155 research outputs found
Fairness and Inclusion for Users of Surface Transport—An Exploratory Thematic Study for Irish Users
This paper explores the conditions of public transport with respect to user accessibility, design of infrastructure, and safety from a gendered perspective. Our investigation aims to understand the factors that direct a citizen’s choice of whether or not to use public transport. Our discussion is focused on gender disparities among user experiences, so we confine our focus to that of women’s perspectives and their experiences with public transport use. A framework for our discussion was formed with consideration of the theoretical aspects of fairness, justice, and gender in transport, as well as user statistics. We identified several spaces where public transport policy planning and implementation may be improved in order to balance gender disparity of access, safety, and security across the gender divide. (We acknowledge that both distinct and interchangeable definitions of safety and security exist. In this work, we err to the latter, while also recognising from user-based qualitative data that safety concerns are not limited to infrastructure, but also relate to other unwanted sources of physical, mental, or emotional harm experienced within the transport system.) Primary among these was the necessity of both the acknowledgment and appreciation of the issues disproportionately experienced by women. A one-size-fits-all approach was found to ill-recognise the societal minutiae of constant caring responsibilities, income limitations, ability/disability, or the effects of past negative experiences faced by women. We conclude that improvements may be achieved by targeting and meeting actual, not just perceived need
Results of international standardised beekeeper surveys of colony losses for winter 2012-2013 : analysis of winter loss rates and mixed effects modelling of risk factors for winter loss.
This article presents results of an analysis of winter losses of honey bee colonies from 19 mainly European countries, most of which implemented the standardised 2013 COLOSS questionnaire. Generalised linear mixed effects models (GLMMs) were used to investigate the effects of several factors on the risk of colony loss, including different treatments for Varroa destructor, allowing for random effects of beekeeper and region. Both winter and summer treatments were considered, and the most common combinations of treatment and timing were used to define treatment factor levels. Overall and within country colony loss rates are presented. Significant factors in the model were found to be: percentage of young queens in the colonies before winter, extent of queen problems in summer, treatment of the varroa mite, and access by foraging honey bees to oilseed rape and maize. Spatial variation at the beekeeper level is shown across geographical regions using random effects from the fitted models, both before and after allowing for the effect of the significant terms in the model. This spatial variation is considerable
Hubble Space Telescope Ultraviolet Spectroscopy of Fourteen Low-Redshift Quasars
We present low-resolution ultraviolet spectra of 14 low redshift (z<0.8)
quasars observed with HST/STIS as part of a Snap project to understand the
relationship between quasar outflows and luminosity. By design, all
observations cover the CIV emission line. Nine of the quasars are from the
Hamburg-ESO catalog, three are from the Palomar-Green catalog, and one is from
the Parkes catalog. The sample contains a few interesting quasars including two
broad absorption line (BAL) quasars (HE0143-3535, HE0436-2614), one quasar with
a mini-BAL (HE1105-0746), and one quasar with associated narrow absorption
(HE0409-5004). These BAL quasars are among the brightest known (though not the
most luminous) since they lie at z<0.8. We compare the properties of these BAL
quasars to the z1.4 Large Bright Quasar samples. By
design, our objects sample luminosities in between these two surveys, and our
four absorbed objects are consistent with the v ~ L^0.62 relation derived by
Laor & Brandt (2002). Another quasar, HE0441-2826, contains extremely weak
emission lines and our spectrum is consistent with a simple power-law
continuum. The quasar is radio-loud, but has a steep spectral index and a
lobe-dominated morphology, which argues against it being a blazar. The unusual
spectrum of this quasar resembles the spectra of the quasars PG1407+265,
SDSSJ1136+0242, and PKS1004+13 for which several possible explanations have
been entertained.Comment: Uses aastex.cls, 21 pages in preprint mode, including 6 figures and 2
tables; accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal (projected vol
133
Leptospirosis during Dengue Outbreak, Bangladesh
We collected acute-phase serum samples from febrile patients at 2 major hospitals in Dhaka, Bangladesh, during an outbreak of dengue fever in 2001. A total of 18% of dengue-negative patients tested positive for leptospirosis. The case-fatality rate among leptospirosis patients (5%) was higher than among dengue fever patients (1.2%)
The Effects of Climate Change on Harp Seals (Pagophilus groenlandicus)
Harp seals (Pagophilus groenlandicus) have evolved life history strategies to exploit seasonal sea ice as a breeding platform. As such, individuals are prepared to deal with fluctuations in the quantity and quality of ice in their breeding areas. It remains unclear, however, how shifts in climate may affect seal populations. The present study assesses the effects of climate change on harp seals through three linked analyses. First, we tested the effects of short-term climate variability on young-of-the year harp seal mortality using a linear regression of sea ice cover in the Gulf of St. Lawrence against stranding rates of dead harp seals in the region during 1992 to 2010. A similar regression of stranding rates and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index values was also conducted. These analyses revealed negative correlations between both ice cover and NAO conditions and seal mortality, indicating that lighter ice cover and lower NAO values result in higher mortality. A retrospective cross-correlation analysis of NAO conditions and sea ice cover from 1978 to 2011 revealed that NAO-related changes in sea ice may have contributed to the depletion of seals on the east coast of Canada during 1950 to 1972, and to their recovery during 1973 to 2000. This historical retrospective also reveals opposite links between neonatal mortality in harp seals in the Northeast Atlantic and NAO phase. Finally, an assessment of the long-term trends in sea ice cover in the breeding regions of harp seals across the entire North Atlantic during 1979 through 2011 using multiple linear regression models and mixed effects linear regression models revealed that sea ice cover in all harp seal breeding regions has been declining by as much as 6 percent per decade over the time series of available satellite data
Quantifying and addressing the prevalence and bias of study designs in the environmental and social sciences
Building trust in science and evidence-based decision-making depends heavily on the credibility of studies and their findings. Researchers employ many different study designs that vary in their risk of bias to evaluate the true effect of interventions or impacts. Here, we empirically quantify, on a large scale, the prevalence of different study designs and the magnitude of bias in their estimates. Randomised designs and controlled observational designs with pre-intervention sampling were used by just 23% of intervention studies in biodiversity conservation, and 36% of intervention studies in social science. We demonstrate, through pairwise within-study comparisons across 49 environmental datasets, that these types of designs usually give less biased estimates than simpler observational designs. We propose a model-based approach to combine study estimates that may suffer from different levels of study design bias, discuss the implications for evidence synthesis, and how to facilitate the use of more credible study designs.Fil: Christie, Alec P.. University of Cambridge; Reino UnidoFil: Abecasis, David. Universidad de Algarve. Centro de Ciencias del Mar; PortugalFil: Adjeroud, Mehdi. Université de Perpignan; Francia. Institut de Recherche Pour Le Developpement; FranciaFil: Alonso, Juan Carlos. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales; EspañaFil: Amano, Tatsuya. University of Queensland; AustraliaFil: Anton, Alvaro. Universidad del País Vasco. Facultad de Educación de Bilbao; EspañaFil: Baldigo, Barry P.. United States Geological Survey; Estados UnidosFil: Barrientos, Rafael. Universidad Complutense de Madrid; EspañaFil: Bicknell, Jake E.. University of Kent; Reino UnidoFil: Buhl, Deborah A.. United States Geological Survey; Estados UnidosFil: Cebrian, Just. Mississippi State University; Estados UnidosFil: Ceia, Ricardo S.. Universidad de Coimbra; PortugalFil: Cibils Martina, Luciana. Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicoquímicas y Naturales. Departamento de Ciencias Naturales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba; ArgentinaFil: Clarke, Sarah. Marine Institute; IrlandaFil: Claudet, Joachim. Universite de Paris; Francia. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; FranciaFil: Craig, Michael D.. University of Western Australia; Australia. Murdoch University; AustraliaFil: Davoult, Dominique. Sorbonne University; FranciaFil: De Backer, Annelies. Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food; BélgicaFil: Donovan, Mary K.. University of California; Estados Unidos. University of Hawaii at Manoa; Estados UnidosFil: Eddy, Tyler D.. University of South Carolina; Estados Unidos. Memorial University of Newfoundland; Canadá. Victoria University of Wellington; Nueva ZelandaFil: França, Filipe M.. Lancaster University; Reino UnidoFil: Gardner, Jonathan P. A.. Victoria University of Wellington; Nueva ZelandaFil: Harris, Bradley P.. Alaska Pacific University; Estados UnidosFil: Huusko, Ari. Natural Resources Institute Finland; FinlandiaFil: Jones, Ian L.. Memorial University of Newfoundland; CanadáFil: Kelaher, Brendan P.. Southern Cross University; AustraliaFil: Kotiaho, Janne S.. Universidad de Jyvaskyla; FinlandiaFil: López Baucells, Adrià. Universidad de Lisboa; Portugal. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute; Panamá. Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Instituto de Investigaciones Amazonicas; Colombia. Museo de Ciencias Naturales de Granollers; EspañaFil: Major, Heather L.. University of New Brunswick; CanadáFil: Mäki Petäys, Aki. Voimalohi Oy; Finlandia. University of Oulu; Finlandi
Convergence of marine megafauna movement patterns in coastal and open oceans
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2017. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115 (2018): 3072-3077, doi:10.1073/pnas.1716137115.The extent of increasing anthropogenic impacts on large marine
vertebrates partly depends on the animals’ movement patterns.
Effective conservation requires identification of the key drivers of
movement including intrinsic properties and extrinsic constraints
associated with the dynamic nature of the environments the animals
inhabit. However, the relative importance of intrinsic versus
extrinsic factors remains elusive. We analyse a global dataset of
2.8 million locations from > 2,600 tracked individuals across 50
marine vertebrates evolutionarily separated by millions of years
and using different locomotion modes (fly, swim, walk/paddle).
Strikingly, movement patterns show a remarkable convergence,
being strongly conserved across species and independent of body
length and mass, despite these traits ranging over 10 orders of
magnitude among the species studied. This represents a fundamental
difference between marine and terrestrial vertebrates not
previously identified, likely linked to the reduced costs of locomotion
in water. Movement patterns were primarily explained by the
interaction between species-specific traits and the habitat(s) they
move through, resulting in complex movement patterns when
moving close to coasts compared to more predictable patterns
when moving in open oceans. This distinct difference may be
associated with greater complexity within coastal micro-habitats,
highlighting a critical role of preferred habitat in shaping marine
vertebrate global movements. Efforts to develop understanding
of the characteristics of vertebrate movement should consider the
habitat(s) through which they move to identify how movement
patterns will alter with forecasted severe ocean changes, such as
reduced Arctic sea ice cover, sea level rise and declining oxygen
content.Workshops funding granted by the UWA Oceans Institute, AIMS, and
KAUST. AMMS was supported by an ARC Grant DE170100841 and an IOMRC
(UWA, AIMS, CSIRO) fellowship; JPR by MEDC (FPU program, Spain); DWS by
UK NERC and Save Our Seas Foundation; NQ by FCT (Portugal); MMCM by
a CAPES fellowship (Ministry of Education)
Predator-derived bioregions in the Southern Ocean: Characteristics, drivers and representation in marine protected areas
Multiple initiatives have called for large-scale representative networks of marine protected areas (MPAs). MPAs should be ecologically representative to be effective, but in large, remote regions this can be difficult to quantify and assess. We present a novel bioregionalization for the Southern Ocean, which uses the modelled circumpolar habitat importance of 17 marine bird and mammal species. The habitat-use of these predators indicates biodiversity patterns that require representation in Southern Ocean conservation and management planning. In the predator habitat importance predictions, we identified 17 statistical clusters, falling into four larger groups. We characterized and contrasted these clusters based on their predator, prey and oceanographic characteristics. Under the existing Southern Ocean MPA network, some clusters fall short of 10 % representation, yet others meet or exceed these targets. Implementation of currently proposed MPAs can in some cases contribute to meeting even 30 % spatial coverage conservation targets. However, the effectiveness of mixed-use versus no-take MPAs should be taken into consideration, since some clusters are not adequately represented by no-take MPAs. These results, combined with previous studies in the Southern Ocean, can help inform the continued design, implementation, and evaluation of a representative system of MPAs for Southern Ocean conservation and management
Vocal Accuracy and Neural Plasticity Following Micromelody-Discrimination Training
Recent behavioral studies report correlational evidence to suggest that non-musicians with good pitch discrimination sing more accurately than those with poorer auditory skills. However, other studies have reported a dissociation between perceptual and vocal production skills. In order to elucidate the relationship between auditory discrimination skills and vocal accuracy, we administered an auditory-discrimination training paradigm to a group of non-musicians to determine whether training-enhanced auditory discrimination would specifically result in improved vocal accuracy.We utilized micromelodies (i.e., melodies with seven different interval scales, each smaller than a semitone) as the main stimuli for auditory discrimination training and testing, and we used single-note and melodic singing tasks to assess vocal accuracy in two groups of non-musicians (experimental and control). To determine if any training-induced improvements in vocal accuracy would be accompanied by related modulations in cortical activity during singing, the experimental group of non-musicians also performed the singing tasks while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Following training, the experimental group exhibited significant enhancements in micromelody discrimination compared to controls. However, we did not observe a correlated improvement in vocal accuracy during single-note or melodic singing, nor did we detect any training-induced changes in activity within brain regions associated with singing.Given the observations from our auditory training regimen, we therefore conclude that perceptual discrimination training alone is not sufficient to improve vocal accuracy in non-musicians, supporting the suggested dissociation between auditory perception and vocal production
The retrospective analysis of Antarctic tracking data project
The Retrospective Analysis of Antarctic Tracking Data (RAATD) is a Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research project led jointly by the Expert Groups on Birds and Marine Mammals and Antarctic Biodiversity Informatics, and endorsed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. RAATD consolidated tracking data for multiple species of Antarctic meso- and top-predators to identify Areas of Ecological Significance. These datasets and accompanying syntheses provide a greater understanding of fundamental ecosystem processes in the Southern Ocean, support modelling of predator distributions under future climate scenarios and create inputs that can be incorporated into decision making processes by management authorities. In this data paper, we present the compiled tracking data from research groups that have worked in the Antarctic since the 1990s. The data are publicly available through biodiversity.aq and the Ocean Biogeographic Information
System. The archive includes tracking data from over 70 contributors across 12 national Antarctic programs, and includes data from 17 predator species, 4060 individual animals, and over 2.9 million observed locations
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