Are sacred caves still safe havens for the endemic bats of Madagascar?

Despite conservation discourses in Madagascar increasingly emphasizing the role of customary institutions for wildlife management, we know relatively little about their effectiveness. Here, we used semi-structured interviews (n = 54 adults in 8 villages) to investigate whether sacred caves and taboos offer in situ conservation benefits for cave-dwelling bats in and around Tsimanampetsotsa National Park, Southwest Madagascar. Although some caves were described as sites of spiritual significance for the local communities, most interviewees (~76%) did not recognize their present-day sacred status. Similarly, only 22% of the interviewees recognized taboos inhibiting bat hunting and consumption. In general, legal protection of both bats and caves was often more acknowledged than customary regulations, although up to 30% of the interviewees reported bat bushmeat consumption within their communities. Guano extraction was often tolerated in sacred caves, in exchange for economic compensations. In view of these results, our study questions the extent to which sacred sites, taboos and legal frameworks offer protection for bats in Madagascar. These results align with previous studies documenting the erosion of customary institutions in Madagascar, including the loss of the spiritual values underpinning sacred sites. Guano harvesting may benefit bat conservation, although it is often performed through destructive and exploitative practices with low benefits for the local communities. Given that many Malagasy bats are cave-dwelling species and that most depend on the customary protection of these sites, it remains paramount to better understand the complex interactions between spiritual practices, taboos and protected areas in sustaining ‒or not‒ bat diversity

Enhancement of Epidemiological Models for Dengue Fever Based on Twitter Data

Epidemiological early warning systems for dengue fever rely on up-to-date epidemiological data to forecast future incidence. However, epidemiological data typically requires time to be available, due to the application of time-consuming laboratorial tests. This implies that epidemiological models need to issue predictions with larger antecedence, making their task even more difficult. On the other hand, online platforms, such as Twitter or Google, allow us to obtain samples of users' interaction in near real-time and can be used as sensors to monitor current incidence. In this work, we propose a framework to exploit online data sources to mitigate the lack of up-to-date epidemiological data by obtaining estimates of current incidence, which are then explored by traditional epidemiological models. We show that the proposed framework obtains more accurate predictions than alternative approaches, with statistically better results for delays greater or equal to 4 weeks.Comment: ACM Digital Health 201

Growth patterns and scaling laws governing AIDS epidemic in Brazilian cities

Brazil holds approximately 1/3 of population living infected with AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) in Central and South Americas, and it was also the first developing country to implement a large-scale control and intervention program against AIDS epidemic. In this scenario, we investigate the temporal evolution and current status of the AIDS epidemic in Brazil. Specifically, we analyze records of annual absolute frequency of cases for more than 5000 cities for the first 33 years of the infection in Brazil. We found that (i) the annual absolute frequencies exhibit a logistic-type growth with an exponential regime in the first few years of the AIDS spreading; (ii) the actual reproduction number decaying as a power law; (iii) the distribution of the annual absolute frequencies among cities decays with a power law behavior; (iv) the annual absolute frequencies and the number of inhabitants have an allometric relationship; (v) the temporal evolution of the annual absolute frequencies have different profile depending on the average annual absolute frequencies in the cities. These findings yield a general quantitative description of the AIDS infection dynamics in Brazil since the beginning. They also provide clues about the effectiveness of treatment and control programs against the infection, that has had a different impact depending on the number of inhabitants of cities. In this framework, our results give insights into the overall dynamics of AIDS epidemic, which may contribute to select empirically accurate models.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Rural Competitiveness: Results of the 1996 Rural Manufacturing Survey

Establishments in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan locations are surprisingly similar in their adoption of new technologies, worker skill requirements, use of government programs and technical assistance, exports, and sources of financing, according to the results of a nationwide survey of 3,909 manufacturing businesses. The most widespread concern of both metro and nonmetro businesses appears to be with quality of labor. Survey respondents report rapidly increasing skill requirements, and many report problems finding qualified workers. Quality of local labor is the most frequently cited problem associated with nonmetro business locations. Access to credit, transportation, and telecommunications infrastructure is a problem of secondary importance for both metro and nonmetro respondents. Rural communities face a considerable challenge in supplying workers with needed skills. The fastest-growing skill requirements -- computer, interpersonal/teamwork, and problem-solving skills -- are not central to traditional academic instruction.rural manufacturing, sample survey, worker skills, manufacturing location, credit availability, technology adoption, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Complexity-Aware Assignment of Latent Values in Discriminative Models for Accurate Gesture Recognition

Many of the state-of-the-art algorithms for gesture recognition are based on Conditional Random Fields (CRFs). Successful approaches, such as the Latent-Dynamic CRFs, extend the CRF by incorporating latent variables, whose values are mapped to the values of the labels. In this paper we propose a novel methodology to set the latent values according to the gesture complexity. We use an heuristic that iterates through the samples associated with each label value, stimating their complexity. We then use it to assign the latent values to the label values. We evaluate our method on the task of recognizing human gestures from video streams. The experiments were performed in binary datasets, generated by grouping different labels. Our results demonstrate that our approach outperforms the arbitrary one in many cases, increasing the accuracy by up to 10%.Comment: Conference paper published at 2016 29th SIBGRAPI, Conference on Graphics, Patterns and Images (SIBGRAPI). 8 pages, 7 figure

La enseñanza de la gravitación universal de Newton orientada por la historia y filosofía de la ciencia: una propuesta didáctica con un enfoque en la argumentación

Aquest treball presenta una proposta didàctica per ensenyar la gravitació universal de Newton (GU), orientada per la història i la filosofia de la ciència, per promoure millores en l'habilitat d'argumentació dels alumnes. Aquesta proposta és la culminació d'un treball més ampli que ja va produir alguns resultats (Teixeira et al., 2010a; Teixeira et al., 2010b). La proposta inclou alguns textos de referència per a la seva implementació, sent un d'ells presentat en la segona secció d'aquest treball que discuteix el layout d'argumentació de Toulmin (1958/2006), la referència sobre argumentació que subsidia el nostre treball. Presentem finalment una síntesi de la seqüència didàctica proposta i els instruments d'orientació i avaluació suggerits per a la seva implementació a la classe.This paper presents a didactical proposal to teach Newton’s universal gravitation (GU)guided by the history and philosophy of science (HPS) to promote improvements in students’ argumentation skills. This proposal is the culmination of a larger work that has already produced some results (Teixeira et al., 2010a; Teixeira et al., 2010b). The proposal includes some reference texts for implementation, one of which is presented in the second section of the paper that discusses the Toulmin’s layout of argument (Toulmin, 2006), which is the argumentation framework we have adopted in our work. Finally, this paper presents a synthesis of the didactical sequence and the tools for guidance and evaluation suggested for implementation in the classroom.Este trabajo presenta una propuesta didáctica para enseñar la gravitación universal de Newton (GU), orientada por la historia y la filosofía de la ciencia, para promover mejoras en la habilidad de argumentación de los alumnos. Esta propuesta es la culminación de un trabajo más amplio que ya produjo algunos resultados (Teixeira et al., 2010a; Teixeira et al., 2010b). La propuesta incluye algunos textos de referencia para su implementación, siendo uno de ellos presentado en la segunda sección de este trabajo que discute el layout de argumentación de Toulmin (1958/2006), la referencia sobre argumentación que subsidia nuestro trabajo. Presentamos finalmente una síntesis de la secuencia didáctica propuesta y los instrumentos de orientación y evaluación sugeridos para su implementación en la clase. 

Prosecuting Members of the U.S. Military for Wartime Environmental Crimes

War is inherently damaging to the environment. Though these deleterious actions are often attributed to states during times of armed conflict, they are normally the result of military operations conducted by members of the military who are carrying out orders from military superiors. While many have proposed systemic changes that affect how states can or should be held responsible, few have commented on the process of holding individual military personnel or commanders responsible for battlefield acts of environmental damage. This paper argues that there are sufficient laws and regulations in place to hold individuals and commanders in the United States military responsible for illegal environmental damage during wartime. Further, these laws and regulations provide sufficient penalties and other enforcement mechanisms to deter potential violators, punish convicted criminals, and protect the environment

First reports of computed tomographic colonography for the screening of colorectal polyps in acromegalic patients

*Aim:* To analyze the CTC performance for the screening of colorectal polyps in acromegalic patients. 

*Materials and Methods:* A prospective study of 21 acromegalic patients, 12 male and 9 female, average age 49, who underwent CTC and CC. CTC was performed with a GE Helical Multislice Computed Tomography Apparatus. The colonoscopy was performed, in the same day, without previous knowledge of the CTC diagnostics. The study evaluated the capacity of CTC to detect patients with colorectal polyps and identify each colorectal lesion described by CC. 

*Results:* In two patients (2/21), CC was incomplete. However, in all patients CTC was complete. In Phase I (“Per Patient”), CTC diagnosed 8 of the 9 patients with colorectal polyps and showed 88% sensitivity, 75% specificity and 81% accuracy. In Phase II (“Per Polyp”), out of the 21 acromegalic patients included in this study, 12 presented normal findings at CC. A total of 19 polyps were identified in 9 patients. 10 of the 19 polyps were smaller than 10 mm, and 9 were equal to or larger than 10. CTC identified 7 of the 9 polyps ≥ 10 mm described by CC and only 6 of the 10 small polyps identified at CC were detected by CTC. The histological analysis of resected lesions revealed 12 tubular adenomas, 6 hyperplastic polyps and 1 colonic tubulo-villous adenoma with an adenocarcinoma focus. 

*Conclusion:* In this study, CTC was performed without complications and a complete and safe colorectal evaluation was possible in all acromegalic patients. Moreover, CTC showed good sensitivity to identify acromegalic patients with colorectal polyps