The Spread of Opinions and Proportional Voting

Election results are determined by numerous social factors that affect the formation of opinion of the voters, including the network of interactions between them and the dynamics of opinion influence. In this work we study the result of proportional elections using an opinion dynamics model similar to simple opinion spreading over a complex network. Erdos-Renyi, Barabasi-Albert, regular lattices and randomly augmented lattices are considered as models of the underlying social networks. The model reproduces the power law behavior of number of candidates with a given number of votes found in real elections with the correct slope, a cutoff for larger number of votes and a plateau for small number of votes. It is found that the small world property of the underlying network is fundamental for the emergence of the power law regime.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Analyzing Trails in Complex Networks

Even more interesting than the intricate organization of complex networks are the dynamical behavior of systems which such structures underly. Among the many types of dynamics, one particularly interesting category involves the evolution of trails left by moving agents progressing through random walks and dilating processes in a complex network. The emergence of trails is present in many dynamical process, such as pedestrian traffic, information flow and metabolic pathways. Important problems related with trails include the reconstruction of the trail and the identification of its source, when complete knowledge of the trail is missing. In addition, the following of trails in multi-agent systems represent a particularly interesting situation related to pedestrian dynamics and swarming intelligence. The present work addresses these three issues while taking into account permanent and transient marks left in the visited nodes. Different topologies are considered for trail reconstruction and trail source identification, including four complex networks models and four real networks, namely the Internet, the US airlines network, an email network and the scientific collaboration network of complex network researchers. Our results show that the topology of the network influence in trail reconstruction, source identification and agent dynamics.Comment: 10 pages, 16 figures. A working manuscript, comments and criticisms welcome

A Methodology Based on Bioacoustic Information for Automatic Identification of Reptiles and Anurans

Nowadays, human activity is considered one of the main risk factors for the life of reptiles and amphibians. The presence of these living beings represents a good biological indicator of an excellent environmental quality. Because of their behavior and size, most of these species are complicated to recognize in their living environment with image devices. Nevertheless, the use of bioacoustic information to identify animal species is an efficient way to sample populations and control the conservation of these living beings in large and remote areas where environmental conditions and visibility are limited. In this chapter, a novel methodology for the identification of different reptile and anuran species based on the fusion of Mel and Linear Frequency Cepstral Coefficients, MFCC and LFCC, is presented. The proposed methodology has been validated using public databases, and experimental results yielded an accuracy above 95% showing the efficiency of the proposal

Comparison of fermentation characteristics and bacterial diversity in the rumen of sheep and batch cultures of rumen microorganisms

The objective of the current study was to assess how closely batch cultures (BC) of rumen microorganisms can mimic the dietary differences in fermentation characteristics found in the rumen, and to analyse changes in bacterial diversity over the in vitro incubation period. Four ruminally and duodenally cannulated sheep were fed four diets having forage : concentrate ratios (FCR) of 70 : 30 or 30 : 70, with either alfalfa hay or grass hay as forage. Rumen fluid from each sheep was used to inoculate BC containing the same diet fed to the donor sheep, and the main rumen fermentation parameters were determined after 24 h of incubation. There were differences between BC and sheep in the magnitude of most measured parameters, but BC detected differences among diets due to forage type similar to those found in sheep. In contrast, BC did not reproduce the dietary differences due to FCR found in sheep for pH, degradability of neutral detergent fibre and total volatile fatty acid (VFA) concentrations. There were differences between systems in the magnitude of most determined parameters and BC showed higher pH values and NH3–N concentrations, but lower fibre degradability and VFA and lactate concentrations compared with sheep. There were significant relationships between in vivo and in vitro values for molar proportions of acetate, propionate and butyrate, and the acetate : propionate ratio. The automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis (ARISA) of 16S ribosomal deoxyribonucleic acid showed that FCR had no effect on bacterial diversity either in the sheep rumen fluid used as inoculum (IN) or in BC samples. In contrast, bacterial diversity was greater with alfalfa hay diets than those with grass hay in the IN, but was unaffected by forage type in the BC. Similarity index between the bacterial communities in the inocula and those in the BC ranged from 67·2 to 74·7%, and was unaffected by diet characteristics. Bacterial diversity was lower in BC than in the inocula with 14 peaks out of a total of 181 detected in the ARISA electropherograms never appearing in BC samples, which suggests that incubation conditions in the BC may have caused a selection of some bacterial strains. However, each BC sample showed the highest similarity index with its corresponding rumen IN, which highlights the importance of using rumen fluid from donors fed a diet similar to that being incubated in BC when conducting in vitro experiments

Fast Community Identification by Hierarchical Growth

A new method for community identification is proposed which is founded on the analysis of successive neighborhoods, reached through hierarchical growth from a starting vertex, and on the definition of communities as a subgraph whose number of inner connections is larger than outer connections. In order to determine the precision and speed of the method, it is compared with one of the most popular community identification approaches, namely Girvan and Newman's algorithm. Although the hierarchical growth method is not as precise as Girvan and Newman's method, it is potentially faster than most community finding algorithms.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Perspectivas y retos de los extractos vegetales como aditivos alimentarios en rumiantes

Algunas plantas producen y almacenan compuestos secundarios que ejercen actividades beneficiosas en el organismo humano y animal. En lo que se refiere a su uso en alimentación animal, constituyen una alternativa natural a los aditivos antibióticos promotores del crecimiento, cuyo uso en rumiantes se ha centrado fundamentalmente en sus efectos sobre la fermentación rumial

Pregnancy associated glyciprotein and progesterone concentrations in plasma of sheep during gestation and post-partum period

Contributed to: 109th meeting of the British Society of Animal Production (Scarborough, UK, Mar 21-23, 1994).Peer reviewe

Influence of processing method of rumen contents on microbial populations in the inoculum and in vitro fermentation of substrates of variable composition

The in vitro batch culture technique is being increasingly used to study rumen fermentation, but the results are affected by several factors, being the source of the inoculum one of the most relevant. This work was conducted to assess the effects of different processing methods of ruminal contents on microbial populations in the obtained fluid, and its influence on fermentation parameters when the fluid was used as inoculum for in vitro incubations. Rumen contents were obtained from four rumen-fistulated sheep fed a 2:1 alfalfa hay:concentrate diet and subjected to the following treatments: SQ: squeezed through four layers of cheesecloth; FL: SQ treatment and further filtration through a 100-μm nylon cloth; STO: blended for three min at 230 rev min−1 in a Stomacher® and further filtrations as in SQ. Microbial populations’ abundance and bacterial diversity in the ruminal fluids were analysed by quantitative PCR (qPCR) and automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis (ARISA), respectively. Three forages (alfalfa hay, grass hay and barley straw) were incubated in vitro, either alone or mixed with concentrate (1:1), using each of the ruminal fluids as inoculum. There were no differences between SQ and FL methods in any of the microbial populations analysed, but STO increased the relative abundance of Fibrobacter succinogenes and Ruminococcus albus (P 0.05) by the processing methods. There were no interactions (P > 0.05) between the processing method and the characteristics of the substrates for any of the fermentation parameters analysed. Compared with SQ, the STO method resulted in greater (P < 0.05) methane production and ammonia-N concentrations in 8 h incubations. After 24 h of incubation, the use of STO inoculum increased (P < 0.05) methane production and dry matter degradability compared with SQ, with no differences in the rest of the parameters. No differences between SQ and FL methods were detected in any parameter. The results show that stomaching the rumen contents prior to inoculation of in vitro cultures modified some microbial populations, but had only subtle effects on fermentation parameters

Presente y perspectivas de futuro en la UE del empleo de probióticos en la alimentación de rumiantes

En este artículo se describe, en primer lugar, la situación legal actual de los probióticos como aditivos en la alimentación de los animales rumiantes en la Unión Europea (UE). A continuación se repasan sus mecanismos de acción, considerando especialmente los últimos avances científicos en referencia a sus acciones sobre las poblaciones microbianas ruminales, y se analizan los factores que influyen en la respuesta de los animales a la administración de estos aditivos. Finalmente, se detallan brevemente las perspectivas de futuro de los probióticos en el ámbito de la ganadería de rumiantes europea

Utilización de enzimas fibrolíticas para mejorar la digestión de forrajes tropicales. I. Influencia del método de aplciacion en la producción de gas in vitro y la composición química

Los forrajes tropicales presentan, en general, un menor valor nutritivo que los forrajes de zonas templadas. Sin embargo, su disponibilidad suele ser elevada y en numerosas ocasiones son el único recurso alimenticio disponible para los animales rumiantes. Esta situación limita la productividad de estos animales y por ello se han investigado diferentes estrategias para aumentar el valor nutritivo de los forrajes tropicales. Una de las metodologías propuestas para incrementar la utilización digestiva de los forrajes es el tratamiento de los mismos con enzimas fibrolíticas (Carro y Ranilla, 2001), pero todavía son escasos los estudios realizados con forrajes tropicales. El objetivo de este trabajo fue evaluar el efecto de tres preparados enzimáticos en la fermentación ruminal in vitro y la degradabilidad de tres forrajes tropicales