839 research outputs found
Multiple stressors in a top predator seabird: potential ecological consequences of environmental contaminants, population health and breeding conditions
Environmental contaminants may have impacts on reproduction and survival in wildlife populations suffering from multiple stressors. This study examined whether adverse effects of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) increased with poor population health and breeding conditions in three colonies (60–74°N) of great skua (Stercorarius skua) in the north-eastern Atlantic (Shetland, Iceland and Bjørnøya [Bear Island]). POPs (organochlorines [OCs] and polybrominated diphenyl ethers [BDEs]) were measured in plasma of incubating birds (n = 222), concentrations differing nearly tenfold among colonies: Bjørnøya (2009) > Bjørnøya (2010) > Iceland (2009) > Shetland (2009). Reproductive success (hatching success and chick survival) showed that breeding conditions were favourable in Shetland and at Bjørnøya (2010), but were very poor in Iceland and at Bjørnøya (2009). Biomarkers indicated that health was poor in the Shetland population compared to the other populations. Females whose chicks hatched late had high POP concentrations in all colonies except at Bjørnøya (2010), and females losing their eggs at Bjørnøya (2009) tended to have higher concentrations than those hatching. Moreover, there was a negative relationship between female POP concentrations and chick body condition at hatching in Iceland and at Bjørnøya (2010). Supplementary feeding experiments were conducted, and in Iceland where feeding conditions were poor, significant negative relationships were found between female POP concentrations and daily growth-rate in first-hatched chicks of control nests, but not in food supplemented nests. This suggests that negative impacts of POPs were mitigated by improved feeding conditions. For second-chicks, there was a strong negative relationship between the female POP concentrations and growth-rate, but no effects of supplementary feeding. Lowered adult return-rate between breeding seasons with increasing POP loads were found both at Bjørnøya (2009) and in Shetland, especially related to BDEs. This indicates stronger fitness consequences of POPs following seasons with very poor breeding conditions and/or high reproductive effort. This study suggests that the impacts of POPs may differ depending on population health and breeding conditions, and that even low concentrations of POPs could have ecological consequences during adverse circumstances. This is important with regard to risk assessment of biomagnifying contaminants in marine ecosystems
Particlization in hybrid models
In hybrid models, which combine hydrodynamical and transport approaches to
describe different stages of heavy-ion collisions, conversion of fluid to
individual particles, particlization, is a non-trivial technical problem. We
describe in detail how to find the particlization hypersurface in a 3+1
dimensional model, and how to sample the particle distributions evaluated using
the Cooper-Frye procedure to create an ensemble of particles as an initial
state for the transport stage. We also discuss the role and magnitude of the
negative contributions in the Cooper-Frye procedure.Comment: 18 pages, 28 figures, EPJA: Topical issue on "Relativistic Hydro- and
Thermodynamics"; version accepted for publication, typos and error in Eq.(1)
corrected, the purpose of sampling and change from UrQMD to fluid clarified,
added discussion why attempts to cancel negative contributions of Cooper-Frye
are not applicable her
Network Cournot Competition
Cournot competition is a fundamental economic model that represents firms
competing in a single market of a homogeneous good. Each firm tries to maximize
its utility---a function of the production cost as well as market price of the
product---by deciding on the amount of production. In today's dynamic and
diverse economy, many firms often compete in more than one market
simultaneously, i.e., each market might be shared among a subset of these
firms. In this situation, a bipartite graph models the access restriction where
firms are on one side, markets are on the other side, and edges demonstrate
whether a firm has access to a market or not. We call this game \emph{Network
Cournot Competition} (NCC). In this paper, we propose algorithms for finding
pure Nash equilibria of NCC games in different situations. First, we carefully
design a potential function for NCC, when the price functions for markets are
linear functions of the production in that market. However, for nonlinear price
functions, this approach is not feasible. We model the problem as a nonlinear
complementarity problem in this case, and design a polynomial-time algorithm
that finds an equilibrium of the game for strongly convex cost functions and
strongly monotone revenue functions. We also explore the class of price
functions that ensures strong monotonicity of the revenue function, and show it
consists of a broad class of functions. Moreover, we discuss the uniqueness of
equilibria in both of these cases which means our algorithms find the unique
equilibria of the games. Last but not least, when the cost of production in one
market is independent from the cost of production in other markets for all
firms, the problem can be separated into several independent classical
\emph{Cournot Oligopoly} problems. We give the first combinatorial algorithm
for this widely studied problem
Graduate employability learning through Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction (SDLMI) driven digital app
A graph-based integration of multimodal brain imaging data for the detection of early mild cognitive impairment (E-MCI)
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia in older adults. By the time an individual has been diagnosed with AD, it may be too late for potential disease modifying therapy to strongly influence outcome. Therefore, it is critical to develop better diagnostic tools that can recognize AD at early symptomatic and especially pre-symptomatic stages. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI), introduced to describe a prodromal stage of AD, is presently classified into early and late stages (E-MCI, L-MCI) based on severity. Using a graph-based semi-supervised learning (SSL) method to integrate multimodal brain imaging data and select valid imaging-based predictors for optimizing prediction accuracy, we developed a model to differentiate E-MCI from healthy controls (HC) for early detection of AD. Multimodal brain imaging scans (MRI and PET) of 174 E-MCI and 98 HC participants from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) cohort were used in this analysis. Mean targeted region-of-interest (ROI) values extracted from structural MRI (voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and FreeSurfer V5) and PET (FDG and Florbetapir) scans were used as features. Our results show that the graph-based SSL classifiers outperformed support vector machines for this task and the best performance was obtained with 66.8% cross-validated AUC (area under the ROC curve) when FDG and FreeSurfer datasets were integrated. Valid imaging-based phenotypes selected from our approach included ROI values extracted from temporal lobe, hippocampus, and amygdala. Employing a graph-based SSL approach with multimodal brain imaging data appears to have substantial potential for detecting E-MCI for early detection of prodromal AD warranting further investigation
West Nile virus encephalitis in kidney transplanted patient, first case in Hungary : Case report
Pure point diffraction implies zero entropy for Delone sets with uniform cluster frequencies
Delone sets of finite local complexity in Euclidean space are investigated.
We show that such a set has patch counting and topological entropy 0 if it has
uniform cluster frequencies and is pure point diffractive. We also note that
the patch counting entropy is 0 whenever the repetitivity function satisfies a
certain growth restriction.Comment: 16 pages; revised and slightly expanded versio
The reporting of studies conducted using observational routinely collected health data statement for pharmacoepidemiology (RECORD-PE).
In pharmacoepidemiology, routinely
collected data from electronic health
records (including primary care
databases, registries, and
administrative healthcare claims) are a
resource for research evaluating the
real world effectiveness and safety of
medicines. Currently available
guidelines for the reporting of research
using non-randomised, routinely
collected data—specifically the
REporting of studies Conducted using
Observational Routinely collected
health Data (RECORD) and the
Strengthening the Reporting of
OBservational studies in Epidemiology
(STROBE) statements—do not
capture the complexity of
pharmacoepidemiological research.
We have therefore extended the
RECORD statement to include
reporting guidelines specific to
pharmacoepidemiological research
(RECORD-PE). This article includes the
RECORD-PE checklist (also available on
www.record-statement.org) and
explains each checklist item with
examples of good reporting. We
anticipate that increasing use of the
RECORD-PE guidelines by researchers
and endorsement and adherence by
journal editors will improve the
standards of reporting of
pharmacoepidemiological research
undertaken using routinely collected
data. This improved transparency will
benefit the research community,
patient care, and ultimately improve
public health
The Effects of Voluntary Disclosure and Dividend Propensity on Prices Leading Earnings
We investigate the joint effects of dividend propensity (i.e. whether a firm pays cash dividends) and voluntary disclosure on the relationship between current stock returns and future earnings. We examine whether dividend propensity and voluntary disclosure act as substitutes or complements in the financial communication process. We also examine whether the effects of dividend propensity and voluntary disclosure vary between high- and lowgrowth firms. Consistent with prior studies, we find that share price anticipation of earnings improves with increasing levels of annual report narrative disclosure, and that firms that pay dividends exhibit higher levels of share price anticipation of earnings than non-dividend-paying firms. The paper adds to the literature on share price anticipation of earnings in two crucial respects. First we show that the associations of voluntary disclosure and dividend propensity with share price anticipation of earnings are statistically significant for high-growth firms and insignificant for low-growth firms. Second we show that the significant effects we find for dividend propensity and voluntary disclosure in high-growth firms are not perfectly additive
Alternative farrowing systems: design criteria for farrowing systems based on the biological needs of sows and piglets
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