2,970 research outputs found

    Evaluation of Potential Translocation Sites for an Imperiled Cyprinid, the Hornyhead Chub

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    Translocation of isolated species into suitable habitats may help to secure vulnerable, geographically limited species. Due to the decline of Wyoming Hornyhead Chub Nocomis biguttatus, conservation actions, such as the translocation of populations within the plausible historical range, are being considered to improve population redundancy and resiliency to disturbance events. Translocation of Wyoming Hornyhead Chub must be rigorously evaluated because a hatchery stock does not exist, so all fish used in translocations will come from the wild population. We present an approach to identify the best available translocation sites prior to translocation efforts taking place. We evaluated fish community composition and habitat conditions at 54 potential translocation sites for Hornyhead Chub within 12 streams of the North Platte River basin of Wyoming. We used two analyses to identify translocation sites that were most similar to currently occupied Hornyhead Chub sites on the Laramie River: hurdle models to predict hypothetical abundance of Hornyhead Chub at translocation sites and nonmetric multidimensional scaling with fish community and habitat conditions. Presence and abundance of Hornyhead Chub were positively related to a lack of nonnative predators and to habitat features characteristic of backwater and velocity refuge habitats (e.g., minimum water velocity and width-to-depth ratio). We used a rank scoring system to weight the outcomes of each analysis, and the highest-ranking translocation sites occurred at a historically occupied locality, the Sweetwater River. Our approach may be appropriate for other at-risk species with isolated distributions and little historical data

    Feeling better:Experiences and needs of adolescents and professionals regarding their mentoring relationship in residential youth care

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    Purpose: In residential youth care, group care workers and teachers often serve as a mentor for individual adolescents. Research suggests that favorable mentoring relationships are associated with positive adolescent outcomes. However, few studies examined the role of mentoring in residential youth care. The present study aims to assess adolescents’, care workers’ and teachers’ mentoring relationship needs in terms of their one-on-one conversations during residential care. Method: Interviews with eleven adolescents, ten group care workers and two teachers show that all are rather satisfied with their conversations, which are often concerned with how it’s going with the adolescent. Results: Adolescents mostly consider their family and situation at home as difficult topics, while care workers mostly consider sexuality as a difficult topic to talk about. Although the aim is often ‘improvement’ with the youth, most adolescents report that they do not (know if they) show changes as a result of these conversations. Moreover, only one of the twelve professionals thinks that it is his core task to achieve behavior change with the young person. According to the professionals, conversations often aim at building a good relationship, coaching, determining treatment goals, and gaining insight into the adolescent. Adolescents prefer a mentor who is calm, has respect, listens, and is reluctant in giving advice. Most professionals do not use a specific treatment protocol or method and doubt whether they want to have conversations according to a manual, protocol or support tool. Discussion: Despite being rather satisfied, adolescents and professionals indicate several points for improvement of one-on-one conversations

    Professionalizing care workers:Outcomes of a ‘Motivational Interviewing’ Training in residential youth care

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    Behavioral change in adolescents is often an important aim of residential youth care, but difficult to achieve. Care workers can increase the intrinsic motivation of adolescents to change their behavior by applying Motivational Interviewing (MI). The aim of this study is to investigate whether there is a difference in workers’ performance vis-à-vis adolescents before and after an MI training course. To measure this difference, we coded transcripts of audio recordings of one-on-one conversations between adolescents and workers, using the MITI 4.2.1 and MISC 2.5. We compared the transcripts made before the MI training course with the transcripts made after the training course. The results show that the 13 workers made significantly more use of MI adherent behaviors after the training course. Moreover, a trend toward using fewer MI non-adherent behaviors after the training was observed. The results suggest that workers are able to evoke more ‘change talk’ with adolescents after a training course. In conclusion, after attending a training course, workers are able to engage in conversations that are more in line with the MI-spirit. However, these are still not “real” MI conversations yet. We recommend to train workers more intensively in how to apply MI

    Experimental Investigation of the Effect of Pilot Tone Modulation on Partial Response Modulation Formats

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    This paper presents an experimental investigation of 8% pilot tone modulation depth is a system transmitting NRZ, PAM4 and Duobinary. The penalty from the pilot tone increases with signal amplitude levels and reaches a received power penalty of 3 dB.Comment: Project BlueSpace (EU funding No. 762055

    Chronicle of a death foretold: Plasmodium liver stage parasites decide on the fate of the host cell

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    Protozoan parasites of the genus Plasmodium are the causative agents of malaria. Despite more than 100years of research, the complex life cycle of the parasite still bears many surprises and it is safe to say that understanding the biology of the pathogen will keep scientists busy for many years to come. Malaria research has mainly concentrated on the pathological blood stage of Plasmodium parasites, leaving us with many questions concerning parasite development within the mosquito and during the exo-erythrocytic stage in the vertebrate host. After the discovery of the Plasmodium liver stage in the middle of the last century, it remained understudied for many years but the realization that it represents a promising target for vaccination approaches has brought it back into focus. The last decade saw many new and exciting discoveries concerning the exo-erythrocytic stage and in this review we will discuss the highlights of the latest developments in the field. During the last decade many surprising facts about exoerythrocytic development of Plasmodium parasites have been revealed and will be discusse

    Coopetition of software firms in Open source software ecosystems

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    Software firms participate in an ecosystem as a part of their innovation strategy to extend value creation beyond the firms boundary. Participation in an open and independent environment also implies the competition among firms with similar business models and targeted markets. Hence, firms need to consider potential opportunities and challenges upfront. This study explores how software firms interact with others in OSS ecosystems from a coopetition perspective. We performed a quantitative and qualitative analysis of three OSS projects. Finding shows that software firms emphasize the co-creation of common value and partly react to the potential competitiveness on OSS ecosystems. Six themes about coopetition were identified, including spanning gatekeepers, securing communication, open-core sourcing and filtering shared code. Our work contributes to software engineering research with a rich description of coopetition in OSS ecosystems. Moreover, we also come up with several implications for software firms in pursing a harmony participation in OSS ecosystems.Comment: This is the author's version of the work. Copyright owner's version can be accessed at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-69191-6_10, Coopetition of software firms in Open source software ecosystems, 8th ICSOB 2017, Essen, Germany (2017
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