Long-term and seasonal patterns in coastal temperature and salinity along the North American west coast

Numerous integrated time series have been assembled that suggest global temperature has been increasing steadily over the last century. ... However, superimposed on the long-term warming trends of these series are decadal-scale fluctuations, periods of slightly increasing and even decreasing temperature followed by rapid increases in temperature. ... In this pilot study, data for 1931-1990 from eight [western North America] coastal stations are examined to test the utility of a state-space statistical model (developed by Dr. Roy Mendelssohn, PFEG) in separating and describing seasonal patterns and long-term trends.

South American streamflow and the extreme phases of the Southern Oscillation

This study investigates the extent of the affect [sic] of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation on South American streamflow. The response of South American precipitation and temperature to the extreme phases of ENSO (El Niño and La Niña events) is well documented; but the response of South American hydrology has been barely studied. Such paucity of research contrasts sharply with that available on the response of North American streamflow to ENSO events.

Larval rearing of Macrobrachium rosenbergii (De Man) in artificial sea water

Larvae of Macrobrachium rosenbergii were successfully reared in artificial sea water prepared in fresh ground water. The water was circulated through a biological filter by means of air-lift pumps for a period of one week to remove the undissolved particles prior to use in the hatchery operation. The experiments were initiated during 1989 and the hatchery has been working on pilot scale since June, 1990. The larvae in all the experiments were fed with egg-custard, Mona and Artemia nauplii. The survival rate varied from 5 to 52% in the 12 experiments. These findings can add to the development of hatcheries in the inland areas which can further boost the popularization of giant freshwater prawn farming.

Soundings: the Newsletter of the Monterey Bay Chapter of the American Cetacean Society. 2014

Issues January - November/December 2014. (PDF contains 100 pages)

Effects of artificial feeds on production of fishes in polyculture

A study on the effects of artificial feeds on the growth and production of fishes in polyculture in 6 ponds along with some limnological conditions was conducted. Species of Indian and Chinese major carps (Labeo rohita, Catla catla, Cirrhinus mrigala, Hypophthalmicthys molitrix) and catfishes (Clarias batrachus, Clarias gariepinus) were stocked in 6 ponds. Stocking rate in both cases were 32044 fingerlings per hectare. Ratio of species of Rui:Catla:Mrigal:Silver carp:African Magur:Local Magur=25%:25%:5%:25%:14%:6%. Fertilization and artificial feeds were given in 3 ponds (treatment I) and only fertilization was done in other 3 ponds (treatment II). Average yield/ha/yr was 7.903 m.ton in case of fertilization and artificial feeding application and 3.374 m.ton in case of only fertilization application. Urea, TSP and cow dung were applied fortnightly at the rates of 400 kg/ha/yr, 2000 kg/ha/yr and 4000 kg/ha/yr respectively. Wheat bran, rice bran and mustard oil cake were given daily as an artificial feed in treatment I. Whereas treatment II was conducted without any artificial feed. Ratio of artificial feed was wheat bran:rice bran:oil cake=2:2:1 (by wt). Absence of artificial feed in 3 ponds under treatment II seriously affected the growth and production of fish.

Biodiversity in floodplains with special reference to artificial stocking

A five years investigation on fish biodiversity in connection with artificial stocking was conducted in three south-western floodplains of Bangladesh from 1992 to 1996. The ten top most available and ten rarest fish species were identified. Puntius sp., Channa punctatus, Mystus sp., Anabus testudinius, Ambasis sp., Colisha sp. and Macrobrachium sp. etc. were the most common available species. On the other hand, Mystus aor, Notopterus chitala, Clupisoma garua, Aplocheilus panchax, Ctenophmyngodon idella etc. were the rarest species. However, the most abundant and the rarest fish species behaved differently in different floodplains in different years. Shannon diversity index was used to assess the extent of diversity in different years. The study revealed that the artificial stocking programme, to some extent, influenced the biodiversity in floodplains.

Artificial insemination in penaeid shrimps

Artificial Insemination (AI) is a tool for genetic manipulation in the shrimp stocks. It is seen as one of the means for propagating shrimp culture to new areas by controlled reproduction. Attempts at artificial insemination in the dominant closed-thelycum penaeid shrimps species of the area viz. Metapenaeus affinis and Metapenaeus brevicornis were induced in wild adult stocks collected off Mumbai coast. Female specimens were subjected to unilateral eyestalk ablation by pinching so as to induce moulting and maturation. AI was performed two days after moulting on these females when the cuticle was still soft and flexible. Moulting also ensured rejection of initial spermatophores, if present. Response of males to electrical stimulation for spermatophore expulsion was spontaneous. Use of tissue glue for spermatophore retention was found to be unnecessary. Latency period ranged between10-16 days, while spawning occurred within 10-12 days of spermatophore transfer. Three partial spawning were recorded viz., two in Metapenaeus affinis and one in Metapenaeus brevicornis with an average spawning and hatching rates of 30% and 72.3% respectively. Average survival from first nauplius (N1) to one-day old post-larva (PLI) was a meager 3.43%. Use of AI in genetic manipulation of shrimp stocks for aquacultural purposes is indicated.

Magnetic field and current distributins in melt-textured YBa 2Cu 3O 7-x with an artificial grain boundary

Using a magneto-optical (MO) technique, magnetic field distributions have been measured in a melt-textured YBa 2Cu 3O 7-x bulk superconductor, joined to form an artificial grain boundary (GB), in an external magnetic field perpendicular to the sample surface. The magnetic field at a weak section of the GB shows different values between the field increasing up to 150mT and decreasing down to 0T after zero-field-cooling. Namely, the magnetic field in increasing field is higher than that in decreasing field, even in the same external field. This result supports a model in which such differences in magnetic field at the weak-link GB give rise to the hysteresis behavior in the field dependence of transport critical current density in polycrystalline samples. The field distributions across a well-joined region of the GB behave similarly to the adjoining bulk material and this result indicates the possibility of creating useful artifacts provided that the strongly coupled sections can be reproduced on a larger scale.

Variability of nanoindentation responses of bone and artificial bone-like composites

Nanoindentation is a popular technique for measuring the intrinsic mechanical response of bone and has been used to measure a single-valued elastic modulus. However, bone is a composite material with 20-80 nm hydroxyapatite plates embedded in a collagen matrix, and modern instrumentation allows for measurements at these small length scales. The present study examines the indentation response of bone and artificial gelatin-apatite nanocomposite materials across three orders of magnitude of lengthscale, from nanometers to micrometers, to isolate the composite phase contributions to the overall response. The load-displacement responses were variable and deviated from the quadratic response of homogeneous materials at small depths. The distribution of apparent elastic modulus values narrowed substantially with increasing indentation load. Indentation of particulate nanocomposites was simulated using finite element analysis. Modeling results replicated the convergence in effective modulus seen in the experiments. It appears that the apatite particles are acting as the continuous ("matrix") phase in bone and nanocomposites. Copyright © 2004 by ASME.

Scaling POMDPs for dialog management with composite summary point-based value iteration (CSPBVI)

Although partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) have shown great promise as a framework for dialog management in spoken dialog systems, important scalability issues remain. This paper tackles the problem of scaling slot-filling POMDP-based dialog managers to many slots with a novel technique called composite point-based value iteration (CSPBVI). CSPBVI creates a "local" POMDP policy for each slot; at runtime, each slot nominates an action and a heuristic chooses which action to take. Experiments in dialog simulation show that CSPBVI successfully scales POMDP-based dialog managers without compromising performance gains over baseline techniques and preserving robustness to errors in user model estimation. Copyright © 2006, American Association for Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved.

Dog chromosome-specific paints reveal evolutionary inter- and intrachromosomal rearrangements in the American mink and human

Forty chromosome-specific paint probes of the domestic dog (Canis familiaris, 2n = 78) were used to delineate conserved segments on metaphase chromosomes of the American mink (Mustela vison, 2n = 30) by fluorescence in situ hybridisation. Half of the 38 canine autosomal probes each painted one pair of homologous segments in a diploid mink metaphase, whereas the other 19 dog probes each painted from two to five pairs of discrete segments. In total, 38 canine autosomal paints highlighted 71 pairs of conserved segments in the mink. These painting results allow us to establish a complete comparative chromosome map between the American mink and domestic dog. This map demonstrates that extensive chromosome rearrangements differentiate the karyotypes of the dog and American mink. The 38 dog autosomes could be reconstructed from the 14 autosomes of the American mink through at least 47 fissions, 25 chromosome fusions, and six inversions. Furthermore, comparison of the current dog/mink map with the published human/dog map discloses 23 cryptic intrachromosomal rearrangements in 10 regions of conserved synteny in the human and American mink genomes and thus further refined the human/mink comparative genome map. Copyright (C) 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel.