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Administrative justice concerns how government and public bodies treat people, the correctness of their decisions, the fairness of their procedures, and the opportunities people have to question and challenge decisions made about them. Our research has used a mixture of methods, including desk-based research identifying, collating and examining law and guidance applicable to Wales, alongside policy documents, previous research reports and statistical data. A central conclusion of our research is that public administration in Wales is seen as concerned with sustainability, well-being, equality and human rights, but less often as involving justice for individuals in their relationships with the state.

Genome-scale sequence data have invigorated the study of hybridization and introgression, particularly in animals. However, outside of a few notable cases, we lack systematic tests for introgression at a larger phylogenetic scale across entire clades. Here we leverage 155 genome assemblies, from 149 species, to generate a fossil-calibrated phylogeny and conduct multilocus tests for introgression across nine monophyletic radiations within the genus Drosophila. Using complementary phylogenomic approaches, we identify widespread introgression across the evolutionary history of Drosophila. Mapping gene-tree discordance onto the phylogeny revealed that both ancient and recent introgression has occurred across most of the nine clades that we examined. Our results provide the first evidence of introgression occurring across the evolutionary history of Drosophila and highlight the need to continue to study the evolutionary consequences of hybridization and introgression in this genus and across the Tree of Life.

This work is part of an experimental project aiming at understanding the kinetics of human gastric emptying. For this purpose magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images of the stomach of healthy volunteers have been acquired using a state-of-art scanner with an adapted protocol. The challenge is to follow the stomach content (food) in the data. Frozen garden peas and petits pois have been chosen as experimental proof-of-concept as their shapes are well defined and are not altered in the early stages of digestion. The food recognition is performed as a binary classification implemented using a deep convolutional neural network (CNN). Input hyperparameters, here image size and number of epochs, were exhaustively evaluated to identify the combination of parameters that produces the best classification. The results have been analysed using interactive visualisation. We prove in this paper that advances in computer vision and machine learning can be deployed to automatically label the content of the stomach even when the amount of training data is low and the data imbalanced. Interactive visualisation helps identify the most effective combinations of hyperparameters to maximise accuracy, precision, recall and F1 score, leaving the end-user evaluate the possible trade-off between these metrics. Food recognition in MRI scans through neural network produced an accuracy of 0.97, precision of 0.91, recall of 0.86 and F1 score of 0.89, all close to 1., Computer Graphics and Visual Computing (CGVC), Visualisation and Machine Learning, 11, 18, Joshua Gardner, Shatha Al-Maliki, Évelyne Lutton, François Boué, and Franck P. Vidal, CCS Concepts: Applied computing --> Life and medical sciences; Computing methodologies --> Machine learning

A signal transmission technique termed subcarrier index-power modulated optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with dual superposition multiplexing (SIPM-OOFDM-DSPM) is proposed and investigated, for the first time, for IMDD PON transmission systems. Compared to previously published similar transmission techniques, SIPM-OOFDM-DSPM not only enables more information bits to be conveyed in the extra information-carrying dimension but also improves the power usage efficiency, performance flexibility and adaptability without increasing DSP and hardware complexity. Detailed numerical simulations of the proposed technique are undertaken to identify optimum transceiver parameters, based on which its performance characteristics are explored. It is shown that over the aforementioned transmission systems, SIPM-OOFDM-DSPM considerably enhances the signal transmission capacity and simultaneously decreases the power penalty, in comparison with other subcarrier-index power-based OOFDM techniques encoded using similar signal modulation formats.

Made available in DSpace on 2018-12-11T16:51:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2018-12-01 Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) Brazil's large land base is important for global food security but its high dependency on inorganic phosphorus (P) fertilizer for crop production (2.2 Tg rising up to 4.6 Tg in 2050) is not a sustainable use of a critical and price-volatile resource. A new strategic analysis of current and future P demand/supply concluded that the nation's secondary P resources which are produced annually (e.g. livestock manures, sugarcane processing residues) could potentially provide up to 20% of crop P demand by 2050 with further investment in P recovery technologies. However, the much larger legacy stores of secondary P in the soil (30 Tg in 2016 worth over $40 billion and rising to 105 Tg by 2050) could provide a more important buffer against future P scarcity or sudden P price fluctuations, and enable a transition to more sustainable P input strategies that could reduce current annual P surpluses by 65%. In the longer-term, farming systems in Brazil should be redesigned to operate profitably but more sustainably under lower soil P fertility thresholds. School of Environment Natural Resources and Geography Bangor University, Thoday Building College of Agriculture 'Luiz de Queiroz' University of São Paulo - ESALQ-USP, Av. Pádua Dias, 11. CEP Federal University of Lavras - UFLA Campus Universitário, PO Box 3037 Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation Embrapa Soils, Rua Jardim Botânico, 1024 Santa Catarina State University UDESC., Av. Luís de Camões 2090 Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation Embrapa Cerrados. BR 020, Km 18 Planaltina. PO Box 08223 São Paulo State University FCA/UNESP. Rua José Barbosa de Barros 1780, CEP 186010-307 Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation Embrapa Soybean, PO Box 231 São Paulo State University FCAV/UNESP. Via de Acesso Prof, Paulo Donato Castellane, s/n. km 5 São Paulo State University FCA/UNESP. Rua José Barbosa de Barros 1780, CEP 186010-307 São Paulo State University FCAV/UNESP. Via de Acesso Prof, Paulo Donato Castellane, s/n. km 5

International audience; We report experimentally and theoretically a new state in which injection locking of the parallel polarization and simultaneous excitation of the orthogonal polarization in a single-transverse mode VCSEL are obtained. We find very simple analytical expressions for the power of both linear polarizations. A simple nonlinear dependence between the power of both linear polarizations and the frequency detuning is found. Also, the total power emitted by the VCSEL is constant and it is independent of the injected power and of the frequency detuning. The stability maps in the injected power-frequency detuning plane identifying this state are performed for different values of bias currents with good agreement between the experimental and calculated maps. Moreover, a simple analytical expression that describes the boundaries of these maps for negative and large frequency detunings provides a simple method to extract the linear dichroism of the laser. © 2017 IEEE.

The European native oyster (Ostrea edulis) is a threatened keystone species which historically created extensive, physically complex, biogenic habitats throughout European seas. Overfishing and direct habitat destruction, subsequently compounded by pollution, invasive species, disease, predation and climate change have resulted in the functional extinction of native oyster habitat across much of its former range. Although oyster reef habitat remains imperilled, active restoration efforts are rapidly gaining momentum. Identifying appropriate sites for habitat restoration is an essential first step in long-term project success. In this study, a three-round Delphi process was conducted to determine the most important factors to consider in site selection for European native oyster habitat restoration projects. Consensus was reached on a total of 65 factors as being important to consider in site selection for European native oyster habitat restoration projects. In addition to the abiotic factors typically included in habitat suitability models, socio-economic and logistical factors were found to be important. Determining the temporal and spatial variability of threats to native oyster habitat restoration and understanding the biotic factors present at a proposed restoration site also influence the potential for project scale-up and longevity. This list guides site selection by identifying: a shortlist of measurable factors which should be considered; the relevant data to collect; topics for discussion in participatory mapping processes; information of interest from the existing body of local ecological knowledge; and factors underpinning supportive and facilitating regulatory frameworks., This work was the product of the Site Selection Working Group within the Native Oyster Restoration Alliance (NORA). The NORA Secretariat are funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit) and the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (Bundesamt für Naturschutz) through the Federal Program for Biodiversity and the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research within the project PROCEED (FKZ 3517685013). PSEzE was supported by The Nature Conservancy, Global Ocean Team.

International audience; Polarization switching in a long-wavelength VCSEL under parallel optical injection is analyzed in a theoretical and experimental way. We report a novel state in which injection locking of the parallel polarization and excitation of the free-running orthogonal polarization of the VCSEL are simultaneously obtained.

International audience

International audience

International audience; SIPM-OOFDM having an extra subcarrier index-power information-bearing dimension is, for the first time, proposed and investigated, which, compared to conventional OOFDM, offers considerable signal transmission capacity improvement without degrading system power budget and dispersion/nonlinearity tolerances.

Selective logging prevails in tropical forests around the world, posing urgent questions about how to reconcile timber extraction with biodiversity conservation. Roads are those elements of selective logging that are most costly, most visible and they probably have the most far-reaching environmental impacts. While many studies have outlined road related threats to forest ecosystems, little is known about the persistence of logging roads in the forest landscape. This is especially important in Central Africa, where selective logging is the most important type of land use, both in terms of spatial extent and financial yield. In this thesis I analyze the temporal and spatial dynamics of logging road networks in a part of the Congo Basin and apply these findings to make suggestions for forest management. In five chapters I am approaching the subject from different angles and on different scales:In the introductory chapter, I compare the content and the orientation of scientific literature on logging roads in tropical forests. In general I identified two strains in the literature, one focusing specifically on road related impacts on forest ecosystems and the other giving technical advice in road planning, building and maintenance in order to improve efficiency and reduce impacts. A third, partially distinct direction of research is oriented on the characterization of the spatial distribution and coverage of forest road networks on larger scale to monitor forest exploitation and related degradation.The second chapter presents a methodology to identify roads in Central African forests based on remote sensing with LANDSAT images. In a time series approach, I used survival analysis to evaluate the temporal dynamics of secondary logging roads over the last 30 years and showed how road persistence differs depending on environmental variables such as geological substrates.The third chapter approaches the persistence of logging roads from a field based perspective. I carried out vegetation inventories on a chronosequence of roads abandoned between 1985 and 2015. The results showed that road tracks and edges are suitable habitats for commercial species regeneration with rapid changes in the environmental conditions occurring over time. During 30 years after abandonment about one third of the biomass lost for road building has re-captured in subsequent vegetation development.The fourth chapter analyses the extent of logging road networks in the overall forest landscape. I used the mathematically well-defined Empty Space Function as a novel way to calculate roadless space. I demonstrated how roadless space in intact forest landscapes (declared in 2000) has diminished in general but in particular in FSC-certified logging concessions. I recommend that forest management should make the preservation of large connected forest areas a top priority by effectively monitoring - and limiting - the occupation of space by roads that are accessible at the same time.The concluding chapter develops management suggestions to apply the findings. I showed that re-opening logging roads in subsequent harvests is rather the exception than the rule. Evaluating benefits, opportunities, costs and risks, I conclude that re-opening roads should be given a higher priority in forest management. Re-using logging roads can spare forests within the same area by avoiding new forest clearing in the vicinity and at a larger scale by sparing unlogged forests from new logging disturbance by intensifying operations on previously logged forests. As a vision for road management, I suggest to actively manage logging roads as transient elements in the landscape until they are reopened. Permanent access roads should only be built in the periphery of continuous forest blocks. As a perspective for further research, I discuss the trade-offs between the need of roads for development and the environmental impacts. As an example for this, I present evidence for the first major road corridor crossing the Congo Basin that is already under construction. To limit the impacts on the forest, large-scale conservation corridors have to be established, requiring supra-regional landscape planning.; Une fraction importante des forêts tropicales dans le monde est exploitée de manière sélective, générant des questions essentielles sur la manière dont il est possible de réconcilier l’extraction du bois et la conservation de la biodiversité. Les pistes forestières sont le facteur le plus coûteux, le plus visible et probablement celui qui a les impacts environnementaux les plus graves, de l’exploitation. Plusieurs études ont souligné les effets négatifs des pistes forestières sur les écosystèmes forestiers tropicaux, mais généralement sans traiter l’aspect de leur persistance dans les paysages boisés. Dans cette thèse, j’analyse les dynamiques spatiales et temporelles des réseaux de pistes d’exploitation dans une partie de l’Afrique centrale, et je prends les résultats en compte pour formuler des propositions dans le cadre des aménagements forestiers. Je traite ce sujet en cinq chapitres, en adoptant dans chacun d’eux des angles et des échelles différents.Dans le chapitre introductif, je présente la littérature scientifique qui a traité des pistes d’exploitation dans les forêts tropicales. D’une manière générale, j’ai identifié deux axes de recherche dans la littérature, l’un traitant uniquement de l’impact négatif des routes sur les forêts et l’autre focalisé sur des recommandations plutôt techniques pour une meilleure planification, une meilleure construction et un maintien plus efficace des routes dans le but d’en réduire les impacts. J’ai également identifié un troisième axe, plutôt orienté sur la caractérisation de la distribution spatiale des réseaux routiers sur une échelle plus large et utilisé ça comme indicateur de la dégradation des forêts tropicales.Dans le deuxième chapitre je présente la méthodologie, basée sur l’utilisation d’images satellitaires LANDSAT, qui m’a permis d’identifier les pistes d’exploitation, primaires et secondaires, en Afrique centrale. En utilisant une série chronologique d’images, j’ai réalisé une analyse de survie pour évaluer la dynamique temporelle des pistes secondaires pendant les 30 dernières années et j’ai montré que la persistance des pistes dépendait en partie de différents facteurs environnementaux, en particulier des substrats géologiques. Dans le troisième chapitre, j’analyse la persistance des pistes d’exploitation sur le terrain. Pour cela, j’ai réalisé des inventaires de végétation sur des pistes plus ou moins anciennement abandonnées (entre 1985 et 2015, donc depuis 30 ans, jusqu’à cette année). Les résultats montrent que la bande de roulement et le bord des pistes constituent des habitats particulièrement favorables pour la régénération des espèces commerciales, tout en étant soumis à des modifications rapides des conditions environnementales. Sur les pistes les plus anciennes, en 30 ans, un tiers de la biomasse perdue lors de la construction a été reconstituée du fait de leur ré-végétalisation.Dans le quatrième chapitre j’analyse l’extension du réseau des pistes, à l’échelle du paysage. J’ai utilisé pour cela une méthode originale, basée sur l’utilisation – pour la première fois en foresterie - de la formule dite « de l’espace vide » (empty space function). Cette formule résulte d’une extension aux deux dimensions d’une formule permettant d’analyser des processus ponctuels et présente l’avantage d’être mathématiquement bien définie. Appliquée au cas des pistes, elle permet de calculer la fragmentation des paysages. J’ai ainsi montré que la fragmentation des forêts dans les paysages définis comme « intacts » en 2000 (Intact Forest Landscapes ou IFL), a augmenté en général, et en particulier dans les concessions certifiées dans le cadre du FSC (Forest Stewardship Council). Je conclus en recommandant que l’aménagement forestier priorise la mise en réserve de la majeure partie de la concession forestière en assurant que les anciennes pistes restent inaccessibles.Le chapitre de conclusion présente, tirées de ces résultats, des propositions pour l’aménagement forestier. Je montre que sur des coups d’exploitation récurrents, les anciennes pistes ne sont pas ré-ouvertes régulièrement. Après avoir évalué les bénéfices, les opportunités, les coûts et les risques liés à l’ouverture des pistes, je conclue que la réouverture de ces pistes mérite une plus grande attention dans l’aménagement, et devrait être priorisée. La réouverture pourrait épargner des superficies forestières et limiter les impacts négatifs sur la faune, en particulier liés à la chasse. A plus grande échelle, cela permettrait d’épargner des forêts encore peu ou pas exploitées, grâce à une intensification de l’exploitation dans des zones déjà perturbées. En conclusion, je vois l’aménagement des réseaux de pistes dans les forêts tropicales comme une planification active d’éléments transitoires dans le paysage, rendu complètement inaccessible après l’exploitation jusqu’à leur réouverture.

A novel transmission technique known as subcarrier index-power modulated optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (SIPM-OOFDM) is proposed, for the first time, by introducing an extra subcarrier index-power information-bearing dimension into conventional OOFDM. Detailed numerical simulations are undertaken of SIPM-OOFDM performance characteristics to identify optimum SIPM-OOFDM transceiver parameters and also to explore corresponding maximum achievable transmission performances over passive optical network systems based on intensity-modulation and direct-detection. It is shown that, compared to conventional OOFDM, SIPM-OOFDM offers considerable signal transmission capacity improvement without increasing minimum required optical signal-to-noise ratios and degrading chromatic dispersion/nonlinearity tolerances.

International audience; In the framework of the IAEA Coordinated Research Projects on In-Vessel Melt Retention, a benchmark of CFD simulations, devoted to thermal-hydraulic behavior of the light metal layer involves several research organizations: KTH of Sweden, SSTC NRS of Ukraine, ÚJV Řež of Czech Republic and CEA of France. This work aims at better simulating the focusing effect phenomenon leading to a heat flux peak along the height of the light metal layer, which is formed above the oxide layer in a stratified corium pool configuration during a PWR severe accident. This is a known safety issue compromising the reactor vessel integrity. The final stage of this benchmark is the simulation of realistic prototypical light metal layer configuration in case of severe accident. The first benchmark step provides a solid foundation to the CFD schemes (physical models, meshes) by comparing the results of CFD simulations with thermal-hydraulic experimental data obtained using water as simulating fluid in a representative and quite laminar configuration. Then a similar but highly turbulent case, of higher height, is considered for more complex validation of the numerical simulation approach. Results with different turbulent models are compared. On the strength of this encouraging work, a simulation of the same height configuration but considering steel fluid and severe accident conditions is foreseen at the final stage of this benchmark.

International audience

International audience; BACKGROUND:Bats are amongst the natural reservoirs of many coronaviruses (CoVs) of which some can lead to severe infection in human. African bats are known to harbor a range of pathogens (e.g., Ebola and Marburg viruses) that can infect humans and cause disease outbreaks. A recent study in South Africa isolated a genetic variant closely related to MERS-CoV from an insectivorous bat. Though Madagascar is home to 44 bat species (41 insectivorous and 3 frugivorous) of which 34 are endemic, no data exists concerning the circulation of CoVs in the island's chiropteran fauna. Certain Malagasy bats can be frequently found in close contact with humans and frugivorous bats feed in the same trees where people collect and consume fruits and are hunted and consumed as bush meat. The purpose of our study is to detect and identify CoVs from frugivorous bats in Madagascar to evaluate the risk of human infection from infected bats.METHODS:Frugivorous bats belonging to three species were captured in four different regions of Madagascar. We analyzed fecal and throat swabs to detect the presence of virus through amplification of the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) gene, which is highly conserved in all known coronaviruses. Phylogenetic analyses were performed from positive specimens.RESULTS:From 351 frugivorous bats, we detected 14 coronaviruses from two endemic bats species, of which 13 viruses were identified from Pteropus rufus and one from Eidolon dupreanum, giving an overall prevalence of 4.5%. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that the Malagasy strains belong to the genus Betacoronavirus but form three distinct clusters, which seem to represent previously undescribed genetic lineages.CONCLUSIONS:Our findings suggest that CoVs circulate in frugivorous bats of Madagascar, demonstrating the needs to evaluate spillover risk to human populations especially for individuals that hunt and consume infected bats. Possible dispersal mechanisms as to how coronaviruses arrived on Madagascar are discussed.

Digital filter multiple access (DFMA) passive optical networks (PONs) are, for the first time to our knowledge, proposed and extensively investigated, where digital signal processing (DSP)-enabled, software-reconfigurable, digital orthogonal filtering is employed in each individual optical network unit (ONU) and the optical line terminal to enable all ONUs to dynamically share the transmission medium under the control of the centralized software-defined controller and the transceiver-embedded DSP controllers. The DFMA PONs fully support software-defined networking with the network control further extended to the physical layer. As digital filtering is the fundamental process at the heart of the proposed DFMA PONs, the filtering-induced tradeoffs among upstream transmission capacity, filter design flexibility, and filter DSP complexity are examined, based on which optimum filter design guidelines are identified for various application scenarios. Furthermore, the performance characteristics of the DFMA PONs are also numerically explored in terms of maximum achievable upstream transmission capacity, differential ONU launch power dynamic range, and ONU count-dependent minimum received optical power.

Meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals requires reconciling development with biodiversity conservation. Governments and lenders increasingly call for major industrial developments to offset unavoidable biodiversity loss but there are few robust evaluations of whether offset interventions ensure no net loss of biodiversity. We focus on the biodiversity offsets associated with the high-profile Ambatovy mine in Madagascar and evaluate their effectiveness at delivering no net loss of forest. As part of their efforts to mitigate biodiversity loss, Ambatovy compensate for forest clearance at the mine site by slowing deforestation driven by small-scale agriculture elsewhere. Using a range of methods, including extensive robustness checks exploring 116 alternative model specifications, we show that the offsets are on track to avert as much deforestation as was caused by the mine. This encouraging result shows that biodiversity offsetting can contribute towards mitigating environmental damage from a major industrial development, even within a weak state, but there remain important caveats with broad application. Our approach could serve as a template to facilitate other evaluations and so build a stronger evidence-base of the effectiveness of no net loss interventions.

The human voice carries speech as well as important nonlinguistic signals that influence our social interactions. Among these cues that impact our behavior and communication with other people is the perceived emotional state of the speaker. A theoretical framework for the neural processing stages of emotional prosody has suggested that auditory emotion is perceived in multiple steps (Schirmer and Kotz, 2006) involving low-level auditory analysis and integration of the acoustic information followed by higher-level cognition. Empirical evidence for this multistep processing chain, however, is still sparse. We examined this question using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a continuous carry-over design (Aguirre, 2007) to measure brain activity while volunteers listened to non-speech-affective vocalizations morphed on a continuum between anger and fear. Analyses dissociated neuronal adaptation effects induced by similarity in perceived emotional content between consecutive stimuli from those induced by their acoustic similarity. We found that bilateral voice-sensitive auditory regions as well as right amygdala coded the physical difference between consecutive stimuli. In contrast, activity in bilateral anterior insulae, medial superior frontal cortex, precuneus, and subcortical regions such as bilateral hippocampi depended predominantly on the perceptual difference between morphs. Our results suggest that the processing of vocal affect recognition is a multistep process involving largely distinct neural networks. Amygdala and auditory areas predominantly code emotion-related acoustic information while more anterior insular and prefrontal regions respond to the abstract, cognitive representation of vocal affec. © 2014 Bestelmeyer et al.