How much management is enough? Stakeholder views on forest management in fire-prone areas in central Portugal

With the increasing pressure to improve the contribution of forests to help dealing with global changes, it is critical to understand the different perceptions of those involved in the forest. How do forest owners, managers and members of local communities who often depend on the forest, value it and what are the problems affecting the forests in terms of being able to meet these new challenges? In Portugal, this task has taken on an even greater priority as more than 90% of the forest is private and forest management relies on the individual decisions of thousands of forest owners. To understand stakeholder views on forest and forest management, a transversal social perception survey was implemented in the form of a case study of central Portugal which included decision-makers, local technicians, forest owners and the general public. The results show that there is a consensus on the main issues affecting forests and forest management. A shift from classic forest owners to the emergence of indifferent forest owners was observed, although this shift has not been recognized by the forest owners in the survey, who maintain the individual management of their properties.

Subjective perception of sleepiness in a driving simulator is different from that in the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test.

OBJECTIVE To test whether sleep-deprived, healthy subjects who do not always signal spontaneously perceived sleepiness (SPS) before falling asleep during the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT) would do so in a driving simulator. METHODS Twenty-four healthy subjects (20-26 years old) underwent a MWT for 40 min and a driving simulator test for 1 h, before and after one night of sleep deprivation. Standard electroencephalography, electrooculography, submental electromyography, and face videography were recorded simultaneously to score wakefulness and sleep. Subjects were instructed to signal SPS as soon as they subjectively felt sleepy and to try to stay awake for as long as possible in every test. They were rewarded for both "appropriate" perception of SPS and staying awake for as long as possible. RESULTS After sleep deprivation, seven subjects (29%) did not signal SPS before falling asleep in the MWT, but all subjects signalled SPS before falling asleep in the driving simulator (p <0.004). CONCLUSIONS The previous results of an "inaccurate" SPS in the MWT were confirmed, and a perfect SPS was shown in the driving simulator. It was hypothesised that SPS is more accurate for tasks involving continuous feedback of performance, such as driving, compared to the less active situation of the MWT. Spontaneously perceived sleepiness in the MWT cannot be used to judge sleepiness perception while driving. Further studies are needed to define the accuracy of SPS in working tasks or occupations with minimal or no performance feedback.

Periacetabular osteotomy through the pararectus approach: technical feasibility and control of fragment mobility by a validated surgical navigation system in a cadaver experiment

PURPOSE The pararectus approach has been validated for managing acetabular fractures. We hypothesised it might be an alternative approach for performing periacetabular osteotomy (PAO). METHODS Using four cadaver specimens, we randomly performed PAO through either the pararectus or a modified Smith-Petersen (SP) approach. We assessed technical feasibility and safety. Furthermore, we controlled fragment mobility using a surgical navigation system and compared mobility between approaches. The navigation system's accuracy was tested by cross-examination with validated preoperative planning software. RESULTS The pararectus approach is technically feasible, allowing for adequate exposure, safe osteotomies and excellent control of structures at risk. Fragment mobility is equal to that achieved through the SP approach. Validation of these measurements yielded a mean difference of less <1 mm without statistical significance. CONCLUSION Experimental data suggests the pararectus approach might be an alternative approach for performing PAO. Clinical validation is necessary to confirm these promising preliminary results.

Analysis of Nucleocytoplasmic Protein Shuttling by Imaging Flow Cytometry

Many intracellular signal transduction events involve the reversible shuttling of proteins between the cytoplasm and the nucleus. Study of these processes requires imaging information on the protein localization in a given cell and a large number of measurements to obtain sufficient statistics on the protein localization in the whole population. The protocol describes method for quantitative imaging flow cytometry analysis of intracellular distribution of NF-kappaB in ARPE-19 cells stained with specific fluorochrome-conjugated antibodies. The described technique alone or in combination with standard flow cytometry methods can be applied to study any protein undergoing translocation from cytoplasm into the nucleus in a variety of cell lines as well as in heterogeneous primary cell populations

Information-Centric Content Retrieval for Delay-Tolerant Networks

The shift from host-centric to information-centric networking (ICN) promises seamless communication in mobile networks. However, most existing works either consider well-connected networks with high node density or introduce modifications to {ICN} message processing for delay-tolerant Networking (DTN). In this work, we present agent-based content retrieval, which provides information-centric {DTN} support as an application module without modifications to {ICN} message processing. This enables flexible interoperability in changing environments. If no content source can be found via wireless multi-hop routing, requesters may exploit the mobility of neighbor nodes (called agents) by delegating content retrieval to them. Agents that receive a delegation and move closer to content sources can retrieve data and return it back to requesters. We show that agent-based content retrieval may be even more efficient in scenarios where multi-hop communication is possible. Furthermore, we show that broadcast communication may not be necessarily the best option since dynamic unicast requests have little overhead and can better exploit short contact times between nodes (no broadcast delays required for duplicate suppression).

Dynamic Unicast: Information-Centric Multi-hop Routing for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

Abstract Information-centric networking (ICN) offers new perspectives on mobile ad-hoc communication because routing is based on names but not on endpoint identifiers. Since every content object has a unique name and is signed, authentic content can be stored and cached by any node. If connectivity to a content source breaks, it is not necessarily required to build a new path to the same source but content can also be retrieved from a closer node that provides the same content copy. For example, in case of collisions, retransmissions do not need to be performed over the entire path but due to caching only over the link where the collision occurred. Furthermore, multiple requests can be aggregated to improve scalability of wireless multi-hop communication. In this work, we base our investigations on Content-Centric Networking (CCN), which is a popular {ICN} architecture. While related works in wireless {CCN} communication are based on broadcast communication exclusively, we show that this is not needed for efficient mobile ad-hoc communication. With Dynamic Unicast requesters can build unicast paths to content sources after they have been identified via broadcast. We have implemented Dynamic Unicast in CCNx, which provides a reference implementation of the {CCN} concepts, and performed extensive evaluations in diverse mobile scenarios using NS3-DCE, the direct code execution framework for the {NS3} network simulator. Our evaluations show that Dynamic Unicast can result in more efficient communication than broadcast communication, but still supports all {CCN} advantages such as caching, scalability and implicit content discovery.

Efficient Production of Wins in Major League Baseball

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is applied to Major League Baseball salary and performance data from 1985 to 2006 in order to identify those teams which produced wins most efficiently and the characteristics which lead to efficient production. It is shown that on average both National and American League teams over allocate the most resources to first basemen. Additionally, it is found that National League teams should allocate significantly more resources towards starting pitching while American League teams should allocate significantly more resources toward second base. It is also observed that efficient teams use younger less experienced players and employ rosters with a greater number of previous all star appearances.

Novel Imaging-Based Techniques Reveal a Role for PD-1/PD-L1 in Tumor Immune Surveillance in the Lung

The binding of immune inhibitory receptor Programmed Death 1 (PD-1) on T cells to its ligand PD-L1 has been implicated as a major contributor to tumor induced immune suppression. Clinical trials of PD-L1 blockade have proven effective in unleashing therapeutic anti-tumor immune responses in a subset of patients with advanced melanoma, yet current response rates are low for reasons that remain unclear. Hypothesizing that the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway regulates T cell surveillance within the tumor microenvironment, we employed intravital microscopy to investigate the in vivo impact of PD-L1 blocking antibody upon tumor-associated immune cell migration. However, current analytical methods of intravital dynamic microscopy data lack the ability to identify cellular targets of T cell interactions in vivo, a crucial means for discovering which interactions are modulated by therapeutic intervention. By developing novel imaging techniques that allowed us to better analyze tumor progression and T cell dynamics in the microenvironment; we were able to explore the impact of PD-L1 blockade upon the migratory properties of tumor-associated immune cells, including T cells and antigen presenting cells, in lung tumor progression. Our results demonstrate that early changes in tumor morphology may be indicative of responsiveness to anti-PD-L1 therapy. We show that immune cells in the tumor microenvironment as well as tumors themselves express PD-L1, but immune phenotype alone is not a predictive marker of effective anti-tumor responses. Through a novel method in which we quantify T cell interactions, we show that T cells are largely engaged in interactions with dendritic cells in the tumor microenvironment. Additionally, we show that during PD-L1 blockade, non-activated T cells are recruited in greater numbers into the tumor microenvironment and engage more preferentially with dendritic cells. We further show that during PD-L1 blockade, activated T cells engage in more confined, immune synapse-like interactions with dendritic cells, as opposed to more dynamic, kinapse-like interactions with dendritic cells when PD-L1 is free to bind its receptor. By advancing the contextual analysis of anti-tumor immune surveillance in vivo, this study implicates the interaction between T cells and tumor-associated dendritic cells as a possible modulator in targeting PD-L1 for anti-tumor immunotherapy.

La imagen de los datos : una metodología de aplicación en la investigación artística

Fil: Césari, Ricardo Manuel. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Artes y Diseño