Characteristics of Positive Deviants in Western Chimpanzee Populations

With continued expansion of anthropogenically modified landscapes, the proximity between humans and wildlife is continuing to increase, frequently resulting in species decline. Occasionally however, species are able to persist and there is an increased interest in understanding such positive outliers and underlying mechanisms. Eventually, such insights can inform the design of effective conservation interventions by mimicking aspects of the social-ecological conditions found in areas of species persistence. Recently, frameworks have been developed to study the heterogeneity of species persistence across populations with a focus on positive outliers. Applications are still rare, and to our knowledge this is one of the first studies using this approach for terrestrial species conservation. We applied the positive deviance concept to the western chimpanzee, which occurs in a variety of social-ecological landscapes. It is now categorized as Critically Endangered due to hunting and habitat loss and resulting excessive decline of most of its populations. Here we are interested in understanding why some of the populations did not decline. We compiled a dataset of 17,109 chimpanzee survey transects (10,929 km) across nine countries and linked them to a range of social and ecological variables. We found that chimpanzees seemed to persist within three social-ecological configurations: first, rainforest habitats with a low degree of human impact, second, steep areas, and third, areas with high prevalence of hunting taboos and low degree of human impact. The largest chimpanzee populations are nowadays found under the third social-ecological configuration, even though most of these areas are not officially protected. Most commonly chimpanzee conservation has been based on exclusion of threats by creation of protected areas and law enforcement. Our findings suggest, however, that this approach should be complemented by an additional focus on threat reduction, i.e., interventions that directly target individual human behavior that is most threatening to chimpanzees, which is hunting. Although changing human behavior is difficult, stakeholder co-designed behavioral change approaches developed in the social sciences have been used successfully to promote pro-environmental behavior. With only a fraction of chimpanzees and primates living inside protected areas, such new approaches might be a way forward to improve primate conservation

Characteristics of Positive Deviants in Western Chimpanzee Populations

With continued expansion of anthropogenically modified landscapes, the proximity between humans and wildlife is continuing to increase, frequently resulting in species decline. Occasionally however, species are able to persist and there is an increased interest in understanding such positive outliers and underlying mechanisms. Eventually, such insights can inform the design of effective conservation interventions by mimicking aspects of the social-ecological conditions found in areas of species persistence. Recently, frameworks have been developed to study the heterogeneity of species persistence across populations with a focus on positive outliers. Applications are still rare, and to our knowledge this is one of the first studies using this approach for terrestrial species conservation. We applied the positive deviance concept to the western chimpanzee, which occurs in a variety of social-ecological landscapes. It is now categorized as Critically Endangered due to hunting and habitat loss and resulting excessive decline of most of its populations. Here we are interested in understanding why some of the populations did not decline. We compiled a dataset of 17,109 chimpanzee survey transects (10,929 km) across nine countries and linked them to a range of social and ecological variables. We found that chimpanzees seemed to persist within three social-ecological configurations: first, rainforest habitats with a low degree of human impact, second, steep areas, and third, areas with high prevalence of hunting taboos and low degree of human impact. The largest chimpanzee populations are nowadays found under the third social-ecological configuration, even though most of these areas are not officially protected. Most commonly chimpanzee conservation has been based on exclusion of threats by creation of protected areas and law enforcement. Our findings suggest, however, that this approach should be complemented by an additional focus on threat reduction, i.e., interventions that directly target individual human behavior that is most threatening to chimpanzees, which is hunting. Although changing human behavior is difficult, stakeholder co-designed behavioral change approaches developed in the social sciences have been used successfully to promote pro-environmental behavior. With only a fraction of chimpanzees and primates living inside protected areas, such new approaches might be a way forward to improve primate conservation

Silylated macro-precursors of organic-inorganic hybrid materials : synthesis, self-assembly and hydrolysis-condensation

Cette thèse porte sur la préparation de matériaux hybrides organique-inorganique nanostructurés à partir de macro-précurseurs de silice. Notre approche a consisté à synthétiser des copolymères à blocs portant des groupements trialcoxysilane pendants susceptibles d’être hydrolysés-condensés pour former un réseau inorganique Si-O-Si. La synthèse des copolymères a été réalisée par polymérisation radicalaire contrôlée par les nitroxydes (NMRP). Ensuite, ces copolymères ont été auto-assemblés en solution et en masse en des morphologies diverses (micelles, lamelles, cylindres). Enfin, des objets hybrides nanostructurés ont été obtenus par hydrolyse-condensation, en milieu acide, des domaines contenant les groupements trialcoxysilane.This dissertation deals with the preparation of nanostructured organic-inorganic hybrid materials using silica macro-precursors. Our approach was to synthesize block copolymers bearing trialcoxysilane groups able to be hydrolyzed and condensed into a Si-O-Si network.Block copolymers were first synthesized using Nitroxide-Mediated Radical Polymerization (NMRP). They were then self-assembled in solution and bulk into various nanoscale morphologies (micelles, lamellas, cylinders). Finally, nanostructured hybrid objects were obtained by hydrolysis-condensation, in acidic medium, of domains containing gelable groups

Mean square error for the Leland-Lott hedging strategy.

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Mean Square Error for the Leland-Lott Hedging Strategy

The Leland strategy of approximate hedging of the call-option under proportional transaction costs prescribes to use, at equidistant instants of portfolio revisions, the classical Black-Scholes formula but with a suitably enlarged volatility. An appropriate mathematical framework is a scheme of series, i.e. a sequence of models M n with the transaction costs coefficients k n depending on n, the number of the revision intervals. The enlarged volatility σ n , in general, also depends on n. Lott investigated in detail the particular case where the transaction costs coefficients decrease as n −1/2 and where the Leland formula yields σ n not depending on n. He proved that the terminal value of the portfolio converges in probability to the pay-off. In the present note we show that it converges also in L 2 and find the first order term of asymptotics for the mean square error. The considered setting covers the case of non-uniform revision intervals. We establish the asymptotic expansion when the revision dates are t n i = g(i/n) where the strictly increasing scale function g : [0, 1] → [0, 1] and its inverse f are continuous with their first and second derivatives on the whole interval or g(t) = 1 − (1 − t) β , β ≥ 1

In situ synthesis of silica particles from the hdrolysis-condensation of well defined alkoxysilyl-based block copolymers

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In situ synthesis of silica particles from the hdrolysis-condensation of well defined alkoxysilyl-based block copolymers

International audienc