Potential Ecological Impact of Diet Selectivity and Bison Herd Composition

Behavioral segregation between the sexes of bison (Bas bison), coupled with artificially manipulated sex ratios of bison herds, might profoundly influence prairie ecosystems. Therefore, we measured carbon isotopes in hair collected from bison from the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in northeast Oklahoma to determine if adult male, adult female, and juvenile bison segregate on the basis of botanical composition of their diet. Sex ratio of bison herds in the Great Plains and behavioral differences between sexes were used to assess potential effects of sex ratio on tallgrass prairie. Botanical composition of diet differed among the three bison groups, in that C4 grasses contributed most to adult bull diets and least to juvenile diets. Bison sex ratio in half of the herds surveyed was highly skewed toward females. Because of behavioral differences between adult male and female bison, different sex ratios in bison herds might result in different vegetation structure, composition, and patchiness

Potential Ecological Impact of Diet Selectivity and Bison Herd Composition

Behavioral segregation between the sexes of bison (Bas bison), coupled with artificially manipulated sex ratios of bison herds, might profoundly influence prairie ecosystems. Therefore, we measured carbon isotopes in hair collected from bison from the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in northeast Oklahoma to determine if adult male, adult female, and juvenile bison segregate on the basis of botanical composition of their diet. Sex ratio of bison herds in the Great Plains and behavioral differences between sexes were used to assess potential effects of sex ratio on tallgrass prairie. Botanical composition of diet differed among the three bison groups, in that C4 grasses contributed most to adult bull diets and least to juvenile diets. Bison sex ratio in half of the herds surveyed was highly skewed toward females. Because of behavioral differences between adult male and female bison, different sex ratios in bison herds might result in different vegetation structure, composition, and patchiness

A method for calculating the strength of evidence associated with an earwitness’s claimed recognition of a familiar speaker

The present paper proposes and demonstrates a method for assessing strength of evidence when an earwitness claims to recognize the voice of a speaker who is familiar to them. The method calculates a Bayes factor that answers the question: What is the probability that the earwitness would claim to recognize the offender as the suspect if the offender was the suspect versus what is the probability that the earwitness would claim to recognize the offender as the suspect if the offender was not the suspect but some other speaker from the relevant population? By “claim” we mean a claim made by a cooperative earwitness not a claim made by an earwitness who is intentionally deceptive. Relevant data are derived from naïve listeners' responses to recordings of familiar speakers presented in a speaker lineup. The method is demonstrated under recording conditions that broadly reflect those of a real case

Evaluating directive-based programming models on Wave Propagation Kernels

HPC systems have become mandatory to tackle the ever-increasing challenges imposed by new exploration areas around the world. The requirement for more HPC resources depends on the complexity of the area under exploration, yet the larger the HPC system, the more the energy consumption involved. Reduction of overall power consumption in HPC facilities, lead technologies vendors to introduce many-core devices and heterogeneous computing to the supercomputers, thus, forcing exploration codes to be ported to such new architectures. As the Oil & Gas industry has more than 30 years of legacy code, the effort to adapt it could be huge. To this extent, several programming models emerged, e.g. high-level directive-based programming models, such as OpenMP, OpenACC, and OmpSs rely on specifying to the compiler the parallelism directives to release users from manually decomposing and processing the parallel regions. The results show that it is possible to obtain a parallel code for current heterogeneous HPC architectures investing a few hours or days. The obtained speedup is at least an order of magnitude w.r.t. a sequential code. However, we provide parallelism inside a single computational node, and a wider study for evaluating the costs of porting and parallelizing across computational nodes is pending.Authors thank Repsol for the permission to publish the present research, carried out at the Repsol-BSC Research Center. This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme (2014-2020) and from the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation through Rede Nacional de Pesquisa (RNP) under the HPC4E Project (www.hpc4e.eu), grant agreement n.◦ 689772.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Ascensión Martínez Riaza (ed.). La independencia inconcebible: España y la «pérdida del Perú» (1820-1824)

El libro La independencia inconcebible: España y la «pérdida del Perú» (1820-1824) editado por Ascensión Martínez Riaza estudia, como su título lo enuncia, la independencia del Perú desde la perspectiva española durante el segundo liberalismo (1820-1823) y hasta la proclamación de la independencia en 1824, cuando ya se había vuelto al absolutismo. Sus autores son destacados especialistas del periodo, de reconocida trayectoria académica y con relevantes publicaciones sobre la historia del Perú..

Madre sólo hay una. Ilustración, maternidad y medicina en el Perú del siglo XVIII

This work studies the construction of a model of maternity that served as the base of the enlightenment family in the late 18th century of Peru. It analyzes journalism and other texts of the period, to show the hygienist discourse about pregnancy and birth, the controversies about breast-feeding, the diatribes against midewifes versus scientific knowledge of medical doctors, among other aspects, to configure a new vision of maternity. This vision relates to a more complex process of society on the whole, such as the birth of a modern journalism and public opinion or the formalization of scientific knowledge and the increased social role of medical doctor. In this way, this discourse shows one of the many faces of the difficult process of modernity.Este trabajo estudia cómo a fines del siglo XVIII en el Perú se dio la construcción de un modelo de madre, que sería el eje en torno al cual debía girar la familia ilustrada. A través del análisis de la prensa y otros escritos de la época, se muestra cómo el discurso higienista sobre el embarazo y el parto, la polémica sobre la lactancia materna y la diatriba de las parteras frente al saber científico del médico, entre otros aspectos, van configurando una nueva visión de la maternidad. Esta, a su vez, se vincula con procesos más complejos que involucraban a la sociedad en su conjunto como son la emergencia de un periodismo moderno y una opinión pública o la tentativa de formalizar el saber científico con el acrecentamiento del rol social del médico. De esta manera, se muestra una de las múltiples caras que asume el difícil proceso de construcción de la modernidad

Seminario «El Perú en los últimos 50 años»

El Seminario «El Perú en los últimos 50 años», se llevó a cabo en Lima los días 11, 12 y 13 de julio de 2013, organizado por la Universidad de Ciencias y Humanidades, el Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos y el Colegio de Abogados de Lima. Como afirmó al inicio del evento Heraclio Bonilla, quien impulsó este importante seminario, José Carlos Mariátegui en sus 7 ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana pensó y escribió sobre los problemas de su tiempo; actualmente, nos haría falta un..

Methodology to predict scalability of parallel applications

In the road to exascale computing, the inference of expected performance of parallel applications results in a complex task. Performance analysts need to identify the behavior of the applications and to extrapolate it to nonexistent machines. In this work, we present a methodology based on collecting the essential knowledge about fundamental factors of parallel codes, and to analyze in detail the behavior of the application at low core counts on current platforms. The result is a guide to generate the model that best predicts performance at very large scale. Obtained results from executions at low core counts showed expected parallel eficiències with a low relative error

Functional Fruits Through Metabolic Engineering

Metabolic engineering is a main focus of many plant biotechnology programs that look for the production of novel plant varieties with improved human health benefits. Among the most interesting goals are those that are focused in the production of functional fruits. A fruit can be considered as functional if it produces additional benefits to human health and well-being, beyond nutrition. Fruits that present higher levels of beneficial compounds such as essential vitamins, antioxidants, and phytochemicals can be considered as functional as those compounds have long-term benefits in reducing the occurrence of certain diseases. Through the expression, silencing, or mutagenesis strategies, many functional fruit crops have been produced during the last 40 years. Novel plants produce higher amount of carotenoids, antocyanins, and folic acid in their fruits, as well as higher color, sweetness, flavor, and aroma. The improvement of postharvest and resistance to biotic and abiotic stress in commercial plants has been also enhanced as it can led to a better fruit production. Taken together, this chapter will present a revision of the main fruits that have been improved by means of metabolic engineering within the framework of functional foods and super foods