10,186 research outputs found
Design of Marine Protected Areas on high seas and territorial waters of rockall bank
Fisheries closures are rapidly being developed to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems worldwide. Satellite monitoring of fishing vessel activity indicates that these closures can work effectively with good compliance by international fleets even in remote areas. Here we summarise how remote fisheries closures were designed to protect Lophelia pertusa habitat in a region of the NE Atlantic that straddles the EU fishing zone and the high seas. We show how scientific records, fishers' knowledge and surveillance data on fishing activity can be combined to provide a powerful tool for the design of Marine Protected Areas. © Inter-Research 2009
Learning recursion: Multiple nested and crossed dependencies
Language acquisition in both natural and artificial language learning settings crucially depends on extracting information from sequence input. A shared sequence learning mechanism is thus assumed to underlie both natural and artificial language learning. A growing body of empirical evidence is consistent with this hypothesis. By means of artificial language learning experiments, we may therefore gain more insight in this shared mechanism. In this paper, we review empirical evidence from artificial language learning and computational modelling studies, as well as natural language data, and suggest that there are two key factors that help determine processing complexity in sequence learning, and thus in natural language processing. We propose that the specific ordering of non-adjacent dependencies (i.e., nested or crossed), as well as the number of non-adjacent dependencies to be resolved simultaneously (i.e., two or three) are important factors in gaining more insight into the boundaries of human sequence learning; and thus, also in natural language processing. The implications for theories of linguistic competence are discussed
The first high-amplitude delta Scuti star in an eclipsing binary system
We report the discovery of the first high-amplitude delta Scuti star in an
eclipsing binary, which we have designated UNSW-V-500. The system is an
Algol-type semi-detached eclipsing binary of maximum brightness V = 12.52 mag.
A best-fitting solution to the binary light curve and two radial velocity
curves is derived using the Wilson-Devinney code. We identify a late A spectral
type primary component of mass 1.49+/-0.02 M_sun and a late K spectral type
secondary of mass 0.33+/-0.02 M_sun, with an inclination of 86.5+/-1.0 degrees,
and a period of 5.3504751+/-0.0000006 d. A Fourier analysis of the residuals
from this solution is performed using PERIOD04 to investigate the delta Scuti
pulsations. We detect a single pulsation frequency of f_1 = 13.621+/-0.015 c/d,
and it appears this is the first overtone radial mode frequency. This system
provides the first opportunity to measure the dynamical mass for a star of this
variable type; previously, masses have been derived from stellar evolution and
pulsation models.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables, for submission to MNRAS, v2: paper size
change, small typographical changes to abstrac
Complex network analysis of literary and scientific texts
We present results from our quantitative study of statistical and network
properties of literary and scientific texts written in two languages: English
and Polish. We show that Polish texts are described by the Zipf law with the
scaling exponent smaller than the one for the English language. We also show
that the scientific texts are typically characterized by the rank-frequency
plots with relatively short range of power-law behavior as compared to the
literary texts. We then transform the texts into their word-adjacency network
representations and find another difference between the languages. For the
majority of the literary texts in both languages, the corresponding networks
revealed the scale-free structure, while this was not always the case for the
scientific texts. However, all the network representations of texts were
hierarchical. We do not observe any qualitative and quantitative difference
between the languages. However, if we look at other network statistics like the
clustering coefficient and the average shortest path length, the English texts
occur to possess more clustered structure than do the Polish ones. This result
was attributed to differences in grammar of both languages, which was also
indicated in the Zipf plots. All the texts, however, show network structure
that differs from any of the Watts-Strogatz, the Barabasi-Albert, and the
Erdos-Renyi architectures
Tramp Ship Scheduling Problem with Berth Allocation Considerations and Time-dependent Constraints
This work presents a model for the Tramp Ship Scheduling problem including
berth allocation considerations, motivated by a real case of a shipping
company. The aim is to determine the travel schedule for each vessel
considering multiple docking and multiple time windows at the berths. This work
is innovative due to the consideration of both spatial and temporal attributes
during the scheduling process. The resulting model is formulated as a
mixed-integer linear programming problem, and a heuristic method to deal with
multiple vessel schedules is also presented. Numerical experimentation is
performed to highlight the benefits of the proposed approach and the
applicability of the heuristic. Conclusions and recommendations for further
research are provided.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, 5 tables, proceedings paper of Mexican
International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (MICAI) 201
Quantifying the interplay of conversational devices in building mutual understanding
Humans readily engage in idle chat and heated discussions and negotiate tough joint decisions without ever having to think twice about how to keep the conversation grounded in mutual understanding. However, current attempts at identifying and assessing the conversational devices that make this possible are fragmented across disciplines and investigate single devices within single contexts. We present a comprehensive conceptual framework to investigate conversational devices, their relations, and how they adjust to contextual demands. In two corpus studies, we systematically test the role of three conversational devices: backchannels, repair, and linguistic entrainment. Contrasting affiliative and task-oriented conversations within participants, we find that conversational devices adaptively adjust to the increased need for precision in the latter: We show that low-precision devices such as backchannels are more frequent in affiliative conversations, whereas more costly but higher-precision mechanisms, such as specific repairs, are more frequent in task-oriented conversations. Further, task-oriented conversations involve higher complementarity of contributions in terms of the content and perspective: lower semantic entrainment and less frequent (but richer) lexical and syntactic entrainment. Finally, we show that the observed variations in the use of conversational devices are potentially adaptive: pairs of interlocutors that show stronger linguistic complementarity perform better across the two tasks. By combining motivated comparisons of several conversational contexts and theoretically informed computational analyses of empirical data the present work lays the foundations for a comprehensive conceptual framework for understanding the use of conversational devices in dialogue
The UNSW Extrasolar Planet Search: Methods and First Results from a Field Centred on NGC 6633
We report on the current status of the University of New South Wales
Extrasolar Planet Search project, giving details of the methods we use to
obtain millimagnitude precision photometry using the 0.5m Automated Patrol
Telescope. We use a novel observing technique to optimally broaden the PSF and
thus largely eliminate photometric noise due to intra-pixel sensitivity
variations on the CCD. We have observed 8 crowded Galactic fields using this
technique during 2003 and 2004. Our analysis of the first of these fields
(centred on the open cluster NGC 6633) has yielded 49 variable stars and 4
shallow transit candidates. Follow-up observations of these candidates have
identified them as eclipsing binary systems. We use a detailed simulation of
our observations to estimate our sensitivity to short-period planets, and to
select a new observing strategy to maximise the number of planets detected.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, version published in MNRAS Updated figures,
references, and additional discussion in section
Strangelet dwarfs
If the surface tension of quark matter is low enough, quark matter is not
self bound. At sufficiently low pressure and temperature, it will take the form
of a crystal of positively charged strangelets in a neutralizing background of
electrons. In this case there will exist, in addition to the usual family of
strange stars, a family of low-mass large-radius objects analogous to white
dwarfs, which we call "strangelet dwarfs". Using a generic parametrization of
the equation of state of quark matter, we calculate the mass-radius
relationship of these objects.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX, added discussion of CFL phase and strangelet
pollution, version to appear in journal. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:0808.067
Validation of the Monitoring Efficacy of Neurogenic Bowel Treatment on Response (MENTOR) Tool in a Japanese Rehabilitation Setting
Study design: Prospective observational study. Objective: To validate the Monitoring Efficacy of NBD Treatment On Response (MENTOR) tool in individuals with a spinal cord injury (SCI) or spina bifida, suffering from neurogenic bowel dysfunction (NBD) in a rehabilitation center in Japan. Methods: First, the MENTOR tool was translated from English to Japanese using a validated translation process. Second, the MENTOR tool was validated in a rehabilitation clinic in Japan. Participants completed the MENTOR tool prior to a consultation with an expert physician. According to the results of the tool, each participant was allocated to one of three categories regarding change in treatment: âadequately treated,â âfurther discussion,â and ârecommended change.â The results of the MENTOR tool were compared with the treatment decision made by an expert physician, who was blinded to the results of the MENTOR tool. Results: A total of 60 participants completed the MENTOR tool. There was an acceptable concordance between individuals allocated as respectively, being adequately treated (100%) and recommended change in treatment (61%) and the physiciansâ decision on treatment. The concordance was lower for individuals allocated as requiring further discussion (48%). Conclusions: In this study the MENTOR tool was successfully validated in a Japanese rehab setting. The tool will help identify individuals with SCI that need further treatment of their NBD symptoms
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