Rodents in open space adjust their behavioral response to the different risk levels during barn-owl attack

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have revealed that the response of prey species to predatory risk comprised either freezing (when the prey remained immobile), or fleeing (when it ran frantically in order to remove itself from the vicinity of the predator). Other studies, however, have suggested that the prey will adjust its behavior to risk level. The present study was designed to follow the attacks of a barn owl (Tyto alba) on common spiny mice (Acomys cahirinus) and social voles (Microtus socialis guntherei), in order to reveal the correspondence between the behavior of the owl, the risk level at each phase of the owl's attack, and the defensive behavior of the rodents. RESULTS: Spiny mice dramatically increased the traveled distance upon the appearance of the owl, and kept moving during its attack while taking long trajectories of locomotion. Defensive response in voles dichotomized: in some voles traveled distance dropped when the owl appeared, reaching zero during its attack. In other voles, traveled distance dramatically increased once the owl appeared and further increased under its attack. These defensive responses developed by gradual tuning of normal locomotor behavior in accordance with the level of risk. CONCLUSIONS: The phenotypic difference in defensive behavior between voles and spiny mice probably stems from their different habitats and motor capacities. Agility and running capacity, together with a relatively sheltered natural habitat, make fleeing the most appropriate response for spiny mice during owl attack. Clumsiness and relatively limited motor capacities, together with an open natural habitat, account for the dichotomy to freezing or fleeing in voles. Thus, the apparent species-specific anti-predator response in spiny mice and voles is based on species-specific normal locomotor behavior, which depends on the species-specific ecology and motor capacity, and behaviors like defensive attack or escape jump that are specific to life threat. The latter behaviors are brief, and irregularly inlaid in the ongoing locomotor behavior. Finally, our results show that in both voles and spiny mice there is a gradual transition from normal to defensive behavior in accordance with the increase in risk level

Phénomènes naturels - une esquisse orientée-objets

In her article Magdalena Edut presented a new type of the lexicographical description which is based on the methodology of the object-oriented approach (approche orientee-objets). In the first part of the text she discussed, on the example of the word mżawka (drizzle), which belongs to the category of the “natural phenomena”, the principles and aims of the proposed approach. In the following parts she compared the received description with the description suggested by the lexical database WordNet and with the contemporary lexicographical theories dealing with the issue of the automatic translation: - prof. G. Gross’s idea of an electronic dictionary, - I. Mel’cuk’s and A. Zolkovsky’s model Sens-Texte, - Pustejovsky’s and Boguraev’s structure qualia.In her article Magdalena Edut presented a new type of the lexicographical description which is based on the methodology of the object-oriented approach (approche orientee-objets). In the first part of the text she discussed, on the example of the word mżawka (drizzle), which belongs to the category of the “natural phenomena”, the principles and aims of the proposed approach. In the following parts she compared the received description with the description suggested by the lexical database WordNet and with the contemporary lexicographical theories dealing with the issue of the automatic translation: - prof. G. Gross’s idea of an electronic dictionary, - I. Mel’cuk’s and A. Zolkovsky’s model Sens-Texte, - Pustejovsky’s and Boguraev’s structure qualia

Management of skill-oriented subjects and goal attainment in private secondary schools in Ikom Education Zone, Cross River State, Nigeria

This study investigated management of skill-oriented subjects and goal attainment in private secondary schools in Ikom Education Zone, Cross River State, Nigeria. To achieve the purpose of the study, two research questions were raised and converted to two null hypotheses to guide the study. Literature review was done based on the variables of the study. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised 127 private secondary schools in Ikom Education Zone, Cross River State. All the 127 administrators of the schools were used for the study through census approach. The instrument for the study was the researchers-developed questionnaire titled: Management of Skill Oriented Subject Questionnaire (MSOSQ) and School Goal Attainment Questionnaire (SGAQ) designed on four-point Likert scale format. The MSOSQ measured 6 items, while SGAQ measured 18 items. The instrument was validated by two experts in Test, Measurement and Evaluation Department, University of Calabar. After the trial test, the reliability coefficient range of 0.72 to 0.91 were obtained which were considered reliable. The data collected were analyzed using Descriptive Statistics and Pearson Product Correlation Analysis at 0.05 level of significance with 125 degree of freedom. Findings revealed that management of Agricultural Science and Introductory Technology subjects did not have a significant relationship with secondary school goals attainment in terms of higher education opportunity, knowledge acquisition and learning outcome. It was recommended among others that Principals should ensure adequate management of skills oriented subjects in order to make students employable rather than job seekers.Keywords: Management, Skill-Oriented Subject, Goal Attainment, Computational Content, Introductory Technolog

Pengaruh kepemimpinan transformasional, komunikasi, dan disiplin kerja terhadap kinerja karyawan bagian produksi di PT Integra Indocabinet, Sedati Sidoarjo, Jawa Timur

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menguji pengaruh kepemimpinan transformasional, komunikasi, dan disiplin kerja terhadap kinerja karyawan. Sampel dalam penelitian ini adalah karyawan di PT. Integra Indocabinet Sedati Sidoarjo Jawa Timur, yang berjumlah 98 orang sebagai responden yang diambil menggunakan rumus Slovin. Teknik pengambilan sampel yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah non probability sampling yaitu teknik yang tidak membeli peluang atau menjadi sampel. Dari hasil pengujian hipotesis secara parsial menunjukkan bahwa 1) kepemimpinan transformasional tidak berpengaruh positif signifikansi terhadap kinerja karyawan, 2) komunikasi berpengaruh positif signifikansi terhadap kinerja karyawan, 4) disiplin kerja berpengaruh positif signifikansi terhadap kinerja karyawan

Escape path complexity and its context dependency in Pacific blue-eyes (Pseudomugil signifer)

The escape paths prey animals take following a predatory attack appear to be highly unpredictable - a property that has been described as ‘protean behaviour’. Here we present a method of quantifying the escape paths of individual animals using a path complexity approach. When individual fish (Pseudomugil signifer) were attacked, we found that a fish's movement path rapidly increased in complexity following the attack. This path complexity remained elevated (indicating a more unpredictable path) for a sustained period (at least 10 seconds) after the attack. The complexity of the path was context dependent; paths were more complex when attacks were made closer to the fish, suggesting that these responses are tailored to the perceived level of threat. We separated out the components of speed and turning rate changes to determine which of these components contributed to the overall increase in path complexity following an attack. We found that both speed and turning rate measures contributed similarly to an individual's path complexity in absolute terms. Overall, our work highlights the context dependent escape responses that animals use to avoid predators and also provides a method for quantifying the escape paths of animals

Animal escapology I: theoretical issues and emerging trends in escape trajectories

Escape responses are used by many animal species as their main defence against predator attacks. Escape success is determined by a number of variables; important are the directionality (the percentage of responses directed away from the threat) and the escape trajectories (ETs) measured relative to the threat. Although logic would suggest that animals should always turn away from a predator, work on various species shows that these away responses occur only approximately 50–90% of the time. A small proportion of towards responses may introduce some unpredictability and may be an adaptive feature of the escape system. Similar issues apply to ETs. Theoretically, an optimal ET can be modelled on the geometry of predator–prey encounters. However, unpredictability (and hence high variability) in trajectories may be necessary for preventing predators from learning a simple escape pattern. This review discusses the emerging trends in escape trajectories, as well as the modulating key factors, such as the surroundings and body design. The main ET patterns identified are: (1) high ET variability within a limited angular sector (mainly 90–180deg away from the threat; this variability is in some cases based on multiple peaks of ETs), (2) ETs that allow sensory tracking of the threat and (3) ETs towards a shelter. These characteristic features are observed across various taxa and, therefore, their expression may be mainly related to taxon-independent animal design features and to the environmental context in which prey live – for example whether the immediate surroundings of the prey provide potential refuges

EMI Shielding for Use in Side-Channel Security: Analysis, Simulation and Measurements

Considering side-channel analysis (SCA) security for cryptographic devices, the mitigation of electromagnetic leakage and electromagnetic interference (EMI) between modules poses significant challenges. This paper presents a comprehensive review and deep analysis of the utilization of EMI shielding materials, devised for reliability purposes and standards such as EMI/EMC, as a countermeasure to enhance EM-SCA security. We survey the current landscape of EMI-shields materials, including conductive polymers, metal-foams, carbon-based materials, and meta-materials, evaluating their effectiveness in attenuating emissions and preventing information-leakage, a task done with security-centric metrics for such materials for the first time. Through a systematic examination of existing literature, experimental studies and a construction of fully-simulatable EM environment in ANSYS-solver, we identify key factors influencing the performance of EMI-shield materials, such as shielding-effectiveness (SE), bandwidth, thickness, and material properties, on security characteristics. We devise a connection between SE and cryptographic-SNR, and we demonstrate from real hardware measurements how and in what conditions can such materials provide very high security levels. By synthesizing insights from multidisciplinary research domains, this paper aims to provide valuable two-way benefit and guidance for researchers, engineers, and practitioners in the design and deployment of robust side-channel security measures leveraging EMI-shields, already in utilization devised by reliability standards

A community of secrets : Stigmatization of former Hansen's Disease patients and their generations in Kampung Baru, Sarawak, Malaysia SARAWAK, MALAYSIA

In the early 19th century in Sarawak, Hansen’s disease or leprosy became a reportable disease where the unfortunate victims were forcibly segregated to a leprosarium, leaving behind family, relatives and future. The image of claw hands or toes and rot noses were associated with the unclean and the sinful. This chronic transmissible affliction made a great panic to the state government to ostracize sufferers in an isolated settlement back in the 1920s. Fortunately, the infection can be cured but negative attitudes towards the former leprosy patients persist until now. This paper is based on ethnographic work that explores the stigma experienced and challenges faced by former leprosy patients and their generation. The research findings are based on three months of fieldwork with seven former sufferers and three children of former sufferers who live in Kampung Sinar Baru, Kota Padawan, Sarawak, a resettlement village for the former leprosy patients. The findings reveal their dreadful past experiences on compulsory segregation in Rajah Charles Brooke Memorial Hospital (RCBMH) where they were forced to be separated from family and hometown which still haunt them till today. In addition, former patients suffer mental health consequences and humiliation from the effects of treatment and also from visible deformities. Nevertheless, they believe that the stigmatization is less severe now than in the past and empathy from society makes them become more independent

Primary and secondary defences of squid to cruising and ambush fish predators : variable tactics and their survival value

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Animal Behaviour 81 (2011): 585-594, doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.12.002.Longfin squid (Loligo pealeii) were exposed to two predators, bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix) and summer flounder (Paralichthys dentatus), representing cruising and ambush foraging tactics, respectively. During 35 trials, 86 predator–prey interactions were evaluated between bluefish and squid, and in 29 trials, 92 interactions were assessed between flounder and squid. With bluefish, squid predominantly used stay tactics (68.6%, 59/86) as initial responses. The most common stay response was to drop to the bottom, while showing a disruptive body pattern, and remain motionless. In 37.0% (34/92) of interactions with flounder, squid did not detect predators camouflaging on the bottom and showed no reaction prior to being attacked. Squid that did react, used flee tactics more often as initial responses (43.5%, 40/92), including flight with or without inking. When all defence behaviours were considered concurrently, flight was identified as the strongest predictor of squid survival during interactions with each predator. Squid that used flight at any time during an attack sequence had high probabilities of survival with bluefish (65%, 20/31) and flounder (51%, 18/35). The most important deimatic/protean behaviour used by squid was inking. Inking caused bluefish to startle (deimatic) and abandon attacks (probability of survival = 61%, 11/18) and caused flounder to misdirect (protean) attacks towards ink plumes rather than towards squid (probability of survival = 56%, 14/25). These are the first published laboratory experiments to evaluate the survival value of antipredator behaviours in a cephalopod. Results demonstrate that squid vary their defence tactics in response to different predators and that the effectiveness of antipredator behaviours is contingent upon the behavioural characteristics of the predator encountered.This study was funded by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Sea Grant Program, the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Institute, the University of Massachusetts and the Five College Coastal and Marine Sciences Program. R. T. Hanlon acknowledges partial support from ONR grant N000140610202 and the Sholley Foundation

Similar patterns of local barn owl adaptation in the Middle East and Europe with respect to melanic coloration

The maintenance of phenotypic variation is a central question in evolutionary biology. A commonly suggested mechanism is that of local adaptation, whereby different phenotypes are adapted to alternative environmental conditions. A recent study in the European barn owl (Tyto alba) has shown that natural selection maintains a strong clinal variation in reddish pheomelanin-based coloration. Studies in the region where phenotypic variation in this owl is the highest in Europe have further demonstrated that dark-reddish and pale-reddish owls exploit open and wooded habitats, predate voles and wood mice, and are long-tailed and short-tailed, respectively. However, it remains unclear as to whether these traits evolved as a consequence of allopatric evolution of dark colour in northern Europe and white colour in southern Europe, during which owls could have also evolved different morphologies and foraging behaviour. This scenario implies that covariation between coloration and foraging behaviour could be a specificity of the European continent, which is not found in other worldwide-distributed populations. To investigate this issue we studied a barn owl population in the Middle East. Our results show that, as in Central Europe, dark-reddish female owls breed more often in the open landscape than their pale-reddish female conspecifics, their offspring are fed with more voles than Muridae, and they are longer-winged and longer-tailed. These findings indicate that in the barn owl the association in females between pheomelanin-based coloration and foraging behaviour and morphology is not restricted to the European continent but may well evolve in sympatry in many barn owl populations worldwide