Linking plant composition and arthropod abundance to establish little bustard breeding requirements in pastureland dominated landscapes

Most research on steppe bird habitat selection has been focused on the effects of management regimes or vegetation structure. However, much less is known on how plant composition is related with steppe bird occurrence. We investigated microhabitat of little bustard territorial males and females during the nesting and chick-rearing season in areas with dominance of pastureland focusing on plant composition. We searched for relationships between preferred vegetation and arthropod abundance in order to identify the contribution of different vegetation typologies in providing essential trophic resources for the species. Surveys of little bustards were made using car and foot transects. Plant composition was obtained within a 50 × 50 cm square at four sampling replicates and arthropod availability was sampled using a sweep net. Statistical procedures were conducted in three steps: (1) analysis of variance was used to identify at univariate level the plant composition and arthropod variables that were significantly related with both male and female occurrence sites; (2) principal components analysis was performed using the variables with significant results at univariate level; (3) model averaging on generalized linear and mixed models was applied to evaluate the selection probability of each principal component. The species occurs in sites with high floristic richness and high abundance of Fabaceae species, although plant composition differs from male to female sites. These variables were found to be crucial to provide higher abundances of arthropods, notably of Acrididea, Formicidae and some groups of Coleoptera which are decisive for the selection of displaying or female breeding sites

The importance of grazing regime in the provision of breeding habitat for grassland birds: The case of the endangered little bustard (Tetrax tetrax)

In Mediterranean dry grasslands, grazing by domestic animals is an important agricultural activity on dry grasslands. Several bird species occur in these grazed habitats and are now experiencing a near continuous decline. We investigated the impact of livestock grazing on the threatened little bustard (Tetrax tetrax L.). The study was conducted at the NATURA 2000 Site/Important Bird Area of Cabrela, Portugal. Our main goals were to investigate responses of little bustard territorial males and breeding females to different livestock management practices, namely pasture types, stocking rates and sward structure. Bird distribution was surveyed using car and foot surveys. Data on grazing was supplied by land managers every 10 days from February to June through field interviews. Generalised additive models and model averaging were used to compute predictive models. Results indicate that higher probabilities of occurrence were found in long-term pastures and under light-moderate grazing conditions (stocking rates around 0.4 LU/ha). Conversely, lower probabilities of occurrence were found in ungrazed or heavy grazed fields. Males occurred mostly in large fields, but this variable seemed to be less important for females. On the other hand, green plant cover and the vegetation height were good predictors for the occurrence of females but not for males. Females used mostly pastures with vegetation height around 20–25 cm. Our results suggest that grazing management plans that aim to conserve little bustard populations should consider (1) the maintenance of the larger long-term pastures and (2) the use of light-moderate stocking rates (0.2–0.6 LU/ha)

Infections due to rare Cryptococcus species: a literature review

Infections due to rare Cryptococcus species (other than C. neoformans species complex, C. gattii species complex, C. albidus or C. laurentii) are barely reported. The aim of this work is to present a comprehensive literature review of all the papers describing infections due to these species referenced in the main databases (PubMed/MEDLINE, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Google Scholar). Clinical and epidemiological data together with laboratory findings (identification and antifungal susceptibility) of each isolate were analyzed. Fifty-eight cryptococosis due to rare species were described in 46 papers between 1934-2018. These reports included 16 rare Cryptococcus spp. that were generally associated with nervous system infections and fungemias. Some species are non-capsulated and are not able to grow at 37 °C. Few species were identified by commercially available methods, making internal transcriber spacer (ITS) and D1/D2 regions sequencing mandatory. The most potent antifungal was amphotericin B (although some species showed high MIC values). The studied strains showed high MICs values to 5-fluorocytosine (all >64 µg/mL), echinocandins (all >8 µg/mL), and fluconazole (>80% of the MICs >4 µg/mL). Due to the scarcity of the data and the absence of guidelines for the treatment of these infections, this review could be informative and could help in the diagnosis and treatment of these infections.Fil: Morales Lopez, Soraya E.. Universidad Popular del Cesar; ColombiaFil: Garcia, Guillermo Manuel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Facultad de Bioquímica y Ciencias Biológicas; Argentin

Between and within-year effects of haying on grassland bird

In recent years, haying has extended to Iberian Mediterranean dry grasslands potentially threatening grassland birds. We evaluate the between and within-year effects of haying on grassland birds in Alentejo region, Portugal. Our main goals were: (1) to investigate variations on bird abundance and species richness in the fields hayed, with respect to past haying events occurred in a field and its surroundings and (2) to investigate the shifts in bird abundance, species richness and spatial dynamics resulting from haying a field and its surrounding area in a given year. We conducted grassland bird censuses during the breeding season through point counts from 2012 to 2015. The relationship between bird abundance/richness and past haying events was investigated using Generalized Linear Models whereas within-year effects of haying were analysed using Generalized Additive Models. Bird abundance in a field was positively related with the surface hayed in the vicinity of that field in the previous year. However, contrasting yearly effects were found for non passerines. Also, some species prefer fields with less haying events or surface hayed, whereas others occur mostly in fields frequently managed for haying. Haying a field leads, in the short term, to its abandonment by birds, and thus to a decrease in bird abundance and, for some species, to spatial concentration in surrounding fields offering suitable habitat. We conclude that within-year effects of haying have higher impact on grassland birds than between-year effects. Maintaining haying at low levels by rotating haying yearly through the different fields in each farm and using partial haying may be an adequate way to ensure an effective management of grassland bird populations.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologi

Como iniciar una explotación Apícola?

La Apicultura que es una ciencia que trata de la crianza racional y técnica de las abejas, insectos cuya asociación para vivir y producir es admirable, y que puede constituirse en una fuente de ingresos, que ayuden en parte a la subsistencia de un estudiante, de un agricultor o de un pequeño empresario que se decida por esta rama pecuaria

Actions and approaches for enabling Industry 5.0-driven sustainable industrial transformation: A strategy roadmap

Although Industry 4.0 was believed to promote sustainable development, it has ignored or misunderstood many prevailing sustainability concerns, which led to the emergence of the Industry 5.0 agenda. While the desirable sustainability values of Industry 5.0 are widely acknowledged, the knowledge of how this agenda can deliver sustainable transformation is lacking. The present study addresses this knowledge gap, explaining how Industry 5.0 transformation should be managed to facilitate sustainable development. Therefore, this study strives to model the underlying mechanism for enabling such transformation. The study conducted a content-centric review of the literature and identified 11 actions and approaches that serve as enablers of Industry 5.0 transformation. The study further conducted the interpretive structural modeling and structured the enablers as an interpretive model explaining steps needed for enabling Industry 5.0. Finally, the study developed the strategy roadmap for enabling Industry 5.0 transformation and sustainable development. Results emphasized stakeholder salience, highlighting the enabling role of stakeholder integration and collaboration in Industry 5.0 transformation. Proactive governmental support is the most driving enabler of Industry 5.0, whereas eco-innovation and sustainable value network reformation are among the most complex and hard-to-develop enablers. Results offer several implications for policymakers and practitioners, explaining the functionality of each approach and strategy necessary for Industry 5.0 transformation. The roadmap determines the sequential relationships among these approaches and strategies and identifies their optimal development sequence for enabling Industry 5.0 transformation synergistically. Results further identify the codependences among the Industry 5.0 transition enablers and highlight their interactions and complementarities

An overview of Ciao and its design philosophy

We provide an overall description of the Ciao multiparadigm programming sy stem emphasizing some of the novel aspects and motivations behind its design and implementation. An important aspect of Ciao is that, in addition to supporting logic programming (and, in particular, Prolog), it provides the programmer with a large number of useful features from different programming paradigms and styles, and that the use of each of these features (including those of Prolog) can be turned on and off at will for each program module. Thus, a given module may be using, e.g., higher order functions and constraints, while another module may be using assignment, predicates, Prolog meta-programming, and concurrency. Furthermore, the language is designed to be extensible in a simple and modular way. Another important aspect of Ciao is its programming environment, which provides a powerful preprocessor (with an associated assertion language) capable of statically flnding non-trivial bugs, verifying that programs comply with speciflcations, and performing many types of optimizations (including automatic parallelization). Such optimizations produce code that is highly competitive with other dynamic languages or, with the (experimental) optimizing compiler, even that of static languages, all while retaining the flexibility and interactive development of a dynamic language. This compilation architecture supports modularity and sepárate compilation throughout. The environment also includes a powerful auto-documenter and a unit testing framework, both closely integrated with the assertion system. The paper provides an informal overview of the language and program development environment. It aims at illustrating the design philosophy rather than at being exhaustive, which would be impossible in a single journal paper, pointing instead to previous Ciao literature

The ciao approach to the dynamic vs. static language dilemma. Proceedings for the international workshop on scripts to programs

Abstract is not availabl

Protein diagenesis in archaeological gastropod shells and the suitability of this material for amino acid racemisation dating: Phorcus lineatus (da Costa, 1778)

Abstract: The inter-and intra-crystalline fractions of the topshell Phorcus lineatus recovered from modern specimens and shells from archaeological sites in Northern Spain covering Neolithic, Mesolithic, and Upper Magdalenian periods were examined for amino acidcomposition and racemisation over time. The main loss of proteins from the inter-crystalline fraction occurred within the first 6000 years after the death of the organism. In contrast, the intra-crystalline fraction isolated by bleaching?with a different protein composition to that of the inter-crystalline fraction?appeared to behave like a closed system for at least 12.6 ka, as reflected by the lack of a significant decrease in amino acid content. However, changes in the relative composition of the amino acids present in these shells occurred during this period. The concentration of aspartic acid remained almost constant with age within the intra-crystalline fraction and its contribution to the total amino acid content also remained the same. Good correspondence was obtained between Asx D/L values in unbleached and bleached samples and age, thereby allowing the dating of archaeological sites and the determination of chronometric age.This research was part of the projects HAR2010-22115-C02-01, HAR2010-22115-C02-02, and HAR2013-46802-P, all of them funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. IGZ was supported by the Newton International Fellowships scheme (grant number NF100413) and the Juan de la Cierva Research Programme (grant number This research was part of the projects HAR2010-22115-C02-01, HAR2010-22115-C02-02, and HAR2013-46802-P, all of them funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. IGZ was supported by the Newton International Fellowships scheme (grant number NF100413) and the Juan de la Cierva Research Programme (grant number JCI-2012-12094)

An overview of ciao and its design philosophy

We provide an overall description of the Ciao multiparadigm programming system emphasizing some of the novel aspects and motivations behind its design and implementation. An important aspect of Ciao is that, in addition to supporting logic programming (and, in particular, Prolog), it provides the programmer with a large number of useful features from different programming paradigms and styles and that the use of each of these features (including those of Prolog) can be turned on and off at will for each program module. Thus, a given module may be using, e.g., higher order functions and constraints, while another module may be using assignment, predicates, Prolog meta-programming, and concurrency. Furthermore, the language is designed to be extensible in a simple and modular way. Another important aspect of Ciao is its programming environment, which provides a powerful preprocessor (with an associated assertion language) capable of statically finding non-trivial bugs, verifying that programs comply with specifications, and performing many types of optimizations (including automatic parallelization). Such optimizations produce code that is highly competitive with other dynamic languages or, with the (experimental) optimizing compiler, even that of static languages, all while retaining the flexibility and interactive development of a dynamic language. This compilation architecture supports modularity and separate compilation throughout. The environment also includes a powerful autodocumenter and a unit testing framework, both closely integrated with the assertion system. The paper provides an informal overview of the language and program development environment. It aims at illustrating the design philosophy rather than at being exhaustive, which would be impossible in a single journal paper, pointing instead to previous Ciao literature