Search results for "81"
showing 10 items of 2468 documents
Emulating natural disturbances in boreal Norway spruce forests: Effects on ground beetles (Coleoptera, Carabidae)
2014
The disturbance regime of boreal forests has been substantially altered by human influence in northern Europe. In this context, emulations of natural disturbance have become increasingly common as management tools to minimize negative effects of forestry on biodiversity. In a large-scale habitat-restoration experiment conducted in Norway spruce stands in southern Finland, we tested the effects of controlled burning, partial harvesting, and increasing the amount of downed wood on ground beetles (carabids). We also evaluated the effects of moisture gradients within harvested sites. We collected beetles seven years after the treatments. The moisture gradient was the strongest determinant of ca…
A comparison of two methods for surveying aquatic macrophyte communities in boreal lakes: Implications for bioassessment
2013
To compare the performance of two common methods for surveying boreal lake aquatic macrophyte communities (the transect survey and the phytolittoral inventory) in lake bioassessment, we studied five small humic lakes with both methods. In addition to this pairwise comparison, we contrasted available independent sets of reference lake data of either methodological origin. Specifically, we compared the observed species richness and a number of ecological quality (community) metrics and their variability both between the methods and within them in relation to sampling effort and operator. With the phytolittoral inventory, more taxa (mean 38.8 ± s.d. 12.1) were observed than with transect surve…
Titmice are a better indicator of bird density in Northern European than in Western European forests
2022
Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Population sizes of many birds are declining alarmingly and methods for estimating fluctuations in species’ abundances at a large spatial scale are needed. The possibility to derive indicators from the tendency of specific species to co-occur with others has been overlooked. Here, we tested whether the abundance of resident titmice can act as a general ecological indicator of forest bird density in European forests. Titmice species are easily identifiable and have a wide distribution, which makes them potentially useful ecological indicators. Migratory birds often use information on the densit…
A naïve approach to speed up portfolio optimization problem using a multiobjective genetic algorithm
2012
a b s t r a c t Genetic algorithms (GAs) are appropriate when investors have the objective of obtaining mean-variance (VaR) efficient frontier as minimising VaR leads to non-convex and non-differential risk-return optimisation problems. However GAs are a time-consuming optimisation technique. In this paper, we propose to use a naive approach consisting of using samples split by quartile of risk to obtain complete efficient frontiers in a reasonable computation time. Our results show that using reduced problems which only consider a quartile of the assets allow us to explore the efficient frontier for a large range of risk values. In particular, the third quartile allows us to obtain efficie…
Unawareness and bankruptcy: A general equilibrium model
1998
International audience; We present a consistent pure-exchange general equilibrium model where agents may not be able to foresee all possible future contingencies. In this context, even with nominal assets and complete asset markets, an equilibrium may not exist without appropriate assumptions. Specific examples are provided. An existence result is proved under the main assumption that there are sufficiently many states that all the agents foresee. An intrinsic feature of the model is bankruptcy, which agents may involuntarily experience in the unforeseen states.
Ecological stoichiometry: a link between developmental speed and physiological stress in an omnivorous insect
2019
The elemental composition of organisms is a part of a suite of functional traits that may adaptively respond to fluctuating selection pressures. Life history theory predicts that predation risk and resource limitations impose selection pressures on organisms’ developmental time and are further associated with variability in energetic and behavioral traits. Between-individual differences in developmental speed, behaviors and physiology have been explained using the pace-of-life syndrome (POLS) hypothesis. However, how an organism’s developmental speed is linked with elemental body composition, metabolism and behavior is not well understood. We compared elemental body composition, latency to …
Atrial Fibrosis Hampers Non-invasive Localization of Atrial Ectopic Foci From Multi-Electrode Signals: A 3D Simulation Study
2018
[EN] Introduction: Focal atrial tachycardia is commonly treated by radio frequency ablation with an acceptable long-term success. Although the location of ectopic foci tends to appear in specific hot-spots, they can be located virtually in any atrial region. Multi-electrode surface ECG systems allow acquiring dense body surface potential maps (BSPM) for non-invasive therapy planning of cardiac arrhythmia. However, the activation of the atria could be affected by fibrosis and therefore biomarkers based on BSPM need to take these effects into account. We aim to analyze the effect of fibrosis on a BSPM derived index, and its potential application to predict the location of ectopic foci in the …
Editorial: Hypoxia and Cardiorespiratory Control
2021
To maintain adequate oxygen levels in the body, which is essential for a healthy life, the respiratory and cardiovascular systems play vitally important roles. When the oxygen content is insufficient, i.e., when hypoxia is loaded, respiratory and cardiovascular systems respond to restore, compensate, or adapt to hypoxia, e.g., by increasing ventilation and blood flow to maintain oxygen transport to vital organs. Traditionally, it has been thought that hypoxia is detected solely by carotid and aortic bodies, i.e., by peripheral chemoreceptors, and information from the peripheral chemoreceptors is transmitted to respiratory and cardiovascular centers in the brainstem whose respiratory and car…
Educational value of surgical videos on YouTube: quality assessment of laparoscopic appendectomy videos by senior surgeons vs. novice trainees
2019
Background To prepare for surgery, surgeons often recur to surgical videos, with YouTube being reported as the preferred source. This study aimed to compare the evaluation of three surgical trainees and three senior surgeons of the 25 most viewed laparoscopic appendectomy videos listed on YouTube. Additionally, we assessed the video conformity to the published guidelines on how to report laparoscopic surgery videos (LAP-VEGaS). Methods Based on the number of visualization, the 25 most viewed videos on laparoscopic appendectomy uploaded on YouTube between 2010 and 2018 were selected. Videos were evaluated on the surgical technical performance (GOALS score), critical view of safety (CVS), and…
The renormalized electron mass in non-relativistic quantum electrodynamics
2007
This work addresses the problem of infrared mass renormalization for a scalar electron in a translation-invariant model of non-relativistic QED. We assume that the interaction of the electron with the quantized electromagnetic field comprises a fixed ultraviolet regularization and an infrared regularization parametrized by $\sigma>0$. For the value $p=0$ of the conserved total momentum of electron and photon field, bounds on the renormalized mass are established which are uniform in $\sigma\to0$, and the existence of a ground state is proved. For $|p|>0$ sufficiently small, bounds on the renormalized mass are derived for any fixed $\sigma>0$. A key ingredient of our proofs is the operator-t…