No description available.

Different Laricobius nigrinus Fender release locations, numbers of predators, and timing of release were evaluated for biological control of the hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA), Adelges tsugae Annand (Hemiptera: Adelgidae). It established at 59% of the sites and location was the most important factor related with establishment and abundance, HWA density, and hemlock vigor index. Cold locations had poor establishment or low abundance, declines in HWA density, and increases in hemlock vigor over time. Paired release and control sites detected a predator impact on HWA density, but densities remained high and tree vigor declined. The phenology of L. nigrinus, L. rubidus LeConte, and HWA were studied at a field insectary and the species were highly synchronized. A cage exclusion study showed that HWA survival and density were lower and ovisac disturbance was higher when exposed to predation. To improve L. nigrinus monitoring, we compared beat sheets for adults or branch clipping for immatures, and the host searching behavior of L. nigrinus was studied to understand how it locates a tree and HWA. In the Appalachians, beat sheet sampling resulted in false negatives as larvae were collected by branch clipping. Adults orientated to a tree visually, fed when prey were present and flew when absent, and showed different search patterns on infested versus uninfested trees. In Seattle, both sampling methods detected L. nigrinus because the predator was common. Predator : prey ratios were high at heavily infested sites in Seattle and low in the eastern US, where is has been released recently. Partial life tables were constructed for HWA sistentes at four sites for 2 yr in Seattle. Unspecified causes of nymph and adult mortality were high and L. nigrinus was the dominant predator of ovisacs. Adult L. nigrinus abundance was positively related to HWA density and immature abundance was related to ovisac density, indicating an aggregation and numerical response to its prey. Laricobius nigrinus has not demonstrated complete biological control of HWA to date, but it may do so in the future and continued release is justified. / Ph. D.

Although emergency management is established for the purpose of addressing disasters and other major emergencies, I have found that it can be purposefully engineered to also be an assist leader to other agencies and entities during nonemergency periods because the key element of synchrony that enables emergency managers to be effective during an emergency can also be employed during nonemergency periods to assist other departments in a manner that not only delivers a direct benefit to the department but also enhances the emergency preparedness, mitigation, and resiliency efforts of the jurisdiction. Emergency managers can create this performance-enhancing synchrony using boundary spanning functions that bridge the divide that separates stakeholders. Emergency management practitioners are steadfast in their pursuit of methods and practices by which they can be more effective. The recent increase in the frequency and severity of natural disasters is only one example of the ever-growing demands placed upon these professionals. Compounding this development is the fact that the occurrences of natural disasters have outpaced research and theory development regarding how emergency management professionals should prepare for and respond to these events. This research study envisions, proposes, and outlines a framework in which emergency managers function in a broader capacity that could elevate their overall performance and importance to a higher plane than the one on which perhaps most currently operate. / Business Administration/Strategic Management

<p>My thesis revolves around neuronal circuit dynamics in health and disease. The first part of the thesis characterized cross-regional synchrony within the visual cortical network following visual perceptual experience in healthy mice. This work for the first time described inter-areal 4-8 Hz superficial layer LFP synchrony across mouse visual cortical regions persisting beyond visual stimulation time window, and revealed that the synchrony was expressed specifically between V1 and the higher-order visual area (HVA) with functional preference matching the entrained spatial frequency (SF) and temporal frequency (TF) content, in mice. The discovery of visual familiarity induced inter-areal 4-8 Hz synchrony extends the previous discovery of the 4-8 Hz oscillation in V1 after visual experience from our lab (Kissinger et al., 2018; Kissinger et al., 2020; Gao et al., 2021), and provided the first pivotal evidence supporting the role of 4-8 Hz oscillation in mediating cross-regional communication. Such 4-8 Hz visual cortical network synchrony has been mostly reported in primate studies in contexts of visual attention and working memory (Liebe et al., 2012; Spyropoulos et al., 2018), while our study extended the visual cortical network synchrony research scope to mouse models and in a new context of visual familiarity. The work is a key step for starting cortical network studies in mice, and for starting predictive coding theory study in the context of oscillations in mouse cortical network in the future. Additionally, unit spiking was more strongly modulated by 4-8 Hz oscillations in V1 and HVAs after visual experience. The visually-locked responsive units in V1 and HVAs exihibted either increased or decreased inter-areal spiking synchrony, while most post-stimulus responsive units in V1 and HVA exhibited higher spiking synchrony. </p> <p>The other parts of my dissertation looked at V1 activity in disease and following a novel CNS therapy. One project looked at recovery of visually evoked response in mouse V1 after ischemia through NeuroD1 mediated astrocyte-to-neuron conversion, where we characterized the formation of cortical laminated structure from the converted neurons, longitudinal recovery of visually evoked responses of unit populations in V1, and units’ selective responses to orientations. Another project looked at altered visual cortical activity in an Auxilin knockout mouse model, which demonstrated overall reduced visually evoked responses, less selective responses to orientations, impaired visual adaptive responses and mismatch responses, as well as slower visual experience induced oscillations. These projects utilized the high-density silicon probe recording technique to 1) characterize visual cortical function recovery following a therapy, which provided evidence for its high efficacy for recovering physiological functions, and to 2) phenotype visual cortical functional impairments in a mouse disease model, which provided more basic understanding in visual cortical physiology of Auxilin related disease.</p> <p>In sum, my dissertation work took advantage of the high-density silicon probe recording technique to probe neuronal circuits in health and disease. The discovery of visual experience induced inter-areal 4-8 Hz synchrony paves the way for studying 4-8 Hz activity in relation to stream-dependent visual processing and predictive coding in health and disease.</p>

The objective of this research was to investigate the effects of slow release urea on N metabolism in cattle. The ruminal behavior of Optigen®II and the effect of basal diet on the in situ degradability of urea and Optigen®II were evaluated. The effect of slow release urea and its interaction with degradable intake protein (DIP) level in the diet on N retention and excretion was evaluated utilizing 8 Holstein steers in a 4 x 4 Latin square experiment. In addition, the effect of slow release urea and DIP level on ruminal and systemic urea kinetics was evaluated using stable isotope techniques with 8 Holstein steers in a 4 x 4 Latin square experiment. Finally, slow release urea was evaluated under a practical beef production setting. The performance of slow release urea was compared to regular feed grade urea in a 42 day receiving study (288 Angus cross steers) as well as a 70 day growing study (240 Angus cross steers). High forage diets increased the ruminal degradation rate of both urea and slow release urea an increased the extent of degradation of slow release urea when compared to high concentrate diets. Lower DIP concentrations in the diet reduced systemic urea production, ruminal ammonia and plasma urea concentrations and urinary urea excretion under most circumstances but also led to a reduction in N retention, reduced diet digestibility, lower feed intake, lower growth rate and decreased feed efficiency. High DIP intakes increased N retention, growth rate, diet digestibility and improved feed efficiency but also lead to increased excretion on urea N in the urine. Slow release urea improved N retention and efficiency of N retention in high DIP diets when compared to urea and generally reduced plasma urea and ruminal ammonia concentrations. Compared to urea, slow release urea did not significantly improve the production of receiving cattle. However Optigen®II improved the feed efficiency when compared to urea on high concentrate diets but reduced feed efficiency on high forage diets.

Complexity lies halfway between stochasticity and determinism, suggesting that brain activity is neither fully random nor fully predictable but lives by the rules of nonlinear high- and low-complexity dynamics. One important aspect of brain function is noise-like activity (NLA), defined as background, electrical potential fluctuations in the nervous system distinct from spiking rhythms in the foreground. The objective of this thesis was to investigate the neurodynamical complexity of NLA recorded at the cellular and local network scales in in vitro preparations of mouse and human hippocampal tissue, under healthy and epileptiform conditions. In particular, it was found that neuronal NLA arises out of the physiological contributions of gap junctions and chemical synaptic channels and is characterized by a spectrum of complexity, ranging from high- to low-complexity, that was measured using methods from nonlinear dynamical systems theory. Importantly, the complexity of background, neuronal NLA was shown to depend on the degree of cellular interconnectivity to the surrounding local network. In addition, the complexity and multifractality of NLA was further studied at the cellular and local network scales in epileptiform transitions to seizure-like events, identifying emergent low-complexity and reduced multifractality (bordering on monofractal-type dynamics) in the pathological ictal state. Finally, dual intracellular recordings of hippocampal epileptiform activity were analyzed to measure NLA synchronicity, showing evidence for increased same- and cross-frequency correlations and increased phase synchronization in the pathological ictal state. Convergence towards increased phase synchrony manifested in lower frequency regions including theta (4-10 Hz) and beta (12-30 Hz), but also in higher frequency bands (gamma, 30-80 Hz). In summary, there is evidence to suggest that background NLA captures important neurodynamical information pertinent to the classification and identification of brain state transitions in healthy and epileptiform hippocampal dynamics, using sophisticated neuroengineering analyses of these physiological signals.

The occurrence of wildfire is influenced by a suite of factors ranging from "top-down" influences (e. g., climate) to "bottom-up" localized influences (e. g., ignitions, fuels, and land use). We carried out the first broad-scale assessment of wildland fire patterns in northern Mexico to assess the relative influence of top-down and bottom-up drivers of fire in a region where frequent fire regimes continued well into the 20th century. Using a network of 67 sites, we assessed (1) fire synchrony and the scales at which synchrony is evident, (2) climate drivers of fire, and (3) asynchrony in fire regime changes. We found high fire synchrony across northern Mexico between 1750 and 2008, with synchrony highest at distances < 400 km. Climate oscillations, especially El Nino-Southern Oscillation, were important drivers of fire synchrony. However, bottom-up factors modified fire occurrence at smaller spatial scales, with variable local influence on the timing of abrupt, unusually long fire-free periods starting between 1887 and 1979 CE. Thirty sites lacked these fire-free periods. In contrast to the neighboring southwestern United States, many ecosystems in northern Mexico maintain frequent fire regimes and intact fire-climate relationships that are useful in understanding climate influences on disturbance across scales of space and time.

Increasing temperatures resulting from climate change have within recent years been shown to advance phenological events in a large number of species worldwide. Species can differ in their response to increasing temperatures, and understanding the mechanisms that determine the response is therefore of great importance in order to understand and predict how a warming climate can influence both individual species, but also their interactions with each other and the environment. Understanding the mechanisms behind responses to increasing temperatures are however largely unexplored. The selected study system consisting of host plant species of the Brassicaceae family and their herbivore Anthocharis cardamines, is assumed to be especially vulnerable to climatic variations. Through the use of this study system, the aim of this thesis is to study differences in the effect of temperature on development to start of flowering within host plant species from different latitudinal regions (study I), and among host plant species (study II). We also investigate whether different developmental phases leading up to flowering differ in sensitivity to temperature (study II), and if small-scale climatic variation in spring temperature influence flowering phenology and interactions with A. cardamines (study III). Finally, we investigate if differences in the timing of A. cardamines relative to its host plants influence host species use and the selection of host individuals differing in phenology within populations (study IV). Our results showed that thermal reaction norms differ among regions along a latitudinal gradient, with the host plant species showing a mixture of co-, counter- and mixed gradient patterns (study I). We also showed that observed differences in the host plant species order of flowering among regions and years might be caused by both differences in the distribution of warm days during development and differences in the sensitivity to temperature in different phases of development (study II). In addition, we showed that small-scale variations in temperature led to variation in flowering phenology among and within populations of C. pratensis, impacting the interactions with the butterfly herbivore A. cardamines. Another result was that the less the mean plant development stage of a given plant species in the field deviated from the stage preferred by the butterfly for oviposition, the more used was the species as a host by the butterfly (study IV). Finally, we showed that the later seasonal appearance of the butterflies relative to their host plants, the higher butterfly preference for host plant individuals with a later phenology, corresponding to a preference for host plants in earlier development stages (study IV). For our study system, this thesis suggest that climate change will lead to changes in the interactions between host plants and herbivore, but that differences in phenology among host plants combined with changes in host species use of the herbivore might buffer the herbivore against negative effects of climate change. Our work highlights the need to understand the mechanisms behind differences in the responses of developmental rates to temperature between interacting species, as well as the need to account for differences in temperature response for interacting organisms from different latitudinal origins and during different developmental phases in order to understand and predict the consequences of climate change. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

Submitted by Caroline Xavier (caroline.xavier@pucrs.br) on 2017-06-08T18:15:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TES_RASHA_HASAN_COMPLETO.pdf: 5197991 bytes, checksum: bfd855e20678be1fe11d1731c4cbc317 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-08T18:15:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TES_RASHA_HASAN_COMPLETO.pdf: 5197991 bytes, checksum: bfd855e20678be1fe11d1731c4cbc317 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-01-16 / Nas ?ltimas tr?s d?cadas de pesquisa em Sistemas Distribu?dos (SDs), um aspecto central discutido ? o de sincronia. Com um sistema ass?ncrono, n?o fazemos suposi??es sobre velocidades de execu??o de processos e / ou atrasos de entrega de mensagens; Com um sistema s?ncrono, fazemos suposi??es sobre esses par?metros [Sch93b]. Sincronismo em SDs impacta diretamente a complexidade e funcionalidade de algoritmos tolerantes a falhas. Uma infra-estrutura s?ncrona contribui para o desenvolvimento de sistemas mais simples e fi?veis, mas tal infra-estrutura ? muito cara e ?s vezes nem sequer vi?vel de implementar. Uma infra-estrutura totalmente ass?ncrona ? mais realista, mas alguns problemas foram mostrados como insol?veis em tal ambiente atrav?s do resultado de impossibilidade por Fischer, Lynch e Paterson [FLP85]. As limita?es tanto em ambientes totalmente s?ncronos como totalmente ass?ncronos levaram ao desenvolvimento de sistemas distribu?dos como s?ncronia parcial [CF99, Ver06]. Em um estudo de funcionalidade de sistemas distribu?dos s?ncronos parciais e de propriedades de Redes Virtuais (RVs), descobrimos que existem v?rios desafios para este tipo de sistemas que podem ser resolvidos com RVs devido ?s propriedades que a virtualiza??o traz. Por exemplo a) partilha de recursos fornecida por RVs permite diminuir o custo ao partilhar a parte s?ncrona da infra-estrutura f?sica, b) isolamento fornecido por a natureza da RVs, isso pode beneficiar os SDs coexistentes na mesma infra-estrutura f?sica que exigem certo n?vel de isolamento,c) resili?ncia garantido atrav?s do processo de aloca??o de recursos de Redes Virtuais, isso permite alocar recursos de reposi??o ao lado dos prim?rios para redes virtuais que exigem garantias de disponibilidade, por exemplo, SDs tolerantes a falhas. Em nosso trabalho, argumentamos que as RVs e um adequado processo de aloca??o de recursos das RVs oferecem um ambiente adequado para executar aplicativos distribu?dos com sincronia parcial. Isto levou ? abstra??o de um novo tipo de RVs: As Redes Virtuais com sincronia h?brida (RVSHs). Nesta tese, apresentamos a id?ia geral das Redes Virtuais com sincronia h?brida motivado pelos SDs com s?ncronia h?brida, e dividimos nosso trabalho em duas partes: a) Espa?oRVSHs propostos pelo SDs com sincronia h?brida em espa?o, e b) Tempo-RVSHs propostos pelo SDs com sincronia h?brida em tempo. No SDs com s?ncronia h?brida em espa?o, a infraestrutura ? composta de subconjuntos de componentes s?ncronos e ass?ncronos, e cada um desses subconjuntos mant?m seu status de sincronia atrav?s do tempo (i.e., os subconjuntos s?ncronos permanecem s?ncronos e os ass?ncronos permanecem ass?ncronos). No SDs com s?ncronia h?brida em tempo, a infra-estrutura ? composta de subconjuntos de n?s e la?os que podem alternar seu status de sincronia atrav?s do tempo (i.e., os componentes se comportam de forma s?ncrona durante os intervalos de tempo e de forma ass?ncrona durante outros intervalos de tempo). As principais contribui??es desta tese s?o: a) caracterizam os RVSHs em seus dois tipos Espa?o-RVSHs e Tempo-RVSHs para refletir tanto a natureza de sincronia em espa?o e em tempo; b) propor uma estrutura adequada para o processo de aloca??o de recursos para ambos Espa?o-RVSHs e Tempo-RVSHs, e c) fornecer uma avalia??o dos modelos propostos para RVSHs. / In the last three decades of research in Distributed Systems (DSs), one core aspect discussed is the one of synchrony. \Vith an asynchronous system, we make no assumptions about process execution speeds andj or message delivery delays; with a synchronous system, we do make assumptions about these parameters [Sch93b]. Synchrony in DSs impacts directly the complexity and functionality of fault-tolerant algorithms. Although a synchronous infrastructure contributes towards the development of simpler and reliable systems, yet such an infrastructure is too expensive and sometimes even not feasible to implemento On the other hand, a fully asynchronous infrastructure is more realistic, but some problems were shown to be unsolvable in such an environment through the impossibility result by Fischer, Lynch and Paterson [FLP85]. The limitations in both fully synchronous or fully asynchronous environments have led to the development of partial synchronous distributed systems [CF99, Ver06]. In a study of partial synchronous distributed systems functionality, and of Virtual Networks (VNs) properties, we found that there are several challenges for this kind of systems that can be solved with VNs due to the properties that virtualization brings. For example a) resources sharing provided by VNs allows decreasing the cost when sharing the synchronous portion of the physical infrastructure, b) isolation provided by the VNs nature can benefit the coexistent DSs on same physical infrastructure that demand certain leveI of isolation, c) resilience guaranteed through the Virtual Networks Embedding (VNE) process that allows allocating spare resources beside the primary ones for virtual networks that require availability guarantees, for example fault tolerant DSs. In our work, we argue that VNs and a suitable VN embedding process offer suitable environment for running distributed applications with partial synchrony. This has led to the abstraction of new type of VNs: The Hybrid Synchrony Virtual Networks (HSVNs). In this thesis, we introduce the general idea of Hybrid Synchrony Virtual Networks (HSVNs) motivated by the hybrid synchronous DSs, and we branch our work into two branches: a) Space-HSVNs addressed to spatial hybrid synchronous DSs, and b) TimeHSVNs addressed to the time hybrid synchronous DSs. In spatial hybrid synchronous DSs, the hybrid synchronous physical infrastructure is composed of subsets of synchronous and asynchronous components, and each of these subsets maintains its synchrony status through time (i.e., synchronous subsets remain synchronous and asynchronous ones remain asynchronous). In time hybrid synchronous DSs, the hybrid synchronous physical infrastructure is composed of subsets of nodes and links that can alternate their synchrony status through time (i.e., the components behave synchronously during time intervals, and asynchronously during other time intervals). The main contributions of this thesis are: a) characterize the HSVNs in its two types Space-HSVNs and Time-HSVNs to reflect both the synchrony space-variant and time-variant nature ofDSs; b) propose a suitable embedding framework for both Space-HSVNs and TimeHSVNs, and c) provide an evaluation of the embedding mo deIs addressed to the HSVNs.

Submitted by Liliane Ferreira (ljuvencia30@gmail.com) on 2018-04-04T14:02:36Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Tese - Jaques Everton Zanon - 2018.pdf: 3230898 bytes, checksum: 7e20d6f4c53febb70d99701805d33565 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2018-04-05T12:50:16Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Tese - Jaques Everton Zanon - 2018.pdf: 3230898 bytes, checksum: 7e20d6f4c53febb70d99701805d33565 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-04-05T12:50:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Tese - Jaques Everton Zanon - 2018.pdf: 3230898 bytes, checksum: 7e20d6f4c53febb70d99701805d33565 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-03-20 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / Population synchrony occurs when abundance of different local populations increase and decrease simultaneously along time. In terms of other characteristics that can be measured in ecosystems, such as biomass and nutrient contents, intrinsic and extrinsic processes have also been used to explain synchronic variation patterns. Synchrony may clarify whether regional processes are more important than local processes. This study used epiphytic biomass data (chlorophyll-a) from eight locations collected in a floodplain through 11 years. The goal was to estimate epiphytic biomass synchrony. We anticipated that high synchrony levels would be consistent with the strong impact of floods, which affect different floodplain habitats simultaneously. This is equivalent to the Moran effect. In contrast, low synchrony levels would be consistent with the hypothesis that high environmental heterogeneity of floodplains hampers synchrony. Our results indicated low synchrony and its variation was not correlated with geographic or environmental distances and neither with environmental synchrony. Also, regression models demonstrated low predictive power of local environmental variables in predicting biomass variation in the different sites. In addition, we performed a meta-analysis that confirms the generality of our findings. In conclusion, these results challenge the efficiency of epiphytic biomass as an ecological indicator, at least in floodplain system. / Populações locais, mesmo quando distribuídas em amplas extensões espaciais, variam de forma sincrônica, ou seja, suas abundâncias aumentam e diminuem simultaneamente ao longo do tempo. Em termos de outras características que podem ser mensuradas em ecossistemas, tais como, biomassa e teores de nutrientes, os conceitos de coerência temporal, forças intrínsecas e extrínsecas também têm sido utilizadas para explicar padrões sincrônicos de variação. A magnitude do fenômeno de sincronia pode elucidar se o padrão que processos extrínsecos (e.g., efeitos de fontes difusas sobre as concentrações de nutrientes) são mais importantes que processos intrínsecos (efeitos de fontes pontuais). Nesse estudo nós utilizamos dados de biomassa (clorofila a) do perifíton em 8 locais e 37 meses coletados em uma planície de inundação. O objetivo desse estudo foi de avaliar o padrão de sincronia da biomassa perifítica. Primeiro, nós conjecturamos que elevados níveis de sincronia seriam condizentes com o forte impacto das inundações que influenciam simultaneamente diferentes hábitats de uma planície de inundação, analogamente ao efeito de Moran. Por outro lado, baixos níveis de sincronia seriam condizentes com a hipótese de maior importância da heterogeneidade ambiental (ao longo do espaço), uma vez que planícies de inundação são consideradas um mosaico de manchas de habitats. Em suma nós encontramos baixos valores de sincronia. Variações na sincronia não foram correlacionadas com a distâncias geográfica e ambiental tampouco com a sincronia ambiental. Ainda a nossos modelos GLS demonstraram pouco poder preditivo do ambiente local acerca da biomassa. Como conclusão nosso estudo demonstra o baixo poder preditivo da biomassa perifítica acerca de fatores regionais e locais nos ambientes estudados.