Factors affecting the home range size of felids (Mammalia, Carnivora) with emphasis on three American species

El objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar los factores que influyen en el tamaño del ámbito hogareño de felinos en los niveles inter- e intraespecífico. En nivel interespecífico, evaluamos la influencia de la masa corporal en el ámbito hogareño de 19 especies de felinos, controlando la filogenia. A nivel de especies, evaluamos el efecto del sexo y el hábitat (abierto vs. cerrado) sobre el ámbito hogareño de tres especies de felinos americanos, Panthera onca, Leopardus pardalis y Puma concolor, para los cuales existe una buena cantidad de información. Los datos de masa corporal, sexo y ámbito hogareño fueron extraídos de la base de datos Pantheria (para 19 especies, para comparación interespecífica) y 48 estudios para la variación intraespecífica. Evaluamos la influencia de la masa corporal en el tamaño del ámbito hogareño de felinos utilizando un análisis filogenético de los mínimos cuadrados generalizados. Evaluamos la existencia de dimorfismo sexual en el ámbito hogareño y la masa corporal usando una prueba t pareada. Finalmente, investigamos la influencia del hábitat en el ámbito hogareño utilizando un modelo ANOVA. Nuestros resultados mostraron que el tamaño del ámbito hogareño está asociado positivamente con la masa corporal en felinos. A nivel intraespecífico, confirmamos que la masa corporal y el ámbito hogareño de los machos son mayores que los de las hembras en P. onca y L. pardalis y P. concolor. Además, el ámbito hogareño de P. onca aumenta en hábitats abiertos (i.e., pastizales, desiertos y matorrales), tal como se esperaba. En general, nuestros resultados confirman que los mayores ámbitos hogareños están asociados con un tamaño corporal más grande en los animales que necesitan más recursos alimentarios o recursos específicos (como presas para felinos) para satisfacer las tasas metabólicas. Además, el ámbito hogareño de los tres felinos parece estar muy influenciado por los atributos de reproducción, así como por la calidad del hábitat. Esto sugiere una conexión con la distribución espacial de alimentos (presas) y las oportunidades de apareamiento.We evaluated several factors that might be related to the home-range size of felids at both inter and intraspecific levels. At the interspecific level, we tested the influence of body mass on home range size of 19 felid species, while controlling for phylogeny. At the species level, we evaluated the effect of sex and habitat type (open vs. closed) on the home range size of three species of felids occurring in America, Panthera onca, Leopardus pardalis and Puma concolor, which are among the most studied species concerning home ranges. Body mass, sex, and home range data were extracted from the Pantheria database (for 19 species, for interspecific comparisons) and from 48 studies for intraspecific comparisons. We assessed the influence of body mass on the home range size of felids using phylogenetic generalized least squares analysis. We evaluated the existence of sexual dimorphism on both home range size and body mass using paired t-tests. Finally, we investigated the influence of habitat type (open vs. closed) on home range size using ANOVA. Our results show that home range size is positively influenced by body mass in felids. At the intraspecific level, we confirmed that both the body mass and home range are larger for males than for the females in P. onca, L. pardalis and P. concolor. Moreover, the average home range size of P. onca is larger in open (i.e., grasslands, deserts and shrublands) than in closed (i.e., forests) habitats. Overall, our results confirm that larger home ranges are associated with larger body sizes in animals that need a large amount of food resources or specific resources (such as the specific prey requirements of felids) to maintain their metabolic rates. Furthermore, home range size of these three felids seems to be strongly influenced by reproductive attributes as well as by habitat quality, suggesting a connection with the spatial distribution of both food (prey) and mates

Bases para la configuración del sistema de investigación de la cadena de la papa en colombia

En torno a la investigación sobre la problemática del sector papicultor en Colombia se han dado cita gran número de entidades, dentro de las cuales son de destacar Institutos de Investigación como el ICA, universidades como la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, específicamente la Facultad de Agronomía en sus programas de pre y postgrado, Fedepapa, casas comerciales, Sociedades de Investigación, etc. De las investigaciones adelantadas sobre tal problemática, muchas no han repercutido en un mejoramiento de la población involucrada a lo largo de los eslabones que conforman la cadena de este importante rubro de producción, en razón, en gran parte, a la carencia en el país de un sistema de investigación que regule y coordine acciones atinentes a enfrentar los problemas más relevantes y prioritarios de orden técnico y socioeconómico que afectan el gremio papicultor. Sin embargo, no se puede desconocer que la cadena de la papa se ha beneficiado de algunos programas de investigación, especialmente realizados por el ICA a lo largo de su existencia, tal es el caso del desarrollo de variedades, muchas de las cuales mantienen su vigencia comercial, por ser apropiadas para las condiciones ambientales Colombianas.Several research organizations, including the U.N., especifically the Agriculture School in its undergraduate and graduate programs, ICA, the Federation of Potato growers, comercial agrochemical companies, research associations, etc have joined forces around the problems that plague the potato growers in Colombia. Much research has been carried out on this issue, but relatively few has had an impact on the improvement of living conditions for the peasantry involved along the chain of production and marketing processes, due to the lack of a system that coordinates actions regarding the most relevant and urgent problems of the potato guild in the technical and socioeconomic spheres. Nonetheless, the potato growers have undoubtedly benefitted from the achievements of past research, especially by the Colombia n Agricultural Institute (ICA) regarding the development of improved potato varieties, several of them still used for commercial purposes

An Ensemble Generation Method Based on Instance Hardness

In Machine Learning, ensemble methods have been receiving a great deal of attention. Techniques such as Bagging and Boosting have been successfully applied to a variety of problems. Nevertheless, such techniques are still susceptible to the effects of noise and outliers in the training data. We propose a new method for the generation of pools of classifiers based on Bagging, in which the probability of an instance being selected during the resampling process is inversely proportional to its instance hardness, which can be understood as the likelihood of an instance being misclassified, regardless of the choice of classifier. The goal of the proposed method is to remove noisy data without sacrificing the hard instances which are likely to be found on class boundaries. We evaluate the performance of the method in nineteen public data sets, and compare it to the performance of the Bagging and Random Subspace algorithms. Our experiments show that in high noise scenarios the accuracy of our method is significantly better than that of Bagging.Comment: Paper accepted for publication on IJCNN 201

Response surface optimization in growth curves through multivariate analysis

A methodology is proposed to jointly model treatments with quantitativelevels measured throughout time by combining the response surface andgrowth curve techniques. The model parameters, which measure the effectthroughout time of the factors related to the second-order response surfacemodel, are estimated. These estimates are made through a suitable transformationthat allows to express the model as a classic MANOVA model,so the traditional hypotheses are formulated and tested. In addition, theoptimality conditions throughout time are established as a set of specificcombination factors by the fitted model. As a final step, two applicationsare analyzed using our proposed model: the first was previously analyzedwith growth curves in another paper, and the second involves two factorsthat are optimized over time

MultiS: A Context-Server for Pervasive Computing

AbstractContext-aware applications are capable of recognizing environmental changes and adapting their behavior to the new context. This process can be divided into three stages: monitoring, context recognition and adaptation. On the monitoring layer, raw information about the environment is collected from sensors. The context recognition layer processes the data acquired from the context and transforms it into information which can be useful for the adaptation process. With this information, the adaptation system can determine what behavior is correct for the application in each different context. This paper proposes a context server called MultiS, which has the goal of solving the problems arising from the context recognition layer, and which includes the following advantages: a) the production of new context data based on the information of several sensors and an ability to react to changes in the environment; b) definition of a composed language for the context data called CD-XML; c) support for mobility

Antitumor properties of a new non-anticoagulant heparin analog from the mollusk Nodipecten nodosus: Effect on P-selectin, heparanase, metastasis and cellular recruitment

Inflammation and cancer are related pathologies acting synergistically to promote tumor progression. In both, hematogenous metastasis and inflammation, P-selectin participates in interactions involving tumor cells, platelets, leukocytes and endothelium. Heparin has been shown to inhibit P-selectin and as a consequence it blunts metastasis and inflammation. Some heparin analogs obtained from marine invertebrates are P-selectin inhibitors and do not induce bleeding effects. The present work focuses on the P-selectin blocking activity of a unique heparan sulfate (HS) from the bivalve mollusk Nodipecten nodosus. Initially, we showed that the mollusk HS inhibited LS180 colon carcinoma cell adhesion to immobilized P-selectin in a dose-dependent manner. In addition, we demonstrated that this glycan attenuates leukocyte rolling on activated endothelium and inflammatory cell recruitment in thioglycollate-induced peritonitis in mice. Biochemical analysis indicated that the invertebrate glycan also inhibits heparanase, a key player in cell invasion and metastasis. Experimental metastasis of Lewis lung carcinoma cells was drastically attenuated by the mollusk HS through a mechanism involving inhibition of platelet-tumor-cell complex formation in blood vessels. These data suggest that the mollusk HS is a potential alternative to heparin for inhibiting P-selectin-mediated events such as metastasis and inflammatory cell recruitmen

On the M-theory description of supersymmetric gluodynamics

We study the stringy description of N=1 supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theory on R^{1,2} X S^1. Our description is based on the known Klebanov-Strassler and Maldacena-Nunez solutions, properly modified to account for the compact dimension. The presence of this circle turns out to be a non trivial modification and it leads us to consider the up-lifted eleven dimensional solution. We discuss some of its properties. Perhaps the most interesting one is that extra BPS M-branes are present. These generate a non-perturbative superpotential that we explicitly compute. Our findings, besides their interest in the gauge-string correspondence, may also have applications in the cosmological KKLT and KKLMMT scenarios.Comment: 24 pages; typos corrected and references adde