Spatial transformations in Mercedes (Uruguay): representation of industrial agriculture growth and informal settlements.

Using Lefebvre\u27s theory of space, this study describes the interaction between landscape transformations and the increasing financial investments from agriculture industries in Mercedes, Uruguay. I gathered secondary data and produced analytical maps to understand the recent changes produced in the urban- rural space of Mercedes. I also had informal conversations with local and national government staff about plans and policies. The interaction between plans, policies, and foreign investments related to industrial agriculture and social mobility has created new orders and spaces in the city. The most vulnerable sectors of the society have not benefited from these new orders in space. Capital has increased the fragmentation of space between the inner city and the periphery and/or informal settlements. Recommendations center on how governmental institutions can develop new policies and regulations to improve and change critical aspects of Mercedes\u27 growth

Korzystne skutki nastawienia na rozwój inteligencji i nastawienia na rozwój osobowości na osiągnięcia w nauce u dzieci w wieku szkolnym

Multiple research studies revealed the benefits of adopting a growth mindset of intelligence for students of all ages. However, few studies have investigated the advantage of having a growth mindset of personality or having grit on academic performance. Therefore, this study investigated the influence of grit and implicit theories of intelligence and personality on academic performance in fifth through eighth-grade students. Our hypothesis is that a relatively higher level of grit as well as a growth mindset would result in better academic success. Students were tested in their respective classrooms using questionnaires for grit, mindset of intelligence and mindset of personality. Quarter grades and standardized scores were obtained for all students on topics such as English, reading, language, math and science. Growth mindset of intelligence and growth mindset of personality provided a selective advantage academically to students on classroom grades and on standardized testing, particularly in verbal areas such as English, reading and language. Furthermore, mindset of intelligence predicted significant change in standardized math scores. Grit did not affect academic performance. Our results suggest that educational institutions would benefit from mindset interventions promoting a growth mindset of intelligence and personality in students.Liczne badania naukowe ujawniły korzyści płynące z przyjęcia nastawienia na rozwój inteligencji dla uczniów w każdym wieku. Jednak niewiele badań przeprowadzonych do tej pory dotyczyło korzyści wynikających z nastawienia na rozwój osobowości lub wytrwałości w nauce. Dlatego też niniejsze studium koncentruje się na zbadaniu związku między wytrwałością, teoriami pośrednimi i osobowością, w kontekście ich wpływu na wyniki w nauce uczniów klas od piątej do ósmej. Badanie zakładało, że relatywnie większa wytrwałość i nastawienie na rozwój przełoży się na sukces naukowy. Uczniowie badani byli za pomocą kwestionariuszy dotyczących wytrwałości, nastawienia na rozwój inteligencji i nastawienia na rozwój osobowości; następnie poddano analizie ich oceny kwartalne i ustandaryzowane wyniki w nauce z takich przedmiotów jak angielski, czytanie, język, matematyka i przedmioty ścisłe. Badanie wskazuje na korzystny wpływ, jaki nastawienie na rozwój inteligencji i nastawienie na rozwój osobowości miało na wyniki z języka angielskiego i czytania. Co więcej, nastawienie na rozwój inteligencji przełożyło się na znacznie wyższe wyniki z matematyki. Wytrwałość nie miała wpływu na wyniki w nauce. Poniższe badanie wskazuje na to, że instytucje edukacyjne skorzystałyby z promowania nastawienia na rozwój inteligencji i osobowości u swoich uczniów

Influence of the Mexican prairie dog (Cynomys mexicanus) on plant taxonomical and functional diversity and soil properties in semiarid grasslands of Mexico

Research in grassland ecosystems worldwide has highlighted the crucial role many burrowing herbivore mammals provide as so-called “ecosystem engineers”. Many of these examples come from North America and have mostly been focused on Prairie Dogs (Cynomys sp.), which, due to their burrowing and grazing activities, are considered as a species of high ecological importance. Multiple studies have shown that their loss reduces grassland ecosystem functions and that their activities increase plant, arthropod, bird and mammal biodiversity, grassland heterogeneity, provide benefits to cattle, among many other key ecological roles. However, prairie dog species are distributed throughout multiple landscapes in North America, and most of the studies have been on mixed prairie grasslands. It is therefore not surprising that, when comparing the effects of different prairie dog species across ecoregions, the role of prairie dogs is not as clear and results vary, depending on spatial context, type of grasslands, climate and environmental conditions. Yet, grasslands are considered as some of the most highly threatened ecosystems, having high rates of conversion, desertification and biodiversity loss. Therefore, it is imperative to understand the effects prairie dog species have on the ecosystem. In this thesis, I focus on the Mexican prairie dog (C. mexicanus), a species in drastic decline due to habitat loss, caused by agriculture, overgrazing, human settlement, fragmentation, diseases (e.g. plague) and past eradication programs. C. mexicanus is considered endangered by the IUCN red list of threatened species and The Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. It is also endemic to the Grassland Priority Conservation Area (GPCA) of El Tokio, located in Northeast Mexico within the Chihuahuan desert ecoregion and designated as a GPCA by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (a cooperation between Canada, U.S. and Mexico) in 2009. Grasslands within GPCA El Tokio are highly fragmented as a result of many years of intense agricultural practices and other anthropogenic activities and around 90% of the original grasslands have been lost. However, it is considered an area of ecological importance due to its unique vegetation and edaphic associations, as well as being a key habitat for migratory birds. Up until now, very few studies have explored the role C. mexicanus has on plant taxonomical diversity and soil properties. Moreover, no studies focusing on prairie dogs have looked into the effect the species has on plant functional diversity or soil properties. Furthermore, GPCA El Tokio is a data-scarce area. Therefore, at this point, basic information and system understanding are urgently needed in order to identify which conservation efforts are most promising and which specific sites these efforts should focus on. Understanding the influence of prairie dog disturbance on vegetation parameters (taxonomic and functional), soil properties and their interaction with environmental conditions through time, will increase knowledge on the risks and vulnerability of grasslands, promoting solutions that can support grassland management. Furthermore, there is a clear gap in the literature about the varying effects of prairie dogs depending on different grassland types and environmental conditions. To study such conditions, I first classified and controlled for factors that could influence prairie dog ecosystem engineering effects addressing the following two general questions: (1) Which grassland types are present in GPCA El Tokio? (2) Do the different grassland types present in GPCA El Tokio influence prairie dog colony sizes and burrow density? When influencing factors were confirmed, I then assess the effects of prairie dog disturbance on vegetation and soil to answer the following questions: (3) Are there clear distinctions across GPCA El Tokio grassland environmental variables? (4) Do the different grassland types present in GPCA El Tokio influence prairie dog colony sizes and burrow density? To do so I selected a representative sample of sites covering the varying environmental conditions present in GPCA El Tokio grasslands, a data-driven clustering approach was used. Once clusters were defined, average burrow density was estimated from remote sensing imagery. To study vegetation measures I first, sampled plant species (92 species and 28 families and 6 traits) to obtain taxonomical and functional diversity measures, and obtained variables related to nutrient availability, carbon and climate regulation, and water regulation and purification. To study the effects on soil a total of 11 soil properties were obtained (382 samples were analyzed). Field work was done during the wet season and repeated during the dry season to obtain season variations of all measures. Soil measures were further obtained at depths of 0-10cm and 10 to 20cm. Results from the study classify GPCA El Tokio into 8 different grassland types with 4 clusters being the most dominant, named Agriculture, Arid, Calcareous, Mountain. I found agricultural grasslands had significantly lower colony sizes compared to calcareous grasslands when outliers were considered, but no differences when outliers were removed and burrow density varied depending on the grassland type, with mountain grasslands having a significantly lower burrow density compared to agricultural and calcareous grasslands. Regarding the effects of prairie dogs on vegetation and soil my findings suggest that functional metrics and community weighted mean (CWM) analyses responded to interactions between prairie dog disturbance, grassland type and season, whilst species diversity and cover measures were less sensitive to the role of prairie dog disturbance. I found weak evidence that prairie dog disturbance has a negative effect on vegetation structure, except for minimal effects on C4 and graminoid cover, but which depended mainly on season. Grassland type and season explained most of the effects on plant functional and taxonomic diversity as well as CWM traits. In the case of soil properties WOP grasslands tended to have higher nutrient availability than WP grasslands. However, mounds played a key role within WP grasslands. Mounds reduce compaction and increase nutrient levels of soil organic carbon, nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, and phosphorus. Such an effect was particularly present in calcareous and arid grasslands, and in many cases the effect was enhanced under wet conditions. In general, the effect of disturbance on soil property changes was dependent on environmental conditions. Overall, my study shows evidence that grassland type and season have a stronger effect than prairie dog disturbance on the vegetation of this short-grass, water-restricted grassland ecosystem.:3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration of conformity 2 1 Acknowledgments 3 2 Extended Summary 5 4 List of Figures 11 5 List of Tables 13 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Importance of grasslands 1 1.2 Grassland conservation and ecosystem engineers 2 1.3 Prairie dogs: ecosystem engineers of grasslands in North America 3 1.4 Distribution of prairie dogs across North American grasslands 6 1.5 Current threats and conservation of the Mexican prairie dog C. mexicanus 7 1.6 Research questions, aims and objectives 9 2 Scientific background 13 2.1 Differences in grassland definitions and classifications 13 2.2 Dryland biases in grassland research 13 2.3 Research gaps on C. mexicanus 15 2.4 Functional diversity and disturbance 16 2.5 Soil complexity and limited research 17 3 Study Area: Grassland Priority Conservation Area of El Tokio 19 3.1 General overview 19 3.2 Bioregions, geology, topography and soils 20 3.3 Climate 23 3.4 Ecoregions, Land cover and Biodiversity 24 3.5 Anthropogenic activities and environmental issues 28 4 Assessing and classifying factors that could influence prairie dog ecosystem engineering effects 31 4.1 Data-driven identification of grassland types 33 4.1.1 Introduction 33 4.1.2 Methods 33 4.1.3 Results 36 4.1.4 Discussion and conclusion 39 4.2 C. mexicanus colony trends and differences across grassland types 41 4.2.1 Introduction 41 4.2.2 Methods 42 4.2.3 Results 48 4.2.4 Discussion and conclusion 52 5 Prairie dog disturbance effects on vegetation and soil across different grassland types and seasons 55 5.1 General methodology 57 5.1.1 Selection of grassland locations 57 5.1.2 Defining study sites and plots 58 5.1.3 Vegetation and soil sampling design 59 5.2 The effect of C. mexicanus on taxonomical and functional diversity across different seasons and grassland types 61 5.2.1 Introduction 61 5.2.2 Methods 63 5.2.3 Results 65 5.2.4 Discussion and conclusion 72 5.3 Soil property responses to the presence of C. mexicanus and its mounds across different grassland types, seasons and depths 77 5.3.1 Introduction 77 5.3.2 Methods 78 5.3.3 Results 81 5.3.4 Discussion and conclusion 88 6 Synthesis 95 6.1 Key findings 95 6.2 Management and Conservation opportunities 97 6.2.1 Designing management plans to suit existing environmental conditions 97 6.2.2 Functional diversity: an opportunity to identify patterns of vegetation across environmental conditions and scales. 98 6.3 Future research 99 6.3.1 Exploration of spatial and temporal effects 99 6.3.2 Mechanistic understanding of disturbance dynamics 100 6.3.3 A need for plant and soil ecological data 101 7 References 103 8 Appendix 131 8.1 Appendix 1. Prairie dog research reference list 132 8.2 Appendix 2. List of individual colonies with areas and other relevant information 140 8.3 Appendix 3. Historical and present colony data. 142 8.4 Appendix 4. Correlation results 144 8.5 Appendix 5. Top 3 models 146 8.6 Appendix 6. Species list per grassland type. 151 8.7 Appendix 7. Correspondence analysis (CA) for each grassland 154 8.8 Appendix 8. Post-hoc results 155 8.9 Appendix 9. Top 3 dominant species. 157 8.10 Appendix 10. HPD credible interval and ROPE. 15

Improving predictions of solvation free energies from non-polarisable models by applying polarisation corrections

Classical non-polarisable models, normally based on a combination of Lennard-Jones (LJ) sites and point charges, are extensively used to model thermodynamic properties of fluids. An important shortcoming of this class of models is that they do not explicitly account for polarisation effects - i.e. a description of how the electron density responds to changes in the molecular environment. Instead, polarisation is implicitly included into the parameters of the model, usually by fitting to pure liquid properties (e.g. density). A problem arises when trying to describe thermodynamic properties that involve a change of phase (e.g. enthalpy of vaporisation), solutions/mixtures (e.g. solvation free energies), or properties that directly depend on the electronic response of the medium (e.g. dielectric constant). Fully polarisable models present a natural route for addressing these limitations, but at the price of a much higher computational cost. The main goal of this thesis is to obtain a non-polarisable force field for alcohols, amines and ketones able to predict both pure liquid properties and solvation free energies with a high degree of accuracy through the use of post-facto polarisation corrections. These corrections are applied to the properties computed using the non-polarisable force field in order to account for the effects of polarisation, and thus, increase the model's accuracy while maintaining its computational effciency. This work is part of a larger project which end goal is to predict the solubility of drug molecules (e.g. paracetamol). These molecules usually contain hydroxyl, amino and carbonyl groups, and thus, this thesis focuses on molecules with these functional groups. Aromatic rings are another functional group present in most drug molecules, however, they are not studied here due to time limitations. Alcohols and amines are interesting from a fundamental point of view as they are the simplest molecules that combine a hydrophobic moiety with a hydrogen-bonding functional group. Also, alcohols and ketones are widely used as solvents and amines are used in CO2 adsorption/desorption processes designed to decrease CO2 emissions. The model developed in this thesis is called PolCA, standing for 'Polarisation-Consistent Approach', and it is an extension of the modified TraPPE force field for hydrocarbons proposed by Jorge [1] that eliminates systematic deviations from experimental solvation free energies. The new amino, hydroxyl and carbonyl parameters were fitted to several pure-component experimental properties including the density and enthalpy of vaporisation, and in some cases also self-solvation free energies. The optimization was carried out using meta-models that predict how the simulated properties change with the input parameters, allowing for a better exploration of the force field parameters' space. The PolCA force field for alcohols can accurately predict methanol to decanol's densities, diffusion constants (except for methanol), enthalpies of vaporisation, free energies of self-solvation, dielectric constants and solvation free energies in hexadecane. PolCA also does a very good job at predicting the densities, enthalpies of vaporisation and free energies of self-solvation of linear and branched primary amines, and its predicted solvation free energies of linear primary amines in hexadecane are in very good agreement with experimental data. However, it greatly overpredicts the dielectric constant of methylamine and significantly overpredicts other linear and branched amines' dielectric constants. Furthermore, PolCA can accurately predict the densities, enthalpies of vaporisation, diffusion constants and self-solvation free energies of propanone to 2-decanone (except for butanone and 2-pentanone's densities which are underpredicted), however, it greatly overpredicts ketones' dielectric constants and sovation free energies in hexadecane (more negative values). Lastly, PolCA was used to calculate solvation free energies of amines and ketones in octanol and multifunctional compounds' densities and dielectric constants to test its transferability. Our force field was not able to simultaneously predict solvation free energies in hexadecane and octanol, and thus a re-parameterisation will be carried out in future work using polarisation corrections obtained with more accurate methods. Nonetheless, the results obtained in this work show that the approach proposed here is very promising since they significantly improve agreement with experiment for the dielectric constant and solvation free energies of alcohols and amines in hexadecane.Classical non-polarisable models, normally based on a combination of Lennard-Jones (LJ) sites and point charges, are extensively used to model thermodynamic properties of fluids. An important shortcoming of this class of models is that they do not explicitly account for polarisation effects - i.e. a description of how the electron density responds to changes in the molecular environment. Instead, polarisation is implicitly included into the parameters of the model, usually by fitting to pure liquid properties (e.g. density). A problem arises when trying to describe thermodynamic properties that involve a change of phase (e.g. enthalpy of vaporisation), solutions/mixtures (e.g. solvation free energies), or properties that directly depend on the electronic response of the medium (e.g. dielectric constant). Fully polarisable models present a natural route for addressing these limitations, but at the price of a much higher computational cost. The main goal of this thesis is to obtain a non-polarisable force field for alcohols, amines and ketones able to predict both pure liquid properties and solvation free energies with a high degree of accuracy through the use of post-facto polarisation corrections. These corrections are applied to the properties computed using the non-polarisable force field in order to account for the effects of polarisation, and thus, increase the model's accuracy while maintaining its computational effciency. This work is part of a larger project which end goal is to predict the solubility of drug molecules (e.g. paracetamol). These molecules usually contain hydroxyl, amino and carbonyl groups, and thus, this thesis focuses on molecules with these functional groups. Aromatic rings are another functional group present in most drug molecules, however, they are not studied here due to time limitations. Alcohols and amines are interesting from a fundamental point of view as they are the simplest molecules that combine a hydrophobic moiety with a hydrogen-bonding functional group. Also, alcohols and ketones are widely used as solvents and amines are used in CO2 adsorption/desorption processes designed to decrease CO2 emissions. The model developed in this thesis is called PolCA, standing for 'Polarisation-Consistent Approach', and it is an extension of the modified TraPPE force field for hydrocarbons proposed by Jorge [1] that eliminates systematic deviations from experimental solvation free energies. The new amino, hydroxyl and carbonyl parameters were fitted to several pure-component experimental properties including the density and enthalpy of vaporisation, and in some cases also self-solvation free energies. The optimization was carried out using meta-models that predict how the simulated properties change with the input parameters, allowing for a better exploration of the force field parameters' space. The PolCA force field for alcohols can accurately predict methanol to decanol's densities, diffusion constants (except for methanol), enthalpies of vaporisation, free energies of self-solvation, dielectric constants and solvation free energies in hexadecane. PolCA also does a very good job at predicting the densities, enthalpies of vaporisation and free energies of self-solvation of linear and branched primary amines, and its predicted solvation free energies of linear primary amines in hexadecane are in very good agreement with experimental data. However, it greatly overpredicts the dielectric constant of methylamine and significantly overpredicts other linear and branched amines' dielectric constants. Furthermore, PolCA can accurately predict the densities, enthalpies of vaporisation, diffusion constants and self-solvation free energies of propanone to 2-decanone (except for butanone and 2-pentanone's densities which are underpredicted), however, it greatly overpredicts ketones' dielectric constants and sovation free energies in hexadecane (more negative values). Lastly, PolCA was used to calculate solvation free energies of amines and ketones in octanol and multifunctional compounds' densities and dielectric constants to test its transferability. Our force field was not able to simultaneously predict solvation free energies in hexadecane and octanol, and thus a re-parameterisation will be carried out in future work using polarisation corrections obtained with more accurate methods. Nonetheless, the results obtained in this work show that the approach proposed here is very promising since they significantly improve agreement with experiment for the dielectric constant and solvation free energies of alcohols and amines in hexadecane

A polarization-consistent model for alcohols to predict solvation free energies

Classical nonpolarizable models, normally based on a combination of Lennard-Jones sites and point charges, are extensively used to model thermodynamic properties of fluids, including solvation. An important shortcoming of these models is that they do not explicitly account for polarization effects, i.e., a description of how the electron density responds to changes in the molecular environment. Instead, polarization is implicitly included, in a mean-field sense, into the parameters of the model, usually by fitting to pure liquid properties (e.g., density). This causes problems when trying to describe thermodynamic properties that involve a change of phase (e.g., enthalpy of vaporization), that directly depend on the electronic response of the medium (e.g., dielectric constant), and that require mixing or solvation in different media (e.g., solvation free energies). Fully polarizable models present a natural route for addressing these limitations but at the price of a much higher computational cost. In this work, we combine the best of those two approaches by running fast simulations using nonpolarizable models and applying post facto corrections to the computed properties in order to account for the effects of polarization. By applying this new paradigm, a new united-atom force field for alcohols is developed that is able to predict both pure liquid properties, including dielectric constant, and solvation free energies in different solvents with a high degree of accuracy. This paves the way for the development of a generic classical nonpolarizable force field that can predict solvation of drug-like molecules in a variety of solvents

Transporte de animales de compañía en la Unión Europea

Treball presentat a l'assignatura de Deontologia i Veterinària Legal (21223

How to?! Practical knowledge for transformative science - facilitation guidelines for two applications of the Human Scale Development Approach

Multiple methods for transdisciplinary and transformative sciences have been presented and discussed in the literature on sustainability. Wider knowledge however, on how to implement global environmental change is still sough for. We suggest that understanding the practical knowledge with the Aristotelian concept of stechne and phronesis provides important contributions for change. With the present paper we will show the detailed facilitation outlines within the application of the Human Scale Development Approach (HSDA) that was introduced in the early 1980´s. Although the approach has been applied and adapted during the last three decades a particularized description of the facilitation process it requires is lacking. The same gap of information resides with regard in many other methods in transdisciplinary and transformative sustainability sciences. As a contribution of “how-to” practical knowledge within transformative science can beappliedwe present two detailed facilitation processes of adaptations of the original HSDA. With these contributions we would like to encourage other scholars and practitioners to test and validate the presented applications and further develop them in their own settings as well as for their own purposes

Neural Coding of an Auditory Pitch Illusion

Pitch is an important perceptual dimension in audition, supporting auditory object segregation, melody recognition and lexical distinction. Huggins’ pitch, for example, is a phenomenon evoked by two sources of broadband noise presented binaurally with an inter-aural phase shift over a narrow frequency band. Huggins’ pitch and other dichotic pitches have been studied extensively using perceptual experiments. Several models have been proposed to explain and predict the perception of pitch; however, no studies have tried to record in vivo neuron responses to Huggins’ pitch (HP) nor have tried to explain how the HP is coded by neurons. The existence of pitches arising from the detection of binaural temporal cues may suggests that at least some of the “pitch neurons” involved must be linked to binaural unmasking: a phenomenon whereby binaural processing enhances the perceptual signal-to-noise ratio in noisy environments. To evaluate the neural coding of HP, in vivo recordings of chinchilla auditory nerve fibers (ANFs) and medial superior olivary (MSO) axons were made. Monoaurally and binaurally spike trains were gathered from ANFs and MSO axons respectively. Computational simulation using cross-correlation was used to predict the output of HP using ANFs as input and then it was compared to the recorded output (MSO). A decrease in the firing rate near the MSO neuron center frequency was found in the computation model and in the MSO neurons output. Therefore, by recording from single ANFs and single MSO fibers, we provide evidence for a de-correlation based neural coding of an auditory illusion: Huggins’ pitch

The Actual Cost of Food Systems on Roadway Infrastructure

This project was designed to provide more insight into the infrastructure challenges of agricultural enterprises in Iowa and to also facilitate the understanding needed to implement broader energy-related policy and planning. This work will also provide farmers and farmer networks with the necessary resources to justify increased local and state investments in the local and regional food systems