Extraordinary Size and Survival of American Black Duck, Anas rubripes, Broods

Two female American Black Ducks (Anas rubripes) were initially observed during June 1982 with 20 Class Ib or 18-22 Class Ia-b ducklings in two wetlands in Hancock County, Cherryfield, Maine. Fifteen of 20 ducklings (75%) in one brood and 16 of 18-22 ducklings (72-89%) in the other brood survived to fledge. These large broods probably resulted from post-hatch brood amalgamation

Empirical evaluation of different feature representations for social circles detection

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19390-8_4Social circles detection is a special case of community detection in social network that is currently attracting a growing interest in the research community. We propose in this paper an empirical evaluation of the multi-assignment clustering method using different feature representation models. We define different vectorial representations from both structural egonet information and user profile features. We study and compare the performance on the available labelled Facebook data from the Kaggle competition on learning social circles in networks. We compare our results with several different baselines.This work was developed in the framework of the W911NF-14-1-0254 research project Social Copying Community Detection (SOCOCODE), fundedby the US Army Research Office (ARO).Alonso, J.; Paredes Palacios, R.; Rosso, P. (2015). Empirical evaluation of different feature representations for social circles detection. En Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis: 7th Iberian Conference, IbPRIA 2015, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, June 17-19, 2015, Proceedings. Springer International Publishing. 31-38. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19390-8_4S3138Buhmann, J., Kühnel, H.: Vector quantization with complexity costs. IEEE Trans. Inf. Theor. 39(4), 1133–1145 (1993)Dey, K., Bandyopadhyay, S.: An empirical investigation of like-mindedness of topically related social communities on microblogging platforms. In: International Conference on Natural Languages (2013)Fortunato, S.: Community detection in graphs. Phys. Rep. 486(3), 75–174 (2010)Frank, M., Streich, A.P., Basin, D., Buhmann, J.M.: Multi-assignment clustering for boolean data. J. Mach. Learn. Res. 13(1), 459–489 (2012)Kaggle: Learning social circles in networks. http://www.kaggle.com/c/learning-social-circlesMcAuley, J., Leskovec, J.: Learning to discover social circles in ego networks. Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst. 25, 539–547 (2012)McAuley, J., Leskovec, J.: Discovering social circles in ego networks. ACM Trans. Knowl. Discov. Data (TKDD) 8(1), 4 (2014)Palla, G., Dernyi, I., Farkas, I., Vicsek, T.: Uncovering the overlapping community structure of complex networks in nature and society. Nature 435(7043), 814–818 (2005)Pathak, N., DeLong, C., Banerjee, A., Erickson, K.: Social topic models for community extraction. In: The 2nd SNA-KDD Workshop (2008)Porter, M.A., Onnela, J.P., Mucha, P.J.: Communities in networks. Not. Amer. Math. Soc. 56(9), 1082–1097 (2009)Rose, K., Gurewitz, E., Fox, G.C.: Vector quantization by deterministic annealing. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 38(4), 1249–1257 (1992)Sachan, M., Contractor, D., Faruquie, T.A., Subramaniam, L.V.: Using content and interactions for discovering communities in social networks. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on World Wide Web, pp. 331–340 (2012)Streich, A.P., Frank, M., Basin, D., Buhmann, J.M.: Multi-assignment clustering for Boolean data. In: Proceedings of the 26th Annual International Conference on Machine Learning, pp. 969–976 (2009)Vaidya, J., Atluri, V., Guo, Q.: The role mining problem: finding a minimal descriptive set of roles. In: Proceedings of the 12th ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies, pp. 175–184 (2007)Zhou, D., Councill, I., Zha, H., Giles, C.L.: Discovering temporal communities from social network documents. In: Seventh IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, PP. 745–750 (2007

Expulsion of Symbiotic Algae during Feeding by the Green Hydra – a Mechanism for Regulating Symbiont Density?

Background: Algal-cnidarian symbiosis is one of the main factors contributing to the success of cnidarians, and is crucial for the maintenance of coral reefs. While loss of the symbionts (such as in coral bleaching) may cause the death of the cnidarian host, over-proliferation of the algae may also harm the host. Thus, there is a need for the host to regulate the population density of its symbionts. In the green hydra, Chlorohydra viridissima, the density of symbiotic algae may be controlled through host modulation of the algal cell cycle. Alternatively, Chlorohydra may actively expel their endosymbionts, although this phenomenon has only been observed under experimentally contrived stress conditions. Principal Findings: We show, using light and electron microscopy, that Chlorohydra actively expel endosymbiotic algal cells during predatory feeding on Artemia. This expulsion occurs as part of the apocrine mode of secretion from the endodermal digestive cells, but may also occur via an independent exocytotic mechanism. Significance: Our results demonstrate, for the first time, active expulsion of endosymbiotic algae from cnidarians under natural conditions. We suggest this phenomenon may represent a mechanism whereby cnidarians can expel excess symbiotic algae when an alternative form of nutrition is available in the form of prey

Living with the user: Design drama for dementia care through responsive scripted experiences in the home

Participation in forms of drama and narrative can provoke empathy and creativity in user-centred design processes. In this paper, we expand upon existing methods to explore the potential for responsive scripted experiences that are delivered through the combination of sensors and output devices placed in a home. The approach is being developed in the context of Dementia care, where the capacity for rich user participation in design activities is limited. In this case, a system can act as a proxy for a person with Dementia, allowing designers to gain experiences and insight as to what it is like to provide care for, and live with, this person. We describe the rationale behind the approach, a prototype system architecture, and our current work to explore the creation of scripted experiences for design, played out though UbiComp technologies.This research is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK, (AH/K00266X/1) and Horizon Digital Economy Research (RCUK grant EP/G065802/1)

Effect of Ammonium Enrichment on Animal and Algal Biomass of the Coral Pocillopora damicornis

Algal and animal biomass parameters of colonies of the Pacific coral Pocillopora damicornis (Linnaeus) were measured as a function of time of exposure to elevated concentrations of seawater ammonium (20 and 50 uM [(NH4)2S04]) ranging from 2 to 8 weeks. Areal concentrations of zooxanthellae, chlorophyll, and protein increased with 20 uM ammonium addition. During the 8-week period of exposure to 20 uM ammonium, the population density of zooxanthellae increased from 3.5 to 7.5 x 105 cells cm-2, chlorophyll a content of zooxanthellae increased from 5.7 to 8.6 pg, and animal protein concentration doubled (from 0.74 to 1.38 mg cm-2). These data indicate that both the coral animal and the zooxanthellae respond to the addition of exogenous dissolved inorganic nitrogen provided as 20 uM ammonium. Growth of the symbiotic association in response to the addition of 20 uM ammonium adds further evidence to support the argument that growth of tropical symbioses is limited by the availability of nitrogen. However, the coral response is likely to depend on the concentration of ammonium provided, because the biomass parameters of corals held at 50 uM ammonium did not change significantly with time of exposure to the added nutrient

Recent data from radiofrequency denervation trials further emphasise that treating nociception is not the same as treating pain

Chronic low back pain is a condition that current health care provision is failing and we suggest that recent evidence from the interventional pain medicine field points to what these failings are. Radiofrequency denervation is performed on the presumption that denervation of a peripheral structure will eradicate or significantly reduce pain and improve function. The results of six moderately sized and well conducted clinical trials that demonstrate no efficacy and no real-world effectiveness for denervation procedures are a stark illustration of how flawed this approach is. We suggest that these results represent a line-in-the-sand for back pain research and management. This is a clear signal to finally abandon research agendas and management paradigms that focus primarily on nociception and instead, truly embrace the biopsychosocial model of pain

Movement restriction does not modulate sensory and perceptual effects of exercise-induced arm pain

BACKGROUND: Movement restriction has been proposed as an important modulator of changes in sensory and perceptual function and motor imagery performance that are observed in musculoskeletal pain syndromes. There are no empirical data to support this view. PURPOSE: The primary objective of this experiment was to determine the effects of movement restriction on local and widespread sensory, perceptual and motor imagery changes after exercise-induced muscular pain. Further objectives were to investigate whether changes in sensory perception are correlated with pain intensity and tactile acuity or motor imagery performance. METHODS: In forty healthy volunteers, delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) of the non-dominant elbow flexors was induced using eccentric contractions until exhaustion. Participants were then randomised into two groups: a movement restriction group (wearing a sling) or a control group (not wearing a sling). Sensory and perceptual functions were measured using a range of sensory tests and a motor imagery performance task (left/right limb judgements). RESULTS: Movement restriction did not modulate any of the measures. We found concurrent mechanical hypoesthesia (p \u3c 0.01), reduced tactile acuity (p = 0.02) and pressure hyperalgesia (p \u3c 0.01) at the painful side. We found evidence of widespread pressure hyperalgesia. Impaired tactile acuity was associated with a decrease in pain threshold to pressure (r = -0.34, p = 0.03). Motor imagery performance was unchanged (p \u3e 0.35) by pain or movement restriction. CONCLUSION: Short-term movement restriction did not influence local and widespread sensory changes induced by experimentally induced muscular pain

The reliability of eyetracking to assess attentional bias to threatening words in healthy individuals

Eyetracking is commonly used to investigate attentional bias. Although some studies have investigated the internal consistency of eyetracking, data are scarce on the test–retest reliability and agreement of eyetracking to investigate attentional bias. This study reports the test–retest reliability, measurement error, and internal consistency of 12 commonly used outcome measures thought to reflect the different components of attentional bias: overall attention, early attention, and late attention. Healthy participants completed a preferential-looking eyetracking task that involved the presentation of threatening (sensory words, general threat words, and affective words) and nonthreatening words. We used intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) to measure test–retest reliability (ICC \u3e .70 indicates adequate reliability). The ICCs(2, 1) ranged from –.31to.71. Reliability varied according to the outcome measure and threat word category. Sensory words had a lower mean ICC (.08) than either affective words (.32) or general threat words (.29). A longer exposure time was associated with higher test–retest reliability. All of the outcome measures, except second-run dwell time, demonstrated low measurement error (\u3c6%). Most of the outcome measures reported high internal consistency (α \u3e.93). Recommendations are discussed for improving the reliability of eyetracking tasks in future research

Women, know your limits: Cultural sexism in academia

Despite the considerable advances of the feminist movement across Western societies, in Universities women are less likely to be promoted, or paid as much as their male colleagues, or even get jobs in the first place. One way in which we can start to reflect on why this might be the case is through hearing the experiences of women academics themselves. Using feminist methodology, this article attempts to unpack and explore just some examples of ‘cultural sexism’ which characterise the working lives of many women in British academia.This article uses qualitative methods to describe and make sense of just some of those experiences. In so doing, the argument is also made that the activity of academia is profoundly gendered and this explicit acknowledgement may contribute to our understanding of the under-representation of women in senior positions