Incorporating ecological functions in conservation decision making

Systematic conservation planning has become a standard approach globally, but prioritization of conservation efforts hardly considers species traits in decision making. This can be important for species persistence and thus adequacy of the conservation plan. Here, we developed and validated a novel approach of incorporating trophic information into a systematic conservation planning framework. We demonstrate the benefits of this approach using fish data from Europe's second largest river, the Danube. Our results show that adding trophic information leads to a different spatial configuration of priority areas at no additional cost. This can enhance identification of priority refugia for species in the lower position of the trophic web while simultaneously identifying areas that represent a more diverse species pool. Our methodological approach to incorporating species traits into systematic conservation planning is generally applicable, irrespective of realm, geographical area, and species composition and can potentially lead to more adequate conservation plans.SL was supported by ARC DECRA fellowship, project number DE130100565. VH was supported by a Ramon y Cajal contract (RYC‐2013‐13979) funded by the Spanish Government

KiDS+VIKING+GAMA: Halo occupation distributions and correlations of satellite numbers with a new halo model of the galaxy-matter bispectrum for galaxy-galaxy-galaxy lensing

Halo models and halo occupation distributions (HODs) are important tools to model the galaxy and matter distribution. We present and assess a new method for constraining the parameters of HODs using the gravitational lensing shear around galaxy pairs, galaxy-galaxy-galaxy-lensing (G3L). In contrast to galaxy-galaxy-lensing, G3L is sensitive to correlations between the per-halo numbers of galaxies from different populations. We use G3L to probe these correlations and test the default hypothesis that they are negligible. We derive a halo model for G3L and validate it with realistic mock data from the Millennium Simulation and a semi-analytic galaxy model. Then, we analyse public data from the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS), the VISTA Infrared Kilo-Degree Galaxy Survey (VIKING) and data from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly Survey (GAMA) to infer the HODs of galaxies at $z<0.5$ in five different stellar mass bins between $10^{8.5}h^{-2} M_\odot$ and $10^{11.5}h^{-2} M_\odot$ and two colours (red and blue), as well as correlations between satellite numbers. The analysis recovers the true HODs in the simulated data within the $68\%$ credibility range. The inferred HODs vary significantly with colour and stellar mass. There is also strong evidence ($>3\sigma$) for correlations, increasing with halo mass, between the numbers of red and blue satellites and galaxies with stellar masses below $10^{10} \Msun. Possible causes of these correlations are the selection of similar galaxies in different samples, the survey flux limit, or physical mechanisms like a fixed ratio between the satellite numbers of distinct populations. The decorrelation for halos with smaller masses is probably an effect of shot noise by low-occupancy halos. The inferred HODs can be used to complement galaxy-galaxy-lensing or galaxy clustering HOD studies or as input to cosmological analyses and improved mock galaxy catalogues.Comment: 20 pages + Appendix, 14 Figures. Submitted to Astronomy & Astrophysics. Abstract is abridge

Feasibility of the Engager™ aortic transcatheter valve system using a flexible over-the-wire design

OBJECTIVES The aim was to investigate the safety and feasibility of the redesigned Engager™ transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) system. METHODS Transapical aortic valve implantation with the Engager™ valve prosthesis was intended in 11 patients, and performed in 10. Endpoints were defined according to the valve academic research consortium recommendations for reporting outcomes of TAVI in clinical trials. RESULTS All 10 patients were implanted successfully. No devicerelated or delivery system complications like coronary obstruction or aortic dissection emerged. One patient (10%) died from non-device-related reasons at post-operative day 23 of multi-organ failure. The invasively measured peak-to-peak gradient after valve implantation was 7.1±3.5mmHg. In 90%, there was no or only trivial (≤grad I) aortic regurgitation due to paravalvular leakage. In 10% of the patients, aortic regurgitation grade I-II was observed. At 30-day follow up, the mean gradient was 15.6±4.9mmHg, and no more than a mild transvalvular and paravalvular aortic regurgitation was seen as assessed by transthoracic echocardiography. CONCLUSIONS Application of the Engager™ TAVI system is safe and feasible. Prosthesis deployment in an anatomically correct position was facilitated by the design of the valve prosthesis and was successful in all patients. No device or delivery-system-related complications emerged. Safety and feasibility endpoints were met. Good results concerning the aortic valve performance after implantation and at 30-day follow up were ascertained. These results encouraged the start of a European Pivotal trial including patients to dat

Evaluating the climate impact of aviation emission scenarios towards the Paris agreement including COVID-19 effects

Aviation is an important contributor to the global economy, satisfying society’s mobility needs. It contributes to climate change through CO2 and non-CO2 effects, including contrail-cirrus and ozone formation. There is currently significant interest in policies, regulations and research aiming to reduce aviation’s climate impact. Here we model the effect of these measures on global warming and perform a bottom-up analysis of potential technical improvements, challenging the assumptions of the targets for the sector with a number of scenarios up to 2100. We show that although the emissions targets for aviation are in line with the overall goals of the Paris Agreement, there is a high likelihood that the climate impact of aviation will not meet these goals. Our assessment includes feasible technological advancements and the availability of sustainable aviation fuels. This conclusion is robust for several COVID-19 recovery scenarios, including changes in travel behaviour

Yeast XRS2 and human NBN gene: Experimental evidence for homology using codon optimized cDNA

The genes, XRS2 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and NBN in mammals, have little sequence identity at the amino acid level. Nevertheless, they are both found together with MRE11 and RAD50 in a highly conserved protein complex which functions in the repair of DNA double-strand breaks. Here, we have examined the evolutionary and functional relationship of these two genes by cross-complementation experiments. These experiments necessitated sequence correction for specific codon usage before they could be successfully conducted. We present evidence that despite extreme sequence divergence nibrin can, at least partially, replace Xrs2 in the cellular DNA damage response, and Xrs2 is able to promote nuclear localization of MRE11 in NBS cells. We discuss that the extreme sequence divergence reflects a unique adaptive pressure during evolution related to the specific eukaryotic role for both Xrs2 and nibrin in the subcellular localisation of the DNA repair complex. This, we suggest, is of particular relevance when cells are infected by viruses. The conflict hypothesis of co-evolution of DNA repair genes and DNA viruses may thus explain the very low sequence identity of these two homologous genes

Freshwater ecoacoustics as a tool for continuous ecosystem monitoring

Copyright by the Ecological Society of AmericaPassive acoustic monitoring is gaining popularity in ecology as a practical and non-invasive approach to surveying ecosystems. This technique is increasingly being used to monitor terrestrial systems, particularly bird populations, given that it can help to track temporal dynamics of populations and ecosystem health without the need for expensive resampling. We suggest that underwater acoustic monitoring presents a viable, non-invasive, and largely unexplored approach to monitoring freshwater ecosystems, yielding information about three key ecological elements of aquatic environments – (1) fishes, (2) macroinvertebrates, and (3) physicochemical processes – as well as providing data on anthropogenic noise levels. We survey the literature on this approach, which is substantial but scattered across disciplines, and call for more cross-disciplinary work on recording and analysis techniques. We also discuss technical issues and knowledge gaps, including background noise, spatiotemporal variation, and the need for centralized reference collection repositories. These challenges need to be overcome before the full potential of passive acoustics in dynamic detection of biophysical processes can be realized and used to inform conservation practitioners and managers

VocDoc, what happened to my voice? Towards automatically capturing vocal fatigue in the wild

Objective: Voice problems that arise during everyday vocal use can hardly be captured by standard outpatient voice assessments. In preparation for a digital health application to automatically assess longitudinal voice data ‘in the wild’ – the VocDoc, the aim of this paper was to study vocal fatigue from the speaker’s perspective, the healthcare professional’s perspective, and the ‘machine’s’ perspective. Methods: We collected data of four voice healthy speakers completing a 90-min reading task. Every 10 min the speakers were asked about subjective voice characteristics. Then, we elaborated on the task of elapsed speaking time recognition: We carried out listening experiments with speech and language therapists and employed random forests on the basis of extracted acoustic features. We validated our models speaker-dependently and speaker-independently and analysed underlying feature importances. For an additional, clinical application-oriented scenario, we extended our dataset for lecture recordings of another two speakers. Results: Self- and expert-assessments were not consistent. With mean F1 scores up to 0.78, automatic elapsed speaking time recognition worked reliably in the speaker-dependent scenario only. A small set of acoustic features – other than features previously reported to reflect vocal fatigue – was found to universally describe long-term variations of the voice. Conclusion: Vocal fatigue seems to have individual effects across different speakers. Machine learning has the potential to automatically detect and characterise vocal changes over time. Significance: Our study provides technical underpinnings for a future mobile solution to objectively capture pathological long-term voice variations in everyday life settings and make them clinically accessible

KiDS+VIKING+GAMA:Testing semi-analytic models of galaxy evolution with galaxy-galaxy-galaxy lensing

Several semi-analytic models (SAMs) try to explain how galaxies form, evolve and interact inside the dark matter large-scale structure. These SAMs can be tested by comparing their predictions for galaxy-galaxy-galaxy-lensing (G3L), which is weak gravitational lensing around galaxy pairs, with observations. We evaluate the SAMs by Henriques et al. (2015; H15) and by Lagos et al. (2012; L12), implemented in the Millennium Run, by comparing their predictions for G3L to observations at smaller scales than previous studies and also for pairs of lens galaxies from different populations. We compare the G3L signal predicted by the SAMs to measurements in the overlap of the Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey (GAMA), the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS), and the VISTA Kilo-degree Infrared Galaxy survey (VIKING), splitting lens galaxies into two colour and five stellar-mass samples. Using an improved G3L estimator, we measure the three-point correlation of the matter distribution for mixed lens pairs with galaxies from different samples, and unmixed lens pairs with galaxies from the same sample. Predictions by the H15 SAM agree with the observations for all colour-selected and all but one stellar-mass-selected sample with 95% confidence. Deviations occur for lenses with stellar masses below $9.5h^{-2}\mathrm{M}_\odot$ at scales below $0.2h^{-1}\mathrm{Mpc}$. Predictions by the L12 SAM for stellar-mass selected samples and red galaxies are significantly higher than observed, while the predicted signal for blue galaxy pairs is too low. The L12 SAM predicts more pairs of small stellar-mass and red galaxies than the H15 SAM and the observations, as well as fewer pairs of blue galaxies. Likely explanations are different treatments of environmental effects by the SAMs and different models of the initial mass function. We conclude that G3L provides a stringent test for models of galaxy formation and evolution.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, replaced with version accepted to Astronomy & Astrophysics after considering referees comment

The DYD-RCT protocol:an on-line randomised controlled trial of an interactive computer-based intervention compared with a standard information website to reduce alcohol consumption among hazardous drinkers

Background: Excessive alcohol consumption is a significant public health problem throughout the world. Although there are a range of effective interventions to help heavy drinkers reduce their alcohol consumption, these have little proven population-level impact. Researchers internationally are looking at the potential of Internet interventions in this area. Methods/Design: In a two-arm randomised controlled trial, an on-line psychologically enhanced interactive computer-based intervention is compared with a flat, text-based information web-site. Recruitment, consent, randomisation and data collection are all on-line. The primary outcome is total past-week alcohol consumption; secondary outcomes include hazardous or harmful drinking, dependence, harm caused by alcohol, and mental health. A health economic analysis is included. Discussion: This trial will provide information on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an on-line intervention to help heavy drinkers drink less. Trial registration: International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number Register ISRCTN31070347