Understanding continent-wide variation in vulture ranging behavior to assess feasibility of Vulture Safe Zones in Africa: Challenges and possibilities

Protected areas are intended as tools in reducing threats to wildlife and preserving habitat for their long-term population persistence. Studies on ranging behavior provide insight into the utility of protected areas. Vultures are one of the fastest declining groups of birds globally and are popular subjects for telemetry studies, but continent-wide studies are lacking. To address how vultures use space and identify the areas and location of possible vulture safe zones, we assess home range size and their overlap with protected areas by species, age, breeding status, season, and region using a large continent-wide telemetry datasets that includes 163 individuals of three species of threatened Gyps vulture. Immature vultures of all three species had larger home ranges and used a greater area outside of protected areas than breeding and non-breeding adults. Cape vultures had the smallest home range sizes and the lowest level of overlap with protected areas. Rüppell\u27s vultures had larger home range sizes in the wet season, when poisoning may increase due to human-carnivore conflict. Overall, our study suggests challenges for the creation of Vulture Safe Zones to protect African vultures. At a minimum, areas of 24,000 km2 would be needed to protect the entire range of an adult African White-backed vulture and areas of more than 75,000 km2 for wider-ranging Rüppell\u27s vultures. Vulture Safe Zones in Africa would generally need to be larger than existing protected areas, which would require widespread conservation activities outside of protected areas to be successful

Exploring Cell Tropism as a Possible Contributor to Influenza Infection Severity

Several mechanisms have been proposed to account for the marked increase in severity of human infections with avian compared to human influenza strains, including increased cytokine expression, poor immune response, and differences in target cell receptor affinity. Here, the potential effect of target cell tropism on disease severity is studied using a mathematical model for in-host influenza viral infection in a cell population consisting of two different cell types. The two cell types differ only in their susceptibility to infection and rate of virus production. We show the existence of a parameter regime which is characterized by high viral loads sustained long after the onset of infection. This finding suggests that differences in cell tropism between influenza strains could be sufficient to cause significant differences in viral titer profiles, similar to those observed in infections with certain strains of influenza A virus. The two target cell mathematical model offers good agreement with experimental data from severe influenza infections, as does the usual, single target cell model albeit with biologically unrealistic parameters. Both models predict that while neuraminidase inhibitors and adamantanes are only effective when administered early to treat an uncomplicated seasonal infection, they can be effective against more severe influenza infections even when administered late

Quality balancing for parallel adaptive FEM

We present a dynamic distributed load balancing algorithm for parallel, adaptive finite element simulations using preconditioned conjugate gradient solvers based on domain-decomposition. The load balancer is designed to maintain good partition aspect ratios. It can calculate a balancing flow using different versions of diffusion and a variant of breadth first search. Elements to be migrated are chosen according to a cost function aiming at the optimization of subdomain shapes. We show how to use information from the second step to guide the first. Experimental results using Bramble's preconditioner and comparisons to existing state-ot-the-art load balancers show the benefits of the construction

Bicontinuous microemulsions with extremely high temperature stability based on skin friendly oil and sugar surfactant

Schulreich C, Angermann C, Hoehn S, et al. Bicontinuous microemulsions with extremely high temperature stability based on skin friendly oil and sugar surfactant. Colloids And Surfaces A Physicochemical And Engineering Aspects. 2013;418:39-46.In the present article the phase behavior of microemulsions based on isononyl isononanoate (Lanol 99), sugar surfactant Simulsol SL55 (C-12/14 G(1.3)), D2O/water, and the cosurfactant benzyl alcohol is studied and the bicontinuous phase is identified. Using small angle neutron scattering (SANS) the internal structure of the bicontinuous phase is characterized. In the experiments a temperature range from 261 K to 343 K was covered. The prepared microemulsions were found to exhibit nearly no temperature dependence with respect to their structure and phase behavior. At low temperatures inside the microemulsions water exists in a supercooled liquid state. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V

Politikszenarien für den Klimaschutz : Langfristszenarien und Handlungsempfehlungen ab 2012 (Politikszenarien III) : Untersuchungen im Auftrag des Umweltbundesamtes

$\textbf{1 Ziele, Aufgabenstellung und Methodik der Untersuchung}$ (DIW Berlin) 1.1 $\textit{Vorbemerkungen}$ Im Auftrag des Umweltbundesamtes wurden zwischen 1996 und 1999 unter dem Titel "Politikszenarien für den Klimaschutz" von den Partnern Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW Berlin), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Fraunhofer-Institut für Systemtechnik und Innovationsforschung (FhG-ISI) und Institut für angewandte Ökologie (Öko-Institut) verschiedene Analysen zur Reduktion von Treibhausgasemissionen aus dem deutschen Energiesystem, industriellen Prozessen und sonstigen Emissionsquellen durchgeführt. Dabei wurde insbesondere auch das IKARUS-Instrumentarium genutzt. Diese Vorhaben – verkürzt als „Politikszenarien I“ und Politikszenarien II“ bezeichnet – fanden Eingang in die Klimaschutzberichte der Bundesregierung. Um die neueren Entwicklungen - national wie international - sowie damit einhergehende veränderte Fragestellungen sowie die jüngeren klimapolitischen Entscheidungen der Bundesregierung berücksichtigen zu können, war eine Aktualisierung wie eine Ausweitung des Betrachtungshorizontes geboten. Mit dem nun verfolgten Vorhaben "Politikszenarien III" werden zwei zentrale Ziele verfolgt: $\rhd$ Erstens sollen mit Blick auf den nächsten Bericht der Interministeriellen Arbeitsgruppe „CO$_{2}$-Reduktion“ (IMA-CO$_{2}$) die im Nationalen Klimaschutzprogramm vom 18. Oktober 2000 enthaltenen sowie die neueren klimaschutzpolitischen Maßnahmen hinsichtlich ihrer emissionsreduzierenden Wirkungen analysiert und bewertet werden. $\rhd$ Zweitens gilt es, über 2012 hinaus reichende langfristige Szenarien der Emissionsentwicklung zu beschreiben und dafür Handlungsempfehlungen für eine auf Emissionsminderung zielende Klimaschutzpolitik zu erarbeiten. Entsprechend dieser doppelten Zielsetzung besteht dieses Vorhaben aus zwei Teilen: [...

Temperature tolerance and survival of intertidal populations of the seagrass Zostera noltii (Hornemann) in Southern Europe (Ria Formosa, Portugal)

The dwarf seagrass Zostera noltii is an important primary producer in Atlantic coastal ecosystems from Mauritania to southern Norway and the Mediterranean Sea. Sessile intertidal organisms existing at the interface between marine and terrestrial environments may be particularly vulnerable to environmental change. In this study, we asked how near to thermal tolerance limits natural populations of Z. noltii are in the Ria Formosa coastal lagoon system in southern Portugal. We recorded the maximum temperatures in the Ria Formosa during the 2007 summer, and conducted experiments to determine the sub-lethal temperature of Z. noltii shoots sampled at two sites located at different tidal heights. Mortality rates and photosynthetic performance were recorded within a range of heat shock temperatures between 35 and 41 C. Survival was recorded B37 C, while higher temperatures led to a sudden drop in photosynthetic capacity followed by mortality (shoot loss) that occurred more rapidly with increasing temperatures. At 39 C and above, the rate of shoot mortality in both sites was close to 100%, occurring between 5 and 13 days after the heat shock. Survival was ca. 95 and 90% at 35 and 37 C, respectively. From these results for Z. noltii populations in the Ria Formosa we estimated sub-lethal temperature to be approximately 38 C for Z. noltii, close to the maximum of 36 C recorded in the summer 2007. Considering predicted trajectories in the coming decades, these results raise concern as to the future viability of intertidal Z. noltii populations near the southernmost edge of their distribution

Extensive validation of CM SAF surface radiation products over Europe

This work presents a validation of three satellite-based radiation products over an extensive network of 313 pyranometers across Europe, from 2005 to 2015. The products used have been developed by the Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring (CM SAF) and are one geostationary climate dataset (SARAH-JRC), one polar-orbiting climate dataset (CLARA-A2) and one geostationary operational product. Further, the ERA-Interim reanalysis is also included in the comparison. The main objective is to determine the quality level of the daily means of CM SAF datasets, identifying their limitations, as well as analyzing the different factors that can interfere in the adequate validation of the products. The quality of the pyranometer was the most critical source of uncertainty identified. In this respect, the use of records from Second Class pyranometers and silicon-based photodiodes increased the absolute error and the bias, as well as the dispersion of both metrics, preventing an adequate validation of the daily means. The best spatial estimates for the three datasets were obtained in Central Europe with a Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) within 813 W/m2, whereas the MAD always increased at high-latitudes, snow-covered surfaces, high mountain ranges and coastal areas. Overall, the SARAH-JRC's accuracy was demonstrated over a dense network of stations making it the most consistent dataset for climate monitoring applications. The operational dataset was comparable to SARAH-JRC in Central Europe, but lacked of the temporal stability of climate datasets, while CLARA-A2 did not achieve the same level of accuracy despite predictions obtained showed high uniformity with a small negative bias. The ERA-Interim reanalysis shows the by-far largest deviations from the surface reference measurements. © 2017 The Author

Evolutionary causes and consequences of consistent individual variation in cooperative behaviour

Behaviour is typically regarded as among the most flexible of animal phenotypic traits. In particular, expression of cooperative behaviour is often assumed to be conditional upon the behaviours of others. This flexibility is a key component of many hypothesized mechanisms favouring the evolution of cooperative behaviour. However, evidence shows that cooperative behaviours are often less flexible than expected and that, in many species, individuals show consistent differences in the amount and type of cooperative and non-cooperative behaviours displayed. This phenomenon is known as ‘animal personality’ or a ‘behavioural syndrome’. Animal personality is evolutionarily relevant, as it typically shows heritable variation and can entail fitness consequences, and hence, is subject to evolutionary change. Here, we review the empirical evidence for individual variation in cooperative behaviour across taxa, we examine the evolutionary processes that have been invoked to explain the existence of individual variation in cooperative behaviour and we discuss the consequences of consistent individual differences on the evolutionary stability of cooperation. We highlight that consistent individual variation in cooperativeness can both stabilize or disrupt cooperation in populations. We conclude that recognizing the existence of consistent individual differences in cooperativeness is essential for an understanding of the evolution and prevalence of cooperation