Predators play a key role in the functioning of shallow lakes. Differences between the response of temperate and subtropical systems to fish predation have been proposed, but experimental evidence is scarce. To elucidate cascading effects produced by predators in contrasting climatic zones, we conducted a mesocosm experiment in three pairs of lakes in Uruguay and Denmark. We used two typical planktivorous-omnivorous fish species (Jenynsia multidentata + Cnesterodon decemmaculatus and Gasterosteus aculeatus + Perca fluviatilis) and one littoral omnivorous-predatory macroinvertebrate (Palaemonetes argentinus and Gammarus lacustris), alone and combined, in numbers resembling natural densities. Fish predation on zooplankton increased phytoplankton biomass in both climate zones, whereas the effects of predatory macroinvertebrates on zooplankton and phytoplankton were not significant in either climate zone. Macroinvertebrates (that freely colonized the sampling devices) were diminished by fish in both climate areas; however, periphyton biomass did not vary among treatments. Our experiments demonstrated that fish affected the structure of both planktonic and littoral herbivorous communities in both climate regions, with a visible positive cascading effect on phytoplankton biomass, but no effects on periphyton. Altogether, fish impacts appeared to be a strong driver of turbid water conditions in shallow lakes regardless of climatic zone by indirectly contributing to increasing phytoplankton biomass. Full article

Indoor evacuation systems are needed for rescue and safety management. One of the challenges is to provide users with personalized evacuation routes in real time. To this end, this project aims at exploring the possibilities of Google Glass technology for participatory multiagent indoor evacuation simulations. Participatory multiagent simulation combines scenario-guided agents and humans equipped with Google Glass that coexist in a shared virtual space and jointly perform simulations. The paper proposes an architecture for participatory multiagent simulation in order to combine devices (Google Glass and/or smartphones) with an agent-based social simulator and indoor tracking services. Full article

Modeling the Stark broadening of spectral lines in plasmas is a complex problem. The problem has a long history, since it plays a crucial role in the interpretation of the observed spectral lines in laboratories and astrophysical plasmas. One difficulty is the characterization of the emitter’s environment. Although several models have been proposed over the years, there have been no systematic studies of the results, until now. Here, calculations from stochastic models and numerical simulations are compared for the Atoms 2014, 2 300 Lyman-α and -β lines in neutral hydrogen. Also discussed are results from the Helium-α and -β lines of Ar XVII. Full article

In the framework of the Spectral Line Shapes in Plasmas Code Comparison Workshop (SLSP), large discrepancies appeared between the different approaches to account for ion motion effects in spectral line shape calculations. For a better understanding of these effects, in the second edition of the SLSP in August, 2013, two cases were dedicated to the study of the ionic field directionality on line shapes. In this paper, the effects of the direction and magnitude fluctuations are separately analyzed. The effects of two variants of electric field models, (i) a pure rotating field with constant magnitude and (ii) a time-dependent magnitude field in a given direction, together with the effects of the time-dependent ionic field on shapes of the He II Lyman-α and -β lines for different densities and temperatures, are discussed. Full article