The diet of the Tasmanian Devil, Sarcophilus harrisii, as determined from analysis of scat and stomach contents

Knowledge of the diets of carnivores is an essential precursor to understanding their role as predators in ecosystems. To date, understanding of the diet of Tasmanian Devils, Sarcophilus harrisii, is limited and based upon largely qualitative descriptions. We examined the diets of Tasmanian Devils at six sites by identifying undigested hair, bone and feathers found in their scats. These sites range across different habitat types in coastal and inland Tasmania, and encompass devil populations that are known as both free of the Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) and populations that are infected by the disease. Tasmanian Devil scats at coastal sites (n=27) contained ten species of mammal, as well as birds, fish and insects. Scats collected from inland sites (n= 17) were comprised of six mammalian species, birds and invertebrates. The most common food items were birds, Common Brushtail and Ringtail possums (Trichosurus vulpecula and Pseudocheirus peregrinus respectively), Tasmanian Pademelons (Thylogale billardierii) and Bennett's Wallabies (Macropus ruftgriseus). O fall the scats, 61% contained only one food group, 32% contained two groups, 4% contained three food items and only one scat (2%) contained four food groups. We supplement this information with stomach contents from road-killed devils, and compare our results with those of previous studies, with a view to furthering our understanding ofthe ecology ofthe threatened Tasmanian Devil. Such information will be important for the management of wild and captive devil populations, particularly in light of DFTD

Observations of mortality of fur seals between 1998 and 2005 in Tasmania, Australia

Because of their often close relationship with the human environment, the deaths of marine mammals are often documented, particularly if there are links to anthropogenic influences. Between 1998 and 2005 a total of 504 dead Australian Fur Seals, Arctocephalus pusillus doriferus, and New Zealand Fur Seals, Arctocephalus forsteri, were reported in Tasmanian waters. Ninety individuals (18%) were dependent unweaned pups that had been displaced from their natal colonies. Of the 209 adult or subadult seals for which the cause of death could be ascertained,anthropogenic activities were identified as being responsible for the deaths of 172 individuals (82%), with 112 (53%) associated with fish farms. Most fish farm-related deaths occurred during the winter when adult and subadult seals were away from breeding colonies and seal numbers are highest around farms. The next most common cause of death was from firearms (41 individuals - 20%). Death of adults and subadults by natural causes accounted for 37 animals, or 18% of all deaths for which the cause was identified. Excluding pups, most seals were identified as Australian (80%) or New Zealand fur seals (3%). The remainder (17%) were identified as fur seals but not to species. Males were most common (58%), with only 6% identified as females; the sex of 36% could not be determined. Of the males, 106 (26%) were adults and 98 (24%) were subadults or juveniles

Trapping and relocating seals from salmonid fish farms in Tasmania, 1990-2000: was it a success?

In an effort to reduce the impact of seals on fish farms, the trapping and relocation of seals at Tasmanian salmonid farms began in 1990. To the end of May 2000,353 identified individual seals had been trapped in 672 capture events. Most were non-breeding male Australian fur seals (Arctocephalus pusillus doriftrus). The number of seals captured increased (from four in 1990 ro a peak of 164 in 1998) with the size and extent of the farms, and an increase in salmon production from 55 tonnes in 1986/87 to almost 10000 tonnes in 1999/2000. Of 586 capture events 52% were of seals that had been captured more than once. When seals are recaptured following trapping and relocation, this occurs on average 25 days after capture. Capture-mark-recapture calculations show that many seals in the vicinity of fish farms are not 'trappable', suggesting that trapping is only effective for certain individuals. Some individuals are recaptured many times, reflecting the predisposition of some individuals to be captured ('trap-happy'). Interaction is seasonal, with most seals trapped during winter, between May and September. The assessment of trends in capture rates is problematic, due to the lack of capture effort information from the farms. A further confounding factor has been the change in management practice both between farms and over time, as the use of predator nets has become more widespread. Two seals trapped at fish farms and fitted with satellite transmitters before relocation have either not returned to the farm or returned to the vicinity of farms and not interacted with them, although on one occasion the individual was trapped. The effectiveness of the relocation program as a management tool to reduce seal interactions cannot be quantified from the relocation data per se, but relocation does not stop seals interacting with farms

Blind Normalization of Speech From Different Channels

We show how to construct a channel-independent representation of speech that has propagated through a noisy reverberant channel. This is done by blindly rescaling the cepstral time series by a non-linear function, with the form of this scale function being determined by previously encountered cepstra from that channel. The rescaled form of the time series is an invariant property of it in the following sense: it is unaffected if the time series is transformed by any time-independent invertible distortion. Because a linear channel with stationary noise and impulse response transforms cepstra in this way, the new technique can be used to remove the channel dependence of a cepstral time series. In experiments, the method achieved greater channel-independence than cepstral mean normalization, and it was comparable to the combination of cepstral mean normalization and spectral subtraction, despite the fact that no measurements of channel noise or reverberations were required (unlike spectral subtraction).Comment: 25 pages, 7 figure

Ground state correlations and structure of odd spherical nuclei

It is well known that the Pauli principle plays a substantial role at low energies because the phonon operators are not ideal boson operators. Calculating the exact commutators between the quasiparticle and phonon operators one can take into account the Pauli principle corrections. Besides the ground state correlations due to the quasiparticle interaction in the ground state influence the single particle fragmentation as well. In this paper, we generalize the basic QPM equations to account for both mentioned effects. As an illustration of our approach, calculations on the structure of the low-lying states in $^{131}$Ba have been performed.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figur

Morph-to-word transduction for accurate and efficient automatic speech recognition and keyword search

© 2017 IEEE. Word units are a popular choice in statistical language modelling. For inflective and agglutinative languages this choice may result in a high out of vocabulary rate. Subword units, such as morphs, provide an interesting alternative to words. These units can be derived in an unsupervised fashion and empirically show lower out of vocabulary rates. This paper proposes a morph-to-word transduction to convert morph sequences into word sequences. This enables powerful word language models to be applied. In addition, it is expected that techniques such as pruning, confusion network decoding, keyword search and many others may benefit from word rather than morph level decision making. However, word or morph systems alone may not achieve optimal performance in tasks such as keyword search so a combination is typically employed. This paper proposes a single index approach that enables word, morph and phone searches to be performed over a single morph index. Experiments are conducted on IARPA Babel program languages including the surprise languages of the OpenKWS 2015 and 2016 competitions

Low Energy States of 3181Ga50^{81}_{31} Ga_{50} : Elements on the Doubly-Magic Nature of 78^{78}Ni

Excited levels were attributed to $^{81}_{31}$Ga$_{50}$ for the first time which were fed in the $\beta$-decay of its mother nucleus $^{81}$Zn produced in the fission of $^{nat}$U using the ISOL technique. We show that the structure of this nucleus is consistent with that of the less exotic proton-deficient N=50 isotones within the assumption of strong proton Z=28 and neutron N=50 effective shell effects.Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX 4, 5 figures (eps format

Deep Hole States in Two Particle Transfer Reactions

This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grants PHY 76-84033A01, PHY 78-22774, and Indiana Universit

Diminished linear growth during intermittent calcitriol therapy in children undergoing CCPD

Diminished linear growth during intermittent calcitriol therapy in children undergoing CCPD. Daily calcitriol therapy has been reported to improve linear growth in children with renal bone disease, and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D is a key regulator of chondrocyte proliferation and differentiation. Whereas large intermittent doses of calcitriol can lower serum parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels and reverse the skeletal changes of secondary hyperparathyroidism, the impact of intermittent calcitriol therapy on linear growth in children is not known. Thus, we studied 16 pre-pubertal patients with bone biopsy-proven secondary hyperparathyroidism who completed a 12-month prospective clinical trial of intermittent calcitriol therapy. Biochemical results and growth data obtained during intermittent calcitriol therapy were compared to values determined during the preceding 12 months of daily calcitriol therapy in each study subject; changes in bone histology were assessed after one year of intermittent calcitriol therapy. Z-scores for height did not change during 12 months of daily calcitriol therapy. Although the skeletal lesions of secondary hyperparathyroidism improved in most patients, Z-scores for height decreased from -1.8 ± 0.32 to -2.0 ± 0.33, P < 0.01, during intermittent calcitriol therapy. The largest reductions were seen in patients who developed adynamic bone lesions after 12 months of treatment. Delta Z-scores for height correlated with serum PTH, r = 0.71, P < 0.01, and alkaline phosphatase levels, r = 0.67, P < 0.01, during intermittent calcitriol therapy but not during daily calcitriol therapy. The data suggest that high dose intermittent calcitriol therapy adversely affects linear growth, particularly in patients with the adynamic lesion. The higher doses of calcitriol or the intermittent schedule of calcitriol administration may directly inhibit chondrocyte activity within growth plate cartilage of children with end-stage renal disease