Search results for "dance"

Evaluation of esophageal motility using multichannel intraluminal impedance in healthy children and children with gastroesophageal reflux: comments

2011

Variation in predator species abundance can cause variable selection pressure on warning signaling prey

2012

Predation pressure is expected to drive visual warning signals to evolve toward conspicuousness. However, coloration of defended species varies tremendously and can at certain instances be considered as more camouflaged rather than conspicuous. Recent theoretical studies suggest that the variation in signal conspicuousness can be caused by variation (within or between species) in predators' willingness to attack defended prey or by the broadness of the predators' signal generalization. If some of the predator species are capable of coping with the secondary defenses of their prey, selection can favor reduced prey signal conspicuousness via reduced detectability or recognition. In this study…

The role of individual processes and learning environment in the prediction of grades in a sample of Norwegian students

2018

Student grades are traditionally used to evaluate academic achievement in higher education. A review of previous research indicates a relatively clear tendency to adopt either an individual or contextual approach in exploring this subject. The present study represents an attempt to simultaneously examine effects of individual variables and learning environment on academic achievements as measured in grades. The study adopts a quantitative approach and reports data collected from students enrolled in early childhood education in a mid-sized university in Norway. Results of a stepwise hierarchical regression demonstrate that individual variables (e.g. nonmandatory school attendance, self-effi…

Finland: Becoming and the Youngest Children at Home and in ECEC

2019

This chapter will focus on the youngest children and the everyday contexts and practices of their lives in Finland. The chapter explores the concept of ‘becoming’ within childhood, particularly within early childhood education and care (ECEC) in our country. For the youngest children, their homes and nuclear families have been historically and culturally constructed as the first and most important social and emotional growth environments. For families, the discourses concerning the ‘best or right place’ for their young children to be cared for and learn in are fuelled by the extensive system of financial incentives for home care (e.g. maternity, paternity and home allowances). Only about 40…

Younger children in ECEC: focus on the national steering documents in the Nordic countries

2015

The aim of this study was to review the national steering documents on early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, with the focus on children up to the age of three, posing the question: What do these documents tell us about ECEC for younger children in the Nordic early childhood settings? Methodologically, a qualitative document analysis was applied. The documents provide a picture of young children whose age, individual needs and a number of other factors, such as cultural background, should be taken into account in ECEC. These children learn holistically, in close interaction with their environment. Their safety and well-being are seen as pa…

Digital Games in Early Childhood: Broadening Definitions of Learning, Literacy, and Play

2017

Digital games attract children and young people with imaginary worlds, fascinating stories, and shared experiences with peers. They also can add children’s learning and motivation and offer a variety of new affordances to explore and play with. The pedagogical use of digital games has been found to potentially intensify a more critical use and understanding of varied forms of media. In this chapter, we will focus on analyzing the role of digital games in early childhood, especially from the perspectives of learning, literacy, and play. This chapter examines digital games as playing an essential role in young children’s overall technology experiences, particularly in the context of the socia…

Fuzzy Quantification of Common and Rare Species in Ecological Communities (FuzzyQ)

2020

Abstract1. Most species in ecological communities are rare whereas only a few are common. This distributional paradox has intrigued ecologists for decades but the interpretation of species abundance distributions remains elusive.2. We present Fuzzy Quantification of Common and Rare Species in Ecological Communities (FuzzyQ) as an R package. FuzzyQ shifts the focus from the prevailing species-categorization approach to develop a quantitative framework that seeks to place each species along a rare-commonness gradient. Given a community surveyed over a number of sites, quadrats, or any other convenient sampling unit, FuzzyQ uses a fuzzy clustering algorithm that estimates a probability for eac…

Status, distribution and conservation of Kentish plover <em>Charadrius alexandrinus</em> (Aves, Charadriiformes) in Sicily

2021

The Kentish Plover Charadrius alexandrinus is a sensitive species whose national breeding population has been undergoing a sharp decrease, up to 50%, in 2010 compared to the previous decade. Due to the lack of updated data and fragmented knowledge about its current status and distribution in Sicily, a specific and accurate monitoring of this species was carried out during the years 2018 and 2019. About 230 km of coastline and 64 UTM squares 10x10 km were investigated during the breeding seasons, and a total of 205-287 pairs have been estimated for the whole region, distributed in 41 UTM squares (including the island of Favignana). Pairs are mainly concentrated in the complex of “Saline di T…

West Nile virus in Spain: Forecasting the geographical distribution of risky areas with an ecological niche modelling approach.

2021

West Nile virus (WNV), a well-known emerging vector-borne arbovirus with a zoonotic life cycle, represents a threat to both public and animal health. Transmitted by ornithophilic mosquitoes, its transmission is difficult to predict and even more difficult to prevent. The massive and unprecedented number of human cases and equid outbreaks in Spain during 2020 interpellates for new approaches. For the first time, we present an integrate analysis from a niche perspective to provide an insight to the situation of West Nile disease (WND) in Spain. Our modelling approach benefits from the combined use of global occurrence records of outbreaks of WND in equids and of its two alleged main vectors i…

Multiple morphological characters needed for field identification of cryptic long‐eared bat species around the Swiss Alps

2010

The identification of cryptic species may significantly change our view about their distribution, abundance, ecology and therefore conservation status. In the European Alps, molecular studies have revealed the existence of three sibling species of plecotine bats Plecotus auritus, Plecotus austriacus and, very recently, Plecotus macrobullaris. Knowledge of the ecological niche partitioning of cryptic species is a requisite to develop sound conservation policies. Yet, this requests the development of unambiguous identification methods easily applicable in the field. This study investigates the reliability of several morphological methods used for species recognition and proposes a new identif…