An assessment of two decades of contaminant monitoring in the Nation’s Coastal Zone.

Executive Summary: Information found in this report covers the years 1986 through 2005. Mussel Watch began monitoring a suite of trace metals and organic contaminants such as DDT, PCBs and PAHs. Through time additional chemicals were added, and today approximately 140 analytes are monitored. The Mussel Watch Program is the longest running estuarine and coastal pollutant monitoring effort conducted in the United States that is national in scope each year. Hundreds of scientific journal articles and technical reports based on Mussel Watch data have been written; however, this report is the first that presents local, regional and national findings across all years in a Quick Reference format, suitable for use by policy makers, scientists, resource managers and the general public. Pollution often starts at the local scale where high concentrations point to a specific source of contamination, yet some contaminants such as PCBs are atmospherically transported across regional and national scales, resulting in contamination far from their origin. Findings presented here showed few national trends for trace metals and decreasing trends for most organic contaminants; however, a wide variety of trends, both increasing and decreasing, emerge at regional and local levels. For most organic contaminants, trends have resulted from state and federal regulation. The highest concentrations for both metal and organic contaminants are found near urban and industrial areas. In addition to monitoring throughout the nation’s coastal shores and Great Lakes, Mussel Watch samples are stored in a specimen bank so that trends can be determined retrospectively for new and emerging contaminants of concern. For example, there is heightened awareness of a group of flame retardants that are finding their way into the marine environment. These compounds, known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), are now being studied using historic samples from the specimen bank and current samples to determine their spatial distribution. We will continue to use this kind of investigation to assess new contaminant threats. We hope you find this document to be valuable, and that you continue to look towards the Mussel Watch Program for information on the condition of your coastal waters. (PDF contains 118 pages

The Effect of Macro Information Environment Change on the Quality of Management Earnings Forecasts

The 1990s were characterized by substantial increases in the performance of and investor reliance on financial analysts. Because managers possess superior private information and issue forecasts to align investors’ expectations with their own, we predict that managers increased the quality of their earnings forecasts during the 1990s in order to keep pace with the improved forward-looking information provided by financial analysts, upon which investors increasingly relied. Using a sample of 2,437 management earnings forecasts, we document an increase in management earnings forecast precision, management earnings forecast accuracy, and managers’ tendency to explain earnings forecasts in 1993-1996 relative to 1983-1986. Given that these forecast characteristics are linked to greater informativeness and credibility, we also document that the information content of management earnings forecasts, as measured by the strength of share price responses to forecast news, increased in 1993 -1996 relative to 1983-1986. As expected, the increased information content of management forecasts primarily occurred for firms covered by financial analysts

When fair is not equal: compassion and politeness predict allocations of wealth under different norms of equity and need

Growing evidence has highlighted the importance of social norms in promoting prosocial behaviors in economic games. Specifically, individual differences in norm adherence—captured by the politeness aspect of Big Five agreeableness—has been found to predict fair allocations of wealth to one’s partner in the dictator game. Yet most studies have used neutrally-framed paradigms, where players may default to norms of equality in the absence of contextual cues. In this study (N = 707), we examined prosocial personality traits and dictator allocations under salient real-world norms of equity and need. Extending on previous research, we found that—in addition to politeness—the compassion aspect of agreeableness predicted greater allocations of wealth when they were embedded in real-world norms. These results represent an important step in understanding the real-world implications of laboratory-based research, demonstrating the importance of both normative context and prosocial traits

Procedural personas as critics for dungeon generation

This paper introduces a constrained optimization method which uses procedural personas to evaluate the playability and quality of evolved dungeon levels. Procedural personas represent archetypical player behaviors, and their controllers have been evolved to maximize a specific utility which drives their decisions. A “baseline” persona evaluates whether a level is playable by testing if it can survive in a worst-case scenario of the playthrough. On the other hand, a Monster Killer persona or a Treasure Collector persona evaluates playable levels based on how many monsters it can kill or how many treasures it can collect, respectively. Results show that the implemented two-population genetic algorithm discovers playable levels quickly and reliably, while the different personas affect the layout, difficulty level and tactical depth of the generated dungeons.The research was supported, in part, by the FP7 ICT project C2Learn (project no: 318480) and by the FP7 Marie Curie CIG project AutoGameDesign (project no: 630665).peer-reviewe

Chiropteran Mortality

The study of chiropteran mortality is a difficult one because observations concerning mass mortality, predation, and fatal accidents are sporadic and unexpected. Almost every known predaceous animal preys on bats from time to time; but (with one or two rare exceptions) do so only when an occasional opportunity presents itself, and do not specialize in bat predation. Our knowledge of bat pathology is meager. Mass-mortalities have been reported only from sight observations, and the causative organisms rarely ascertained, because of the unexpected encounter. The relationships between human and chiropteran diseases are becoming much better understood; this study is mostly oriented toward man, and not toward the cause and effect of disease in the chiroptera. The longevity of certain bats is known to range between 15 and 20 years; but their unique activities make them rather prone to accident. They become impaled on such sharp objects as barbed wire, and locust, burdock, and cactus spines. They fall into water holes and drown, get entrapped in tar pits, get electrocuted on high-power lines, etc., but remain among the most abundant mammals on earth today. We have attempted to assemble the literature on all known causes of mortality in bats but cannot, of course, cite all noted occurrences

Morphological Variation in Cephalogonimus americanus (Trematoda: Cephalogonimidae) from Amphibians in Colorado

A collection of western toads, Bufo boreas Baird and Girard, 1852, and neotenic tiger salamanders, Ambystoma tigrinum (Green) from Sheep Lake, Horseshoe Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, were examined for helminths in the spring of 1966. Oswaldo-Cruzia subauricularis (Rudolphi, 1819) was found in Bufo boreas and Ophiotaenia filarioides (LaRue, 1909) in Ambystoma tigrinum. In addition, both hosts harbored Spironoura pretiosa Ingles, 1936, Phylloclistomum bufonis Frandsen, 1957 and Cephalogonimus americanus. The last species differed greatly in appearance in the two hosts and these differences are reported herein

Computers Play the Beer Game: Can Artificial Agents Manage Supply Chains?

We model an electronic supply chain managed by artificial agents. We investigate whether artificial agents do better than humans when playing the MIT Beer Game. Can the artificial agents discover good and effective business strategies in supply chains both in stationary and non-stationary environments? Can the artificial agents discover policies that mitigate the Bullwhip effect? In particular, we study the following questions: Can agents learn reasonably good policies in the face of deterministic demand with fixed lead time? Can agents cope reasonably well in the face of stochastic demand with stochastic lead time? Can agents learn and adapt in various contexts to play the game? Can agents cooperate across the supply chain

Final Syllable Lengthening (FSL) in Infant Vocalizations

Final Syllable Lengthening (FSL) has been extensively examined in infant vocalizations in order to determine whether its basis is biological or learned. Findings suggest there may be a U-shaped developmental trajectory for FSL. The present study sought to verify this pattern and to determine whether vocal maturity and deafness influence FSL. Eight normally hearing infants, aged 0 ; 3 to 1 ; 0, and eight deaf infants, aged 0 ; 8 to 4 ; 0, were examined at three levels of prelinguistic vocal development: precanonical, canonical, and postcanonical. FSL was found at all three levels suggesting a biological basis for this phenomenon. Individual variability was, however, considerable. Reduction in the magnitude of FSL across the three sessions provided some support for a downward trend for FSL in infancy. Findings further indicated that auditory deprivation can significantly affect temporal aspects of infant speech production