The North-South Divide: Regional Economic Inequality in Contemporary Italy

This paper analyzes data from the International Social Survey Program’s 2009 Social Inequality Survey in order to explain the contemporary economic inequality between the macro-regions of Italy. Economic inequality will be measured by household income. I use multiple regression analysis to first determine the degree of the regional disparity and then to determine what factors explain that inequality. My overall findings from this analysis are that while all of these variables contribute to household income inequality, it is difficult to pinpoint a consistent factor affecting household income inequality across all of the regions

Effects of habitat on the recruitment variation of coral reef fishes.

Coral reef fish life cycles have two distinct phases that take place in different parts of their environment. Benthonic or pelagic eggs spawned by adults hatch into larvae that join the water column, after spending some variable time in it they settle back on to a reef. It is well documented that recruitment is highly variable across space and time. This variation can be a reflection of factor occurring during the pelagic larval phase, or during the settlement event. Prior to settlement the number of larvae settling to a given location could be a consequence of oceanographic features, as well as random events taking place during the pelagic larval phase which might affect the survival of larvae. Larvae then have been found to settle differentially to a preferred habitat. These associations have been studied at several spatial scales with contrasting results. In order to explore relationships between habitat and patterns of recruitment, we must first describe the habitat features found at a given location. Chapter two explored the effects that sampling intensity (i.e. number of sampling points or quadrats) and method (point-intercept vs. photo quadrats) have on the comprehensiveness and precision of percent cover estimates of substratum abundances. Chapter three assessed the degree to which habitat type can explain the spatial and temporal variation observed in the recruitment of 2 coral reef species. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)Dept. of Biological Sciences. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2004 .U87. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 43-01, page: 0150. Adviser: Peter F. Sale. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2004

Habitat connectivity in reef fish communities and marine reserve design in Old Providence-Santa Catalina, Colombia

On the insular platform of Old Providence/Santa Catalina, Colombia, we compared nearshore lagoonal patch reefs to those on the northern bank distant from the islands to determine the importance of habitat connectivity to fish community structure. Nearshore patch reefs had greater proximity to mangrove, seagrass and rocky shore habitats, and they had significantly more individuals. Nearshore reefs also tended to have a greater total biomass, more species, a higher proportion of predators of mobile invertebrates and small fishes, and a lower proportion of herbivores. Biomass of snappers and grunts at nearshore sites was four times greater compared to bank sites, and was correlated with the amount of seagrass and sand/rubble habitat within 500 m of each patch reef. We also compared length-frequency distributions and abundances of grunts and snappers among all sites (deep and shallow forereefs, patch reefs and deep and shallow leeside slopes). The results were consistent with ontogenetic migrations from shallow sites, primarily seagrass and mangrove habitats, to deeper sites and to those further out on the bank. The evidence suggests that species differed in both distance and direction of dispersal, which may be affected by the abundance and distribution of preferred habitats. Marine reserves near the islands should target nearshore nursery areas and patch reefs harboring species of limited dispersal capability. Reserves on the northern bank would protect spawners of those species showing the greatest dispersal capability

Semaine d'Etude Maths-Entreprises 14 : Discrimination des différences d'activité cérébrale induites par des stimulations auditives de fréquence variable

L’objectif d’un projet mené au CHU de Besançon, est d’évaluer si les patients peuvent entendre. Pour cela l’activité de leur cerveau est enregistrée alors qu’ils écoutent différents types de sons. Le but de cette étude est le suivant : à partir des signaux obtenus, peut-on retrouver les différents types de sons? Une classification ascendante hiérarchique est proposée pour classer les différents sons, ainsi que différentes pistes de reflexion pour mettre en évidence les différences/ressemblances entre sons/patients

Recovery of corals a decade after a bleaching event in Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Elevated sea surface temperatures in the late 1990s were associated with widespread coral mortality in the Arabian Gulf, particularly in Acropora dominated areas. This study investigates the composition, condition, and recruitment patterns of coral communities in Saih Al-Shaib, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, a decade after mass bleaching. Five statistically distinct communities were identified by cluster analysis, with grouping optimized from 17 significant indicator species. Overall, 25 species of scleractinian coral were observed, representing 35 ± 1.6% coral cover. Densities of recruits were low (0.8 ± 0.2 m-2), and composition generally reflected that of the surrounding adult community. Ten years after mass mortality, Acropora dominated assemblages were observed in three of the six sites examined and coral cover (41.9 ± 2.5%) was double post-bleaching cover. One shallow near-shore site appears to have had recovery of Acropora reset by a further bleaching event in 2002. However, the prevalence of young Acropora colonies here indicates that recovery may recur in several years. One area formerly dominated by Acropora is now dominated by faviids and poritids, with adult and juvenile composition suggesting this dominance shift is likely to persist. Porites lutea and Porites harrisoni dominated communities were negligibly impacted by the bleaching events, and the limited change in coral cover and composition in intervening years likely results from slow growth and low recruitment. Despite strong recovery of several dominant Acropora species, five formerly common species from this area were not observed suggesting local extinction. Dubai coral communities exhibit both resistance and resilience to elevated sea temperatures. The conservation of these patch reefs is warranted given the predicted increase in bleaching events, and the role that these communities may play in regional recovery. © 2008 Springer-Verlag

Spatial quantile predictions for elliptical random fields

International audienceIn this work, we consider elliptical random fields. We propose some spatial quantile predictions at one site given observations at some other locations. To this aim, we first give exact expressions for conditional quantiles, and discuss problems that occur for computing these values. A first affine regression quantile predictor is detailed, an explicit formula is obtained, and its distribution is given. Direct simple expressions are derived for some particular elliptical random fields. The performance of this regression quantile is shown to be very poor for extremal quantile levels, so that a second predictor is proposed. We prove that this new extremal prediction is asymptotically equivalent to the true conditional quantile. Through numerical illustrations, the study shows that Quantile Regression may perform poorly when one leaves the usual Gaussian random field setting, justifying the use of proposed extremal quantile predictions

Optimal shrinkage for robust covariance matrix estimators in a small sample size setting

When estimating covariance matrices, traditional sample covariance-based estimators are straightforward but suffer from two main issues: 1) a lack of robustness, which occurs as soon as the samples do not come from a Gaussian distribution or are contaminated with outliers and 2) a lack of data when the number of parameters to estimate is too large compared to the number of available observations, which occurs as soon as the covariance matrix dimension is greater than the sample size. The first issue can be handled by assuming samples are drawn from a heavy-tailed distribution, at the cost of more complex derivations, while the second issue can be addressed by shrinkage with the difficulty of choosing the appropriate level of regularization. In this work we offer both a tractable and optimal framework based on shrinked likelihood-based M-estimators. First, a closed-form expression is provided for a regularized covariance matrix estimator with an optimal shrinkage coefficient for any sample distribution in the elliptical family. Then, a complete inference procedure is proposed which can also handle both unknown mean and tail parameter, in contrast to most existing methods that focus on the covariance matrix parameter requiring pre-set values for the others. An illustration on synthetic and real data is provided in the case of the t-distribution with unknown mean and degrees-of-freedom parameters

Modelado avanzado de desodorización y refinación física de aceites vegetales con columnas de relleno estructurado

En la presente tesis se desarrolla un modelado avanzado de la desodorización y refinación física de aceites vegetales con columnas de relleno estructurado, mediante el uso del modelo en no equilibrio (NEQ) desarrollado por (Taylor & Krishna, 1990) y las siguientes revisiones (Taylor & Kooijman, 1994), (Kooijman, 1995), y el uso conjunto de la correlación de transferencia de masa de (Rocha, Bravo, & Fair, 1996) y la correlación de cálculo de caída de presión de (Ma'ckowiak, 2010). El modelo desarrollado es implementado, mediante la construcción de la columna y la incorporación de los compuestos requeridos, en una plataforma de simulación de procesos adecuada (ChemCAD), para la simulación y validación del modelo a través de dos estudios de caso (1. desodorización de aceite de palma y 2. desodorización de aceite de soja); para luego realizar distintos estudios de sensibilidad con el objeto de analizar el impacto de las variables criticas del proceso sobre la concentración másica del total de ácidos grasos libres en el aceite desodorizado (para el caso de estudio 1) y para maximizar los ingresos por venta de destilados en función de la concentración másica de tocoferoles y el destilado obtenido (para el caso de estudio 2).Facultad de Ingenierí

A variational framework for higher order perturbations

A covariant, global, variational framework for perturbations in field theories is presented. Perturbations are obtained as vertical vector fields on the configuration bundle and they drag, exactly, solution into solutions. The flow of a perturbation drags solutions into solutions and the dragged perturbed solutions can be expanded in a series with respect to the flow parameter, hence it contains perturbations at any order. Mechanics is included as a special case. As a simple application, we recover the well-known discussion about stability of geodesics on a sphere $S_2$.Comment: 14 page