Measurements of wind-wave growth and swell decay during the joint North Sea wave project (JONSWAP).

Wavo spectra were measured along a profile extending 160 km into the North Sea westward from Sylt for a period of ten weeks in 1969. Currents, tides, air-sea temperature differences and turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer were also measured. the goal of the experiment (described in Part 1) was to determine the structure of the source function governing the energy balance of the wave spectrum, with particular emphasis on wave growth under stationary offshore wind conditions (Part 2) and the attention of swell in water of finito depth (Part 3). The source functions of wave spectra generated by offshore winds exhibit a characteristic plus-minus signature associated with the shift of the sharp spectral peak towards lower frequencies. The two-lobed distribution of the source function can be explained quantitively by the nonlinear transfer due to resonant wave-wave interactions (second order Bragg scattering). The evolution of a pronounced peak and its shift towards lower frequencies can also be understood as a self-stabilizing feature of this process. The decay rates determined for incoming swell varied considerably, but energy attenuation factors of two along the length of the profile were typical. This is in order of magnitude agreement with expected damping rates due to bottom friction. However, the strong tidal modulation predicted by theory for the case of a quadratic bottom friction law was not observed. Adverse winds did not affect the decay rate. Computations also rule out wave-wave interactions or dissipation due to turbulence outside the bottom boundary layer as effective mechanisms of swell attenuation. We conclude that either the generally accepted friction law needs to be significantly modified or that some other mechanism, such as scattering by bottom irregularities, is the cause of the attenuation. The dispersion characteristics of thw swells indicated rather nearby origins, for which the classical DELTA-event model was generally inapplicable. A strong Doppler modulation by tidal currents was also observed. (A

FunSecKB: the Fungal Secretome KnowledgeBase

The Fungal Secretome KnowledgeBase (FunSecKB) provides a resource of secreted fungal proteins, i.e. secretomes, identified from all available fungal protein data in the NCBI RefSeq database. The secreted proteins were identified using a well evaluated computational protocol which includes SignalP, WolfPsort and Phobius for signal peptide or subcellular location prediction, TMHMM for identifying membrane proteins, and PS-Scan for identifying endoplasmic reticulum (ER) target proteins. The entries were mapped to the UniProt database and any annotations of subcellular locations that were either manually curated or computationally predicted were included in FunSecKB. Using a web-based user interface, the database is searchable, browsable and downloadable by using NCBI’s RefSeq accession or gi number, UniProt accession number, keyword or by species. A BLAST utility was integrated to allow users to query the database by sequence similarity. A user submission tool was implemented to support community annotation of subcellular locations of fungal proteins. With the complete fungal data from RefSeq and associated web-based tools, FunSecKB will be a valuable resource for exploring the potential applications of fungal secreted proteins

Design and validation of an unmanned surface vehicle simulation mode

In this paper we present a multiphysics simulation model of Halcyon, an autonomous unmanned surface vehicle (USV). The simulation model presented in this paper has been developed to rapidly progress the design, development and validation of Halcyon's autonomy management system, particularly in challenging sea conditions. Using simulation for this purpose enables extensive testing across the full environmental operating envelope of the vessel, hence greatly reducing the need for real-world sea-trials. The simulator is comprised of a novel and comprehensive sea-surface wave environment model, a six degree of freedom nonlinear unified seakeeping and manoeuvring boat dynamics model, an actuation dynamics model, an autopilot and an interface with an autonomy management system. Results are presented that show good agreement between real-world and simulated sea-trials data

Fluoxetine Exerts Age-Dependent Effects on Behavior and Amygdala Neuroplasticity in the Rat

The selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) Prozac® (fluoxetine) is the only registered antidepressant to treat depression in children and adolescents. Yet, while the safety of SSRIs has been well established in adults, serotonin exerts neurotrophic actions in the developing brain and thereby may have harmful effects in adolescents. Here we treated adolescent and adult rats chronically with fluoxetine (12 mg/kg) at postnatal day (PND) 25 to 46 and from PND 67 to 88, respectively, and tested the animals 7–14 days after the last injection when (nor)fluoxetine in blood plasma had been washed out, as determined by HPLC. Plasma (nor)fluoxetine levels were also measured 5 hrs after the last fluoxetine injection, and matched clinical levels. Adolescent rats displayed increased behavioral despair in the forced swim test, which was not seen in adult fluoxetine treated rats. In addition, beneficial effects of fluoxetine on wakefulness as measured by electroencephalography in adults was not seen in adolescent rats, and age-dependent effects on the acoustic startle response and prepulse inhibition were observed. On the other hand, adolescent rats showed resilience to the anorexic effects of fluoxetine. Exploratory behavior in the open field test was not affected by fluoxetine treatment, but anxiety levels in the elevated plus maze test were increased in both adolescent and adult fluoxetine treated rats. Finally, in the amygdala, but not the dorsal raphe nucleus and medial prefrontal cortex, the number of PSA-NCAM (marker for synaptic remodeling) immunoreactive neurons was increased in adolescent rats, and decreased in adult rats, as a consequence of chronic fluoxetine treatment. No fluoxetine-induced changes in 5-HT1A receptor immunoreactivity were observed. In conclusion, we show that fluoxetine exerts both harmful and beneficial age-dependent effects on depressive behavior, body weight and wakefulness, which may relate, in part, to differential fluoxetine-induced neuroplasticity in the amygdala