Search results for "cement"
showing 10 items of 2662 documents
Restoration of Abundance and Dynamics of Coastal Fish and Lobster Within Northern Marine Protected Areas Across Two Decades
2021
This article reviews a suite of studies conducted in a network of coastal Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Skagerrak, Southeast Norway. In 2006, Norway’s first lobster reserves were implemented, with the aim of protecting European lobster (Homarus gammarus) through a ban on fixed gear. A before–after control-impact paired series (BACIPS) monitoring program was initiated to evaluate effects of protection on depleted lobster populations. Experimental trapping and capture-recapture techniques were combined to track demography of populations, also including movement of individuals within and beyond MPAs and adjacent control areas. Further, population genetics and parentage studies were applied,…
Reinforcement targets sexual or postmating prezygotic reproductive barriers depending on species abundance and population history
2018
AbstractThe impact of different reproductive barriers on species or population isolation may vary in different stages of speciation depending on evolutionary forces acting within species and through species’ interactions. Genetic incompatibilities between interacting species are expected to reinforce prezygotic barriers in sympatric populations and create character displacement between conspecific populations living within and outside the area of sympatry. The outcome of reinforcement has been suggested to be affected by the strength of postzygotic barriers, the history of species coexistence, and the impact of species abundancies on females’ discrimination against heterospecific males. We …
Climate Change and Migration for Scandinavian Saami: A Review of Possible Impacts
2019
Migration, especially of indigenous peoples, related to or influenced by climate change continues to gain increasing research and policy attention. Limited material remains for this topic for Scandinavia&rsquo
Anhydrobiosis: Inside yeast cells
2018
International audience; Under natural conditions yeast cells as well as other microorganisms are regularly subjected to the influence of severe drought, which leads to their serious dehydration. The dry seasons are then changed by rains and there is a restoration of normal water potential inside the cells. To survive such seasonal changes a lot of vegetative microbial cells, which belong to various genera and species, may be able to enter into a state of anhydrobiosis, in which their metabolism is temporarily and reversibly suspended or delayed. This evolutionarily developed adaptation to extreme conditions of the environment is widely used for practical goals - for conservation of microorg…
Exploratory behaviour is not related to associative learning ability in the carabid beetle Nebria brevicollis.
2020
Abstract Recently, it has been hypothesised that as learning performance and animal personality vary along a common axis of fast and slow types, natural selection may act on both in parallel leading to a correlation between learning and personality traits. We examined the relationship between risk-taking, exploratory behaviour and associative learning ability in carabid beetle Nebria brevicollis females by quantifying the number of trials individuals required to reach criterion during an associative learning task (‘learning performance’). The associative learning task required the females to associate odour and direction with refugia from light and heat in a T-maze. Further, we assessed lea…
MARL-Ped+Hitmap: Towards Improving Agent-Based Simulations with Distributed Arrays
2016
Multi-agent systems allow the modelling of complex, heterogeneous, and distributed systems in a realistic way. MARL-Ped is a multi-agent system tool, based on the MPI standard, for the simulation of different scenarios of pedestrians who autonomously learn the best behavior by Reinforcement Learning. MARL-Ped uses one MPI process for each agent by design, with a fixed fine-grain granularity. This requirement limits the performance of the simulations for a restricted number of processors that is lesser than the number of agents. On the other hand, Hitmap is a library to ease the programming of parallel applications based on distributed arrays. It includes abstractions for the automatic parti…
Towards Intelligent IoT Networks: Reinforcement Learning for Reliable Backscatter Communications
2019
Backscatter communication is becoming the focal point of research for low-powered Internet of things (IoT). However, the intelligence aspect of the backscattering devices is not well-defined. Since future IoT networks are going to be a formidable platform of intelligent sensing devices operating in a self-organizing manner, it is necessary to incorporate learning capabilities in backscatter devices. Motivated by this objective, this paper aims to employ reinforcement learning for improving the performance of backscatter networks. In particular, a multicluster backscatter communication model is developed for shortrange information sharing. This is followed by a power allocation algorithm usi…
UJI RobInLab's approach to the Amazon Robotics Challenge 2017
2017
This paper describes the approach taken by the team from the Robotic Intelligence Laboratory at Jaume I University to the Amazon Robotics Challenge 2017. The goal of the challenge is to automate pick and place operations in unstructured environments, specifically the shelves in an Amazon warehouse. RobInLab's approach is based on a Baxter Research robot and a customized storage system. The system's modular architecture, based on ROS, allows communication between two computers, two Arduinos and the Baxter. It integrates 9 hardware components along with 10 different algorithms to accomplish the pick and stow tasks. We describe the main components and pipelines of the system, along with some e…
Surrogate models for the compressive strength mapping of cement mortar materials
2021
Despite the extensive use of mortar materials in constructions over the last decades, there is not yet a robust quantitative method available in the literature, which can reliably predict their strength based on the mix components. This limitation is attributed to the highly nonlinear relation between the mortar’s compressive strength and the mixed components. In this paper, the application of artificial intelligence techniques for predicting the compressive strength of mortars is investigated. Specifically, Levenberg–Marquardt, biogeography-based optimization, and invasive weed optimization algorithms are used for this purpose (based on experimental data available in the literature). The c…
A Mathematical Model for Vehicle-Occupant Frontal Crash Using Genetic Algorithm
2016
In this paper, a mathematical model for vehicle-occupant frontal crash is developed. The developed model is represented as a double-spring-mass-damper system, whereby the front mass and the rear mass represent the vehicle chassis and the occupant, respectively. The springs and dampers in the model are nonlinear piecewise functions of displacements and velocities respectively. More specifically, a genetic algorithm (GA) approach is proposed for estimating the parameters of vehicle front structure and restraint system. Finally, it is shown that the obtained model can accurately reproduce the real crash test data taken from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The maximu…