Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Dawson, Iowa for the period January 1, 2014 through December 31, 2014

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Dawson, Iowa for the period January 1, 2014 through December 31, 2014

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Nichols, Iowa for the period January 1, 2013 through December 31, 2014

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Nichols, Iowa for the period January 1, 2013 through December 31, 2014

Agreed-upon procedures report on Eden Township in Fayette County, Iowa for the period July 1, 2003 through April 30, 2015

Agreed-upon procedures report on Eden Township in Fayette County, Iowa for the period July 1, 2003 through April 30, 2015

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Blairstown, Iowa for the period December 1, 2013 through November 30, 2014

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Blairstown, Iowa for the period December 1, 2013 through November 30, 2014

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Oxford, Iowa for the period July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Oxford, Iowa for the period July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014

Agreed–upon procedures report on the City of Riverside, Iowa for the period July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014

Agreed–upon procedures report on the City of Riverside, Iowa for the period July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014

Do stacked species distribution models reflect altitudinal diversity patterns?

The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of stacked species distribution models in predicting the alpha and gamma species diversity patterns of two important plant clades along elevation in the Andes. We modelled the distribution of the species in the Anthurium genus (53 species) and the Bromeliaceae family (89 species) using six modelling techniques. We combined all of the predictions for the same species in ensemble models based on two different criteria: the average of the rescaled predictions by all techniques and the average of the best techniques. The rescaled predictions were then reclassified into binary predictions (presence/absence). By stacking either the original predictions or binary predictions for both ensemble procedures, we obtained four different species richness models per taxa. The gamma and alpha diversity per elevation band (500 m) was also computed. To evaluate the prediction abilities for the four predictions of species richness and gamma diversity, the models were compared with the real data along an elevation gradient that was independently compiled by specialists. Finally, we also tested whether our richness models performed better than a null model of altitudinal changes of diversity based on the literature. Stacking of the ensemble prediction of the individual species models generated richness models that proved to be well correlated with the observed alpha diversity richness patterns along elevation and with the gamma diversity derived from the literature. Overall, these models tend to overpredict species richness. The use of the ensemble predictions from the species models built with different techniques seems very promising for modelling of species assemblages. Stacking of the binary models reduced the over-prediction, although more research is needed. The randomisation test proved to be a promising method for testing the performance of the stacked models, but other implementations may still be developed.

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Laurel, Iowa for the period February 1, 2014 through January 31, 2015

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Laurel, Iowa for the period February 1, 2014 through January 31, 2015

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Ocheyedan, Iowa for the period July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Ocheyedan, Iowa for the period July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Collins, Iowa for the period July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Collins, Iowa for the period July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Martensdale, Iowa for the period November 1, 2013 through October 31, 2014

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Martensdale, Iowa for the period November 1, 2013 through October 31, 2014

Adaptive tuning of perceptual timing to whole body motion.

In a previous work we have shown that sinusoidal whole-body rotations producing continuous vestibular stimulation, affected the timing of motor responses as assessed with a paced finger tapping (PFT) task (Binetti et al. (2010). Neuropsychologia, 48(6), 1842-1852). Here, in two new psychophysical experiments, one purely perceptual and one with both sensory and motor components, we explored the relationship between body motion/vestibular stimulation and perceived timing of acoustic events. In experiment 1, participants were required to discriminate sequences of acoustic tones endowed with different degrees of acceleration or deceleration. In this experiment we found that a tone sequence presented during acceleratory whole-body rotations required a progressive increase in rate in order to be considered temporally regular, consistent with the idea of an increase in "clock" frequency and of an overestimation of time. In experiment 2 participants produced self-paced taps, which entailed an acoustic feedback. We found that tapping frequency in this task was affected by periodic motion by means of anticipatory and congruent (in-phase) fluctuations irrespective of the self-generated sensory feedback. On the other hand, synchronizing taps to an external rhythm determined a completely opposite modulation (delayed/counter-phase). Overall this study shows that body displacements "remap" our metric of time, affecting not only motor output but also sensory input.

Uncovering the genetic basis of adaptive change: on the intersection of landscape genomics and theoretical population genetics

A workshop recently held at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland) was dedicated to understanding the genetic basis of adaptive change, taking stock of the different approaches developed in theoretical population genetics and landscape genomics and bringing together knowledge accumulated in both research fields. Indeed, an important challenge in theoretical population genetics is to incorporate effects of demographic history and population structure. But important design problems (e.g. focus on populations as units, focus on hard selective sweeps, no hypothesis-based framework in the design of the statistical tests) reduce their capability of detecting adaptive genetic variation. In parallel, landscape genomics offers a solution to several of these problems and provides a number of advantages (e.g. fast computation, landscape heterogeneity integration). But the approach makes several implicit assumptions that should be carefully considered (e.g. selection has had enough time to create a functional relationship between the allele distribution and the environmental variable, or this functional relationship is assumed to be constant). To address the respective strengths and weaknesses mentioned above, the workshop brought together a panel of experts from both disciplines to present their work and discuss the relevance of combining these approaches, possibly resulting in a joint software solution in the future.

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Urbana, Iowa for the period July 1, 2014 through June 30, 2015

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Urbana, Iowa for the period July 1, 2014 through June 30, 2015

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Sidney, Iowa for the period July 1, 2014 through June 30, 2015

Agreed-upon procedures report on the City of Sidney, Iowa for the period July 1, 2014 through June 30, 2015