Forest Fire Susceptibility and Risk Mapping Using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) for Protected Areas Case of Horton Plains National Park, Sri Lanka

Horton Plains National Park is a protected Area in the central highlands of SriLanka and is covered by montane grassland and cloud forest. This plateau is rich inbiodiversity and many species found here are endemic to the region. Horton PlainsNational Park is the headwater of the three major rivers in Sri Lanka, Mahaweli, Kelaniand Walawe. It is one of the main tourist attraction areas of the country. Hence it isutmost important to protect this National Park, considering it‟s ecological, hydrological,and economic significance to the country.It has been experiencing number of conservation issues including man-madeforest fires from the past to the present. Though the occurrence of forest fires fairly lowthey lead to considerable damages to ecosystem along with number of other negativeconsequences. In the event of a prolonged spell without rain, and a lowering of thewater table in the peat swamp forest, the National Park is very prone to fire. Therefore aprecise evaluation of forest fire problems and the understanding of the areas at fire risksneed to be closer concentration. Decisions on forest fire management can only besatisfactory when a fire hazard zone mapping is available. Geospatial technology,including Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS), providesthe information and the tools necessary to develop a forest fire susceptibility map inorder to indentify, classify and map fire hazard area.The objectives of this research study were to identify environmental and humaninduced factors for forest fire hazards in Horton Plains National Park and to identifysusceptible areas for fire hazard and finally to prepare susceptibility and risk map inorder to facilitate decision making for fire hazard control. Data, such as soil type,topography, and other environmental factors were collected and were converted into aspatial database using GIS. Parameters to reflect the factors that influence fireoccurrence, such as fuel type, vegetation cover, temperature, wetness, etc were extracted from Landsat-7 ETM and IRS imagery. Slope and aspect of topography were generatedfrom the digital terrain data of Survey Department. Soil type data was digitized from thesoil map of the Irrigation Department. Forest fire susceptibility was analyzed using thefactors causing forest fires by likelihood ratio method and the spatial relationshipsbetween hotspot-occurrence location and each factors contribution in hotspotoccurrence were derived using the frequency ratio model.The results derived in this study can help the concerned authorities for forest firemanagement and mitigation in protected areas in Sri Lanka. The models used in thestudy are valid for awareness so that necessary prevention measures can be taken duringthe time of forest fire. In this paper, forest fire susceptibility map was developed inorder to determine the level of severity of forest fire hazards in terms of susceptibility tofire by assessing the relative importance of fire factors and location of fire ignitionKey words: GIS modeling of fire, Protected area management, Fire ecology

Older People’s Needs and Opportunities for Assistive Technologies

Older adults experience a disconnect between their needs and adoption of technologies that have potential to assist and to support more independent living. This paper reviewed research that links people’s needs with opportunities for assistive technologies. It searched 13 databases identifying 923 papers with 34 papers finally included for detailed analysis. The research papers identified needs in the fields of health, leisure, living, safety, communication, family relationship and social involvement. Amongst these, support for activities of daily living category was of most interest. In specific sub-categories, the next most reported need was assistive technology to support walking and mobility followed by smart cooking/kitchen technology and assistive technology for social contacts with family member/other people. The research aimed to inform a program of research into improving the adoption of technologies where they can ameliorate identified needs of older people

Implementation and use of computerised clinical decision support (CCDS) in emergency pre-hospital care: a qualitative study of paramedic views and experience using Strong Structuration Theory

Computerised clinical decision support (CCDS) has been shown to improve processes of care in some healthcare settings, but there is little evidence related to its use or effects in pre-hospital emergency care. CCDS in this setting aligns with policies to increase IT use in ambulance care, enhance paramedic decision-making skills, reduce avoidable emergency department attendances and improve quality of care and patient experience. This qualitative study was conducted alongside a cluster randomised trial in two ambulance services of the costs and effects of web-based CCDS system designed to support paramedic decision-making in the care of older people following a fall. Paramedics were trained to enter observations and history for relevant patients on a tablet, and the CCDS then generated a recommended course of action which could be logged. Our aim was to describe paramedics' experience of the CCDS intervention and to identify factors affecting its implementation and use. We invited all paramedics who had been randomly allocated to the intervention arm of the trial to participate in interviews or focus groups. The study was underpinned by Strong Structuration Theory, a theoretical model for studying innovation based on the relationship between what people do and their context. We used the Framework approach to data analysis. Twenty out of 22 paramedics agreed to participate. We developed a model of paramedic experience of CCDS with three domains: context, adoption and use, and outcomes. Aspects of context which had an impact included organisational culture and perceived support for non-conveyance decisions. Experience of adoption and use of the CCDS varied between individual paramedics, with some using it with all eligible patients, some only with patients they thought were 'suitable' and some never using it. A range of outcomes were reported, some of which were different from the intended role of the technology in decision support. Implementation of new technology such as CCDS is not a one-off event, but an ongoing process, which requires support at the organisational level to be effective. ISRCTN Registry 10538608 . Registered 1 May 2007. Retrospectively registered

The Usability of E-learning Platforms in Higher Education: A Systematic Mapping Study

The use of e-learning in higher education has increased significantly in recent years, which has led to several studies being conducted to investigate the usability of the platforms that support it. A variety of different usability evaluation methods and attributes have been used, and it has therefore become important to start reviewing this work in a systematic way to determine how the field has developed in the last 15 years. This paper describes a systematic mapping study that performed searches on five electronic libraries to identify usability issues and methods that have been used to evaluate e-learning platforms. Sixty-one papers were selected and analysed, with the majority of studies using a simple research design reliant on questionnaires. The usability attributes measured were mostly related to effectiveness, satisfaction, efficiency, and perceived ease of use. Furthermore, several research gaps have been identified and recommendations have been made for further work in the area of the usability of online learning

Genetic features of Sri Lankan elephant, Elephas maximus maximus Linnaeus revealed by high throughput sequencing of mitogenome and ddRAD-seq.

Elephas maximus maximus Linnaeus, the Sri Lankan subspecies is the largest and the darkest among Asian elephants. Patches of depigmented areas with no skin color on the ears, face, trunk, and belly morphologically differentiate it from the others. The elephant population in Sri Lanka is now limited to smaller areas and protected under Sri Lankan law. Despite its ecological and evolutionary importance, the relationship between Sri Lankan elephants and their phylogenetic position among Asian elephants remains controversial. While identifying genetic diversity is the key to any conservation and management strategies, limited data is currently available. To address such issues, we analyzed 24 elephants with known parental lineages with high throughput ddRAD-seq. The mitogenome suggested the coalescence time of the Sri Lankan elephant at ~0.2 million years, and sister to Myanmar elephants supporting the hypothesis of the movement of elephants in Eurasia. The ddRAD-seq approach identified 50,490 genome-wide SNPs among Sri Lankan elephants. The genetic diversity within Sri Lankan elephants assessed with identified SNPs suggests a geographical differentiation resulting in three main clusters; north-eastern, mid-latitude, and southern regions. Interestingly, though it was believed that elephants from the Sinharaja rainforest are of an isolated population, the ddRAD-based genetic analysis clustered it with the north-eastern elephants. The effect of habitat fragmentation on genetic diversity could be further assessed with more samples with specific SNPs identified in the current study

A Multi-Point Identification Approach for the Recognition of Individual Leopards (Panthera pardus kotiya)

Visual leopard identifications performed with camera traps using the capture–recapture method only consider areas of the skin that are visible to the equipment. The method presented here considered the spot or rosette formations of either the two flanks or the face, and the captured images were then compared and matched with available photographs. Leopards were classified as new individuals if no matches were found in the existing set of photos. It was previously assumed that an individual leopard’s spot or rosette pattern would not change. We established that the spot and rosette patterns change over time and that these changes are the result of injuries in certain cases. When compared to the original patterns, the number of spots may be lost or reduced, and some spots or patterns may change in terms of their prominence, shape, and size. We called these changes “obliterate changes” and “rejig changes”, respectively. The implementation of an earlier method resulted in a duplication of leopard counts, achieving an error rate of more than 15% in the population at Yala National Park. The same leopard could be misidentified and counted multiple times, causing overestimated populations. To address this issue, we created a new two-step methodology for identifying Sri Lankan leopards. The multi-point identification method requires the evaluation of at least 9–10 spot areas before a leopard can be identified. Moreover, the minimum leopard population at the YNP 1 comprises at least 77 leopards and has a density of 0.5461 leopards per km2

Investigation of the Curvature Induction and Membrane Localization of the Influenza Virus M2 Protein Using Static and Off-Magic-Angle Spinning Solid-State Nuclear Magnetic Resonance of Oriented Bicelles

A wide variety of membrane proteins induce membrane curvature for function; thus, it is important to develop new methods to simultaneously determine membrane curvature and protein binding sites in membranes with multiple curvatures. We introduce solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methods based on magnetically oriented bicelles and off-magic-angle spinning (OMAS) to measure membrane curvature and the binding site of proteins in mixed-curvature membranes. We demonstrate these methods on the influenza virus M2 protein, which not only acts as a proton channel but also mediates virus assembly and membrane scission. An M2 peptide encompassing the transmembrane (TM) domain and an amphipathic helix, M2(21–61), was studied and compared with the TM peptide (M2TM). Static [superscript 31]P NMR spectra of magnetically oriented 1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DMPC)/1,2-dihexanoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DHPC) bicelles exhibit a temperature-independent isotropic chemical shift in the presence of M2(21–61) but not M2TM, indicating that the amphipathic helix confers the ability to generate a high-curvature phase. Two-dimensional (2D) [superscript 31]P spectra indicate that this high-curvature phase is associated with the DHPC bicelle edges, suggestive of the structure of budding viruses from the host cell. [superscript 31]P- and [superscript 13]C-detected [superscript 1]H relaxation times of the lipids indicate that the majority of M2(21–61) is bound to the high-curvature phase. Using OMAS experiments, we resolved the [superscript 31]P signals of lipids with identical headgroups based on their distinct chemical shift anisotropies. On the basis of this resolution, 2D [superscript 1]H–[superscript 31]P correlation spectra show that the amide protons in M2(21–61) correlate with the DMPC but not DHPC [superscript 31]P signal of the bicelle, indicating that a small percentage of M2(21–61) partitions into the planar region of the bicelles. These results show that the amphipathic helix induces high membrane curvature and localizes the protein to this phase, in good agreement with the membrane scission function of the protein. These bicelle-based relaxation and OMAS solid-state NMR techniques are generally applicable to curvature-inducing membrane proteins such as those involved in membrane trafficking, membrane fusion, and cell division.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NIH Grant GM088204