Incubation temperatures and sex ratios of loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) hatched on Northwest Florida beaches

The purpose ofthis project was to collect sand and nest temperature information from loggerhead nesting beaches and in situ nests in Northwest Florida, perform sex ratio analysis on eggs collected from those nests, and describe general sand characteristics and variations in weather conditions within the experimental area. This information was to be used to determine what variations in sand temperatures and loggerhead nest incubation temperatures exist across Northwest Florida, evaluate differences in sand characteristics and weather conditions throughout the Florida Panhandle and how these differences relate to variations in incubation temperatures, and determine the sex ratios of loggerhead sea turtles produced on Northwest Florida beaches.(3 page document

SeLeCT: a lexical cohesion based news story segmentation system

In this paper we compare the performance of three distinct approaches to lexical cohesion based text segmentation. Most work in this area has focused on the discovery of textual units that discuss subtopic structure within documents. In contrast our segmentation task requires the discovery of topical units of text i.e., distinct news stories from broadcast news programmes. Our approach to news story segmentation (the SeLeCT system) is based on an analysis of lexical cohesive strength between textual units using a linguistic technique called lexical chaining. We evaluate the relative performance of SeLeCT with respect to two other cohesion based segmenters: TextTiling and C99. Using a recently introduced evaluation metric WindowDiff, we contrast the segmentation accuracy of each system on both "spoken" (CNN news transcripts) and "written" (Reuters newswire) news story test sets extracted from the TDT1 corpus

Biology of nesting sea turtles along the Florida panhandle

The purpose of this study was to determine how the dynamic system off Cape San Blas affects its unique group of nesting sea turtles. We assessed: 1. changes in beach topography, 2. changes in offshore topography, 3. current flows and direction, 4. tidal patterns, 5. sand composition and origin, 6. sea turtle nesting pattern, and 7. structure of the sea turtle group nesting along Cape San Blas. (9 page document

Characterization of Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtles in the Florida Big Bend Area: Final report

The Kemp's ridley (Lepidochelys kempo is considered the most endangered of the seven extant marine turtle species (Ross et al. 1989). The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) estimate the breeding population at 1,500 to 3,000 individuals. The nesting population has been reduced from approximately 40,000 on one day to no more than 700 annually (Magnuson et al. 1990, USFWS & NMFS 1992). Conservation measures for the species have focused on the protection of the nesting beach, captive rearing (head starting), and the implementation of turtle excluder devices (TEDs) on shrimp nets. Five hundred to 5,000 ridleys are still taken incidentally yearly by shrimp trawls (Magnuson et al. 1990). Lack of knowledge about early life stages of the Kemp's ridley sea turtle currently hinders recovery efforts for this federally listed species. (Document has 18 pages.

Segmenting broadcast news streams using lexical chains

In this paper we propose a course-grained NLP approach to text segmentation based on the analysis of lexical cohesion within text. Most work in this area has focused on the discovery of textual units that discuss subtopic structure within documents. In contrast our segmentation task requires the discovery of topical units of text i.e. distinct news stories from broadcast news programmes. Our system SeLeCT first builds a set of lexical chains, in order to model the discourse structure of the text. A boundary detector is then used to search for breaking points in this structure indicated by patterns of cohesive strength and weakness within the text. We evaluate this technique on a test set of concatenated CNN news story transcripts and compare it with an established statistical approach to segmentation called TextTiling

Systems approach provides management control of complex programs

Integrated program management process provides management visual assistance through three interrelated charts - system model that identifies each function to be performed, matrix that identifies personnel responsibilities for these functions, process chart that breaks down the functions into discrete tasks

Forest vegetation management in Europe: current practice and future requirements

The book provides a record of the co-operation within Europe in the field of forest vegetation management through the Cost Action E47. The aims are: i)to provide a summary of the current state of the art' as it applies to forest vegetation management in Europe for scientists, practitioners and policymakers, affiliated to state, non-governmental or private commercial organizations; ii)to document existing forest weed control practices across Europe, and hence provide a resource of alternative solutions for individual countries sharing similar conditions and challenges; and iii)to identify common information gaps and future research needs, and hence potential future areas of collaboration for forest vegetation management scientists across Europe, along with barriers that may need to be overcome to achieve that aim.FORET;PEUPLEMENT FORESTIER;VEGETATION;CONCURRENCE VEGETALE;LUTTE;MODE DE TRAITEMENT;COOPERATION INTERNATIONALE;RECHERCHE DEVELOPPEMENT;DEVELOPPEMENT DURABLE;AMENAGEMENT FORESTIER;MAUVAISE HERBE;CONTROLE DE LA VEGETATION;PESTICIDE;LUTTE PHYTOSANITAIRE;IMPACT SUR L'ENVIRONNEMENT;DYNAMIQUE DE VEGETATION;HERBICIDE;BIODIVERSITE;ECOSYSTEME;HISTOIRE;GESTION FORESTIERE;EUROPE;VEGETATION FORESTIERE;ADVENTICE;ALTERNATIVES AUX HERBICIDES;

Uncovering the Wider Structure of Extreme Right Communities Spanning Popular Online Networks

Recent years have seen increased interest in the online presence of extreme right groups. Although originally composed of dedicated websites, the online extreme right milieu now spans multiple networks, including popular social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Ideally therefore, any contemporary analysis of online extreme right activity requires the consideration of multiple data sources, rather than being restricted to a single platform. We investigate the potential for Twitter to act as a gateway to communities within the wider online network of the extreme right, given its facility for the dissemination of content. A strategy for representing heterogeneous network data with a single homogeneous network for the purpose of community detection is presented, where these inherently dynamic communities are tracked over time. We use this strategy to discover and analyze persistent English and German language extreme right communities.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures. Due to use of "sigchi" template, minor changes were made to ensure 10 page limit was not exceeded. Minor clarifications in Introduction, Data and Methodology section