Combining video and GPS-tracking to study the spatial foraging distribution of a single-prey loading seabird

Seabirds are valuable indicators of marine ecosystem processes and studying seabird diets can shed light on natural or human-induced variability in food-web composition.Specifically single-prey loading seabird species such as terns have the potential to act as visual sentinels of prey availability offshore.However,obtaining diet information from remote bird colonies is often challenging and time consuming.In this pilot study we present a novel approach to combine two established methods to study seabird foraging ecology,providing a powerful and cost-effective tool to study the distribution of prey items available to seabirds.We combined GPS tracking data of Sandwich Terns(Thalasseus sandvicensis)with prey-observations from a hide in 2012 and 2013,and from semicontinuously recorded camera footage in 2017.By doing so,we identified 115 approximate catch locations of prey(86 herring/sprat Clupeidae,29 sandeel Ammodytidae).Combining GPS-data and prey observations yielded detailed knowledge on the movements and chick diets of tracked birds as well as the spatial origin and lengths of captured prey items.Further catch distances of both Clupeidae and Ammodytidae resulted in deliveries of larger prey items and thus higher energy yield per trip,but also a higher energy expenditure per trip.We discuss the limitations and potential of our methodological approach to study foraging energetics during chick-provisioning of seabirds that carry prey items visible in their beaks.

Tri-axial accelerometry allows to determine parental food provisioning behaviour in a marine bird

The study of parental food provisioning is essential for understanding the breeding ecology of birds.We conducted the first study using accelerometry to detect food provisioning in birds,using Support Vector Machine(SVM)models to identify when adults feed chicks of three different age classes.Accelerometers were attached to the head of adult female Imperial Shags(Leucocarbo atriceps),and various attributes derived from the acceleration signals were used to train SVM models for each chick age class.Model performance improved with chick age class,with SVM models achieving high overall accuracy(>88%)and highest sensitivity in older chick categories(>91%).However,precision values,especially for younger chicks,remained relatively low(between 26%and 45%).The application of a time filter based on the minimum duration of the observed food provisioning behaviours for each chick age category,improved model performance by reducing false provisioning behaviours,particularly in the model for older chicks,which showed the highest precision(72.4%).This study highlights the effectiveness of accelerometry and machine learning in studying parental food provisioning in birds,providing a rapid and accurate data collection method to complement traditional techniques.The described methodology can be applied to any bird species that exhibits distinctive movements while feeding its offspring and has suitable characteristics for attaching an accelerometer to the body part that best captures this movement.Finally,it is hoped that the results of this study will contribute to future research on key questions in parental investment theory and reproductive strategies in birds.

Instructions for Authors

1.Aims The provision of low carbon energy to our society is a key issue at the heart of sustainable development of global energy supply.The Global Energy Interconnection(GEI)publishes original research on theories and developments as well practical applications on principles of large scale low carbon energy generation,transmission,distribution&storage technologies,global energy interconnection&system developments,global energy policy and energy market operations,global climate changes&environmental impacts,global energy transition strategies and global energy governance.

Instructions for Authors

1.Aims,The provision of low carbon energy to our society is a key issue at the heart of sustainable development of global energy supply.The Global Energy Interconnection(GEI)publishes original research on theories and developments as well practical applications on principles of large scale low carbon energy generation,transmission,distribution&storage technologies,global energy interconnection&system developments,global energy policy and energy market operations,global climate changes&environmental impacts,global energy transition strategies and global energy governance.

Instructions for Authors

1.Aims The provision of low carbon energy to our society is a key issue at the heart of sustainable development of global energy supply.The Global Energy Interconnection(GEI)publishes original research on theories and developments as well practical applications on principles of large scale low carbon energy generation,transmission,distribution&storage technologies,global energy interconnection&system developments,global energy policy and energy market operations,global climate changes&environmental impacts,global energy transition strategies and global energy governance.

Provision of Preconception Care by Midwives, Nurses and Doctors at Ndola Teaching Hospital in Ndola District, Zambia

Background: The goal of preconception care is to improve the outcome of a mother’s pregnancy and childbirth. Nevertheless, in most developing nations;Zambia included, there are still issues with implementation of preconception care. Therefore, the aim of this study was to establish the provision of preconception care by midwives, nurses and doctors at Ndola Teaching Hospital in Zambia. Methods: A concurrent embedded mixed methodology utilising a descriptive explorative study design, where 107 respondents were randomly selected using the lottery technique for quantitative part and two focused group discussions for qualitative part of the study was used. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data and a focus group discussion guide was used for the focus group discussions. Statistical Package of Social Sciences version 26 with significance set at 0.05 and at 95% confidence level and thematic analysis were used for data analysis. Results: 75% of the respondents in this study were not providing preconception care and only 25% of respondents were providing preconception care;however, this was provided randomly because there were no guidelines to follow. Among the respondents, 81.3% had medium knowledge, 70.1% had good practices and 92.5% had positive attitudes towards preconception care. Further analysis showed that the association between preconception care and knowledge, practices and attitudes was not statistically significant (p = values 0.336;0.344;1.000 respectively). Multivariate logistic regression revealed that participants with high knowledge were five times more likely to provide preconception care (OR = 5.00, CI = 0.42 - 59.7, P = 0.203). Generally, all the participants acknowledged that preconception care was an important package that could prevent maternal and child morbidities and mortalities. Conclusions: The study revealed that most of the respondents were not providing preconception care. Provision of preconception was done by a small fraction of the respondents and it was done in an unorderly manner due to lack of set standards and guidelines. Despite medium levels of knowledge and generally good practices and positive attitudes towards preconception care, its random provision indicates a need for established standards to enhance maternal and child health outcomes.

From EBIT to SEBIT(Sustainable EBIT):Sustainable Performance Accounting(SPA)Using the Example of CO_(2) Accounting

Corporate sustainability reporting has become increasingly important in recent years.However,conventional approaches reach their limits when it comes to quantifying and measuring the actual sustainability performance of a company.This article presents a new approach:Sustainable Performance Accounting(SPA),which is based on an extension of bookkeeping by including ESG bookkeeping.SPA enables companies to systematically measure and manage their sustainability performance.The article provides an overview of the basics of SPA methodology and uses a comprehensive example showing how SPA can be implemented in practice.The article is aimed at interested readers from science and practice as well as decision-makers who are interested in future-oriented sustainability reporting.

Comparative Performance Measurement of the Pareto Optimal Combination and Multi-Objective Combination Models for Controller Placement in Software-Defined Networks

The evolution of the current network has challenges of programmability, maintainability and manageability, due to network ossification. This challenge led to the concept of software-defined networking (SDN), to decouple the control system from the infrastructure plane caused by ossification. The innovation created a problem with controller placement. That is how to effectively place controllers within a network topology to manage the network of data plane devices from the control plane. The study was designed to empirically evaluate and compare the functionalities of two controller placement algorithms: the POCO and MOCO. The methodology adopted in the study is the explorative and comparative investigation techniques. The study evaluated the performances of the Pareto optimal combination (POCO) and multi-objective combination (MOCO) algorithms in relation to calibrated positions of the controller within a software-defined network. The network environment and measurement metrics were held constant for both the POCO and MOCO models during the evaluation. The strengths and weaknesses of the POCO and MOCO models were justified. The results showed that the latencies of the two algorithms in relation to the GoodNet network are 3100 ms and 2500 ms for POCO and MOCO respectively. In Switch to Controller Average Case latency, the performance gives 2598 ms and 2769 ms for POCO and MOCO respectively. In Worst Case Switch to Controller latency, the performance shows 2776 ms and 2987 ms for POCO and MOCO respectively. The latencies of the two algorithms evaluated in relation to the Savvis network, compared as follows: 2912 ms and 2784 ms for POCO and MOCO respectively in Switch to Controller Average Case latency, 3129 ms and 3017 ms for POCO and MOCO respectively in Worst Case Switch to Controller latency, 2789 ms and 2693 ms for POCO and MOCO respectively in Average Case Controller to Controller latency, and 2873 ms and 2756 ms for POCO and MOCO in Worst Case Switch to Controller latency respectively. The latencies of the two algorithms evaluated in relation to the AARNet, network compared as follows: 2473 ms and 2129 ms for POCO and MOCO respectively, in Switch to Controller Average Case latency, 2198 ms and 2268 ms for POCO and MOCO respectively, in Worst Case Switch to Controller latency, 2598 ms and 2471 ms for POCO and MOCO respectively, in Average Case Controller to Controller latency, 2689 ms and 2814 ms for POCO and MOCO respectively Worst Case Controller to Controller latency. The Average Case and Worst-Case latencies for Switch to Controller and Controller to Controller are minimal, and favourable to the POCO model as against the MOCO model when evaluated in the Goodnet, Savvis, and the Aanet networks. This simply indicates that the POCO model has a speed advantage as against the MOCO model, which appears to be more resilient than the POCO model.

Tree-based ecosystem services supply and multifunctionality of church forests and their agricultural matrix near Lake Tana,Ethiopia

Ecosystem services(ES)are the connection between nature and society,and are essential for the well-being of local communities that depend on them.In Ethiopia,church forests and the surrounding agricultural matrix supply numerous ES.However,the ES delivered by both land use types have not yet been assessed simultaneously.Here we surveyed both church forests and their agricultural matrices,aiming to quantify,compare and unravel the drivers underlying tree-based ES supply,density and multifunctionality.We found that almost all church forests and half of the agricultural matrices provided high ES densities.ES multifunctionality was higher in the agricultural matrices,suggesting that people deliberately conserve or plant multifunctional tree species.Furthermore,the supply of all categories of ES was positively correlated with church forest age(p-value<0.001)in the agricultural matrix,while the extent of church forest was positively correlated with the density of all categories ecosystem services score in the church forests(p-value<0.001).Our results can be used to prioritize conservation efforts at sites that provide high levels of ES supply,ES density and ES multifunctionality,and to prioritize restoration efforts at sites with low levels thereof.

Instructions for Authors

1.Aims The provision of low carbon energy to our society is a key issue at the heart of sustainable development of global energy supply.The Global Energy Interconnection(GEI)publishes original research on theories and developments as well practical applications on principles of large scale low carbon energy generation,transmission,distribution&storage technologies,global energy interconnection&system developments,global energy policy and energy market operations,global climate changes&environmental impacts,global energy transition strategies and global energy governance.

Instructions for Authors

1.Aims The provision of low carbon energy to our society is a key issue at the heart of sustainable development of global energy supply.The Global Energy Interconnection(GEI)publishes original research on theories and developments as well practical applications on principles of large scale low carbon energy generation,transmission,distribution&storage technologies,global energy interconnection&system developments,global energy policy and energy market operations,global climate changes&environmental impacts,global energy transition strategies and global energy governance.

Instructions for Authors

1.Aims The provision of low carbon energy to our society is a key issue at the heart of sustainable development of global energy supply.The Global Energy Interconnection(GEI)publishes original research on theories and developments as well practical applications on principles of large scale low carbon energy generation,transmission,distribution&storage technologies,global energy interconnection&system developments,global energy policy and energy market operations,global climate changes&environmental impacts,global energy transition strategies and global energy governance.

Instructions for Authors

1.Aims,The provision of low carbon energy to our society is a key issue at the heart of sustainable development of global energy supply.The Global Energy Interconnection(GEI)publishes original research on theories and developments as well practical applications on principles of large scale low carbon energy generation,transmission,distribution&storage technologies.

Failure Prediction for Scientific Workflows Using Nature-Inspired Machine Learning Approach

Scientific workflows have gained the emerging attention in sophisti-cated large-scale scientific problem-solving environments.The pay-per-use model of cloud,its scalability and dynamic deployment enables it suited for executing scientific workflow applications.Since the cloud is not a utopian environment,failures are inevitable that may result in experiencingfluctuations in the delivered performance.Though a single task failure occurs in workflow based applications,due to its task dependency nature,the reliability of the overall system will be affected drastically.Hence rather than reactive fault-tolerant approaches,proactive measures are vital in scientific workflows.This work puts forth an attempt to con-centrate on the exploration issue of structuring a nature inspired metaheuristics-Intelligent Water Drops Algorithm(IWDA)combined with an efficient machine learning approach-Support Vector Regression(SVR)for task failure prognostica-tion which facilitates proactive fault-tolerance in the scheduling of scientific workflow applications.The failure prediction models in this study have been implemented through SVR-based machine learning approaches and the precision accuracy of prediction is optimized by IWDA and several performance metrics were evaluated on various benchmark workflows.The experimental results prove that the proposed proactive fault-tolerant approach performs better compared with the other existing techniques.

Impact of Mandatory Provisions on the Validity of Juristic Acts: A Path for Legal Policy Analysis

Contrary to the approach in judicial practice,Paragraph 1,Article 153,of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China,as a rule of invalidity for violating mandatory provisions,does not adopt a dichotomy towards mandatory provisions with effectiveness and administrative characteristics,yet it maintains the legislative philosophy of differentiation.It leaves unspecified whether mandatory provisions that do not explicitly render a juristic act invalid impact the act’s validity,entrusting this determination to the discretion of judges on a case-by-case basis.When judges,under the authority of Paragraph 1,Article 153 of the Civil Code,explore the normative intent of mandatory provisions to assess their effect on the validity of juristic acts,they should engage in legal policy analysis centered on consequence-based argumentation to overcome the limitations of norm typological analysis.This analysis employs a reasoning model predicated on the normative purpose,utilizing a consequencefocused interpretative approach for formulating and arguing propositions of rules applicable to pending cases,thereby arriving at case-specific conclusions.Since the invalidation of juristic acts serves as an auxiliary regulatory tool for the state economy and society,a consequence-oriented interpretation needs to be based on the idea of mutual instrumentalization of public and private laws.This entails predicting the outcomes of negating the validity of a juristic act in industrial regulatory scenarios and assessing these outcomes within the framework of public and private regulatory instruments.

美国建筑抗震设计的法规体系与设计地震动的确定

本文论述了美国建筑抗震设计法规体系发展演变过程及其代表性的规范、标准与技术文档;分析了美国当前建筑法规中设计地震动参数的重要技术见解,设计地震动的不同层次与作用,基于目标风险的最大考虑地震概念等技术的进展,同时,也总结了美国抗震设计相关法规中设计地震动确定的基本规定。本文旨在从美国庞大复杂的建筑设计法规体系中,梳理出清晰的建筑抗震设计的法规体系脉络与设计地震动的要求,为我国建筑抗震设计中设计地震动的相关研究提供参照。

The foraging behavior of Japanese macaques Macaca fuscata in a forested enclosure: Effects of nutrient composition,energy and its seasonal variation on the consumption of natural plant foods

In the wild, primate foraging behaviors are related to the diversity and nutritional properties of food, which are affected by seasonal variation. The goal of environmental enrichment is to stimulate captive animals to exhibit similar foraging behavior of their wild counterparts, e.g. to extend foraging time. We conducted a 12-month study on the foraging behavior of Japanese macaques in a semi-naturally forested enclosure to understand how they use both provisioned foods and naturally available plant foods and what are the nutritional criteria of their consumption of natural plants. We recorded time spent feeding on provisioned and natural plant foods and collected the plant parts ingested of their major plant food species monthly, when available. We conducted nutritional analysis （crude protein, crude lipid, neutral detergent fiber-‘NDF＇, ash） and calculated total non-structural carbohydrate - ‘TNC＇ and total energy of those food items. Monkeys spent 47% of their feeding time foraging on natural plant species. The consumption of plant parts varied significantly across seasons. We found that leaf items were consumed in months when crude protein, crude protein-to-NDF ratio, TNC and total energy were significantly higher and NDF was significantly lower, fruit/nut items in months when crude protein and TNC were significantly higher and crude lipid content was significantly lower, and bark items in months when TNC and total energy were higher and crude lipid content was lower. This preliminary investigation showed that the forested enclosure allowed troop members to more fully express their species typical flexible behavior by challenging them to adjust their foraging behavior to seasonal changes of plant item diversity and nutritional content, also providing the possibility for individuals to nutritionally enhance their diet .

无盘系统在计算机实验室管理中的应用

在学校的计算机实验室管理中,计算机软件安装、升级和维护是一件繁杂的事情。快速而易用的无盘系统是网络技术的一个重要分支,可以大大降低计算机软件安装、升级和维护的成本。BXP无盘和锐起无盘是无盘系统领域中最具代表性的两个技术产品,速度和稳定性好,功能强大。

Provisioning Services与XenApp联合组建局域网应用环境的研究

Citrix公司推出的基于应用流技术的Provisioning Services软件可以实现客户端通过PXE技术获取服务端采用VDisk磁盘存放的操作系统镜像文件,实现无盘启动;而同公司的基于应用虚拟化技术的XenApp软件则可以实现瘦客户端对服务器端所发布程序的访问。将两者相互结合来组建局域网应用环境,不但可以节省软硬件成本,而且对局域网络环境的管理也变得更加轻松和安全。此外还可以指定客户端可运行的应用程序,对服务器端的访问也不仅限于局域网内部。

可编程的网络——软件定义网络

本文描述了软件定义网络(SDN)的需求、概念及关键技术,重点分析了SDN的网络结构、OpenFlow模型和OpenFlow交换机。最后,讨论了SDN的应用。