In Fennoscandia, mountain hare (Lepus timidus) and brown hare (Lepus europaeus) hybridize and produce fertile offspring, resulting in gene flow across the species barrier. Analyses of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) show that introgression occur frequently, but unavailability of appropriate nuclear DNA markers has made it difficult to evaluate the scale- and significance for the ...

Mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins, is the most significant mortality agent in pine forests of western North America. Silvicultural treatments that reduce the number of susceptible host trees, alter age and size class distributions, and diversify species composition are considered viable, long-term options for reducing stand susceptibility to mountain pine beetle-caused tree ...

The purpose of the study was to investigate determinants of acute mountain sickness after rapid ascent to high altitude. A total of 21 climbers were studied ascending from <1,200 m to Capanna Regina Margherita, a hut in the Alps at 4,559 m, within <24 h. During their overnight stay at 4,559 m, breathing patterns and ventilation were recorded by calibrated respiratory inductive plethysmography a...

Bokermannohyla nanuzae (Bokermann & Sazima 1973) and B. feioi (Napoli & Caramaschi 2004) belong to the B. cir-cumdata species group. The type locality of the former is Serra do Cipó, Espinhaço mountain range, and of the latter is Parque Estadual do Ibitipoca, Mantiqueira mountain range, both in Minas Gerais State, Brazil. Differences on dorsal draw-ing pattern of adults, oral disc morphology of...

This paper introduces a teacher-student framework for reinforcement learning. In this framework, a teacher agent instructs a student agent by suggesting actions the student should take as it learns. However, the teacher may only give such advice a limited number of times. We present several novel algorithms that teachers can use to budget their advice effectively, and we evaluate them in two ex...

1. Divisão de Pneumologia, Instituto do Coração, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo (SP) Brasil. In the last 20 years, there has been a significant, progressive decline in the prevalence of smoking in both genders, worldwide(1) and in Brazil,(2) where that decline has been more pronounced. From 1980 to 2012, the worldwide prevalence declined from 41.2% to 31.1% in men...

1. Laboratório do Sono, Disciplina de Pneumologia, Instituto do Coração, Hospital das Clínicas, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo (SP) Brasil. Sleep medicine is a relatively new discipline that has begun to consolidate as an important area of activity for pulmonologists, in Brazil as well as in the rest of the world. The JBP has been a part of this transformation, as e...

OBJECTIVE To investigate and compare the main determinants of overall inequality and wealth-related inequality in under-5 mortality in 13 African countries. METHODS Data from Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 2007-2010 in African countries were used. The study assessed the contribution of determinants to (1) overall inequality in under-5 mortality measured by the Gini index and (2) ...

This research aims to examine tourists’ perception of the sustainable tourism development of the Tianzhu Mountain in Anhui Province, China. It reviews tourists’ opinions on three sustainability aspects of tourism (economic, environmental and socio-cultural aspects) and assess differences among tourist demographics. The research used non-random convenient sampling. 384 questionnaires were distri...