Planning Guide Outdoor Recreation Facilities

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A System for Accessible Artificial Intelligence

While artificial intelligence (AI) has become widespread, many commercial AI systems are not yet accessible to individual researchers nor the general public due to the deep knowledge of the systems required to use them. We believe that AI has matured to the point where it should be an accessible technology for everyone. We present an ongoing project whose ultimate goal is to deliver an open source, user-friendly AI system that is specialized for machine learning analysis of complex data in the biomedical and health care domains. We discuss how genetic programming can aid in this endeavor, and highlight specific examples where genetic programming has automated machine learning analyses in previous projects.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Genetic Programming Theory and Practice 2017 worksho

Occupational Characteristics of Leading Canadian Executives

Pour connaître le lieu d'origine, le milieu social, la formation et la carrière professionnelles des dirigeants d'entreprise de renom au Canada, on a eu recours à un questionnaire-enquête. Les interviouwés, des présidents de conseil d'administration et des présidents ou vice-présidents de grandes entreprises canadiennes principalement, ont répondu dans une proportion de 49 pour cent et 485 réponses étaient utilisables pour fins d'analyse.71 pour cent des répondants étaient nés au Canada, mais un pourcentage anormalement élevé d'entre eux provenaient de la Colombie Britannique et des provinces des Prairies, alors que le Québec et les Maritimes n'ont pas donné leur juste part. Les différences d'éducation et de culture peuvent expliquer cette constatation. Les dirigeants originaires des États-Unis détiennent un nombre beaucoup trop considérable des postes de commande dans les grandes entreprises canadiennes, principalement dans les industries qui se sont développées rapidement.Un fort pourcentage des dirigeants d'entreprise importants étaient natifs de la ville, avaient une éducation avancée et avaient commencé leur carrière comme cols blancs. La plupart avait reçu leur instruction post-secondaire au Canada, principalement dans les grandes universités de Toronto et de Montréal ainsi que dans les collèges privés d'Ontario. Il est manifeste que beaucoup d'entre eux ont: émigré de leur place d'origine vers ces centres de haut savoir. Fait frappant, la proportion de hauts dirigeants formés dans les universités de langue française est presque négligeable.Comme on pouvait s'y attendre, on retrouve une grande partie des dirigeants, qui possèdent une formation supérieure, dans les industries qui comptent un fort pourcentage d'entreprises jeunes et en voie d'expansion. De même, il y a un pourcentage plus élevé de dirigeants de formation supérieure dans les firmes où la proportion des capitaux étrangers est la plus élevée.Enfin, le passage des postes commande secondaires aux postes de commande supérieurs se fait très rapidement et 89 pour cent des répondants ont été promus à des fonctions de direction après moins de quinze ans de service. D'une façon générale, le cheminement de la carrière des dirigeants d'entreprise canadiens importants ressemble de très près à celui des dirigeants d'entreprise de renom aux États-Unis.The purpose of this study is to investigate the geographic origins, the social and educational backgrounds and the occupational and career patterns of top executives in Canadian Companies

On the universal structure of human lexical semantics

How universal is human conceptual structure? The way concepts are organized in the human brain may reflect distinct features of cultural, historical, and environmental background in addition to properties universal to human cognition. Semantics, or meaning expressed through language, provides direct access to the underlying conceptual structure, but meaning is notoriously difficult to measure, let alone parameterize. Here we provide an empirical measure of semantic proximity between concepts using cross-linguistic dictionaries. Across languages carefully selected from a phylogenetically and geographically stratified sample of genera, translations of words reveal cases where a particular language uses a single polysemous word to express concepts represented by distinct words in another. We use the frequency of polysemies linking two concepts as a measure of their semantic proximity, and represent the pattern of such linkages by a weighted network. This network is highly uneven and fragmented: certain concepts are far more prone to polysemy than others, and there emerge naturally interpretable clusters loosely connected to each other. Statistical analysis shows such structural properties are consistent across different language groups, largely independent of geography, environment, and literacy. It is therefore possible to conclude the conceptual structure connecting basic vocabulary studied is primarily due to universal features of human cognition and language use.Comment: Press embargo in place until publicatio

COMPARATIVE WATER RELATIONS AND PHOTOSYNTHESIS OF MYCORRHIZAL AND NON-MYCORRHIZAL \u3ci\u3eBOUTELOUA GRACILIS\u3c/i\u3e H.B.K. LAG EX STEUD.

The rangeland grass, Bouteloua gracilis was inoculated with its mycorrhizal symbiont, Glomus fasciculatus, to determine the influence of vesicular-arhuscular mycorrhizae on water status, stomatal behaviour and photosynthesis as well as gross plant morphology, biomass and phosphorus content. Mycorrhizal infection increased transpiration rates by over 100% with 50 to 70% lower leaf resistances to water vapour diffusion. Leaf xylem pressure was not different between mycorrhizal and non-mycorrhizal plants indicating that whole-plant resistance to water transport was reduced by more than 50%. Photosynthetic rates under saturating light conditions increased 68% with infection as a consequence of a 33% reduction in stomatal resistance and a 67% reduction in mesophyll resistance to CO2 uptake. Mycorrhizal infection did not affect biomass or gross plant morphology after 30 weeks of growth, but increased chlorophyll and phosphate concentrations by 28% and 70% respectively. These physiological changes indicate that mycorrhizae may substantially alter survival ability of Bouteloua gracilis

Exceptional sperm cooperation in the wood mouse

Spermatozoa from a single male will compete for fertilization of ova with spermatozoa from another male when present in the female reproductive tract at the same time. Close genetic relatedness predisposes individuals towards altruism, and as haploid germ cells of an ejaculate will have genotypic similarity of 50%, it is predicted that spermatozoa may display cooperation and altruism to gain an advantage when inter-male sperm competition is intense. We report here the probable altruistic behaviour of spermatozoa in an eutherian mammal. Spermatozoa of the common wood mouse, Apodemus sylvaticus, displayed a unique morphological transformation resulting in cooperation in distinctive aggregations or 'trains' of hundreds or thousands of cells, which significantly increased sperm progressive motility. Eventual dispersal of sperm trains was associated with most of the spermatozoa undergoing a premature acrosome reaction. Cells undergoing an acrosome reaction in aggregations remote from the egg are altruistic in that they help sperm transport to the egg but compromise their own fertilizing ability

Affinity of Talin-1 for the β3-Integrin Cytosolic Domain is Modulated by its Phospholipid Bilayer Environment

Binding of the talin-1 FERM (4.1/ezrin/radixin/moesin) domain to the β3 cytosolic tail causes activation of the integrin αIIbβ3. The FERM domain also binds to acidic phospholipids. Although much is known about the interaction of talin-1 with integrins and lipids, the relative contribution of each interaction to integrin regulation and possible synergy between them remain to be clarified. Here, we examined the thermodynamic interplay between FERM domain binding to phospholipid bilayers and to its binding sites in the β3 tail. We found that although both the F0F1 and F2F3 subdomains of the talin-1 FERM domain bind acidic bilayers, the full-length FERM domain binds with an affinity similar to F2F3, indicating that F0F1 contributes little to the overall interaction. When free in solution, the β3 tail has weak affinity for the FERM domain. However, appending the tail to acidic phospholipids increased its affinity for the FERM domain by three orders of magnitude. Nonetheless, the affinity of the FERM for the appended tail was similar to its affinity for binding to bilayers alone. Thus, talin-1 binding to the β3 tail is a ternary interaction dominated by a favorable surface interaction with phospholipid bilayers and set by lipid composition. Nonetheless, interactions between the FERM domain, the β3 tail, and lipid bilayers are not optimized for a high-affinity synergistic interaction, even at the membrane surface. Instead, the interactions appear to be tuned in such a way that the equilibrium between inactive and active integrin conformations can be readily regulated