Drivers of Flight Performance of California Condors (Gymnogyps californianus)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie R. Bonner ◽  
Sharon A. Poessel ◽  
Joseph C. Brandt ◽  
Molly T. Astell ◽  
James R. Belthoff ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Flight Behavior ◽  
Flight Performance ◽  
Avian Flight ◽  
Management Plans ◽  
Soaring Flight ◽  
Gymnogyps Californianus ◽  
Social Demographic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Effect Of Age ◽  
Insight Into

ABSTRACT Flight behavior of soaring birds depends on a complex array of physiological, social, demographic, and environmental factors. California Condors (Gymnogyps californianus) rely on thermal and orographic updrafts to subsidize extended bouts of soaring flight, and their soaring flight performance is expected to vary in response to environmental variation and, potentially, with experience. We collected 6298 flight tracks described by high-frequency GPS telemetry data from five birds ranging in age from 1 to 19 yr old and followed over 32 d in summer 2016. Using these data, we tested the hypothesis that climb rate, an indicator of flight performance, would be related to the topographic and meteorological variables the bird experienced, and also to its age. Climb rate was greater when condors were flying in faster winds and during environmental conditions that were conducive to updraft development. However, we found no effect of age on climb rate. Although many of these relationships were expected based on flight theory, the lack of an effect of age was unexpected. Our work expands understanding of the relationship condors have with the environment, and it also suggests the potential for as-yet unexplored complexity to this relationship. As such, this study provides insight into avian flight behavior and, because flight performance influences bird behavior and exposure to anthropogenic risk, it has potential consequences for development of conservation management plans.

Impact of Age on Pay Satisfaction and Job Satisfaction Leading to Turnover Intention: A Study of Young Working Professionals in India

2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 353-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajashik Roy Choudhury ◽  
Varun Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Job Satisfaction ◽  
Turnover Intention ◽  
Turnover Intentions ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Moderating Effect ◽  
Pay Satisfaction ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Effect Of Age ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Study Offer

In this study, the authors contribute insight into the relationship between pay satisfaction and turnover intention as well as between job satisfaction and turnover intention amongst young Indian professionals by segregating the respondents into two groups based on the median age. Data were collected from 230 working Indian executives, having median age of 25, from various industries such as Information Technology, Public Sector Units, Pharmacy, and Fast Moving Consumer Goods where they expressed their views on turnover intentions, job satisfaction & pay satisfaction in their respective organizations. The results revealed the negative relationship between turnover intention and job satisfaction and also between turnover intention and pay satisfaction. However, when age is introduced as a variable having a moderating effect on the above relationships, it was noticed that pay satisfaction is more significant than job satisfaction when it comes to intention to quit a job for employees who are relatively experienced having an age greater than the median age of 25; whereas, for employees less than the median age, turnover intention is driven more by job satisfaction than pay satisfaction. Findings from this study offer important implications for theory & research in turnover intention driven by factors like pay satisfaction and job satisfaction with the moderating effect of age of employees.

When conifers took flight: a biomechanical evaluation of an imperfect evolutionary takeoff

Paleobiology ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Stevenson ◽  
Dennis Evangelista ◽  
Cindy V. Looy
Keyword(s):  
Seed Weight ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Evolutionary Developmental Biology ◽  
Flight Behavior ◽  
Relative Advantage ◽  
Flight Performance ◽  
Dispersal Capacity ◽  
Biomechanical Evaluation ◽  
Variable Morphology ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractManifera talaris, a voltzian conifer from the late early to middle Permian (ca. 270 Ma) of Texas, is the earliest known conifer to produce winged seeds indicative of autorotating flight. In contrast to autorotating seeds and fruits of extant plants, the ones ofM. talarisare exceptional in that they have variable morphology. They bore two wings that produced a range of wing configurations, from seeds with two equal-sized wings to single-winged specimens, via various stages of underdevelopment of one of the wings. To examine the effects of various seed morphologies on aerodynamics and dispersal potential, we studied the flight performance of paper models of three morphotypes: symmetric double-winged, asymmetric double-winged, and single-winged. Using a high-speed camera we identified the mode of descent (plummeting, gliding, autorotation) and quantified descent speed, autorotation frequency, and other flight characteristics. To validate such modeling as an inferential tool, we compared descent of extant analogues (kauri;Agathis australis) with descent of similarly constructed seed models. All three seed morphotypes exhibited autorotating flight behavior. However, double-winged seeds, especially symmetric ones, failed to initiate slow autorotative descent more frequently than single-winged seeds. Even when autorotating, symmetric double-winged seeds descend faster than asymmetric double-winged ones, and descent is roughly twice as fast compared to single-winged seeds. Moreover, the relative advantage that (effectively) single-winged seeds have in slowing descent during autorotation becomes larger as seed weight increases. Hence, the range in seed wing configurations inM. talarisproduced a wide variation in potential dispersal capacity. Overall, our results indicate that the evolutionarily novel autorotating winged seeds must have improved conifer seed dispersal, in a time when animal vectors for dispersion were virtually absent. Because of the range in wing configuration, the early evolution of autorotative flight in conifers was a functionally imperfect one, which provides us insight into the evolutionary developmental biology of autorotative seeds in conifers.

Skeletal elements of crinoid echinoderms: High-resolution structural and microanalytical results

1983 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 194-195
Author(s):  
D. F. Blake ◽  
L. F. Allard ◽  
D. R. Peacor
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution ◽  
Marine Invertebrates ◽  
Sea Urchins ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Sea Stars ◽  
High Resolution Tem ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

Echinodermata is a phylum of marine invertebrates which has been extant since Cambrian time (c.a. 500 m.y. before the present). Modern examples of echinoderms include sea urchins, sea stars, and sea lilies (crinoids). The endoskeletons of echinoderms are composed of plates or ossicles (Fig. 1) which are with few exceptions, porous, single crystals of high-magnesian calcite. Despite their single crystal nature, fracture surfaces do not exhibit the near-perfect {10.4} cleavage characteristic of inorganic calcite. This paradoxical mix of biogenic and inorganic features has prompted much recent work on echinoderm skeletal crystallography. Furthermore, fossil echinoderm hard parts comprise a volumetrically significant portion of some marine limestones sequences. The ultrastructural and microchemical characterization of modern skeletal material should lend insight into: 1). The nature of the biogenic processes involved, for example, the relationship of Mg heterogeneity to morphological and structural features in modern echinoderm material, and 2). The nature of the diagenetic changes undergone by their ancient, fossilized counterparts. In this study, high resolution TEM (HRTEM), high voltage TEM (HVTEM), and STEM microanalysis are used to characterize tha ultrastructural and microchemical composition of skeletal elements of the modern crinoid Neocrinus blakei.

On Metaphysics and the Political: A Polemics of Reading Baudelaire in the 1930s

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.

The Annual Reports of the Prison Commissioners for Scotland and Religion, 1903–1931

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-101
Author(s):  
Cameron McKay
Keyword(s):  
Annual Report ◽  
Annual Reports ◽  
Individual Choice ◽  
Drinking Habits ◽  
Parental Neglect ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Causes Of Crime ◽  
Criminological Theories ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century penologists began to explore the possibility that environment and upbringing, as opposed to individual choice, were the causes criminality. The Prison Commissioners for Scotland, the devolved body who administered prisons north of the border, were not immune to this wider trend. Smith has argued that from the 1890s onwards the Commissioners began to accept that criminality was caused by social problems, namely alcoholism, but also parental neglect, poor education and poverty. In their efforts to test these new criminological theories, the Commissioners began to make more careful enquiries into the backgrounds of their charges. From 1896 to 1931 the Commissioners interviewed a sample of prisoners each year and included the findings in their annual report. Although the main focus of these interviews was on the upbringing and drinking habits of prisoners; by the 1900s the Commissioners seem to have added irreligion to the growing list of etiological causes of crime, and from 1903 onwards prisoners were asked to give details on their religious habits. Although it is debateable how much the Prison Commissioners revealed about the relationship between religion and crime, they did however provide a useful insight into the religiosity of the average prisoner.

The Relationship between Seeker and Spiritual Guide as portrayed in contemporary Western Sufi Autobiographies

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-332
Author(s):  
Kate Zebiri
Keyword(s):  
Life Writing ◽  
New Age ◽  
The Self ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Continuity And Discontinuity

This article aims to explore the Shaykh-mur?d (disciple) or teacher-pupil relationship as portrayed in Western Sufi life writing in recent decades, observing elements of continuity and discontinuity with classical Sufism. Additionally, it traces the influence on the texts of certain developments in religiosity in contemporary Western societies, especially New Age understandings of religious authority. Studying these works will provide an insight into the diversity of expressions of contemporary Sufism, while shedding light on a phenomenon which seems to fly in the face of contemporary social and religious trends which deemphasize external authority and promote the authority of the self or individual autonomy.

Empathy as moderator of gender differences in Chinese insurance agents' business ethical sensitivity

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 1029-1042 ◽  
Author(s):  
Na Zhang ◽  
Jian Zhang ◽  
Jing Wang
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Business Ethics ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Ethical Sensitivity ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Insurance Agents ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Ethics Research ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

To expand the business ethics research field, and to increase society's understanding of Chinese insurance agents' business ethics, we investigated how gender differences are related to agents' business ethical sensitivity and whether or not these relationships are moderated by empathy. Through a regression analysis of the factors associated with the business ethical sensitivity of 417 Chinese insurance agents, we found that gender played an important role in affecting business ethical sensitivity, and empathy significantly affected business ethical sensitivity. Furthermore, empathy had a moderating effect on the relationship between gender and business ethical sensitivity. Both men and women with strong empathy scored high on business ethical sensitivity; however, men with strong empathy had higher levels of business ethical sensitivity than did women with little empathy. The findings add to the literature by providing insight into the mechanisms responsible for the benefits of empathy in increasing business ethical sensitivity.

AI Narratives

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Intelligent Machines ◽  
Narrative History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Imaginative Thinking ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This book is the first to examine the history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines. As real artificial intelligence (AI) begins to touch on all aspects of our lives, this long narrative history shapes how the technology is developed, deployed, and regulated. It is therefore a crucial social and ethical issue. Part I of this book provides a historical overview from ancient Greece to the start of modernity. These chapters explore the revealing prehistory of key concerns of contemporary AI discourse, from the nature of mind and creativity to issues of power and rights, from the tension between fascination and ambivalence to investigations into artificial voices and technophobia. Part II focuses on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in which a greater density of narratives emerged alongside rapid developments in AI technology. These chapters reveal not only how AI narratives have consistently been entangled with the emergence of real robotics and AI, but also how they offer a rich source of insight into how we might live with these revolutionary machines. Through their close textual engagements, these chapters explore the relationship between imaginative narratives and contemporary debates about AI’s social, ethical, and philosophical consequences, including questions of dehumanization, automation, anthropomorphization, cybernetics, cyberpunk, immortality, slavery, and governance. The contributions, from leading humanities and social science scholars, show that narratives about AI offer a crucial epistemic site for exploring contemporary debates about these powerful new technologies.

Die klingende Ferne; Walter Braunfels’ Opera Die Vögel after Aristophanes’ Birds

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-371
Author(s):  
Michael Ewans
Keyword(s):  
Central Theme ◽  
Spiritual Values ◽  
Greek Comedy ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract This article explores the opera Die Vögel (1920) by Walter Braunfels (1882–1954), and its reception of Aristophanes' Birds. The Introduction is substantial, as the work is little known. It is followed by an Overview of each of the two Acts, which discusses in Act I the relationship to Aristophanes (Braunfels discarded the second half of the original Greek comedy and struck out on a completely new path). Then the article analyses the development during Act II of insight into die klingende Ferne (‘the music of far away') by Hopeful, who is the principal human character in Braunfels' adaptation. It is shown that Hopeful's quest for spiritual values almost beyond human understanding is the central theme of the opera; the superiority of the life of birds, which Aristophanes treats humorously in the two parabaseis, is taken seriously in Braunfels' mystical second Act.

The Impact of Financial Literacy on Financial Preparedness for Retirement in the Small and Medium Enterprises Sector in Uganda

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 26-41
Author(s):  
Colin Agabalinda ◽  
Alain Vilard Ndi Isoh
Keyword(s):  
Financial Literacy ◽  
Small And Medium Enterprises ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
Moderating Effect ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Retirement Preparedness ◽  
Medium Enterprises ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Effect Of Age

The study investigated the direct effects of financial literacy (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) on financial preparedness for retirement and the moderating effect of age among the small and medium enterprises in Uganda. Primary data was collected from a sample of n = 380 selected from the SME workforce. Descriptive analysis was run on SPSS, while validity and reliability of the measurement items yielded satisfactory composite reliability scores and average variance explained (AVE) scores for all items. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses and multi-group analysis conducted to test for the moderating effect of age on the relationship between financial literacy and retirement preparedness. The results revealed that knowledge and skills were significant predictors of retirement preparedness. However, ‘attitude' was not a significant predictor, and age had no moderating effect on the relationship between the study variables. These findings present practical implications for policymakers and financial educators in a developing country context.

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