Discovery of the Orbit of the Transient X ray Pulsar SAX J2103.5+4545

Using X-ray data from the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), we carried out pulse timing analysis of the transient X-ray pulsar SAX J2103.5+4545. An outburst was detected by All Sky Monitor (ASM) October 25 1999 and reached a peak X-ray brightness of 27 mCrab October 28. Between November 19 and December 27, the RXTE/PCA carried out pointed observations which provided us with pulse arrival times. These yield an eccentric orbit (e= 0.4 \pm 0.2) with an orbital period of 12.68 \pm 0.25 days and light travel time across the projected semimajor axis of 72 \pm 6 sec. The pulse period was measured to be 358.62171 \pm 0.00088 s and the spin-up rate (2.50 \pm 0.15) \times 10^{-13} Hz s^{-1}. The ASM data for the February to September 1997 outburst in which BeppoSAX discovered SAX J2103.5+4545 (Hulleman, in't Zand and Heise 1998) are modulated at time scales close to the orbital period. Folded light curves of the 1997 ASM data and the 1999 PCA data are similar and show that the intensity increases at periastron passages.Comment: To appear in The Astrophysical Journal (Letters

Fungal contaminants observed during micropropagation of Lilium candidum L. and the effect of chemotherapeutic substances applied after sterilization

Lilium candidum L. is a species which grows in the South West Anatolia region of Turkey. It is a bulbous plant with beautifully scented flowers and is used in the floral industry. The bulbs are produced by using traditional propagation and in vitro techniques. Micropropagation is a rapid propagation technique, but the greatest problem is contamination with fungi and bacteria. Antibiotic and fungicide treatments were done after sterilization for micropropagation of L. candidum. Fungal contaminants formed during the culture were determined. Bulb scales were used as explants (5 - 10 mm width) and were cultured in photoperiodic conditions (16 h light, 8 h dark) or complete darkness. Bulb scales rinsed in water were surface sterilized, then solutions containing chemotherapeutic substances (Benomyl, Nystatin, Streptomycin, Penicillin) in different combinations were applied for 30 min and subsequently were cultured in MS medium with supplement 0.1 mg dm-3 NAA + 0.01 mg dm-3 BA. During the experiment, fungal contaminants were observed in full treatments. Determined contaminants were identified according to their morphological and cultural characteristics by cultivation and were comprised of: Fusarium, Penicillium, Alternaria, Rhizopus, Cylindrocarpon and Aspergillus species. The most effective treatment against fungal contaminations was achieved by utilizing a Benomyl (100 mg dm-3) + Nystatin (100 mg dm-3) treatment combination

Two experimental fish aggregating systems (fads) in the Aegean sea: their design and application

Duas bóias de aço spar foram construídas e ancoradas em 50 e 100 m de profundidade nas águas do Mar Egeu para dar apoio à pesca recreativa. O primeiro FAD foi implantado nas coordenadas 38°01'48''N 26°58'02''E, a uma distância de 3 milhas náuticas da costa. O outro ficou ancorado a 1,1 milha náutica da costa nas coordenadas 38°03'11''N; 26°59'01''E. Uma âncora (1.2x1.2x0.8 m3), pesando aproximadamente 2,76 toneladas, feita de concreto armado, foi usada para prender um FAD de peso aproximado de 1,5 toneladas. Foram realizados cálculos para determinação das conexões dos FADs, dos cabos e da ancoragem. A interação entre as forças de ondas e correntes com os FADs foi também investigada. No experimento, todas as forças (força de arrasto, força de empuxo, etc) atuantes sobre os FADs foram calculadas. É proposto que para a construção dos FADs deverão ser levados em consideração os seguintes fatores: ondas e correntes, forças relacionadas com os FADs, profundidade de implantação, sistema computacional dos moorings e cordas de amarração. Esse conhecimento proporcionará referência importante para os interessados em realizar projetos que visem aumentar o desempenho e a vida útil dos FADs.Two steel spar buoys were constructed and moored in 50 and 100 m deep of water in the Aegean Sea to support recreational fisheries. The first FAD was deployed at coordinates 38°01´48´´N 26°58´02´´E and at a distance of 3 nautical miles from the shoreline. The other FAD was moored at 1.1 nautical miles from the shoreline at coordinates 38°03´11´´N; 26°59´01´´E. An anchor (1.2x1.2x0.8 m3) weighing approximate 2.76 metric ton, made of reinforced concrete, was used to hold a FAD weighing approximate 1.5 metric ton. Hardware and connections of FADs, ropes, mooring calculation and anchor design were made. The interaction between the forces of wave and current and FADs in those waters was investigated. In the experiment, all forces (drag force, buoyancy force etc.) acting on FADs were calculated. It is proposed that the construction of the FADs should take the following design criteria into consideration: wave and current, forces related to the FADs, deployment depth, mooring hardware and ropes. This knowledge provides an important reference for stakeholders performing projects aiming to increase the performance and service life FADs

Adaptation of Deeplab V3+ for Damage Detection on Port Infrastructure Imagery

Regular inspection and maintenance of infrastructure facilities are crucial to ensure their functionality and safety for users. However, current inspection methods are labor-intensive and can vary depending on the inspector. To improve this process, modern sensor systems and machine learning algorithms can be deployed to detect defects based on rapidly acquired data, resulting in lower downtime. A quality-controlled processing chain allows to provide hence informed uncertainty assessments to inspection operators. In this study, we present several Deeplab V3+ models optimized to predict corroded segments of the quay wall at JadeWeserPort, Germany, which is a dataset from the 3D HydroMapper research project. Our models achieve generally high accuracy in detecting this damage type. Therefore, we examine the use of a Region Growing-based weakly supervised approach to efficiently extend our model to other common types in the future. This approach achieves about 90 % of the results compared to corresponding fully supervised networks, of which a ResNet-50 variant peaks at 55.6 % Intersection-over-Union regarding the test set's corrosion class

Comparison of fish community structure on artificial reefs deployed at different depths on turkish Aegean sea coast

A profundidade da implantação de recifes artificiais é uma das questões mais importantes no planejamento de etapas e do futuro êxito. A maior parte dos estudos visando determinar a comunidade de peixes em volta de recifes artificiais foi realizada, principalmente , a profundidades de 10-25m no Mediterrâneo e Mar Egeu. Os objetivos deste estudo são determinar e comparar a estrutura da comunidade de peixes em volta de recifes artificiais que foram implantados a profundidades de 20, 30 e 40 m. A técnica de censo visual foi usada para determinar as espécies e obter uma estimativa do número e tamanho dos peixes. Não houve nenhuma diferença estatística (p> 0.05) entre as profundidades, na média da biomassa de peixes e no número de indivíduos. Entretanto, a média do número de espécies foi significativamente maior nos 20 m em comparação com as profundidades de 30 m e de 40 m (pDeployment depth of artificial reefs is one of the most important issue in planning stage and future success. Most of the studies aimed at determination of fish community around artificial reefs were conducted mainly 10-25m depths in Mediterranean and Aegean Sea. The goals of this study are determine and compare of fish community structure around artificial reefs which deployed 20, 30 and 40 m depths. Underwater visual census technique was used to determine fish species, number of individual and size estimation. There was no statistical difference (p>0.05) in mean fish biomass and number of individual between the depths. But mean species number was significantly greater on 20 m in comparison to 30 m and 40 m depths (

Tulathromycin disturbs blood oxidative and coagulation status

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of tulathromycin on serum oxidative status and coagulation factors in rabbits. Tulathromycin was administered to eight rabbits, and blood samples were obtained 0, 1, 5, 10 and 15 days after treatment. Indicators of serum oxidative status (malondialdehyde, nitric oxide, superoxide dismutase, retinol and -carotene) and coagulation values (antithrombin III, fibrinogen) were measured after tulathromycin treatment. In addition, routine serum biochemical values (creatine kinase-MB, lactate dehydrogenase, alkaline phosphatase, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, gamma glutamyl transferase, creatinine, blood urea nitrogen, cholesterol, triglyceride, high density lipoprotein, amylase, total protein, albumin, glucose and calcium), haemacell counts (white and red blood cells) and arterial blood gas parameters (packed cell volume, hemoglobin, pH, partial pressure of carbon dioxide, partial pressure of oxygen, actual bicarbonate, standard bicarbonate, total carbon dioxide, base excess in vivo, base excess in vitro, oxygen saturation, sodium and potassium) were also determined. Tulathromycin increased (P < 0.05) the levels of malondialdehyde, nitric oxide and superoxide dismutase activity, and decreased (P < 0.05) the level of antithrombin III. In conclusion, tulathromycin may cause oxidative damage and coagulation disorders during the treatment period.Key words: Tulathromycin, oxidative damage, coagulation disorder

A Debiasing Variational Autoencoder for Deforestation Mapping

Deep Learning (DL) algorithms provide numerous benefits in different applications, and they usually yield successful results in scenarios with enough labeled training data and similar class proportions. However, the labeling procedure is a cost and time-consuming task. Furthermore, numerous real-world classification problems present a high level of class imbalance, as the number of samples from the classes of interest differ significantly. In various cases, such conditions tend to promote the creation of biased systems, which negatively impact their performance. Designing unbiased systems has been an active research topic, and recently some DL-based techniques have demonstrated encouraging results in that regard. In this work, we introduce an extension of the Debiasing Variational Autoencoder (DB-VAE) for semantic segmentation. The approach is based on an end-to-end DL scheme and employs the learned latent variables to adjust the individual sampling probabilities of data points during the training process. For that purpose, we adapted the original DB-VAE architecture for dense labeling in the context of deforestation mapping. Experiments were carried out on a region of the Brazilian Amazon, using Sentinel-2 data and the deforestation map from the PRODES project. The reported results show that the proposed DB-VAE approach is able to learn and identify under-represented samples, and select them more frequently in the training batches, consequently delivering superior classification metrics

A stalagmite test of North Atlantic SST and Iberian hydroclimate linkages over the last two glacial cycles

Close coupling of Iberian hydroclimate and North Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) during recent glacial periods has been identified through the analysis of marine sediment and pollen grains co-deposited on the Portuguese continental margin. While offering precisely correlatable records, these time series have lacked a directly dated, site-specific record of continental Iberian climate spanning multiple glacial cycles as a point of comparison. Here we present a high-resolution, multi-proxy (growth dynamics and delta C-13, delta O-18, and delta U-234 values) composite stalagmite record of hydroclimate from two caves in western Portugal across the majority of the last two glacial cycles (similar to 220 ka). At orbital and millennial scales, stalagmite-based proxies for hydroclimate proxies covaried with SST, with elevated delta C-13, delta O-18, and delta U-234 values and/or growth hiatuses indicating re-duced effective moisture coincident with periods of lowered SST during major ice-rafted debris events, in agreement with changes in palynological reconstructions of continental climate. While in many cases the Portuguese stalagmite record can be scaled to SST, in some intervals the magnitudes of stalagmite isotopic shifts, and possibly hydroclimate, appear to have been somewhat decoupled from SST.Agência financiadora / Número do subsídio Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, Cornell College US National Science Foundation BCS-1118155 BCS-1118183 AGS-1804132 IGESPAR Associacao de Estudos Subterraneos e Defesa do Ambienteinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio