Dietary variations within a family of ambush predators (Platycephalidae) occupying different habitats and environments in the same geographical region

2015 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 1046-1077 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. G. Coulson ◽  
M. E. Platell ◽  
K. R. Clarke ◽  
I. C. Potter
Author(s):  
Mirza Sangin Beg

Finally, Mirza Sangin Beg tackles a huge assemblage of eclectic human exertions in the environs, centred around areas of trade and commerce, piety, landscaped spaces, cemeteries, and natural surroundings of rivers and hillocks. While structures such as the Jantar Mantar and the Firoz Shah’s lat are alluded to, it is stories about the human agencies that are privileged above these spaces. There are detailed renderings of activities in areas such as Pahar Ganj, Subzi Mandi, and Qadam Sharif, the biannual fair at Hanuman Temple, celebrations of Salono, numerous chhariyan melas, and worship of Goga. A fantastic account of Makhdum Jahanian Jahan Gasht coexists with an intense belief in relics of Prophet Muhammad, Hazrat Ali, and Imam Husain. Mirza Sangin Beg goes beyond the geographical region of Delhi towards north, west, and southwest. He writes of Bu Ali Shah Qalander’s dargah in Panipat and of the English platoon, officers, and gentlemen stationed between Gurgaon and Pataudi. The author has placed a variety of inscriptions and epitaphs from equally diverse structures and graveyards in a fatuous manner. Certain inscriptions seem to satisfy the self-esteem of the builders, some are laudatory while several are informative.


Algorithms ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Md Ali Azam ◽  
Hans D. Mittelmann ◽  
Shankarachary Ragi

In this paper, we present a decentralized unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm formation control approach based on a decision theoretic approach. Specifically, we pose the UAV swarm motion control problem as a decentralized Markov decision process (Dec-MDP). Here, the goal is to drive the UAV swarm from an initial geographical region to another geographical region where the swarm must form a three-dimensional shape (e.g., surface of a sphere). As most decision-theoretic formulations suffer from the curse of dimensionality, we adapt an existing fast approximate dynamic programming method called nominal belief-state optimization (NBO) to approximately solve the formation control problem. We perform numerical studies in MATLAB to validate the performance of the above control algorithms.


BMJ Open ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. e026846 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angel M R Schols ◽  
Eline Meijs ◽  
Geert-Jan Dinant ◽  
Henri E J H Stoffers ◽  
Mariëlle M E Krekels ◽  
...  

ObjectivesTo investigate how many general practitioner (GP)-referred venous thromboembolic events (VTEs) are diagnosed during 1 year in one geographical region and to investigate the (urgent) referral pathway of VTE diagnoses, including the role of laboratory D-dimer testing.DesignHistorical cohort study.SettingGP patients of 47 general practices in a demarcated geographical region of 161 503 inhabitants in the Netherlands.ParticipantsWe analysed all 895 primary care patients in whom either the GP determined a D-dimer value or who had a diagnostic work-up for suspected VTE in a non-academic hospital during 2015.Primary and secondary outcome measuresThe primary outcomes of this study were the total number of VTEs per year and the diagnostic pathways—including the role of GP determined D-dimer testing—of patients urgently referred to secondary care for suspected VTE. Additionally, we explored the use of an age-adjusted D-dimer cut-off.ResultsThe annual VTE incidence was 0.9 per 1000 inhabitants. GPs annually ordered 5.1 D-dimer tests per 1000 inhabitants. Of 470 urgently GP-referred patients, 31.3% had a VTE. Of those urgently referred based on clinical assessment only (without D-dimer testing), 73.8% (96/130) had a VTE; based on clinical assessment and laboratory D-dimer testing yielded 15.0% (51/340) VTE. Applying age-adjusted D-dimer cut-offs to all patients aged 50 years or older resulted in a reduction of positive D-dimer results from 97.9% to 79.4%, without missing any VTE.ConclusionsAlthough D-dimer testing contributes to the diagnostic work-up of VTE, GPs have a high detection rate for VTE in patients who they urgently refer to secondary care based on clinical assessment only.


2011 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 1051-1057 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Ross Kunz ◽  
Joshua Ottaway ◽  
John H. Kalivas ◽  
Constantinos A. Georgiou ◽  
George A. Mousdis

2001 ◽  
Vol 204 (21) ◽  
pp. 3621-3627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Herrel ◽  
Jay J. Meyers ◽  
Peter Aerts ◽  
Kiisa C. Nishikawa

SUMMARYChameleons capture prey items using a ballistic tongue projection mechanism that is unique among lizards. During prey capture, the tongue can be projected up to two full body lengths and may extend up to 600 % of its resting length. Being ambush predators, chameleons eat infrequently and take relatively large prey. The extreme tongue elongation (sixfold) and the need to be able to retract fairly heavy prey at any given distance from the mouth are likely to place constraints on the tongue retractor muscles. The data examined here show that in vivo retractor force production is almost constant for a wide range of projection distances. An examination of muscle physiology and of the ultrastructure of the tongue retractor muscle shows that this is the result (i) of active hyoid retraction, (ii) of large muscle filament overlap at maximal tongue extension and (iii) of the supercontractile properties of the tongue retractor muscles. We suggest that the chameleon tongue retractor muscles may have evolved supercontractile properties to enable a substantial force to be produced over a wide range of tongue projection distances. This enables chameleons successfully to retract even large prey from a variety of distances in their complex three-dimensional habitat.


2018 ◽  
Vol 147 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Mellou ◽  
E. Saranti-Papasaranti ◽  
G. Mandilara ◽  
T. Georgakopoulou

AbstractAusterity might have affected the capacity of public hospitals in Greece to diagnose salmonellosis (laboratory capacity) over the period 2010–2016, as well as the performance of the existing surveillance systems. The scope of this paper is to present data on laboratory capacity over these years, as well as the results of a two-source capture-recapture study (data from Mandatory Notification System and National Reference Laboratory System for Salmonella). The main findings were that: (a) laboratory capacity was high and steady besides the financial crisis, (b) the estimated number of laboratory-confirmed cases (n = 6017, 95% CI 5892–6142) resulted in an incidence rate (7.9 cases/100 000 population) almost twice than that reported by the two systems Mandatory Notification System (MNS); 4.1 and National Reference Laboratory System (NRLS); 4.5 cases/100 000 population, (c) underreporting was high for both systems (MNS; 47.5% and NRLS; 42.8%) and (d) differences by geographical region, size and type of hospital were identified. We suggest that (a) specific interventions are needed to increase completeness of the systems by type of hospital and geographical region, (b) record linkage can help in estimating the disease burden in a more valid way than each system separately and (c) a common electronic database in order to feed one system to the other could significantly increase completeness of both systems.


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