Transpiration of montane <I>Pinus sylvestris</I> L. and <I>Quercus pubescens</I> Willd. forest stands measured with sap flow sensors in NE Spain

International audienceStand transpiration was measured during the 2003 and 2004 growing seasons using heat dissipation sap flow sensors in a Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) and a pubescent oak (Quercus pubescens Willd.) forest located in a montane area of the Eastern Pyrenees (NE Spain). The first aim of the study was to assess the differences in quantitative estimates of transpiration (Ec) and the response to evaporative demand of the two stands. Over the studied period of 2003, characterised by a severe drought episode during the summer, the oak stand Ec was only 110mm compared to the 239 mm transpired by the Scots pine stand, although the ratio of transpiration to reference evapotranspiration (Ec/ET0) in the oak stand compares well with the expected values predicted for low leaf area index (LAI) oak forests in southern Europe. Scots pine showed a strong reduction in Ec/ET0 as the drought developed, whereas pubescent oak was less affected by soil moisture deficits in the upper soil. As a second objective, and given the contrasting meteorological conditions between 2003 and 2004 summer periods, the interanual variability of transpiration was studied in the Scots pine plot. Rainfall during the summer months (June-September) in 2003 was almost 40% less than in the same interval in 2004. Accordingly, transpiration was also reduced about 25% in 2003. Finally, Scots pine data from 2003 and 2004 was used to calibrate a simple transpiration model using ET0 and soil moisture deficit (SMD) as input variables, and implicitly including stomatal responses to high vapour pressure deficits (D?) and soil water status

La conciencia poética del lector adolescente, clave para la formación lectora

El autor de trabajo plantea la formación poética de los alumnos de educación secundaria obligatoria a partir de los textos que ellos mismos leen o escriben en distintos foros y soportes. Así mismo reflexiona sobre el papel que debe desempeñar la conciencia poética del adolescente para su formación lectora.The author aims at the role of the poetic consciousness in the formation of the teenager's reading. At the same time, he conceives that formation in high school education starting from the texts students produce and read in different situations and media

Developing a novel approach to analyse the regimes of temporary streams and their controls on aquatic biota

Temporary streams are those water courses that undergo the recurrent cessation of flow or the complete drying of their channel. The biological communities in temporary stream reaches are strongly dependent on the temporal changes of the aquatic habitats determined by the hydrological conditions. The use of the aquatic fauna structural and functional characteristics to assess the ecological quality of a temporary stream reach can not therefore be made without taking into account the controls imposed by the hydrological regime. This paper develops some methods for analysing temporary streams' aquatic regimes, based on the definition of six aquatic states that summarize the sets of mesohabitats occurring on a given reach at a particular moment, depending on the hydrological conditions: flood, riffles, connected, pools, dry and arid. We used the water discharge records from gauging stations or simulations using rainfall-runoff models to infer the temporal patterns of occurrence of these states using the developed aquatic states frequency graph. The visual analysis of this graph is complemented by the development of two metrics based on the permanence of flow and the seasonal predictability of zero flow periods. Finally, a classification of the aquatic regimes of temporary streams in terms of their influence over the development of aquatic life is put forward, defining Permanent, Temporary-pools, Temporary-dry and Episodic regime types. All these methods were tested with data from eight temporary streams around the Mediterranean from MIRAGE project and its application was a precondition to assess the ecological quality of these streams using the current methods prescribed in the European Water Framework Directive for macroinvertebrate communities

Intense Physical Exercise Reduces Overt Attentional Capture

The abrupt onset of a visual stimulus typically results in overt attentional capture, which can be quantified by saccadic eye movements. Here, we tested whether attentional capture following onset of task-irrelevant visual stimuli (new object) is reduced after a bout of intense physical exercise. A group of participants performed a visual search task in two different activity conditions: Rest - without any prior effort; Effort - immediately after an acute bout of intense exercise. The results showed that participants exhibited: 1) slower reaction time of the first saccade toward the target when a new object was simultaneously presented in the visual field, but only in the rest activity condition; 2) more saccades to the new object in the rest activity condition than in the effort activity condition. We suggest that immediately after an acute bout of effort, participants improved their ability to inhibit irrelevant (distracting) stimuli. Key words: Acute exercise, effort, eye movements, attention, exogenous attention, physical activity

Hydrological processes and their seasonal controls in a small Mediterranean mountain catchment in the Pyrenees

The Vallcebre catchments are located in a middle mountain area of the Pyrenean ranges, built up by sedimentary rocks and loamy soils. The vegetation cover is pastures and forests of <i>Pinus sylvestris</i>, mostly occupying former agricultural terraces. Some relatively small, heavily eroded landscapes (badlands) occur in the catchments, playing a relevant hydrological and geomorphic role. Annual precipitation is 924 mm and potential (reference) evapotranspiration is about 700 mm. Rainfall interception in forests represents about 24% of precipitation; interception rates were similar throughout the seasons because of a compensation between rainfall intensities and atmospheric conditions. Soil moisture showed a temporal pattern characterised by the occurrence of marked deficit periods in summer and also, but less pronounced, in winter. During most of the year, subsurface flows on hillslopes drove the spatial organisation of soil moisture and the occurrence of saturated areas. Nevertheless, this spatial organisation was also controlled by the patterns of vegetation cover. During dry periods, subsurface flow ceased, saturated areas disappeared and the spatial patterns of soil moisture changed. Stream flow from these catchments was dominated by storm flow, and the runoff generating mechanisms showed a clear seasonal pattern, controlled mainly by the soil moisture and the extent of saturated areas. During the dry periods, runoff was produced only on impervious areas and badlands. At the end of the dry periods, some large rainfall events generated significant runoff because of the perched saturation of the shallow soil horizons. Thereafter, runoff generation was dominated by the role of saturated areas. Stream waters in catchments with badlands had very high suspended sediment concentrations. The seasonal pattern of erosion processes in badlands was characterised by physical weathering during winter, regolith breakdown and vigorous hillslope erosion during spring and summer, and efficient transport of sediments in autumn

Gut bacterial community of the xylophagous cockroaches Cryptocercus punctulatus and Parasphaeria boleiriana

Cryptocercus punctulatus and Parasphaeria boleiriana are two distantly related xylophagous and subsocial cockroaches. Cryptocercus is related to termites. Xylophagous cockroaches and termites are excellent model organisms for studying the symbiotic relationship between the insect and their microbiota. In this study, high-throughput 454 pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA was used to investigate the diversity of metagenomic gut communities of C. punctulatus and P. boleiriana, and thereby to identify possible shifts in symbiont allegiances during cockroaches evolution. Our results revealed that the hindgut prokaryotic communities of both xylophagous cockroaches are dominated by members of four Bacteria phyla: Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, and Actinobacteria. Other identified phyla were Spirochaetes, Planctomycetes, candidatus Saccharibacteria (formerly TM7), and Acidobacteria, each of which represented 1-2% of the total population detected. Community similarity based on phylogenetic relatedness by unweighted UniFrac analyses indicated that the composition of the bacterial community in the two species was significantly different (P < 0.05). Phylogenetic analysis based on the characterized clusters of Bacteroidetes, Spirochaetes, and Deltaproteobacteria showed that many OTUs present in both cockroach species clustered with sequences previously described in termites and other cockroaches, but not with those from other animals or environments. These results suggest that, during their evolution, those cockroaches conserved several bacterial communities from the microbiota of a common ancestor. The ecological stability of those microbial communities may imply the important functional role for the survival of the host of providing nutrients in appropriate quantities and balance

Human or Computer Assisted Interactive Transcription: Automated Text Recognition, Text Annotation, and Scholarly Edition in the Twenty-First Century

Computer assisted transcription tools can speed up the initial process of reading and transcribing texts. At the same time, new annotation tools open new ways of accessing the text in its graphical form. The balance and value of each method still needs to be explored. STATE, a complete assisted transcription system for ancient documents, was presented to the audience of the 2013 International Medieval Congress at Leeds. The system offers a multimodal interaction environment to assist humans in transcribing ancient documents: the user can type, write on the screen with a stylus, or utter a word. When one of these actions is used to correct an erroneous word, the system uses this new information to look for other mistakes in the rest of the line. The system is modular, composed of different parts: one part creates projects from a set of images of documents, another part controls an automatic transcription system, and the third part allows the user to interact with the transcriptions and easily correct them as needed. This division of labour allows great flexibility for organising the work in a team of transcribers.Las herramientas de ayuda a la transcripción automática pueden acelerar el proceso inicial de la lectura y transcripción de textos. Al mismo tiempo, las nuevas herramientas de anotación aportan nuevas formas de acceder al texto en su forma original gráfica. Sin embargo, todavía es necesario evaluar las bondades y capacidades de los distintos métodos. STATE, un completo sistema de asistencia a la transcripción de documentos antiguos, se presentó a la audiencia del International Medieval Congress de 2013 celebrado en Leeds. El sistema ofrece un entorno de interacción multimodal para ayudar a las personas en la transcripción de documentos antiguos: el usuario puede teclear, escribir en la pantalla con un lápiz óptico o corregir usando la voz. Cada vez que el usuario cambia de esta forma una palabra, el sistema utiliza la corrección para buscar errores en el resto de la línea. El sistema está dividido en diferentes módulos: uno crea proyectos a partir de un conjunto de imágenes de documentos, otro módulo controla el sistema de transcripción automática, y un tercer módulo permite al usuario interactuar con las transcripciones y corregirlas fácilmente cuando sea necesario. Esta división de las tareas permite una gran flexibilidad para organizar el trabajo de los transcriptores en equipo