An Investigation Of The Ecology Of Nesting Golden Eagles In North Dakota

Few studies have focused on golden eagles nesting in North Dakota. This project investigates the ecology of, and the potential effects from energy development on, nesting golden eagles in North Dakota, by collecting historical data, conducting nest checks and surveys (2002-2006). Historical information was not sufficient for population estimates. Nest checks/surveys indicated that nest densities, occupied nest sites and territories was greatest near the riparian river bottoms. There were 176 potential extant territories. The average minimum distance between occupied nest sites was 6.32km (7.20km to 3.85km). The mean territory area was 8.95 km2 (SD = 4.25 km2, min = 3.09 km2, max 26.65 km 2). With a detection rate of 48.58%, nest surveys revealed 388 nest sites, of which 51 were occupied. Nests on cliffs with a SE, S, SW orientation were found more commonly than tree and ground nests. Occupied nests ranged from 15 to 50, (2002-2006), averaging 0.81(SD = 0.65) - 1.30 (SD = 0.45) fledglings/nest. One to three chicks were fledged. Twenty-three mortalities were recorded, all juveniles. Wind storms and West Nile were the main causes. Eight of the 18 tagged birds survived. I observed group hunting by pairs of adult golden eagles. In 2003 I observed 8 separate groups of three or four, in 2004 two groups of 4, and in 2003 and 2005, a group of six was observed. The best fit model, with a significance of 0.10, for both forward selection and backward elimination resulted in selection of the explanatory variables: Slope, Large Tree Woody Habitat, Cropland, Erodibility, Native Prairie, and Aspect with an AIC value of 365.71. Slope (SL), Large Tree Woody Habitat (LW), Cropland (C), Erodibility (Kf), and Native Prairie (NP), were the most parsimonious predictors; (βSL = 0.1693, SE = 0.0131; β LW = -0.1322, SE 0.0288; βC = -0.0581, SE = 0.0131; β Kf = 1.2168, SE = 0.3396; βNP = -0.0212, SE = 0.0105. The categorical variables Aspect had weak correlations yet collectively they met the 0.10 significance level and increased the AIC value for model selection. The results from the habitat suitability map identify areas of high priority for the protection of nesting golden eagles

2017 Conference Abstracts: Annual Undergraduate Research Conference at the Interface of Biology and Mathematics

Schedule and abstract book for the Ninth Annual Undergraduate Research Conference at the Interface of Biology and Mathematics Date: November 11-12, 2017Location: UT Conference Center, KnoxvillePlenary Speaker: Kiona Ogle, The School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems, Northern Arizona Univ.Featured Speaker: Katherine J. Evans, Group Leader, Computational Earth Sciences, ORN

Optimising Agent Behaviours and Game Parameters to Meet Designer’s Objectives

The game industry is one of the biggest economic sector in the entertainment business whose product rely heavily on the quality of the interactivity to stay relevant. Non-Player Character (NPC) is the main mechanic used for this purpose and it has to be optimised for its designated behaviour. The development process iteratively circulates the results among game designers, game AI developers, and game testers. Automatic optimisation of NPCs to designer’s objective will increase the speed of each iteration, and reduce the overall production time. Previous attempts used entropy evaluation metrics which are difficult to translate the terms to the optimising game and a slight misinterpretation often leads to incorrect measurement. This thesis proposes an alternative method which evaluates generated game data with reference result from the testers. The thesis first presents a reliable way to extract information for NPCs classification called Relative Region Feature (RRF). RRF provides an excellent data compression method, a way to effectively classify, and a way to optimise objective-oriented adaptive NPCs. The formalised optimisation is also proved to work on classifying player skill with the reference hall-of-fame scores. The demonstration are done on the on-line competition version of Ms PacMan. The generated games from participating entries provide challenging optimising problems for various evolutionary optimisers. The thesis developed modified version of CMA-ES and PSO to effectively tackle the problems. It also demonstrates the adaptivity of MCTS NPC which uses the evaluation method. This NPC performs reasonably well given adequate resources and no reference NPC is required

Diagrammatics and the Proactive Visualization of Legal Information

This article performs an analysis of one mode of visual legal communication: diagrammatics and the visualization of legal data and other information in legal instruments and communications. The Proactive Law movement and the Legal Design movement each seek to transform legal instruments and documents to improve access to and comprehension of the communication of law to all persons. “All persons” includes both law-trained and non-law-trained persons and extends from the literate and educated all the way to disadvantaged, illiterate, and less-thanfully literate persons. The overall goal of the Proactive Law movement and a primary goal of Legal Design is to improve the understanding of legal rights, relationships, and obligations expressed in legal products, instruments, services, processes, and systems through illustration, simplification, engagement, and inclusiveness in the text and visual components of these instruments and communications

Finite elements software and applications

The contents of this thesis are a detailed study of the software for the finite element method. In the text, the finite element method is introduced from both the engineering and mathematical points of view. The computer implementation of the method is explained with samples of mainframe, mini- and micro-computer implementations. A solution is presented for the problem of limited stack size for both mini- and micro-computers which possess stack architecture. Several finite element programs are presented. Special purpose programs to solve problems in structural analysis and groundwater flow are discussed. However, an efficient easy-to-use finite element program for general two-dimensional problems is presented. Several problems in groundwater flow are considered that include steady, unsteady flows in different types of aquifers. Different cases of sinks and sources in the flow domain are also considered. The performance of finite element methods is studied for the chosen problems by comparing the numerical solutions of test problems with analytical solutions (if they exist) or with solutions obtained by other numerical methods. The polynomial refinement of the finite elements is studied for the presented problems in order to offer some evidence as to which finite element simulation is best to use under a variety of circumstances

Untersuchung der Struktur und Interaktion mit allosterischen Modulatoren der Familie C GPCRs mit Hilfe von Sequenz-, Struktur- und Ligand-basierten Verfahren

This study focuses on structural features of a particular GPCR type, the family C GPCRs. Structure- and ligand-based approaches were adopted for prediction of novel mGluR5 binding ligand and their binding modes. The objectives of this study were: 1. An analysis of function and structural implication of amino acids in the TM region of family C GPCRs. 2. The prediction of the TM domain structure of mGluR5. 3. The discovery of novel selective allosteric modulators of mGluR5 by virtual screening. 4. The prediction of a ligand binding mode for the allosteric binding site in mGluR5. GPCRs are a super-family of structurally related proteins although their primary amino acid sequence can be diverse. Using sequence information a conservation analysis of family C GPCRs should be applied to reveal characteristic differences and similarities with respect function, folding and ligand binding. Using experimental data and conservation analysis the allosteric binding site of mGluR5 should be characterized regarding NAM and PAM and selective ligand binding. For further evaluation experimental knowledge about family A GPCRs as well as conservation between vertebrate rhodopsins was planned to be compared to results obtained for family C GPCRs (Section 4.1 Conservation analysis of family C GPCRs). Since no receptor structure is available for any family C GPCR, discussion of conserved sequence positions between family A and C GPCRs requires the prediction of a receptor structure for mGluR5 using a family A receptor as template. In order to predict the mGluR5 structure a sequence alignment to a GPCR template protein will have to be proposed and GPCR specific features considered in structure calculation (Section 4.1.4 Structure prediction of mGluR5). The obtained structure was intended to be involved in ligand binding mode prediction of newly discovered active molecules. For discovery of novel selective mGluR modulators several ligand-based virtual screening protocols were adapted and evaluated. Prediction models were derived for selection of possibly active molecules using a diverse collection of known mGluR binding ligands. For that purpose a data collection of known mGluR binding ligands should be established and this reference collection analyzed with respect to different ligand activity classes, NAM or PAM and selective modulators. The prediction of novel NAMs and PAMs using several combinations of 2D-, 3D-, pharmacophore or molecule shape encoding methods with machine learning techniques and similarity determining methods should be tested in a prospective manner (Section 4.2 Virtual screening for novel mGluR modulators). In collaboration with Merz Pharmaceuticals (Merz GmbH & Co. KGaA, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) the modulating effect of a few hundred molecules should be approved in a functional cell-based assay. With the objective to predict a binding mode of the discovered active molecules, molecule docking should be applied using the allosteric binding site of the modeled mGluR5 structure (Section 4.2.4 Modeling of binding modes). Predicted ligand binding modes are to be correlated to conservation profiles that had resulted from the sequence-based entropy analysis and information from mutation experiments, and shall be compared to known ligand binding poses from crystal structures of family A GPCRs.Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurden Konzepte zur Aufklärung struktureller und funktioneller Eigenschaften von G-Protein gekoppelten Rezeptoren (GPCR) der Familie C entwickelt und angewendet. Mit unterschiedlichen Methodiken der Bio- und Chemieinformatik orientiert an experimentellen Ergebnissen wurden Fragestellungen bezüglich des Funktionsmechanismus von GPCRs untersucht. In Verlauf wurde anhand verfügbarer experimenteller Daten aus Mutations- und Ligandenbindungsstudien ein Vergleich konservierter Bereiche der Rezeptor-Familien A und C angefertigt. Die Konserviertheitsanalyse stützte sich auf die Berechnung der Shannon-Entropie und wurde für ein multiples Sequenzalignment von Transmembrandomänen unterschiedlicher 96 Familie C GPCRs ermittelt. Konservierte Bereiche wurden mit Hilfe experimenteller Daten interpretiert und insbesondere zur Definition von Regionen in der allosterischen Bindetasche hinsichtlich Selektivität verwendet. Mit dem Ziel, neue selektive allosterische Modulatoren für den metabotropen Glutamatrezeptor des Typs fünf (mGluR5) zu finden, wurden mehrere Liganden-basierte Ansätze zur virtuellen Vorhersage der Aktivität von Molekülen entwickelt und getestet. Die dabei angewendete Strategie basierte auf der Kenntnis bereits bekannter Liganden, deren Strukturen und Aktivitätswerte für das Erstellen von Vorhersagemodelle genutzt werden konnten. Die prospektive Vorhersage stützte sich auf unterschiedliche Methoden zur Ähnlichkeitsberechnung und Arten der Molekülkodierung. Die Testung der Moleküle erfolgte hinsichtlich ihrer modulatorischen Wirkung am mGluR5. Die Art der Messung erfasste die Änderungen des Ca2+-Levels in der Zelle. mGluR5-bindende Modulatoren wurden zur Selektivitätsbestimmung einer Testung am mGluR1 unterzogen. Insgesamt konnten 8 von 228 getesteten Molekülen im Aktivitätsbereich unter 10μM ermittelt werden, darunter befand sich ein positiver allosterischer Modulator. Von den restlichen sieben negativen Modulatoren (NAM) waren fünf selektiv für mGluR5. Alle identifizierten NAMs wurden mittels molekularem Dockings auf mögliche Interaktion mit der Transmembrandomäne von mGluR5 untersucht. Die Bindungshypothese entsprach einer Überlagerung der gefundenen Moleküle und ihrer möglicher Interaktionspunkte. Exemplarisch am mGluR5 konnte somit die Eignung einer modellierten GPCR-Struktur für eine Hypothesengenerierung bezüglich Ligandenbindung und struktureller Zusammenhänge untersucht werden

Optimisation methods in structural systems reliability

Imperial Users onl