Diapause is a common dormancy strategy exhibited by many species of invertebrates and insects to temporarily avoid seasonally recurring unfavourable conditions for their development, most usually in winter. Less frequently, a prolonged diapause lasting two or more years is described in species living in unpredictable environments where it is adaptive, but with significant costs. In this paper we examine the occurrence of prolonged diapause in the lycaenid butterfly Tomares ballus. Pupae of this species undergo an obligate diapause from mid-May to late January the following year. However, during our rearing experiments (from 2009 to 2016) the emergence of adults occurred sequentially and a fraction of the pupae remained in diapause for up to seven years. The annual percentage emergence after the first year of diapause was 45.6%, and only barely exceeded 50.0% in 2015. Remarkably, 12 pupae (11.4% of the initial brood) remained in diapause in their eighth year. The negative exponential equation fitted to the emergence data suggests that further emergences may occur within the next five years. Therefore, the potential for successful prolonged diapause of T. ballus pupae may be more than 10 years. The adaptive value of this strategy is discussed in relation to the effects of adverse and unpredictable weather during the flight period of the butterfly, intra-guild competition, parasitoids and changes in habitat quality. We suggest that this strategy may also be exhibited by other species of Mediterranean lycaenids., Rafael Obregón, Juan Fernández Haeger, Diego Jordano., and Obsahuje bibliografii
We investigate the control of dynamical networks for the case of nodes, that although different, can be make passive by feedback. The so-called V-stability characterization allows for a simple set of stabilization conditions even in the case of nonidentical nodes. This is due to the fact that under V-stability characterization the dynamical difference between node of a network reduces to their different passivity degrees, that is, a measure of the required feedback gain necessary to make the node stable at a desired solution. We propose a pinning control strategy that extends this approach to solve the tracking problem, furthermore using an adaptive controller approach we provide a methodology to impose a common reference trajectory to a network of different nodes by pinning only a few of them to the desired solution. We illustrate our results with numerical simulation of well-known benchmark systems.
A method based on the adaptive-network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) is presented for computing the narrow aperture dimension of the pyramidal horn. Eight optimization algorithms, least-squares, hybrid learning, Nelder-Mead, genetic, differential evolution, particle swarm, simulated annealing, and clonal selection, are used to optimally determine the design parameters of the ANFIS. The narrow aperture dimension computed by using the ANFIS is used in the optimum gain pyramidal horn design. The computed gains of the designed pyramidal horns are in a very good agreement with the desired gains. When the performances of ANFIS models are compared with each other, the best result is obtained from the ANFIS model trained by the least-squares algorithm.
Adaptavní optické systémy se vyznačují schopností měnit své optické vlastnosti na požádání a v reálném čase. V tomto příspěvku jsou diskutovány základní prvky adaptivních optických systémů využívaných v astronomii ke kompenzaci vlivu atmosféry na zobrazení velkých pozemských teleskopů., Adaptive optical systems are those whose optical responses can be adjusted on demand, in real time. Here we discuss the basics of adaptive optical systems utilised in astronomy for compensation of aberrations due to atmospheric turbulence, which seriously impairs the performance of uncorrected large ground-based telescopes., Jaroslav Řeháček, Bohumil Stoklasa., and Obsahuje seznam literatury
Cíl: Cílem této studie je poskytnout orientační normy k Addenbrookskému kognitivnímu testu (ACE‑<span class=""></span>R) a jeho jednotlivým kognitivním doménám pro českou populaci. Soubor a metodika: Do studie bylo zařazeno 143 osob (89 žen a 54 mužů) ve věku 55–<span class=""></span>89 let. Subjekty byly zástupci zdravé populace, bez onemocnění mozku, smyslové poruchy a závažného psychiatrického onemocnění, s MMSE nad 27 bodů. Osoby byly podrobeny detailnímu anamnestickému rozhovoru pro zjištění případných onemocnění mozku v minulosti a pro zjištění míry soběstačnosti v běžných denních činnostech. Osoby s poškozením mozku v anamnéze či porušenou soběstačností v běžných denních činnostech nebyly do studie zařazeny, stejně jako osoby s MMSE nižším než 27 bodů. Srovnání hodnot ACE‑<span class=""></span>R a jeho složek u mužů a žen bylo provedeno pomocí Mannova‑<span class=""></span>Whitneyova testu a srovnání hodnot u čtyř skupin daných věkem a vzděláním pomocí Kruskalova‑<span class=""></span>Wallisova testu. Výsledné p‑<span class=""></span>hodnoty byly korigovány na mnohonásobné testování užitím Bonferroniho korekce. Hraniční skóry byly vytvořeny na úrovni 2. a 7. percentilu. Výsledky: Byla prokázána negativní korelace s věkem (p < 0,001; r = –<span class=""></span>0,43) a pozitivní korelace s proměnnou vzdělání na celkový výsledek v testu (p < 0,001; r = 0,41) i v dosažených výsledcích některých jednotlivých kognitivních domén. Vliv pohlaví nebyl statistický prokázán. Hraniční skór pro všechny subjekty ve věku 55–<span class=""></span>89 na úrovni 2. percentilu je 74 bodů pro celkový skór v Addenbrookském kognitivním testu a 79 bodů na úrovni 7. percentilu. Závěr: Studie poskytuje orientační normy pro českou populaci pro Addenbrookský kognitivní test a nabízí bázi pro vytvoření kvalitních norem za předpokladu navýšení počtu subjektů., Aim: The aim of this study was to provide benchmark normal values for Addenbrooke’s cognitive examination (ACE-R) and its domains for the Czech population. Methods: The study included 143 healthy subjects (89 women and 54 men) aged 55–89 years, without brain injury, neurodegenerative disease, severe hearing or visual impairment and without a psychiatric disease, with MMSE above 27 points. Participants were interviewed in detail to ascertain any previous brain injury history and to determine the level of self-sufficiency in daily living activities. Individuals with a history of brain injury or impaired self-sufficiency were excluded from the study. ACE-R values and values for its domains in men and women were compared with Mann-Whitney test and values for the four age and education groups were compared using the Kruskal-Wallis test. P-values were corrected for multiple testing using Bonferroni correction. Results: Cut-off scores were set at 2nd and 7th percentile. Negative correlation with age (p < 0.001, r = –0.43) and positive correlation with education (p < 0.001, r = 0.41) were statistically significant for the overall test performance and also for the performance in individual cognitive domains except for the Attention and orientation domain. The effect of sex was not statistically significant. The cut-off score for the total score in Addenbrooke’s cognitive examination for all subjects aged 55–89 years is 74 points at the 2nd percentile and 79 points at the 7th percentile. Conclusion: The study suggests cut-off scores for the Czech population of ACE-R and provides the basis for the development of Czech norms for this test. Key words: Addenbrooke’s cognitive examination – normal values – cognitive deficit <span class="">The authors declare they have no potential conflicts of interest concerning drugs, products, </span>or services used in the study. The Editorial Board declares that the manu<span class="">script met the ICMJE “uniform requirements” </span>for biomedical papers., and D. Beránková, P. Krulová, M. Mračková, I. Eliášová, M. Košťálová, E. Janoušová, I. Stehnová, M. Bar, P. Ressner, P. Nilius, M. Tomagová, I. Rektorová
After sigmoid activation function is replaced with piecewise linear activation function, the adding decaying self-feedback continuous Hopfield neural network (ADSCHNN) searching space changes to hyper-cube space, i.e. the simplified ADSCHNN is obtained. Then, convergence analysis is given for the simplified ADSCHNN in hyper-cube space. It is proved through convergence analysis that the ADSCHNN outperforms the continuous Hopfield neural network (CHNN), when they are applied to solve optimization problem. It is also proved that when extra self-feedback is negative, the ADSCHNN is more effective than the extra self-feedback is positive, when the ADSCHNN is applied to solve TSP.
To investigate the effect of glutamine-enriched total parenteral nutrition (TPM) on the protein synthesis and morphology of jejunal mucosa in non-hypercatabolic stress, sixty-two male Sprague-Dawley rats were subjected to surgical stress by femoral fracture. The rats were divided into 3 groups and received TPM for 8 days. One group received a standard amino acid solution without glutamine, the second group a standard solution enriched with glycine and glutamic acid, and the third group a standard solution enriched with glycyl-glutamine. All regimens were isocaloric and isonitrogenous-nitrogen (2.2 g/kg.day), glucose (150 Kcal/kg.day), and lipids (150 Kcal/kg.day). There were no statistically significant differences in jejunal mucosal thickness, DMA content, protein content, fractional synthesis rate or absolute protein synthesis among the groups after eight days of parenteral nutrition. In conclusion, the addition of glutamine to TPM did not influence either protein metabolism or morphology of the jejunal mucosa in non-hypercatabolic surgical stress.
In a case-cohort design, covariate histories are measured only on cases and a subcohort that is randomly selected from the entire cohort. This design has been widely used in large epidemiologic studies, especially when the exposures of interest are expensive to assemble for all the subjects. In this paper, we propose statistical procedures for analyzing case-cohort sampled current status data under the additive hazards model. Asymptotical properties of the proposed estimator are described and we suggest a resampling method to estimate the variances. Simulation studies show that the proposed method works well for finite sample sizes, and one data set is analyzed for illustrative purposes.