The climate of the Waikato Basin

The topography of the Waikato Valley and its position in relation to the large-scale weather system give it warm humid summers, mild winters and a moderate rainfall with a winter maximum. Some typical meteorological situations affecting the valley are described and the individual climatic elements are considered in detail

Dietary stress increases the total opportunity for sexual selection and modifies selection on condition-dependent traits

Although it is often expected that adverse environmental conditions depress the expression of condition-dependent sexually selected traits, the full consequences of environmental change for the action of sexual selection, in terms of the opportunity for total sexual selection and patterns of phenotypic selection, are unknown. Here we show that dietary stress in guppies, Poecilia reticulata, reduces the expression of several sexually selected traits and increases the opportunity for total sexual selection (standardized variance in reproductive success) in males. Furthermore, our results show that dietary stress modulates the relative importance of precopulatory (mating success) and postcopulatory (relative fertilization success) sexual selection, and that the form of multivariate sexual selection (linear vs. nonlinear) depends on dietary regime. Overall, our results are consistent with a pattern of heightened directional selection on condition-dependent sexually selected traits under environmental stress, and underscore the importance of sexual selection in shaping adaptation in a changing world.This work was funded by the University of Padova (Progetto CPDA120105 and Assegno di Ricerca BIRD 2017) to A.P. S.C. was supported by a Postgraduate Scholarship through The University of Padova, and F.G.G. by the Spanish Ministry of Economy (CGL2016-76173-P AEI/FEDER, UE). J.P.E. was supported by a sabbatical grant funded by the University of Western Australia.Peer reviewe

Multi-particle excitations in the superdeformed 149^{149}Gd nucleus

This article presents earlier results of our research works in the area of modeling Business Intelligence Systems. The basic idea of this research area is presented first. We then show the necessity of including certain users' parameters in Information systems that are used in Business Intelligence systems in order to integrate a better response from such systems. We identified two main types of attributes that can be missing from a base and we showed why they needed to be included. A user model that is based on a cognitive user evolution is presented. This model when used together with a good definition of the information needs of the user (decision maker) will accelerate his decision making process

Multiparticle excitations and identical bands in the superdeformed 149^{149}Gd nucleus

We examine some of the various fields where tie together, in a complex way, non-linear sciences and sciences of information, communication. This approach is exploratory, not-exhaustive, open