Campylobacter is one of the most common bacterial causes of diarrheal illness in humans. This study describes the isolation of Campylobacter lari from seabirds during 4 consecutive summers (2000-2003) in Hope Bay, Antarctic Peninsula. One hundred and twenty-two spontaneously dead Antarctic seabirds were studied. Ten Campylobacter lari isolates from 7 skuas (Stercorarius spp.), 2 kelp gulls (Larus dominicanus), and 1 Adelie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) were identified by phenotypical characteristics. Human activity in Antarctica was identified as a possible source of infectious agents, and migratory birds could be carriers of infectious diseases. However, nothing is known about zoonotic enteropathogens causing diseases in humans living in the Antarctic region. We demonstrated that seabirds carried C. lari in their intestines, and that they were settled around the lakes where humans are supplied with fresh water. Consumption of fresh water from Antarctic lakes contaminated with feces of seabirds could be a risk of human campylobacteriosis. This is the first report of C. lari isolated from seabirds in Hope Bay, Antarctica.

The work done in this study is a preliminary investigation into the possibility of modelling the filling and solidification process of castings in molds made with the additive method. The work originated from an experiment to produce a bronze casting with a high tin content in an additive mold. The mold filling and solidification simulation was carried out in the MAGMASO FT program, and the lambda thermal conductivity coefficient used in the program’s material database was corrected based on the actual temperature values of the printed form. The results were compared with the modeling results for the physical properties of furan molds based on the program database. The microstructure of the castings obtained in the compared forms was assessed.

Simultaneous propagation of vibrations and noise has an important role in the task of minimizing vibroacoustic hazards on the station of operator of the construction machinery. In many cases vibrations transferred by the construction are processed to noise in different points of the machine. As a result, they may increase the level of noise at the workplace. The paper presents the proposition of a simple estimation of noise and vibration propagation paths of the machine. On the basis of the analysis of hydraulic excavator an effectiveness of a proposed procedure was shown. This procedure helps to minimize the transfer of vibrations of power unit in selected frequency ranges which led to the change of overall noise level in operator’s cab about 5 dB.

A variety of algorithms allows gesture recognition in video sequences. Alleviating the need for interpreters is of interest to hearing impaired people, since it allows a great degree of self-sufficiency in communicating their intent to the non-sign language speakers without the need for interpreters. State-of-theart in currently used algorithms in this domain is capable of either real-time recognition of sign language in low resolution videos or non-real-time recognition in high-resolution videos. This paper proposes a novel approach to real-time recognition of fingerspelling alphabet letters of American Sign Language (ASL) in ultra-high-resolution (UHD) video sequences. The proposed approach is based on adaptive Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG) filtering with local extrema detection using Features from Accelerated Segment Test (FAST) algorithm classified by a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The recognition rate of our algorithm was verified on real-life data.

Adult females of a predatory fish, the blackfin icefish, Chaenocephalus aceratus examined at the South Shetland Islands and South Orkney Islands were by several orders of magnitude more infected with Acanthocephala than the males and immature females. Such phenomenon has not been observed in the neritic zone at South Georgia. Cystacanths of Corynosoma hamanni and Corynosoma pseudohamanni were the dominant parasites in Admiralty Bay, whereas Corynosoma bullosum was the dominant in the open sea off the South Shetland Islands and South Georgia, and in the sub-coastal waters off the South Orkney Islands. However, the dominance of C. bullosum was observed in several hosts in Admiralty Bay and the co-dominance of C. bullosum, C. hamanni, and C. pseudohamanni in one mature female in the neritic zone at the South Shetland Islands. Probably, these fish previously lived in the open sea. Cystacanths of Corynosoma arctocephali and Corynosoma shackletoni occurred in the fish in Admiralty Bay and off South Georgia. The former parasite was present also off the South Orkney Islands. One cystacanth of Andracantha baylisi was found off South Georgia. Two echinorhynchids, Aspersentis megarhynchus and Metacanthocephalus dalmori, occurred in the alimentary tracts of the fish caught in Admiralty Bay and one specimen of Echinorhynchus petrotschenkoi off the South Shetland Islands. The highest infection, amounting to 816 acanthocephalans, was found in a mature female in Admiralty Bay. One cystacanth of C. hamanni occurred in a single immature fish caught in the sub-coastal area off Deception Island.