257 research outputs found
New algorithms and technologies for the un-supervised reduction of Optical/IR images
This paper presents some of the main aspects of the software library that has
been developed for the reduction of optical and infrared images, an integral
part of the end-to-end survey system being built to support public imaging
surveys at ESO. Some of the highlights of the new library are: unbiased
estimates of the background, critical for deep IR observations; efficient and
accurate astrometric solutions, using multi-resolution techniques; automatic
identification and masking of satellite tracks; weighted co-addition of images;
creation of optical/IR mosaics, and appropriate management of multi-chip
instruments. These various elements have been integrated into a system using
XML technology for setting input parameters, driving the various processes,
producing comprehensive history logs and storing the results, binding them to
the supporting database and to the web. The system has been extensively tested
using deep images as well as images of crowded fields (e.g. globular clusters,
LMC), processing at a rate of 0.5 Mega-pixels per second using a DS20E ALPHA
computer with two processors. The goal of this presentation is to review some
of the main features of this package.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, conferenc
Organic Beekeeping in Mexico
Mexico is often described as a cornucopia, a land with high diversity in ecosystems, crops, fauna and flora. These are superb preconditions for organic honey production. Already the pre-hispanic Maya cultures produced honey from the native stingless bee (Meliponini) before the Spanish introduced European honey bee (Apis mellifera L). The main beekeeping product in Mexico is honey. Mexico ranks sixth in the world in honey production (57,000 t) and third as an exporter (25,000 t).
Two conditions allow Mexico to possess an enormous potential for organic honey production. First, the beekeeping with Africanized honeybees: despite the problems derived from their defensiveness, these bees have great qualities in terms of natural defences against main diseases, including Varroa, so that beekeeping can be realized almost without the use of medicines, contrary to beekeeping with European bees. Second, the southern states of Mexico have a low industrialization level with small scale agriculture characterized by a rather low use of pesticides. Thus, a big part of the territory is suitable for organic honey production as it fulfils the low exposure levels of contaminants.
Mexico produces approximately 1,150 tons of organic certified honey that is about 5% of the Mexican honey export. 20 operators are certified organic. Most organic producers are cooperatives with small scale beekeepers. In 2010, more than 448 organic beekeepers (and 291 beekeepers in transition) are managing more than 46,318 organic hives (and 8,629 hives in transition). Organic honey is mainly produced in the states of Yucatan, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Morelos and Jalisco. Some of the organic beekeeping cooperatives also hold Fair Trade certificates. The first cooperatives were certified in the 1990âs in Oaxaca y Guerrero state. Naturland/IMO organized the first organic beekeeping workshop in 2001. Since 2003, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR) has offered annual courses with diplomas in organic beekeeping. Naturland/ IMO trained the inspection agency Certimex on auditing organic beekeepers in 2004. The First Forum of Organic Apiculture was held in 2005 in Chetumal, followed by a second Forum in 2008 in MĂ©rida. The premium price placed on organic honey makes the transition to organic production very attractive. For small scale beekeepers in cooperatives, an Internal Control System (ICS) has to be developed and full traceability of the product must be ensured. The documentation of the beekeepersâ activities, as well as the accounting of the honey and wax, can present some difficulties at the beginning, particularly because many of the indigenous beekeepers are illiterate.
Wax from organic beekeeping is used for wax exchange within the organic projects to guarantee a closed wax cycle. Organic certifiers like Naturland, IMO and Certimex carry out wax analysis in order to ensure the absence of conventional Varroacides in the wax. If wax is contaminated, it has to be replaced and the cycle of home-grown wax has to be established. Mexico presents the most suitable conditions of biodiversity and nectar sources from extensive natural forests, traditionally not intensively developed, and more than 400,000 ha of certified agriculture land. It has the potential to increase organic honey production considerably, so that many cooperatives of small farmers may benefit by including organic beekeeping in their production
Organic beekeeping in Mexico
Mexico is often described as a cornucopia, a land with high diversity in ecosystems, crops, fauna and flora.
These are superb preconditions for organic honey production. Already the pre-hispanic Maya cultures produced honey from the native stingless bee (Meliponini) before the Spanish introduced European honey bee (Apis mellifera L). The main beekeeping product in Mexico is honey. Mexico ranks sixth in the world in honey production (57,000 t) and third as an exporter (25,000 t)
Adaptation de la gestion technique des producteurs de café et de miel face aux variations de prix au Guatemala : concepts et méthodes
International audienceL'incertitude forge le quotidien des agriculteurs des municipalitĂ©s de Jacaltenango et de San Antonio Huista, Ă la frontiĂšre occidentale du Guatemala. La communication prĂ©sente le projet de recherche et les rĂ©sultats intermĂ©diaires d'une thĂšse de doctorat (2009-2011) portant sur l'adaptation de la gestion technique des producteurs de cafĂ© et de miel des hautes terres guatĂ©maltĂšques face aux variations de prix. Les concepts de logique d'action sur le long terme, de gestion technique et de flexibilitĂ© sont mobilisĂ©s pour l'Ă©tude de la trajectoire d'activitĂ©s et de pratiques agricoles de 48 producteurs membres d'une association de commercialisation de cafĂ© et miel. La mĂ©thodologie se dĂ©compose en quatre phases : (1) une phase exploratoire d'enquĂȘtes comprĂ©hensives, (2) une phase exhaustive d'enquĂȘtes semi-directives, (3) le traitement des donnĂ©es avec des mĂ©thodes statistiques de regroupement, (4) une vĂ©rification des corrĂ©lations statistiques observĂ©es via des monographies des systĂšmes d'activitĂ©s. Une premiĂšre confrontation de ce cadre thĂ©orique et mĂ©thodologique avec le terrain permet de prĂ©ciser nos hypothĂšses autour des relations entre flexibilitĂ© et d'une part production biologique et d'autre part catĂ©gorie sociale de la main d'Ćuvre
Workers dominate male production in the neotropical bumblebee Bombus wilmattae (Hymenoptera: Apidae)
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Cooperation and conflict in social insects are closely linked to the genetic structure of the colony. Kin selection theory predicts conflict over the production of males between the workers and the queen and between the workers themselves, depending on intra-colonial relatedness but also on other factors like colony efficiency, sex ratios, cost of worker reproduction and worker dominance behaviour. In most bumblebee (<it>Bombus</it>) species the queen wins this conflict and often dominates male production. However, most studies in bumblebees have been conducted with only a few selected, mostly single mated species from temperate climate regions. Here we study the genetic colony composition of the facultative polyandrous neotropical bumblebee <it>Bombus wilmattae</it>, to assess the outcome of the queen-worker conflict over male production and to detect potential worker policing.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 120 males from five colonies were genotyped with up to nine microsatellite markers to infer their parentage. Four of the five colonies were queen right at point of time of male sampling, while one had an uncertain queen status. The workers clearly dominated production of males with an average of 84.9% +/- 14.3% of males being worker sons. In the two doubly mated colonies 62.5% and 96.7% of the male offspring originated from workers and both patrilines participated in male production. Inferring the mother genotypes from the male offspring, between four to eight workers participated in the production of males.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>In this study we show that the workers clearly win the queen-worker conflict over male production in <it>B. wilmattae</it>, which sets them apart from the temperate bumblebee species studied so far. Workers clearly dominated male production in the singly as well the doubly mated colonies, with up to eight workers producing male offspring in a single colony. Moreover no monopolization of reproduction by single workers occurred.</p
Cleaning sky survey databases using Hough Transform and Renewal String approaches
Large astronomical databases obtained from sky surveys such as the
SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey (SSS) invariably suffer from spurious records coming
from artefactual effects of the telescope, satellites and junk objects in orbit
around earth and physical defects on the photographic plate or CCD. Though
relatively small in number these spurious records present a significant problem
in many situations where they can become a large proportion of the records
potentially of interest to a given astronomer. Accurate and robust techniques
are needed for locating and flagging such spurious objects, and we are
undertaking a programme investigating the use of machine learning techniques in
this context. In this paper we focus on the four most common causes of unwanted
records in the SSS: satellite or aeroplane tracks, scratches, fibres and other
linear phenomena introduced to the plate, circular halos around bright stars
due to internal reflections within the telescope and diffraction spikes near to
bright stars. Appropriate techniques are developed for the detection of each of
these. The methods are applied to the SSS data to develop a dataset of spurious
object detections, along with confidence measures, which can allow these
unwanted data to be removed from consideration. These methods are general and
can be adapted to other astronomical survey data.Comment: Accepted for MNRAS. 17 pages, latex2e, uses mn2e.bst, mn2e.cls,
md706.bbl, shortbold.sty (all included). All figures included here as low
resolution jpegs. A version of this paper including the figures can be
downloaded from http://www.anc.ed.ac.uk/~amos/publications.html and more
details on this project can be found at
http://www.anc.ed.ac.uk/~amos/sattrackres.htm
ESO for GOODS' sake
Currently public ESO data sets pertinent to the CDFS/GOODS field are briefly
illustrated along with an indication on how to get access to them. Future ESO
plans for complementing the GOODS database with optical/IR imaging and optical
spectroscopy are also described.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the ESO/USM
Workshop "The Mass of Galaxies at Low and High Redshift" (Venice, Italy,
October 2001), eds. R. Bender and A. Renzin
ESO Imaging Survey: infrared observations of CDF-S and HDF-S
This paper presents infrared data obtained from observations carried out at
the ESO 3.5m New Technology Telescope (NTT) of the Hubble Deep Field South
(HDF-S) and the Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S). These data were taken as part
of the ESO Imaging Survey (EIS) program, a public survey conducted by ESO to
promote follow-up observations with the VLT. In the HDF-S field the infrared
observations cover an area of ~53 square arcmin, encompassing the HST WFPC2 and
STIS fields, in the JHKs passbands. The seeing measured in the final stacked
images ranges from 0.79" to 1.22" and the median limiting magnitudes (AB
system, 2" aperture, 5sigma detection limit) are J_AB~23.0, H_AB~22.8 and
K_AB~23.0 mag. Less complete data are also available in JKs for the adjacent
HST NICMOS field. For CDF-S, the infrared observations cover a total area of
\~100 square arcmin, reaching median limiting magnitudes (as defined above) of
J_AB~23.6 and K_AB~22.7 mag. For one CDF-S field H-band data are also
available. This paper describes the observations and presents the results of
new reductions carried out entirely through the un-supervised, high-throughput
EIS Data Reduction System and its associated EIS/MVM C++-based image processing
library developed, over the past 5 years, by the EIS project and now publicly
available. The paper also presents source catalogs extracted from the final
co-added images which are used to evaluate the scientific quality of the survey
products, and hence the performance of the software. This is done comparing the
results obtained in the present work with those obtained by other authors from
independent data and/or reductions carried out with different software packages
and techniques. The final science-grade catalogs and co-added images are
available at CDS.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A, 13 pages, 12 figures; a full
resolution version of the paper is available from
http://www.astro.ku.dk/~lisbeth/eisdata/papers/4528.pdf ; related catalogs
and images are available through http://www.astro.ku.dk/~lisbeth/eisdata
The circumstellar envelope of IRC+10216 from milli-arcsecond to arcmin scales
Aims.Analysis of the innermost regions of the carbon-rich star IRC+10216 and
of the outer layers of its circumstellar envelope have been performed in order
to constrain its mass-loss history. Methods: .We analyzed the high dynamic
range of near-infrared adaptive optics and the deep V-band images of the
circumstellar envelope of IRC+10216 using high angular resolution, collected
with the VLT/NACO and FORS1 instruments. Results: .From the near-infrared
observations, we present maps of the sub-arcsecond structures, or clumps, in
the innermost regions. The morphology of these clumps is found to strongly vary
from J- to L-band. Their relative motion appears to be more complex than
proposed in earlier works: they can be weakly accelerated, have a constant
velocity, or even be motionless with respect to one another. From V-band
imaging, we present a high spatial resolution map of the shell distribution in
the outer layers of IRC+10216. Shells are resolved well up to a distance of
about 90'' to the core of the nebula and most of them appear to be composed of
thinner elongated shells. Finally, by combining the NACO and FORS1 images, a
global view is present to show both the extended layers and the bipolar core of
the nebula together with the real size of the inner clumps. Conclusions: .This
study confirms the rather complex nature of the IRC+10216 circumstellar
environment. In particular, the coexistence at different spatial scales of
structures with very different morphologies (clumps, bipolarity, and almost
spherical external layers) is very puzzling. This confirms that the formation
of AGB winds is far more complex than usually assumed in current models.Comment: Published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2006, 455, 18
- âŠ