Balancing conservation and economic gain: a dynamic programming approach

We optimize the trade-off between economic and ecological concerns in conservation biology by using a novel method to link a spatially explicit individual-based model to a dynamic programming model. To date, few optimality models have been presented to optimize this trade-off, especially when the common currency cannot be easily measured in dollars. We use a population simulation model (e.g. spatially explicit individual-based model) to model a hypothetical forest bird population’s response to different cutting and planting regimes. We then link these results to a dynamic programming model to determine the optimal choice a manager should make at each time step to minimize revenue foregone by not harvesting timber while maintaining a given population of birds. Our results show that if optimal management choices are made further back in time, future (terminal) reward may be greater. As the end of the management period approaches, past management practices influence the terminal reward more than future practices can. Thus if past revenue lost is high, the future reward will be low as compared to when past revenue lost is low. The general strategy of setting some minimum viable population size and then using a population simulator linked to a dynamic programming model to ask how to maintain such a population size with minimum economic loss should have nearly universal applicability in conservation biology.This research was supported by the American Ornithologists’ Union, the Maumee Valley Audubon Society, The North American Bluebird Society, The Ohio Chapter of the Nature Conservancy, The Wilson Ornithological Society and NSF grant IBN-9522064 to T.C.G

Ground and excited state communication within a ruthenium containing benzimidazole metallopolymer

Emission spectroscopy and electrochemistry has been used to probe the electronic communication between adjacent metal centres and the conjugated backbone within a family of imidazole based metallopolymer, [Ru(bpy)2(PPyBBIM)n]2+, in the ground and excited states, bpy is 2,2’-bipyridyl, PPyBBIM is poly[2-(2-pyridyl)-bibenzimidazole] and n = 3, 10 or 20. Electronic communication in the excited state is not efficient and upon optical excitation dual emission is observed, i.e., both the polymer backbone and the metal centres emit. Coupling the ruthenium moiety to the imidazole backbone results in a red shift of approximately 50 nm in the emission spectrum. Luminescent lifetimes of up to 120 ns were also recorded. Cyclic voltammetry was also utilized to illustrate the distance dependence of the electron hopping rates between adjacent metal centres with ground state communication reduced by up to an order of magnitude compared to previously reported results when the metal to backbone ratio was not altered. DCT and De values of up to 3.96 x 10-10 and 5.32 x 10-10 cm2S-1 were observed with corresponding conductivity values of up to 2.34 x 10-8 Scm-1

Determinants of vaccination coverage and consequences for rabies control in Bali, Indonesia

Maintaining high vaccination coverage is key to successful rabies control, but mass dog vaccination can be challenging and population turnover erodes coverage. Declines in rabies incidence following successive island-wide vaccination campaigns in Bali suggest that prospects for controlling and ultimately eliminating rabies are good. Rabies, however, has continued to circulate at low levels. In the push to eliminate rabies from Bali, high coverage needs to be maintained across all areas of the island. We carried out door-to-door (DTD) questionnaire surveys (n = 10,352 dog-owning households) and photographic mark–recapture surveys (536 line transects, 2,597 observations of free-roaming dogs) in 2011–2012 to estimate dog population sizes and assess rabies vaccination coverage and dog demographic characteristics in Bali, Indonesia. The median number of dogs per subvillage unit (banjar) was 43 (range 0–307) for owned dogs estimated from the DTD survey and 17 (range 0–83) for unconfined dogs (including both owned and unowned) from transects. Vaccination coverage of owned dogs was significantly higher in adults (91.4%) compared to juveniles (<1 year, 43.9%), likely due to insufficient targeting of pups and from puppies born subsequent to vaccination campaigns. Juveniles had a 10–70 times greater risk of not being vaccinated in urban, suburban, and rural areas [combined odds ratios (ORs): 9.9–71.1, 95% CI: 8.6–96.0]. Free-roaming owned dogs were also 2–3 times more likely to be not vaccinated compared to those confined (combined Ors: 1.9–3.6, 95% CI: 1.4–5.4), with more dogs being confined in urban (71.2%) than in suburban (16.1%) and rural areas (8.0%). Vaccination coverage estimates from transects were also much lower (30.9%) than household surveys (83.6%), possibly due to loss of collars used to identify the vaccination status of free-roaming dogs, but these unconfined dogs may also include dogs that were unowned or more difficult to vaccinate. Overall, coverage levels were high in the owned dog population, but for future campaigns in Bali to have the highest chance of eliminating rabies, concerted effort should be made to vaccinate free-roaming dogs particularly in suburban and rural areas, with advertising to ensure that owners vaccinate pups. Long-lasting, cheap, and quick methods are needed to mark vaccinated animals and reassure communities of the reach of vaccination campaigns

Everyday concept detection in visual lifelogs: validation, relationships and trends

The Microsoft SenseCam is a small lightweight wearable camera used to passively capture photos and other sensor readings from a user's day-to-day activities. It can capture up to 3,000 images per day, equating to almost 1 million images per year. It is used to aid memory by creating a personal multimedia lifelog, or visual recording of the wearer's life. However the sheer volume of image data captured within a visual lifelog creates a number of challenges, particularly for locating relevant content. Within this work, we explore the applicability of semantic concept detection, a method often used within video retrieval, on the novel domain of visual lifelogs. A concept detector models the correspondence between low-level visual features and high-level semantic concepts (such as indoors, outdoors, people, buildings, etc.) using supervised machine learning. By doing so it determines the probability of a concept's presence. We apply detection of 27 everyday semantic concepts on a lifelog collection composed of 257,518 SenseCam images from 5 users. The results were then evaluated on a subset of 95,907 images, to determine the precision for detection of each semantic concept. We conduct further analysis on the temporal consistency, co-occurance and trends within the detected concepts to more extensively investigate the robustness of the detectors within this novel domain. We additionally present future applications of concept detection within the domain of lifelogging

Ante-Bellum Pensacola: 1821-1860

The morning sun over Pensacola on July 17, 1821, shone on a scene of historic pageantry not since repeated in Florida’s history. During the early hours of that day a full company of Spanish troops, dismounted dragoons of the regiment of Tarragona who were elegantly clad and equipped, paraded in the plaza before the Government House. A few miles away, through the flat piney woods, came elements of the Fourth United States Infantry and Fourth United States Artillery regiments with flags flying and band playing. At their heads rode the gaunt gray figure of Andrew Jackson. After almost two months of tedious, irksome, and-so far as Jackson was concerned-unnecessarily time-consuming negotiations, the surrender by Spain of the province of West Florida to the United States was about to be consummated. At half-past six, Jackson and a few of his staff entered the city and took breakfast with Mrs. Jackson who was already established in a house near the plaza. At about eight o’clock a battalion of the Fourth Infantry and a company of the Fourth Artillery were drawn up by Colonel George M. Brooke opposite the Spanish troops on the plaza, which is still the plaza today. After the two bodies of troops had saluted each other, Brooke detached four companies of infantry under Major James E. Dinkins to take possession of Fort Barrancas nine miles away

Florida in 1855

One hundred years ago when the Florida Historical Society was founded at St. Augustine the members of that organization lived in a region and a society which was vastly different from that which is known to millions of twentieth century Americans as “Florida.” In those ancient days tourists were a rarity and resort hotels south of St. Augustine were even rarer. The cities were mere hamlets by present-day standards and almost all of the population was concentrated in the extreme northern part of the state. Industry was virtually non-existent and the mass of men were farmers. Negroes were held in slavery, and the aristocracy of the state was based upon and much of the wealth of the state was represented by this human chattel. The political scene was enlivened by two vociferous political parties but the grim sounds of sectional conflict which would mark the death of the two party system were already being heard. Yet in those early Floridians there was a pride and self confidence familiar to Floridians of the present-day

Florida Books from University Presses

Three universities in the state of Florida now support presses devoted to the publication of scholarly and worthwhile books. The publication of volumes dealing with the history of Florida has been one of their important functions. The oldest of the presses is that founded in 1945 at the University of Florida. Its first publication was a brief history of the state, Rembert W. Patrick’s Florida Under Five Flags. Since its first appearance it has gone through three editions and has been a perennial bestseller. Since 1945, under the direction of Lewis F. Haines, the University of Florida Press has turned out twenty-one titles dealing with Florida history, and maintains a long catalog of books in a variety of other fields. Included in its works on Florida history are five biographies of significant state figures ranging all the way from Menendez to Hamilton Holt. In 1959 the Press started a series of social science monographs, publishing four every year. Three of these titles are in the area of Florida history. In 1962 a significant reprint series of rare old works was begun as the “Floridiana Series of Facsimile and Reprint Editions.” The books in this series are actually photographic reproductions of old classics, attractively bound in simulated leather covers with handsome gold stamping

A Free Negro Purchases his Daughter

Many interesting sidelights to Southern history are to be found in the documents comprising the Richard Keith Call collection in the Florida Historical Society Library. Certain letters addressed to Call give us new and intriguing views of life in the old South. Here are two letters addressed to Call from Canada by a free Negro. We know very little about these letters or the circumstances surrounding them; as Call’s side of the correspondence is not preserved in the collection, nor is there any reference to the matter nor the persons in any other documents of the collection which this writer has examined. Consequently, we can only speculate, in the light of the usual practices of that day, upon what actually took place

Rembert Wallace Patrick

In the Fall of 1940 a young South Carolinian with a brandnew doctor’s degree in history from the University of North Carolina appeared among the new faculty members at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Rembert Wallace Patrick had begun his long and warm association with Florida, its people, and its history. In the small, north Florida college town the youthful historian energetically devoted himself to his work and soon won the devoted following of students and the affection and respect of his colleagues. Though he was a practical, down-to-earth man, he quickly revealed a dry, often irreverent sense of humor. Despite his newness to the University of Florida, young Professor Patrick was not an inexperienced teacher. He came to Gainesville from Meredith College in North Carolina where he had taught history while completing his Ph.D. degree. Earlier he had been employed for several years in the public schools of South Carolina

Richard K. Call vs. the Federal Government on the Seminole War

In the city of Washington in the autumn of 1836, the United States War Department was in a state of high confusion. On the sixth of October Lewis Cass had resigned as Secretary of War and the vacancy was temporarily filled by an under secretary, C. A. Harris. Within a few days the office was bestowed upon Benjamin F. ButIer, an interim appointee. These changes came during one of the crises of the Seminole War in Florida, which added to the confusion in Washington, In midsummer the command of that war had been vested in Governor Richard K. Call who launched an end-the-war campaign in early October. This initial move was not successful and rumors of its failure kept official circles in Washington in a state of nervous tension