An integrated low carbon energy solution to cooking fuel, tailored to Niger state’s rural population

Niger State (Nigeria) was selected as a case study of renewable, affordable and user friendly clean energy provision in remote areas of developing countries. Niger state has 80% of its 4.5 million population living in rural agrarian areas with low literacy rates, there is a lack of wind thus eliminating wind as widely available potential power source. Based on the assessment of the local large insolation, the type of agricultural, biomass and husbandry resources, this study selected the design of anaerobic digestion units processing mostly animal and human waste, and whose heating and power requirement would be entirely provided by solar photovoltaic/thermal to maintain optimum efficiency of the biogas production. The designs was carried out at the scale of up to 15 household demand (community scale). Volume and therefore the production of biogas maybe increased or decreased in the design considered, and local, low cost resilient material were proposed. The proposed system was costed for a community of 24 people, demonstrating the potential for clean and renewable gas production economically

Mapping with Sparse Local Sensors and Strong Hierarchical Priors

The paradigm case for robotic mapping assumes large quantities of sensory information which allow the use of relatively weak priors. In contrast, the present study considers the mapping problem in environments where only sparse, local sensory information is available. To compensate for these weak likelihoods, we make use of strong hierarchical object priors. Hierarchical models were popular in classical blackboard systems but are here applied in a Bayesian setting and novelly deployed as a mapping algorithm. We give proof of concept results, intended to demonstrate the algorithm’s applicability as a part of a tactile SLAM module for the whiskered SCRATCHbot mobile robot platform

Habitat and forage associations of a naturally colonising insect pollinator, the Tree Bumblebee Bombus hypnorum

Bumblebees (Bombus species) are major pollinators of commercial crops and wildflowers but factors affecting their abundance, including causes of recent population declines, remain unclear. Investigating the ecology of species with expanding ranges provides a potentially powerful means of elucidating these factors. Such species may also bring novel pollination services to their new ranges. We therefore investigated landscape-scale habitat use and foraging preferences of the Tree Bumblebee, B. hypnorum, a recent natural colonist that has rapidly expanded its range in the UK over the past decade. Counts of B. hypnorum and six other Bombus species were made in March-June 2012 within a mixed landscape in south-eastern Norfolk, UK. The extent of different landscape elements around each transect was quantified at three scales (250 m, 500 m and 1500 m). We then identified the landscape elements that best predicted the density of B. hypnorum and other Bombus species. At the best fitting scale (250 m), B. hypnorum density was significantly positively associated with extent of both urban and woodland cover and significantly negatively associated with extent of oilseed rape cover. This combination of landscape predictors was unique to B. hypnorum. Urban and woodland cover were associated with B. hypnorum density at three and two, respectively, of the three scales studied. Relative to other Bombus species, B. hypnorum exhibited a significantly higher foraging preference for two flowering trees, Crataegus monogyna and Prunus spinosa, and significantly lower preferences for Brassica napus, Glechoma hederacea and Lamium album. Our study provides novel, quantitative support for an association of B. hypnorum with urban and woodland landscape elements. Range expansion in B. hypnorum appears to depend, on exploitation of widespread habitats underutilised by native Bombus species, suggesting B. hypnorum will readily co-exist with these species. These findings suggest that management could target bumblebee species with distinctive habitat requirements to help maintain pollination service

Costing conservation: an expert appraisal of the pollinator habitat benefits of England’s entry level stewardship

Pollination services provided by insects play a key role in English crop production and wider ecology. Despite growing evidence of the negative effects of habitat loss on pollinator populations, limited policy support is available to reverse this pressure. One measure that may provide beneficial habitat to pollinators is England’s entry level stewardship agri-environment scheme. This study uses a novel expert survey to develop weights for a range of models which adjust the balance of Entry Level Stewardship options within the current area of spending. The annual costs of establishing and maintaining these option compositions were estimated at £59.3–£12.4 M above current expenditure. Although this produced substantial reduction in private cost:benefit ratios, the benefits of the scheme to pollinator habitat rose by 7–140 %; significantly increasing the public cost:benefit ratio. This study demonstrates that the scheme has significant untapped potential to provide good quality habitat for pollinators across England, even within existing expenditure. The findings should open debate on the costs and benefits of specific entry level stewardship management options and how these can be enhanced to benefit both participants and biodiversity more equitably

FIT Count Brasil: monitoramento de visitantes florais por contagem.

A Série de livros "Ciência Cidadã" tem como objetivo apresentar ao público diferentes questões científicas que podem ser trabalhadas com o auxílio de cientistas cidadãos e motivar diferentes pessoas (como você, por exemplo) a atuarem como cientistas cidadãos. No presente livro, apresentamos o protocolo intitulado "FIT COUNT: contagem cronometrada de visitantes florais"

Psychometric Curve and Behavioral Strategies for Whisker-Based Texture Discrimination in Rats

The rodent whisker system is a major model for understanding neural mechanisms for tactile sensation of surface texture (roughness). Rats discriminate surface texture using the whiskers, and several theories exist for how texture information is physically sensed by the long, moveable macrovibrissae and encoded in spiking of neurons in somatosensory cortex. However, evaluating these theories requires a psychometric curve for texture discrimination, which is lacking. Here we trained rats to discriminate rough vs. fine sandpapers and grooved vs. smooth surfaces. Rats intermixed trials at macrovibrissa contact distance (nose >2 mm from surface) with trials at shorter distance (nose <2 mm from surface). Macrovibrissae were required for distant contact trials, while microvibrissae and non-whisker tactile cues were used for short distance trials. A psychometric curve was measured for macrovibrissa-based sandpaper texture discrimination. Rats discriminated rough P150 from smoother P180, P280, and P400 sandpaper (100, 82, 52, and 35 µm mean grit size, respectively). Use of olfactory, visual, and auditory cues was ruled out. This is the highest reported resolution for rodent texture discrimination, and constrains models of neural coding of texture information

Pollinator monitoring more than pays for itself

1. Resilient pollination services depend on sufficient abundance of pollinating insects over time. Currently, however, most knowledge about the status and trends of pollinators is based on changes in pollinator species richness and distribution only. 2. Systematic, long‐term monitoring of pollinators is urgently needed to provide baseline information on their status, to identify the drivers of declines and to inform suitable response measures. 3. Power analysis was used to determine the number of sites required to detect a 30% change in pollinator populations over 10 years. We then evaluated the full economic costs of implementing four national monitoring schemes in the UK: (a) professional pollinator monitoring, (b) professional pollination service monitoring, (c) volunteer collected pan traps and (d) volunteer focal floral observations. These costs were compared to (a) the costs of implementing separate, expert‐designed research and monitoring networks and (b) the economic benefits of pollination services threatened by pollinator loss. 4. Estimated scheme costs ranged from £6,159/year for a 75‐site volunteer focal flower observation scheme to £2.7 M/year for an 800‐site professional pollination service monitoring network. The estimated research costs saved using the site network as research infrastructure range from £1.46–4.17 M/year. The economic value of UK crop yield lost following a 30% decline in pollinators was estimated at ~£188 M/year. 5. Synthesis and applications. We evaluated the full costs of running pollinator monitoring schemes against the economic benefits to research and society they provide. The annual costs of monitoring are <0.02% of the economic value of pollination services that would be lost after a 30% decline in pollination services. Furthermore, by providing high‐quality scientific data, monitoring schemes would save at least £1.5 on data collection per £1 spent. Our findings demonstrate that long‐term systematic monitoring can be a cost‐effective tool for both answering key research questions and setting action points for policymakers. Careful consideration must be given to scheme design, the logistics of national‐scale implementation and resulting data quality when selecting the most appropriate combination of surveyors, methods and site networks to deliver a successful scheme

Odor supported place cell model and goal navigation in rodents

Experiments with rodents demonstrate that visual cues play an important role in the control of hippocampal place cells and spatial navigation. Nevertheless, rats may also rely on auditory, olfactory and somatosensory stimuli for orientation. It is also known that rats can track odors or self-generated scent marks to find a food source. Here we model odor supported place cells by using a simple feed-forward network and analyze the impact of olfactory cues on place cell formation and spatial navigation. The obtained place cells are used to solve a goal navigation task by a novel mechanism based on self-marking by odor patches combined with a Q-learning algorithm. We also analyze the impact of place cell remapping on goal directed behavior when switching between two environments. We emphasize the importance of olfactory cues in place cell formation and show that the utility of environmental and self-generated olfactory cues, together with a mixed navigation strategy, improves goal directed navigation

Whisker Movements Reveal Spatial Attention: A Unified Computational Model of Active Sensing Control in the Rat

Spatial attention is most often investigated in the visual modality through measurement of eye movements, with primates, including humans, a widely-studied model. Its study in laboratory rodents, such as mice and rats, requires different techniques, owing to the lack of a visual fovea and the particular ethological relevance of orienting movements of the snout and the whiskers in these animals. In recent years, several reliable relationships have been observed between environmental and behavioural variables and movements of the whiskers, but the function of these responses, as well as how they integrate, remains unclear. Here, we propose a unifying abstract model of whisker movement control that has as its key variable the region of space that is the animal's current focus of attention, and demonstrate, using computer-simulated behavioral experiments, that the model is consistent with a broad range of experimental observations. A core hypothesis is that the rat explicitly decodes the location in space of whisker contacts and that this representation is used to regulate whisker drive signals. This proposition stands in contrast to earlier proposals that the modulation of whisker movement during exploration is mediated primarily by reflex loops. We go on to argue that the superior colliculus is a candidate neural substrate for the siting of a head-centred map guiding whisker movement, in analogy to current models of visual attention. The proposed model has the potential to offer a more complete understanding of whisker control as well as to highlight the potential of the rodent and its whiskers as a tool for the study of mammalian attention

The impact of land use/land cover scale on modelling urban ecosystem services

Context Urbanisation places increasing stress on ecosystem services; however existing methods and data for testing relationships between service delivery and urban landscapes remain imprecise and uncertain. Unknown impacts of scale are among several factors that complicate research. This study models ecosystem services in the urban area comprising the towns of Milton Keynes, Bedford and Luton which together represent a wide range of the urban forms present in the UK. Objectives The objectives of this study were to test (1) the sensitivity of ecosystem service model outputs to the spatial resolution of input data, and (2) whether any resultant scale dependency is constant across different ecosystem services and model approaches (e.g. stock- versus flow-based). Methods Carbon storage, sediment erosion, and pollination were modelled with the InVEST framework using input data representative of common coarse (25 m) and fine (5 m) spatial resolutions. Results Fine scale analysis generated higher estimates of total carbon storage (9.32 vs. 7.17 kg m−2) and much lower potential sediment erosion estimates (6.4 vs. 18.1 Mg km−2 year−1) than analyses conducted at coarser resolutions; however coarse-scale analysis estimated more abundant pollination service provision. Conclusions Scale sensitivities depend on the type of service being modelled; stock estimates (e.g. carbon storage) are most sensitive to aggregation across scales, dynamic flow models (e.g. sediment erosion) are most sensitive to spatial resolution, and ecological process models involving both stocks and dynamics (e.g. pollination) are sensitive to both. Care must be taken to select model data appropriate to the scale of inquiry