An Economic Evaluation of a Pest Management Control Program: "Outfox the Fox"

Foxes are regarded as a serious pest of environmental and grazing systems in Australia. The fox is a recognised predator of native wildlife and has been a significant contributor to the population decline of many native mammal, bird and reptile species. There are also claims that foxes may account for up to 30% of lamb mortalities in some areas, while mortality due to predation of 2 to 5% is more likely in most regions. The ‘Outfox the Fox’ program was established by NSW Agriculture in conjunction with a number of Rural Land Protection Boards to achieve a more strategic and coordinated fox baiting program. This program relies on a community driven and integrated management approach to the problem. The main features are to synchronise baiting across landholders at least twice a year, undertake baiting during periods when the fox is most susceptible, regularly check and replace baits, and continue until the bait take declines. A stochastic economic surplus and benefit-cost analysis model was developed to evaluate this program. The change in annual economic surplus due to the ‘Outfox the Fox’ program was $3.4m. The benefit-cost analysis showed that the project provided a significant return on public investment with a mean net present value of$9.8m and a mean benefit-cost ratio of 13.0:1. The stochastic analysis indicated that there was a very low probability of this program providing a negative economic return.benefit cost analysis, research evaluation, economic surplus, fox, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use, Livestock Production/Industries, Production Economics, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Q160,

Oribatid assemblies of tropical high mountains on some points of the “Gondwana-Bridge” – a case study

This work is the first part of a series of studies, which introduces the methodological possibilities of coenological and zoogeographical indication and – following the climate, vegetation and elevation zones – the pattern-describing analysis of the main Oribatid sinusia of the world explored till our days.This current work is a case-study, which displays the comparison of 9 examination sites from 3 different geographical locations. On each location, three vegetation types have been examined: a plain rain-forest, a mossforest and a mountainous paramo. Analyses are based on the hitherto non-published genus-level database and coenological tables of the deceased János Balogh professor. Occurrence of 18 genera is going to be published as new data for the given zoogeographical region

The measurement of dissolved oxygen today - tradition and topicality

Today, the determination of the dissolved oxygen content of natural waters is practically an essential duty whenever background data is collected for investigations of a hydrobiological, ecological, and nature or environmental protection viewpoint. If the method by which the measurements are carried out is concerned, it can be stated that the 120 year old, classical Winkler-method is inevitable even today. However the development of hydroecological sciences have laid claim to such expectations that the necessity of in situ oxygen determinations have become increasingly important. In our work we present the survival of the traditional Winkler-method in the present practice, we review all those viewpoints which have facilitated the widespread application of in situ oxygen determinations as well as the methods of all the measurements that are presently regularly applied in the investigations of natural waters

Metallic magnetism at finite temperatures studied by relativistic disordered moment description: Theory and applications

We develop a self-consistent relativistic disordered local moment (RDLM) scheme aimed at describing finite temperature magnetism of itinerant metals from first principles. Our implementation in terms of the Korringa--Kohn--Rostoker multiple scattering theory and the coherent potential approximation allows to relate the orientational distribution of the spins to the electronic structure, thus a self-consistent treatment of the distribution is possible. We present applications for bulk bcc Fe, L1$_0$-FePt and FeRh ordered in the CsCl structure. The calculations for Fe show significant variation of the local moments with temperature, whereas according to the mean field treatment of the spin fluctuations the Curie temperature is overestimated. The magnetic anisotropy of FePt alloys is found to depend strongly on intermixing between nominally Fe and Pt layers, and it shows a power-law behavior as a function of magnetization for a broad range of chemical disorder. In case of FeRh we construct a lattice constant vs. temperature phase diagram and determine the phaseline of metamagnetic transitions based on self-consistent RDLM free energy curves.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

Sobolev inequalities with jointly concave weights on convex cones

Using optimal mass transport arguments, we prove weighted Sobolev inequalities of the form $$\left(\int_E |u(x)|^q\,\omega(x) \,dx\right)^{1/q}\leq K_0\,\left(\int_E |\nabla u(x)|^p\,\sigma(x)\,dx\right)^{1/p},\ \ u\in C_0^\infty(\mathbb R^n),\ \ \ \ \ \ {\rm (WSI)}$$ where $p\geq 1$ and $q>0$ is the corresponding Sobolev critical exponent. Here $E\subseteq \mathbb R^n$ is an open convex cone, and $\omega,\sigma:E\to (0,\infty)$ are two homogeneous weights verifying a general concavity-type structural condition. The constant $K_0= K_0(n, p, q, \omega, \sigma) >0$ is given by an explicit formula. Under mild regularity assumptions on the weights, we also prove that $K_0$ is optimal in (WSI) if and only if $\omega$ and $\sigma$ are equal up to a multiplicative factor. Several previously known results, including the cases for monomials and radial weights, are covered by our statement. Further examples and applications to PDEs are also provided.Comment: 35 pages; some references are updated. To appear in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Societ

Bounding sup-norms of cusp forms of large level

Let f be an $L^2$-normalized weight zero Hecke-Maass cusp form of square-free level N, character $\chi$ and Laplacian eigenvalue $\lambda\geq 1/4$. It is shown that $\| f \|_{\infty} \ll_{\lambda} N^{-1/37}$, from which the hybrid bound $\|f \|_{\infty} \ll \lambda^{1/4} (N\lambda)^{-\delta}$ (for some $\delta > 0$) is derived. The first bound holds also for $f = y^{k/2}F$ where F is a holomorphic cusp form of weight k with the implied constant now depending on k.Comment: version 3: substantially revised versio

Ram pressure and dusty red galaxies - key factors in the evolution of the multiple cluster system Abell 901/902

We present spectroscopic observations of 182 disk galaxies (96 in the cluster and 86 in the field environment) in the region of the Abell 901/902 multiple cluster system, which is located at a redshift of $z\sim 0.165$. The presence of substructures and non-Gaussian redshift distributions indicate that the cluster system is dynamically young and not in a virialized state. We find evidence for two important galaxy populations. \textit{Morphologically distorted galaxies} are probably subject to increased tidal interactions. They show pronounced rotation curve asymmetries at intermediate cluster-centric radii and low rest-frame peculiar velocities. \textit{Morphologically undistorted galaxies} show the strongest rotation curve asymmetries at high rest-frame velocities and low cluster-centric radii. Supposedly, this group is strongly affected by ram-pressure stripping due to interaction with the intra-cluster medium. Among the morphologically undistorted galaxies, dusty red galaxies have particularly strong rotation curve asymmetries, suggesting ram pressure is an important factor in these galaxies. Furthermore, dusty red galaxies on average have a bulge-to-total ratio higher by a factor of two than cluster blue cloud and field galaxies. The fraction of kinematically distorted galaxies is 75% higher in the cluster than in the field environment. This difference mainly stems from morphological undistorted galaxies, indicating a cluster-specific interaction process that only affects the gas kinematics but not the stellar morphology. Also the ratio between gas and stellar scale length is reduced for cluster galaxies compared to the field sample. Both findings could be best explained by ram-pressure effects.Comment: Electronic version published in Astronomy and Astrophysics Volume 549, Page 0; 19 pages, 21 figure

Methylation landscape in the genome of higher plants of agronomical interest

In eukaryotic cells the methylation of cytosines in DNA is an essential mechanism which is implied in the dynamic organization of the genome structure, in relation to genes expression. Plant genomes contain a significant proportion and variable according to the species, of sequences which are likely to be methylated during the life of the plant. It is known that the establishment and the maintenance of methylation profiles in both genomic areas and specific sequences constitute a crucial mediator in the modulation of genes expression during development. Recent studies have evidenced the implication of epimutations in the adaptation of plants to their environment particularly in response to biotic and abiotic stresses. Recently, the complete mapping of methylation in the genomes of Arabidopsis thaliana and rice provided invaluable information on the distribution of methylation within genes in relation to their expression. The impact of changes in the methylation profiles on the characters of agronomic importance has not been intensively studied yet, whereas this question takes a considerable importance in the context of an increasing food demand and foreseen global climate changes. The METHYLANDSCAPE project proposes to isolate genomic DNA sequences on the basis of their degree of methylation and to connect the variation of their methylation profiles with, on the one hand, the expression of the corresponding genes and, on the other hand, with environmental or developmental processes. Thus, it should be possible to identify genes which expression is differentially controlled by methylation during development and/or in situation of stress, and likely to have an influence on the agronomic value of the plant. The METHYLANDSCAPE partners thus propose to bring signification advances in plant genomics on four original species, by integrating DNA methylation mapping and the relationship between epigenome and transcriptome, up to the generation of methylation-sensitive markers linked with characters of agronomic importance. (Texte intégral

Relating near-Earth observations of an interplanetary coronal mass ejection to the conditions at its site of origin in the solar corona

A halo coronal mass ejection (CME) was detected on January 20, 2004. We use solar remote sensing data (SOHO, Culgoora) and near-Earth in situ data (Cluster) to identify the CME source event and show that it was a long duration flare in which a magnetic flux rope was ejected, carrying overlying coronal arcade material along with it. We demonstrate that signatures of both the arcade material and the flux rope material are clearly identifiable in the Cluster and ACE data, indicating that the magnetic field orientations changed little as the material traveled to the Earth, and that the methods we used to infer coronal magnetic field configurations are effective