Guided by the light: Roost choice and behaviour of urban Rainbow Lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus)

1. The formation of large communal roosts is a conspicuous phenomenon associated with a wide range of bird species successfully exploiting urban environments. In many Australian cities, the abundance of the Rainbow Lorikeet (Trichoglossus haematodus), a native parrot, has increased markedly in recent decades, with the species roosting in very large numbers within suburban sites. These roosting locations are noisy and cause significant fouling of the land beneath, resulting in conflict with humans.2. We investigated the selection of roosting sites in this species in Brisbane, Australia, by comparing characteristics of both the general sites of these roosts as well as individual trees used within roosting sites and trees that were avoided.3. Lorikeets used a wide variety of tree types for roosting but demonstrated a clear preference for clumped trees within sparsely treed areas that received significantly more artificial light at night than otherwise suitable sites  and trees nearby.4. These features of roosting sites may enhance the detection of nocturnal predators by Rainbow Lorikeets, suggesting a potential positive impact of anthropogenic lighting. Our findings provide valuable insights into the management of roost-related conflicts in urban areas. We encourage further investigations into the possible benefits of artificial light

Virtual Consumption, Sustainability & Human Well-Being

There is widespread consensus that present patterns of consumption could lead to the permanent impossibility of maintaining those patterns and, perhaps, the existence of the human race. While many patterns of consumption qualify as ‘sustainable’ there is one in particular that deserves greater attention: virtual consumption. We argue that virtual consumption — the experience of authentic consumptive experiences replicated by alternative means — has the potential to reduce the deleterious consequences of real consumption by redirecting some consumptive behavior from shifting material states to shifting information states

Estimates of regional ET from HCMM data: Summary of 1977 experiment and final arrangement for 1978 in southeastern France test site

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

Interpretation of the ion mass spectra in the mass range 25-35 obtained in the inner coma of Halley's comet by the HIS-sensor of the Giotto IMS Experiment

The IMS-HIS double-focussing mass spectrometer that flew on the Giotto spacecraft covered the mass per charge range from 12 to 56 (AMU/e). By comparing flight data, calibration data, and results of model calculations of the ion population in the inner coma, the absolute mass scale is established, and ions in the mass range 25 to 35 are identified. Ions resulting from protonation of molecules with high proton affinity are relatively abundant, enabling us to estimate relative source strengths for H2CO, CH3OH, HCN, and H2S, providing for the first time a positive in situ measurement of methanol. Also, upper limits for NO and some hydrocarbons are derived

Approximate algorithms for partitioning and assignment problems

The problem of optimally assigning the modules of a parallel/pipelined program over the processors of a multiple computer system under certain restrictions on the interconnection structure of the program as well as the multiple computer system was considered. For a variety of such programs it is possible to find linear time if a partition of the program exists in which the load on any processor is within a certain bound. This method, when combined with a binary search over a finite range, provides an approximate solution to the partitioning problem. The specific problems considered were: a chain structured parallel program over a chain-like computer system, multiple chain-like programs over a host-satellite system, and a tree structured parallel program over a host-satellite system. For a problem with m modules and n processors, the complexity of the algorithm is no worse than O(mnlog(W sub T/epsilon)), where W sub T is the cost of assigning all modules to one processor and epsilon the desired accuracy

On-line Sensor Control for Milk Powder and Cheese Manufacture.

End of Project ReportThis project investigated the use of on-line sensors of rheological characteristics which can be measured during the manufacture of milk powder and cheese. The objective is to use on-line measurements to fine tune each process, so as to compensate for the variability of milk.Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marin

Comparing Efficiency Across Markets: An Extension and Critique of the Zhang and Bartels (1998) Methodology

The use of non-parametric frontier methods for the evaluation of product market efficiency in heterogeneous markets seems to have gained some popularity recently. However, the statistical properties of these frontier estimators have been largely ignored. The main point is that nonparametric frontier estimators are biased and that the degree of bias depends on specific sample properties, most importantly sample size and number of dimensions of the model. To investigate the effect of this bias on comparing market efficiency, this contribution estimates the efficiency for several datasets for two main product categories. Following Zhang and Bartels (1998), these results comprise re-estimates for the larger samples limiting their size to that of the smaller samples when the model dimensions for different samples are identical. Furthermore, sample sizes are adjusted to mitigate the eventual differences in dimensions in specification. This allows comparing market efficiency for different markets on a more equal footing, since it reduces the bias effect to a minimum making the comparison of market efficiency possible. However, the article also points out the critical limitations of this Zhang and Bartels (1998) approach in certain respects. Apart from reporting these negative results, we also offer some suggestions for future work.Market Efficiency, Heterogeneous Product Markets, Bias, Monte-Carlo Simulation

Low Earth orbit environmental effects on the space station photovoltaic power generation systems

A summary of the Low Earth Orbital Environment, its impact on the Photovoltaic Power systems of the space station and the solutions implemented to resolve the environmental concerns or issues are described. Low Earth Orbital Environment (LEO) presents several concerns to the Photovoltaic power systems of the space station. These concerns include atomic oxygen interaction with the polymeric substrate of the solar arrays, ionized environment effects on the array operating voltage, the effects of the meteoroids and debris impacts and penetration through the different layers of the solar cells and their circuits, and the high energy particle and radiation effects on the overall solar array performance. Potential solutions to some of the degrading environmental interactions that will provide the photovoltaic power system of the space station with the desired life are also summarized