Edible crabs “Go West”: migrations and incubation cycle of Cancer pagurus revealed by electronic tags

Crustaceans are key components of marine ecosystems which, like other exploited marine taxa, show seasonable patterns of distribution and activity, with consequences for their availability to capture by targeted fisheries. Despite concerns over the sustainability of crab fisheries worldwide, difficulties in observing crabs’ behaviour over their annual cycles, and the timings and durations of reproduction, remain poorly understood. From the release of 128 mature female edible crabs tagged with electronic data storage tags (DSTs), we demonstrate predominantly westward migration in the English Channel. Eastern Channel crabs migrated further than western Channel crabs, while crabs released outside the Channel showed little or no migration. Individual migrations were punctuated by a 7-month hiatus, when crabs remained stationary, coincident with the main period of crab spawning and egg incubation. Incubation commenced earlier in the west, from late October onwards, and brooding locations, determined using tidal geolocation, occurred throughout the species range. With an overall return rate of 34%, our results demonstrate that previous reluctance to tag crabs with relatively high-cost DSTs for fear of loss following moulting is unfounded, and that DSTs can generate precise information with regards life-history metrics that would be unachievable using other conventional means

An innovative mobile application for construction programme managers

Construction programme management is a complex and information-intensive environment. The construction programme management team requires access to construction information in real-time and when needed. The current increasing use of mobile devices offers an opportunity to meet this need. The efficient management of construction programmes is one of the major factors for improving stakeholders’ satisfaction. An innovative tool is needed in accessing the right information at the right time, especially when spontaneous and urgent decision-making is needed. To this end, the innovative use of a mobile device in delivering information and services to the management team in real-time and based on their current context offers significant benefits. This paper discusses context-aware computing, the enabling technologies for geolocation and the development of a prototype, mobile, context-aware application for construction programme management. The prototype system developed is based on the findings from an earlier study of user requirements which showed that the ability to provide relevant information and services at an appropriate time and at the most appropriate location has the potential to improve the monitoring and control of construction programmes. The prototype system demonstrates the provision of context-specific information and services to construction programme managers using a mobile device. The benefits and limitations of the proposed approach are discussed and conclusions drawn about the potential impact of enhanced information delivery for the efficiency of the construction programme managers

ISY Mission to Planet Earth Conference: A planning meeting for the International Space Year

A major theme was the opportunity offered by the International Space Year (ISY) to initiate a long-term program of Earth observation mission coordination and worldwide data standardization. The challenge is immense and extremely time critical. A recommendation was made to inventory the capabilities of Earth observing spacecraft scheduled during the next decade. The ISY effort to strengthen coordination and standardization should emphasize global issues, and also regional initiatives of particular relevance to developing nations. The concepts of a Global Information System Test (GIST) was accepted and applied to specific issues of immediate concern. The importance of ISY Earth observation initiatives extending beyond research to include immediate and direct applications for social and economic development was stressed. Several specific Mission to Planet Earth proposals were developed during the Conference. A mechanism was set up for coordinating participation of the national space agencies or equivalent bodies

Decentralization in Bitcoin and Ethereum Networks

Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies have demonstrated how to securely implement traditionally centralized systems, such as currencies, in a decentralized fashion. However, there have been few measurement studies on the level of decentralization they achieve in practice. We present a measurement study on various decentralization metrics of two of the leading cryptocurrencies with the largest market capitalization and user base, Bitcoin and Ethereum. We investigate the extent of decentralization by measuring the network resources of nodes and the interconnection among them, the protocol requirements affecting the operation of nodes, and the robustness of the two systems against attacks. In particular, we adapted existing internet measurement techniques and used the Falcon Relay Network as a novel measurement tool to obtain our data. We discovered that neither Bitcoin nor Ethereum has strictly better properties than the other. We also provide concrete suggestions for improving both systems.Comment: Financial Cryptography and Data Security 201

Development and Demonstration of a TDOA-Based GNSS Interference Signal Localization System

Background theory, a reference design, and demonstration results are given for a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) interference localization system comprising a distributed radio-frequency sensor network that simultaneously locates multiple interference sources by measuring their signals’ time difference of arrival (TDOA) between pairs of nodes in the network. The end-to-end solution offered here draws from previous work in single-emitter group delay estimation, very long baseline interferometry, subspace-based estimation, radar, and passive geolocation. Synchronization and automatic localization of sensor nodes is achieved through a tightly-coupled receiver architecture that enables phase-coherent and synchronous sampling of the interference signals and so-called reference signals which carry timing and positioning information. Signal and crosscorrelation models are developed and implemented in a simulator. Multiple-emitter subspace-based TDOA estimation techniques are developed as well as emitter identification and localization algorithms. Simulator performance is compared to the CramérRao lower bound for single-emitter TDOA precision. Results are given for a test exercise in which the system accurately locates emitters broadcasting in the amateur radio band in Austin, TX.Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanic

Going Rogue: Mobile Research Applications and the Right to Privacy

This Article investigates whether nonsectoral state laws may serve as a viable source of privacy and security standards for mobile health research participants and other health data subjects until new federal laws are created or enforced. In particular, this Article (1) catalogues and analyzes the nonsectoral data privacy, security, and breach notification statutes of all fifty states and the District of Columbia; (2) applies these statutes to mobile-app-mediated health research conducted by independent scientists, citizen scientists, and patient researchers; and (3) proposes substantive amendments to state law that could help protect the privacy and security of all health data subjects, including mobile-app-mediated health research participants

RIDDLE: Race and ethnicity Imputation from Disease history with Deep LEarning

Anonymized electronic medical records are an increasingly popular source of research data. However, these datasets often lack race and ethnicity information. This creates problems for researchers modeling human disease, as race and ethnicity are powerful confounders for many health exposures and treatment outcomes; race and ethnicity are closely linked to population-specific genetic variation. We showed that deep neural networks generate more accurate estimates for missing racial and ethnic information than competing methods (e.g., logistic regression, random forest). RIDDLE yielded significantly better classification performance across all metrics that were considered: accuracy, cross-entropy loss (error), and area under the curve for receiver operating characteristic plots (all $p < 10^{-6}$). We made specific efforts to interpret the trained neural network models to identify, quantify, and visualize medical features which are predictive of race and ethnicity. We used these characterizations of informative features to perform a systematic comparison of differential disease patterns by race and ethnicity. The fact that clinical histories are informative for imputing race and ethnicity could reflect (1) a skewed distribution of blue- and white-collar professions across racial and ethnic groups, (2) uneven accessibility and subjective importance of prophylactic health, (3) possible variation in lifestyle, such as dietary habits, and (4) differences in background genetic variation which predispose to diseases