Pacific bonito management information document

Management of Pacific bonito in California is examined in this Management Information Document by a State-Federal team of scientists. Abundance of Pacific bonito in southern California has fallen dramatically between the 1963-1969 period and the 1974-1977 period. Since 1976 the commercia1 fleet has found few large fish in southern California, and has caught fish in the size range of 15 to 57 cm (1.2 to 4.7 pounds). This fact, coupled with the low abundance indices, point out the need for a more active management regime. To develop management measures for the California bonito fishery both a surplus yield analysis and a yield-per-recruit analysis were performed. A maximum sustained yield of 10,000 short tons was estimated for the fishery in southern California, while the whole fishery, including Baja California, has an estimated MSY of 13,000 tons. In order to achieve this level of catch, however, the stock abundance must be increased by a factor of five. Yield-per-recruit considerations suggest that a minimum size limit in the commercial fishery has two important effects. A three-pound size limit could result in a slight increase in yield-per-recruit. If the size limit is increased to 5 or 7.5 lbs, the yield-per-recruit would fall significantly. Offsetting the effect on yield-per-recruit, however, would be a substantial increase in average amount of spawning per recruit which should result in a proportional increase in recruitment. With the current depressed stock abundance both a reduced annual take and a minimum size limit on commercial catch would confer substantial benefits in the form of an increase in the future stock size. After considering seven different types of management measures, the team finds that three types -- an annual commercial catch quota, a commercial size limit, and a recreational bag limit -- appear desirable. Re-establishment of the stock in southern California was the major consideration in this evaluation because the stock is currently depressed. All segments of the fishery will benefit from a more abundant resource. The difficult issues for policy, however, concern the rate of rebuilding, the degree of risk that is acceptable, and the distribution of benefits among user groups. By judicious choice among the options discussed here, a variety of positions can be established with respect to these issues. The greater the size limit, for instance, the more benefit is provided the recreational sector while difficulties are imposed upon commercial fishermen. The higher the quotas adopted, the slower the stock rebuilding and the greater the risk of continued stock depletion. A final reconciliation of the management options involves social, political and legal considerations which must be thoroughly incorporated by decision-makers before adoption of a management plan. (93pp.

On right conjugacy closed loops of twice prime order

The right conjugacy closed loops of order 2p, where p is an odd prime, are classified up to isomorphism.Comment: Clarified definitions, added some remarks and a tabl

Dynamics of fingering convection II: The formation of thermohaline staircases

Regions of the ocean's thermocline unstable to salt fingering are often observed to host thermohaline staircases, stacks of deep well-mixed convective layers separated by thin stably-stratified interfaces. Decades after their discovery, however, their origin remains controversial. In this paper we use 3D direct numerical simulations to shed light on the problem. We study the evolution of an analogous double-diffusive system, starting from an initial statistically homogeneous fingering state and find that it spontaneously transforms into a layered state. By analysing our results in the light of the mean-field theory developed in Paper I, a clear picture of the sequence of events resulting in the staircase formation emerges. A collective instability of homogeneous fingering convection first excites a field of gravity waves, with a well-defined vertical wavelength. However, the waves saturate early through regular but localized breaking events, and are not directly responsible for the formation of the staircase. Meanwhile, slower-growing, horizontally invariant but vertically quasi-periodic gamma-modes are also excited and grow according to the gamma-instability mechanism. Our results suggest that the nonlinear interaction between these various mean-field modes of instability leads to the selection of one particular gamma-mode as the staircase progenitor. Upon reaching a critical amplitude, this progenitor overturns into a fully-formed staircase. We conclude by extending the results of our simulations to real oceanic parameter values, and find that the progenitor gamma-mode is expected to grow on a timescale of a few hours, and leads to the formation of a thermohaline staircase in about one day with an initial spacing of the order of one to two metres.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, associated mpeg file at http://earth.uni-muenster.de/~stellma/movie_small.mp4, submitted to JF

Follow-up of vestibular function in bilateral vestibulopathy

Objective: Bilateral vestibulopathy (BV) leads to a bilateral deficit of the vestibulo-ocular reflex and has various aetiologies. The main goal of this study was to determine the frequency and degree of recovery or worsening of vestibular function over time.Methods: 82 patients (59 males, 23 females; mean age at the time of diagnosis 56.3 (SD 17.6) years) were re-examined 51 (36) months after the first examination. All patients underwent a standardised neuro-ophthalmological and neuro-otological examination. Electronystagmography with bithermal caloric irrigation was analysed by measurement of the mean peak slow phase velocity (SPV) of the induced nystagmus. Patients evaluated the course of their disease in terms of balance, gait unsteadiness and health related quality of life.Results: Statistical analysis of the mean peak SPV of caloric induced nystagmus revealed a non-significant worsening over time (initial mean peak SPV 3.0 (3.5)°/s vs 2.1 (2.8)°/s). With respect to subgroups of aetiology, only patients with BV due to meningitis exhibited an increasing, but non-significant SPV (1.0 (1.4)°/s vs 1.9 (1.6)°/s). Vestibular outcome was independent of age, gender, time course of manifestation and severity of BV. Single analysis of all patients showed that a substantial improvement ⩾5°/s occurred in two patients on both sides (idiopathic n = 1, Sjögren's syndrome n = 1) and in eight patients on one side (idiopathic n = 6, meningitis n = 1, Menière's disease n = 1). In 84% of patients there was impairment of their health related quality of life (42% slight, 24% moderate, 18% severe). Forty-three per cent of patients rated the course of their disease as stable, 28% as worsened and 29% as improved.Conclusions: Our data support the view that more than 80% of patients with BV do not improve. Thus the prognosis of BV is less favourable than assumed

On gravity currents driven by constant fluxes of saline and particle-laden fluid in the presence of a uniform flow

Experiments are reported on the sustained release of saline and particle-laden fluid\ud into a long, but relatively narrow, flume, filled with fresh water. The dense fluid rapidly\ud spread across the flume and flowed away from the source: the motion was then essentially\ud two-dimensional. In the absence of a background flow in the flume, the motion\ud was symmetric, away from the source. However, in the presence of a background\ud flow the upstream speed of propagation was slowed and the downstream speed was\ud increased. Measurements of this motion are reported and, when the excess density was\ud due to the presence of suspended sediment, the distribution of the deposited particles\ud was also determined. Alongside this experimental programme, new theoretical models\ud of the motion were developed. These were based upon multi-layered depth-averaged\ud shallow-water equations, in which the interfacial drag and mixing processes were\ud explicitly modelled. While the early stages of the motion are independent of these\ud interfacial phenomena to leading order, they play an increasingly important dynamical\ud role as the the flow is slowed, or even arrested. In addition a new integral model is\ud proposed. This does not resolve the interior dynamics of the flow, but may be readily\ud integrated and obviates the need for more lengthy numerical calculations. It is shown\ud that the predictions from both the shallow-layer and integral models are in close\ud agreement with the experimental observations

The competition between gravity and flow focusing in two-layered porous media

The gravitationally driven flow of a dense fluid within a two-layered porous media is examined experimentally and theoretically. We find that in systems with two horizontal layers of differing permeability a competition between gravity driven flow and flow focusing along high-permeability routes can lead to two distinct flow regimes. When the lower layer is more permeable than the upper layer, gravity acts along high-permeability pathways and the flow is enhanced in the lower layer. Alternatively, when the upper layer is more permeable than the lower layer, we find that for a sufficiently small input flux the flow is confined to the lower layer. However, above a critical flux fluid preferentially spreads horizontally within the upper layer before ultimately draining back down into the lower layer. This later regime, in which the fluid overrides the low-permeability lower layer, is important because it enhances the mixing of the two fluids. We show that the critical flux which separates these two regimes can be characterized by a simple power law. Finally, we briefly discuss the relevance of this work to the geological sequestration of carbon dioxide and other industrial and natural flows in porous media

On the p-length of some finite p-soluble groups

The main aim of this paper is to give structural information of a finite group of minimal order belonging to a subgroup-closed class of finite groups and whose p-length is greater than 1, p a prime number. Alternative proofs and improvements of recent results about the influence of minimal p-subgroups on the p-nilpotence and p-length of a finite group arise as consequences of our study