Uridine Diphosphogalactose 4-Epimerase from Bovine Mammary Tissue

Chemistry (Biochemistry

Meddelelser

Intet resum

Meddelelser

Intet resum

Wildbook: Crowdsourcing, computer vision, and data science for conservation

Photographs, taken by field scientists, tourists, automated cameras, and incidental photographers, are the most abundant source of data on wildlife today. Wildbook is an autonomous computational system that starts from massive collections of images and, by detecting various species of animals and identifying individuals, combined with sophisticated data management, turns them into high resolution information database, enabling scientific inquiry, conservation, and citizen science. We have built Wildbooks for whales (flukebook.org), sharks (whaleshark.org), two species of zebras (Grevy's and plains), and several others. In January 2016, Wildbook enabled the first ever full species (the endangered Grevy's zebra) census using photographs taken by ordinary citizens in Kenya. The resulting numbers are now the official species census used by IUCN Red List: http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/7950/0. In 2016, Wildbook partnered up with WWF to build Wildbook for Sea Turtles, Internet of Turtles (IoT), as well as systems for seals and lynx. Most recently, we have demonstrated that we can now use publicly available social media images to count and track wild animals. In this paper we present and discuss both the impact and challenges that the use of crowdsourced images can have on wildlife conservation.Comment: Presented at the Data For Good Exchange 201

Nitrification represents the bottle-neck of sheep urine patch N2O emissions from extensively grazed organic soils

Extensively grazed grasslands are understudied in terms of their contribution to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from livestock production. Mountains, moorlands and heath occupy 18% of the UK land area, however, in situ studies providing high frequency N2O emissions from sheep urine deposited to such areas are lacking. Organic soils typical of these regions may provide substrates for denitrification-related N2O emissions, however, acidic and anoxic conditions may inhibit nitrification (and associated emissions from nitrification and denitrification). We hypothesised urine N2O-N emission factors (EFs) would be lower than the UK country-specific and IPCC default value for urine, which is based on lowland measurements. Using automated GHG sampling chambers, N2O emissions were determined from real sheep urine (930 kg N ha−1) and artificial urine (920 kg N ha−1) applied in summer, and from an artificial urine treatment (1120 kg N ha−1) and a combined NO3− and glucose treatment (106 kg N ha−1; 213 kg C ha−1) in autumn. The latter treatment provided an assessment of the soils capacity for denitrification under non-substrate limiting conditions. The artificial urine-N2O EF was 0.01 ± 0.00% of the N applied in summer and 0.00 ± 0.00% of the N applied in autumn. The N2O EF for real sheep urine applied in summer was 0.01 ± 0.02%. A higher flux was observed in only one replicate of the real urine treatment, relating to one chamber where an increase in soil solution NO3− was observed. No lag phase in N2O emission was evident following application of the NO3− and glucose treatment, which emitted0.69 ± 0.15% of the N applied. This indicates nitrification rates are the bottle-neck for N2O emissions in upland organic soils.We calculated the potential impact of using hill-grazing specific urine N2O EFs on the UK inventory of N2O emissions from sheep excreta, and found a reduction of ca. 43% in comparison to the use of a country-specific excretal EF

Tegnøkonomi som klasseintervensjon for å korte ned latenstiden etter friminutt

Lærings-og undervisningshemmende atferd er de vanligste formene for problematferd i skolen, og inkluderer at elevene kommer for sent til timene. Tegnøkonomi er en intervensjon som har vist gode resultater på flere arenaer. Tegnøkonomi er tidligere benyttet for å påvirke elever til å komme raskere inn i klasserommet etter friminutt. Intervensjonene i denne studien ble gjennomført i to skoleklasser. Elevene brukte unødvendig lang tid på å komme til ro på plassene etter friminuttene. Data er samlet inn etter en plan i tråd med en ABAB-design. Intervensjonen innebar å levere tokens hver gang minst 80 % av deltakerne nådde kriteriet for forsterkning. Tokens ble vekslet inn i foretrukne aktiviteter og materielle stimuli etter et VR8 skjema. Data viser at tiltaket hadde god effekt. I både eksperiment A og eksperiment B vises en rask endring fra basislinjebetingelsen til intervensjonsbetingelsen; gjennomsnittlig antall minutter fra det ringer inn til deltakerne sitter rolig på stolene sine går ned

Genetic assimilation of ancestral plasticity during parallel adaptation to Zinc contamination in Silene uniflora

Phenotypic plasticity in ancestral populations is hypothesized to facilitate adaptation, but evidence is piecemeal and often contradictory. Further, whether ancestral plasticity increases the probability of parallel adaptive changes has not been explored. The most general finding is that ancestral responses to a new environment are reversed following adaptation (known as reversion). We investigated the contribution of ancestral plasticity to adaptive evolution of gene expression in two independently evolved lineages of zinc-tolerant Silene uniflora. We found that the general pattern of reversion is driven by the absence of a widespread stress response in zinc-adapted plants compared with zinc-sensitive plants. We show that ancestral plasticity that moves expression closer to the optimum value in the new environment influences the evolution of gene expression among genes that are likely to be involved in adaptation and increases the chance that genes are recruited repeatedly during adaptation. However, despite convergence in gene expression levels between independently adapted lineages, ancestral plasticity does not influence how similar expression values of adaptive genes become. Surprisingly, we also observed that ancestral plasticity that increases fitness often becomes genetically determined and fixed, that is, genetically assimilated. These results emphasize the important role of ancestral plasticity in parallel adaptation

Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): merging galaxies and their properties

We derive the close pair fractions and volume merger rates for galaxies in the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey with −23 < Mr < −17 (ΩM = 0.27, ΩΛ = 0.73, H0 = 100 km s−1 Mpc−1) at 0.01 < z < 0.22 (look-back time of <2 Gyr). The merger fraction is approximately 1.5 per cent Gyr−1 at all luminosities (assuming 50 per cent of pairs merge) and the volume merger rate is ≈3.5 × 10−4 Mpc−3 Gyr−1. We examine how the merger rate varies by luminosity and morphology. Dry mergers (between red/spheroidal galaxies) are found to be uncommon and to decrease with decreasing luminosity. Fainter mergers are wet, between blue/discy galaxies. Damp mergers (one of each type) follow the average of dry and wet mergers. In the brighter luminosity bin (−23 < Mr < −20), the merger rate evolution is flat, irrespective of colour or morphology, out to z ∼ 0.2. The makeup of the merging population does not appear to change over this redshift range. Galaxy growth by major mergers appears comparatively unimportant and dry mergers are unlikely to be significant in the buildup of the red sequence over the past 2 Gyr. We compare the colour, morphology, environmental density and degree of activity (BPT class, Baldwin, Phillips & Terlevich) of galaxies in pairs to those of more isolated objects in the same volume. Galaxies in close pairs tend to be both redder and slightly more spheroid dominated than the comparison sample. We suggest that this may be due to ‘harassment’ in multiple previous passes prior to the current close interaction. Galaxy pairs do not appear to prefer significantly denser environments. There is no evidence of an enhancement in the AGN fraction in pairs, compared to other galaxies in the same volume