title: Machine learning identifies ecological selectivity patterns across the end-Permian mass extinction

authors: Foster, William J.

abstract: The end-Permian mass extinction occurred alongside a large swath of environmental changes that are often invoked as extinction mechanisms, even when a direct link is lacking. One way to elucidate the cause(s) of a mass extinction is to investigate extinction selectivity, as it can reveal critical information on organismic traits as key determinants of extinction and survival. Here we show that machine learning algorithms, specifically gradient boosted decision trees, can be used to identify determinants of extinction as well as to predict extinction risk. To understand which factors led to the end-Permian mass extinction during an extreme global warming event, we quantified the ecological selectivity of marine extinctions in the well-studied South China region. We find that extinction selectivity varies between different groups of organisms and that a synergy of multiple environmental stressors best explains the overall end-Permian extinction selectivity pattern. Extinction risk was greater for genera that had a low species richness, narrow bathymetric ranges limited to deep-water habitats, a stationary mode of life, a siliceous skeleton, or, less critically, calcitic skeletons. These selective losses directly link the extinctions to the environmental effects of rapid injections of carbon dioxide into the ocean-atmosphere system, specifically the combined effects of expanded oxygen minimum zones, rapid warming, and potentially ocean acidification.

text: Machine learning identifies ecological selectivity patterns across the end-Permian mass extinction The end-Permian mass extinction occurred alongside a large swath of environmental changes that are often invoked as extinction mechanisms, even when a direct link is lacking. One way to elucidate the cause(s) of a mass extinction is to investigate extinction selectivity, as it can reveal critical information on organismic traits as key determinants of extinction and survival. Here we show that machine learning algorithms, specifically gradient boosted decision trees, can be used to identify determinants of extinction as well as to predict extinction risk. To understand which factors led to the end-Permian mass extinction during an extreme global warming event, we quantified the ecological selectivity of marine extinctions in the well-studied South China region. We find that extinction selectivity varies between different groups of organisms and that a synergy of multiple environmental stressors best explains the overall end-Permian extinction selectivity pattern. Extinction risk was greater for genera that had a low species richness, narrow bathymetric ranges limited to deep-water habitats, a stationary mode of life, a siliceous skeleton, or, less critically, calcitic skeletons. These selective losses directly link the extinctions to the environmental effects of rapid injections of carbon dioxide into the ocean-atmosphere system, specifically the combined effects of expanded oxygen minimum zones, rapid warming, and potentially ocean acidification.

year: 2022

title: Maintaining SLOs of cloud-native applications via self-adaptive resource sharing

authors: Podolskiy, Vladimir

subjects: computer science

abstract: With changing workloads, cloud service providers can leverage vertical container scaling (adding/removing resources) so that Service Level Objective (SLO) violations are minimized and spare resources are maximized. In this paper, we investigate a solution to the self-adaptive problem of vertical elasticity for co-located containerized applications. First, the system learns performance models that relate SLOs to workload, resource limits and service level indicators. Second, it derives limits that meet SLOs and minimize resource consumption via a combination of optimization and restricted brute-force search. Third, it vertically scales containers based on the derived limits. We evaluated our technique on a Kubernetes private cloud of 8 nodes with three deployed applications. The results registered two SLO violations out of 16 validation tests; acceptably low derivation times facilitate realistic deployment. Violations are primarily attributed to application specifics, such as garbage collection, which require further research to be circumvented.

text: Maintaining SLOs of cloud-native applications via self-adaptive resource sharing With changing workloads, cloud service providers can leverage vertical container scaling (adding/removing resources) so that Service Level Objective (SLO) violations are minimized and spare resources are maximized. In this paper, we investigate a solution to the self-adaptive problem of vertical elasticity for co-located containerized applications. First, the system learns performance models that relate SLOs to workload, resource limits and service level indicators. Second, it derives limits that meet SLOs and minimize resource consumption via a combination of optimization and restricted brute-force search. Third, it vertically scales containers based on the derived limits. We evaluated our technique on a Kubernetes private cloud of 8 nodes with three deployed applications. The results registered two SLO violations out of 16 validation tests; acceptably low derivation times facilitate realistic deployment. Violations are primarily attributed to application specifics, such as garbage collection, which require further research to be circumvented.

year: 2019

title: Viewing the world through a wider lens: Māori and council planning documents

authors: Kennedy, Nathan

subjects: New Zealand

abstract: My effort to convey an iwi perspective on environmental resource management - what we call kaitiakitanga – should highlight for new planners about to enter the profession that the environmental perspectives of hapū  and iwi (which are provided for in the RMA), are currently not well covered in either mainstream local government planning or education.

text: Viewing the world through a wider lens: Māori and council planning documents My effort to convey an iwi perspective on environmental resource management - what we call kaitiakitanga – should highlight for new planners about to enter the profession that the environmental perspectives of hapū  and iwi (which are provided for in the RMA), are currently not well covered in either mainstream local government planning or education.

year: 2008-07-30