Do bare soil landscapes encourage ground nesting bees?

Most bee species are ground-nesters, yet knowledge on this vast group remains sparse when compared to their better-known cousins, honeybees and bumblebees. Whilst evidence on the effectiveness of ground-nesting bee species as crop pollinators is growing, limited information exists regarding their nesting habits and preferences. In this study, artificially prepared plots of bare soil were used where nine different soil properties were investigated to determine the preferred soil properties of the attracted species. Eleven ground-nesting bee species (7 Andrena, 3 Lasioglossum and 1 Halictus) were recorded from the study plots. The findings of this study suggest that compaction, hydraulic conductivity and the soil textures, sandy loam and sandy clay loam, being the soil properties that play a significant role in the nesting of the recorded species. Building a greater understanding of their nesting ecology will allow better management of their populations, resulting in enhancement of pollination services in agriculture

The importance of soil and vegetation characteristics for establishing ground nesting bee aggregations

Most bee species are ground-nesters, yet knowledge on the nesting behaviour of this diverse group remains sparse. Evidence on the effectiveness of ground-nesting bee species as crop pollinators is growing, but there is limited information on their nesting habits and preferences and how to manage habitats to enhance populations on farms. In this study, artificially prepared plots of bare soil were constructed with the aim to attract ground-nesting bees to nest in a commercial orchard in Kent, UK. Nine soil parameters were measured to determine their preferred soil properties: hydraulic conductivity, soil compaction, soil moisture, soil temperature, soil stoniness, soil organic matter, soil root biomass, soil texture and vegetation cover. Eighteen non-parasitic ground-nesting bee species (7 Andrena, 9 Lasioglossum, 1 Halictus and 1 Colletes spp.) were recorded in the study plots. Soil stoniness and soil temperature at 10cm depth were positively correlated, and vegetation cover and hydraulic conductivity were negatively correlated with the number of ground-nesting bees on the plots. We show that artificially created habitats can be exploited for nesting by several ground-nesting bee species. This study’s findings can inform management practices to enhance ground-nesting bee populations in agricultural and urban areas

Abstract Group-Guaranteed Channel Capacity in Multimedia Storage Servers

One of the open questions in the design of multimedia storage servers is in what order to serve incoming requests. Given the capability provided by the disk layout and scheduling algorithms to serve multiple streams simultaneously, improved request scheduling algorithms can reduce customer waiting times. This results in better service and/or lower customer loss. In this paper we define a new class of request scheduling algorithms, called Group-Guaranteed Server Capacity (GGSC), that preassign server channel capacity to groups of objects. We also define a particular formal method for computing the assigned capacities to achieve a given performance objective. We observe that the FCFS policy can provide the precise time of service to incoming customer requests. Under this assumption, we compare the performance of one of the new GGSC algorithms, GGSCW-FCFS, against FCFS and against two other recently proposed scheduling algorithms: Maximum Factored Queue length (MFQ), and the FCFS-n algorithm that preassigns capacity only to each of the n most popular objects. The algorithms are compared for both competitive market and captured audience environments. Key findings of the algorithm comparisons are that: (1) FCFS-n has no advantage over FCFS if FCFS gives time of service guarantees to arriving customers, (2) FCFS and GGSCW-FCFS are superior to MFQ for both competitive and captive audience environments, (3) for competitive servers that are configured for customer loss less than 10%, FCFS is superior to all other algorithms examined in this paper, and (4) for captive audience environments that have objects with variable playback length, GGSCW-FCFS is the most promising of the policies considered in this paper. The conclusions for FCFS-n and MFQ differ from previous work because we focus on competitive environments with customer loss under 10%, we assume FCFS can provide time of service guarantees to all arriving customers, and we consider the distribution of customer waiting time as well as the average waiting time.

The Impact of Autocorrelation on Queuing Systems

The performance of single-server queues with independent interarrival intervals and service demands is well understood, and often analytically tractable. In particular, the M/M/1 queue has been thoroughly studied, due to its analytical tractability. Little is known, though, when autocorrelation is introduced into interarrival times or service demands, resulting in loss of analytical tractability. Even the simple case of an M/M/1 queue with autocorrelations does not appear to be well understood. Such autocorrelations do, in fact, abound in real-life systems, and worse, simplifying independence assumptions can lead to very poor estimates of performance measures. This paper reports the results of a simulation study of the impact of autocorrelation on performance in an FIFO queue. The study used two computer methods for generating autocorrelated random sequences, with different autocorrelation characteristics. The simulation results show that the injection of autocorrelation into interarrival times, and to a lesser extent into service demands, can have a dramatic impact on performance measures. From a performance viewpoint, these effects are generally deleterious, and their magnitude depends on the method used to generate the autocorrelated process. The paper discusses these empirical results and makes some recommendations to practitioners of performance analysis of queuing systems.autocorrelation, autocorrelated arrivals, autocorrelated services, queuing systems, TES processes, minification/maxification processes, waiting times

Geometry or poetry? Issues of methods and techniques in regional research

Method, Quantitative and qualitative methods, Pluralism, Practical reason, Culture, Local communities, Development,