Electroencephalographic studies of sleep

Various experimental studies on sleep are described. The following areas are discussed: (1) effect of altered day length on sleep, (2) effect of a partial loss of sleep on subsequent nocturnal sleep; (3) effect of rigid control over sleep-wake-up times; (4) sleep and wakefulness in a time-free environment; (5) distribution of spindles during a full night of sleep; and (6) effect on sleep and performance of swiftly changing shifts of work

Evaluating the reliability of point estimates of wetland reference evaporation

The Penman-Monteith formulation of evaporation has been criticised for its reliance upon point estimates so that areal estimates of wetland evaporation based upon single weather stations may be misleading. Typically, wetlands comprise a complex mosaic of land cover types from each of which evaporative rates may differ. The need to account for wetland patches when monitoring hydrological fluxes has been noted. This paper presents work carried out over a wet grassland in Southern England. The significance of fetch on actual evaporation was examined using the approach adopted by Gash (1986) based upon surface roughness to estimate the fraction of evaporation sensed from a specified distance upwind of the monitoring station. This theoretical analysis (assuming near-neutral conditions) reveals that the fraction of evaporation contributed by the surrounding area increases steadily to a value of 77% at a distance of 224 m and thereafter declines rapidly. Thus, point climate observations may not reflect surface conditions at greater distances. This result was tested through the deployment of four weather stations on the wetland. The resultant data suggested that homogeneous conditions prevailed so that the central weather station provided reliable areal estimates of reference evaporation during the observation period March–April 1999. This may be a result of not accounting for high wind speeds and roughness found in wetlands that lead to widespread atmospheric mixing. It should be noted this analysis was based upon data collected during the period March-April when wind direction was constant (westerly) and the land surface was moist. There could be more variation at other times of the year that would lead to greater heterogeneity in actual evaporation.</p> <p style='line-height: 20px;'><b>Keywords: </b>evaporation, Penman-Monteith, automatic weather station, fetch, wetland</p

Living With Coyotes

Coyotes have been slowly moving into New York State from Canada since the 1930s. They reached Westchester County and the Bronx decades ago, and their numbers have been slowly rising. Sighting in Manhattan reached an all-time high last spring, and pet attacks in Westchester County have increased slightly in the last several years. But the slight increase in sightings and pet attacks in recent years has been amplified on social media in towns like Chappaqua, New York, where anxiety and fear about coyotes has pitted neighbors against neighbors. Main character Frank Vincenti is a Long Island barber and a self-proclaimed wildlife educator. He’s always wanted to be a scientist, but he wasn’t able to go to school for it—instead he runs his family’s 4th generation barbershop business. Frank gives talks in communities in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, trying to teach people how to live with coyotes. He may not have the academic qualifications of some educators, but he makes up for it with passion and humor. He He’s on a mission to teach people how to live with coyotes. Frank believes that coyotes are here to stay, and he does his best to educate people on how to protect their pets and train coyotes to avoid humans. He’s charismatic, funny, and enthusiastic, but there is also some pathos to his unsuccessful efforts to help others. In recent years, Frank has been trying to give talks in towns around Westchester about how to deal with coyotes, but the towns don’t always want his help. In the hamlet of Chappaqua, coyote attacks came to a head in 2013, and Frank was finally invited to speak (along with a state expert) after several dogs were killed. Frank’s talk didn’t go well—residents were angry and upset, and his speaking style (he makes a lot of bad jokes) wasn’t appreciated by some of the people who had just lost their pets. Since then, the town has tried to develop a plan for how to deal with coyotes, but there have been strongly opposing viewpoints. Some people feel coyotes should be left alone, while others feel they should be trapped and eliminated, leading to some heated exchanges on social media and at public meetings. The film looks at the coyote conflict in Westchester and the frustrated efforts of one outsider—Frank Vincenti—to improve human-coyote interactions. It’s a portrait of small-town politics and an example of how human ambitions and emotions can be projected onto the natural world

Uplift and subsidence associated with the great Aceh-Andaman earthquake of 2004

Rupture of the Sunda megathrust on 26 December 2004 produced broad regions of uplift and subsidence. We define the pivot line separating these regions as a first step in defining the lateral extent and the downdip limit of rupture during that great M_w ≈ 9.2 earthquake. In the region of the Andaman and Nicobar islands we rely exclusively on the interpretation of satellite imagery and a tidal model. At the southern limit of the great rupture we rely principally on field measurements of emerged coral microatolls. Uplift extends from the middle of Simeulue Island, Sumatra, at ~2.5°N, to Preparis Island, Myanmar (Burma), at ~14.9°N. Thus the rupture is ~1600 km long. The distance from the pivot line to the trench varies appreciably. The northern and western Andaman Islands rose, whereas the southern and eastern portion of the islands subsided. The Nicobar Islands and the west coast of Aceh province, Sumatra, subsided. Tilt at the southern end of the rupture is steep; the distance from 1.5 m of uplift to the pivot line is just 60 km. Our method of using satellite imagery to recognize changes in elevation relative to sea surface height and of using a tidal model to place quantitative bounds on coseismic uplift or subsidence is a novel approach that can be adapted to other forms of remote sensing and can be applied to other subduction zones in tropical regions

Effect of uniformity of land application of solid cattle manure on crop yield and soil nitrate

Non-Peer ReviewedEquipment used in Western Canada to apply solid cattle manure (SCM) are known to exhibit uneven uniformity of distribution of material. For organic bio-solid manures to be a viable supplement or alternative to chemical fertilizers, it is essential that the uniformity of distribution of the product be measured by the effect that occurs on soil components and crop yields. A precise field scale solid manure applicator has been developed at the University of Saskatchewan and Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute that is capable of precise surface and subsurface application of solid organic manure. The Low and Mid C.V. treatments at the low SCM application rate achieved similar grain yield results and were significantly higher than the High C.V. high SCM rate treatments. Addition of urea fertilizer to the treatments boosted grain yield production in most of the C.V. and rate treatments, however most of these increases were found to be not significantly different from urea only fertilized treatment plots. The addition of urea fertilizer in most of the treatments increased soil NO3-N compared to the non-urea fertilized treatments. There was however, no significant difference in soil NO3-N among the three C.V. treatments without the addition of urea fertilizer. The lack of large manure impacts is likely related to low release of available nutrient in the year in application

Effect of variability in cattle manure application on soil nutrients and crop yield

Non-Peer Reviewe

Visual attention, biological motion perception and healthy ageing

Open Access via Springer Compact Agreement This study was funded by a grant from the Development Trust to Karin S. Pilz and Louise H. Phillips.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Brief communication: The effects of disuse on the mechanical properties of bone: What unloading tells us about the adaptive nature of skeletal tissue

The intricate link between load environment and skeletal health is exemplified by the severe osteopenia that accompanies prolonged periods of immobilization, frequently referred to as disuse osteoporosis. Investigating the effects disuse has on the structural properties of bone provides a unique opportunity to better understand how mechanical loads influence the adaptation and maintenance of skeletal tissue. Here, we report results from an examination of multiple indicators of bone metabolism (e.g., mean osteon density, mean osteon size, bone mass, and bone area distribution) within the major long bones of individuals with distinct activity level differences. Results are based on a sample comprising two subjects that suffered from long‐term quadriplegia and 28 individuals of comparable age that had full limb mobility. Although limited in sample size, our findings suggest bones associated with long‐term disuse have lower osteon densities and larger osteon areas compared to individuals of normal mobility, reflecting dramatically lower remodeling rates potentially related to reduced strain levels. Moreover, immobilized skeletal elements demonstrate a reduced percentage of cortical area present resulting from endosteal resorption. Differences between mobility groups in the percentage of cortical area present and bone distribution of all skeletal elements, suggests bone modeling activity is negligible in the unloaded adult skeleton. Additional histomorphometric comparisons reveal potential intraskeletal differences in bone turnover rates suggesting remodeling rates are highest within the humeri and femora. Addition of more immobilized individuals in the future will allow for quantitative statistical analyses and greater consideration of human variation within and between individuals. Am J Phys Anthropol 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/94522/1/22150_ftp.pd

G_2 Perfect-Fluid Cosmologies with a proper conformal Killing vector

We study the Einstein field equations for spacetimes admitting a maximal two-dimensional abelian group of isometries acting orthogonally transitively on spacelike surfaces and, in addition, with at least one conformal Killing vector. The three-dimensional conformal group is restricted to the case when the two-dimensional abelian isometry subalgebra is an ideal and it is also assumed to act on non-null hypersurfaces (both, spacelike and timelike cases are studied). We consider both, diagonal and non-diagonal metrics and find all the perfect-fluid solutions under these assumptions (except those already known). We find four families of solutions, each one containing arbitrary parameters for which no differential equations remain to be integrated. We write the line-elements in a simplified form and perform a detailed study for each of these solutions, giving the kinematical quantities of the fluid velocity vector, the energy-density and pressure, values of the parameters for which the energy conditions are fulfilled everywhere, the Petrov type, the singularities in the spacetimes and the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker metrics contained in each family.Comment: Latex, no figure