Publications by authors named "Michael Fairhurst"

species cause disease and devastation of plants in ecological and horticultural settings worldwide. A recently identified species, , infects and ultimately kills the treasured kauri trees () that are endemic to New Zealand. Currently, there are few options for managing kauri dieback disease.

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Kūmarahou (Pomaderris kumeraho) is a shrub endemic to New Zealand used in rongoā (traditional medicine). While studying the antimicrobial properties of kūmarahou, we isolated a new strain of Pseudomonas fluorescens, which we designated KF1 (for "kūmarahou flower 1"). Here, we report the complete genome sequence of P.

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Red algae of the genus have been a rich source of halogenated monoterpenes. Herein, a new cyclic monoterpene, costatone C (), was isolated from the extract of collected in New Zealand, along with the previously reported (1,5)-1,6-dichloro-2-methylhepta-1,5-dien-3-ol (). Elucidation of the planar structure of was achieved through conventional NMR and (-)-HR-APCI-MS techniques, and the absolute configuration by comparison of experimental and DFT-calculated ECD spectra.

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Nitrate- and nitrite-sensing (NIT) domains are found associated with a wide variety of bacterial receptors, including chemoreceptors. However, the structure of a chemoreceptor-associated NIT domain has not yet been characterized. Recently, a chemoreceptor named PscF was identified from the plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv.

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A new multimodal biometric database designed and acquired within the framework of the European BioSecure Network of Excellence is presented. It is comprised of more than 600 individuals acquired simultaneously in three scenarios: 1) over the Internet, 2) in an office environment with desktop PC, and 3) in indoor/outdoor environments with mobile portable hardware. The three scenarios include a common part of audio/video data.

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Visuo-spatial neglect (often simply referred to as "neglect") is a complex poststroke medical syndrome which may be assessed by means of a series of drawing-based tests. Based on a novel analysis of a test battery formed from established pencil-and-paper tests, the aim of this study is to develop an automated assessment system which enables objectivity, repeatability, and diagnostic capability in the scoring process. Furthermore, the novel assessment system encapsulates temporal sequence and other "dynamic" information inherent in the drawing process.

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The collection of human biometric test data for system development and evaluation within any chosen modality generally requires significant time and effort if data are to be obtained in workable quantities. To overcome this problem, techniques to generate synthetic data have been developed. This paper describes a novel technique for the automatic synthesis of human handwritten-signature images, which introduces modeled variability within the generated output based on positional variation that is naturally found within genuine source data.

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Figure copying is often used to detect visuospatial neglect (VSN) in brain-damaged patients. We describe algorithms that enable the computation of parameters for describing figure-copying performance. The researcher can readily implement these algorithms on a computer using image analysis software, and they provide information on goodness-of-fit, relative to a standard model, as well as on dynamic aspects of subjects' performance in completing figure copies.

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The set of fuzzy connectives can be seen as an important combination tool, such as in combining the antecedent sets of the rules, in multi-criteria decision making and in combining the outputs of neural classifiers in a multi-neural system. This papers investigates the performance of some fuzzy combination schemes applied to a multi hybrid neural system which is composed of neural and fuzzy neural networks. An empirical evaluation in a handwritten numeral recognition task is used to investigate the performance of the presented fuzzy methods with some existing combination methods.

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Left ventricular geometry is an important parameter of its function; however, left ventricular function has been conventionally quantified through measurements of volume, ejection fraction, and mass. Left ventricular global shape has been quantified previously using methods that are based on assumptions of idealized cavity shape. Although these indices have been applied to various disease states of the left ventricle, the underlying assumption of an ideal left ventricular geometry is inherently flawed.

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