Pitch production during the Roman period: an intensive mountain industry for a globalised economy?

The authors’ research project in the Pyrenees mountains has located and excavated Roman kilns for producing pitch from pine resin. Their investigations reveal a whole sustainable industry, integrated into the local environmental cycle, supplying pitch to the Roman network and charcoal as a spin-off to the local iron extractors. The paper makes a strong case for applying combined archaeological and palaeoenvironmental investigations in upland areas, showing mountain industries to have been not so much marginal and pastoral as key players in the economy of the Roman period and beyond it into the seventh century AD

Environmental regulation using Plasticoding for the evolution of robots

Evolutionary robot systems are usually affected by the properties of the environment indirectly through selection. In this paper, we present and investigate a system where the environment also has a direct effect: through regulation. We propose a novel robot encoding method where a genotype encodes multiple possible phenotypes, and the incarnation of a robot depends on the environmental conditions taking place in a determined moment of its life. This means that the morphology, controller, and behavior of a robot can change according to the environment. Importantly, this process of development can happen at any moment of a robot lifetime, according to its experienced environmental stimuli. We provide an empirical proof-of-concept, and the analysis of the experimental results shows that Plasticoding improves adaptation (task performance) while leading to different evolved morphologies, controllers, and behaviour.Comment: This paper was submitted to the Frontiers in Robotics and AI journal on the 22/02/2020, and is still under revie

Hu-bot:promoting the cooperation between humans and mobile robots

peer reviewedThis paper investigates human–robot collaboration in a novel setup: a human helps a mobile robot that can move and navigate freely in an environment. Specifically, the human helps by remotely taking over control during the learning of a task. The task is to find and collect several items in a walled arena, and Reinforcement Learning is used to seek a suitable controller. If the human observes undesired robot behavior, they can directly issue commands for the wheels through a game joystick. Experiments in a simulator showed that human assistance improved robot behavior efficacy by 30% and efficiency by 12%. The best policies were also tested in real life, using physical robots. Hardware experiments showed no significant difference concerning the simulations, providing empirical validation of our approach in practice

Non-canonical Translation in Plant RNA Viruses

Viral protein synthesis is completely dependent upon the host cell's translational machinery. Canonical translation of host mRNAs depends on structural elements such as the 5′ cap structure and/or the 3′ poly(A) tail of the mRNAs. Although many viral mRNAs are devoid of one or both of these structures, they can still translate efficiently using non-canonical mechanisms. Here, we review the tools utilized by positive-sense single-stranded (+ss) RNA plant viruses to initiate non-canonical translation, focusing on cis-acting sequences present in viral mRNAs. We highlight how these elements may interact with host translation factors and speculate on their contribution for achieving translational control. We also describe other translation strategies used by plant viruses to optimize the usage of the coding capacity of their very compact genomes, including leaky scanning initiation, ribosomal frameshifting and stop-codon readthrough. Finally, future research perspectives on the unusual translational strategies of +ssRNA viruses are discussed, including parallelisms between viral and host mRNAs mechanisms of translation, particularly for host mRNAs which are translated under stress conditions.The research program in Aranda's lab is supported by grants AGL2015-65838 (MINECO, Spain) and ARIMNet2-EMERAMB(ERA-Net-618127, EU FP7). WM is funded by NIH grant number R01 GM067104.Peer reviewedPeer Reviewe

Mechanisms of weight loss after obesity surgery

Obesity surgery remains the most effective treatment for obesity and its complications. Weight loss was initially attributed to decreased energy absorption from the gut but have since been linked to reduced appetitive behaviour and potentially increased energy expenditure. Implicated mechanisms associating rearrangement of the gastrointestinal tract with these metabolic outcomes include central appetite control, release of gut peptides, change in microbiota and bile acids. However, the exact combination and timing of signals remain largely unknown. In this review, we survey recent research investigating these mechanisms, and seek to provide insights on unanswered questions over how weight loss is achieved following bariatric surgery which may eventually lead to safer, nonsurgical weight-loss interventions or combinations of medications with surger

Evaluating Ecosystem Services in Transhumance Cultural Landscapes: An Interdisciplinary and Participatory Framework

Following the concept of ecosystem services, we propose in this article an interdisciplinary and participatory methodological framework for ecosystem services assessment and participatory decision-making in Mediterranean cultural landscapes linked with transhumant pastoralism. It is based on four sequential phases: 1. characterisation of the social-ecological network associated with transhumance, 2. preliminary identification and characterisation of ecosystem services, 3. evaluation of ecosystem services (in biophysical, socio-cultural, and economic terms), and 4. future scenario planning for the analysis of social conflicts related to ecosystem services use and trade-offs as well as the proposal of management strategies. Applying the framework to a case study on one of the major transhumance landscapes in Spain, we could identify and evaluate more than 30 ecosystem services. The framework facilitated the design of robust policy measures that aim to maintain this livestock raising model and its associated flow of ecosystem services. It also contributes to provide the basis for the implementation of adaptive co-management strategiesThis research has been financed by the Spanish Ministry for the Environment and Rural and Marine Affairs (Project 079/RN08/02.1