Search results for "Inequality"
showing 10 items of 1076 documents
Phenotypic Divergence among West European Populations of Reed Bunting Emberiza schoeniclus: The Effects of Migratory and Foraging Behaviours
2013
[EN] Divergent selection and local adaptation are responsible for many phenotypic differences between populations, potentially leading to speciation through the evolution of reproductive barriers. Here we evaluated the morphometric divergence among west European populations of Reed Bunting in order to determine the extent of local adaptation relative to two important selection pressures often associated with speciation in birds: migration and diet. We show that, as expected by theory, migratory E. s. schoeniclus had longer and more pointed wings and a slightly smaller body mass than the resident subspecies, with the exception of E. s. lusitanica, which despite having rounder wings was the s…
Acoustic signalling in a wolf spider: can signal characteristics predict male quality?
2000
While there has been considerable interest in female choice for male sexual signals, there have been few studies of the underlying information that different aspects of the signal calls convey. Such studies, however, are essential to understand the significance of signals as honest handicaps, arbitrary Fisherian traits and/or in species recognition. We studied the somewhat exceptional system of audible drumming in the wolf spider Hygrolycosa rubrofasciata. We estimated the repeatabilities of signal components, the levels of between-male variance, the symmetry of the signal, the correlations between different aspects of drumming and their correlations with body weight. While in other taxa th…
Sexually extravagant males age more rapidly
2011
Evolutionary theories of ageing posit that increased reproductive investment occurs at the expense of physiological declines in later life. Males typically invest heavily in costly sexual ornaments and behaviour, but evidence that the expression of these traits can cause senescence is lacking. Long-lived houbara bustards (Chlamydotis undulata) engage in extravagant sexual displays to attract mates and here we show that males investing most in these displays experience a rapid senescent deterioration of spermatogenic function at a younger age. This effect is sufficiently large that the expected links between male showiness and fertility reverse in later life, despite showy males continuing t…
Sex-ratio and male sexual characters in a population of Blue tits Parus caeruleus
2005
Sex allocation theory proposes that parents should bias the sex ratio of their offspring if the reproductive value of one sex is greater than that of the other. In the monogamous blue tit (Parus caeruleus), males have a greater variance in reproductive success than females, and high-quality males have higher reproductive success than high-quality females due to extrapair paternity. Consequently, females mating with attractive males are expected to produce broods biased toward sons, as sons benefit more than daughters from inheriting their father’s characteristics. Song and plumage color in birds are secondary sexual characters indicating male quality and involved in female choice. We used t…
Is mate choice in Drosophila males guided by olfactory or gustatory pheromones ?
2010
International audience; Drosophila melanogaster flies use both olfactory and taste systems to detect sex pheromones and select the most suitable mate for reproduction. In nature, flies often face multiple potential partners and should have an acute sensory ability to discriminate between different pheromonal bouquets. We investigated both the pheromones and the chemosensory neurons influencing Drosophila mate choice. We measured various courtship traits in single tester males simultaneously presented with two target male and/or female flies carrying different pheromonal bouquets (pairs of control flies of the same or different sex, same-sex target pairs of pheromonal variant strains). The c…
LMI-based 2D-3D Registration: from Uncalibrated Images to Euclidean Scene
2015
International audience; This paper investigates the problem of registering a scanned scene, represented by 3D Euclidean point coordinates , and two or more uncalibrated cameras. An unknown subset of the scanned points have their image projections detected and matched across images. The proposed approach assumes the cameras only known in some arbitrary projective frame and no calibration or autocalibration is required. The devised solution is based on a Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) framework that allows simultaneously estimating the projective transformation relating the cameras to the scene and establishing 2D-3D correspondences without triangulating image points. The proposed LMI framewo…
Disturbance observer-based disturbance attenuation control for a class of stochastic systems
2016
This paper studies a class of stochastic systems with multiple disturbances which include the disturbance with partially-known information and the white noise. A disturbance observer is constructed to estimate the disturbance with partially-known information, based on which, a disturbance observer-based disturbance attenuation control (DOBDAC) scheme is proposed by combining pole placement and linear matrix inequality (LMI) methods.
Vibration control strategy for large-scale structures with incomplete multi-actuator system and neighbouring state information
2016
The synthesis of optimal controllers for vibrational protection of large-scale structures with multiple actuation devices and partial state information is a challenging problem. In this study, the authors present a design strategy that allows computing this kind of controllers by using standard linear matrix inequality optimisation tools. To illustrate the main elements of the new approach, a five-story structure equipped with two interstory actuation devices and subjected to a seismic disturbance is considered. For this control setup, three different controllers are designed: an ideal state-feedback H 8 controller with full access to the complete state information and two static output-fee…
Corporealising a Healthy Democracy? Inequality, Bodies and Participation
2019
Socio-economic inequality is associated with differentiated levels of health and poor health affects political participation; inequalities are embodied in political life. This contribution, focusin...
Refining the Baveno VI elastography criteria for the definition of compensated advanced chronic liver disease
2021
Background: The Baveno VI consensus proposed a dual liver stiffness (LS) by transient elastography threshold of <10 and >15 kPa for excluding and diagnosing compensated advanced chronic liver disease (cACLD) in the absence of other clinical signs. Herein, we aimed to validate these criteria in a real-world multicentre study. Methods: We included 5,648 patients (mean age 51 ± 13 years, 53% males) from 10 European liver centres who had a liver biopsy and LS measurement within 6 months. We included patients with chronic hepatitis C (n = 2,913, 52%), non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD, n = 1,073, 19%), alcohol-related liver disease (ALD, n = 946, 17%) or chronic hepatitis B (n = 716…