Bird surveys for REDD+: avian communities indicate forest degradation in a Peruvian coffee landscape

Shade coffee cultivation in the Peruvian Andes assists in reducing emissions from deforestation because it avoids conversion to non-forest land uses such as coca and sun grown coffee farming. REDD+ is a potential finance mechanism which may provide incentives for local coffee cooperatives to maintain high shade tree cover. REDD+ has potential multiple benefits other than carbon sequestration, including the conservation of biodiversity. When monitoring for REDD+, surveys of bird biodiversity may prove to be particularly valuable: apart from their high intrinsic value and their value as essential ecosystem service providers, birds inhabiting forest habitats are extremely sensitive to forest loss and forest degradation and are therefore potential useful indicators for the impact of habitat and climate disturbances on biodiversity and environmental health.
We analyzed the impact of coffee cultivation on the conservation of birds and assessed what can be learned from bird surveys when monitoring the Peruvian mountain forests for REDD+. Using twelve day-long transect walks, bird species were recorded in two sites in the buffer zone of the Bahuaja-Sonene National Park in SE Peru. The two sites had contrasting human pressure: one site an intimate mixture of shade coffee plantations, orchards, secondary forest patches and coca plantations and the other site secondary forest with patchily distributed shade coffee, fruit and coca plantations. An indirect gradient approach (non-metric multidimensional scaling and multi-response permutation procedure tests) was used to detect differences in forest degradation between sites.
In a two-dimensional ordination space, individual counts of the less disturbed site were separated from the other counts, but sites did not differ significantly at the community-level. Observed birds were indicative for one habitat type. The bird assemblage was dominated by species of forest edges and second growth habitat (78%). The majority of species (68%) had a wide range covering Amazonia and the east slopes of the Andes; only 25 species (29%) were more or less restricted to Andes and the outlying ridges.
The current state of the forest, in both sites with contrasting human influence, can be described as disturbed secondary montane evergreen forest of the transition zone between the Andes and the Amazon. Despite severe human impact, several forest specialists (22%) of both Andean montane and Amazonian forest persisted –including the enigmatic Andean cock-of-the-rock and Military macaw. For such species, REDD+ projects should not only focus on the sustainable management of the shade coffee stands but also aim to conserve the remaining old-growth secondary forest patches

Progression of extrapyramidal signs in Alzheimer's disease. clinical and neuropathological correlates

Extrapyramidal signs (EPS) are frequent in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and core manifestation of related diseases, i.e., dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson's disease; furthermore, Lewy bodies and AD-type pathology occur in all three conditions

Sleeping Volcanoes: The Production (and Productivity) of Violence in Joan Anim-Addo\u27s Imoinda, Or She Who Will Lose Her Name

This thesis foregrounds the significance of gender and violence in the creolization process within the Caribbean slave system, as depicted in Joan Anim-Addo\u27s libretto, Imoinda, Or She Who Will Lose Her Name. Written as a reimagining of Aphra Behn\u27s novella, Oroonoko, Anim-Addo\u27s Imoinda contends that violence (particularly sexual violence) is an integral component of creolization. Yet, this thesis operates on an understanding of violence in which it signifies a simultaneously destructive and productive event, wherein cultures clash and meld together in order to form a new identity. This thesis further explores the ways that a libretto, as a performative genre, specifically addresses the issue of textual silence that Anim-Addo believes is inherent in Behn\u27s Oroonoko. Finally, this thesis closes with a call to readers, in which the audience (like Imoinda\u27s daughter) is charged `not to forget\u27 neither Imoinda\u27s personal suffering, nor the collective history of her people

Learning Observation – Introducing the Role of a Meta-Observer

Observation is a key skill in performing analysis and evaluation activities during development and maintenance of an information system. This paper looks at how this skill can be learnt by investigating the research question: “Can observation learning be improved by introducing a meta-observer?”. This research consists of using a simulation of a real life situation of an observation scenario embracing three different roles: a user, an observer and a meta-observer. The user, while performing a task, is encouraged to ‘think aloud’ by the observer. The meta-observer’s task is to observe the observer and to provide feedback. Findings in terms of strengths and problems concerning the role of the meta-observer are presented

Temporal MCDA Methods for Decision-Making in Sustainable Development Context

Public decision-making problems are more and more complex in a context where decisions have to be made based concurrently on economic, social, and environmental considerations. In this context, decisions need to be evaluated in the short, medium, and long term because their planning horizons are usually of several years or even decades. A literature review on MCDA methods used in the sustainable development (SD) context shows that most MCDA methods used are static and existing research does not propose any aggregation framework for temporal assessment of actions. In the last 5 years, development of temporal MCDA has witnessed the interest of some researchers. However, the latest developments remain limited, and only a few research studies offer aggregation frameworks for multi-period settings. This paper presents two recent temporal MCDA methods that were applied in SD context. The first is MUPOM method which demonstrates how outranking methods, based on concordance-discordance principles, can be generalized to processing temporal impacts of decisions. The second, named PROMETHEE-MP, consists of a multi-period generalization of PROMETHEE under random uncertainty

Sentiment Classification Using Negation as a Proxy for Negative Sentiment

We explore the relationship between negated text and neg- ative sentiment in the task of sentiment classification. We propose a novel adjustment factor based on negation occur- rences as a proxy for negative sentiment that can be applied to lexicon-based classifiers equipped with a negation detec- tion pre-processing step. We performed an experiment on a multi-domain customer reviews dataset obtaining accuracy improvements over a baseline, and we further improved our results using out-of-domain data to calibrate the adjustment factor. We see future work possibilities in exploring nega- tion detection refinements, and expanding the experiment to a broader spectrum of opinionated discourse, beyond that of customer reviews

A Case-Based Approach to Cross Domain Sentiment Classification

This paper considers the task of sentiment classification of subjective text across many domains, in particular on scenarios where no in-domain data is available. Motivated by the more general applicability of such methods, we propose an extensible approach to sentiment classification that leverages sentiment lexicons and out-of-domain data to build a case-based system where solutions to past cases are reused to predict the sentiment of new documents from an unknown domain. In our approach the case representation uses a set of features based on document statistics, while the case solution stores sentiment lexicons employed on past predictions allowing for later retrieval and reuse on similar documents. The case-based nature of our approach also allows for future improvements since new lexicons and classification methods can be added to the case base as they become available. On a cross domain experiment our method has shown robust results when compared to a baseline single-lexicon classifier where the lexicon has to be pre-selected for the domain in question

Evaluation of the Developmental Toxicity of Lead in the Danio rerio Body

Lead has been utilized throughout history and is widely distributed and mobilized globally. Although lead in the environment has been somewhat mitigated, the nature of lead and its extensive uses in the past prohibit it from being completely absent from our environment and exposure to lead is still a public health concern. Most studies regarding lead toxicity have focused on the brain. However, little is found in the literature on the effects of lead in other tissues. Here, we utilize the zebrafish model system to investigate effects of lead exposure during early developmental time windows at 24, 48 and 72 hours post fertilization in the body. We analyze whole body, notochord and somatic muscle changes, vascular changes of the body, as well as motor neuron alterations. We find lead exposure induces a curved body phenotype with concomitant changes in somite length, decreased notochord staining and abnormal muscle staining using live and in situ approaches. Furthermore, altered vasculature within the somatic regions, loss and/or alternations of motor neuron extension both dorsally and ventrally from the spinal cord, loss of Rohon-Beard sensory neurons, and increased areas of apoptosis were found. We conclude that lead is developmentally toxic to other areas of the developing embryo, not just the brain

Antiretroviral therapy clinic attendance among children aged 0-14 years in Kahama district, Tanzania: a cross-sectional study

Background: Efforts made to scale up care and treatment for HIV in Tanzania have started to pay off. The number of people living with HIV (PLHIV) who are on antiretroviral therapy (ART) has massively increased owing to an increase in investment made. However, this is not reflected in all populations, especially children living with HIV. This study, therefore, aims to determine the magnitude and factors associated with ART uptake among children living with HIV in Kahama district, Tanzania.Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among pairs of children aged 0-14 years and their caregivers. A total of 423 randomly selected caregivers of HIV-positive children were interviewed using a structured questionnaire. The outcome variable was ART uptake while independent variables constituted of socio-demographic, health facility, and systemic factors.Results: A total of 132 (31%) of all caregivers reported to have missed at least one clinic visit for their children during a period of three months before the survey. Of them, one in four missed at least two clinics. Caregivers cited factors such as lack of transport fare and distance to the health facility as barriers to attend the planned clinics. After adjusting for the important confounders and other covariates, factors associated with ART uptake were being divorced/widowed (AOR= 0.57, 95% CI; 0.33-0.97) and having primary education or more (AOR 0.30, 95% CI 0.11-0, 82).Conclusion: One in every three HIV-positive children miss their scheduled routine ART clinics in Kahama, Shinyanga. Tailored interventions should target caregivers of such children who are divorced or widowed and those with low or no education while addressing distance and transportation challenges in this and other areas with similar contexts.