scholarly journals Spatio-temporal variation in the wintering associations of an alpine bird

2021 ◽  
Vol 288 (1951) ◽  
pp. 20210690
Author(s):  
María del Mar Delgado ◽  
Raphaël Arlettaz ◽  
Chiara Bettega ◽  
Mattia Brambilla ◽  
Miguel de Gabriel Hernando ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Winter Climate ◽  
Winter Conditions ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Common Strategy ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Wintering Conditions ◽  
Shed Light

Many animals make behavioural changes to cope with winter conditions, being gregariousness a common strategy. Several factors have been invoked to explain why gregariousness may evolve during winter, with individuals coming together and separating as they trade off the different costs and benefits of living in groups. These trade-offs may, however, change over space and time as a response to varying environmental conditions. Despite its importance, little is known about the factors triggering gregarious behaviour during winter and its change in response to variation in weather conditions is poorly documented. Here, we aimed at quantifying large-scale patterns in wintering associations over 23 years of the white-winged snowfinch Montifringilla nivalis nivalis . We found that individuals gather in larger groups at sites with harsh wintering conditions. Individuals at colder sites reunite later and separate earlier in the season than at warmer sites. However, the magnitude and phenology of wintering associations are ruled by changes in weather conditions. When the temperature increased or the levels of precipitation decreased, group size substantially decreased, and individuals stayed united in groups for a shorter time. These results shed light on factors driving gregariousness and points to shifting winter climate as an important factor influencing this behaviour.

scholarly journals First Identification of RNA-Binding Proteins That Regulate Alternative Exons in the Dystrophin Gene

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (20) ◽  
pp. 7803
Author(s):  
Julie Miro ◽  
Anne-Laure Bougé ◽  
Eva Murauer ◽  
Emmanuelle Beyne ◽  
Dylan Da Cunha ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Binding Proteins ◽  
Molecular Mechanisms ◽  
Rna Binding ◽  
Rna Binding Proteins ◽  
Dystrophin Gene ◽  
Rna Seq ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Dmd Gene ◽  
Shed Light

The Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) gene has a complex expression pattern regulated by multiple tissue-specific promoters and by alternative splicing (AS) of the resulting transcripts. Here, we used an RNAi-based approach coupled with DMD-targeted RNA-seq to identify RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) that regulate splicing of its skeletal muscle isoform (Dp427m) in a human muscular cell line. A total of 16 RBPs comprising the major regulators of muscle-specific splicing events were tested. We show that distinct combinations of RBPs maintain the correct inclusion in the Dp427m of exons that undergo spatio-temporal AS in other dystrophin isoforms. In particular, our findings revealed the complex networks of RBPs contributing to the splicing of the two short DMD exons 71 and 78, the inclusion of exon 78 in the adult Dp427m isoform being crucial for muscle function. Among the RBPs tested, QKI and DDX5/DDX17 proteins are important determinants of DMD exon inclusion. This is the first large-scale study to determine which RBP proteins act on the physiological splicing of the DMD gene. Our data shed light on molecular mechanisms contributing to the expression of the different dystrophin isoforms, which could be influenced by a change in the function or expression level of the identified RBPs.

scholarly journals Automated location of active fire perimeters in aerial infrared imaging using unsupervised edge detectors

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 241 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. M. Valero ◽  
O. Rios ◽  
E. Pastor ◽  
E. Planas
Keyword(s):  
Forest Fires ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Infrared Imaging ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Automated System ◽  
Rate Of Spread ◽  
Active Fire ◽  
Edge Detectors ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Manual Tasks

A variety of remote sensing techniques have been applied to forest fires. However, there is at present no system capable of monitoring an active fire precisely in a totally automated manner. Spaceborne sensors show too coarse spatio-temporal resolutions and all previous studies that extracted fire properties from infrared aerial imagery incorporated manual tasks within the image processing workflow. As a contribution to this topic, this paper presents an algorithm to automatically locate the fuel burning interface of an active wildfire in georeferenced aerial thermal infrared (TIR) imagery. An unsupervised edge detector, built upon the Canny method, was accompanied by the necessary modules for the extraction of line coordinates and the location of the total burned perimeter. The system was validated in different scenarios ranging from laboratory tests to large-scale experimental burns performed under extreme weather conditions. Output accuracy was computed through three common similarity indices and proved acceptable. Computing times were below 1 s per image on average. The produced information was used to measure the temporal evolution of the fire perimeter and automatically generate rate of spread (ROS) fields. Information products were easily exported to standard Geographic Information Systems (GIS), such as GoogleEarth and QGIS. Therefore, this work contributes towards the development of an affordable and totally automated system for operational wildfire surveillance.

scholarly journals Insights on the assembly rules of a continent-wide multilayer network

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco A. R. Mello ◽  
Gabriel M. Felix ◽  
Rafael B. P. Pinheiro ◽  
Renata L. Muylaert ◽  
Cullen Geiselman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Traits ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Assembly Rules ◽  
Multilayer Network ◽  
Separate Species ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Nested Structure ◽  
Shed Light

Introductory paragraphHow are ecological systems assembled? Here, we aim to contribute to answering this question by harnessing the framework of a novel integrative hypothesis. We shed light on the assembly rules of a multilayer network formed by frugivory and nectarivory interactions between bats and plants in the Neotropics. Our results suggest that, at a large scale, phylogenetic trade-offs separate species into different layers and modules. At an intermediate scale, the modules are also shaped by geographic trade-offs. And at a small scale, the network shifts to a nested structure within its modules, probably as a consequence of resource breadth processes. Finally, once the topology of the network is shaped, morphological traits related to consuming fruits or nectar determine which species are central or peripheral. Our results help understand how different processes contribute to the assemblage of ecological systems at different scales, resulting in a compound topology.

scholarly journals K-Prototypes Segmentation Analysis on Large-Scale Ridesourcing Trip Data

2020 ◽  
Vol 2674 (9) ◽  
pp. 383-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Soria ◽  
Ying Chen ◽  
Amanda Stathopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Data ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Data Types ◽  
Adverse Weather Conditions ◽  
Segmentation Analysis ◽  
Adverse Weather ◽  
Mobility System ◽  
Spatio Temporal

Shared mobility-on-demand services are expanding rapidly in cities around the world. As a prominent example, app-based ridesourcing is becoming an integral part of many urban transportation ecosystems. Despite the centrality, limited public availability of detailed temporal and spatial data on ridesourcing trips has limited research on how new services interact with traditional mobility options and how they affect travel in cities. Improving data-sharing agreements are opening unprecedented opportunities for research in this area. This study examined emerging patterns of mobility using recently released City of Chicago public ridesourcing data. The detailed spatio-temporal ridesourcing data were matched with weather, transit, and taxi data to gain a deeper understanding of ridesourcing’s role in Chicago’s mobility system. The goal was to investigate the systematic variations in patronage of ridehailing. K-prototypes was utilized to detect user segments owing to its ability to accept mixed variable data types. An extension of the K-means algorithm, its output was a classification of the data into several clusters called prototypes. Six ridesourcing prototypes were identified and discussed based on significant differences in relation to adverse weather conditions, competition with alternative modes, location and timing of use, and tendency for ridesplitting. The paper discusses the implications of the identified clusters related to affordability, equity, and competition with transit.

scholarly journals Large-Scale Station-Level Crowd Flow Forecast with ST-Unet

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yirong Zhou ◽  
Hao Chen ◽  
Jun Li ◽  
Ye Wu ◽  
Jiangjiang Wu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Dependence ◽  
Traffic Management ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Temporal Dependence ◽  
Flow Information ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Real World Datasets ◽  
Temporal Events ◽  
Flow Forecast

High crowd mobility is a characteristic of transportation hubs such as metro/bus/bike stations in cities worldwide. Forecasting the crowd flow for such places, known as station-level crowd flow forecast (SLCFF) in this paper, would have many benefits, for example traffic management and public safety. Concretely, SLCFF predicts the number of people that will arrive at or depart from stations in a given period. However, one challenge is that the crowd flows across hundreds of stations irregularly scattered throughout a city are affected by complicated spatio-temporal events. Additionally, some external factors such as weather conditions or holidays may change the crowd flow tremendously. In this paper, a spatio-temporal U-shape network model (ST-Unet) for SLCFF is proposed. It is a neural network-based multi-output regression model, handling hundreds of target variables, i.e., all stations’ in and out flows. ST-Unet emphasizes stations’ spatial dependence by integrating the crowd flow information from neighboring stations and the cluster it belongs to after hierarchical clustering. It learns the temporal dependence by modeling the temporal closeness, period, and trend of crowd flows. With proper modifications on the network structure, ST-Unet is easily trained and has reliable convergency. Experiments on four real-world datasets were carried out to verify the proposed method’s performance and the results show that ST-Unet outperforms seven baselines in terms of SLCFF.

scholarly journals The degree of ripening of the grapevine in the varieties of selection of National Scientific Centre ‟Institute of viticulture and wine-making after V.YE. Tairovˮ in the conditions of the northern part of the Forest-steppe of Ukraine

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-114
Author(s):  
O. S. Vasylenko ◽  
◽  
T. E. Kondratenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Growing Season ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Forest Steppe ◽  
Winter Conditions ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Primary Fluorescence ◽  
Wintering Conditions ◽  
Grape Varieties ◽  
Selection Of

Strong growth of shoots and ripening of grape fruits do not give grounds for claiming that the variety is in accordance with the climatic conditions of a certain area. Only a well-ripe vine can withstand severe winter conditions. The purpose of the study is to determine the degree of maturation of the vine in grape varieties of Odessa breeding grown in the northern part of the Forest-steppe, and to identify among them the most prepared for wintering conditions in the area. The degree of maturation of the vine was determined during 2018–2019 in the autumn before the cover of grape plants by the method of primary fluorescence using a microscope MBS-2 with fluorescent illuminator OI-18 and by the method of N. Matuzok. Studies have shown that the degree of ripening of the grapevine depends on the weather conditions during the growing season and varietal characteristics of the plants. Weather conditions during the years of study contributed to the good maturation of the shoots of grapes of all varieties except Kometa and Zahadka. The first had a characteristic brown color of the mature bark along the entire length of the shoot. When bending the vine in its upper part of the characteristic cracking of the bark was not in the varieties Kometa, Zahadka, Yarylo and Muskat odeskyi. The highest degree of ripening of shoot tissues was noted in the lower zone of the vine in the Aromatnyi, Kardyshakh, Kishmish tayirovskij. In the middle zone of shoots, the highest degree of maturation of the felema was found in the variety Kardyshakh, and in the upper part of the shoot, in the variety Aromatnyi. The highest conditional coefficient of maturation (Kv) of the tissues of the vine in the fifth internode is defined in the varieties Aromatnyi and Kyshmysh tairovskyi (0.90), the mean in the variety Kardyshakh (0.88), and the lowest in the variety Kometa (0.56). Based on the data obtained from the results of complex studies, it was found that the varieties Aromatnyi, Kyshmysh tairovskyi and Kardyshakh are the most prepared for wintering in the northern part of the Forest-steppe.

scholarly journals Parasite prevalence increases with temperature in an avian metapopulation in northern Norway

Parasitology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 146 (8) ◽  
pp. 1030-1035 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Holand ◽  
H. Jensen ◽  
T. Kvalnes ◽  
J. Tufto ◽  
H. Pärn ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Natural Populations ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Parasite Prevalence ◽  
Winter Climate ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
Northern Norway ◽  
Mild Winter ◽  
The North

AbstractClimate and weather conditions may have substantial effects on the ecology of both parasites and hosts in natural populations. The strength and shape of the effects of weather on parasites and hosts are likely to change as global warming affects local climate. These changes may in turn alter fundamental elements of parasite–host dynamics. We explored the influence of temperature and precipitation on parasite prevalence in a metapopulation of avian hosts in northern Norway. We also investigated if annual change in parasite prevalence was related to winter climate, as described by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). We found that parasite prevalence increased with temperature within-years and decreased slightly with increasing precipitation. We also found that a mild winter (positive winter NAO index) was associated with higher mean parasite prevalence the following year. Our results indicate that both local and large scale weather conditions may affect the proportion of hosts that become infected by parasites in natural populations. Understanding the effect of climate and weather on parasite–host relationships in natural populations is vital in order to predict the full consequence of global warming.

scholarly journals Low-hanging fruits in large-scale fluvial landscaping measures: trade-offs between flood hazard, costs, stakeholders and biodiversity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Menno W. Straatsma ◽  
Jan M. Fliervoet ◽  
Johan A. H. Kabout ◽  
Fedor Baart ◽  
Maarten G. Kleinhans
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Flood Hazard ◽  
Rhine River ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Single Measure ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Efficiency Measures ◽  
Hydraulic Design ◽  
Multidimensional Evaluation ◽  
Adaptation Scenarios

Abstract. Adapting densely populated deltas to the combined impacts of climate change and socioeconomic developments presents a major challenge for their sustainable development in the 21st century. Decisions for the adaptations require an overview of cost and benefits and the number of stakeholders involved, which can be used in stakeholder discussions. Therefore, we investigated the balance between multi-faceted costs and benefits of common landscaping measures to compensate for changes in discharge and sea level rise on the basis of relevant, but inexhaustive, quantitative variables for physical, ecological and societal costs and benefits. We modelled the largest delta distributary of the Rhine River with adaptation scenarios driven by (1) the choice of seven measures, (2) the areas owned by the two largest stakeholders (LS) versus all stakeholders (AS), and (3) the ecological or hydraulic design principle. We evaluated measures by their efficiency in flood hazard reduction, potential biodiversity, number of stakeholders as a proxy to governance complexity, and measure implementation cost. We found that only floodplain lowering over the whole study area can offset the altered hydrodynamic boundary conditions; for all other measures, additional dike raising is required. LS areas comprise low hanging fruits for water level lowering due to the governance simplicity and hydraulic efficiency. Measures implemented in LS areas are 3 to 74 % more efficient than in AS areas. Clear trade-offs were revealed between evaluation parameters, but no single measure represented the optimal combination on all aspects. The multidimensional evaluation space provides a frame for the co-creation of adaptation paths for climate-proofing deltas.

Elucidating cyclic AMP signaling in subcellular domains with optogenetic tools and fluorescent biosensors

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (6) ◽  
pp. 1733-1747 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Klausen ◽  
Fabian Kaiser ◽  
Birthe Stüven ◽  
Jan N. Hansen ◽  
Dagmar Wachten
Keyword(s):  
Cyclic Amp ◽  
Adenosine Monophosphate ◽  
Adenylyl Cyclases ◽  
Temporal Precision ◽  
Fluorescent Biosensors ◽  
Subcellular Domains ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Hydrolysis Of ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Cyclic Amp Signaling

The second messenger 3′,5′-cyclic nucleoside adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) plays a key role in signal transduction across prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Cyclic AMP signaling is compartmentalized into microdomains to fulfil specific functions. To define the function of cAMP within these microdomains, signaling needs to be analyzed with spatio-temporal precision. To this end, optogenetic approaches and genetically encoded fluorescent biosensors are particularly well suited. Synthesis and hydrolysis of cAMP can be directly manipulated by photoactivated adenylyl cyclases (PACs) and light-regulated phosphodiesterases (PDEs), respectively. In addition, many biosensors have been designed to spatially and temporarily resolve cAMP dynamics in the cell. This review provides an overview about optogenetic tools and biosensors to shed light on the subcellular organization of cAMP signaling.

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