Preserving the impossible: conservation of soft-sediment hominin footprint sites and strategies for three-dimensional digital data capture.

Human footprints provide some of the most publically emotive and tangible evidence of our ancestors. To the scientific community they provide evidence of stature, presence, behaviour and in the case of early hominins potential evidence with respect to the evolution of gait. While rare in the geological record the number of footprint sites has increased in recent years along with the analytical tools available for their study. Many of these sites are at risk from rapid erosion, including the Ileret footprints in northern Kenya which are second only in age to those at Laetoli (Tanzania). Unlithified, soft-sediment footprint sites such these pose a significant geoconservation challenge. In the first part of this paper conservation and preservation options are explored leading to the conclusion that to 'record and digitally rescue' provides the only viable approach. Key to such strategies is the increasing availability of three-dimensional data capture either via optical laser scanning and/or digital photogrammetry. Within the discipline there is a developing schism between those that favour one approach over the other and a requirement from geoconservationists and the scientific community for some form of objective appraisal of these alternatives is necessary. Consequently in the second part of this paper we evaluate these alternative approaches and the role they can play in a 'record and digitally rescue' conservation strategy. Using modern footprint data, digital models created via optical laser scanning are compared to those generated by state-of-the-art photogrammetry. Both methods give comparable although subtly different results. This data is evaluated alongside a review of field deployment issues to provide guidance to the community with respect to the factors which need to be considered in digital conservation of human/hominin footprints

Laetoli's lost tracks: 3D generated mean shape and missing footprints.

The Laetoli site (Tanzania) contains the oldest known hominin footprints, and their interpretation remains open to debate, despite over 35 years of research. The two hominin trackways present are parallel to one another, one of which is a composite formed by at least two individuals walking in single file. Most researchers have focused on the single, clearly discernible G1 trackway while the G2/3 trackway has been largely dismissed due to its composite nature. Here we report the use of a new technique that allows us to decouple the G2 and G3 tracks for the first time. In so doing we are able to quantify the mean footprint topology of the G3 trackway and render it useable for subsequent data analyses. By restoring the effectively 'lost' G3 track, we have doubled the available data on some of the rarest traces directly associated with our Pliocene ancestors

POLÍTICAS DE FINANCIAMENTO DA EDUCAÇÃO BÁSICA: A VALORIZAÇÃO DOS PROFISSIONAIS DO MAGISTÉRIO NA REDE MUNICIPAL DE ENSINO DE SÃO MATEUS/ES

Esta dissertação tem como objetivo analisar a gestão dos recursos do Fundeb e sua influência nas políticas de valorização dos profissionais do magistério no Município de São Mateus/ES, no período de 2007 a 2015, buscando verificar como o fundo contribuiu para assegurar essas políticas. Para isso, analisamos as legislações de regulamentação do financiamento da educação, de implantação do Fundef e do Fundeb e as normas que asseguram a carreira do magistério do Município estudado. A metodologia utilizada de pesquisa foi qualitativa, apresentando reflexões acerca do financiamento da educação básica, com base em levantamento bibliográfico e documental. Para discussão e análise, realizamos em um primeiro momento estudo das características e políticas de financiamento no Brasil e as influências do Estado burocrático para a efetivação dessas políticas. Em seguida, analisamos os dados financeiros e educacionais do Município relacionados aos fundos e as políticas implantadas no que dizem respeito a valorização do magistério após o Fundeb. Realizamos ainda, estudos da interferência dos recursos destinados à educação na oferta de matrículas na Rede Municipal. Concluiu-se que, o Fundeb se constitui em instrumento efetivo para a garantia de políticas positivas de valorização do magistério implantadas no Município de São Mateus, principalmente no que se refere ao Plano de Cargos, Carreira e Remuneração o que consequentemente incentivou a busca por formação inicial e continuada por parte dos profissionais da educação

Signatures of a globally optimal searching strategy in the three-dimensional foraging flights of bumblebees

Simulated annealing is a powerful stochastic search algorithm for locating a global maximum that is hidden among many poorer local maxima in a search space. It is frequently implemented in computers working on complex optimization problems but until now has not been directly observed in nature as a searching strategy adopted by foraging animals. We analysed high-speed video recordings of the three-dimensional searching flights of bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) made in the presence of large or small artificial flowers within a 0.5 m3 enclosed arena. Analyses of the three-dimensional flight patterns in both conditions reveal signatures of simulated annealing searches. After leaving a flower, bees tend to scan back-and forth past that flower before making prospecting flights (loops), whose length increases over time. The search pattern becomes gradually more expansive and culminates when another rewarding flower is found. Bees then scan back and forth in the vicinity of the newly discovered flower and the process repeats. This looping search pattern, in which flight step lengths are typically power-law distributed, provides a relatively simple yet highly efficient strategy for pollinators such as bees to find best quality resources in complex environments made of multiple ephemeral feeding sites with nutritionally variable rewards

Effect of resource spatial correlation and Hunter-Fisher-Gatherer mobility on social cooperation in Tierra del Fuego

This article presents an agent-based model designed to explore the development of cooperation in hunter-fisher-gatherer societies that face a dilemma of sharing an unpredictable resource that is randomly distributed in space. The model is a stylised abstraction of the Yamana society, which inhabited the channels and islands of the southernmost part of Tierra del Fuego (Argentina-Chile). According to ethnographic sources, the Yamana developed cooperative behaviour supported by an indirect reciprocity mechanism: whenever someone found an extraordinary confluence of resources, such as a beached whale, they would use smoke signals to announce their find, bringing people together to share food and exchange different types of social capital. The model provides insight on how the spatial concentration of beachings and agents’ movements in the space can influence cooperation. We conclude that the emergence of informal and dynamic communities that operate as a vigilance network preserves cooperation and makes defection very costly.MICINN http://www.idi.mineco.gob.es/ CSD2010-00034 (SimulPast CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010) and HAR2009-06996; the government of Castilla y Leónhttp://www.jcyl.es/ GREX251-2009; the Argentine CONICET http://www.conicet.gov.ar/PIP-0706; and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Researchhttp://www.wennergren.org/ "Social Aggregation: A Yamana Society's Short Term Episode to Analyse Social Interaction, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina". The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscrip

Optimal searching behaviour generated intrinsically by the central pattern generator for locomotion.

Efficient searching for resources such as food by animals is key to their survival. It has been proposed that diverse animals from insects to sharks and humans adopt searching patterns that resemble a simple Lévy random walk, which is theoretically optimal for 'blind foragers' to locate sparse, patchy resources. To test if such patterns are generated intrinsically, or arise via environmental interactions, we tracked free-moving Drosophila larvae with (and without) blocked synaptic activity in the brain, suboesophageal ganglion (SOG) and sensory neurons. In brain-blocked larvae, we found that extended substrate exploration emerges as multi-scale movement paths similar to truncated Lévy walks. Strikingly, power-law exponents of brain/SOG/sensory-blocked larvae averaged 1.96, close to a theoretical optimum (µ ≅ 2.0) for locating sparse resources. Thus, efficient spatial exploration can emerge from autonomous patterns in neural activity. Our results provide the strongest evidence so far for the intrinsic generation of Lévy-like movement patterns

Locomotor preferences in terrestrial vertebrates: An online crowdsourcing approach to data collection

Understanding how animals move within their environment is a burgeoning field of research. Despite this, relatively basic data, such as the locomotor speeds that animals choose to walk at in the wild, are sparse. If animals choose to walk with dynamic similarity, they will move at equal dimensionless speeds, represented by Froude number (Fr). Fr may be interpreted from simple limb kinematics obtained from video data. Here, using Internet videos, limb kinematics were measured in 112 bird and mammal species weighing between 0.61 and 5400 kg. This novel method of data collection enabled the determination of kinematics for animals walking at their self-selected speeds without the need for exhaustive fieldwork. At larger sizes, both birds and mammals prefer to walk at slower relative speeds and relative stride frequencies, as preferred Fr decreased in larger species, indicating that Fr may not be a good predictor of preferred locomotor speeds. This may result from the observation that the minimum cost of transport is approached at lower Fr in larger species. Birds walk with higher duty factors, lower stride frequencies and longer stance times compared to mammals at self-selected speeds. The trend towards lower preferred Fr is also apparent in extinct vertebrate species

Lévy patterns in seabirds are multifaceted describing both spatial and temporal patterning

BACKGROUND: The flight patterns of albatrosses and shearwaters have become a touchstone for much of Lévy flight research, spawning an extensive field of enquiry. There is now compelling evidence that the flight patterns of these seabirds would have been appreciated by Paul Lévy, the mathematician after whom Lévy flights are named. Here we show that Lévy patterns (here taken to mean spatial or temporal patterns characterized by distributions with power-law tails) are, in fact, multifaceted in shearwaters being evident in both spatial and temporal patterns of activity. RESULTS: We tested for Lévy patterns in the at-sea behaviours of two species of shearwater breeding in the North Atlantic Ocean (Calonectris borealis) and the Mediterranean sea (C. diomedea) during their incubating and chick-provisioning periods. We found that distributions of flight durations, on/in water durations and inter-dive time-intervals have power-law tails and so bear the hallmarks of Lévy patterns. CONCLUSIONS: The occurrence of these statistical laws is remarkable given that bird behaviours are strongly shaped by an individual’s motivational state and by complex environmental interactions. Our observations could take Lévy patterns as models of animal behaviour to a new level by going beyond the characterisation of spatial movements to characterise how different behaviours are interwoven throughout daily animal life

Total energy expenditure is repeatable in adults but not associated with short-term changes in body composition

Low total energy expenditure (TEE, MJ/d) has been a hypothesized risk factor for weight gain, but repeatability of TEE, a critical variable in longitudinal studies of energy balance, is understudied. We examine repeated doubly labeled water (DLW) measurements of TEE in 348 adults and 47 children from the IAEA DLW Database (mean ± SD time interval: 1.9 ± 2.9 y) to assess repeatability of TEE, and to examine if TEE adjusted for age, sex, fat-free mass, and fat mass is associated with changes in weight or body composition. Here, we report that repeatability of TEE is high for adults, but not children. Bivariate Bayesian mixed models show no among or within-individual correlation between body composition (fat mass or percentage) and unadjusted TEE in adults. For adults aged 20-60 y (N = 267; time interval: 7.4 ± 12.2 weeks), increases in adjusted TEE are associated with weight gain but not with changes in body composition; results are similar for subjects with intervals >4 weeks (N = 53; 29.1 ± 12.8 weeks). This suggests low TEE is not a risk factor for, and high TEE is not protective against, weight or body fat gain over the time intervals tested