Aspects of genetic and morphological variation in selected new world land birds

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2000The objective of this thesis is to examine variation in certain New World land birds, focusing on morphological difference at the intraspecific level and genetic differences at the intra- and interspecific levels. First, I investigate sexual dimorphism in the Wilson's Warbler (Wilsonia pusilla), a Nearctic-Neotropic migrant parulid. Using museum specimens, I quantify the degree of dimorphism and devise a method to distinguish the sexes using morphological measurements. Second, I outline a new method of approximating Weir and Cockerham's 0 (1984, 1993), an unbiased estimator of genetic population structure. The method uses commonly published parameters and obviates the need to recode existing allozyme data sets to calculate 0. The estimation algorithm is shown to be useful for both model populations and real-world avian populations

Carried by migrants - frictions of migration and mobility patterns in the conflicting assemblage of the Russian private transport sector

It is well known that labor migrants from different countries all over the Eurasian Union are the backbone of crucial economy sectors in the Russian Federation as, inter alia, construction, agriculture or trade. This article deals with another less mentioned but similarly significant labor market, which substantially changed its assemblage during the last couple of years, namely commercial urban transport services. In the last two decades, the marshrutka sector underwent major reforms and formalization processes that, on the one hand, brought operators back into the tax net and ensured a certain extension of control to the local transportation departments but, on the other hand, worsened the labor conditions of the transportation workers. Drawing from the empirical evidence of my fieldwork in southern Russia, I describe currently problematized mobility assemblages and embed the actor’s articulations in broader conflicts within the marshrutka business and transportation regulation policy. I further analyze how labor migrants have been forced to accept unfavorable working conditions in the enterprises as a direct result of politically triggered reforms in the marshrutka business. The paper provides insights into the social arena of the marshrutka, which serves as a societal encounter of urban conflicts and transformation mirroring (un-)intended effects of the local transportation reformation attempts

Multirhythmicity in an optoelectronic oscillator with large delay

An optoelectronic oscillator exhibiting a large delay in its feedback loop is studied both experimentally and theoretically. We show that multiple square-wave oscillations may coexist for the same values of the parameters (multirhythmicity). Depending on the sign of the phase shift, these regimes admit either periods close to an integer fraction of the delay or periods close to an odd integer fraction of twice the delay. These periodic solutions emerge from successive Hopf bifurcation points and stabilize at a finite amplitude following a scenario similar to Eckhaus instability in spatially extended systems. We find quantitative agreements between experiments and numerical simulations. The linear stability of the square-waves is substantiated analytically by determining stable fixed points of a map.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

Spaces of exposure: Re-thinking ‘publicness’ through public transport

Developing thoughts on exposure in cultural geography, literary studies, and mobilities research, this article aims to provide a more comprehensive account towards the publicness of public space. What would happen if we assessed publicness not by degrees of openness and inclusion, but through the nexus of vulnerability and complicity that is fundamental to the notion of exposure? To grasp such an intrinsic dualism, our perspective goes towards public transport, where experiences of exposure are intensified by its specific conditions of encapsulation and movement. We illustrate this perspective drawing from the autobiographical chronicles of the Chilean writer Pedro Lemebel, in order to then propose a ‘learning from’ the case of public transport for a rethinking of publicness. Specifically, we argue that exposure provides new insights on agency, power and vulnerability as part of a more processual notion of public space.Peer Reviewe

Estimating the unbiased estimator θ for population genetic survey data

We consider a method of approximating Weir and Cockerham\u27s θ, an unbiased estimator of genetic population structure, using values readily available from published studies using biased estimators (Wright\u27s FST or Nei\u27s GST). The estimation algorithm is shown to be useful for both model populations and real-world avian populations. However, the correlation between Wright\u27s FST and Weir and Cockerham\u27s θ is strong when compared among 39 empirical avian datasets. Thus, the advantage of approximating an unbiased estimator is unclear considering the small actual effect of θ\u27s bias-removing power on empirical datasets

Running Genetic Algorithms in the Edge: A First Analysis

Nowadays, the volume of data produced by different kinds of devices is continuously growing, making even more difficult to solve the many optimization problems that impact directly on our living quality. For instance, Cisco projected that by 2019 the volume of data will reach 507.5 zettabytes per year, and the cloud traffic will quadruple. This is not sustainable in the long term, so it is a need to move part of the intelligence from the cloud to a highly decentralized computing model. Considering this, we propose a ubiquitous intelligent system which is composed by different kinds of endpoint devices such as smartphones, tablets, routers, wearables, and any other CPU powered device. We want to use this to solve tasks useful for smart cities. In this paper, we analyze if these devices are suitable for this purpose and how we have to adapt the optimization algorithms to be efficient using heterogeneous hardware. To do this, we perform a set of experiments in which we measure the speed, memory usage, and battery consumption of these devices for a set of binary and combinatorial problems. Our conclusions reveal the strong and weak features of each device to run future algorihms in the border of the cyber-physical system.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. This research has been partially funded by the Spanish MINECO and FEDER projects TIN2014-57341-R (http://moveon.lcc.uma.es), TIN2016-81766-REDT (http://cirti.es), TIN2017-88213-R (http://6city.lcc.uma.es), the Ministry of Education of Spain (FPU16/02595