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Based on the analysis of the current situation in the domestic food market and the assessment of the current regulatory framework, the article substantiates the need for a transition to a new model of planning and managing the country’s food security, which can be conventionally called the «big challenges» model. Ensuring food security is an ongoing process characterized by a periodic change in tactical tasks and guidelines, mechanisms for their solution against the background of a growing lack of information and a constantly changing external environment. We formulated the main principles of the new model: a combination of strategic planning and operational-tactical management of the development of the domestic food market, the integration of long-term structural measures to increase the income of the Russian population with the mechanisms of domestic food aid, the formation of a risk management system, including price risks and risks arising from export products of the agro-industrial complex, scenario forecasting. The existing regulatory framework in the field of strategic planning and management does not imply the implementation of such a model, and the methods and instruments of state policy used do not make it possible to implement its basic principles in practice. The paper formulates the main directions and mechanisms for adjusting the new model in relation to the tasks of ensuring the food security of the Russian population.

In this paper the problem of synchronization for delayed chaotic systems is considered based on aperiodic intermittent control. First, delayed chaotic systems are proposed via aperiodic adaptive intermittent control. Next, to cut down the control gain, a new generalized intermittent control and its adaptive strategy is introduced. Then, by constructing a piecewise Lyapunov auxiliary function and making use of piecewise analysis technique, some effective and novel criteria are obtained to ensure the global synchronization of delayed chaotic systems by means of the designed control protocols. At the end, two examples with numerical simulations are provided to verify the effectiveness of the theoretical results proposed scheme.

Jiali Wang,1,2 Yixuan Zhang,1,2 Xiaoquan Liu,1,2 Haochen Liu1,2 1School of Pharmacy, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, 210009, People’s Republic of China; 2Center of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, 210009, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Xiaoquan Liu; Haochen Liu Email lxq@cpu.edu.cn; haochenliu@cpu.edu.cnObjective: The treatment plans designed with the guidance of the mathematical model and adaptive strategy can trap tumor subpopulations in a periodic and controllable loop. But this process requires detailed information about the tumor system, which is difficult to obtain. Therefore, we wondered whether the fixed periodic treatment plans designed with the typical values of population parameters could be applied to a similar tumor system without complete information.Methods: A binary tumor system constructed by an EGFR-mutant and a KRAS-mutant cell line was used to explore the applicability of the fixed periodic treatment plans. The dynamics of this system were described by combining the Lotka-Volterra model with the framework of the nonlinear mixed-effects model. The typical values of population parameters were used to design the plans, and the robust plans were screened through parameter variation. These screened plans were examined their applicability in animal experiments and simulations.Results: In animal experiments where system parameters vary from − 30% to 30%, the “osimertinib administration, withdrawal, FK866 administration and withdrawal” plan can trap subpopulations of the system in periodic cycles. In simulation, when there was an unknown resistant subpopulation, the screened fixed periodic treatment plans can still delay the evolution of resistance. The median outcomes of screened plans were better than conventional sequential treatment in most cases. There was no significant difference between the outcomes of the screened plan with median stability and the optimal therapy. The evolutionary trajectories of these two plans were similar.Conclusion: According to the results, these fixed periodic plans should be tried in treatment even the information of the tumor system was incomplete.Keywords: adaptive strategy, osimertinib resistance, tumor evolution, fixed periodic treatment plans

The gravitational search algorithm is a global optimization algorithm that has the advantages of a swarm intelligence algorithm. Compared with traditional algorithms, the performance in terms of global search and convergence is relatively good, but the solution is not always accurate, and the algorithm has difficulty jumping out of locally optimal solutions. In view of these shortcomings, an improved gravitational search algorithm based on an adaptive strategy is proposed. The algorithm uses the adaptive strategy to improve the updating methods for the distance between particles, gravitational constant, and position in the gravitational search model. This strengthens the information interaction between particles in the group and improves the exploration and exploitation capacity of the algorithm. In this paper, 13 classical single-peak and multi-peak test functions were selected for simulation performance tests, and the CEC2017 benchmark function was used for a comparison test. The test results show that the improved gravitational search algorithm can address the tendency of the original algorithm to fall into local extrema and significantly improve both the solution accuracy and the ability to find the globally optimal solution.

Document scanning often suffers from skewing, which may seriously influence the efficiency of Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Therefore, it is necessary to correct the skewed document before document image information analysis. In this article, we propose a novel adaptive deskewing algorithm for document images, which mainly includes Skeleton Line Detection (SKLD), Piecewise Projection Profile (PPP), Morphological Clustering (MC), and the image classification method. The image type is determined firstly based on the image’s layout feature. Thus, adaptive correcting is applied to deskew the image according to its type. Our method maintains high accuracy on the Document Image Skew Estimation Contest (DISEC’2013) and PubLayNet datasets, which achieved 97.6% and 80.1% accuracy, respectively. Meanwhile, extensive experiments show the superiority of the proposed algorithm.

Owing to the different quantities and processing times of sub-lots, intermingling sub-lots with each other, instead of fixing the production sequence of sub-lots of a lot as in the existing studies, is a more practical approach to lot-streaming flow shops. Hence, a lot-streaming hybrid flow shop scheduling problem with consistent and intermingled sub-lots (LHFSP-CIS) was studied. A mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model was established, and a heuristic-based adaptive iterated greedy algorithm (HAIG) with three modifications was designed to solve the problem. Specifically, a two-layer encoding method was proposed to decouple the sub-lot-based connection. Two heuristics were embedded in the decoding process to reduce the manufacturing cycle. Based on this, a heuristic-based initialization is proposed to improve the performance of the initial solution; an adaptive local search with four specific neighborhoods and an adaptive strategy has been structured to improve the exploration and exploitation ability. Besides, an acceptance criterion of inferior solutions has been improved to promote global optimization ability. The experiment and the non-parametric Kruskal–Wallis test (p = 0) showed the significant advantages of HAIG in effectiveness and robustness compared with five state-of-the-art algorithms. An industrial case study verifies that intermingling sub-lots is an effective technique to enhance the utilization ratio of machines and shorten the manufacturing cycle.

The beetle antennae search (BAS) algorithm is a new meta-heuristic algorithm which has been shown to be very useful in many applications. However, the algorithm itself still has some problems, such as low precision and easy to fall into local optimum when solving complex problems, and excessive dependence on parameter settings. In this paper, an algorithm called beetle antennae search algorithm based on Lévy flights and adaptive strategy (LABAS) is proposed to solve these problems. The algorithm turns the beetle into a population and updates the population with elite individuals' information to improve the convergence rate and stability. At the same time, Lévy flights and scaling factor are introduced to enhance the algorithm's exploration ability. After that, the adaptive step size strategy is used to solve the problem of difficult parameter setting. Finally, the generalized opposition-based learning is applied to the initial population and elite individuals, which makes the algorithm achieve a certain balance between global exploration and local exploitation. The LABAS algorithm is compared with 6 other heuristic algorithms on 10 benchmark functions. And the simulation results show that the LABAS algorithm is superior to the other six algorithms in terms of solution accuracy, convergence rate and robustness.

The current problem field of modern education is revealed through the need to ensure the accessibility and quality of education and upbringing of children with different educational needs. Among them, children with special health needs should be identified as needing serious adaptation of all components of the educational system: goals and objectives, content, conditions, forms and methods, means of education. Monitoring of individual psychosocial development of students is considered by us as the most effective tool for quality control and timely correction of content and organization of educational process in conditions of inclusion. The article reveals the author’s approach, which considers the resources of interaction of school specialists as the basis for achieving such changes. The study presented in the article is aimed at studying the professional behavior of a teacher and psychologist at different stages of monitoring the individual psychosocial development of a student with special health needs. The types of professional behavior of a teacher and a psychologist during their interaction (“isolation”, “chaotic movement”, “forced interaction”, “purposeful interaction”, “real cooperation”) are distinguished. The need is justified and an adaptive lesson strategy is developed, which involves professionally valuable formats of interaction between a teacher and a psychologist at different stages of its design. Effective ways of overcoming meaning, operational and targeting barriers are defined on the basis of new dialogic formats of such interaction between specialists providing individualization of educational environment for students with different educational needs. The scale of the problem is determined, first of all, by the fact that the development of a scientific justification and the practical operationalization of the adapting lesson methods contributes to ensuring the inclusion of a student with special health needs in educational activities and increases its both academic and social success.

Mountain rangelands are critical resources for mobile pastoralists, and they provide benefits to humankind broadly. Yet mountain pastoral social–ecological systems (SESs) face challenges that affect both mountains and rangelands. Herders' traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) underpins their adaptive strategies and serves as a resource for future adaptation. This holistic case study of Ilemchane transhumant herders in Morocco's High Atlas Mountains applies a simple framework to explore how herders' biophysical TEK, practices, and institutions interrelate and how climate and social changes affect the SES. Using participant observation, interviews, and surveys, we find Ilemchane climate, plant, and ecological knowledge shape their practices and institutions, which in turn reinforce or alter TEK. Building on a recent synthesis of mountain SES, we identify a paradox of remoteness, wherein Ilemchane remoteness both maintains traditional transhumant culture and TEK and threatens it. Overcoming this paradox may require internal organization, collective action, and external support.

A coastal erosion risk assessment was framed as the basis for the intervention of coastal adaptation strategies under time-variant scenarios. The framework was devised to assess the influence of coastal erosion on coastal defense, the coastal inundation induced by the erosion-induced malfunction of defense, and risks using a downscaling analysis and the mechanism of the compound hazard interaction, which are innovative and practical for the application of coastal management in Taiwan. In addition, the vulnerable socio-economy was also taken into consideration in risk assessment. The adaptive strategy is proposed in terms of the risk origins and time-variance of risk forecasts, and the risk origins were assessed based on the Fuzzy Delphi Method and the analytic hierarchy process instead of subjective consideration. Within the erosion-induced hazard and risk assessments, this study considered erosion rates, decreases in defense elevation due to land subsidence, and population development in time-variant scenario analyses to estimate risk forecasts. Furthermore, a case study of the Yunlin coastal area was undertaken to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method. The presented results are informative for coastal hazard reduction and the promotion of the sustainable development of coastal zones.

International audience; Cyber-attacks have spread all over the world to steal information such as trade secrets, intellectual property and banking data. Facing the danger of the insecurity of saved data (personal, professional, official, etc.), keystroke dynamics was proposed as an interesting, non-intrusive, inexpensive, permanent and weakly constrained solution for users. Based on the typing rhythm of users, it improves logical access security. Nevertheless, it was demonstrated that such an authentication mechanism would need a larger number of samples to enroll the typing characteristics of users. Moreover, these registered characteristics generally undergo aging effects after a time span. Different solutions have been suggested to remedy these variability problems, including template adaptation. In this paper, we propose a double serial adaptation strategy that considers a single-capture-based enrollment process. When using the authentication system, the template of users and the decision/adaptation thresholds are updated. Experimental results on three public keystroke dynamics datasets show the benefits of the proposed method.

Aim:Horticulture has been recognized as the main pathway of plant invasions worldwide. The selection of ornamental garden plants is not random, and certain plant characteristics related to adaptive plant strategies are preferred by horticulture and may promote invasion. We examined the direct and indirect interactions between horticultural use, species adaptive strategies (competitive (C), stress‐tolerant (S), and ruderal (R)), native range size and naturalization success.Location:Global.Time period:From 1492 to the present.Major taxa studied:Vascular plants.Methods:We compiled a dataset of 3,794 plant species including their C‐, S‐ and Rscores, native range size, cultivation in botanic and domestic gardens and whether the species is naturalized in at least one region globally (naturalization incidence). For the 1,711 naturalized species, we also calculated naturalization extent, that is, the number of regions where the species has naturalized. We used phylogenetic path analysis to disentangle the direct and indirect effects of all variables on both naturalization incidence and extent, and the relationships between variables.Results:Approximately 87 and 94% of the 1,711 naturalized species were cultivated in botanic or domestic gardens, respectively, compared to c. 55 and 50% of the 2,083 non‐naturalized species, respectively. We found a cascading structure among the examined variables: (a) species exhibiting C‐ or R‐selected strategies and having large native ranges tended to be cultivated in domestic and botanic gardens, became naturalized outside their native ranges and occupied more regions in their naturalized ranges; (b) C‐, S‐ and R‐scores also had indirect effects on naturalization success, which were mediated by horticultural use and native range size; and (c) cultivation in domestic gardens was the strongest factor examined that could explain plant species’ naturalization success.Main conclusions:We show that horticulture is not only the major introduction pathway of alien plants, but also that in particular domestic gardens select species predisposed to invade and naturalize. published

Background Total DNA (intracellular, iDNA and extracellular, eDNA) from ancient permafrost records the mixed genetic repository of the past and present microbial populations through geological time. Given the exceptional preservation of eDNA under perennial frozen conditions, typical metagenomic sequencing of total DNA precludes the discrimination between fossil and living microorganisms in ancient cryogenic environments. DNA repair protocols were combined with high throughput sequencing (HTS) of separate iDNA and eDNA fraction to reconstruct metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) from ancient microbial DNA entrapped in Siberian coastal permafrost. Results Despite the severe DNA damage in ancient permafrost, the coupling of DNA repair and HTS resulted in a total of 52 MAGs from sediments across a chronosequence (26–120 kyr). These MAGs were compared with those derived from the same samples but without utilizing DNA repair protocols. The MAGs from the youngest stratum showed minimal DNA damage and thus likely originated from viable, active microbial species. Many MAGs from the older and deeper sediment appear related to past aerobic microbial populations that had died upon freezing. MAGs from anaerobic lineages, including Asgard archaea, however exhibited minimal DNA damage and likely represent extant living microorganisms that have become adapted to the cryogenic and anoxic environments. The integration of aspartic acid racemization modeling and metaproteomics further constrained the metabolic status of the living microbial populations. Collectively, combining DNA repair protocols with HTS unveiled the adaptive strategies of microbes to long-term survivability in ancient permafrost. Conclusions Our results indicated that coupling of DNA repair protocols with simultaneous sequencing of iDNA and eDNA fractions enabled the assembly of MAGs from past and living microorganisms in ancient permafrost. The genomic reconstruction from the past and extant microbial populations expanded our understanding about the microbial successions and biogeochemical alterations from the past paleoenvironment to the present-day frozen state. Furthermore, we provided genomic insights into long-term survival mechanisms of microorganisms under cryogenic conditions through geological time. The combined strategies in this study can be extrapolated to examine other ancient non-permafrost environments and constrain the search for past and extant extraterrestrial life in permafrost and ice deposits on Mars.

Small-scale fishers are always expected to adapt to fishing activities that cannot be conducted all year round due to weather and fishing season. This condition, especially when it is not the fish season, makes fishers face a problem. Notwithstanding, fishermen households need to develop an adequate adaptation strategy to solve the problem of fulfilling their needs, known as coping strategies. This study aims to analyze fishermen households' coping strategies in facing the fishing season and non-fish season by using fishermen's family resources and two types of internal and external family coping strategies. The data were gathered from approximately 150 small-scale fishing households using simple random sampling. The results indicate the fishers do fishing activities in three batch: peak season (68%), mild season (20%), and off-season (12%). The use of resources for fishermen households' coping strategy is carried out by diversifying the sources of household income. Some economic activities include cultivating forest land belonging to the forest department, marine tour guides, livestock, and his wife. This study also confirm that all households use internal family coping strategies with humor indicator as the highest percentage. Accordingly, the households also adopt the external family coping strategy to deal with the existing situation. This strategy follows the local community's characteristics and culture who are friendly and open and based on religion. The household coping strategy strengthening model is generated through the synergy of formal institutional roles in society and government institutions as policymakers.

Plants have developed a suite of traits to survive the anaerobic and anoxic soil conditions in wetlands. Previous studies on wetland plant adaptive traits have focused mainly on physiological aspects under experimental conditions, or compared the trait expression of the local species pool. Thus, a comprehensive analysis of potential factors driving wetland plant adaptive traits under natural environmental conditions is still missing. In this study, we analysed three important wetland adaptive traits, that is root porosity, root/shoot ratio and underwater photosynthetic rate, to explore driving factors using a newly compiled dataset of wetland plants. Based on 21 studies at 38 sites across different biomes, we found that root porosity was affected by an interaction of temperature and hydrological regime; root:shoot ratio was affected by temperature, precipitation and habitat type; and underwater photosynthetic rate was affected by precipitation and life‐form. This suggests that a variety of driving mechanisms affect the expression of different adaptive traits. The quantitative relationships we observed between the adaptive traits and their driving factors will be a useful reference for future global methane and denitrification modelling studies. Our results also stress that besides the traditionally emphasized hydrological driving factors, other factors at several spatial scales should also be taken into consideration in the context of future functional wetland ecology. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

The red palm weevil (RPW), Rhynchophorus ferrugineus, is one of the worst palm pests worldwide. In this work, we studied the physiological basis underlying its adaptive strategy against low temperatures. Specifically, we analyzed the main low-molecular-weight biochemical substances acting as possible endogenous cryoprotectants, as well as their efficiency in reducing cold injury by preserving K+/Na+ homeostasis. Wild pre-pupae were cold-treated (5.0 ± 0.5 °C) or non-treated (23 ± 1 °C) for 7 days. We then determined the levels of: (a) glucose, trehalose and glycerol, spectrophotometrically, (b) amino acids, by liquid chromatography and (c) potassium and sodium, by inductively coupled plasma mass-spectrometry. Cold-treated larvae increased their potassium level, suggesting some degree of chill injury. However, part of the cold-exposed animals was able to develop an efficient overall cryoprotective response which primarily includes glucose, as well as glycerol and several amino acids (mainly alanine). Our study shows for the first time that RPW is capable of deploying effective physiological mechanisms for a rapid response to cold, which could be relevant to improving predictive models of geographic distribution, especially in a context of climate change. The knowledge of the specific molecules involved would allow future studies to try to prevent its adaptive strategy, either by natural or chemical methods.

Climate-related extremes such as droughts have led to significant impacts on some watersheds. To assess watershed health and develop effective management plans, information about the function and structure of the watersheds in the context of their climatic response, especially to take into account rainfall anomalies and climate change adaptation, is needed. Integration of climatic variables with reliability, resilience and vulnerability (RRV) indicators, is a novel approach for generating this information. This study investigated the behavior of RRV indicators with respect to rainfall variability and drought patterns for three watersheds governed by different climates. Reliability was defined as the probability of a watershed to be in the range of satisfactory Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) values. Resilience was indicated as the speed of recovery from an unsatisfactory condition. Vulnerability was defined as a function of the exposure of a watershed to climate change and variation using the SPI. The study areas were the Foyle Watershed in Northern Ireland (temperate oceanic, Cfb), the Xarrama Watershed in Portugal (Mediterranean hot summer, Csa) and the Shazand Watershed in Iran (moderate to cold semi-arid (Bsk). Based on the SPI pattern of each watershed, the SPI of −0.1 for the Foyle and Xarrama watersheds and +0.1 for the Shazand Watershed was selected as the drought threshold. The drought based RRV index was subsequently calculated from long-term (1981–2012) RRV indicators, resulting in means of 0.52 ± 0.25, 0.53 ± 0.21 and 0.30 ± 0.18 for the three watersheds, respectively. These means reflect the status of the watersheds in terms of climatic conditions, which was moderate dry (0.41–0.60) for the Foyle and Xarrama watersheds and dry (0.21–0.40) for the Shazand Watershed. The temporal trend of the drought based RRV index was found to be non-significantly increasing (P-value >0.52) for the Foyle and Xarrama watersheds and non-significantly decreasing for the Shazand Watershed (P-value >0.48). The vulnerability indicator and drought based RRV index were significantly (p-value = 0.00) affected by the climatological gradient. The results of the conceptual framework linked to statistical trends can provide researchers, policy makers, and land managers a more comprehensive base to assess variability of watershed health and design drought management plans.

In this article, we propose Simulated Annealing (SA) heuristic to solve Unequal Area Dynamic Facility Layout Problem (FBS) with Flexible Bay Structure (UA-DFLPs with FBS). The UA-DFLP with FBS is the problem of determining the facilities dimension and their location coordinates with flexible bays formation in the layout for various periods of the planning horizon. The UA-DFLP with FBS is more constrained than general UA-DFLP and it is an NP-complete problem. The proposed SA is tested with the available UA-DFLPs instances in the literature. The proposed SA heuristic has given new best solution or the same solution for FBS based problems as compared with the best-known reported in the UA-DFLPs with FBS literature. The proposed SA heuristic is also tested on standard UA-DFLPs used in non-FBS approaches. The SA heuristic solution is not significantly different from the best solution reported in the literature for non-FBS approaches. Equal area DFLP instances are also solved with the proposed SA and the results obtained are promising with the solutions reported in the literature. Hence the results obtained indicate that the proposed SA for UA-DFLP with FBS is effective and versatile for both equal and unequal area dynamic facility layout problems. The computational efficiency of the proposed SA heuristic is very much competitive as compared to other meta-heuristics computational timings reported in the literature.

International audience; The attacks considered for keystroke dynamics study especially adaptive strategies have commonly treated impersonation attempts known as zero-effort attacks. These attacks are generally the acquisition of other users of the same database while typing the same password without intending to impersonate the genuine user account. To deal with more realistic scenarios, we are interested in this paper to study the robustness of an adaptive strategy against four types of imposter attacks: zero-effort, spoof, playback and synthetic applied to the WEBGREYC database. Experimental results show that 1) playback and synthetic attacks are the most dangerous and increase the EER rates compared to the other attacks;2) we also find that the impact of these attacks is more pronounced when the percentages of imposter samples are greater than those of genuine ones;3) the spoof attacks achieve alarmingly higher FMR, FNMR, and EER rates compared to zero-effort impostor attacks; 4) FMR, FNMR, and EER are higher when the percentage of attacks increases; 5) the attacks belonging to the same user are more dangerous than those of different users in particular when the percentage of the attacks increases. In light of our results, we point out that the traditional attacks considered in research on keystroke-based authentication must evolve according to the evolution of the attacks of nowadays password-based applications.

Sexual dimorphism in vegetative and reproductive traits is associated with contrasting strategies of males and females for response to varied environmental conditions, causing sex-specific reproduction success and consequently long-distance dispersal and colonization. Aquatic plants usually exhibit rich phenotypic plasticity and great diversity in reproductive systems, but the influence of aquatic conditions on the plasticity of sexual dimorphism has received less attention. Using a common garden experiment with dioecious submerged plant Vallisneria natans grown at various water depths simulating different light availability, we measured variations in 20 traits for females and 19 traits for males (total = 540 plants from 30 seed families) including morphology, reproductive traits and photosynthesis. We investigated sex-specific plastic responses and variation of sexual dimorphism in response to water depth change. Females displayed much greater leaf length, vegetative biomass and resource allocation to reproduction than males at all depths, whereas spathe number and gamete production per spathe displayed reverse pattern. Besides most traits in each sex (16 in female and 12 in male) showing striking phenotypic plasticity, the degree of sexual dimorphism increased significantly for total biomass and reproductive investment, but decreased for leaf length, spathe number and flowering ramet percentage in low light and deep water. Females varied more than males in leaf length, total biomass, reproductive investment, length and biomass of reproductive organs and rate of photosynthesis in response to decreased underwater light availability, suggesting that female has greater plasticity than male. These findings illustrated considerable plasticity in the degree of sexual dimorphism in a variety of vegetative and reproductive traits across different environments driven by the contrasting reproductive functions of the sexes in relation to pollen and seed dispersal. Females of V. natans responded more plastically than males to low light conditions resulted from water depth variation in either aboveground vegetative growth or reproduction. This study provides novel insight into adaptive strategies of submerged dioecious macrophytes to survive and increase fitness in freshwater habitats.

Sexual dimorphism in vegetative and reproductive traits is associated with contrasting strategies of males and females for response to varied environmental conditions, causing sex-specific reproduction success and consequently long-distance dispersal and colonization. Aquatic plants usually exhibit rich phenotypic plasticity and great diversity in reproductive systems, but the influence of aquatic conditions on the plasticity of sexual dimorphism has received less attention. Using a common garden experiment with dioecious submerged plant Vallisneria natans grown at various water depths simulating different light availability, we measured variations in 20 traits for females and 19 traits for males (total = 540 plants from 30 seed families) including morphology, reproductive traits and photosynthesis. We investigated sex-specific plastic responses and variation of sexual dimorphism in response to water depth change. Females displayed much greater leaf length, vegetative biomass and resource allocation to reproduction than males at all depths, whereas spathe number and gamete production per spathe displayed reverse pattern. Besides most traits in each sex (16 in female and 12 in male) showing striking phenotypic plasticity, the degree of sexual dimorphism increased significantly for total biomass and reproductive investment, but decreased for leaf length, spathe number and flowering ramet percentage in low light and deep water. Females varied more than males in leaf length, total biomass, reproductive investment, length and biomass of reproductive organs and rate of photosynthesis in response to decreased underwater light availability, suggesting that female has greater plasticity than male. These findings illustrated considerable plasticity in the degree of sexual dimorphism in a variety of vegetative and reproductive traits across different environments driven by the contrasting reproductive functions of the sexes in relation to pollen and seed dispersal. Females of V. natans responded more plastically than males to low light conditions resulted from water depth variation in either aboveground vegetative growth or reproduction. This study provides novel insight into adaptive strategies of submerged dioecious macrophytes to survive and increase fitness in freshwater habitats.

Early Neolithic lifeways in North China, which are marked by a low-level food production economy, population aggregation, and sedentism, thrived just after the period of a climatic cooling event at 8.2 ka. Instead of simply regarding this climate fluctuation as a cause for the significant socio-economic transition, this paper attempts to explore the interplay between people’s choices of coping strategies with climate change as a perspective to learn how people respond to this climate fluctuation and how such responses generated the interlocked socio-economic transitions. This analysis indicates that pre-existing changes in human adaptive behaviors prior to the cooling events were sufficient to enable people in certain areas to apply the intensification of food procurement in circumscribed territories as a strategy to cope with the climate fluctuations of the 8.2 ka BP cooling event. The application of such a coping strategy facilitated the economic and sociopolitical transition into Neolithic lifeways and led to the flourishing development of Neolithic cultures after 8 ka BP in North China.

International audience; Regarding the fact that individuals have different interactions with biometric authentication systems, several techniques have been developed in the literature to model different users categories. Doddington Zoo is a concept of categorizing users behaviors into animal groups to reflect their characteristics with respect to biometric systems. This concept was illustrated for different biometric modalities including keystroke dynamics. The present study extends this biometric classification, by proposing a novel adaptive strategy based on the Doddinghton Zoo for user recognition with keystroke dynamics. The obtained results demonstrate competitive performances on significant keystroke dynamics datasets.

In this paper, the problem of exponential lag synchronization for a class of neural networks with mixed delays including discrete and distributed delays is investigated via adaptive intermittent control. Based on piecewise analytic method, some sufficient conditions for globally exponential lag synchronization are established through constructing a piecewise continuous auxiliary function. It is noted that both the control periods and the control widths in our adaptive intermittent control strategy are allowed to be nonidentical, which extends the scope of application of periodically intermittent control with fixed both control period and control width employed widely in previous works. Moreover, it is shown that the derived globally exponential lag synchronization criteria are related to the control rates rather than the control periods, which facilitates the choice of the control periods for practical problems. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the correctness of the obtained theoretical results.

Root morphology and root system architecture of young Posidonia oceanica plants established on two contrasting substrate types, sand and rock, were examined to provide insights into the strategy of adaptation of seagrasses to their environment. After germination, seedlings were planted on sandy patches and on rock within the same area, and survived plants were collected five years later for measurements of the size of the entire root complex and analysis of individual morphological and architectural root traits. Collected plants exhibited up to nine highly intermingled root systems and approx. 2.5 m of total root length. Maximum horizontal extension, total biomass and total length of roots were not significantly affected by substrate. However, on sand roots grew vertically reaching up to 13 cm, while on rock they extended more horizontally and did not penetrate deeper than 5–7 cm leading to the formation of a shallow, densely packed root complex. On rock, the number and the length of second-order laterals on an individual root system were reduced and the topological index higher than on sand (0.8 vs. 0.7) reflecting a more simple (herringbone) branching pattern. Again, root diameter was greater than on sand. The results suggest that P. oceanica can adjust root traits early during plant development according to substrate typology to maximize anchorage and substrate exploration efficiency. This plasticity enables the species to establish and persist also on rocky bottoms which generally prevent establishment of the majority of seagrasses.

The treatment period over which radiation therapy is administered extends over several weeks. Since tumor shrinkage in response to radiation therapy and weight loss due to radiation-induced mucositis may impact on the dose distribution in both target and organ at risk in patients with head and neck cancer, the anatomical changes of tumor and neck volumes during this period should be taken into consideration. We investigated the anatomical changes that occurred in the target and normal structure of the neck during radiation therapy for pharyngeal cancer, and evaluated the necessity of an adaptive strategy. Ten patients with pharyngeal cancer who underwent radical chemoradiation therapy using 3-dimensional conformal radiation therapy RT (66-70 Gy in 33-35 fractions) between April 2009 and September 2010 were enrolled in the study. Patients underwent CT scans every week during their course of treatment. We analyzed the CT data in the radiation treatment planning system and measured changes of tumor, organ at risk, and neck volume. Gross tumor volume (GTV) was rapidly reduced by 28% of the original volume on average in the first 3 weeks. The right and left submandibular glands volume decreased to 70% and 63% of their initial volumes on average, respectively. The volume of the neck in the radiation fields decreased to 89% of its initial volume on average by the sixth week mainly caused by body weight loss due to acute radiation morbidity. Considerable anatomical change in the radiation filed that will affect dose distribution of the target and organ at risk was observed during radiation therapy for head and neck cancer.

This paper presents an adaptive robust predictive current control (RPCC) for grid-connected three-phase inverters that exhibit zero steady-state current error. The error correction is achieved by means of an adaptive strategy that works in parallel with the deadbeat algorithm, therefore preserving the typical fast response of the predictive law. The resulting control adapts to any particular L or LCL filter by estimation of the resistive part of the filter. As a variety of the RPCC class of control, it offers the best tradeoff between robustness and speed. © 2009 IEEE.

A methodology to analyze impact, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in conjunctive-use systems at basin scale is presented. Based on the value obtained for various indices under possible future scenarios (indices obtained from the results of a system management model), a systematic procedure is presented to identify problems and solutions to adapt to climate change effects. The future hydrological scenarios to be analyzed can be approached by starting from the historical series available for the system and taking into account the changes expected in the key statistics of the series. A method to predict the expected changes in the key statistics using the results of previous climate change studies in the area has been developed. A " downscaling" procedure is proposed to translate the climatic variations into results on a basin scale. The methodology has been applied to the case study of the Serpis River Basin (Eastern Spain). © 2011 Elsevier B.V., The authors thank the three anonymous reviewers for their comments, which have helped to improve significantly the clarity of the original manuscript. This research has been supported by the European Commission CIRCE project, the SAWARES project (GESHYDRO + HYDROECOCUMATE) of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the ARCO project of the Spanish Ministry of Environment, Rural, and Marine Affairs (MARM). We also thanks the Prudence Project, because we have employed some public data of this project, which are available at their web page (in the PRUDENCE data archive funded by the EU through contract EVK2-CT2001-00132).

Businesses employ different strategies to manage legislative requirements; however, there is little science-based understanding of the strategies that are in use. This study introduces a general legislation maturity model for businesses that includes company profiles, strategies and activity levels in relation to legislative requirements. Four strategies, namely defensive, adaptive, proactive and lead, are described through a case study of legislative sustainability requirements for biofuels in the EU that are organised according to their urgency and validity to biofuel producers, and the associated activity levels. This model will help managers to identify the strategies they employ, more systematically select strategies, understand the spatial and temporal scales and more efficiently allocate legislation management resources. The legislation maturity profiles, strategies, activities and urgency-validity framework are applicable in other industries. Post-print / Final draft

Проаналізовано сучасний стан технічного обслуговування мобільної сільськогосподарської техніки (МСГТ) увага зосереджена на транспортних засобах в сільськогосподарському виробництві. З’ясовано передумови переходу з планово-запобіжної стратегії на альтернативні, які забезпечують необхідний рівень експлуатаційної надійності. Сформульовано основні завдання технічної експлуатації, спрямовані на підтримання справного технічного стану МСГТ. Виявлено, що технічна діагностика займає головне місце у встановленні діагнозу і рівня технічно справного стану МСГТ, наведено схему етапів прогнозування її технічного стану. Встановлено, що на базі прогнозної інформації за допомогою діагностики і методів інформаційної теорії стає можливим перехід від планово-запобіжної до адаптивної стратегії, яка найбільше пристосовує до технічний стан МСГТ до умов її функціонування. Така стратегія є гнучкою в управлінні технічним станом МСГТ та забезпечує максимальну роботоздатність МСГТ при мінімальних витратах. Analyzed the modern state of the maintenance service the mobile of agricultural machinery. Attention basically focused on vehicles in agricultural production. It was found prerequisites of transition from plannedpreventive strategies to alternative which provide a given level of operational reliability. This is the first of all adaptive strategy that is based on the monitoring of technical condition diagnostics systems. Formulated tasks of technical operation designed to maintain good technical condition the mobile agricultural machinery. It was found that ensure maximum of operational reliability is a high priority in the technical operation of a modern market economy.For introduction adaptive maintenance strategy must be consider the following: the use of onboard diagnostic systems enables better monitoring of technical condition; Information technologies provide fast calculations of various indicators of diagnostic information, and necessary to consider individual performance technical condition of vehicles. Found that technical diagnostics occupies the main place in establishing the diagnosis and level of good technical condition the mobile agricultural machinery presented circuit of stages forecasting technical condition, the first phase considers retrospection diagnostic information that has been collected to the latest diagnostic, the second stage diagnosis itself that is needed for determining the real parameters of systems and their mechanisms, the third is projected phase generates recommendations for replacement parts or regulation, and determining the residual life. It was established that based on the of predictive information using diagnosis and development of information theory becomes possible transition from a planned to a safety adaptive strategy that adapts to actual technical state the mobile agricultural machinery. At the present stage of technological development, this strategy is flexible in managing the technical condition MAM and provides maximum serviceability of the mobile agricultural machinery at minimum cost resources.

The study was conducted in 4 pastoral kebeles (lower administrative unit) of Moyale, district, Borena Administrative Zone, Oromyia Regional State with the objectives of investigating the impact of climate change on the livelihood; identifying root causes of vulnerability; and identifying the local communities’ adaptive mechanisms. The data were collected from 129 household respondents using household questionnaires, key informant interview, and direct observation. The household respondents were selected based on population proportion of the targeted kebeles. The study scrutinized the local communities’ vulnerability to changing climate, environmental degradation, complex disasters as factors that undermine communities’ ability to adapt to climate change. The results indicated that drought was more frequent; rain small in amount, uneven in distribution, short in duration and high in intensity. Therefore, it was found to be wise to protect those traditional coping mechanisms retain importance, especially in sorting out disputes over resources and governing access to pasture. Besides, it is recommended the adaptation policies to be complemented local pastorals autonomous response to climate change through the development of new drought- resistant approach and improved weather forecasts.

Tuning compilations is the process of adjusting the values of a compiler options to improve some features of the final application. In this paper, a strategy based on the use of a genetic algorithm and a multi-objective scheme is proposed to deal with this task. Unlike previous works, we try to take advantage of the knowledge of this domain to provide a problem-specific genetic operation that improves both the speed of convergence and the quality of the results. The evaluation of the strategy is carried out by means of a case of study aimed to improve the performance of the well-known web server Apache. Experimental results show that a 7.5% of overall improvement can be achieved. Furthermore, the adaptive approach has shown an ability to markedly speed-up the convergence of the original strategy.

Four cases of coprophagy and two cases of fecal inspection were identified during the 1142 h of observing wild bonobos at Wamba in the Luo Scientific Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At least 5 females in the study group practiced coprophagy and/or fecal inspection. According to our daily behavioral observations, boredom and stress, insufficient roughage, and the search for essential nutrients could not explain the coprophagy. Several episodes observed in this study indicated that bonobos might have sought and ingested certain valuable food items, such as hard Dialium seeds, in feces during relatively lean seasons. Although coprophagy occurred only rarely among wild bonobos, this practice appeared to represent a possibly adaptive feeding strategy during periods of food scarcity rather than a behavioral abnormality.

International audience; Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) is characterized by morphological trunk modifications acting on body mass distribution. Some specific biomechanical strategies during postural regulation have been reported. Given that spinal deformity is three-dimensional, some strategy analysis resulting from different stepping directions should lead to a better understanding of the dynamic adaptation of behaviour. The aim of this study is to identify dynamic strategies of AIS patients stepping in lateral and forward directions. Ten AIS patients with a right thoracic curve and 15 controlled volunteers have been tested. Ground reaction forces (GRF) have been recorded for right-limb stepping and for left-limb stepping associated to forward and lateral directions. Force amplitudes, corresponding occurrences, impulses of stepping phases and an asymmetry index have been computed. Asymmetry and variability increased in the AIS group, compared to the control group, whatever the stepping direction is. Asymmetry for AIS patients systematically provides an increased left initiation GRF compared to a right initiation. Nevertheless, for both groups, lateral initiation shows the largest asymmetry index reported for a forward initiation. More precisely, adaptive dynamic strategies for the AIS group have been characterized by an asymmetry between right and left limbs for lateral and forward initiation. These results can be explained by the influence of scoliosis pathology on dynamic movements due to spinal deformity. A right thoracic curve leads to an extra weight on the limb, which needs to be moved; consequently, stepping initiation with the right limb was more challenging for patients than stepping with the left limb. For the AIS group, the observed variability can also depend on the ontogenesis of adaptive strategies. Lateral step initiation has to be considered as the most relevant paradigm to study scoliosis and may also serve as a clinical basis for treatment to analyse the dynamic postural control and asymmetry strategies of the scoliosis patient.

The goal of sustainable water quality management is to keep total pollutant discharges from exceeding the assimilation capacity of a water body. Climate change may influence streamflows, and further alter assimilation capacity and degrade river sustainability. The purposes of this study are to evaluate the effect of climate change on sustainable water quality management and design an early warning indicator to issue warnings on river sustainability. A systematic assessment procedure is proposed here, including a weather generation model, the streamflow component of GWLF, QUAL2E, and an optimization model. The Touchen creek in Taiwan is selected as the study area. Future climate scenarios derived from projections of four global climate models (GCMs) and two pollutant discharge scenarios, as usual and proportional to population, are considered in this study. The results indicate that streamflows may very likely increase in humid seasons and decrease in arid seasons, respectively. The reduction of streamflow in arid seasons may further degrade water quality and assimilation capacity. In order to provide warnings to trigger necessary adaptation strategies, an early warning indicator is designed and its 30-year moving average is calculated. Finally, environmental monitoring systems and methods to prioritize adaptation strategies are discussed for further studies in the future.

In this report we investigate the optimal control approach for the active control of the laminar circular cylinder wake flow (Re = 200). The objective is the minimization of the mean total drag where the control function is the time harmonic angular velocity of the rotating cylinder. When the Navier-Stokes equations are used as state equations, the discretization of the optimality system leads to large scale discretized optimization problems that represent a tremendous computational task. In order to reduce the number of state variables during the optimization process, a Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) Reduced-Order Model (ROM) is then derived to be used as state equation. Since the range of validity of the POD ROM is generally limited to the vicinity of the design parameters in the control parameter space, we propose to use the Trust-Region Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (TRPOD) approach to update the reduced-order models during the optimization process. Benefiting from the trust-region philosophy, rigorous convergence results guarantee that the iterates produced by the TRPOD algorithm will converge to the solution of the original optimization problem defined with the Navier-Stokes equations. A lot of computational work is indeed saved because the optimization process is now based only on low order models. The key enablers to an accurate and robust POD ROM for the pressure and velocity fields are the extension of the POD basis functions to the pressure data, the introduction of eddy-viscosity estimated for each POD mode as the solution of an auxiliary optimization problem, and the inclusion of different non-equilibrium modes. When the TRPOD algorithm is applied to the wake flow configuration, this approach converges to the minimum predicted by an open-loop control approach and leads to a relative mean drag reduction of $30\%$ for reduced numerical costs.

The reliability of transit modes is a crucial issue to guarantee their competitiveness and attractiveness. Experience shows that buses covering busy lines with short headways tend to arrive irregularly at their stops, often in bunches and therefore remarkably affecting the service. Hence, this work presents a stochastic model capable of representing the operational activity of a bus transit network and the service disruptions which eventually end up causing deviations from desired schedule. At the same time, the model is tested on an ideal route as a decision making tool.