L’eriçó africà, Atelerix algirus (Lereboullet, 1842) (Erinaceidae), i els passos de bestiar canadencs del Cap de Cavalleria (Es Mercadal, Menorca)

During the period of 2007 to 2010, every two days we visited the three cattle grids on the road to the Cap of Cavalleria, where it was possible to observe the fauna that fell into the grids. The first cattle grid is the closest to es Mercadal, the second cattle grid is 300 meters from the first, and the third is a further 700 meters and is closest to the lighthouse of Cavalleria. Therefore, the distance between the first and the third is one kilometer. During this four year period we recovered 118 hedgehogs (106 alive and 12 dead), two turtles, a rabbit, a stone curlew and a snake that otherwise would have died of thirst or drowned when the grids filled with water following rain. The chance to periodically visit an area where hedgehogs are relatively abundant allowed for an accurate estimation of the density of the population in the area and to take notes of their behavior

L’eriçó africà, Atelerix algirus (Lereboullet, 1842) (Erinaceidae), i els passos de bestiar canadencs del Cap de Cavalleria (Es Mercadal, Menorca)

Durant el període 2007-2010, es va realitzar un recorregut cada dos dies, visitant els tres passos de bestiar de la carretera que va al Cap de Cavalleria per observar la possible caiguda de fauna. El pas de bestiar 1 és el més proper a es Mercadal, el segon pas està a una distància de 300 metres del primer, i a uns 700 metres del tercer (el més proper al far de Cavalleria), per tant la distància entre el primer i el tercer és d’un quilòmetre. Durant aquest 4 anys s'han recuperat 118 eriçons (106 eriçons vius i 12 morts), dues tortugues, un conill, una serp i un sebel·lí que haguessin mort de set o ofegats rere una inundació dels passos en casos de pluja. La possibilitat de fer un recorregut periòdic per una zona en la que els eriçons són relativament abundants, ofereix la possibilitat de realitzar una estima fidel sobre la seva densitat de població a la zona. Així mateix també es donen apunts sobre el seu comportament.During the period of 2007 to 2010, every two days we visited the three cattle grids on the road to the Cap of Cavalleria, where it was possible to observe the fauna that fell into the grids. The first cattle grid is the closest to es Mercadal, the second cattle grid is 300 meters from the first, and the third is a further 700 meters and is closest to the lighthouse of Cavalleria. Therefore, the distance between the first and the third is one kilometer. During this four year period we recovered 118 hedgehogs (106 alive and 12 dead), two turtles, a rabbit, a stone curlew and a snake that otherwise would have died of thirst or drowned when the grids filled with water following rain. The chance to periodically visit an area where hedgehogs are relatively abundant allowed for an accurate estimation of the density of the population in the area and to take notes of their behavior

Predictability of the monthly North Atlantic Oscillation index based on fractal analyses and dynamic system theory

The predictability of the monthly North Atlantic Oscillation, NAO, index is analysed from the point of view of different fractal concepts and dynamic system theory such as lacunarity, rescaled analysis (Hurst exponent) and reconstruction theorem (embedding and correlation dimensions, Kolmogorov entropy and Lyapunov exponents). The main results point out evident signs of randomness and the necessity of stochastic models to represent time evolution of the NAO index. The results also show that the monthly NAO index behaves as a white-noise Gaussian process. The high minimum number of nonlinear equations needed to describe the physical process governing the NAO index fluctuations is evidence of its complexity. A notable predictive instability is indicated by the positive Lyapunov exponents. Besides corroborating the complex time behaviour of the NAO index, present results suggest that random Cantor sets would be an interesting tool to model lacunarity and time evolution of the NAO index

Lacunarity, predictability and predictive instability of the daily pluviometric regime in the Iberian Peninsula

The complexity of the daily pluviometric regime of the Iberian Peninsula is analysed from the point of view of its lacunarity, predictability and predictive instability. The database consists of daily pluviometric records obtained from 43 rain gauges in Spain and Portugal for the period 1950–1990. Five different series are generated for every rain gauge. The first series is constituted by the consecutive daily amounts. The other four consist of dry spell lengths with respect to daily amount thresholds of 0.1, 1.0, 5.0 and 10.0 mm/day. A dry spell length is defined as the number of consecutive days with rainfall amounts below one of these thresholds. The empirical lacunarity for every rain gauge is well reproduced by two power laws, the exponents varying notably from one gauge to another. The spatial distribution of the lacunarity is characterised by a north to south or southeast gradient, thus suggesting that this parameter can be a useful tool to distinguish between different pluviometric regimes. The predictability of the five series is quantified by means of the rescaled analysis and the interpretation of the Hurst exponent. Its patterns reveal that most part of the Iberian Peninsula shows signs of persistence for the daily rainfall and the dry spell series, although persistence is only clearly manifested in some small domains. The instability of possible predictive algorithms is analysed through the Lyapunov exponents. They are only computed for the series of daily amounts and for dry lengths respect to the threshold level of 0.1 mm/day due to the short number of dry spells for larger threshold levels. The series of daily amounts depict the highest instability along the Mediterranean coast. The series of dry spells show an increasing instability from NE to SW Spain, with a relevant nucleus of high Lyapunov values in the south-western Atlantic coast. As a summary, lacunarity and Hurst and Lyapunov exponents depict a relevant spatial variation, which is in agreement with well known patterns of the pluviometric regime, such as annual amount spatial distribution and return periods of dry spells

Novel personalized pathway-based metabolomics models reveal key metabolic pathways for breast cancer diagnosis

Comparison of logistic regression, SVM and random forest performance in the plasma training data set. Table S2. Pathway significance and relative log fold changes in our metabolomics data and TCGA breast cancer RNA-Seq data. Table S3. Detected metabolites and their differential test results among the two models. a All-stage diagnosis model. b Early-stage diagnosis model. Table S4. Single-variate logistic analysis of metabolites or pathways selected as features in the metabolite-based or pathway-based early-stage diagnosis model. Table S5. Comparison of pathway features in the full-size (101 input pathways) and half-size (51 input pathways) pathway-based early-stage diagnosis models. (DOCX 34 kb

Statistical distribution of elapsed times and distances of seismic events: the case of the Southern Spain seismic catalogue

International audienceSeveral empiric cumulative distributions of elapsed times and distances between seismic events occurred in the Southern Iberian Peninsula from 1985 to 2000 (data extracted from the seismic catalogue of the Andalusian Institute of Geophysics) are investigated. Elapsed times and distances between consecutive seismic events of the whole catalogue, taking into account threshold magnitudes of 2.5, 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0, and of five seismic crises, without distinguishing magnitudes, are investigated. Additionally, the series of distances and elapsed times from the main event to every aftershock are also analysed for the five seismic crises. Even though a power law is sometimes a satisfactory model for the cumulative distribution of elapsed times and distances between seismic events, in some cases a fit with a Weibull distribution for elapsed times performs better. It is worth of mention that, in the case of the seismic crises, the fit achieved by the power law is sometimes improved when it is combined with a logarithmic law. The results derived might be a contribution to a better representation of the seismic activity by means of models that could be based on random-walk processes

Fractal behaviour of the seismicity in the Southern Iberian Peninsula

The fractal behaviour of the seismicity in the Southern Iberian Peninsula is analysed by considering two different series of data: the distance and the elapsed time between consecutive seismic events recorded by the seismic network of the Andalusian Institute of Geophysics (AIG). The fractal analyses have been repeated by considering four threshold magnitudes of 2.5, 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0. The re-scaled analysis lets to determine if the seismicity shows strong randomness or if it is characterised by time-persistence and the cluster dimension indicates the degree of time and spatial clustering of the seismicity. Another analysis, based on the reconstruction theorem, permits to evaluate the minimum number of nonlinear equations describing the dynamical mechanism of the seismicity, its 'loss of memory', its chaotic character and the instability of a possible predicting algorithm. The results obtained depict some differences depending on distances or elapsed times and the different threshold levels of magnitude also lead to slightly different results. Additionally, only a part of the fractal tools, the re-scaled analysis, have been applied to five seismic crises in the same area