This article presents a comparative analysis of three Late Roman sites located at the northern outskirts of the Kharga Oasis in Egypt's Western Desert: Umm al-Dabadib, Ayn al-Labakha, and the Gib/Sumayra Complex. These were part of the district of the Oasis Magna, which included the oases of Dakhla and Kharga. An analysis of their layout, including both shape and extent, is followed by an evaluation of their absolute and relative positions. These data are then compared to the administrative and historical contexts within which the three sites flourished. Both administrative and economic aspects are considered, as well as the presence of the army. The complex picture that emerges suggests that these three sites played several roles at the same time and were part of a large-scale strategic design that encompassed not only the Kharga Oasis but the entire Western Desert.

The literature lacks methodologies to make supply chains of composite materials circular. The proposed approach aims to transform scraps and off-specification products into secondary raw materials. Its novelty is to find innovative applications, instead of re-introducing scraps in the loop they come from. The case study investigates how scraps can be re-worked and re-used as raw material. First, the processes are analyzed; some components are then re-designed to be made of the discarded scraps (composites material). Results reveal that the symbiosis can ensure green, high performing products.

Termite mounds have been poorly studied in tropical rainforest in contrast to those of savannahs where they create fertility hotspots and influence the spatial pattern of vegetation. An inventory of termite mounds and of 15 tree species with a diameter at breast height ≥ 10 cm was carried out in two 800-ha blocks, in two rainforest sites located in northern Congo. We used inhomogeneous and intertype K functions to study the spatial pattern of termite mounds and of tree species around mounds, respectively. We found that mounds in Loundoungou were over-dispersed within a radius of less than 70 m, while those in Mokabi were randomly spaced. Tree species within a 20-m radius around a mound were aggregated towards the mound, e.g. Entandrophragma cylindricum, randomly distributed, or even repulsed by the mound. The specific responses also differed in the two sites. These results suggest that (i) the mounds in Loundoungou were created by savannah termite species 3,000-2,000 years BP during the Late Holocene Rainforest Crisis and (ii) the mounds in Mokabi are characteristic of forest mounds. The impact of termite mounds on the spatial pattern of tree species is thus site-dependent, and these differences might be due to species seed dispersal strategies and to soil calcium concentrations.

Diabrotica speciosa is an important pest of several crops in South America, including soybeans. Adults cause severe defoliation in soybean plants, and damage is significant when cotyledons are attacked. This study evaluated feeding non-preference to D. speciosa adults using 10 soybean genotypes, testing (i) 15-day-old whole plants and (ii) leaf disks of 60-day-old plants, through assessments of soybean attractiveness and leaf area consumed (LAC). Foliar contents of flavonoids and nutrients, and leaf trichome density were quantified for potential correlations with soybean resistance to adult of D. speciosa. In the whole young-plant experiment, under free-choice conditions, the lowest LAC was observed in IAC 100 and PI 227687. In no-choice, PI 227687 and IGRA RA 626 RR showed lower LAC than the other genotypes. In the leaf disk test, in free-choice, the genotypes IAC 100, PI 274454, PI 227687, DM 339, and BR 16 were the least preferred by adult of D. speciosa. In no-choice, PI 274454 was one of the least preferred, similarly to IGRA RA 626 RR, Dowling, and PI 227687. In the whole plant experiment, a high rutin content and low amounts of zinc, calcium, sulfur and manganese were associated with less consumption of D. speciosa on leaves of resistant genotypes. In contrast, in the leaf disk test there was a significant influence of trichomes in soybean resistance to the pest. In conclusion, the PI lines herein assessed are also promising sources for developing cultivars resistant to D. speciosa.

This article investigates Classic Maya understandings of two particular animal species: the (gray) fox and the armadillo. We use these species as a point of entry into Classic Maya categorizations of the non-human animal world, examining the salient biological and physical characteristics of those animals that Classic-period artists and scribes chose to highlight. Rather than accepting the creatures depicted on painted pottery or referenced in hieroglyphic texts as generalized examples of particular kinds (i.e., simply “a fox” or “an armadillo”), however, we show how the evidence from ancient art, historical accounts, and contemporary ethnography points to an emphasis on specific beings, often named individuals, who engage in particular behaviors and relate to other entities (both human and non-human) in distinctive ways. Although this article focuses exclusively on the fox and the armadillo, those species serve as examples through which we consider the limitations of applying Western taxonomic categories to other systems of knowledge, as well as the possibilities for how we might catch glimpses of radically different ways of organizing the world.

Circulating branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), a subgroup of the nine essential amino acids, have been associated to pancreatic cancer risk. The aim of this study is to estimate the relation between BCAA intake from diet and pancreatic cancer risk.

We analysed data from a multicentric Italian case-control study, including 326 pancreatic cancer cases and 652 controls, matched to cases by study centre, sex and age. A validated food-frequency questionnaire was used to collect the participants’ usual diet before cancer diagnosis (or hospital admission for controls) and to compute dietary intakes of various nutrients, including BCAAs. Odds ratios (ORs) and corresponding confidence intervals (CIs) were computed through logistic regression models conditioned on the matching variables and adjusted for major confounding factors, including total energy intake.

We found a positive association between the BCAA intake and pancreatic cancer risk (OR for the third quartile=1.88, 95% CI=1.08-3.26; OR for the fourth quartile =2.17, 95% CI=1.17-4.06), with a significant trend in risk. The association persisted after excluding subjects with diabetes and family history of pancreatic cancer, and across strata of selected covariates.

These data support and quantify the association between dietary BCAAs and pancreatic cancer, previously suggested by studies on circulating BCAAs.

Let $(A,\mathfrak m)$ be an excellent two-dimensional normal local domain. In this paper, we study the elliptic and the strongly elliptic ideals of A with the aim to characterize elliptic and strongly elliptic singularities, according to the definitions given by Wagreich and Yau. In analogy with the rational singularities, in the main result, we characterize a strongly elliptic singularity in terms of the normal Hilbert coefficients of the integrally closed $\mathfrak m$ -primary ideals of A. Unlike $p_g$ -ideals, elliptic ideals and strongly elliptic ideals are not necessarily normal and necessary, and sufficient conditions for being normal are given. In the last section, we discuss the existence (and the effective construction) of strongly elliptic ideals in any two-dimensional normal local ring.

The practices adopted in dairy farms can positively or negatively affect the perception of consumers. To meet consumer expectations and improve the productivity of dairy farms, a welfare certification system has recently been initiated in Brazil. In this research communication we describe the perceptions of Brazilian consumers and farmers regarding the implementation of welfare certification systems and the most common practices that affect animal welfare on dairy farms. For this purpose, two semi-structured questionnaires were used: one applied to 409 consumers and the other to 158 dairy farmers. The results demonstrate that consumers are concerned with the adoption of welfare practices in animal husbandry at dairy farms, mainly on topics related to movement restriction and cow-calf separation. Thus, the majority of consumers state that they are willing to pay more for welfare-certified dairy products. In addition, most dairy farmers are interested in adopting a welfare certification system, especially if it could add value to the raw milk sold to industries. Veterinarians and animal scientists are important for disseminating animal welfare recommendations, and the consequences of its improper adoption need to be emphasized. Finally, dairy farms need improvements regarding environmental hygiene, thermal conditions, animal husbandry, health, and milking processes. In conclusion, consumers and farmers are interested in welfare systems and their certification, and there is a need for stakeholders to make welfare certification a reality in the Brazilian dairy supply chain.

Formal reasoning about finite sets and cardinality is important for many applications, including software verification, where very often one needs to reason about the size of a given data structure. The Constraint Logic Programming tool $$\{ log\} $$ provides a decision procedure for deciding the satisfiability of formulas involving very general forms of finite sets, although it does not provide cardinality constraints. In this paper we adapt and integrate a decision procedure for a theory of finite sets with cardinality into $$\{ log\} $$ . The proposed solver is proved to be a decision procedure for its formulas. Besides, the new CLP instance is implemented as part of the $$\{ log\} $$ tool. In turn, the implementation uses Howe and King’s Prolog SAT solver and Prolog’s CLP(Q) library, as an integer linear programming solver. The empirical evaluation of this implementation based on +250 real verification conditions shows that it can be useful in practice.

Under consideration in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP)

We address the question of identifying the long-term (secular) stability regions in the semi-major axis-eccentricity projected phase space of the Sun-Jupiter planar circular restricted three-body problem in the domains i) below the curve of apsis equal to the planet’s orbital radius (ensuring protection from collisions) and ii) above that curve. This last domain contains several Jupiter’s crossing trajectories. We discuss the structure of the numerical stability map in the (a,e) plane in relation to manifold dynamics. We also present a closed-form perturbation theory for particles with non-crossing highly eccentric trajectories exterior to the planet’s trajectory. Starting with a multipole expansion of the barycentric Hamiltonian, our method carries out a sequence of normalizations by Lie series in closed-form and without relegation. We discuss the applicability of the method as a criterion for estimating the boundary of the domain of regular motion.

Spatial units typically vary over many of their characteristics, introducing potential unobserved heterogeneity which invalidates commonly used homoskedasticity conditions. In the presence of unobserved heteroskedasticity, methods based on the quasi-likelihood function generally produce inconsistent estimates of both the spatial parameter and the coefficients of the exogenous regressors. A robust generalized method of moments estimator as well as a modified likelihood method have been proposed in the literature to address this issue. The present paper constructs an alternative indirect inference (II) approach which relies on a simple ordinary least squares procedure as its starting point. Heteroskedasticity is accommodated by utilizing a new version of continuous updating that is applied within the II procedure to take account of the parameterization of the variance–covariance matrix of the disturbances. Finite-sample performance of the new estimator is assessed in a Monte Carlo study. The approach is implemented in an empirical application to house price data in the Boston area, where it is found that spatial effects in house price determination are much more significant under robustification to heterogeneity in the equation errors.