How birds cope physiologically and behaviourally with extreme climatic events

As global climate change progresses, the occurrence of potentially disruptiveclimatic events such as storms are increasing in frequency, duration and inten-sity resulting in higher mortality and reduced reproductive success. Whatconstitutes an extreme climatic event? First we point out that extreme climaticevents in biological contexts can occur in any environment. Focusing on fieldand laboratory data on wild birds we propose a mechanistic approach to defin-ing and investigating what extreme climatic events are and how animals copewith them at physiological and behavioural levels. The life cycle of birds ismade up of life-history stages such as migration, breeding and moult thatevolved to match a range of environmental conditions an individual mightexpect during the year. When environmental conditions deteriorate anddeviate from the expected range then the individual must trigger copingmechanisms (emergency life-history stage) that will disrupt the temporal pro-gression of life-history stages, but enhance survival. Using the framework ofallostasis, we argue that an extreme climatic event in biological contexts canbe defined as when the cumulative resources available to an individual areexceeded by the sum of its energetic costs—a state called allostatic overload.This allostatic overload triggers the emergency life-history stage that tempor-arily allows the individual to cease regular activities in an attempt to surviveextreme conditions. We propose that glucocorticoid hormones play a majorrole in orchestrating coping mechanisms and are critical for enduring extremeclimatic events.This article is part of the themed issue ‘Behavioural, ecological andevolutionary responses to extreme climatic events’

BVRI Light Curves for 29 Type Ia Supernovae

BVRI light curves are presented for 27 Type Ia supernovae discovered during the course of the Calan/Tololo Survey and for two other SNe Ia observed during the same period. Estimates of the maximum light magnitudes in the B, V, and I bands and the initial decline rate parameter m15(B) are also given.Comment: 17 pages, figures and tables are not included (contact first author if needed), to appear in the Astronomical Journa

Diseño estratégico de vanguardia

La integración del diseño con la vanguardia se observa natural, esto es, el diseño es una disciplina abductiva y la vanguardia persigue fines prospectivos, es decir, en ambos casos se trata de objetivos de posibilidad futura. De tal suerte, este libro, emanado de una parte de las ponencias rigurosamente arbitradas del Coloquio Internacional de Diseño 2016, está dividido en tres secciones o capítulos, a saber, el capítulo uno relacionado con la teoría y metodología para proyectos de diseño de vanguardia, el segundo sobre la tecnología, la innovación y la sostenibilidad de vanguardia de dichos proyectos, y finalmente el último capítulo, vinculado con la gestión estratégica de proyectos de vanguardia.La historia se forja de hechos e interpretaciones, de pasados construidos y de presentes en procesos constantes, estudiados en forma estricta por las ciencias. Por su parte, el futuro ostenta la posibilidad de ser indefinidamente planeado con base en las variopintas aproximaciones teóricas y empíricas que dan fundamento a este tipo de ciencia; éstas son denominadas prospectivas y sus bases vanguardias. Resulta importante señalar, que estas posibilidades sólo permiten tener una idea hipotética de lo que será la realidad y el mundo de vida de los seres vivos y su contexto, no obstante, se trata de la única manera racional que tiene el ser humano de prever ese futuro posible. Las distintas ciencias y disciplinas nos permiten construir históricamente estas posibilidades partiendo de datos, hechos, significados y un sinfín de informaciones que le dan cuerpo y sentido a tales posibilidades. En este sentido, la vanguardia, como base del conocimiento prospectivo, observa la necesidad de ser escrita, leída y discutida en los términos más estrictos con el fin de volver las predicciones más precisas. El diseño por su parte, es definido de manera sucinta como la disciplina proyectual estratégica y sistémica de la posibilidad, dirigida a procesos de significación utilitaria y simbólica para la comprensión –o interpretación– y modificación –o proyectación– de niveles de realidad (referentes y sujetos) desde diversos aparatos teóricos y empíricos –perspectivas disciplinarias–

Fifth European Dirofilaria and Angiostrongylus Days (FiEDAD) 2016

Peer reviewe

Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol

High blood cholesterol is typically considered a feature of wealthy western countries(1,2). However, dietary and behavioural determinants of blood cholesterol are changing rapidly throughout the world(3) and countries are using lipid-lowering medications at varying rates. These changes can have distinct effects on the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, which have different effects on human health(4,5). However, the trends of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels over time have not been previously reported in a global analysis. Here we pooled 1,127 population-based studies that measured blood lipids in 102.6 million individuals aged 18 years and older to estimate trends from 1980 to 2018 in mean total, non-HDL and HDL cholesterol levels for 200 countries. Globally, there was little change in total or non-HDL cholesterol from 1980 to 2018. This was a net effect of increases in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreases in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe. As a result, countries with the highest level of non-HDL cholesterol-which is a marker of cardiovascular riskchanged from those in western Europe such as Belgium, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta in 1980 to those in Asia and the Pacific, such as Tokelau, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand. In 2017, high non-HDL cholesterol was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million (95% credible interval 3.7 million-4.2 million) worldwide deaths, half of which occurred in east, southeast and south Asia. The global repositioning of lipid-related risk, with non-optimal cholesterol shifting from a distinct feature of high-income countries in northwestern Europe, north America and Australasia to one that affects countries in east and southeast Asia and Oceania should motivate the use of population-based policies and personal interventions to improve nutrition and enhance access to treatment throughout the world.Peer reviewe

First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope results. II. EHT and multiwavelength observations, data processing, and calibration

We present Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) 1.3 mm measurements of the radio source located at the position of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), collected during the 2017 April 5–11 campaign. The observations were carried out with eight facilities at six locations across the globe. Novel calibration methods are employed to account for Sgr A*'s flux variability. The majority of the 1.3 mm emission arises from horizon scales, where intrinsic structural source variability is detected on timescales of minutes to hours. The effects of interstellar scattering on the image and its variability are found to be subdominant to intrinsic source structure. The calibrated visibility amplitudes, particularly the locations of the visibility minima, are broadly consistent with a blurred ring with a diameter of ∼50 μas, as determined in later works in this series. Contemporaneous multiwavelength monitoring of Sgr A* was performed at 22, 43, and 86 GHz and at near-infrared and X-ray wavelengths. Several X-ray flares from Sgr A* are detected by Chandra, one at low significance jointly with Swift on 2017 April 7 and the other at higher significance jointly with NuSTAR on 2017 April 11. The brighter April 11 flare is not observed simultaneously by the EHT but is followed by a significant increase in millimeter flux variability immediately after the X-ray outburst, indicating a likely connection in the emission physics near the event horizon. We compare Sgr A*'s broadband flux during the EHT campaign to its historical spectral energy distribution and find that both the quiescent emission and flare emission are consistent with its long-term behavior.http://iopscience.iop.org/2041-8205Physic

First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. II. EHT and Multiwavelength Observations, Data Processing, and Calibration

We present Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) 1.3 mm measurements of the radio source located at the position of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), collected during the 2017 April 5–11 campaign. The observations were carried out with eight facilities at six locations across the globe. Novel calibration methods are employed to account for Sgr A*'s flux variability. The majority of the 1.3 mm emission arises from horizon scales, where intrinsic structural source variability is detected on timescales of minutes to hours. The effects of interstellar scattering on the image and its variability are found to be subdominant to intrinsic source structure. The calibrated visibility amplitudes, particularly the locations of the visibility minima, are broadly consistent with a blurred ring with a diameter of ∼50 μas, as determined in later works in this series. Contemporaneous multiwavelength monitoring of Sgr A* was performed at 22, 43, and 86 GHz and at near-infrared and X-ray wavelengths. Several X-ray flares from Sgr A* are detected by Chandra, one at low significance jointly with Swift on 2017 April 7 and the other at higher significance jointly with NuSTAR on 2017 April 11. The brighter April 11 flare is not observed simultaneously by the EHT but is followed by a significant increase in millimeter flux variability immediately after the X-ray outburst, indicating a likely connection in the emission physics near the event horizon. We compare Sgr A*’s broadband flux during the EHT campaign to its historical spectral energy distribution and find that both the quiescent emission and flare emission are consistent with its long-term behavior

Heterogeneous contributions of change in population distribution of body mass index to change in obesity and underweight NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC)

From 1985 to 2016, the prevalence of underweight decreased, and that of obesity and severe obesity increased, in most regions, with significant variation in the magnitude of these changes across regions. We investigated how much change in mean body mass index (BMI) explains changes in the prevalence of underweight, obesity, and severe obesity in different regions using data from 2896 population-based studies with 187 million participants. Changes in the prevalence of underweight and total obesity, and to a lesser extent severe obesity, are largely driven by shifts in the distribution of BMI, with smaller contributions from changes in the shape of the distribution. In East and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the underweight tail of the BMI distribution was left behind as the distribution shifted. There is a need for policies that address all forms of malnutrition by making healthy foods accessible and affordable, while restricting unhealthy foods through fiscal and regulatory restrictions

Centrality evolution of the charged-particle pseudorapidity density over a broad pseudorapidity range in Pb-Pb collisions at root s(NN)=2.76TeV

Peer reviewe

Is natural selection promoting sexual dimorphism in the Green-backed Firecrown Hummingbird (Sephanoides Sephaniodes)?

In many hummingbird species there is an opposite pattern of sexual dimorphism in bill length and other morphometric measures of body size. These differences seem to be closely related with differences in foraging ecology directly associated with a different resource exploitation strategy. The aim of this study was to assess if natural selection is acting on wing length and bill size in hummingbird males and females with different resource exploitation strategies (i.e., territorial males and non-territorial females). If competition for resources promotes sexual dimorphism as a selective pressure, males should be subjected to negative directional selection pressure for wing length and no selection pressure over bill size, while females should undergo positive directional selection pressure for both bill size and wing length. The morphometric data we collected suggests that there is no selection for wing length and bill size in male hummingbirds. In contrast, our females exhibited positi