Khawa Karpo, in the eastern Himalayas, is a mountain considered sacred throughout Tibet, and is internationally recognized as a global biodiversity hotspot. Numerous areas within this landscape are considered 'sacred' by the indigenous Tibetans of the region, who interact with these sites in ways potentially beneficial to conservation. Our previous remote sensing study indicated that sacred sites are found in habitats with greater species richness, diversity, and endemism than randomly selected non-sacred sites. This study examines the role of sanctity in biodiversity conservation within habitats in the Khawa Karpo region by pairing plots within the same habitats in sacred and non-sacred areas. Understory richness, diversity, cover, and number of useful species are measured; for trees, richness, diversity, cover, and density are measured. Results indicate that within habitats sanctity does not affect understory plant communities; however, within sacred areas trees are larger ( p = 0.003) and forests have greater cover ( p = 0.003) than non-sacred areas. Our results indicate that, whereas placement of sacred areas and preservation of vegetation cover affects useful plants, biodiversity and endemism, within habitats sacred sites preserve old growth trees and forest structure. In sum, Tibetan sacred sites are ecologically unique and important for conservation on varying scales of landscape, community, and species.Abbreviations: GIS -geographical information systems; dbh -diameter at breast height
Simulation is often used to gain an understanding of vehicle directional response. Furthermore, it is widely agreed that, given an adequate set of parameters that model the vehicle and the surface it drives on, it is reasonable to simulate a particular vehicle with a view toward understanding and perhaps improving its performance. This is not the case with the vehicle/driver system. Rather, in terms of a particular vehicle and driver, simulations provide interesting but not particularly reliable results because of the routine variability of the human part of the system. Genetic algorithms and their derivatives are algorithms with their form drawn from the biological theory of evolution. This paper suggests that genetic algorithms may be useful to evaluate certain important facets of vehicle/driver performance. It supports this suggestion with an example that attempts to answer this question: What is the best a vehicle/driver system could do in the so-called Consumer Union short course? The example is challenging because the strategy the driver uses to drive through the course affects the result. The geneticalgorithm-based solution to this example problem provides evidence that the technique is promising.The paper concludes with speculation on the potential for applying genetic algorithms in a much less constrained set of circumstances, including determination of the possibility of untripped rollover on a smooth surface.
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Urban communities throughout the United States and Europe are expressing a growing concern over the external noise emitted by automobiles and trucks. A major contribution to this noise can be tread whine generated by tires. This paper discusses how the tread pitch arrangement and its contribution to reducing tread whine can be optimized during the design phase. While there are numerous patented approaches to selecting pitch sizes and a pitch arrangement, traditional optimization algorithms are difficult to apply. This paper will show that a genetic algorithm is easily applied and very effective for pitch sequence optimization.
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