Evaluating conservation and fisheries management strategies by linking spatial prioritization software and ecosystem and fisheries modelling tools

Well-designed marine protected area (MPA) networks can deliver a range of ecological, economic and social benefits, and so a great deal of research has focused on developing spatial conservation prioritization tools to help identify important areas. However, whilst these software tools are designed to identify MPA networks that both represent biodiversity and minimize impacts on stakeholders, they do not consider complex ecological processes. Thus, it is difficult to determine the impacts that proposed MPAs could have on marine ecosystem health, fisheries and fisheries sustainability. Using the eastern English Channel as a case study, this paper explores an approach to address these issues by identifying a series of MPA networks using the Marxan and Marxan with Zones conservation planning software and linking them with a spatially explicit ecosystem model developed in Ecopath with Ecosim. We then use these to investigate potential trade-offs associated with adopting different MPA management strategies. Limited-take MPAs, which restrict the use of some fishing gears, could have positive benefits for conservation and fisheries in the eastern English Channel, even though they generally receive far less attention in research on MPA network design. Our findings, however, also clearly indicate that no-take MPAs should form an integral component of proposed MPA networks in the eastern English Channel, as they not only result in substantial increases in ecosystem biomass, fisheries catches and the biomass of commercially valuable target species, but are fundamental to maintaining the sustainability of the fisheries. Synthesis and applications. Using the existing software tools Marxan with Zones and Ecopath with Ecosim in combination provides a powerful policy-screening approach. This could help inform marine spatial planning by identifying potential conflicts and by designing new regulations that better balance conservation objectives and stakeholder interests. In addition, it highlights that appropriate combinations of no-take and limited-take marine protected areas might be the most effective when making trade-offs between long-term ecological benefits and short-term political acceptability.

“English Language Learning Strategies used by the Foreign Language Department Seminar Students Year 2006 with Either Above Eight Grade or Below it Obtained in Their Studies in the Basic Skills Area.

Nowadays language communication plays an important role in the world. For the technological explosion in the 20th century, the electronic mass media collapsed space and time barriers in human communication, enabling people to interact and live on a global scale. In this sense, the earth has been turned into a village by the electronic mass media. It not only changes the distance between countries, societies, but also shortens it between people. It means that the technological advancement makes the earth become a village. Since the distance between people is shortened, language communication becomes more important than before. To enhance language abilities, people can apply many different types of language learning strategies according to the learning styles that they have in order to learn the target language. In the Foreign Language Department of University of El Salvador Seminar students year 2006 apply different language learning strategies which make some of them get a grade either above eight or below it. To understand learning strategies, people can go back to basic term, strategy. This word comes from the ancient Greek term strategia meaning generalship or the art of war. A different, but related, word is tactics, which are tools to achieve the success of strategies. The two expressions share some basic implied characteristics: planning, competition, conscious manipulation, and movement toward a goal.

REASONS BEHIND THE USAGE OF ONLINE AD BLOCKING TOOLS

Online advertising has been growing rapidly since the mid-90s. In recent years, online advertising has become as relevant as an advertising medium as print and television are. However, despite the growth, the generally held consensus is that consumers are not interested in online advertisements. The arrival of online ad blocking tools has offered consumers a very effective way to avoid and block online advertisements. Although these tools have now been around for several years and the most popular software’s have hundreds of millions of active users, the phenomenon of ad blocking has gathered surprisingly little attention from academic marketing research. For this reason, ad blocking was chosen as the topic of this thesis study. The researcher was particularly interested in the reasons behind the usage of online ad blocking tools. The object of the empirical part of this study is to provide new and valid information regarding the reasons behind the usage of online ad blocking tools. The empirical research of this study consisted of a survey study that mixed both quantitative and qualitative elements. Although the sample size of the study was fairly limited, the study provided useful answers to individual research questions and provided new knowledge regarding the reasons behind the usage of online ad blocking and the phenomenon of ad blocking as a whole. The study provides further evidence that consumers are aware of online ad blocking tools and a significant portion of them are interested in using them. This study indicates that many of the consumers who do not have previous knowledge of these tools would actually be interested in them. The reason for the usage of online ad blocking tools varies from institutional reasons to instrumental reason, such as poor quality of the online advertisements. However, there were participants who were not interested in the usage of online ad blocking tools, and some of them reported to find online advertising useful. There also seems to be a concern among some consumers that online ad blocking will have a negative effect on online content in the future if the ad blocking will keep growing as a phenomenon. This certainly can be the case, and it is very interesting to see how the development of online ad blocking will shape the online advertising, how the advertising industry will respond to the growth of online ad blocking and how will the consumers respond to these changes.

Crocin and β-Carotene bleaching assays as analytical tools in the optimization of the extraction of hydrophilic and lipophilic antioxidants from tomato

Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) is the second most important vegetable crop worldwide and a rich source of hydrophilic (H) and lipophilic (L) antioxidants. The H fraction is constituted mainly by ascorbic acid and soluble phenolic compounds, while the L fraction contains carotenoids (mostly lycopene), tocopherols, sterols and lipophilic phenolics [1,2]. To obtain these antioxidants it is necessary to follow appropriate extraction methods and processing conditions. In this regard, this study aimed at determining the optimal extraction conditions for H and L antioxidants from a tomato surplus. A 5-level full factorial design with 4 factors (extraction time (I, 0-20 min), temperature (T, 60-180 •c), ethanol percentage (Et, 0-100%) and solid/liquid ratio (S/L, 5-45 g!L)) was implemented and the response surface methodology used for analysis. Extractions were carried out in a Biotage Initiator Microwave apparatus. The concentration-time response methods of crocin and P-carotene bleaching were applied (using 96-well microplates), since they are suitable in vitro assays to evaluate the antioxidant activity of H and L matrices, respectively [3]. Measurements were carried out at intervals of 3, 5 and 10 min (initiation, propagation and asymptotic phases), during a time frame of 200 min. The parameters Pm (maximum protected substrate) and V m (amount of protected substrate per g of extract) and the so called IC50 were used to quantify the response. The optimum extraction conditions were as follows: r~2.25 min, 7'=149.2 •c, Et=99.1 %and SIL=l5.0 giL for H antioxidants; and t=l5.4 min, 7'=60.0 •c, Et=33.0% and S/L~l5.0 g/L for L antioxidants. The proposed model was validated based on the high values of the adjusted coefficient of determination (R2.wi>0.91) and on the non-siguificant differences between predicted and experimental values. It was also found that the antioxidant capacity of the H fraction was much higher than the L one.

Knowledge and use of asthma control measurement tools in the management of asthma: a survey of doctors working in family and internal medicine practice in Nigeria.

Objective: To investigate the knowledge and use of asthma control measurement (ACM) tools in the management of asthma among doctors working in family and internal medicine practice in Nigeria. Method: A questionnaire based on the global initiative on asthma (GINA) guideline was self-administered by 194 doctors. It contains 12 test items on knowledge of ACM tools and its application. The knowledge score was obtained by adding the correct answers and classified as good if the score ≥ 9, satisfactory if score was 6-8 and poor if < 6. Results: The overall doctors knowledge score of ACM tools was 4.49±2.14 (maximum of 12). Pulmonologists recorded the highest knowledge score of 10.75±1.85. The majority (69.6%) had poor knowledge score of ACM tools. Fifty (25.8%) assessed their patients’ level of asthma control and 34(17.5%) at every visit. Thirty-nine (20.1%) used ACM tools in their consultation, 29 (15.0%) of them used GINA defined control while 10 (5.2 %) used asthma control test (ACT). The use of the tools was associated with pulmonologists, having attended CME within six months and graduated within five years prior to the survey. Conclusion: The results highlight the poor knowledge and use of ACM tools and the need to address the knowledge gap.

Seeing it my way: a case of a selective deficit in inhibiting self-perspective

Little is known about the functional and neural architecture of social reasoning, one major obstacle being that we crucially lack the relevant tools to test potentially different social reasoning components. In the case of belief reasoning, previous studies tried to separate the processes involved in belief reasoning per se from those involved in the processing of the high incidental demands such as the working memory demands of typical belief tasks (e.g., Stone et al., 1998; Samson et al., 2004). In this study, we developed new belief tasks in order to disentangle, for the first time, two perspective taking components involved in belief reasoning: (1) the ability to inhibit one’s own perspective (self-perspective inhibition) and (2) the ability to infer someone else’s perspective as such (other-perspective taking). The two tasks had similar demands in other-perspective taking as they both required the participant to infer that a character has a false belief about an object’s location. However, the tasks varied in the self-perspective inhibition demands. In the task with the lowest self-perspective inhibition demands, at the time the participant had to infer the character’s false belief, he or she had no idea what the new object’s location was. In contrast, in the task with the highest self-perspective inhibition demands, at the time the participant had to infer the character’s false belief, he or she knew where the object was actually located (and this knowledge had thus to be inhibited). The two tasks were presented to a stroke patient, WBA, with right prefrontal and temporal damage. WBA performed well in the low-inhibition false belief task but showed striking difficulty in the task placing high self-perspective inhibition demands, showing a selective deficit in inhibiting self-perspective. WBA also made egocentric errors in other social and visual perspective taking tasks, indicating a difficulty with belief attribution extending to the attribution of emotions, desires and visual experiences to other people. The case of WBA, together with the recent report of three patients impaired in belief reasoning even when self-perspective inhibition demands were reduced (Samson et al., 2004), provide the first neuropsychological evidence that (a) the inhibition of one’s own point of view and (b) the ability to infer someone else’ s point of view, rely on distinct neural and functional processes.

EasyInterface: a toolkit for the rapid development of GUIs for research prototype tools

During the lifetime of a research project, different partners develop several research prototype tools that share many common aspects. This is equally true for researchers as individuals and as groups: during a period of time they often develop several related tools to pursue a specific research line. Making research prototype tools easily accessible to the community is of utmost importance to promote the corresponding research, get feedback, and increase the tools’ lifetime beyond the duration of a specific project. One way to achieve this is to build graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that facilitate trying tools; in particular, with web-interfaces one avoids the overhead of downloading and installing the tools. Building GUIs from scratch is a tedious task, in particular for web-interfaces, and thus it typically gets low priority when developing a research prototype. Often we opt for copying the GUI of one tool and modifying it to fit the needs of a new related tool. Apart from code duplication, these tools will “live” separately, even though we might benefit from having them all in a common environment since they are related. This work aims at simplifying the process of building GUIs for research prototypes tools. In particular, we present EasyInterface, a toolkit that is based on novel methodology that provides an easy way to make research prototype tools available via common different environments such as a web-interface, within Eclipse, etc. It includes a novel text-based output language that allows to present results graphically without requiring any knowledge in GUI/Web programming. For example, an output of a tool could be (a structured version of) “highlight line number 10 of file ex.c” and “when the user clicks on line 10, open a dialog box with the text ...”. The environment will interpret this output and converts it to corresponding visual e_ects. The advantage of using this approach is that it will be interpreted equally by all environments of EasyInterface, e.g., the web-interface, the Eclipse plugin, etc. EasyInterface has been developed in the context of the Envisage [5] project, and has been evaluated on tools developed in this project, which include static analyzers, test-case generators, compilers, simulators, etc. EasyInterface is open source and available at GitHub2.

Professional development programs in health promotion : tools and processes to favor new practices

Developing innovative interventions that are in sync with a health promotion paradigm often represents a challenge for professionals working in local public health organizations. Thus, it is critical to have both professional development programs that favor new practices and tools to examine these practices. In this case study, we analyze the health promotion approach used in a pilot intervention addressing children’s vulnerability that was developed and carried out by participants enrolled in a public health professional development program. More specifically, we use a modified version of Guichard and Ridde’s (Une grille d’analyse des actions pour lutter contre les inégalités sociales de santé. In Potvin, L., Moquet, M.-J. and Jones, C. M. (eds), Réduire les Inégalités Sociales en Santé. INPES, Saint-Denis Cedex, pp. 297– 312, 2010) analytical grid to assess deductively the program participants’ use of health promotion practices in the analysis and planning, implementation, evaluation, sustainability and empowerment phases of the pilot intervention. We also seek evidence of practices involving (empowerment, participation, equity, holism, an ecological approach, intersectorality and sustainability) in the intervention. The results are mixed: our findings reveal evidence of the application of several dimensions of health promotion (equity, holism, an ecological approach, intersectorality and sustainability), but also a lack of integration of two key dimensions; that is, empowerment and participation, during various phases of the pilot intervention. These results show that the professional development program is associated with the adoption of a pilot intervention integrating multiple but not all dimensions of health promotion. We make recommendations to facilitate a more complete integration. This research also shows that the Guichard and Ridde grid proves to be a thorough instrument to document the practices of participants.

Characterization of 10 new tetranucleotide microsatellite markers for the European eagle owl, Bubo bubo: Useful tools for conservation strategies

Bubo bubo is the largest owl in the world, showing a wide geographical distribution throughout the Palaearctic region. It underwent a demographic decline in many European countries during the last century and was considered “vulnerable” (Annex II of the CITES). Nowadays, it is classified as “Least Concern” according to IUCN. Despite its ecological importance and conservation status, few polymorphic molecular markers are available to study its diversity and population genetics. We report on the isolation and development of 10 new microsatellites for the Eagle owl, B. bubo. All loci (10 tetra-nucleotide) are characterized by high polymorphism levels. Number of alleles ranged from 5 to 13 and expected heterozygosity varied from 0.733 to 0.840. These microsatellites would be very useful to assess the genetic diversity, connectivity patterns and parentage of B. bubo. This information will allow to establish new conservation strategies and improve the management of the species.

Tools For Spatiotemporally Specific Proteomic Analysis In Multicellular Organisms

The emergence of mass spectrometry-based proteomics has revolutionized the study of proteins and their abundances, functions, interactions, and modifications. However, in a multicellular organism, it is difficult to monitor dynamic changes in protein synthesis in a specific cell type within its native environment. In this thesis, we describe methods that enable the metabolic labeling, purification, and analysis of proteins in specific cell types and during defined periods in live animals. We first engineered a eukaryotic phenylalanyl-tRNA synthetase (PheRS) to selectively recognize the unnatural L-phenylalanine analog p-azido-L-phenylalanine (Azf). Using Caenorhabditis elegans, we expressed the engineered PheRS in a cell type of choice (i.e. body wall muscles, intestinal epithelial cells, neurons, pharyngeal muscles), permitting proteins in those cells -- and only those cells -- to be labeled with azides. Labeled proteins are therefore subject to "click" conjugation to cyclooctyne-functionalized affnity probes, separation from the rest of the protein pool and identification by mass spectrometry. By coupling our methodology with heavy isotopic labeling, we successfully identified proteins -- including proteins with previously unknown expression patterns -- expressed in targeted subsets of cells. While cell types like body wall or pharyngeal muscles can be targeted with a single promoter, many cells cannot; spatiotemporal selectivity typically results from the combinatorial action of multiple regulators. To enhance spatiotemporal selectivity, we next developed a two-component system to drive overlapping -- but not identical -- patterns of expression of engineered PheRS, restricting labeling to cells that express both elements. Specifically, we developed a split-intein-based split-PheRS system for highly efficient PheRS-reconstitution through protein splicing. Together, these tools represent a powerful approach for unbiased discovery of proteins uniquely expressed in a subset of cells at specific developmental stages.

Music Learning Tools for Android Devices

In this paper, a musical learning application for mobile devices is presented. The main objective is to design and develop an application capable of offering exercises to practice and improve a selection of music skills, to users interested in music learning and training. The selected music skills are rhythm, melodic dictation and singing. The application includes an audio signal analysis system implemented making use of the Goertzel algorithm which is employed in singing exercises to check if the user sings the right musical note. This application also includes a graphical interface to represent musical symbols. A set of tests were conducted to check the usefulness of the application as musical learning tool. A group of users with different music knowledge have tested the system and reported to have found it effective, easy and accessible.

Development of Core Design Methods and Tools for Gen-IV Heavy Liquid Metal Cooled Reactors

Heavy Liquid Metal Cooled Reactors are among the concepts, fostered by the GIF, as potentially able to comply with stringent safety, economical, sustainability, proliferation resistance and physical protection requirements. The increasing interest around these innovative systems has highlighted the lack of tools specifically dedicated to their core design stage. The present PhD thesis summarizes the three years effort of, partially, closing the mentioned gap, by rationally defining the role of codes in core design and by creating a development methodology for core design-oriented codes (DOCs) and its subsequent application to the most needed design areas. The covered fields are, in particular, the fuel assembly thermal-hydraulics and the fuel pin thermo-mechanics. Regarding the former, following the established methodology, the sub-channel code ANTEO+ has been conceived. Initially restricted to the forced convection regime and subsequently extended to the mixed one, ANTEO+, via a thorough validation campaign, has been demonstrated a reliable tool for design applications. Concerning the fuel pin thermo-mechanics, the will to include safety-related considerations at the outset of the pin dimensioning process, has given birth to the safety-informed DOC TEMIDE. The proposed DOC development methodology has also been applied to TEMIDE; given the complex interdependence patterns among the numerous phenomena involved in an irradiated fuel pin, to optimize the code final structure, a sensitivity analysis has been performed, in the anticipated application domain. The development methodology has also been tested in the verification and validation phases; the latter, due to the low availability of experiments truly representative of TEMIDE's application domain, has only been a preliminary attempt to test TEMIDE's capabilities in fulfilling the DOC requirements upon which it has been built. In general, the capability of the proposed development methodology for DOCs in delivering tools helping the core designer in preliminary setting the system configuration has been proven.

Design and Development of a Research Framework for Prototyping Control Tower Augmented Reality Tools

The purpose of the air traffic management system is to ensure the safe and efficient flow of air traffic. Therefore, while augmenting efficiency, throughput and capacity in airport operations, attention has rightly been placed on doing it in a safe manner. In the control tower, many advances in operational safety have come in the form of visualization tools for tower controllers. However, there is a paradox in developing such systems to increase controllers' situational awareness: by creating additional computer displays, the controller's vision is pulled away from the outside view and the time spent looking down at the monitors is increased. This reduces their situational awareness by forcing them to mentally and physically switch between the head-down equipment and the outside view. This research is based on the idea that augmented reality may be able to address this issue. The augmented reality concept has become increasingly popular over the past decade and is being proficiently used in many fields, such as entertainment, cultural heritage, aviation, military & defense. This know-how could be transferred to air traffic control with a relatively low effort and substantial benefits for controllers’ situation awareness. Research on this topic is consistent with SESAR objectives of increasing air traffic controllers’ situation awareness and enable up to 10 % of additional flights at congested airports while still increasing safety and efficiency. During the Ph.D., a research framework for prototyping augmented reality tools was set up. This framework consists of methodological tools for designing the augmented reality overlays, as well as of hardware and software equipment to test them. Several overlays have been designed and implemented in a simulated tower environment, which is a virtual reconstruction of Bologna airport control tower. The positive impact of such tools was preliminary assessed by means of the proposed methodology.

Practical Management of the Endangered African Wild Dog (Lycaon Pictus): Implementation of Research Methodologies, Management Tools and Validation of Non-Invasive Endocrinology Applications

The porpoise of this study was to implement research methodologies and assess the effectiveness and impact of management tools to promote best practices for the long term conservation of the endangered African wild dog (Lycaon pictus). Different methods were included in the project framework to investigate and expand the applicability of these methodologies to free-ranging African wild dogs in the southern African region: ethology, behavioural endocrinology and ecology field methodologies were tested and implemented. Additionally, research was performed to test the effectiveness and implication of a contraceptive implant (Suprenolin) as a management tool for the species of a subpopulation hosted in fenced areas. Attention was especially given to social structure and survival of treated packs. This research provides useful tools and advances the applicability of these methods for field studies, standardizing and improving research instruments in the field of conservation biology and behavioural endocrinology. Results reported here provide effective methodologies to expand the applicability of non-invasive endocrine assessment to previously prohibited fields, and validation of sampling methods for faecal hormone analysis. The final aim was to fill a knowledge gap on behaviours of the species and provide a common ground for future researchers to apply non-invasive methods to this species research and to test the effectiveness of the contraception on a managed metapopulation.

Development of Mass Spectrometry-based analytical tools for characterization of bioconjugate vaccines in E. coli

Antigen design is generally driven by the need to obtain enhanced stability,efficiency and safety in vaccines.Unfortunately,the antigen modification is rarely proceeded in parallel with analytical tools development characterization.The analytical tools set up is required during steps of vaccine manufacturing pipeline,for vaccine production modifications,improvements or regulatory requirements.Despite the relevance of bioconjugate vaccines,robust and consistent analytical tools to evaluate the extent of carrier glycosylation are missing.Bioconjugation is a glycoengineering technology aimed to produce N-glycoprotein in vivo in E.coli cells,based on the PglB-dependent system by C. jejuni,applied for production of several glycoconjugate vaccines.This applicability is due to glycocompetent E. coli ability to produce site-selective glycosylated protein used,after few purification steps, as vaccines able to elicit both humoral and cell-mediate immune-response.Here, S.aureus Hla bioconjugated with CP5 was used to perform rational analytical-driven design of the glycosylation sites for the glycosylation extent quantification by Mass Spectrometry.The aim of the study was to develop a MS-based approach to quantify the glycosylation extent for in-process monitoring of bioconjugate production and for final product characterization.The three designed consensus sequences differ for a single amino-acid residue and fulfill the prerequisites for engineered bioconjugate more appropriate from an analytical perspective.We aimed to achieve an optimal MS detectability of the peptide carrying the consensus sequences,complying with the well-characterized requirements for N-glycosylation by PglB.Hla carrier isoforms,bearing these consensus sequences allowed a recovery of about 20 ng/μg of periplasmic protein glycosylated at 40%.The SRM-MS here developed was successfully applied to evaluate the differential site occupancy when carrier protein present two glycosites.The glycosylation extent in each glycosite was determined and the difference in the isoforms were influenced either by the overall source of protein produced and by the position of glycosite insertion.The analytical driven design of the bioconjugated antigen and the development of accurate,precise and robust analytical method allowed to finely characterize the vaccine.