Confluence: A Robust Non-IoU Alternative to Non-Maxima Suppression in Object Detection.

Confluence is a novel non-Intersection over Union (IoU) alternative to Non-Maxima Suppression (NMS) in bounding box post-processing in object detection. It overcomes the inherent limitations of IoU-based NMS variants to provide a more stable, consistent predictor of bounding box clustering by using a normalized Manhattan Distance inspired proximity metric to represent bounding box clustering. Unlike Greedy and Soft NMS, it does not rely solely on classification confidence scores to select optimal bounding boxes, instead selecting the box which is closest to every other box within a given cluster and removing highly confluent neighboring boxes.

Automated location invariant animal detection in camera trap images using publicly available data sources.

A time-consuming challenge faced by camera trap practitioners is the extraction of meaningful data from images to inform ecological management. An increasingly popular solution is automated image classification software. However, most solutions are not sufficiently robust to be deployed on a large scale due to lack of location invariance when transferring models between sites.

U-Infuse: Democratization of Customizable Deep Learning for Object Detection.

Image data is one of the primary sources of ecological data used in biodiversity conservation and management worldwide. However, classifying and interpreting large numbers of images is time and resource expensive, particularly in the context of camera trapping. Deep learning models have been used to achieve this task but are often not suited to specific applications due to their inability to generalise to new environments and inconsistent performance.

Phage-mediated horizontal gene transfer of both prophage and heterologous DNA by ϕBB-1, a bacteriophage of Borrelia burgdorferi.

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in Borrelia burgdorferi, the Lyme disease agent, is likely mediated by bacteriophage. Studies of the B. burgdorferi phage, ϕBB-1 and its role in HGT have been hindered by the lack of an assay for readily characterizing phage-mediated DNA movement (transduction).

Purine metabolism and the microaerophily of Helicobacter pylori.

The requirements for purine nucleotide synthesis, the effects of purine analogues, and the metabolism of adenine in the bacterium Helicobacter pylori were investigated employing cell culture techniques and one-dimensional NMR spectroscopy. Bacterial cells grew and proliferated in media lacking preformed purines, indicating that H. pylori can synthesize purine nucleotides de novo to meet its requirements.