Conservation value of working landscapes in Mesoamerica for Nearctic-neotropical migratory birds

Populations of many of Nearctic-neotropical migratory birds have declined in the past several decades, recent estimates suggested a dramatic loss of 2.5 billion birds over the past 50 years in North America. Habitat loss and degradation represent a major threat in the tropics. Managed agroecosystems have the potential to mitigate some impacts of land conversion, however, little is known regarding the habitat quality provided by working landscapes in the overwintering range. In this research, we surveyed the migratory bird community in the rapidly expanding oil palm plantations in southern Mexico; and also the declining population of the Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina) inhabiting forest fragments in an agricultural matrix in Costa Rica. We assessed the value of both human-modified habitats by using a combination of demographic, distributional, and individual habitat quality indicators, as well as the relationship of these indicators with environmental characteristics. In the Mexican oil palm plantations, we found that species richness of migratory birds tended to be higher in forest patches than in oil palm, that community assemblages of migratory birds differed between habitats, and that differences in migratory bird abundance were driven by vegetative structure. Specifically, when differences in indicators occurred between oil palm and native forest, most migratory species exhibited indicators of better habitat quality in the native forest. Lastly, we observed, for the first time, territoriality in oil palm plantations and estimated home range sizes for the American Redstart (Setophaga ruticilla), which tended to be smaller than in the native forest. The Wood Thrush population in Costa Rica exhibited an average territory size estimated of 0.71 ha. We were able to determine associations between fragments\u27 characteristics and body conditions, whereby birds in young and more humid fragments exhibited better fitness. Additionally, fragment size alone is probably not the best indicator of habitat quality for Wood Thrushes in Costa Rica. Our results suggest that most species of migratory birds assessed responded positively to forest structure complexity, and that age and sex ratios combined with measures of the physiological conditions, environmental moisture and home range sizes can be used to assess habitat quality for migratory birds overwintering in working landscapes. Importantly, determining a species’ territoriality dynamics, is key when selecting a given indicator of habitat quality for each species due to distributional behavior. Our results also suggest that management strategies that promote forest-like conditions in oil palm plantations can improve the habitat quality in this agroecosystem for declining populations of migratory birds. Additionally, these findings support potential value in variable-sized forest fragments within agricultural areas for the conservation of the Wood Thrushes, and soil humidity could be used as a proximate cue for food availability and ultimately as a habitat quality indicator. Lastly, our results emphasize the importance of determining territoriality dynamics, assessing various habitat indicators, and long-term monitoring, in order to develop effective management measures to improve the conservation value of working landscapes in the Neotropics to mitigate the high rate of habitat loss and degradation, especially considering that habitat availability in the tropics could be limiting migratory bird populations

Leiomiomatosis endovenosa: Abordaje anestésico a propósito de un caso clínico

ResumenJustificativa y objetivosDescribimos aquí el abordaje anestésico a propósito de un caso clínico de leiomiomatosis endovenosa, con invasión de la vena cava inferior y extensión a la aurícula derecha, que tuvo éxito por medio de un abordaje quirúrgico.Relato de casoMujer enferma, de 45 años, aparentemente estable hasta dos semanas antes de su llegada a urgencias, en que debutó con cansancio y disnea. Hizo el ecocardiograma en que se comprobó masa intracardiaca. Por eso, se procedió a la tumorectomía electiva en la transición vena cava-aurícula derecha y ventrículo derecho. En la histología, la pieza operatoria mostró una sugestión de leiomioma uterino. Posteriormente, para evaluar la extensión, se realizó la tomografía computadorizada, que arrojó una extensión a la vena cava inferior y al ovario izquierdo. Entonces se propuso la histerectomía total, anexetomía izquierda y salpingectomía derecha, retirada de leiomioma intravenoso y colocación de filtro definitivo en la vena cava inferior. En este artículo, describimos el abordaje anestésico dándole un énfasis particular a la corrección de las necesidades hídricas, como también a la evolución en el posoperatorio, destacando posibles aportes al abordaje futuro de casos parecidos.ConclusionesEl diagnóstico preoperatorio de leiomiomatosis endovenosa es extremadamente difícil. El tratamiento consiste en la extracción quirúrgica. Ese procedimiento involucra importantes pérdidas hemáticas y por eso, condicionó la preparación preoperatoria. En el intraoperatorio la fluidoterapia fue fundamental y la monitorización invasiva se asumió como preponderante en el auxilio del equilibrio hidroelectrolítico del enfermo. La existencia de un laboratorio de análisis clínicos accesible y con una respuesta rápida y una evaluación de la gasometría fue determinante. La unidad de cuidados intensivos equipada con ventilador para los cuidados postoperatorios fue otra necesidad originada por este caso

Endoscopic treatment of gastroesophageal reflux: a narrative review

Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a common chronic disease that affects one-third of the population worldwide. The reflux of gastric contents in contact with the epithelium of the esophagus causes injury and symptoms associated with GERD. In recent years, there have been significant advances in terms of diagnosis and the type of treatment used in patients, which leads to better identification of injuries and complications that may exist. The mainstay of therapy has been proton pump inhibitor (PPI) based pharmacological therapy and lifestyle and dietary modifications. When patients are refractory to medical treatment, the gold-standard treatment is anti-reflux procedures, such as Nissen 360-degree fundoplication and the Toupet partial fundoplication. Medical and surgical treatment have long-term complications. Currently, there are endoscopic procedures that may be options for the treatment of patients with GERD. In this review, endoscopic techniques for the treatment of GERD will be addressed

Model-Based Evolutionary Operation Design for Batch and Fed- Batch Antibiotic Production Bioprocesses

The control policy determination for batch and fed-batch antibiotic production bioprocesses is an important practical issue due to the high added value of these bioproducts. Since it is highly desirable to optimize the antibiotic production, several methods have been proposed aimed at this objective. Once having a mathematical model for the bioprocess, the optimization problem can be formulated within the framework of Pontryagin\u27s maximum principle and of the optimal control theory to determinate the best control trajectory for certain key manipulated variables, such as temperature, pH, and substrate feed rate. In this chapter, applications of these model-based techniques to optimize and control antibiotics production bioprocesses are reviewed and new aspects are emphasized. The cases analyzed included the optimization of the substrate feed rate in a fed-batch reactor and of the temperature in a batch reactor during penicillin fermentations. The main contributions of this study were: (i) the proposition of a different procedure for calculating the second switching time of substrate feed rate, (ii) the application of simpler numerical methods to solve the two-point boundary-value problem associated with the temperature profile optimization, and (iii) the demonstration that the non-isothermal operation is more productive in antibiotic than the operation under constant temperature

A Comissão de Desfavelamento e as representações da pobreza em Belo Horizonte na década de 1950

The present article analyzes photographs taken of the favelas in the city of Belo Horizonte from the Favela Extinction Commission. In 1955, this commission was created by the City Mayor, Celso Mello de Azevedo, in order to study and submit a solution for “the problem of the favelas”. The photographs were used in the social analysis reports and in the political rhetoric that justified the creation of a department for the “extinction of favelas” in Belo Horizonte. The images created a dialogue with the urban culture of the state capital, Belo Horizonte, from the perspective of engineers, lawyers and social workers from the Favela Extinction Commission, thereby creating a visuality that thereby justified a certain governability for the issue of favelas in the city.O artigo analisa as fotografias das favelas de Belo Horizonte elaboradas pela Comissão de Desfavelamento. Em 1955, a Comissão foi criada pelo prefeito Celso Mello de Azevedo para estudar e propor uma solução ao “problema das favelas”. As fotografias foram usadas nos relatórios de análise social e na retórica política que justificava a criação de um órgão para o “desfavelamento” de Belo Horizonte. As imagens dialogavam com a cultura urbana da capital do estado da época, e, com base no olhar de engenheiros, advogados e assistentes sociais da Comissão de Desfavelamento, criavam uma visualidade que justificava certa governabilidade para a questão das favelas na cidade

Salience and Learned Attention: A Study on the Perception of Uninflected Verbs by Brazilian Portuguese-English Bilinguals

The present study explores the potential reasons for L2 users’ difficulty with inflectional morphology. We investigated the effects of salience and learned attention on the processing of second language inflectional morphology by Brazilian Portuguese(BP)-English bilinguals. To analyze the effects of salience, we tested L2 users’ perception of past regular verbs and past irregular verbs ending with /?t/, which involves a more salient change in the verb root. To probe the influence of learned attention, we compared their behavior concerning regular past tense makers (–ed) and regular present tense markers (–s), as the latter occurs in a grammatical context in which Portuguese uses null morphemes. We conducted an Acceptability Judgment Task to observe L2 users’ behavior in relation to sentences that were ungrammatical due to the use of uninflected verbs. The results indicate that the participants were more sensitive to the absence of regular past tense than to the absence of regular present tense marking, but the absences of regular and irregular past tense markings were perceived similarly. The study's results corroborate models that account for the effects of cross-linguistic influence on learned attention to linguistic cues and also reverberate through second language teaching practices

On Accelerated Black Holes

The static and stationary C-metric are revisited in a generic framework and their interpretations studied in some detail. Specially those with two event horizons, one for the black hole and another for the acceleration. We found that: i) The spacetime of an accelerated static black hole is plagued by either conical singularities or lack of smoothness and compactness of the black hole horizon; ii) By using standard black hole thermodynamics we show that accelerated black holes have higher Hawking temperature than Unruh temperature of the accelerated frame; iii) The usual upper bound on the product of the mass and acceleration parameters <1/sqrt(27) is just a coordinate artifact. The main results are extended to accelerated rotating black holes with no significant changes.Comment: Substantial revision after referee's comments. 21 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables. (amsmath and graphicx packages). Accepted to Phys. Rev.

Local climate zones classification method from Copernicus land monitoring service datasets: an ArcGIS-based toolbox

Local Climate Zones (LCZ) have become a worldwide standard for identifying land cover classes, according to their climate-relevant morphological parameters. The LCZ's are mostly used to evaluate urban climate performance, particularly the relationship between the urban heat island effect (UHI) and the characteristics of the built-up environment. The World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT) has provided a supervised LCZ classification method based only on moderate resolution free satellite imagery, mostly Landsat 7 or 8 (30 m pixel size, in the visible spectrum brands); however, its' results are less accurate for European cities. Conversely, alternative geographic information system (GIS)-based methods developed so far require information that is hardly available to all, such as building footprints or heights. Here, the ArcGIS based LCZ from Copernicus Toolbox (LCZC) provides an alternative classification method that uses only freely accessible information from the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS), being possible to replicate it in 800 European urban locations. The method combines Urban Atlas (UA) and Corine Land Cover (CLC) with Tree Cover Density, Dominant Leaf Type and Grassland information, to produce a higher-resolution baseline shapefile that is classified according to each feature's dominant characteristics. The LCZC toolbox output is a LCZ raster map. It has been validated in five European cities: Athens, Barcelona, Lisbon, Marseille, and Naples.•The LCZC toolbox provides an alternative LCZ GIS-based classification, based on freely accessible CLMS datasets.•The use of CLMS shapefile higher-resolution inputs, particularly the UA and CLC datasets, ensures an output LCZ map that has greater detail and higher accuracy.•The availability of CLMS information in 800 European urban areas guarantees that the method can be replicated in those locations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Local climate zones datasets from five Southern European cities: Copernicus based classification maps of Athens, Barcelona, Lisbon, Marseille and Naples

Here, we provide Local Climate Zones (LCZ) map datasets from five Southern European Mediterranean cities: Athens (Greece), Barcelona (Spain), Lisbon (Portugal), Marseille (France) and Naples (Italy). The maps were produced according to a geographic information system (GIS)-based classification method, using freely available Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS) input data. Several maps are provided: (i) five LCZv1 maps (one per city) depicting urban LCZ's aggregated by density (no building height information); (ii) five LCZv1_leaf maps (one per city), identical to the previously mentioned ones, with tree cover LCZ classes A and B reclassification according to the Dominant Leaf Type (DLT) (deciduous or coniferous); (iii) two LCZv1_BH maps (Athens and Lisbon) distinguishing urban LCZ classes 123 and 456 according to the dominant building height (BH); and (iv) two LCZv1_leaf_BH maps (Athens and Lisbon) identical to the previous ones with added DLT-based land cover classification. The LCZ classification maps are available in both ArcGIS .lyr layer and GeoTIFF raster formats (Appendix 1 and 2), with a spatial resolution of 50×50m pixels, and are suitable to urban climate-related studies, particularly at the metropolitan and city scales of analysis. The data here provided is related to the article entitled «Local Climate Zones in five Southern European cities: an improved GIS-based classification method based on free data from the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service» [1], and the corresponding method/ArcGIS based custom Toolbox is freely available in «Local Climate Zones classification from Copernicus Land Monitoring Service datasets: an ArcGIS-based Toolbox» [2].info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio