Sugar maple syrup production is an important economic activity for eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. Since annual variations in syrup yield have been related to climate, there are concerns about the impacts of climatic change on the industry in the upcoming decades. Although the temporal variability of syrup yield has been studied for specific sites on different time scales or ...

As the limits of stimuli presentation rates are explored in event-related fMRI design, there is a greater need to assess the implications of averaging raw fMRI data. Selective averaging assumes that the fMRI signal consists of task-dependent signal, random noise, and non-task dependent brain signal that can be modeled as random noise so that it tends to zero when averaged over a practical numbe...

BACKGROUND Multi-electrode arrays (MEAs) allow non-invasive multi-unit recording in-vitro from cultured neuronal networks. For sufficient neuronal growth and adhesion on such MEAs, substrate preparation is required. Plating of dissociated neurons on a uniformly prepared MEA's surface results in the formation of spatially extended random networks with substantial inter-sample variability. Such c...

Restrictions in empirical research of biological communities have limited our understanding the combined influence environmental variability and system structure on community composition. Spatial patterns composition less accessible systems, such as marine benthos, can often not be explained by many factors beyond direct impact environment members. We present a method that combines commonly col...

Herbivory by fishes and sea urchins is a powerful mechanism on coral reefs that mitigates coral−algal competition by physically removing algae and creating bare space. Spatially constrained grazing by herbivores, particularly parrotfishes, may foster coral recruitment by creating a spatially continuous refuge of bare substrate for settlement and survival. However, frequent bouts of concentrated...

6 Individual-based modelling approaches are being used to simulate larger complex 7 spatial systems in ecology and in other fields of research. Several novel model de8 velopment issues now face researchers: in particular how to simulate large num9 bers of individuals with high levels of complexity, given finite computing resources. 10 A case study of a spatially-explicit simulation of aphid pop...

The dynamics of spatially structured populations is characterized by within- and between-patch processes. The available theory describes the latter with simple distance-dependent functions that depend on landscape properties such as interpatch distance or patch size. Despite its potential role, we lack a good mechanistic understanding of how the movement of individuals between patches affects t...

UNLABELLED Accurate sensory discrimination is commonly believed to require precise representations in the nervous system; however, neural stimulus responses can be highly variable, even to identical stimuli. Recent studies suggest that cortical response variability decreases during stimulus processing, but the implications of such effects on stimulus discrimination are unclear. To address this,...

Constructive effects of noise in spatially extended systems have been well studied in static reaction-diffusion media. We study a noisy two-dimensional Fitz Hugh-Nagumo excitable model under the stirring of a chaotic flow. We find a regime where a noisy excitation can induce a coherent global excitation of the medium and a noise-sustained oscillation. Outside this regime, noisy excitation is ei...