Socioecology Explains Individual Variation in Urban Space Use in Response to Management in Cape Chacma Baboons (Papio ursinus)

The presence of wildlife adjacent to and within urban spaces is a growing phenomenon globally. When wildlife’s presence in urban spaces has negative impacts for people and wildlife, nonlethal and lethal interventions on animals invariably result. Recent evidence suggests that individuals in wild animal populations vary in both their propensity to use urban space and their response to nonlethal management methods. Understanding such interindividual differences and the drivers of urban space use could help inform management strategies. We use direct observation and high-resolution GPS (1 Hz) to track the space use of 13 adult individuals in a group of chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) living at the urban edge in Cape Town, South Africa. The group is managed by a dedicated team of field rangers, who use aversive conditioning to reduce the time spent by the group in urban spaces. Adult males are larger, more assertive, and more inclined to enter houses, and as such are disproportionately subject to “last resort” lethal management. Field rangers therefore focus efforts on curbing the movements of adult males, which, together with high-ranking females and their offspring, comprise the bulk of the group. However, our results reveal that this focus allows low-ranking, socially peripheral female baboons greater access to urban spaces. We suggest that movement of these females into urban spaces, alone or in small groups, is an adaptive response to management interventions, especially given that they have no natural predators. These results highlight the importance of conducting behavioral studies in conjunction with wildlife management, to ensure effective mitigation techniques

Re-wilding Collective Behaviour: An Ecological Perspective

The earliest studies of collective animal behaviour were inspired by and conducted in the wild. Over the past decades much of the research in this field has shifted to the laboratory, combining high-resolution tracking of individuals with mathematical simulations or agent-based models. Today we are beginning to see a ‘re-wilding’ of collective behaviour thanks to technological advances, providing researchers with the opportunity to quantify and model the heterogeneity that exists within the social groupings they study, and within the environments in which these groups live. The perspective we present here aims to inspire and steer this research toward answering fundamental and outstanding behavioural and ecological questions, while also tackling pertinent conservation challenges

Coronagraphic observations of Si X 1430 nm acquired by DKIST/Cryo-NIRSP with methods for telluric absorption correction

We report commissioning observations of the Si X 1430 nm solar coronal line observed coronagraphically with the Cryogenic Near-Infrared Spectropolarimeter (Cryo-NIRSP) at the National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST). These are the first known spatially resolved observations of this spectral line, which has strong potential as a coronal magnetic field diagnostic. The observations target a complex active region located on the solar northeast limb on 4 March 2022. We present a first analysis of this data, which extracts the spectral line properties through a careful treatment of the variable atmospheric transmission that is known to impact this spectral window. Rastered images are created and compared with EUV observations from the SDO/AIA instrument. A method for estimating the electron density from the Si X observations is then demonstrated that makes use of the forbidden line's density-sensitive emissivity and an emission-measure analysis of the SDO/AIA bandpass observations. In addition, we derive an effective temperature and non-thermal line width across the region. This study informs the calibration approaches required for more routine observations of this promising diagnostic line.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap

Ab initio study of the volume dependence of dynamical and thermodynamical properties of silicon

Motivated by the negative thermal expansion observed for silicon between 20 K and 120 K, we present first an ab initio study of the volume dependence of interatomic force constants, phonon frequencies of TA(X) and TA(L) modes, and of the associated mode Gruneisen parameters. The influence of successive nearest neighbors shells is analysed. Analytical formulas, taking into account interactions up to second nearest neighbors, are developped for phonon frequencies of TA(X) and TA(L) modes and the corresponding mode Gruneisen parameters. We also analyze the volume and pressure dependence of various thermodynamic properties (specific heat, bulk modulus, thermal expansion), and point out the effect of the negative mode Gruneisen parameters of the acoustic branches on these properties. Finally, we present the evolution of the mean square atomic displacement and of the atomic temperature factor with the temperature for different volumes, for which the anomalous effects are even greater.Comment: 24 pages, Revtex 3.0, 11 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

The Relationship Between GPS Sampling Interval and Estimated Daily Travel Distances in Chacma Baboons (Papio ursinus)

Modern studies of animal movement use the Global Positioning System (GPS) to estimate animals’ distance traveled. The temporal resolution of GPS fixes recorded should match those of the behavior of interest; otherwise estimates are likely to be inappropriate. Here, we investigate how different GPS sampling intervals affect estimated daily travel distances for wild chacma baboons (Papio ursinus). By subsampling GPS data collected at one fix per second for 143 daily travel distances (12 baboons over 11–12 days), we found that less frequent GPS fixes result in smaller estimated travel distances. Moving from a GPS frequency of one fix every second to one fix every 30 s resulted in a 33% reduction in estimated daily travel distance, while using hourly GPS fixes resulted in a 66% reduction. We then use the relationship we find between estimated travel distance and GPS sampling interval to recalculate published baboon daily travel distances and find that accounting for the predicted effect of sampling interval does not affect conclusions of previous comparative analyses. However, if short-interval or continuous GPS data—which are becoming more common in studies of primate movement ecology—are compared with historical (longer interval) GPS data in future work, controlling for sampling interval is necessary

MicroRNA in diagnosis and therapy monitoring of early-stage triple-negative breast cancer

Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease with distinct molecular subtypes including the aggressive subtype triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). We compared blood-borne miRNA signatures of early-stage basal-like (cytokeratin-CK5-positive) TNBC patients to age-matched controls. The miRNAs of TNBC patients were assessed prior to and following platinum-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NCT). After an exploratory genome-wide study on 21 cases and 21 controls using microarrays, the identified signatures were verified independently in two laboratories on the same and a new cohort by RT-qPCR. We differentiated the blood of TNBC patients before NCT from controls with 84% sensitivity. The most significant miRNA for this diagnostic classification was miR-126-5p (two tailed t-test p-value of 1.4 × 10−5). Validation confirmed the microarray results for all tested miRNAs. Comparing cancer patients prior to and post NCT highlighted 321 significant miRNAs (among them miR-34a, p-value of 1.2 × 10−23). Our results also suggest that changes in miRNA expression during NCT may have predictive potential to predict pathological complete response (pCR). In conclusion we report that miRNA expression measured from blood facilitates early and minimally-invasive diagnosis of basal-like TNBC. We also demonstrate that NCT has a significant influence on miRNA expression. Finally, we show that blood-borne miRNA profiles monitored over time have potential to predict pCR

Extreme behavioural shifts by baboons exploiting risky, resource-rich, human-modified environments

Abstract A range of species exploit anthropogenic food resources in behaviour known as ‘raiding’. Such behavioural flexibility is considered a central component of a species’ ability to cope with human-induced environmental changes. Here, we study the behavioural processes by which raiding male chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) exploit the opportunities and mitigate the risks presented by raiding in the suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa. Ecological sampling and interviews conducted with ‘rangers’ (employed to manage the baboons’ space use) revealed that baboons are at risk of being herded out of urban spaces that contain high-energy anthropogenic food sources. Baboon-attached motion/GPS tracking collars showed that raiding male baboons spent almost all of their time at the urban edge, engaging in short, high-activity forays into the urban space. Moreover, activity levels were increased where the likelihood of deterrence by rangers was greater. Overall, these raiding baboons display a time-activity balance that is drastically altered in comparison to individuals living in more remote regions. We suggest our methods can be used to obtain precise estimates of management impact for this and other species in conflict with people

First Principles Phase Diagram Calculations for the Octahedral-Interstitial System ZrOX_{X}, 0≤X≤1/20 \leq X \leq 1/2

First principles based phase diagram calculations were performed for the octahedral-interstitial solid solution system \alpha ZrOX (\alpha Zr[ ]_(1-X)OX; [ ]=Vacancy; 0 \leq X \leq 1/2). The cluster expansion method was used to do a ground state analysis, and to calculate the phase diagram. The predicted diagram has four ordered ground-states in the range 0 \leq X \leq 1/2, but one of these, at X=5/12, is predicted to disproportionate at T \approx 20K, well below the experimentally investigated range T \approx 420K. Thus, at T \succeq 420K, the first-principles based calculation predicts three ordered phases rather than the four that have been reported by experimentalists

Hypoxic gene expression in chronic hepatitis B virus infected patients is not observed in state-of-the-art in vitro and mouse infection models

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is the leading cause of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) worldwide. The prolyl hydroxylase domain (PHD)-hypoxia inducible factor (HIF) pathway is a key mammalian oxygen sensing pathway and is frequently perturbed by pathological states including infection and inflammation. We discovered a significant upregulation of hypoxia regulated gene transcripts in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) in the absence of liver cirrhosis. We used state-of-the-art in vitro and in vivo HBV infection models to evaluate a role for HBV infection and the viral regulatory protein HBx to drive HIF-signalling. HBx had no significant impact on HIF expression or associated transcriptional activity under normoxic or hypoxic conditions. Furthermore, we found no evidence of hypoxia gene expression in HBV de novo infection, HBV infected human liver chimeric mice or transgenic mice with integrated HBV genome. Collectively, our data show clear evidence of hypoxia gene induction in CHB that is not recapitulated in existing models for acute HBV infection, suggesting a role for inflammatory mediators in promoting hypoxia gene expression