La etología y lo innato

Texto sobre el libro “Evolución y modificación de la conducta” de Konrad Lorenz.ITESO, A.C

Learning data structure from classes: A case study applied to population genetics

In most cases, the main goal of machine learning and data mining applications is to obtain good classifiers. However, final users, for instance researchers in other fields, sometimes prefer to infer new knowledge about their domain that may be useful to confirm or reject their hypotheses. This paper presents a learning method that works along these lines, in addition to reporting three interesting applications in the field of population genetics in which the aim is to discover relationships between species or breeds according to their genotypes. The proposed method has two steps: first it builds a hierarchical clustering of the set of classes and then a hierarchical classifier is learned. Both models can be analyzed by experts to extract useful information about their domain. In addition, we propose a new method for learning the hierarchical classifier. By means of a voting scheme employing pairwise binary models constrained by the hierarchical structure, the proposed classifier is computationally more efficient than previous approaches while improving on their performance

Backscattered intensity profiles from horizontal Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers

River engineeringInnovative field and laboratory instrumentatio

An estimation of gravel mobility over an alpine river gravel bar (Arc en Maurienne, France) using PIT-tag tracers

River morphodynamics and sediment transportRiver morphology and morphodynamic

Contrasted sediment processes and morphological adjustments in three successive cutoff meanders of the Danube Delta

Since the 1980s intensive anthropogenic disturbances have affected the channel of the St. George branch, the southern distributary of the Danube River. The meander cutoff programme since 1984–1988 induced different hydrosedimentary impacts on the local distribution of river flow velocities, discharge, and sediment fluxes between the former meanders and the man-made canals (Ichim and Radoane, 1986; Popa, 1997; Panin, 2003). This paper selects three large cutoff meander reaches of the St. George branch (the Mahmudia, Dunavăţ de Sus, and Dunavăţ de Josmeanders noted here asM1,M2, andM3, respectively) as an example to analyse the human impact in the Danube River delta. The diversion of the flow induces strong modifications by acceleration of the fluxes through the artificial canals combined with dramatically enhanced deposition in the former meander where it was observed in two cases (M1 and M3) with slight modifications in M2. An exceptional flood that occurred in April 2006 offered a good opportunity for scanning different cross sections of the meander systems. Bathymetry, flow velocity, suspended-load concentration, and liquid and solid discharge data were acquired throughout several cross sections of both natural channels and artificial canals of the three cutoffs, using acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) technology, in order to investigate the distribution of the flowand sediment and its impact on the hydrosedimentary processes in each channelized reach and adjacent former meander. Therefore, the results obtained during the 2006 flood were referred to a long-term evolution (1970–2006), analysed by GIS techniques

Multi-solitary waves for the nonlinear Klein-Gordon equation

International audienceWe consider the nonlinear Klein-Gordon equation in $\R^d$. We call multi-solitary waves a solution behaving at large time as a sum of boosted standing waves. Our main result is the existence of such multi-solitary waves, provided the composing boosted standing waves are stable. It is obtained by solving the equation backward in time around a sequence of approximate multi-solitary waves and showing convergence to a solution with the desired property. The main ingredients of the proof are finite speed of propagation, variational characterizations of the profiles, modulation theory and energy estimates