Land use and environmental factors affecting red-legged partridge (Alectoris rufa) hunting yields in southern Spain

The red-legged partridge is a small game species widely hunted in southern Spain. Its commercial use has important socioeconomic effects in rural areas where other agrarian uses are of marginal importance. The aims of the present work were to identify areas in Andalusia (southern Spain) where game yields for the red-legged partridge reach high values and to establish the environmental and land use factors that determine them. We analysed 32,134 annual hunting reports (HRs) produced by 6,049 game estates during the hunting seasons 1993/1994 to 2001/2002 to estimate the average hunting yields of red-legged partridge in each Andalusian municipality (n=771). We modelled the favourability for obtaining good hunting yields using stepwise logistic regression on a set of climatic, topographical, land use and vegetation variables that were available as digital coverages or tabular data applied to municipalities. Good hunting yields occur mainly in plain areas located in the Guadalquivir valley, at the bottom of Betic Range and in the Betic depressions. Favourable areas are related to highly mechanised, lowelevation areas mainly dedicated to intensive dry crops. The most favourable areas predicted by our model are mainly located in the Guadalquivir valley

Angra Neutrino Project: status and plans

We present the status and plans of the Angra Project, a new nuclear reactor neutrino oscillation experiment, proposed to be built in Brazil at the Angra dos Reis nuclear reactor complex. This experiment is aimed to measure theta_13, the last unknown of the three neutrino mixing angles. Combining a high luminosity design, very low background from cosmic rays and careful control of systematic errors at the 1% level, we propose a high sensitivity multi-detector experiment, able to reach a sensitivity to antineutrino disappearance down to sin^2(2*theta_13) = 0.006 in a three years running period, improving present limits constrained by the CHOOZ experiment by more than an order of magnitude.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure, talk presented by J.C. Anjos ([email protected]) at NuFact05, 21-26 June 2005, Frascati, Ital

A coordination model for interactive components

Although presented with a variety of ‘flavours’, the notion of an interactor, as an abstract characterisation of an interactive com- ponent, is well-known in the area of formal modelling techniques for interactive systems. This paper replaces traditional, hierarchical, ‘tree-like’ composition of interactors in the specification of complex interactive sys- tems, by their exogenous coordination through general-purpose software connectors which assure the flow of data and the meet of synchronisation constraints. The paper’s technical contribution is twofold. First a modal logic is defined to express behavioural properties of both interactors and connectors. The logic is new in the sense that its modalities are indexed by fragments of sets of actions to cater for action co-occurrence. Then, this logic is used in the specification of both interactors and coordination layers which orchestrate their interconnection

Remarks on the Formulation of Quantum Mechanics on Noncommutative Phase Spaces

We consider the probabilistic description of nonrelativistic, spinless one-particle classical mechanics, and immerse the particle in a deformed noncommutative phase space in which position coordinates do not commute among themselves and also with canonically conjugate momenta. With a postulated normalized distribution function in the quantum domain, the square of the Dirac delta density distribution in the classical case is properly realised in noncommutative phase space and it serves as the quantum condition. With only these inputs, we pull out the entire formalisms of noncommutative quantum mechanics in phase space and in Hilbert space, and elegantly establish the link between classical and quantum formalisms and between Hilbert space and phase space formalisms of noncommutative quantum mechanics. Also, we show that the distribution function in this case possesses 'twisted' Galilean symmetry.Comment: 25 pages, JHEP3 style; minor changes; Published in JHE

Relative importance of environment, human activity and spatial situation in determining the distribution of terrestrial mammal diversity in Argentina

We recorded the number of terrestrial mammal species in each Argentinian province, and the number of species belonging to particular groups (Marsupialia, Placentaria, and among the latter, Xenarthra, Carnivora, Ungulates and Rodentia). We performed multiple regressions of each group’s SR on environmental, human and spatial variables, to determine the amounts of variation explained by these factors. We then used a variance partitioning procedure to specify which proportion of the variation in SR is explained by each of the three factors exclusively and which proportions are attributable to interactions between factors

Distribution modelling of wild rabbit hunting yields in its original area (S Iberian Peninsula)

In this work we used the information of the Annual Hunting Reports (AHRs) to obtain a high-resolution model of the potential favourableness for wild rabbit harvesting in Andalusia (southern Spain), using environmental and land-use variables as predictors. We analysed 32,134 AHRs from the period 1993/2001 reported by 6049 game estates to estimate the average hunting yields of wild rabbit in each Andalusian municipality (n5771). We modelled the favourableness for obtaining good hunting yields using stepwise logistic regression on a set of climatic, orographical, land use, and vegetation variables. The favourability equation was used to create a downscaled image representing the favourableness of obtaining good hunting yields for the wild rabbit in 161 km squares in Andalusia, using the Idrisi Image Calculator. The variables that affected hunting yields of wild rabbit were altitude, dry wood crops (mainly olive groves, almond groves, and vineyards), temperature, pasture, slope, and annual number of frost days. The 161 km squares with high favourableness values are scattered throughout the territory, which seems to be caused mainly by the effect of vegetation. Finally, we obtained quality categories for the territory by combining the probability values given by logistic regression with those of the environmental favourability function

Geographical gradients in Argentinean terrestrial mammal species richness and their environmental correlates.

We analysed the main geographical trends of terrestrial mammal species richness (SR) in Argentina, assessing how broad-scale environmental variation (defined by climatic and topographic variables) and the spatial form of the country (defined by spatial filters based on spatial eigenvector mapping (SEVM)) influence the kinds and the numbers of mammal species along these geographical trends. We also evaluated if there are pure geographical trends not accounted for by the environmental or spatial factors. The environmental variables and spatial filters that simultaneously correlated with the geographical variables and SR were considered potential causes of the geographic trends. We performed partial correlations between SR and the geographical variables, maintaining the selected explanatory variables statistically constant, to determine if SR was fully explained by them or if a significant residual geographic pattern remained. All groups and subgroups presented a latitudinal gradient not attributable to the spatial form of the country. Most of these trends were not explained by climate.We used a variation partitioning procedure to quantify the pure geographic trend (PGT) that remained unaccounted for. The PGT was larger for latitudinal than for longitudinal gradients. This suggests that historical or purely geographical causes may also be relevant drivers of these geographical gradients in mammal diversity

Criticality in confined ionic fluids

A theory of a confined two dimensional electrolyte is presented. The positive and negative ions, interacting by a $1/r$ potential, are constrained to move on an interface separating two solvents with dielectric constants $\epsilon_1$ and $\epsilon_2$. It is shown that the Debye-H\"uckel type of theory predicts that the this 2d Coulomb fluid should undergo a phase separation into a coexisting liquid (high density) and gas (low density) phases. We argue, however, that the formation of polymer-like chains of alternating positive and negative ions can prevent this phase transition from taking place.Comment: RevTex, no figures, in press Phys. Rev.