Internal carotid arterial canal size and scaling in Euarchonta: Re-assessing implications for arterial patency and phylogenetic relationships in early fossil primates.

Primate species typically differ from other mammals in having bony canals that enclose the branches of the internal carotid artery (ICA) as they pass through the middle ear. The presence and relative size of these canals varies among major primate clades. As a result, differences in the anatomy of the canals for the promontorial and stapedial branches of the ICA have been cited as evidence of either haplorhine or strepsirrhine affinities among otherwise enigmatic early fossil euprimates. Here we use micro X-ray computed tomography to compile the largest quantitative dataset on ICA canal sizes. The data suggest greater variation of the ICA canals within some groups than has been previously appreciated. For example, Lepilemur and Avahi differ from most other lemuriforms in having a larger promontorial canal than stapedial canal. Furthermore, various lemurids are intraspecifically variable in relative canal size, with the promontorial canal being larger than the stapedial canal in some individuals but not others. In species where the promontorial artery supplies the brain with blood, the size of the promontorial canal is significantly correlated with endocranial volume (ECV). Among species with alternate routes of encephalic blood supply, the promontorial canal is highly reduced relative to ECV, and correlated with both ECV and cranium size. Ancestral state reconstructions incorporating data from fossils suggest that the last common ancestor of living primates had promontorial and stapedial canals that were similar to each other in size and large relative to ECV. We conclude that the plesiomorphic condition for crown primates is to have a patent promontorial artery supplying the brain and a patent stapedial artery for various non-encephalic structures. This inferred ancestral condition is exhibited by treeshrews and most early fossil euprimates, while extant primates exhibit reduction in one canal or another. The only early fossils deviating from this plesiomorphic condition are Adapis parisiensis with a reduced promontorial canal, and Rooneyia and Mahgarita with reduced stapedial canals.

Childhood Attention Problems and the Development of Comorbid Symptoms at the Transition to High School: The Mediating Role of Parent and Peer Relationships

Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are at increased risk for the development of depression and delinquent behavior. Children and adolescents with ADHD also experience difficulty creating/maintaining high quality friendships and parent-child relationships, and these difficulties may contribute to the development of co-morbid internalizing and externalizing symptoms in adolescence. However, there is limited research examining whether high quality friendships and parent-child relationships mediate the relation between ADHD and the emergence of these co-morbid symptoms at the transition to high school. This study examines the mediating role of relationship quality in the association between ADHD and depressive symptoms/delinquent behaviors at this developmentally significant transition point. Results revealed significant indirect effects of grade 6 attention problems on grade 9 depressive symptoms through friendship quality and quality of the mother-child relationship in grade 8. Interventions targeting parent and peer relationships may be valuable for youth with ADHD to promote successful transitions to high school.

Feeding ecology and trophic relationships of fish species in the lower Guadiana River Estuary and Castro Marim e Vila Real de Santo Antonio Salt Marsh

In this study we analyze the feeding ecology and trophic relationships of some of the main fish species (Soleidae, Moronidae, Mullidae, Sparidae, Mugilidae, and Batrachoididae) of the lower Estuary of the Guadiana River and the Castro Marim e Vila Real de Santo Antonio Salt Marsh. We examined the stomachs of 1415 fish caught monthly between September 2000 and August 2001. Feeding indices and coefficients were determined and used along with the results of multivariate analysis to develop diagrams of trophic interactions (food webs). Results show that these species are largely opportunistic predators. The most important prey items are amphipods, gobies (Gobiidae), shrimps (Palaemon serratus and Crangon crangon), and polychaete worms. The lower Estuary and associated salt marshes are important nurseries and feeding grounds for the species studied. In this area, it is therefore important to monitor the effects of changes in river runoff, nutrient input, and temperature that result from construction of the Alqueva Dam upstream. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Soil organic carbon, carbon stock and their relationships to physical attributes under forest soils in Central Amazonia.

The soil carbon under Amazonian forests has an important roles in global changing, making information on the soil content and depths of these stocks are considerable interest in efforts to quantify soil carbon emissions to the atmosphere.This study quantified the content and soil organic carbon stock under primary forest up to 2 m depth, at different topographic positions, at Cuieiras Biological Reserve, Manaus/ ZF2, km 34, in the Central Amazon, evaluating the soil attributes that may influence the permanence of soil carbon. Soil samples were collected along a transect of 850 m on topographic gradient Oxisol (plateau), Ultisol (slope) and Spodosol (valley). The stocks of soil carbon were obtained by multiplying the carbon content, soil bulk density and trickiness of soil layers. The watershed was delimited by using STRM and IKONOS images and the carbon contend obtained in the transects was extrapolated as a way to evaluate the potential for carbon stocks in an area of 2678.68 ha. The total SOC was greater in Oxisol followed by Spodosol and Ultisol. It was found direct correlations between the SOC and soil physical attributes. Among the clay soils (Oxisol and Ultisol), the largest stocks of carbon were observed in Oxisol at both the transect (90 to 175.5 Mg C ha-1) as the level of watershed (100.2 to 195.2 Mg C ha-1). The carbon stocks under sandy soil (Spodosol) was greater to clay soils along the transect (160-241 Mg C ha-1) and near them in the Watershed (96.90 to 146.01 Mg C ha-1).

Underlying scaling relationships between solar activity and geomagnetic activity revealed by multifractal analyses

his paper identifies some scaling relationships between solar activity and geomagnetic activity. We examine the scaling properties of hourly data for two geomagnetic indices (ap and AE), two solar indices (solar X-rays Xl and solar flux F10.7), and two inner heliospheric indices (ion density Ni and flow speed Vs) over the period 1995–2001 by the universal multifractal approach and the traditional multifractal analysis. We found that the universal multifractal model (UMM) provides a good fit to the empirical K(q) and τ(q) curves of these time series. The estimated values of the Lévy index α in the UMM indicate that multifractality exists in the time series for ap, AE, Xl, and Ni, while those for F10.7 and Vs are monofractal. The estimated values of the nonconservation parameter H of this model confirm that these time series are conservative which indicate that the mean value of the process is constant for varying resolution. Additionally, the multifractal K(q) and τ(q) curves, and the estimated values of the sparseness parameter C1 of the UMM indicate that there are three pairs of indices displaying similar scaling properties, namely ap and Xl, AE and Ni, and F10.7 and Vs. The similarity in the scaling properties of pairs (ap,Xl) and (AE,Ni) suggests that ap and Xl, AE and Ni are better correlated—in terms of scaling—than previous thought, respectively. But our results still cannot be used to advance forecasting of ap and AE by Xl and Ni, respectively, due to some reasons

Simulation of crop yields using ERA-40: Limits to skill and nonstationarity in weather-yield relationships

Reanalysis data provide an excellent test bed for impacts prediction systems. because they represent an upper limit on the skill of climate models. Indian groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) yields have been simulated using the General Large-Area Model (GLAM) for annual crops and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) 40-yr reanalysis (ERA-40). The ability of ERA-40 to represent the Indian summer monsoon has been examined. The ability of GLAM. when driven with daily ERA-40 data, to model both observed yields and observed relationships between subseasonal weather and yield has been assessed. Mean yields "were simulated well across much of India. Correlations between observed and modeled yields, where these are significant. are comparable to correlations between observed yields and ERA-40 rainfall. Uncertainties due to the input planting window, crop duration, and weather data have been examined. A reduction in the root-mean-square error of simulated yields was achieved by applying bias correction techniques to the precipitation. The stability of the relationship between weather and yield over time has been examined. Weather-yield correlations vary on decadal time scales. and this has direct implications for the accuracy of yield simulations. Analysis of the skewness of both detrended yields and precipitation suggest that nonclimatic factors are partly responsible for this nonstationarity. Evidence from other studies, including data on cereal and pulse yields, indicates that this result is not particular to groundnut yield. The detection and modeling of nonstationary weather-yield relationships emerges from this study as an important part of the process of understanding and predicting the impacts of climate variability and change on crop yields.

Visualization and validation of (Q)SAR models

Analyzing and modeling relationships between the structure of chemical compounds, their physico-chemical properties, and biological or toxic effects in chemical datasets is a challenging task for scientific researchers in the field of cheminformatics. Therefore, (Q)SAR model validation is essential to ensure future model predictivity on unseen compounds. Proper validation is also one of the requirements of regulatory authorities in order to approve its use in real-world scenarios as an alternative testing method. However, at the same time, the question of how to validate a (Q)SAR model is still under discussion. In this work, we empirically compare a k-fold cross-validation with external test set validation. The introduced workflow allows to apply the built and validated models to large amounts of unseen data, and to compare the performance of the different validation approaches. Our experimental results indicate that cross-validation produces (Q)SAR models with higher predictivity than external test set validation and reduces the variance of the results. Statistical validation is important to evaluate the performance of (Q)SAR models, but does not support the user in better understanding the properties of the model or the underlying correlations. We present the 3D molecular viewer CheS-Mapper (Chemical Space Mapper) that arranges compounds in 3D space, such that their spatial proximity reflects their similarity. The user can indirectly determine similarity, by selecting which features to employ in the process. The tool can use and calculate different kinds of features, like structural fragments as well as quantitative chemical descriptors. Comprehensive functionalities including clustering, alignment of compounds according to their 3D structure, and feature highlighting aid the chemist to better understand patterns and regularities and relate the observations to established scientific knowledge. Even though visualization tools for analyzing (Q)SAR information in small molecule datasets exist, integrated visualization methods that allows for the investigation of model validation results are still lacking. We propose visual validation, as an approach for the graphical inspection of (Q)SAR model validation results. New functionalities in CheS-Mapper 2.0 facilitate the analysis of (Q)SAR information and allow the visual validation of (Q)SAR models. The tool enables the comparison of model predictions to the actual activity in feature space. Our approach reveals if the endpoint is modeled too specific or too generic and highlights common properties of misclassified compounds. Moreover, the researcher can use CheS-Mapper to inspect how the (Q)SAR model predicts activity cliffs. The CheS-Mapper software is freely available at http://ches-mapper.org.

Identification of barriers to and facilitators for the implementation of occupational road safety initiatives

To explore potential barriers to and facilitators for implementing occupational road safety initiatives, in-depth interviews were conducted with personnel from four major Australian organizations. Twenty-four participants were involved in the interviews comprising 16 front line employees and eight managers. The interviews identified that employees perceived six organizational characteristics as potential barriers to implementing occupational road safety initiatives. These included: prioritisation of production over safety; complacency towards occupational road risks; insufficient resources; diversity; limited employee input in safety decisions; and a perception that road safety initiatives were an unnecessary burden. Of these organizational characteristics, prioritisation of production over safety and complacency were the most frequently cited barriers. In regards to facilitators, participants perceived three organizational characteristics as potential facilitators to implementing occupational road safety initiatives. These included: management commitment; the presence of existing systems that could support the implementation of initiatives; and supportive relationships. Of these organizational characteristics, management commitment was the most frequently cited facilitator.

Mining patterns and factors contributing to crash severity on road curves

Road curves are an important feature of road infrastructure and many serious crashes occur on road curves. In Queensland, the number of fatalities is twice as many on curves as that on straight roads. Therefore, there is a need to reduce drivers’ exposure to crash risk on road curves. Road crashes in Australia and in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) have plateaued in the last five years (2004 to 2008) and the road safety community is desperately seeking innovative interventions to reduce the number of crashes. However, designing an innovative and effective intervention may prove to be difficult as it relies on providing theoretical foundation, coherence, understanding, and structure to both the design and validation of the efficiency of the new intervention. Researchers from multiple disciplines have developed various models to determine the contributing factors for crashes on road curves with a view towards reducing the crash rate. However, most of the existing methods are based on statistical analysis of contributing factors described in government crash reports. In order to further explore the contributing factors related to crashes on road curves, this thesis designs a novel method to analyse and validate these contributing factors. The use of crash claim reports from an insurance company is proposed for analysis using data mining techniques. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to use data mining techniques to analyse crashes on road curves. Text mining technique is employed as the reports consist of thousands of textual descriptions and hence, text mining is able to identify the contributing factors. Besides identifying the contributing factors, limited studies to date have investigated the relationships between these factors, especially for crashes on road curves. Thus, this study proposed the use of the rough set analysis technique to determine these relationships. The results from this analysis are used to assess the effect of these contributing factors on crash severity. The findings obtained through the use of data mining techniques presented in this thesis, have been found to be consistent with existing identified contributing factors. Furthermore, this thesis has identified new contributing factors towards crashes and the relationships between them. A significant pattern related with crash severity is the time of the day where severe road crashes occur more frequently in the evening or night time. Tree collision is another common pattern where crashes that occur in the morning and involves hitting a tree are likely to have a higher crash severity. Another factor that influences crash severity is the age of the driver. Most age groups face a high crash severity except for drivers between 60 and 100 years old, who have the lowest crash severity. The significant relationship identified between contributing factors consists of the time of the crash, the manufactured year of the vehicle, the age of the driver and hitting a tree. Having identified new contributing factors and relationships, a validation process is carried out using a traffic simulator in order to determine their accuracy. The validation process indicates that the results are accurate. This demonstrates that data mining techniques are a powerful tool in road safety research, and can be usefully applied within the Intelligent Transport System (ITS) domain. The research presented in this thesis provides an insight into the complexity of crashes on road curves. The findings of this research have important implications for both practitioners and academics. For road safety practitioners, the results from this research illustrate practical benefits for the design of interventions for road curves that will potentially help in decreasing related injuries and fatalities. For academics, this research opens up a new research methodology to assess crash severity, related to road crashes on curves.

Governors highway safety associations and transportation planning: Exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling

The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991 mandated the consideration of safety in the regional transportation planning process. As part of National Cooperative Highway Research Program Project 8-44, "Incorporating Safety into the Transportation Planning Process," we conducted a telephone survey to assess safety-related activities and expertise at Governors Highway Safety Associations (GHSAs), and GHSA relationships with metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) and state departments of transportation (DOTs). The survey results were combined with statewide crash data to enable exploratory modeling of the relationship between GHSA policies and programs and statewide safety. The modeling objective was to illuminate current hurdles to ISTEA implementation, so that appropriate institutional, analytical, and personnel improvements can be made. The study revealed that coordination of transportation safety across DOTs, MPOs, GHSAs, and departments of public safety is generally beneficial to the implementation of safety. In addition, better coordination is characterized by more positive and constructive attitudes toward incorporating safety into planning.

Changing relationships: activating student and staff engagement in a design studio

In the design studio learning environment, traditional student and staff expectations are of close contact teaching and learning. In recent years at QUT students have experienced reduced personal staff attention, and have increasingly felt “anonymous” and correspondingly disengaged, to the detriment of quality learning (Carbone 1998: 8; Biggs 2003). Concurrently, there has been a necessary increase in teaching by sessional staff at QUT with varied levels of experience and assurance. This paper outlines the first iteration of an action research project exploring whether changing the current QUT design studio student and staff relationships may lead to more engaged, dynamic learning environments. “Engagement” is understood as a primarily emotional, rather than operational student concern (Solomonides and Martin 2008; Austerlitz and Aravot 2007). The project inverted the standard QUT design studio teaching structure, and evaluated the new structure and activation of student engagement across four identified markers: attendance, participation, learning and performance (ACER 2009; NSSE 2005; Chapman 2003). Student and staff surveys and focus groups, corporate data, and informal feedback informed these evaluations. Overall, the results support the premise that when students and staff feel part of a reasonably-sized studio class with a dedicated lecturer and self-selected project, the majority are inclined to value these relationships, to feel actively engaged, and to experience some improvement in their learning and teaching performances.

Evolutionary relationships and divergence times among the native rats of Australia

Background The genus Rattus is highly speciose and has a complex taxonomy that is not fully resolved. As shown previously there are two major groups within the genus, an Asian and an Australo-Papuan group. This study focuses on the Australo-Papuan group and particularly on the Australian rats. There are uncertainties regarding the number of species within the group and the relationships among them. We analysed 16 mitochondrial genomes, including seven novel genomes from six species, to help elucidate the evolutionary history of the Australian rats. We also demonstrate, from a larger dataset, the usefulness of short regions of the mitochondrial genome in identifying these rats at the species level. Results Analyses of 16 mitochondrial genomes representing species sampled from Australo-Papuan and Asian clades of Rattus indicate divergence of these two groups ~2.7 million years ago (Mya). Subsequent diversification of at least 4 lineages within the Australo-Papuan clade was rapid and occurred over the period from ~ 0.9-1.7 Mya, a finding that explains the difficulty in resolving some relationships within this clade. Phylogenetic analyses of our 126 taxon, but shorter sequence (1952 nucleotides long), Rattus database generally give well supported species clades. Conclusions Our whole mitochondrial genome analyses are concordant with a taxonomic division that places the native Australian rats into the Rattus fuscipes species group. We suggest the following order of divergence of the Australian species. R. fuscipes is the oldest lineage among the Australian rats and is not part of a New Guinean radiation. R. lutreolus is also within this Australian clade and shallower than R. tunneyi while the R. sordidus group is the shallowest lineage in the clade. The divergences within the R. sordidus and R. leucopus lineages occurring about half a million years ago support the hypotheses of more recent interchanges of rats between Australia and New Guinea. While problematic for inference of deeper divergences, we report that the analysis of shorter mitochondrial sequences is very useful for species identification in rats.

Do people gamble with their lives : The relationship between risky driving behaviour and other risky behaviours

General risky behaviour is explored for correlation with risky driving behaviour in light of two theories, self-control and cross-situational consistency. Identification of general risky behaviours associated with risky driving behaviour, and the theory that best predicts the behaviours, will enable better targeting of intervention and education strategies to reduce driving related fatalities and injuries. A correlational study using participants (N=152) drawn from first year university undergraduates and the public surveyed their lifestyle and behaviours. Relationships were found between risky driving behaviours and other risky behaviours such as alcohol consumption, cannabis use and performing unlawful activities. No significant differences were found between genders, with the exception that males were more likely to believe that they were at risk of injury from their employment, χ2 (1, N = 152) = 4.49, p = .03, were more likely to have performed an unlawful offence, χ2 (1, N = 152) = 11.77, p = .001 and were more likely to drink drive, t (55.41) = -3.87, p < .001, mean difference = -0.63, CI 95% (-0.9, -0.37). People engaged in risky driving behaviours were more likely to engage in other risky behaviours. The theories that were explored were unable to accurately predict an association between general risky behaviour and driving without a license or when disqualified. Cross-situational consistency explained 20% (R2adj = .16) of the variance in which people engaged in risky driving with low self-control theory explaining an additional 0.3% variance (R2change = .003), F (8,143) = 6.92, p < .001. Driving while under the influence of alcohol could be predicted by risky behaviours in lifestyle, health, smoking, cannabis use and alcohol consumption, F (8,143) = 6.92, p < .001. The addition of self-control was not significant.

Developing and sustaining successful mentoring relationships

As mentor teachers hold the balance of power in the relationship, how do they build and sustain positive mentor-mentee relationships? This study involved eleven pairs of mentors and mentees (n=22) with audio-recorded interviews to explore their relationships, mentors’ support and mentors’ expectations for mentees’ involvement in the school. Findings suggested ways to build and sustain mentoring relationships (e.g., professionalism, respect, and support). Indeed, support in providing information for planning, access to resources, two-way dialoguing with feedback and reflections, and establishing safe, risk-taking environments to trial and evaluate newly-learnt teaching practices were considered as a ways to build and sustain relationships.