Foraging Behavior of Tetramorium Caespitum in an Urban Environment: the Effect of Food Quality on Foraging

Animals\u27 foraging strategies are directly related to their fitness. Proposed models of optimal foraging assume that animals strategize in terms of maximizing benefits over the cost of acquiring resources. Ants are social insects that are comparable in biomass to humans inhabiting the plant. As such, it is crucial to understand the foraging strategies of such an influential member of the ecosystem. With the ever-increasing rate of urbanization and human encroachment, it is even more important to consider the foraging patterns of species inhabiting urban areas. In this study we investigate optimal foraging strategies in the pavement ant, Tetramorium caespitum. Specifically, our study examined if pavement ant colonies would alter their foraging behavior so as to maximize benefits and minimize costs. To do this, we exposed the ants to food of two varying nutritional qualities to test how they allocated foragers across these two resources.Food quantity, distance to the food source and terrain were the same in both types of resources. Across a two day period, we saw that T. caespitum colonies increased ant recruitment when food quality increased and decreased ant recruitment when food quality decreased. Our control treatments where food quality did not change also did not see a change in ant recruitment. This study shows that species that live in urban areas, such as T. caespitum, can adapt to forage optimally. Studies like this can be used to make predictions about survival of species that are newly associated with urban environments

TAS AKADIR, Tas Anyaman Bernahan Dasar Akar Keladi Air

Water taro root plants are wild plants mostly found abundantly in swamp area in the middle of the jungle and along the Kapuas river bank. Taro root plants are like creeping roots on trees with the roots dangling down along the tree height, with an estimate length 3 up to 7 metres. The shapes of these plants resemble stem nut, and if the inside part of taro root plants are pared, there is strong root of taro root plants to bind off. At a glance, the plants look like processed rattan, but taro root plants are much better due to their smooth and strong texture of the roots which makes the plants easy to be plaited into various handicraft. These plants are suitable as raw materials for webbing. For webbing handicraft, taro root plants are the typical commodity from West Kalimantan especially because of the raw matarials of these plants can only be found in Pontianak, West Kalimantan. Having seen a huge market opportunity in Pontianak, this business in promosing. Akadir Bag handmade product with the best servise and a good quality of raw materials can give satisfaction to the consumers. This is the main goal of promoting this product and introduce it as unique bag, and interesting webbing with taro root plants-the typical plant from West Kalimantan as the raw materials to the society.. This activity is conducted by the university students to encourage their spirit of creation, art, creativity, and enterpreneurship who are capable to see the market opportunity for the sake of gaining profits

Reversible writing of high-mobility and high-carrier-density doping patterns in two-dimensional van der Waals heterostructures

A key feature of two-dimensional materials is that the sign and concentration of their carriers can be externally controlled with techniques such as electrostatic gating. However, conventional electrostatic gating has limitations, including a maximum carrier density set by the dielectric breakdown, and ionic liquid gating and direct chemical doping also suffer from drawbacks. Here, we show that an electron-beam-induced doping technique can be used to reversibly write high-resolution doping patterns in hexagonal boron nitride-encapsulated graphene and molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) van der Waals heterostructures. The doped MoS2 device exhibits an order of magnitude decrease of subthreshold swing compared with the device before doping, whereas the doped graphene devices demonstrate a previously inaccessible regime of high carrier concentration and high mobility, even at room temperature. We also show that the approach can be used to write high-quality p–n junctions and nanoscale doping patterns, illustrating that the technique can create nanoscale circuitry in van der Waals heterostructures

The relationship between web enjoyment and student perceptions and learning using a web-based tutorial

Web enjoyment has been regarded as a component of system experience. However, there has been little targeted research considering the role of web enjoyment alone in student learning using web-based systems. To address this gap, this study aims to examine the influence of web enjoyment on learning performance and perceptions by controlling system experience as a variable in the study. 74 students participated in the study, using a web-based tutorial covering subject matter in the area of 'Computation and algorithms'. Their learning performance was assessed with a pre-test and a post-test and their learning perceptions were evaluated with a questionnaire. The results indicated that there are positive relationships between the levels of web enjoyment and perceived usefulness and non-linear navigation for users with similar, significant levels of system experience. The implications of these findings in relation to web-based learning are explored and ways in which the needs of students who report different levels of web enjoyment might be met are discussed

Management of hypoxaemia in the critically ill patient.

Hypoxaemia is a common presentation in critically ill patients, with the potential for severe harm if not addressed appropriately. This review provides a framework to guide the management of any hypoxaemic patient, regardless of the clinical setting. Key steps in managing such patients include ascertaining the severity of hypoxaemia, the underlying diagnosis and implementing the most appropriate treatment. Oxygen therapy can be delivered by variable or fixed rate devices, and non-invasive ventilation; if patients deteriorate they may require tracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation. Early critical care team involvement is a key part of this pathway. Specialist treatments for severe hypoxaemia can only be undertaken on an intensive care unit and this field is developing rapidly as trial results become available. It is important that each new scenario is approached in a structured manner with an open diagnostic mind and a clear escalation plan

Understanding Conditional Associations between ToxCast in Vitro Readouts and the Hepatotoxicity of Compounds Using Rule-Based Methods

Current in vitro models for hepatotoxicity commonly suffer from low detection rates due to incomplete coverage of bioactivity space. Additionally, in vivo exposure measures such as Cmax are used for hepatotoxicity screening which are unavailable early on. Here we propose a novel rule-based framework to extract interpretable and biologically meaningful multi-conditional associations to prioritize in vitro endpoints for hepatotoxicity and understand the associated physicochemical conditions. The data used in this study was derived for 673 compounds from 361 ToxCast bioactivity measurements and 29 calculated physicochemical properties against two lowest effective levels (LEL) of rodent hepatotoxicity from ToxRefDB, namely 15mg/kg/day and 500mg/kg/day. In order to achieve 80% coverage of toxic compounds, 35 rules with accuracies ranging from 96% to 73% using 39 unique ToxCast assays are needed at a threshold level of 500mg/kg/day, whereas to describe the same coverage at a threshold of 15mg/kg/day 20 rules with accuracies of between 98% and 81% were needed, comprising 24 unique assays. Despite the 33-fold difference in dose levels, we found relative consistency in the key mechanistic groups in rule clusters, namely i) activities against Cytochrome P, ii) immunological responses, and iii) nuclear receptor activities. Less specific effects, such as oxidative stress and cell cycle arrest, were used more by rules to describe toxicity at the level of 500mg/kg/day. Although the endocrine disruption through nuclear receptor activity formulated an essential cluster of rules, this bioactivity is not covered in four commercial assay setups for hepatotoxicity. Using an external set of 29 drugs with drug-induced liver injury (DILI) labels, we found promiscuity over important assays discriminates between compounds with different levels of liver injury. In vitro-in vivo associations were also improved by incorporating physicochemical properties especially for the potent, 15mg/kg/day toxicity level, as well for assays describing nuclear receptor activity and phenotypic changes. The most frequently used physicochemical properties, predictive for hepatotoxicity in combination with assay activities, are linked to bioavailability, which were the number of rotatable bonds (less than 7) at a of level of 15mg/kg/day, and the number of rings (of less than 3) at level of 500mg/kg/day. In summary, hepatotoxicity cannot very well be captured by single assay endpoints, but better by a combination of bioactivities in relevant assays, with the likelihood of hepatotoxicity increasing with assay promiscuity. Together these findings can be used to prioritize assay combinations which are appropriate to assess potential hepatotoxicity

Sharp Global Bounds for the Hessian on Pseudo-Hermitian Manifolds

We find sharp bounds for the norm inequality on a Pseudo-hermitian manifold, where the L^2 norm of all second derivatives of the function involving horizontal derivatives is controlled by the L^2 norm of the sub-Laplacian. Perturbation allows us to get a-priori bounds for solutions to sub-elliptic PDE in non-divergence form with bounded measurable coefficients. The method of proof is through a Bochner technique. The Heisenberg group is seen to be en extremal manifold for our inequality in the class of manifolds whose Ricci curvature is non-negative.Comment: 13 page

Compressible primitive equation: formal derivation and stability of weak solutions

We present a formal derivation of a simplified version of Compressible Primitive Equations (CPEs) for atmosphere modeling. They are obtained from $3$-D compressible Navier-Stokes equations with an \emph{anisotropic viscous stress tensor} where viscosity depends on the density. We then study the stability of the weak solutions of this model by using an intermediate model, called model problem, which is more simple and practical, to achieve the main result