The Threatened Status of Steller Sea Lions, Eumetopias jubatus, under the Endangered Species Act: Effects on Alaska Groundfish Fisheries Management

In April 1990, the Steller sea lion, Eumetopias jubatus, was listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act by emergency action. Competitive interactions with the billion-dollar Alaska commercial groundfish fisheries have been suggested as one of the possible contributing factors to the Steller sea lion population decline. Since the listing, fisheries managers have attempted to address the potential impacts of the groundfish fisheries on Steller sea lion recovery. In this paper, we review pertinent Federal legislation, biological information on the Steller sea lion decline, changes in the Alaska trawl fishery for walleye pollock, Theragra chalcogramma, since the late 1970's, andpossible interactions between fisheries and sea lions. Using three cases, we illustrate how the listing of Steller sea lions has affected Alaska groundfish fisheries through: I) actions taken at the time of listing designed to limit the potential for directhuman-related sea lion mortality, 2) actions addressing spatial and temporal separation of fisheries from sea lions, and 3) introduction of risk-adverse stock assessment methodologies and Steller sea lion conservation considerations directly in the annual quota-setting process. This discussion shows some of the ways that North Pacific groundfish resource managers have begun to explicitly consider the conservation ofmarine mammal and other nontarget species

Testing the Bayesian confidence hypothesis

Asking subjects to rate their confidence is one of the oldest procedures in psychophysics. Remarkably, quantitative models of confidence ratings have been scarce. The Bayesian confidence hypothesis (BCH) states that an observer’s confidence rating is monotonically related to the posterior probability of their choice. I will report tests of this hypothesis in two visual categorization tasks: one requiring rapid categorization of a single oriented stimulus, the other a deliberative judgment typically made by scientists, namely interpreting scatterplots. We find evidence against the Bayesian confidence hypothesis in both tasks

Fluent Simulation Software

Issue: CFD software, particularly ANSYS/Fluent is difficult to use and understand for people learning fluid mechanics and heat transfer. However, ability to use this software can provide fundamental knowledge to students in these disciplines. Solution: To create tutorials and simulations that will allow students without fluent experience to use fluent to learn CFD and heat transfer fundamental

Best practices of five Canadian ecological education (ECE), environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD) pre-service teacher educators

This study examines the teaching practices of five Canadian pre-service teacher educators in ecological education (ECE) courses, environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD) courses. This study builds upon Lin's (2002) and Towler's (1980) studies by investigating the varied practices of Canadian ECE/EE/ESD teacher educators through the use of interviews. This study found that to greater and lesser extents, all of the participants use action projects, creative/critical approaches, experiential approaches, modeling, narrative, social learning, present multiple perspectives and provide students freedom in choosing their assignments. These teaching practices are carried out in order to provide an environment conducive to inner transformation

Yeast extractives in the nutrition of San Francisco sourdough bacteria (Lactobacillus sanfrancisco)

A laboratory-prepared hot-water extract of yeast is required for vigorous growth of San Francisco sourdough bacteria (Lactobacillus sanfrancisco) in pure culture. This requirement was examined with the goal of determining what is unique about fresh yeast extractives (commercial extractives exhibit much lower growth promoting activity), and which components of fresh yeast extractives are required or stimulatory in the nutrition of these bacteria. Autolysis, the process by which most commercial extractives are prepared, was shown to be less efficient in releasing growth promoting materials for sourdough bacteria than the hot-water extraction procedure used for the preparation of fresh extractives. Essential nutrients supplied by fresh yeast extractives were found to include manganous ion, which the organisms require at a concentration of about 0.2 μg /ml for maximal growth, several vitamins and nucleic acid bases, and a short peptide which accounts for the unique growth promoting activity of this material. The four strains of sourdough organisms examined were found to require thiamine, nicotinic acid, and calcium pantothenate for growth in the test medium employed, while one strain requires, in addition, folic acid. One or more of the nucleic acid bases adenine, guanine, or uracil were demonstrated to be required or stimulatory for all strains. The peptide to which the unique growth promoting activity of fresh yeast extractives may be attributed was isolated and found to contain aspartic acid, cysteine, glutamic acid, glycine, and lysine, with a chain length of about nine residues and a molecular weight of approximately 1,065

Confidence Is the Bridge between Multi-stage Decisions

Demanding tasks often require a series of decisions to reach a goal. Recent progress in perceptual decision-making has served to unite decision accuracy, speed, and confidence in a common framework of bounded evidence accumulation, furnishing a platform for the study of such multi-stage decisions. In many instances, the strategy applied to each decision, such as the speed-accuracy trade-off, ought to depend on the accuracy of the previous decisions. However, as the accuracy of each decision is often unknown to the decision maker, we hypothesized that subjects may carry forward a level of confidence in previous decisions to affect subsequent decisions. Subjects made two perceptual decisions sequentially and were rewarded only if they made both correctly. The speed and accuracy of individual decisions were explained by noisy evidence accumulation to a terminating bound. We found that subjects adjusted their speed-accuracy setting by elevating the termination bound on the second decision in proportion to their confidence in the first. The findings reveal a novel role for confidence and a degree of flexibility, hitherto unknown, in the brain's ability to rapidly and precisely modify the mechanisms that control the termination of a decision.We thank the Wellcome Trust, the Human Frontier Science Program, the Royal Society (Noreen Murray Professorship in Neurobiology to D.M.W.), Howard Hughes Medical Institute, National Eye Institute grant EY11378 to M.N.S., a Sloan Research Fellowship to R.K., and Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain grant 323439 to R.K

The incidence of Salmonella in gulls on the Oregon coast

Environmental swabs and meat samples from two of three seafood processing plants sampled on the Oregon Coast were found to contain Salmonella. Although these enteropathogens were not isolated from the finished products, the danger of contamination is great since the processing received by many seafoods is not designed to yield a sterile product. The incidence of Salmonella in gulls on the Oregon Coast was studied to determine the possible role these birds may have in the contamination of seafood products with salmonellae. Of 521 fecal specimens examined, nearly two percent were found to contain Salmonella. When multiplied by the number of gulls in the environment, this amounts to a tremendous reservoir of infection: Protection of raw and processed seafoods from this source of contamination is essential to insure the distribution of safe and wholesome products. Salmonella typhimurium was isolated from seven samples, while S. enteritidis and S. reading were each recovered once