Habitat Selection of Female Desert Bighorn Sheep: Tradeoffs Associated with Reproduction

Animals select habitat types that enhance their ability to survive, reproduce, and therefore enhance reproductive fitness. Selection for specific habitat types often varies within populations based on season, habitat availability, sex, age, reproductive status, and other characteristics. Therefore, we expect habitat selection to be changing throughout the lifetime of an individual to meet the metabolic and nutritional constraints of specific periods. For instance, reproductive status, especially provisioning dependent young, is commonly linked to changes in behavior of female ungulates that results in variation in resource selection around parturition. Around parturition, female ungulates are commonly linked to tradeoffs between maternal nutritional condition and survival of offspring. These tradeoffs are hypothesized to take place because they allow females to increase their reproductive fitness by enhancing the likelihood that their offspring survives to recruitment. Understanding these shifts in habitat selection are essential to proper management and the conservation of ungulates.I was interested in documenting the variation in habitat selection of female bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni) around parturition, in addition to characterizing composition and quality of diets of females based on time of year and the provisioning status of individuals. This period is critical to female ungulates because their choice of habitat components also influences survival of their offspring and ultimately, the female’s reproductive fitness. I used 2 populations of desert bighorn sheep in west-central Nevada, to study how ungulates adjust habitat selection around parturition. I investigated habitat selection of female desert bighorn sheep from the beginning of their third trimester until weaning of offspring. Furthermore, I investigated how females selected parturition sites and neonates selected bed sites immediately following birth. To accomplish this goal, I captured adult and neonatal bighorn sheep and equipped individuals with very high frequency (VHF) and global positioning system (GPS) radio-collars from 2016 to 2018. Additionally, I collected fecal samples from female bighorn sheep throughout the year and within the parturition season, based on pregnancy and provisioning status of individuals. I also used unmanned aerial vehicles and publicly available remote sensing data to characterize birth sites of parturient females and bed sites of female-offspring pairs. I found that females adjusted habitat selection, based on provisioning status, by trading off maternal nutritional condition for survival of offspring. Prior to parturition, females selected areas with higher forage availability, however, following parturition, females adjusted selection to areas with habitat features that are commonly associated with increased survival of young (i.e., steep slopes, rugged terrain, and more open habitats). Furthermore, as neonates aged, females adjusted habitat selection back to pre-parturition selection levels, where females would be able to fulfill nutritional needs and offspring were less vulnerable to predation. These apparent tradeoffs were also supported by my analyses of diet composition and quality. Females that were not provisioning offspring tended to have higher percentages of nitrogen in fecal pellets indicating that they were consuming higher quality diets than those females that were provisioning offspring. Diet quality of females also varied throughout the year, where spring and summer months had higher fecal nitrogen content than winter months. Additionally, females adjusted diet composition based on provisioning status and season. I found that female bighorn sheep differed in selection strategies for birth and bed sites at each study area. Overall, females tended to select parturition sites at broad scales with steep slopes, high visibility, and close to ridgelines. Microhabitat selection for birth sites was similar to broad scale selection, other than females selected for low downslope visibility and for less steep slopes. Finally, parent-offspring pairs selected bed sites with higher amounts of concealment cover than birth sites

Hybrid Rounding Techniques for Knapsack Problems

We address the classical knapsack problem and a variant in which an upper bound is imposed on the number of items that can be selected. We show that appropriate combinations of rounding techniques yield novel and powerful ways of rounding. As an application of these techniques, we present a linear-storage Polynomial Time Approximation Scheme (PTAS) and a Fully Polynomial Time Approximation Scheme (FPTAS) that compute an approximate solution, of any fixed accuracy, in linear time. This linear complexity bound gives a substantial improvement of the best previously known polynomial bounds.Comment: 19 LaTeX page

Comparison of two models for bridge-assisted charge transfer

Based on the reduced density matrix method, we compare two different approaches to calculate the dynamics of the electron transfer in systems with donor, bridge, and acceptor. In the first approach a vibrational substructure is taken into account for each electronic state and the corresponding states are displaced along a common reaction coordinate. In the second approach it is assumed that vibrational relaxation is much faster than the electron transfer and therefore the states are modeled by electronic levels only. In both approaches the system is coupled to a bath of harmonic oscillators but the way of relaxation is quite different. The theory is applied to the electron transfer in ${\rm H_2P}-{\rm ZnP}-{\rm Q}$ with free-base porphyrin (${\rm H_2P}$) being the donor, zinc porphyrin (${\rm ZnP}$) being the bridge and quinone (${\rm Q}$) the acceptor. The parameters are chosen as similar as possible for both approaches and the quality of the agreement is discussed.Comment: 12 pages including 4 figures, 1 table, 26 references. For more info see http://eee.tu-chemnitz.de/~kili

SCIM: Simultaneous Clustering, Inference, and Mapping for Open-World Semantic Scene Understanding

In order to operate in human environments, a robot's semantic perception has to overcome open-world challenges such as novel objects and domain gaps. Autonomous deployment to such environments therefore requires robots to update their knowledge and learn without supervision. We investigate how a robot can autonomously discover novel semantic classes and improve accuracy on known classes when exploring an unknown environment. To this end, we develop a general framework for mapping and clustering that we then use to generate a self-supervised learning signal to update a semantic segmentation model. In particular, we show how clustering parameters can be optimized during deployment and that fusion of multiple observation modalities improves novel object discovery compared to prior work. Models, data, and implementations can be found at https://github.com/hermannsblum/scimComment: accepted at ISRR 202

Surface Quality of Porcine Corneal Lenticules after Femtosecond Lenticule Extraction

Purpose: To determine the surface characteristics of porcine corneal lenticules after Femtosecond Lenticule Extraction. Methods: The Carl Zeiss Meditec AG VisuMax® femtosecond laser system was used to create refractive corneal lenticules on 10 freshly isolated porcine eyes. The surface regularity on the corneal lenticules recovered was evaluated by assessing scanning electron microscopy images using an established scoring system. Results: All specimens yielded comparable score results of 5–7 points (SD = 0.59) per lenticule (score range minimum 4 to maximum 11 points). Surface irregularities were caused by tissue bridges, cavitation bubbles or scratches. Conclusion: The Femtosecond Lenticule Extraction procedure is capable of creating corneal lenticules of predictable surface quality. However, future studies should focus on the optimization of laser parameters as well as surgical technique to improve the regularity of the corneal stromal bed

Mercury abundance and isotopic composition indicate subaerial volcanism prior to the end-Archean “whiff” of oxygen

Funding: This study was supported by National Aeronautics and Space Administration Exobiology Grant NNX16AI37G (R.B.) and by the MacArthur Professorship (J.D.B.) at the University of Michigan. M.A.K. acknowledges support from an Agouron Institute postdoctoral fellowship.Earth’s early atmosphere witnessed multiple transient episodes of oxygenation before the Great Oxidation Event 2.4 billion years ago (Ga) [e.g., A. D. Anbar et al., Science 317, 1903–1906 (2007); M. C. Koehler, R. Buick, M. E. Barley, Precambrian Res. 320, 281–290 (2019)], but the triggers for these short-lived events are so far unknown. Here, we use mercury (Hg) abundance and stable isotope composition to investigate atmospheric evolution and its driving mechanisms across the well-studied “whiff” of O2 recorded in the ∼2.5-Ga Mt. McRae Shale from the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia [A. D. Anbar et al., Science 317, 1903–1906 (2007)]. Our data from the oxygenated interval show strong Hg enrichment paired with slightly negative Δ199Hg and near-zero Δ200Hg, suggestive of increased oxidative weathering. In contrast, slightly older beds, which were evidently deposited under an anoxic atmosphere in ferruginous waters [C. T. Reinhard, R. Raiswell, C. Scott, A. D. Anbar, T. W. Lyons, Science 326, 713–716 (2009)], show Hg enrichment coupled with positive Δ199Hg and slightly negative Δ200Hg values. This pattern is consistent with photochemical reactions associated with subaerial volcanism under intense UV radiation. Our results therefore suggest that the whiff of O2 was preceded by subaerial volcanism. The transient interval of O2 accumulation may thus have been triggered by diminished volcanic O2 sinks, followed by enhanced nutrient supply to the ocean from weathering of volcanic rocks causing increased biological productivity.PostprintPeer reviewe

Biofuel cell based on microscale nanostructured electrodes with inductive coupling to rat brain neurons.

Miniature, self-contained biodevices powered by biofuel cells may enable a new generation of implantable, wireless, minimally invasive neural interfaces for neurophysiological in vivo studies and for clinical applications. Here we report on the fabrication of a direct electron transfer based glucose/oxygen enzymatic fuel cell (EFC) from genuinely three-dimensional (3D) nanostructured microscale gold electrodes, modified with suitable biocatalysts. We show that the process underlying the simple fabrication method of 3D nanostructured electrodes is based on an electrochemically driven transformation of physically deposited gold nanoparticles. We experimentally demonstrate that mediator-, cofactor-, and membrane-less EFCs do operate in cerebrospinal fluid and in the brain of a rat, producing amounts of electrical power sufficient to drive a self-contained biodevice, viz. 7 μW cm(-2) in vitro and 2 μW cm(-2) in vivo at an operating voltage of 0.4 V. Last but not least, we also demonstrate an inductive coupling between 3D nanobioelectrodes and living neurons

Central localization of gustatory perception: An experimental study

No Abstract.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/49988/1/901210309_ftp.pd

Simple heuristics for the assembly line worker assignment and balancing problem

We propose simple heuristics for the assembly line worker assignment and balancing problem. This problem typically occurs in assembly lines in sheltered work centers for the disabled. Different from the classical simple assembly line balancing problem, the task execution times vary according to the assigned worker. We develop a constructive heuristic framework based on task and worker priority rules defining the order in which the tasks and workers should be assigned to the workstations. We present a number of such rules and compare their performance across three possible uses: as a stand-alone method, as an initial solution generator for meta-heuristics, and as a decoder for a hybrid genetic algorithm. Our results show that the heuristics are fast, they obtain good results as a stand-alone method and are efficient when used as a initial solution generator or as a solution decoder within more elaborate approaches.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur