Finding hidden females in a crowd: Mate recognition in fig wasps

Multi-species mating aggregations are crowded environments within which mate recognition must occur. Mating aggregations of fig wasps can consist of thousands of individuals of many species that attain sexual maturity simultaneously and mate in the same microenvironment, i.e, in syntopy, within the close confines of an enclosed globular inflorescence called a syconium - a system that has many signalling constraints such as darkness and crowding. All wasps develop within individual galled flowers. Since mating mostly occurs when females are still confined within their galls,, male wasps have the additional burden of detecting conspecific females that are ``hidden'' behind barriers consisting of gall walls. In Ficus racemosa, we investigated signals used by pollinating fig wasp males to differentiate conspecific females from females of other syntopic fig wasp species. Male Ceratosolen fusciceps could detect conspecific females using cues from galls containing females, empty galls, as well as cues from gall volatiles and gall surface hydrocarbons. In many figs, syconia are pollinated by single foundress wasps, leading to high levels of wasp inbreeding due to sibmating. In F. racemosa, as most syconia contain many foundresses, we expected male pollinators to prefer non-sib females to female siblings to reduce inbreeding. We used galls containing females from non-natal figs as a proxy for non-sibs and those from natal figs as a proxy for sibling females. We found that males preferred galls of female pollinators from natal figs. However, males were undecided when given a choice between galls containing non-pollinator females from natal syconia and pollinator females from non-natal syconia, suggesting olfactory imprinting by the natal syconial environment. (C) 2013 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

On the Parameterized Complexity of Finding Separators with Non-Hereditary Properties

We study the problem of finding small s-t separators that induce graphs having certain properties. It is known that finding a minimum clique s-t separator is polynomial-time solvable (Tarjan in Discrete Math. 55:221-232, 1985), while for example the problems of finding a minimum s-t separator that induces a connected graph or forms an independent set are fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by the size of the separator (Marx et al. in ACM Trans. Algorithms 9(4): 30, 2013). Motivated by these results, we study properties that generalize cliques, independent sets, and connected graphs, and determine the complexity of finding separators satisfying these properties. We investigate these problems also on bounded-degree graphs. Our results are as follows: Finding a minimum c-connected s-t separator is FPT for c=2 and W1]-hard for any ca parts per thousand yen3. Finding a minimum s-t separator with diameter at most d is W1]-hard for any da parts per thousand yen2. Finding a minimum r-regular s-t separator is W1]-hard for any ra parts per thousand yen1. For any decidable graph property, finding a minimum s-t separator with this property is FPT parameterized jointly by the size of the separator and the maximum degree. Finding a connected s-t separator of minimum size does not have a polynomial kernel, even when restricted to graphs of maximum degree at most 3, unless .

Finding space to mental health : promoting mental health in adolescents (12 to 14 year olds): preliminary results of the intervention's effectiveness

Resumen: La salud mental y el bienestar son fundamentales para nuestra capacidad colectiva y individual como seres humanos de pensar, de exteriorizar los sentimientos, de establecer y mantener relaciones, para estudiar, para perseguir las actividades de ocio, para tomar decisiones diarias y para disfrutar de una vida plena. Una adolescencia saludable es un prerrequisito para una vida adulta saludable. Sin embargo, la realidad actual presenta un panorama preocupante. La formación del capital mental individual y colectivo - especialmente en las primeras etapas de la vida - está siendo retenida por una serie de riesgos evitables para la salud mental (World Health Organization [WHO], 2013). Los adolescentes del sur de Europa (región que ha sido más severamente afectada por la crisis financiera; e.g., Portugal) son señalados como un grupo extremadamente vulnerable, ya que su salud mental fácilmente podría ser influenciada por las dificultades económicas de sus padres y la escasez de solidaridad social (European Parliament, 2012). La promoción de la salud mental de los adolescentes es considerada como una preocupación fundamental (WHO, 2005a, 2013). En este ámbito, las intervenciones centradas en la promoción de la literacía de la salud mental han revelado importantes ventajas en la prevención, reconocimiento, intervención precoz y la reducción del estigma (Pinfold, Stuart, Thornicroft & Arboleda-Florez, 2005; Pinfold, Toulmin, Thornicroft, Huxley, Farmer & Graham, 2003; Schulze, Richter-Werling, Matschinger & Angermeyer, 2003; Stuart, 2006). En consonancia con los marcos de promoción de la salud mentales propuestos por la Organización Mundial de la Salud (2005a), tenemos que involucrar a jóvenes en los ambientes donde interactúan (Burns, 2011). Las escuelas son implícitamente uno de los locales más importantes para la promoción de la salud mental de los adolescentes (Barry, Clarke, Jenkins & Patel, 2013; WHO, 2001). El proyecto “Abrir Espacio para la Salud Mental – Promoción de la salud mental en adolescentes (12-14 años)” tiene como objetivo incrementar literacía de la salud mental en los jóvenes. En el primer año se ha desarrollado un instrumento de evaluación - Mental Health Literacy questionnaire (MHLq) - y la intervención para la promoción de la salud mental. La intervención consiste en 2 sesiones, 90 minutos cada una, implementadas con intervalo de una semana. Siguen una metodología interactiva, utilizando dinámicas de grupo, videos, música y discusión. El estudio de la eficacia de la intervención se lleva a cabo mediante un análisis pre y pos-test con el MHLq, utilizando un grupo experimental y un grupo de control. Este artículo presenta los resultados preliminares de la eficacia de la intervención de promoción de la salud mental en una muestra de 100 adolescentes portugueses (12-14 años). El pos-test mostró un incremento de los niveles de conocimientos de salud mental y estrategias de autoayuda. Los resultados sugieren que la intervención desarrollada parece ser adecuada al objetivo propuesto y refuerzan la creencia de que intervenciones escolares, sistemáticas y sostenibles, para la promoción de la salud mental con jóvenes, es un enfoque prometedor para la promoción de la literacía de la salud mental (Schulze et al., 2003; Rickwood et al., 2005; Corrigan et al., 2007; WHO, 2010).

First Biennial Ocean Climate Summit: Finding Solutions for San Francisco Bay Area’s Coast and Ocean. Proceedings of the Summit: April 29, 2008, Golden Gate Club, The Presidio San Francisco, California

Executive Summary: The marine environment plays a critical role in the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that remains within Earth’s atmosphere, but has not received as much attention as the terrestrial environment when it comes to climate change discussions, programs, and plans for action. It is now apparent that the oceans have begun to reach a state of CO2 saturation, no longer maintaining the “steady-state” carbon cycle that existed prior to the Industrial Revolution. The increasing amount of CO2 present within the oceans and the atmosphere has an effect on climate and a cascading effect on the marine environment. Potential physical effects of climate change within the marine environment, including ocean acidification, changes in wind and upwelling regimes, increasing global sea surface temperatures, and sea level rise, can lead to dramatic, fundamental changes within marine and coastal ecosystems. Altered ecosystems can result in changing coastal economies through a reduction in marine ecosystem services such as commercial fish stocks and coastal tourism. Local impacts from climate change should be a front line issue for natural resource managers, but they often feel too overwhelmed by the magnitude of this issue to begin to take action. They may not feel they have the time, funding, or staff to take on a challenge as large as climate change and continue to not act as a result. Already, natural resource managers work to balance the needs of humans and the economy with ecosystem biodiversity and resilience. Responsible decisions are made each day that consider a wide variety of stakeholders, including community members, agencies, non-profit organizations, and business/industry. The issue of climate change must be approached as a collaborative effort, one that natural resource managers can facilitate by balancing human demands with healthy ecosystem function through research and monitoring, education and outreach, and policy reform. The Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change in their 2007 report titled, “Confronting Climate Change: Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable” charged governments around the world with developing strategies to “adapt to ongoing and future changes in climate change by integrating the implications of climate change into resource management and infrastructure development”. Resource managers must make future management decisions within an uncertain and changing climate based on both physical and biological ecosystem response to climate change and human perception of and response to the issue. Climate change is the biggest threat facing any protected area today and resource managers must lead the charge in addressing this threat. (PDF has 59 pages.)

Finding the right solution

A guide to option appraisal

Finding needles in the haystack : a search for AM CVn systems using the Palomar Transient Factory

The AM CVn systems are a rare class of ultra-compact astrophysical binaries. With orbital periods of under an hour and as short as five minutes, they are among the closest known binary star systems and their evolution has direct relevance to the type Ia supernova rate and the white dwarf binary population. However, their faint and rare nature has made population studies of these systems difficult and several studies have found conflicting results.

I undertook a survey for AM CVn systems using the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) astrophysical synoptic survey by exploiting the "outbursts" these systems undergo. Such events result in an increase in luminosity by a factor of up to two-hundred and are detectable in time-domain photometric data of AM CVn systems. My search resulted in the discovery of eight new systems, over 20% of the current known population. More importantly, this search was done in a systematic fashion, which allows for a population study properly accounting for biases.

Apart from the discovery of new systems, I used the time-domain data from the PTF and other synoptic surveys to better understand the long-term behavior of these systems. This analysis of the photometric behavior of the majority of known AM CVn systems has shown changes in their behavior at longer time scales than have previously been observed. This has allowed me to find relationships between the outburst properties of an individual system and its orbital period.

Even more importantly, the systematically selected sample together with these properties have allowed me to conduct a population study of the AM CVn systems. I have shown that the latest published estimates of the AM CVn system population, a factor of fifty below theoretical estimates, are consistent with the sample of systems presented here. This is particularly noteworthy since my population study is most sensitive to a different orbital period regime than earlier surveys. This confirmation of the population density will allow the AM CVn systems population to be used in the study of other areas of astrophysics.

Results of the Austrian-Ceylonese hydrobiological mission 1970 of the 1st Zoological Institute of the University of Vienna (Austria) and the Department of Zoology of the Vidyalankara University of Ceylon, Kelaniya. Pt. 4. List of reptilia and amphibia collected in the mountains of south-west Ceylon, with notes on finding localities

Sri Lanka is a comparatively small island (65.584 km²) within the equatorial belt of calms. There are only slight seasonal variations in temperature, air humidity and day length. A description is given of the amphibian and reptile material brought back from the Austrian Indo-Pacific expedition, 1970-71. Some notes on the habitat of the animals are included.