Migratory strategies in the Northern Wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe)

Kurzfassung der Dissertation an der Carl von Ossietzky-Universität Oldenburg, angefertigt am Institut für Vogelforschung "Vogelwarte Helgoland", Wilhelmshaven, betreut durch Prof. Dr. Franz Bairlein, Institut für Vogelforschung Wilhelmshaven (Erstbetreuer) sowie Prof. Dr. Henrik Mouritsen, Universität Oldenburg (Zweitbetreuer

Protecting and restoring habitat to help Australia’s threatened species adapt to climate change

Summary for policy makers Australia’s biodiversity is threatened by climate change, but we currently know little about the scale of the threat or how to deploy on ground conservation actions to protect biodiversity against the changes expected. In this project we predict the impacts of climate change for threatened species and delineate the best options for climate adaptation for all these species collectively via protecting and restoring their habitat.For 504 of Australia’s currently threatened species we predict their distributional responses to climate change, under three climate change scenarios of increasing severity: early mitigation, delayed mitigation and business-as-usual. We then simulate the optimal placement of new protected areas and where necessary, restoration of critical habitat for those species most affected by a changing climate, taking into account variation in the costs and benefits of taking action in different places.We measured the benefits of protecting and restoring habitat by considering the long-term availability and quality of habitat for threatened species as climate changes. We undertook a state-of-the-art multi-action optimisation that accounts for spatial and temporal habitat connectivity under climate change. The scale of the prioritisation analysis implemented here is unprecedented in the conservation literature, and is only possible because of recent advances in software sophistication and parallel computer processing power.We discovered that:• Fifty-nine of the 355 threatened plant species and 11 of the 149 threatened animals considered could completely lose their climatically suitable range by 2085 under the most pessimistic (business as usual) climate change scenario, while four plant species face almost certain extinction due to complete loss of suitable range even under the most optimistic mitigation scenario tested.• Climate is predicted to become unsuitable across more than half of their geographic distribution for 310 (61%) of the modelled species under the business-as-usual scenario and for 80 (16%) species under the early mitigation scenario.• For an available budget of $3 billion, protecting an additional 877,415 km2 of intact habitat, and restoring 1,190 km2 of degraded habitat immediately was identified by our analysis as the optimal set of actions to help the 504 threatened species adapt to climate change assuming early mitigation. Under a more pessimistic business-as-usual climate change scenario, 837,914 km2 of protection is required, along with 77 km2 of restoration. In all cases, appropriate threat management within the protected areas is required.• Within the$3 billion budget, optimal allocation of protection focuses on forests and woodland areas of eastern Australia, Northern Territory, the Great Western Woodlands of Western Australia, and southern South Australia. Restoration effort is required mostly in south-eastern Australia.• We tested a range of conservation budgets from $500 million to$8 billion, and found that the spatial pattern of priority does not change dramatically, and that conservation gains do not level off within that range, i.e. that each dollar invested up to at least 8 billion generates additional benefits for threatened species under climate change.Our analysis deals only with threatened species, i.e. those currently most vulnerable to threats including climate change, and while this doesn’t represent all Australian native animals and plants and how they may all be best provided for, these species have great immediate significance for national biodiversity policy.In summary, the 504 threatened species considered in this study require an increase of between 838,077 km2 and 878,590 km2 in areas protected against loss or degradation either through legislation to protect habitat, designation of protected areas, or negotiations of long-lasting voluntary conservation covenants.Please cite this report as: Maggini, R, Kujala, H, Taylor, MFJ, Lee, JR, Possingham, HP, Wintle, BA, Fuller, RA 2013 Protecting and restoring habitat to help Australia’s threatened species adapt to climate change, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility,  Gold Coast, pp. 59.Australia’s biodiversity is threatened by climate change, but we currently know little about the scale of the threat or how to deploy on ground conservation actions to protect biodiversity against the changes expected. In this project we predict the impacts of climate change for threatened species and delineate the best options for climate adaptation for all these species collectively via protecting and restoring their habitat.For 504 of Australia’s currently threatened species we predict their distributional responses to climate change, under three climate change scenarios of increasing severity: early mitigation, delayed mitigation and business-as-usual. We then simulate the optimal placement of new protected areas and where necessary, restoration of critical habitat for those species most affected by a changing climate, taking into account variation in the costs and benefits of taking action in different places.We measured the benefits of protecting and restoring habitat by considering the long-term availability and quality of habitat for threatened species as climate changes. We undertook a state-of-the-art multi-action optimisation that accounts for spatial and temporal habitat connectivity under climate change. The scale of the prioritisation analysis implemented here is unprecedented in the conservation literature, and is only possible because of recent advances in software sophistication and parallel computer processing power.We discovered that: Fifty-nine of the 355 threatened plant species and 11 of the 149 threatened animals considered could completely lose their climatically suitable range by 2085 under the most pessimistic (business as usual) climate change scenario, while four plant species face almost certain extinction due to complete loss of suitable range even under the most optimistic mitigation scenario tested.Climate is predicted to become unsuitable across more than half of their geographic distribution for 310 (61%) of the modelled species under the business-as-usual scenario and for 80 (16%) species under the early mitigation scenario.For an available budget of 3 billion, protecting an additional 877,415 km2 of intact habitat, and restoring 1,190 km2 of degraded habitat immediately was identified by our analysis as the optimal set of actions to help the 504 threatened species adapt to climate change assuming early mitigation. Under a more pessimistic business-as-usual climate change scenario, 837,914 km2 of protection is required, along with 77 km2 of restoration. In all cases, appropriate threat management within the protected areas is required.Within the $3 billion budget, optimal allocation of protection focuses on forests and woodland areas of eastern Australia, Northern Territory, the Great Western Woodlands of Western Australia, and southern South Australia. Restoration effort is required mostly in south-eastern Australia.We tested a range of conservation budgets from$500 million to $8 billion, and found that the spatial pattern of priority does not change dramatically, and that conservation gains do not level off within that range, i.e. that each dollar invested up to at least$8 billion generates additional benefits for threatened species under climate change. Our analysis deals only with threatened species, i.e. those currently most vulnerable to threats including climate change, and while this doesn’t represent all Australian native animals and plants and how they may all be best provided for, these species have great immediate significance for national biodiversity policy.In summary, the 504 threatened species considered in this study require an increase of between 838,077 km2 and 878,590 km2 in areas protected against loss or degradation either through legislation to protect habitat, designation of protected areas, or negotiations of long-lasting voluntary conservation covenants.Please cite this report as: Maggini, R, Kujala, H, Taylor, MFJ, Lee, JR, Possingham, HP, Wintle, BA, Fuller, RA 2013 Protecting and restoring habitat to help Australia’s threatened species adapt to climate change, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility,  Gold Coast, pp. 59.&nbsp

Comparative US-MRI evaluation of the Insall–Salvati index

Purpose: To investigate whether the universally accepted range of normal patellar height ratio derived from MRI for the Insall–Salvati (IS) method could be similarly applied to ultrasound (US). Materials and methods: This study included 52 patients (age range 11–75 years) who underwent a bi-modality (US and MRI) examination, with a total of 60 knees evaluated. IS index (ratio of the patella tendon length to length of the patella) was acquired with both methods. Two operators, with different experiences of musculoskeletal imaging and blinded to the results of other investigators, separately performed the MRI and US measurements. Results: For the two operators, MRI reported a mean value of patellar height ratio of 1.10 ± 0.16 (mean ± standard deviation SD), while US a mean value of 1.17 ± 0.16 (mean ± SD). For comparable results, the small addition of 0.16 is needed for the measurements on US compared with MRI. Inter-observer agreements using intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) was, respectively, 0.97 for MRI and 0.98 for US. The difference of mean values in patellar height ratios between MRI and US was not statistically significant (p = 0.15). The ICC between the two modalities was 0.94. Conclusion: According to our experience, IS index can be appropriately evaluated on US images, reducing the need of other imaging techniques

Aligned and Non-Aligned Double JPEG Detection Using Convolutional Neural Networks

Due to the wide diffusion of JPEG coding standard, the image forensic community has devoted significant attention to the development of double JPEG (DJPEG) compression detectors through the years. The ability of detecting whether an image has been compressed twice provides paramount information toward image authenticity assessment. Given the trend recently gained by convolutional neural networks (CNN) in many computer vision tasks, in this paper we propose to use CNNs for aligned and non-aligned double JPEG compression detection. In particular, we explore the capability of CNNs to capture DJPEG artifacts directly from images. Results show that the proposed CNN-based detectors achieve good performance even with small size images (i.e., 64x64), outperforming state-of-the-art solutions, especially in the non-aligned case. Besides, good results are also achieved in the commonly-recognized challenging case in which the first quality factor is larger than the second one.Comment: Submitted to Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation (first submission: March 20, 2017; second submission: August 2, 2017

“Something Olde, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue…”. On the twenty-eight separate European elections of 2014

Together with “a sixpence in her shoe”, there are various items that are recommended as part of a bridal outfit, according to an old English rhyme. Humour might hardly be allowed as regards the recent European Parliament elections, given the success of Eurosceptic parties. However, we might comment that the 2014 EP election (expected by many commentators to be the first truly European election) was to some extent blessed by the presence of all such auspicious elements. That this has happened in times of economic crisis and rising Euroscepticism, would – again – not make it different from many weddings celebrated in difficult times, yet leading to long-lasting, successful marriages. But let’s go one step at a time

Obsessive-compulsive disorder followed by psychotic episode in long-term ecstasy misuse

Aim. We report the case of two young subjects who developed an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) during a heavy use of ecstasy. After several months of discontinuation of the drug, major depression with psychotic features developed in one subject and a psychotic disorder in the other individual. No mental disorder preceded the use of ecstasy in any subject. Findings. A familial and personality vulnerability for mental disorder was revealed in one subject, but not in the other, and all physical, laboratory and cerebral NMR evaluations showed normal results in both patients. Remission of OCD and depressive episode or psychotic disorder was achieved after treatment with a serotoninergic medication associated with an antipsychotic. Conclusions. The heavy long-term use of ecstasy may induce an alteration in the brain balance between serotonin and dopamine, which might constitute a pathophysiological mechanism underlying the onset of obsessive-compulsive, depressive and psychotic symptoms. The heavy use of ecstasy probably interacted with a vulnerability to psychiatric disorder in one subject, whereas we cannot exclude that an "ecstasy disorder" ex novo affected the other individual. © 2009 Informa UK Ltd All rights reserved