Effects of forest fragmentation on the vertical stratification of neotropical bats

Vertical stratification is a key component of the biological complexity of rainforests. Understanding community- and species-level responses to disturbance across forest strata is paramount for evidence-based conservation and management. However, even for bats, known to extensively explore multiple layers of the complex three-dimensional forest space, studies are biased towards understory-based surveys and only few assessments of vertical stratification were done in fragmented landscapes. Using both ground and canopy mist-nets, we investigated how the vertical structure of bat assemblages is influenced by forest fragmentation in the experimentally fragmented landscape of the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, Central Amazon, Brazil. Over a three year-period, we captured 3077 individuals of 46 species in continuous forest (CF) and in 1, 10 and 100 ha forest fragments. In both CF and forest fragments, the upper forest strata sustained more diverse bat assemblages than the equivalent understory layer, and the midstory layers had significantly higher bat abundance in fragments than in CF. Artibeus lituratus and Rhinophylla pumilio exhibited significant shifts in their vertical stratification patterns between CF and fragments (e.g. R. pumilio was more associated with the upper strata in fragments than in CF). Altogether, our study suggests that fragmentation modulates the vertical stratification of bat assemblages

Removing zero Lyapunov exponents in volume-preserving flows

Baraviera and Bonatti proved that it is possible to perturb, in the c^1 topology, a volume-preserving and partial hyperbolic diffeomorphism in order to obtain a non-zero sum of all the Lyapunov exponents in the central direction. In this article we obtain the analogous result for volume-preserving flows.Comment: 10 page

Ab initio study of electron transport in dry poly(G)-poly(C) A-DNA strands

The bias-dependent transport properties of short poly(G)-poly(C) A-DNA strands attached to Au electrodes are investigated with first principles electronic transport methods. By using the non- equilibrium Green's function approach combined with self-interaction corrected density functional theory, we calculate the fully self-consistent coherent I-V curve of various double-strand polymeric DNA fragments. We show that electronic wave-function localization, induced either by the native electrical dipole and/or by the electrostatic disorder originating from the first few water solvation layers, drastically suppresses the magnitude of the elastic conductance of A-DNA oligonucleotides. We then argue that electron transport through DNA is the result of sequence-specific short-range tunneling across a few bases combined with general diffusive/inelastic processes.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures, 1 tabl

A text mining approach for the extraction of kinetic information from literature

Systems biology has fostered interest in the use of kinetic models to better understand the dynamic behavior of metabolic networks in a wide variety of conditions. Unfortunately, in most cases, data available in different databases are not sufficient for the development of such models, since a significant part of the relevant information is still scattered in the literature. Thus, it becomes essential to develop specific and powerful text mining tools towards this aim. In this context, this work has as main objective the development of a text mining tool to extract, from scientific literature, kinetic parameters, their respective values and their relations with enzymes and metabolites. The pipeline proposed integrates the development of a novel plug-in over the text mining tool @Note2. Overall, the results validate the developed approach

Health-Related Quality of Life in Portuguese Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C

INTRODUCTION: Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection impacts multiple health and psychosocial dimensions and encompasses a significant overall burden as it progresses to advanced stages of hepatic disease. AIMS: To evaluate for the first time health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of a subset of Portuguese adult patients with chronic hepatitis C using the Portuguese versions of generic, Short-Form 12 Health Survey (SF-12v2), and disease-specific, Chronic Liver Disease Questionnaire (CLDQ), instruments; to assess psychometric properties of CLDQ, Portuguese version. METHODS: HRQoL was evaluated in Portuguese adult outpatients with chronic hepatitis C attending the Hepatology Clinic at Centro Hospitalar do Porto, using SF-12v2 and CLDQ. This transversal study was conducted between April and October 2015. RESULTS: Eighty outpatients with chronic hepatitis C were enrolled, with mean age 57 years (standard deviation 11), 67.5% male, all Caucasian, 76.3% diagnosed for >10 years, 66.3% with C virus genotype 1, 65.0% with hepatic cirrhosis (94.2% of which Child-Pugh A), and 46.3% under current antiviral treatment. For CLDQ internal consistency, Cronbach's α was 0.88; for construct validity, correlations ranged from 0.36 to 0.80 (p < 0.01). Mean CLDQ scores ranged from 4.25 (Worry) to 5.78 (Abdominal Symptoms). Lower scores were observed for Worry, Fatigue, and Emotional Function domains. Statistically significant differences were found in median values of Worry (CLDQ) and Role Emotional (SF-12) (p < 0.05) for "current antiviral treatment," with higher scores for patients that concluded therapy. CONCLUSION: HRQoL was negatively affected in several domains in Portuguese patients with chronic hepatitis C; oral antiviral treatment correlated with better quality of life, assuring its benefits on this population; the CLDQ Portuguese version revealed adequate psychometric properties, and was useful in assessing quality of life in Portuguese HCV patients.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Evolutionary algorithms for offline and online optimization of fed-batch fermentation processes

In this work, Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) were used to control a recombinant bacterial fed-batch fermentation process that aims to produce a biopharmaceutical product. Initially, a novel EA, based on real-valued representations and that makes use of individuals with variable sized chromosomes, was used to optimize the process, prior to its run (offline optimization), by simultaneously adjusting the feeding trajectory, the duration of the fermentation and the initial conditions of the process2. A white box mathematical model derived from literature1 and fine tuned by practice was used in the fitness function, based on differential equations and kinetic algebraic equations. Outstanding productivity levels were obtained and the results are validated by practice. Finally, online optimization is proposed, where the EA is running simultaneously with the fermentation process, receiving information regarding the process, updating its internal model and reaching new solutions that will be used to online control. Results obtained by simulation of the system show that without online optimization minor changes cause the process to reach sub-optimal levels in the long run. On the other hand, when online optimization is performed, minor changes are corrected and the behaviour of the system is near optimal

Revisiting Clifford algebras and spinors III: conformal structures and twistors in the paravector model of spacetime

This paper is the third of a series of three, and it is the continuation of math-ph/0412074 and math-ph/0412075. After reviewing the conformal spacetime structure, conformal maps are described in Minkowski spacetime as the twisted adjoint representation of the group Spin_+(2,4), acting on paravectors. Twistors are then presented via the paravector model of Clifford algebras and related to conformal maps in the Clifford algebra over the lorentzian R{4,1}$ spacetime. We construct twistors in Minkowski spacetime as algebraic spinors associated with the Dirac-Clifford algebra Cl(1,3)(C) using one lower spacetime dimension than standard Clifford algebra formulations, since for this purpose the Clifford algebra over R{4,1} is also used to describe conformal maps, instead of R{2,4}. Although some papers have already described twistors using the algebra Cl(1,3)(C), isomorphic to Cl(4,1), the present formulation sheds some new light on the use of the paravector model and generalizations.Comment: 17 page

Evolutionary algorithms for static and dynamic optimization of fed-batch fermentation processes

In this work, Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) are used to control a recombinant bacterial fed-batch fermentation process, that aims at producing a bio-pharmaceutical product. In a first stage, a novel EA is used to optimize the process, prior to its start, by simultaneously adjusting the feeding trajectory, the duration of the fermentation and the initial conditions of the process. In a second stage, dynamic optimization is proposed, where the EA is running simultaneously with the fermentation process, receiving information regarding from the process, updating its internal model, reaching new solutions that will be used for online control