Global trends in infectious diseases at the wildlife–livestock interface

The role and significance of wildlife–livestock interfaces in disease ecology has largely been neglected, despite recent interest in animals as origins of emerging diseases in humans. Scoping review methods were applied to objectively assess the relative interest by the scientific community in infectious diseases at interfaces between wildlife and livestock, to characterize animal species and regions involved, as well as to identify trends over time. An extensive literature search combining wildlife, livestock, disease, and geographical search terms yielded 78,861 publications, of which 15,998 were included in the analysis. Publications dated from 1912 to 2013 and showed a continuous increasing trend, including a shift from parasitic to viral diseases over time. In particular there was a significant increase in publications on the artiodactyls–cattle and bird–poultry interface after 2002 and 2003, respectively. These trends could be traced to key disease events that stimulated public interest and research funding. Among the top 10 diseases identified by this review, the majority were zoonoses. Prominent wildlife–livestock interfaces resulted largely from interaction between phylogenetically closely related and/or sympatric species. The bird–poultry interface was the most frequently cited wildlife–livestock interface worldwide with other interfaces reflecting regional circumstances. This review provides the most comprehensive overview of research on infectious diseases at the wildlife–livestock interface to date

Evaluating the social acceptability of voice based smartwatch search

There has been a recent increase in the number of wearable (e.g. smartwatch, interactive glasses, etc.) devices available. Coupled with this there has been a surge in the number of searches that occur on mobile devices. Given these trends it is inevitable that search will become a part of wearable interaction. Given the form factor and display capabilities of wearables this will probably require a different type of search interaction to what is currently used in mobile search. This paper presents the results of a user study focusing on users’ perceptions of the use of smartwatches for search. We pay particular attention to social acceptability of different search scenarios, focussing on in-put method, device form and information need. Our findings indicate that audience and location heavily influence whether people will perform a voice based search. The results will help search system developers to support search on smartwatches

trends and challenges in the beginning of the 21ST century

UID/SOC/04647/2013 BD/115832/2016?This paper focuses on the employability of graduates and assuming an approach in which em­ployability is understood as the result of the interaction between higher education and the labour market. This interaction is framed by various factors and variables including the ones related to the characteristics of the social and economic contexts and specific policies. Drawing on statis­tical data available from Eurostat and OECD the analysis intends to highlight the main trends concerning participation in higher education and involvement of graduates in the labour market in Portugal since the year 2000, taking into account how these trends converge (or not) with the ones observable at European level. Additionally, trends are contextualised in search of possible explanations, namely related to the ongoing global crisis that started in 2008 and to the debt crisis that has contributed to the deterioration of the social and economic situation in the country.publishersversionpublishe

External knowledge diversity, competition intensity and innovation performance in logistics: implications for less versus more innovative industries

Purpose: This paper analyzes the association of searching diversely as a strategy to capture external knowledge and that of competition intensity with innovation in logistics. Secondly it studies how these associations interact by examining whether they intensify or mitigate one another when jointly occur. Thirdly, it is explored whether correlations of search diversity, competition intensity and their interaction effect with logistics innovation demonstrate differences in their strength depending on logistics innovativeness of target industries. Design/methodology/approach: By discriminating between diversifying and expanding search scope, a new search mode is identified which is more precise in examining diversity of acquired external knowledge in comparison to search breadth. External search diversity is formulated based on a classification of external sources according to similarities in their knowledge supply. Quantile regression is applied for the purpose of this study due to its ability in estimating different models in different quantiles of the response variable. Findings: While positive trends are found for both antecedents, their mutual occurrence partially mitigates their individual positive relations with logistics innovation. All correlations demonstrate dynamic patterns. The strength of these correlations varies between industries with low logistics innovation rates compared to the ones with higher rates. Search diversity illustrates its highest correlation in the least innovative industries whereases competition intensity contributes the most to logistics innovation, in higher innovative ones. Their interaction effect exhibits similar patterns to those of search diversity. Originality: The role of external knowledge management in logistics innovation and its interaction with competition intensity as a synergetic antecedent is studied for the first time in this paper in the open innovation framework

Fundamental Physics with the Laser Astrometric Test Of Relativity

The Laser Astrometric Test Of Relativity (LATOR) is a joint European-U.S. Michelson-Morley-type experiment designed to test the pure tensor metric nature of gravitation - a fundamental postulate of Einstein's theory of general relativity. By using a combination of independent time-series of highly accurate gravitational deflection of light in the immediate proximity to the Sun, along with measurements of the Shapiro time delay on interplanetary scales (to a precision respectively better than 0.1 picoradians and 1 cm), LATOR will significantly improve our knowledge of relativistic gravity. The primary mission objective is to i) measure the key post-Newtonian Eddington parameter \gamma with accuracy of a part in 10^9. (1-\gamma) is a direct measure for presence of a new interaction in gravitational theory, and, in its search, LATOR goes a factor 30,000 beyond the present best result, Cassini's 2003 test. The mission will also provide: ii) first measurement of gravity's non-linear effects on light to ~0.01% accuracy; including both the Eddington \beta parameter and also the spatial metric's 2nd order potential contribution (never measured before); iii) direct measurement of the solar quadrupole moment J2 (currently unavailable) to accuracy of a part in 200 of its expected size; iv) direct measurement of the "frame-dragging" effect on light by the Sun's gravitomagnetic field, to 1% accuracy. LATOR's primary measurement pushes to unprecedented accuracy the search for cosmologically relevant scalar-tensor theories of gravity by looking for a remnant scalar field in today's solar system. We discuss the mission design of this proposed experiment.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures; invited talk given at the 2005 ESLAB Symposium "Trends in Space Science and Cosmic Vision 2020," 19-21 April 2005, ESTEC, Noodrwijk, The Netherland

Scaling laws of human interaction activity

Even though people in our contemporary, technological society are depending on communication, our understanding of the underlying laws of human communicational behavior continues to be poorly understood. Here we investigate the communication patterns in two social Internet communities in search of statistical laws in human interaction activity. This research reveals that human communication networks dynamically follow scaling laws that may also explain the observed trends in economic growth. Specifically, we identify a generalized version of Gibrat's law of social activity expressed as a scaling law between the fluctuations in the number of messages sent by members and their level of activity. Gibrat's law has been essential in understanding economic growth patterns, yet without an underlying general principle for its origin. We attribute this scaling law to long-term correlation patterns in human activity, which surprisingly span from days to the entire period of the available data of more than one year. Further, we provide a mathematical framework that relates the generalized version of Gibrat's law to the long-term correlated dynamics, which suggests that the same underlying mechanism could be the source of Gibrat's law in economics, ranging from large firms, research and development expenditures, gross domestic product of countries, to city population growth. These findings are also of importance for designing communication networks and for the understanding of the dynamics of social systems in which communication plays a role, such as economic markets and political systems.Comment: 20+7 pages, 4+2 figure

A phase-resolved XMM-Newton Campaign on the Colliding Wind Binary HD 152248

We report the first results of an XMM-Newton monitoring campaign of the NGC 6231 open cluster in the Sco OB1 association. This first paper focuses on the massive colliding wind binary HD 152248, which is the brightest X-ray source of the cluster. The campaign, with a total duration of 180 ksec, was split into six separate observations, following the orbital motion of HD 152248. The X-ray flux from this system presents a clear, asymmetric modulation with the phase and ranges from 0.73 to 1.18 10-12 erg s-1 cm-2 in the [0.5-10.0 keV] energy band. The maximum of the emission is reached slightly after apastron. The EPIC spectra are quite soft and peak around 0.8-0.9 keV. We characterize their shape using several combinations of mekal models and power-law spectra and we detect significant spectral variability in the [0.5-2.5 keV] energy band. We also perform 2-D hydrodynamical simulations using different sets of parameters that closely reproduce the physical and orbital configuration of the HD 152248 system at the time of the six XMM-Newton pointings. This allows a direct confrontation of the model predictions with the constraints deduced from the X-ray observations of the system. We show that the observed variation of the flux can be explained by a variation of the X-ray emission from the colliding wind zone, diluted by the softer X-ray contribution of the two O-type stars of the system. Our simulations also reveal that the interaction region of HD 152248 should be highly unstable, giving rise to shells of dense gas that are separated by low density regions. Finally, we perform a search for short-term variability in the light curves of the system and we show that trends are present within several of the 30 ksec exposures of our campaign. Further, most of these trends are in good .Comment: Accepted by MNRAS; 22 pages; without figures; complete PS version (including figures) on http://vela.astro.ulg.ac.be/Preprints/index.htm