Distribution of decapod larvae in the Bombay Harbour-Thana-Bassein Creek regions

Variations in the abundance and composition of larval decapods were studied from 90 km stretch of the Bombay Harbour-Thana Creek-Bassein Creek (BHTCBC) system for a period of 15 months. The larvae belonged to Penacidea, Caridea, Anomura and Brachyura. Among these, brachyurans were the most abundant in the entire study area indicating good potential for crab fishery. Penaeus, Metapenaeus and Parapenaeopsis were the genera recorded in the family Penaeidae of which Metapenaeus spp. were the most common. Generally there was a higher abundance of Penaeus and Metapenaeus during monsoon probably indicating intense breeding. A few genera of decapods showed patchy occurrence in this system. Results of this first investigation were quantitatively and qualitatively evaluated with comments on fishery potential of the commercially important groups of decapods.

Managing without measuring: A study of an electricity distribution company

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present an exception to the common belief "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it". It aims to show how in certain situations particular practices, attitudes and cultures can remove the need for individual performance measurement. Design/methodology/approach: First, the paper identifies the usual roles of performance measurement in managing individual employees as described by control and motivation theorists. Second, it identifies a market-leading organisation where managers deliberately refuse to use their top-level performance measurement system to manage the performance of individual employees. A case study is carried out to test what non-measurement mechanisms fulfil the roles of individual performance measurement in this organisation. Findings: Building on situations observed at this company, a set of possible characteristics of companies that do not require formalised individual performance measurement systems in order to achieve high performance standards is put forward. Practical implications: Managers should not always assume that individual performance measurement is the only way to achieve excellent performance. This study shows that, by granting responsibilities and providing appropriate support, managers can channel workers' enhanced motivation towards meeting wider organisational goals. Originality/value: This work broadens the understanding of how excellent performance can be achieved. It shows that excellence can be achieved through practices based on shared values linked to motivation, trust, and a common sense of mission, without the need to install individual performance measurement systems based on cybernetic principles. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Project neptune: Improved operation of water distribution networks

Water service providers (WSPs) in the UK have statutory obligations to supply drinking water to all customers that complies with increasingly stringent water quality regulations and minimum flow and pressure criteria. At the same time, the industry is required by regulators and investors to demonstrate increasing operational efficiency and to meet a wide range of performance criteria that are expected to improve year-on-year. Most WSPs have an ideal for improving the operation of their water supply systems based on increased knowledge and understanding of their assets and a shift to proactive management followed by steadily increasing degrees of system monitoring, automation and optimisation. The fundamental mission is, however, to ensure security of supply, with no interruptions and water quality of the highest standard at the tap. Unfortunately, advanced technologies required to fully understand, manage and automate water supply system operation either do not yet exist, are only partially evolved, or have not yet been reliably proven for live water distribution systems. It is this deficiency that the project NEPTUNE seeks to address by carrying out research into 3 main areas; these are: data and knowledge management; pressure management (including energy management); and the associated complex decision support systems on which to base interventions. The 3-year project started in April of 2007 and has already resulted in a number of research findings under the three main research priority areas (RPA). The paper summarises in greater detail the overall project objectives, the RPA activities and the areas of research innovation that are being undertaken in this major, UK collaborative study. Copyright 2009 ASCE.

Perspectives on the origin of microfilaments, microtubules, the relevant chaperonin system and cytoskeletal motors - a commentary on the spirochaete origin of flagella

The origin of cytoskeleton and the origin of relevant intracellular transportation system are big problems for understanding the emergence of eukaryotic cells. The present article summarized relevant information of evidences and molecular traces on the origin of actin, tubulin, the chaperonin system for folding them, myosins, kinesins, axonemal dyneins and cytoplasmic dyneins. On this basis the authors proposed a series of works, which should be done in the future, and indicated the ways for reaching the targets. These targets are mainly: 1) the reconstruction of evolutionary path from MreB protein of archaeal ancestor of eukaryotic cells to typical actin; 2) the finding of the MreB or MreB-related proteins in crenarchaea and using them to examine J. A. Lake's hypothesis on the origin of eukaryote from "eocytes" (crenarchaea); 3) the examinations of the existence and distribution of cytoskeleton made of MreB-related protein within coccoid archaea, especially in amoeboid archaeon Thermoplasm acidophilum; 4) using Thermoplasma as a model of archaeal ancestor of eukaryotic cells; 5) the searching for the homolog of ancestral dynein in present-day living archaea. During the writing of this article, Margulis' famous spirochaete hypothesis on the origin of flagella and cilia was unexpectedly involved and analyzed from aspects of tubulins, dyneins and spirochaetes. Actually, spirochaete cannot be reasonably assumed as the ectosymbiotic ancestor of eukaryotic flagella and cilia, since their swing depends upon large amount of bacterial flagella beneath the flexible outer wall, but not depends upon their intracellular tubules and the assumed dyneins. In this case, if they had "evolved" into cilia and lost their bacterial flagella, they would immediately become immobile! In fact, tubulin and dynein-like proteins have not been found in any spirochaete.

Distribution of drug resistant luminous bacteria in penaeid shrimp grow-out ponds

Distribution of luminous bacteria (LB) in penaeid shrimp grow-out pond water in semiintensive seawater farming system and their resistance to 15 antibacterials were investigated. Total viable counts and luminous bacterial counts in pond water ranged from 2.00xl03 to 1.35xl04/ml and l.OOxl01 to 8.00Xl02/ml, respectively. The percentage composition of LB in the total viable population increased significantly with period of culture. Five species of LB such as Vibrio fischeri, V. harveyi, V. orientalis, V. splendidus 1 and Photobacterium leiognathi were encountered. V. harveyi was the dominant species, constituting >80% of the total LB. Multiple antibiotic resistance was more common in these LB. Pond water isolates showed resistance to at least four antibacterial agents.

Boundary-layer suction system design for laminar-flying-wing aircraft

The present study aims to provide insight into the parameters affecting practical laminar-flow-control suction power requirements for a commercial laminar-flying-wing transport aircraft. It is shown that there is a minimum power requirement independent of the suction system design, associated with the stagnation pressure loss in the boundary layer. This requirement increases with aerofoil section thickness, but depends only weakly on Mach number and (for a thick, lightly loaded laminar flying wing) lift coefficient. Deviation from the optimal suction distribution, due to a practical chamber-based architecture, is found to have very little effect on the overall suction coefficient; hence, to a good approximation, the power penalty is given by the product of the optimal suction flow rate coefficient and the average skin pressure drop. In the spanwise direction, through suitable choice of chamber depth, the pressure drop due to frictional and inertial effects may be rendered negligible. Finally, if there are fewer pumps than chambers, the average pressure drop from the aerofoil surface to the pump collector ducts, rather than to the chambers, determines the power penalty. For the representative laminar-flying-wing aircraft parameters considered here, the minimum power associated with boundary-layer losses alone contributes some 80-90% of the total power requirement. © 2011 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc.

Identification of biodiversity and distribution pattern of benthic Foraminifera and Ostracoda in continental shelf sediments of the Oman Sea

Biodiversity and distribution of benthic Foraminifera and Ostracoda in the continental shelf sediments of the Omman Sea was studied in order to indicating of the composition of benthic foraminiferal and ostracodal communities and determining of their relationship with the environmental factors of the Omman Sea. Sediment samples were gathered in winter 2006 from twelve stations ranging in depth from 30 to 103 meters. Environmental factors including depth, temperature, salinity, dissolved Oxygen and pH were measured with a CTD system during sampling time and grain size and total organic matter were measured in laboratory. From the overall 57 benthic foram species, there were 52 identified species belong to 25 genera of 16 families. The cosmopolitan foraminifer, Ammonia beccarii, was common in all sampling stations. The composition of benthic foram communities had a highly positive correlation with depth, salinity and total organic matter. From the overall 30 ostracod species, there were 26 identified species belong to 22 genera of 13 families. Diversity and aboundance of ostracoda of the Oman Sea decreased from east to west and from south to north but increased slightly in the northwest (near the Strait of Hormoz). Ostracoda of the genus Propontocypris were common in all sampling stations but the genera Cyprideis, Paradoxostom and Hemicytheridea were rare in the Oman Sea. Diversity and aboundance of ostracoda in northern regions were less than southern and were less than foraminifera too. The composition of ostracodal communities had a highly positive correlation with dept, salinity and grain size. Biodiversity and distribution pattern of benthic foraminifera and ostracoda were being different in various sampling stations, especially between northern and southern regions. Water depth, salinity and structure of the sediments were the most important abiotic factors controlling the distribution pattern of benthic foraminifera and ostracoda in the Omman Sea. None existence or rare observation of structural abnormalities and oil polluted individuals in the vicinity of all sampling stations, resulted to the "clean" benthic environment of the Omman Sea.

REPORT ON THE DISTRIBUTION, POPULATION, AND ECOLOGY OF THE YUNNAN SNUB-NOSED MONKEY (RHINOPITHECUS-BIETI)

The Yunnan snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus bieti), an endangered species in China, has received more protection in theory than in practice. Therefore it is on the very verge of extinction. The population of the species was estimated less than 2,000 individuals spread in 19 distinct groups. It was confirmed that the monkey was confined to the Yunling Mountain System, the area between the Yangtze River (Changjiang, aka Jinshajiang) to the east and the Mekong River (Lancangjiang) to the west. We further concluded that a lowland belt to the east, about 100 km long and 20 - 30 km wide was not suitable habitat for the monkeys, and appeared to serve as the natural ecogeologic barrier for the species. Our results indicated that the southern limit of the distribution was at Longma (26-degrees 14'N), and that the northern limit of the distribution was at Xiaochangdu (29-degrees 20'N). The distribution area of the species was substantially smaller than previously estimated. There were substantial ecological differences between the southern and northern parts of the species range. The monkey was found only in fir-larch forest.

Response probability distribution of built-up vibro-acoustic systems

The vibro-acoustic response of built-up structures, consisting of stiff components with low modal density and flexible components with high modal density, is sensitive to small imperfections in the flexible components. In this paper, the uncertainty of the response is considered by modeling the low modal density master system as deterministic and the high modal density subsystems in a nonparametric stochastic way, i.e., carrying a diffuse wave field, and by subsequently computing the response probability density function. The master system's mean squared response amplitude follows a singular noncentral complex Wishart distribution conditional on the subsystem energies. For a single degree of freedom, this is equivalent to a chi-square or an exponential distribution, depending on the loading conditions. The subsystem energies follow approximately a chi-square distribution when their relative variance is smaller than unity. The results are validated by application to plate structures, and good agreement with Monte Carlo simulations is found. © 2012 Acoustical Society of America.

An automatic speaker recognition system for intelligence applications

This paper presents an automatic speaker recognition system for intelligence applications. The system has to provide functionalities for a speaker skimming application in which databases of recorded conversations belonging to an ongoing investigation can be annotated and quickly browsed by an operator. The paper discusses the criticalities introduced by the characteristics of the audio signals under consideration - in particular background noise and channel/coding distortions - as well as the requirements and functionalities of the system under development. It is shown that the performance of state-of-the-art approaches degrades significantly in presence of moderately high background noise. Finally, a novel speaker recognizer based on phonetic features and an ensemble classifier is presented. Results show that the proposed approach improves performance on clean audio, and suggest that it can be employed towards improved real-world robustness. © EURASIP, 2009.

On the applicability of the lognormal distribution in random dynamical systems

This paper is concerned with the probability density function of the energy of a random dynamical system subjected to harmonic excitation. It is shown that if the natural frequencies and mode shapes of the system conform to the Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble, then under common types of loading the distribution of the energy of the response is approximately lognormal, providing the modal overlap factor is high (typically greater than two). In contrast, it is shown that the response of a system with Poisson natural frequencies is not approximately lognormal. Numerical simulations are conducted on a plate system to validate the theoretical findings and good agreement is obtained. Simulations are also conducted on a system made from two plates connected with rotational springs to demonstrate that the theoretical findings can be extended to a built-up system. The work provides a theoretical justification of the commonly used empirical practice of assuming that the energy response of a random system is lognormal.

Spatial distribution and morphologic diversity of virioplankton in Lake Donghu, China

The spatial distribution and morphological diversity of virioplankton were determined in Lake Donghu which contains three trophic regions: hypertrophic, eutrophic and mesotrophic region. Virioplankton abundance measured by transmission electron microscope (TEM) ranged from 7.7 x 10(8) to 3.0 x 109 ml(-1), being among the highest observed in any natural aquatic system examined so far. The spatial distribution of virioplankton was correlated significantly with chlorophyll a concentration (r = 0.847; P < 0.01) at the sampling sites in Lake Donghu. 76 morphotypes were observed. Most morphotypes have tails, belonging to Siphoviridae, Myoviridae and Podoviridae. The majority of tailed phages in the lake were Myoviridae. Morphotypes which were rarely reported, such as prolate-headed virus-like particles, lemon-shaped virus-like particle, and viruses resembling Tectiviridae and Corticoviridae were all observed in the lake. It is concluded that the high viral abundance might be associated with high density of phytoplankton including algae and cyanobacteria. There was high viral diversity in this eutrophic shallow lake. In addition, cyanophage represented an important fraction of the virioplankton community in Lake Donghu. (c) 2006 Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.

FATE OF 2 PHENYLBENZOYLUREA INSECTICIDES IN AN ALGAE CULTURE SYSTEM (SCENEDESMUS-SUBSPICATUS)

The bioaccumulation, elimination and degradation of C-14-labelled diflubenzuron (DFB) and of 1-(2-chlorobenzoyl)-3-(4-chlorophenyl)urea (CCU) was studied in a laboratory algae culture system of scenedesmus subspicatus. Algae were exposed at an initial concentration of 200 mug/l for seven days. Neither substance had an inhibitory effect on the growth of algae. The half life of DFB and CCU was 3 and 1 days, respectively, as measured by HPLC. The distribution of C-14 between medium and algae was measured. In the case of DFB radioactivity in algae increased steadily and levelled off at approximately 60 % after 5 days. Due to algae growth BCF values decreased from 4310 to 889 for DFB and from 6719 to 304 for CCU during the exposure period. The relationship between algae density and bioconcentration could be correlated by an adsorption isotherm. Elimination of both compounds was rapid during the first hours.

Thermal performance of a micro-combustor for micro-gas turbine system

Premixed combustion of hydrogen gas and air was performed in a stainless steel based micro-annular combustor for a micro-gas turbine system. Micro-scale combustion has proved to be stable in the micro-combustor with a gap of 2 mm. The operating range of the micro-combustor was measured, and the maximum excess air ratio is up to 4.5. The distribution of the outer wall temperature and the temperature of exhaust gas of the micro-conbustor with excess air ratio were obtained, and the wall temperature of the micro-combustor reaches its maximum value at the excess air ratio of 0.9 instead of 1 (stoichiometric ratio). The heat loss of the micro-combustor to the environment was calculated and even exceeds 70% of the total thermal power computed from the consumed hydrogen mass flow rate. Moreover, radiant hunt transfer covers a large fraction of the total heat loss. Measures used to reduce the heat loss were proposed to improve the thermal performance of the micro-combustor. The optimal operating status of the micro-combustor and micro-gas turbine is analyzed and proposed by analyzing the relationship of the temperature of the exhaust gas of the micro-combustor with thermal power and excess air ratio. The investigation of the thermal performance of the micro-combustor is helpful to design an improved microcombustor.

Transfer property of electron pulse in a femto-second electron diffraction system

An ultra-fast electron diffraction system has been designed. The static and dynamic characters of an electron pulse with 150 fs temporal dispersion are studied during its transmission in the whole ultra-fast electron diffraction system, including the size of the electron spot, temporal dispersion, distribution of azimuths and elevation angles. The initial status of the photoelectrons are put down by Monte Carlo method, both the two dimensional and three dimensional electric fields are calculated by finite difference method and the magnetic flux are. calculated by finite element method.