Patterns of alien plant distribution in a river landscape following an extreme flood

AbstractThe availability of suitable patches and gaps in the landscape is a crucial determinant of invasibility for alien plants. The type and arrangement of patches in the landscape may both facilitate and obstruct alien plant invasions, depending on whether alien species perceive the patches as barriers. In February 2000 tropical weather systems caused an extreme flood with an estimated return interval of 90 to 200 years in the Sabie River, South Africa. The impact of the 2000 flood on the Sabie River landscape provides an array of patches that may provide suitable resources for the establishment of alien plants. This study examines the distribution of alien plants in relation to patchiness of the Sabie River landscape. Our hypothesis was that if certain patches in the river landscape do not represent environmental barriers to alien plant invasion, alien species will occur preferentially in these patch types. The Sabie River within Kruger National Park [KNP] was divided into six patch types (zones, channel types, elevations, geomorphic units, substrates and flood imprint types). We then examined the distribution of native and alien woody and herbaceous density and species richness in patches. The density and species richness of alien plants in the Sabie River in KNP is very low when compared to the density and species richness of native plants. Some patches (bedrock distributary and braid bar geomorphic units) contained higher density and richness of alien plants compared to the other patches examined, indicating that these locations in the river landscape offer the resources necessary for alien plant establishment. Individual alien species are also associated with different parts of the river landscape. Failure of large numbers of alien plants to establish after the 2000 flood is most likely due to a combination of factors—the plant specific barriers imposed by landscape patchiness, the high abundance and richness of native vegetation leading to competition, and for some species certainly, the clearing by the management (Working for Water) programme

Modelling the demand and uncertainty of low voltage networks and the effect of non-domestic consumers

The increasing use and spread of low carbon technologies are expected to cause new patterns in electric demand and set novel challenges to a distribution network operator (DNO). In this study, we build upon a recently introduced method, called 'buddying', which simulates low voltage (LV) networks of both residential and non-domestic (e.g. shops, offices, schools, hospitals, etc.) customers through optimisation (via a genetic algorithm) of demands based on limited monitored and customer data. The algorithm assigns a limited but diverse number of monitored households (the 'buddies') to the unmonitored customers on a network. We study and compare two algorithms, one where substation monitoring data is available and a second where no substation information is used. Despite the roll out of monitoring equipment at domestic properties and/or substations, less data is available for commercial customers. This study focuses on substations with commercial customers most of which have no monitored 'buddy', in which case a profile must be created. Due to the volatile nature of the low voltage networks, uncertainty bounds are crucial for operational purposes. We introduce and demonstrate two techniques for modelling the confidence bounds on the modelled LV networks. The first method uses probabilistic forecast methods based on substation monitoring; the second only uses a simple bootstrap of the sample of monitored customers but has the advantage of not requiring monitoring at the substation. These modelling tools, buddying and uncertainty bounds, can give further insight to a DNO to better plan and manage the network when limited information is available

The existence and break-up of the Antarctic land bridge as indicated by both amphi-Pacific distributions and tectonics

Amphi-Pacific disjunct distributions between South America and Australasia are correlated with the breakup and changing palaeo-climate of Gondwana. For a long period, with a temperate climate, Antarctica formed a land bridge between Australia and South America, allowing species to disperse/vicariate between both continents. Dated phylogenies in the literature, showing sister-clades with a distribution disjunction between South America and Australia, were used for the correlation. The initiation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, and a change to a colder Antarctic climate is associated with the opening of the Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica at c. 30 Ma, and the final separation of Australia and Antarctica along the South Tasman Rise at c. 45 Ma. The distribution data highlighted the existence of a southern disjunct distribution pattern, which may be the result of continental vicariance/dispersal. This is strongly indicative of a connection between Antarctica, South America and Australia; which later provided a dispersal pathway and facilitated vicariance after break up. The taxa that likely dispersed/vicariated via Antarctica included all species with a more (sub)tropical climate preference. Twelve distributions, younger than 30 Ma, are interpreted as the result of long distance dispersal between South America and Australia; these taxa are suited to a temperate climate. The climatic signal shown by all taxa is possibly a consequence of the Australian plate\u27s asynchronous rifting over tens of millions of years in combination with climate changes. These events may have provided opportunities for tropical and sub-tropical species to disperse and speciate earlier than what we observe for the more temperate taxa

C3 Glomerulopathy and Related Disorders in Children: Etiology-Phenotype Correlation and Outcomes

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Membranoproliferative GN and C3 glomerulopathy are rare and overlapping disorders associated with dysregulation of the alternative complement pathway. Specific etiologic data for pediatric membranoproliferative GN/C3 glomerulopathy are lacking, and outcome data are based on retrospective studies without etiologic data. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS: A total of 80 prevalent pediatric patients with membranoproliferative GN/C3 glomerulopathy underwent detailed phenotyping and long-term follow-up within the National Registry of Rare Kidney Diseases (RaDaR). Risk factors for kidney survival were determined using a Cox proportional hazards model. Kidney and transplant graft survival was determined using the Kaplan-Meier method. RESULTS: Central histology review determined 39 patients with C3 glomerulopathy, 31 with immune-complex membranoproliferative GN, and ten with immune-complex GN. Patients were aged 2-15 (median, 9; interquartile range, 7-11) years. Median complement C3 and C4 levels were 0.31 g/L and 0.14 g/L, respectively; acquired (anticomplement autoantibodies) or genetic alternative pathway abnormalities were detected in 46% and 9% of patients, respectively, across all groups, including those with immune-complex GN. Median follow-up was 5.18 (interquartile range, 2.13-8.08) years. Eleven patients (14%) progressed to kidney failure, with nine transplants performed in eight patients, two of which failed due to recurrent disease. Presence of >50% crescents on the initial biopsy specimen was the sole variable associated with kidney failure in multivariable analysis (hazard ratio, 6.2; 95% confidence interval, 1.05 to 36.6; P50% crescents on the initial biopsy specimen. CONCLUSIONS: Crescentic disease was a key risk factor associated with kidney failure in a national cohort of pediatric patients with membranoproliferative GN/C3 glomerulopathy and immune-complex GN. Presenting eGFR and crescentic disease help define prognostic groups in pediatric C3 glomerulopathy. Acquired abnormalities of the alternative pathway were commonly identified but not a risk factor for kidney failure

Language Identification in Short Utterances Using Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Networks

Zazo R, Lozano-Diez A, Gonzalez-Dominguez J, T. Toledano D, Gonzalez-Rodriguez J (2016) Language Identification in Short Utterances Using Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Networks. PLoS ONE 11(1): e0146917. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0146917Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) have recently outperformed other state-of-the-art approaches, such as i-vector and Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), in automatic Language Identification (LID), particularly when dealing with very short utterances (similar to 3s). In this contribution we present an open-source, end-to-end, LSTM RNN system running on limited computational resources (a single GPU) that outperforms a reference i-vector system on a subset of the NIST Language Recognition Evaluation (8 target languages, 3s task) by up to a 26%. This result is in line with previously published research using proprietary LSTM implementations and huge computational resources, which made these former results hardly reproducible. Further, we extend those previous experiments modeling unseen languages (out of set, OOS, modeling), which is crucial in real applications. Results show that a LSTM RNN with OOS modeling is able to detect these languages and generalizes robustly to unseen OOS languages. Finally, we also analyze the effect of even more limited test data (from 2.25s to 0.1s) proving that with as little as 0.5s an accuracy of over 50% can be achieved.This work has been supported by project CMC-V2: Caracterizacion, Modelado y Compensacion de Variabilidad en la Señal de Voz (TEC2012-37585-C02-01), funded by Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, Spain

Simultaneous activities in the household and residential electricity demand in Spain

Recent research and policy studies on the low-carbon future highlight the importance of flexible electricity demand. This might be problematic particularly for residential electricity demand, which is related to simultaneous consumers’ practices in the household. This paper analyses issues of simultaneity in residential electricity demand in Spain. It makes use of the 2011 Spanish Time Use Survey data with comparisons from the previous Spanish Time Use Survey and the Harmonised European Time Use Surveys. Findings show that media activities are associated the highest levels of continuity and simultaneity, particularly in the early and late parts of the evening during weekdays

Enteric Infection with Citrobacter rodentium Induces Coagulative Liver Necrosis and Hepatic Inflammation Prior to Peak Infection and Colonic Disease

Acute and chronic forms of inflammation are known to affect liver responses and susceptibility to disease and injury. Furthermore, intestinal microbiota has been shown critical in mediating inflammatory host responses in various animal models. Using C. rodentium, a known enteric bacterial pathogen, we examined liver responses to gastrointestinal infection at various stages of disease pathogenesis. For the first time, to our knowledge, we show distinct liver pathology associated with enteric infection with C. rodentium in C57BL/6 mice, characterized by increased inflammation and hepatitis index scores as well as prominent periportal hepatocellular coagulative necrosis indicative of thrombotic ischemic injury in a subset of animals during the early course of C. rodentium pathogenesis. Histologic changes in the liver correlated with serum elevation of liver transaminases, systemic and liver resident cytokines, as well as signal transduction changes prior to peak bacterial colonization and colonic disease. C. rodentium infection in C57BL/6 mice provides a potentially useful model to study acute liver injury and inflammatory stress under conditions of gastrointestinal infection analogous to enteropathogenic E. coli infection in humans.United States. Army Research Office (Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology grant 6915539 (SRT))National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant P01 CA026731)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant P30 ES02109)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Toxicology Training grant ES-070220

Effects of foot and ankle devices on balance, gait and falls in adults with sensory perception loss

Foot and ankle devices are being developed as a method of preventing people with sensory perception loss sustaining a fall. Such devices are believed to work by reducing the likelihood of a fall by improving the balance and gait of the user.The objective of the review was to evaluate the effectiveness of foot and ankle devices for the prevention of falls and the improvement of balance and gait in adults with sensory perception loss.Participants were community-dwelling adults with bilateral pathological sensory perception loss.The current review evaluated any foot or ankle device, including but not restricted to, all types of footwear (therapeutic and retail), insoles (customized and prefabricated) and ankle-foot orthoses (AFOs).In the absence of randomized controlled trials (RCT), the review considered experimental and epidemiological study designs, except case series, individual case reports and descriptive cross-sectional studies.The primary outcome was number of falls. Secondary outcome measures were clinical or laboratory measures of balance or gait.A search for published and unpublished literature from inception to March 2015 written in the English language was conducted across a number of major electronic databases. A three-step search strategy was developed using MeSH terminology and keywords to ensure all that relevant materials are captured.Methodological quality of included studies was assessed by two reviewers, who appraised each study independently, using standardized Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) critical appraisal tools.Quantitative data were extracted from the studies that were identified as meeting the criteria for methodological quality using the standardized JBI data extraction tools.Due to the heterogeneity of populations, interventions and outcome measures, meta-analyses were not possible and results are presented in narrative form.Nine trials (from 10 papers) involving 238 participants, (14 with multiple sclerosis and 16 with idiopathic peripheral neuropathy, 150 with diabetic neuropathy) and 58 controls were included in the review. No study reported falls as an outcome measure. The results of the included studies found that in people with sensory perception loss, postural sway improved with vibrating insoles and AFO, altering the softness and texture of the top cover had no effect on postural sway, wearing footwear over long distances or AFOs improved step-to-step consistency, and no foot and ankle device was reported to have a negative effect on the balance or gait of people with sensory perception loss. The methodological quality of the included studies was poor. No study used a randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodology. No study incorporated a follow-up period or tested the intervention within the context of the intended clinical environment.There is limited evidence to suggest that footwear and insole devices can artificially alter postural stability and may reduce the step-to-step variability in adults with sensory perception loss. Varying the material properties of an insole does not notably affect static balance or gait

Are MRI-defined fat infiltrations in the multifidus muscles associated with low back pain?

BACKGROUND: Because training of the lumbar muscles is a commonly recommended intervention in low back pain (LBP), it is important to clarify whether lumbar muscle atrophy is related to LBP. Fat infiltration seems to be a late stage of muscular degeneration, and can be measured in a non-invasive manner using magnetic resonance imaging. The purpose of this study was to investigate if fat infiltration in the lumbar multifidus muscles (LMM) is associated with LBP in adults and adolescents. METHODS: In total, 412 adults (40-year-olds) and 442 adolescents (13-year-olds) from the general Danish population participated in this cross-sectional cohort study. People with LBP were identified through questionnaires. Using MRI, fat infiltration of the LMM was visually graded as none, slight or severe. Odds ratios were calculated for both age groups, taking into account sex, body composition and leisure time physical activity for both groups, and physical workload (in adults only) or daily bicycling (in adolescents only). RESULTS: Fat infiltration was noted in 81% of the adults but only 14% of the adolescents. In the adults, severe fat infiltration was strongly associated with ever having had LBP (OR 9.2; 95% CI 2.0–43.2), and with having LBP in the past year (OR 4.1; 1.5–11.2), but there was no such association in adolescents. None of the investigated moderating factors had an obvious effect on the OR in the adults. CONCLUSION: Fat infiltration in the LMM is strongly associated with LBP in adults only. However, it will be necessary to quantify these measurements objectively and to investigate the direction of this link longitudinally in order to determine if the abnormal muscle is the cause of LBP or vice versa