The Wild Turkey in South Dakota

This bulletin provides an extensive look at the wild turkey in South Dakota

On Hilberg's Law and Its Links with Guiraud's Law

Hilberg (1990) supposed that finite-order excess entropy of a random human text is proportional to the square root of the text length. Assuming that Hilberg's hypothesis is true, we derive Guiraud's law, which states that the number of word types in a text is greater than proportional to the square root of the text length. Our derivation is based on some mathematical conjecture in coding theory and on several experiments suggesting that words can be defined approximately as the nonterminals of the shortest context-free grammar for the text. Such operational definition of words can be applied even to texts deprived of spaces, which do not allow for Mandelbrot's ``intermittent silence'' explanation of Zipf's and Guiraud's laws. In contrast to Mandelbrot's, our model assumes some probabilistic long-memory effects in human narration and might be capable of explaining Menzerath's law.Comment: To appear in Journal of Quantitative Linguistic

Bed Site Selection of Fawn Pronghorn in Custer State Park, South Dakota

We evaluated pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) fawn bedding site characteristics on a prairie and ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) landscape interface in Custer State Park, South Dakota. We radio-marked 16 adult female pronghorn and collected bed site information from their fawns during 2007~2008. We compared bed site selection with random sites (n = 74) during 2 periods; the early hiding phase when fawns were 1 ~28 days of age (n = 23 bed sites) and the later group phase when fawns were 29~60 days of age (n = 52 bed sites). During the hiding phase fawns selected dry prairie-seminatural mixed grassland at the course-scale level; group phase fawns selected prairie dog (Cynomys ludoviciana) dominated grasslands and dry prairie-seminatural mixed grassland at the course-scale. Evaluation at the fine-scale indicated fawns during the group phase period selected bed sites that had greater forb cover and overs tory canopy cover of ponderosa pine trees compared to random sites. Management activities that promote a dynamic grassland ecosystem with patches of forb cover may enhance resources selected as bedding habitat by pronghorn fawns during the group phase period

Données préliminaires sur le paludisme humain en zones rurale et sémi-urbaine du département du Nkam (Littoral-Cameroun)

Objectif : Cette étude évalue les connaissances et les pratiques des populations sur le traitement et la prévention du paludisme et détermine la transmission du paludisme en zones rurale et sémi-urbaine du département du Nkam.Méthodologie et résultats : Un questionnaire a été administré aux populations de Bodiman et Yabassi, localités rurale et semi-urbaine, en mai 2015. Les captures de moustiques sur volontaires ont été effectuées à l’intérieur de 7 habitations par site, de juillet à septembre 2015, au rythme de 2 nuits consécutives par mois. L’infectivité des vecteurs a été déterminée par le test ELISA-CSP. 73,17% (n= 513) d’interviewés connaissaient les vecteurs du paludisme alors que seulement 9,46% (n= 63) connaissaient le germe. La moustiquaire était l’outil de prévention le plus utilisé à Bodiman (100%) et Yabassi (38,46%). Le montant mensuellement dépensé par les ménages contre le paludisme s’élevait à 2,31€ et 16,01€ en moyenne, respectivement à Bodiman et Yabassi. La majorité d’interviewés à Bodiman (n= 98 ; %=49,49) et Yabassi (n=198 ; %= 42,31) se rendaient à l’hôpital en cas de paludisme. En outre, 37 833 moustiques dont 35 961 à Bodiman et 1 872 à Yabassi ont été capturés. An. gambiae (81,82%) et An. coluzzii (18,18%) étaient les membres du complexe Gambiae identifiés ; An. coluzzii (59,26%) étant le plus représenté à Yabassi, et An. gambiae (81,82%) à Bodiman. Les indices sporozoïtiques d’An. gambiae s.l. étaient de 0% à Bodiman et de 2,15% à Yabassi.Conclusion et application : L’association de la lutte antilarvaire aux méthodes existantes de lutte antivectorielle par les pouvoirs publics contribuerait à baisser les fortes densités agressives observées à Bodiman de manière à réduire le budget alloué au paludisme par les ménages.Mots-clés : Connaissances, pratiques, transmission, paludisme, Bodiman, Yabassi

PEN: a low energy test of lepton universality

Allowed charged $\pi$ meson decays are characterized by simple dynamics, few available decay channels, mainly into leptons, and extremely well controlled radiative and loop corrections. In that sense, pion decays represent a veritable triumph of the standard model (SM) of elementary particles and interactions. This relative theoretical simplicity makes charged pion decays a sensitive means for testing the underlying symmetries and the universality of weak fermion couplings, as well as for studying pion structure and chiral dynamics. Even after considerable recent improvements, experimental precision is lagging far behind that of the theoretical description for pion decays. We review the current state of experimental study of the pion electronic decay $\pi^+ \to e^+\nu_e(\gamma)$, or $\pi_{e2(\gamma)}$, where the $(\gamma)$ indicates inclusion and explicit treatment of radiative decay events. We briefly review the limits on non-SM processes arising from the present level of experimental precision in $\pi_{e2(\gamma)}$ decays. Focusing on the PEN experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland, we examine the prospects for further improvement in the near term.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures; paper presented at the XIII International Conference on Heavy Quarks and Leptons, 22-27 May 2016, Blacksburg, Virginia, US

NuGO contributions to GenePattern

NuGO, the European Nutrigenomics Organization, utilizes 31 powerful computers for, e.g., data storage and analysis. These so-called black boxes (NBXses) are located at the sites of different partners. NuGO decided to use GenePattern as the preferred genomic analysis tool on each NBX. To handle the custom made Affymetrix NuGO arrays, new NuGO modules are added to GenePattern. These NuGO modules execute the latest Bioconductor version ensuring up-to-date annotations and access to the latest scientific developments. The following GenePattern modules are provided by NuGO: NuGOArrayQualityAnalysis for comprehensive quality control, NuGOExpressionFileCreator for import and normalization of data, LimmaAnalysis for identification of differentially expressed genes, TopGoAnalysis for calculation of GO enrichment, and GetResultForGo for retrieval of information on genes associated with specific GO terms. All together, these NuGO modules allow comprehensive, up-to-date, and user friendly analysis of Affymetrix data. A special feature of the NuGO modules is that for analysis they allow the use of either the standard Affymetrix or the MBNI custom CDF-files, which remap probes based on current knowledge. In both cases a .chip-file is created to enable GSEA analysis. The NuGO GenePattern installations are distributed as binary Ubuntu (.deb) packages via the NuGO repository

Microscopic description of the beta delayed deuteron emission from \bbox{^6}He

The beta delayed deuteron emission from $^6$He is studied in a dynamical microscopic cluster model. This model gives a reasonably good description for all the subsystems of $^6$He and $^6$Li in a coherent way, without any free parameter. The beta decay transition probability to the $^6$Li ground state is underestimated by a few percents. The theoretical beta delayed deuteron spectrum is close to experiment but it is also underestimated by about a factor 1.7. We argue that, in spite of their different magnitudes, both underestimations might have a common origin. The model confirms that the neutron halo part of the $^6$He wave function plays a crucial role in quenching the beta decay toward the $\alpha$ + d channel.Comment: LATEX with REVTEX, Submitted to Phys. Rev. C, 11 pages, 3 figures (not included) are available upon request. ATOMKI-93/