A big-data spatial, temporal and network analysis of bovine tuberculosis between wildlife (badgers) and cattle

postprin

Plasticity in foraging behaviour as a possible response to climate change

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Allometry and growth of eight tree taxa in United Kingdom woodlands.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0As part of a project to develop predictive ecosystem models of United Kingdom woodlands we have collated data from two United Kingdom woodlands - Wytham Woods and Alice Holt. Here we present data from 582 individual trees of eight taxa in the form of summary variables relating to the allometric relationships between trunk diameter, height, crown height, crown radius and trunk radial growth rate to the tree's light environment and diameter at breast height. In addition the raw data files containing the variables from which the summary data were obtained. Large sample sizes with longitudinal data spanning 22 years make these datasets useful for future studies concerned with the way trees change in size and shape over their life-span

From Molecular Cores to Planet-forming Disks with SIRTF

The SIRTF mission and the Legacy programs will provide coherent data bases for extra-galactic and Galactic science that will rapidly become available to researchers through a public archive. The capabilities of SIRTF and the six legacy programs are described briefly. Then the cores to disks (c2d) program is described in more detail. The c2d program will use all three SIRTF instruments (IRAC, MIPS, and IRS) to observe sources from molecular cores to protoplanetary disks, with a wide range of cloud masses, stellar masses, and star-forming environments. The SIRTF data will stimulate many follow-up studies, both with SIRTF and with other instruments.Comment: 6 pages, from Fourth Cologne-Bonn-Zermatt-Symposium, The Dense Interstellar Matter in Galaxie

Runtime Distributions and Criteria for Restarts

Randomized algorithms sometimes employ a restart strategy. After a certain number of steps, the current computation is aborted and restarted with a new, independent random seed. In some cases, this results in an improved overall expected runtime. This work introduces properties of the underlying runtime distribution which determine whether restarts are advantageous. The most commonly used probability distributions admit the use of a scale and a location parameter. Location parameters shift the density function to the right, while scale parameters affect the spread of the distribution. It is shown that for all distributions scale parameters do not influence the usefulness of restarts and that location parameters only have a limited influence. This result simplifies the analysis of the usefulness of restarts. The most important runtime probability distributions are the log-normal, the Weibull, and the Pareto distribution. In this work, these distributions are analyzed for the usefulness of restarts. Secondly, a condition for the optimal restart time (if it exists) is provided. The log-normal, the Weibull, and the generalized Pareto distribution are analyzed in this respect. Moreover, it is shown that the optimal restart time is also not influenced by scale parameters and that the influence of location parameters is only linear

The Agricultural Growth and Malting Production of Barley Grains in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia

The purpose of this study is to explore the history and production processes of beer and examines the components that contribute to its brewing. The narrative will provide a timeline of the processes that are required to create the product of beer beginning with the agricultural products and following the brewing processes that result in beer as the finished product. I will also examine the business of agriculture and grain processing and will provide some historical perspectives of grain, beer, and malting. I will also consider whether the growing, processing, and malting of grains in the East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia Region is feasible as demonstrated through this research and reported findings

The Agricultural Growth and Malting Production of Barley Grains in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia

The purpose of this study is to explore the history and production processes of beer and examines the components that contribute to its brewing. The narrative will provide a timeline of the processes that are required to create the product of beer beginning with the agricultural products and following the brewing processes that result in beer as the finished product. I will also examine the business of agriculture and grain processing and will provide some historical perspectives of grain, beer, and malting. I will also consider whether the growing, processing, and malting of grains in the East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia Region is feasible as demonstrated through this research and reported findings

SELF-KNOWLEDGE, BUSINESS-INFORMATION PREFERENCE AND USE AS DETERMINANTS OF SALES PERFORMANCE OF MANAGERS IN PETROLEUM MARKETING COMPANIES IN OYO STATE, NIGERIA

Purpose: Preliminary investigation into the management of petroleum marketing companies in Oyo State revealed that the sales performance of managers in petroleum industry is drastically poor and the industry is facing a lot of challenges in the Nigerian environment. Consequently, the study investigates the level of self-knowledge, business information preference and use as determinants of sales performance of managers in petroleum marketing companies in Oyo state, Nigeria. Methodology: The study adopted the descriptive research design to determine the direction and degree of relationship between variables. The target population for the study was the managers in petroleum marketing companies. Total enumeration sampling techniques with a structured questionnaire was used for data collection on a population size of 232 managers out of which 220 managers responded giving a response rate of 94.8 percent. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, percentages, one-way analysis of variance, correlation and multiple regression analysis. Combination of self-knowledge, business information preference and use had significant positive relationship with sales performance of managers in petroleum marketing companies. It shows a coefficient of multiple correlation ( r=.8031) and (R2=1658). Findings: However, the study found out that self-knowledge (r =0.306, P \u3c.05); business information preference (r = 0.401, P \u3c 0.05) and business information use (r=0.548, P \u3c 0.05) of the respondents were found to be significant predictors of sales performance. Recommendations: Management of petroleum marketing companies should continually seek appropriate business information on innovative products and services in order to compete favorably with competitor in the industry. The management should invest in human capital development in the organisation to increase customer satisfaction and increase profitability. Originality: The research work is original and Nobel in addressing issues as regards the topic addressed

Optimization of Brownian ratchets for the manipulation of charged components within supported lipid bilayers

In probability theory, there is a counter-intuitive result that it is possible to construct a winning strategy from two individually losing (or at most breaking-even) "games" by alternating between them. The work presented here demonstrates the application of this principle to supported lipid bilayers (SLBs) in order to create directed motion of charged lipid components in the membrane, which was achieved through the use of "Brownian ratchets" in patterned SLBs. Both a finite element analysis model and an experimental setup have been used to investigate the role of key parameters for the operation of these ratchets: (1) the asymmetry of the ratchet teeth and (2) the relation of the ratchet height to the period of the applied electric field. Importantly, we find that the efficiency of the ratchet for a given charged species is dependent on the diffusion coefficient. This opens the possibility for separation of membrane species according to their size or viscous drag coefficient within the membrane

Coupling models of cattle and farms with models of badgers for predicting the dynamics of bovine tuberculosis (TB)

Bovine TB is a major problem for the agricultural industry in several countries. TB can be contracted and spread by species other than cattle and this can cause a problem for disease control. In the UK and Ireland, badgers are a recognised reservoir of infection and there has been substantial discussion about potential control strategies. We present a coupling of individual based models of bovine TB in badgers and cattle, which aims to capture the key details of the natural history of the disease and of both species at approximately county scale. The model is spatially explicit it follows a very large number of cattle and badgers on a different grid size for each species and includes also winter housing. We show that the model can replicate the reported dynamics of both cattle and badger populations as well as the increasing prevalence of the disease in cattle. Parameter space used as input in simulations was swept out using Latin hypercube sampling and sensitivity analysis to model outputs was conducted using mixed effect models. By exploring a large and computationally intensive parameter space we show that of the available control strategies it is the frequency of TB testing and whether or not winter housing is practised that have the most significant effects on the number of infected cattle, with the effect of winter housing becoming stronger as farm size increases. Whether badgers were culled or not explained about 5%, while the accuracy of the test employed to detect infected cattle explained less than 3% of the variance in the number of infected cattle