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The local pivotal method (LPM) is a successful sampling method for taking well-spread samples from discrete populations. We show how the LPM can be utilized to sample from arbitrary continuous distributions and thereby give powerful variance reduction in general cases. The method creates an ``automatic stratification" on any continuous distribution, of any dimension, and selects a ``thin" well-spread sample. We demonstrate the simplicity, generality and effectiveness of the LPM with various examples, including Monte Carlo estimation of integrals, option pricing and stability estimation in non-linear dynamical systems. Additionally, we show how the LPM can be combined with other variance reduction techniques, such as importance sampling, to achieve even greater variance reduction. To facilitate the implementation of the LPM, we provide a quick start guide to using LPM in MATLAB and R, which includes sample code demonstrating how to achieve variance reduction with just a few lines of code.

International audience; Sustainable yields that are at least 80% of the maximum sustainable yield are sometimes referred to as pretty good yield (PGY). The range of PGY harvesting strategies is generally broad and thus leaves room to account for additional objectives besides high yield. Here, we analyze stage-dependent harvesting strategies that realize PGY with conservation as a second objective. We show that (1) PGY harvesting strategies can give large conservation benefits and (2) equal harvesting rates of juveniles and adults is often a good strategy. These conclusions are based on trade-off curves between yield and four measures of conservation that form in two established population models, one age-structured and one stage-structured model, when considering different harvesting rates of juveniles and adults. These conclusions hold for a broad range of parameter settings, though our investigation of robustness also reveals that (3) predictions of the age-structured model are more sensitive to variations in parameter values than those of the stage-structured model. Finally, we find that (4) measures of stability that are often quite difficult to assess in the field (e.g. basic reproduction ratio and resilience) are systematically negatively correlated with impacts on biomass and impact on size structure, so that these later quantities can provide integrative signals to detect possible collapses.

We investigate various boundary decay estimates for $p(\cdot)$-harmonic functions. For domains in $\mathbb{R}^n, n\geq 2$ satisfying the ball condition ($C^{1,1}$-domains) we show the boundary Harnack inequality for $p(\cdot)$-harmonic functions under the assumption that the variable exponent $p$ is a bounded Lipschitz function. The proof involves barrier functions and chaining arguments. Moreover, we prove a Carleson type estimate for $p(\cdot)$-harmonic functions in NTA domains in $\mathbb{R}^n$ and provide lower- and upper- growth estimates and a doubling property for a $p(\cdot)$-harmonic measure., Comment: 31 pages, 1 figure