More than 140 million people dwell at altitudes of over 2500 m. The Andes region is home to the greatest population density at an altitude of more than 3500 m. Equally, the number of persons living at sea level (SL) is growing, and they travel to medium, high, or extreme altitudes for occupational or scientific reasons, or to enjoy tourism or recreational activities, as is the case of hikers, m...

In the Semantic Web paradigm, geo-ontologies are closely related to geospatial information communities. Each community comes with its own ontology which is modeled, most frequently, within the framework of description logics. The paper questions a central assumption underlying this approach, namely that communities (and ontologies) are defined by crisp semantic boundaries. The idea of a semanti...

Many parasites engaged in complex life cycles manipulate their hosts in a way that facilitates transmission between hosts. Recently, a new category of parasites (hitch-hikers) has been identified that seem to exploit the manipulating effort of other parasites with similar life cycle by preferentially infecting hosts already manipulated. Thomas et al. (Evolution 51 (1997) 1316) showed that the d...

We describe a wheeled robotic system which navigates along outdoor “trails” intended for hikers and bikers. Through a combination of appearance and structural cues derived from stereo omnidirectional color cameras and a tiltable laser range-finder, the system is able to detect and track rough paths despite widely varying tread material, border vegetation, and illumination conditions. The approa...

The exploitation of high volume of geolocalized data from social sport tracking applications of outdoor activities can be useful for natural resource planning and to understand the human mobility patterns during leisure activities. This geolocalized data represents the selection of hike activities according to subjective and objective factors such as personal goals, personal abilities, trail co...

Managing the pathways by which non-native species are introduced and spread is considered the most effective way of preventing species invasions. Tourism and outdoor recreation involve the frequent congregation of people, vehicles and vessels from geographically diverse areas. They are therefore perceived to be major pathways for the movement of non-native species, and ones that will become inc...

Animals often view humans as predators, leading to alterations in their behavior. Even nuanced aspects of human activity like clothing color affect animal behavior, but we lack an understanding of when and where such effects will occur. The species confidence hypothesis posits that birds are attracted to colors found on their bodies and repelled by non-body colors. Here, we extend this hypothes...

Meat tenderness is one of the key factors determining consumer satisfaction and food quality. Freeze drying a critical aspect preservation. Foods produced this way can be stored for an exceedingly long time, but they are characterized by being very hard in texture requiring rehydration before use. This study presents investigation focusing on finding preparation parameters freeze-dried meat tha...

Vector-borne diseases are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in humans animals worldwide. Lyme disease, or borreliosis, is an important emerging vector-borne anthropozoonosis caused by Borrelia burgdorferi. It belongs to the genus Borrelia, phylum Spirochetae. B. burgdorferi gram-negative, flagellated spirochete having loosely coiled spiral morphology. disease distributed many parts...