 7 cm soil depth within 7 cm from the sowing line (Deep band). Results from three maize growth stages (eight-leaf, 45 days after sowing, DAS; tasseling, 60 DAS; and harvest, 115 DAS) showed that leaf, stem, root N accumulation, and total soil N were significantly increased under Deep band than under both Side band and Broadcast at N150P60, N187P60, N150P75, and N187P75, but not at N112P45, N150P45, N187P45, N112P60, and N112P75. Significantly greater leaf, stem, and root N accumulations were also displayed at N150 and N187 than at N112 for the same P60 or P75 under the Deep band at 60 DAS and 115 DAS; while for leaf and stem, N accumulations were greater at P75 and P60 than at P45 for the same N150 under Deep band at 45 DAS, 60 DAS, and 115 DAS. Significantly greater agronomy N use efficiency, partial factor productivity, and N use efficiency were exhibited under the Deep band than under the Side band and Broadcast at N150P75 and N187P75, but at N150P60 and N187P60 for NUE only. In addition, leaf, stem, seed, and root N concentrations positively correlated with their own N accumulations or soil N concentrations at the tasseling and harvest stages. Our results demonstrate that a synchronized N150P60, N187P60, N150P75, or N187P75 fertilization rate with Deep band placement can improve soil N availability and root N uptake, and thereby, increase aboveground N accumulation, N use efficiency, and yield production of maize, which is particularly practical for small-holder farmers globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]