Minkowski Functionals of Abell/ACO Clusters

We determine the Minkowski functionals for a sample of Abell/ACO clusters, 401 with measured and 16 with estimated redshifts. The four Minkowski functionals (including the void probability function and the mean genus) deliver a global description of the spatial distribution of clusters on scales from $10$ to 60\hMpc with a clear geometric interpretation. Comparisons with mock catalogues of N--body simulations using different variants of the CDM model demonstrate the discriminative power of the description. The standard CDM model and the model with tilted perturbation spectrum cannot generate the Minkowski functionals of the cluster data, while a model with a cosmological constant and a model with breaking of the scale invariance of perturbations (BSI) yield compatible results.Comment: 10 pages, 13 Postscript figures, uses epsf.sty and mn.sty (included), submitted to MNRA

Adaptive Use of Information during Growth Can Explain Long-Term Effects of Early Life Experiences.

Development is a continuous process during which individuals gain information about their environment and adjust their phenotype accordingly. In many natural systems, individuals are particularly sensitive to early life experiences, even in the absence of later constraints on plasticity. Recent models have highlighted how the adaptive use of information can explain age-dependent plasticity. These models assume that information gain and phenotypic adjustments either cannot occur simultaneously or are completely independent. This assumption is not valid in the context of growth, where finding food results both in a size increase and learning about food availability. Here, we describe a simple model of growth to provide proof of principle that long-term effects of early life experiences can arise through the coupled dynamics of information acquisition and phenotypic change in the absence of direct constraints on plasticity. The increase in reproductive value from gaining information and sensitivity of behavior to experiences declines across development. Early life experiences have long-term impacts on age of maturity, yet-due to compensatory changes in behavior-our model predicts no substantial effects on reproductive success. We discuss how the evolution of sensitive windows can be explained by experiences having short-term effects on informational and phenotypic states, which generate long-term effects on life-history decisions.This research was funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2011) under grant 259679 (IDEAL) awarded to T.U. T.W.F., A.D.H., and P.C.T. were supported by the European Research Council (ERC Advanced Grant 250209 Evomech to A. Houston). T.U. was supported by the Royal Society of London and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. A.D.H. was supported by fellowships from the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and the Natural Environment Research Council (grant NE/L011921/1)

A importância de oficinas e jogos educacionais como instrumento de ensino da geografia: Um relado de experiências vivenciadas no PIBID

Anais do II Seminário Seminário Estadual PIBID do Paraná: tecendo saberes / organizado por Dulcyene Maria Ribeiro e Catarina Costa Fernandes — Foz do Iguaçu: Unioeste; Unila, 2014O presente artigo faz parte de um relato de experiência de acadêmicas da licenciatura em geografia, participantes do Programa Institucional de Bolsa de Iniciação à Docência (PIBID) da Universidade Estadual de Ponta Grossa – UEPG, onde se descreve a atividade executada sob o tema: “oficinas e jogos educacionais como forma de ensino com alunos de 6° e 7° anos do Colégio Estadual Meneleu de Almeida Torres, situado no município de Ponta Grossa - PR. O objetivo da atividade foi: Proporcionar um estudo mais dinâmico a partir de propostas de oficinas e jogos interativos sobre os assuntos geográficos estudados. Espera-se neste programa, testar diferentes instrumentos de ensino e assim concretizar o grande objetivo do PIBID, que é contribuir para a formação docente dos acadêmicos das licenciaturas e também para o ensino nas escolas públicas brasileira

Scale-free memory model for multiagent reinforcement learning. Mean field approximation and rock-paper-scissors dynamics

A continuous time model for multiagent systems governed by reinforcement learning with scale-free memory is developed. The agents are assumed to act independently of one another in optimizing their choice of possible actions via trial-and-error search. To gain awareness about the action value the agents accumulate in their memory the rewards obtained from taking a specific action at each moment of time. The contribution of the rewards in the past to the agent current perception of action value is described by an integral operator with a power-law kernel. Finally a fractional differential equation governing the system dynamics is obtained. The agents are considered to interact with one another implicitly via the reward of one agent depending on the choice of the other agents. The pairwise interaction model is adopted to describe this effect. As a specific example of systems with non-transitive interactions, a two agent and three agent systems of the rock-paper-scissors type are analyzed in detail, including the stability analysis and numerical simulation. Scale-free memory is demonstrated to cause complex dynamics of the systems at hand. In particular, it is shown that there can be simultaneously two modes of the system instability undergoing subcritical and supercritical bifurcation, with the latter one exhibiting anomalous oscillations with the amplitude and period growing with time. Besides, the instability onset via this supercritical mode may be regarded as "altruism self-organization". For the three agent system the instability dynamics is found to be rather irregular and can be composed of alternate fragments of oscillations different in their properties.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figur

The genome sequence of the Maltese wall lizard, Podarcis filfolensis (Bedriaga, 1876)

We present a genome assembly from a female specimen of Podarcis filfolensis (Maltese wall lizard; Chordata; Lepidosauria; Squamata; Lacertidae). The assembly contains two haplotypes with total lengths of 1,506.95 megabases and 1,404.02 megabases. Most of haplotype 1 (98.73%) is scaffolded into 20 chromosomal pseudomolecules, including the W and Z sex chromosomes. Haplotype 2 was assembled to scaffold level. The mitochondrial genome has also been assembled, with a length of 17.23 kilobases

Environmental and Parental Influences on Offspring Health and Growth in Great Tits (Parus major)

PMCID: PMC3728352This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

The genome sequence of Erhard’s wall lizard, Podarcis erhardii (Bedriaga, 1882)

We present a genome assembly from a female specimen of Podarcis erhardii (Erhard's wall lizard; Chordata; Lepidosauria; Squamata; Lacertidae). The assembly contains two haplotypes with total lengths of 1,495.98 megabases and 1,477.75 megabases. Most of haplotype 1 (99.28%) is scaffolded into 20 chromosomal pseudomolecules, including the W and Z sex chromosomes. Haplotype 2 was assembled to scaffold level. The mitochondrial genome has also been assembled, with a length of 17.14 kilobases

The genome sequence of the Skyros Wall Lizard, Podarcis gaigeae (Werner, 1930)

We present a genome assembly from a female specimen of Podarcis gaigeae (Skyros Wall Lizard; Chordata; Lepidosauria; Squamata; Lacertidae). The assembly contains two haplotypes with total lengths of 1,514.62 megabases and 1,422.31 megabases. Most of haplotype 1 (99.33%) is scaffolded into 20 chromosomal pseudomolecules, including the W and Z sex chromosomes. Most of haplotype 2 (99.58%) is scaffolded into 18 chromosomal pseudomolecules. The mitochondrial genome has also been assembled, with a length of 20.31 kilobases

The genome sequence of the Ibiza wall lizard, Podarcis pityusensis (Boscá, 1883)

Eukaryota; Opisthokonta; Metazoa; Eumetazoa; Bilateria; Deuterostomia; Chordata; Craniata; Vertebrata; Gnathostomata; Teleostomi; Euteleostomi; Sarcopterygii; Dipnotetrapodomorpha; Tetrapoda; Amniota; Sauropsida; Sauria; Lepidosauria; Squamata; Bifurcata; Unidentata; Episquamata; Laterata; Lacertibaenia; Lacertidae; Lacertinae; Podarcis; Podarcis pityusensis (Boscá, 1883) (NCBI:txid74359