Male life history of a harlequin toad population in French Guiana

Harlequin toads (Atelopus spp.) constitute one of the most threatened amphibian clades worldwide, yet much of their life history remains poorly understood. These anurans are strongly associated with stream environments, which are used for reproduction and occupied by males throughout the year, while only visited by females during the reproduction season. We studied a population of the Atelopus flavescens complex in French Guiana. We describe male population density, habitat use, site fidelity and movement, as well as home range behaviour – all prior to the arrival of females. We also present further natural history observations such as nocturnal resting sites and anecdotal observations of females. Our findings suggest that in this lowland population of Atelopus, males maintain territories for a relatively long time compared to other species. Within them, they acoustically compete for females, which they attempt to clasp for amplexus when they arrive later in the season on their way to the breeding sites

Detection of locally stationary segments in time series - algorithms and applications

SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover: RR 8460(2002,11) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekDEGerman

Diskussionsbeitraege zur Subsistenz. Arbeitspapiere des Forschungsprojektes 'Regionales Wirtschaften in der Warburger Boerde' Nr. 1-13

SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover: F03B871 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekBundesministerium fuer Bildung und Forschung, Berlin (Germany)DEGerman

Privacy issues in public discourse: the case of “smart” CCTV in Germany

In dealing with surveillance, scholars have widely agreed to refute privacy as an analytical concept and defining theme. Nonetheless, in public debates, surveillance technologies are still confronted with issues of privacy, and privacy therefore endures as an empirical subject of research on surveillance. Drawing from our analysis of public discourse of so-called smart closed-circuit television (CCTV) in Germany, we propose to use a sociology of knowledge perspective to analyze privacy in order to understand how it is socially constructed and negotiated. Our data comprise 117 documents, covering all publicly available documents between 2006 and 2010 that we were able to obtain. We found privacy to be the only form of critique in the struggle for the legitimate definition of smart CCTV. In this paper, we discuss the implications our preliminary findings have for the relationship between privacy issues and surveillance technology and conclude with suggestions of how this relationship might be further investigated as paradoxical, yet constitutive

Genetic polymorphisms in the cytokine genes and risk of hepatocellular carcinoma in low-risk non-Asians of USA

Polymorphisms in cytokine genes responsible for inflammatory and immune responses are associated with risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in high-risk Chinese population. Similar data in low-risk populations are lacking. A population-based case–control study of HCC was conducted including 120 HCC patients and 230 matched control subjects of non-Asian residents in Los Angeles County, California. Genetic variants in the interferon γ (IFNγ), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNFα), interleukin-2 (IL-2), IL-4, IL-6, IL-10, IL-12 and IL-18 genes were determined by Taqman assays. The logistic regression method was used to analyze the data. For T helper (Th) 1 genes (IFNγ, IL-6 and IL-12), relative to the putative high-activity genotypes, individual low-activity genotypes were associated with statistically non-significant increases in HCC risk. The odds ratio (OR) was 1.53 [95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.53–4.39] for three versus zero low-activity genotypes. For Th2 cytokines (IL-4 and IL-10), low- versus high-activity genotypes were associated with statistically non-significant decreases in HCC risk. The OR was 0.64 (95% CI = 0.27–1.55) for two versus zero low-activity genotypes. When the Th1 and Th2 genotypes were examined simultaneously, the highest level of risk was observed in individuals jointly possessing the highest number of low-activity Th1 genotypes and the lowest number of low-activity Th2 genotypes. There was a roughly doubling of risk between these two extreme genetic profiles, which did not reach statistical significance (OR = 1.98, 95% CI = 0.50–7.84, P = 0.08). In contrast to high-risk Chinese, Th1 and Th2 genotypes did not impact in a major way on risk of HCC in USA non-Asians