Master agreement task order 2 - Analyses and limited evaluations of payload and landing system structures for the survivable soft landing of instrument payloads

Computer programs for analysis and evaluation of payload and landing system structures for soft landing of instrument package

Double-crested Cormorants

The history of conflict between double-crested cormorants (Figure 1) and human interest in fisheries is long and convoluted. Following a low point in the 1970s, populations of cormorants expanded in North America, as did concerns about impacts on fisheries. By the late 1990s, natural resource agencies in 27 states reported losses of free-ranging fish stocks to cormorants. Agencies in 10 states, ranging from the Southwest to the Northeast, considered cormorant predation to be of moderate to major concern to fishery management. Overall, double-crested cormorants are not major consumers of commercial and sportfish species. However, exceptions have been recorded at specific sites with documented impacts on local fisheries (see Damage to Fisheries section). Cormorants often congregate and can have significant local impacts where high concentrations of fish occur, such as stocking release sites, private fishing ponds, aquaculture ponds, reservoirs, spawning sites, and other areas. Cormorants may be managed whenever their damage justi-fies the granting of the permits necessary to control them. Adult cormorants eat approximately 19 ounces of food per day, so local impacts of large flocks on fisheries can be substantial. Although cormorants frequently are blamed for reductions in fish harvests, this is not always substantiat-ed. Sometimes other factors, such as pollution, invasive species, and habitat loss may be the primary factor or con-tributing factors in the decline of fisheries

Impacts of colonial waterbirds on vegetation and potential restoration of island habitats

Colonial waterbirds have impacted forested island ecosystems throughout their breeding range, changing vegetation, and soil characteristics and bird communities. Our objectives were to (1) determine effects of three levels of colonial waterbird exclusion on overall vegetation diversity and growth, and survival of a candidate restoration species (black elderberry; Sambucus nigra canadensis); (2) investigate effects of different planting techniques on survival and growth of black elderberry; and (3) determine effects of waterbird colonization on soil chemistry. In 2012, we investigated effects of three levels of waterbird exclusion (none control plots [CON]; partial, which excluded waterbirds larger than gulls [PEX]; and full which excluded all waterbirds [FEX]) on bird use, existing vegetation growth and diversity, and survival of planted black elderberry on three islands in Door County, WI, Lake Michigan. In 2013, we evaluated survival of black elderberry established with four planting treatments within three waterbird exclusion treatments on two islands in 2013.We also compared soil chemistry characteristics between islands with and without nesting waterbirds for 2 years. Overall plant growth was greater in exclosures, but elderberry survival was similar among treatments. Soil replacement and weed suppression planting treatments did not affect survival, but generally increased overall elderberry biomass. Soil from nesting islands was more acidic and had greater nutrient concentrations than reference islands. Exclusion or removal of colonial nesting waterbirds from islands may improve overall vegetation growth, but successful restoration of woody vegetation may require significant soil manipulation and planting

Exploiting Lexical Conceptual Structure for paraphrase generation

Abstract. Lexical Conceptual Structure (LCS) represents verbs as semantic structures with a limited number of semantic predicates. This paper attempts to exploit how LCS can be used to explain the regularities underlying lexical and syntactic paraphrases, such as verb alternation, compound word decomposition, and lexical derivation. We propose a paraphrase generation model which transforms LCSs of verbs, and then conduct an empirical experiment taking the paraphrasing of Japanese light-verb constructions as an example. Experimental results justify that syntactic and semantic properties of verbs encoded in LCS are useful to semantically constrain the syntactic transformation in paraphrase generation.

A Pluralistic Theory of Wordhood

What are words and how should we individuate them? There are two main answers on the philosophical market. For some, words are bundles of structural-functional features defining a unique performance profile. For others, words are non-eternal continuants individuated by their causal-historical ancestry. These conceptions offer competing views of the nature of words, and it seems natural to assume that at most one of them can capture the essence of wordhood. This paper makes a case for pluralism about wordhood: the view that there is a plurality of acceptable conceptions of the nature of words, none of which is uniquely entitled to inform us as to what wordhood consists in

Effects of Aquaculture on Migration and Movement Patterns of Double-Crested Cormorants

We analyzed 10,620 recovery records for double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) banded as nestlings from 1923 to 2006 to determine the population’s age structure, migration routes, dispersal patterns, and the possible influence of the expansion of the aquaculture industry in the southeastern United States on these population characteristics. Ninety-nine percent of the birds were banded during June to August, and 78% were banded as pre-fledged birds. Cormorants banded in the interior region of the United States comprised 91% of all birds banded from 1955 to 2006; these birds wintered primarily in the Lower Mississippi Valley and the northern Gulf of Mexico area. From 1986 to 2006, the number of bands recovered in principal aquaculture areas in the southeastern United States increased 454%, while the number of bands recovered in other areas increased 55%. Further, pre-aquaculture expansion (1923– 1985) birds were recovered at greater distances from their banding colonies than were postaquaculture expansion (1986–2006) birds. These data indicate that the expansion of southeastern aquaculture has influenced double-crested cormorant movements and migration patterns

Measuring Variability in Sentence Ordering for News Summarization

The issue of sentence ordering is an important one for natural language tasks such as multi-document summarization, yet there has not been a quantitative exploration of the range of acceptable sentence orderings for short texts. We present results of a sentence reordering experiment with three experimental conditions. Our findings indicate a very high degree of variability in the orderings that the eighteen subjects produce. In addition, the variability of reorderings is significantly greater when the initial ordering seen by subjects is different from the original summary. We conclude that evaluation of sentence ordering should use multiple reference orderings. Our evaluation presents several metrics that might prove useful in assessing against multiple references. We conclude with a deeper set of questions: (a) what sorts of independent assessments of quality of the different reference orderings could be made and (b) whether a large enough test set would obviate the need for such independent means of quality assessment

The role of dedicated instrumentation in total hip arthroplasty

Tissue-sparing surgery is a surgical strategy aimed to reduce tissue damage in joint replacement. This can be achieved by reducing soft tissue trauma, performing minimally invasive access routes and limiting bone removal with implantation of conservative prostheses. In order to facilitate mini-approaches, special instrumentation was developed to avoid impingement of the soft tissues and provide an easier and more correct placement of the components. We performed an analysis of the literature and a research of the instrumentation available today, to evaluate the actual utility of dedicated tools

The Cardiac TBX5 Interactome Reveals a Chromatin Remodeling Network Essential for Cardiac Septation

Human mutations in the cardiac transcription factor gene TBX5 cause Congenital Heart Disease (CHD), however the underlying mechanism is unknown. We report characterization of the endogenous TBX5 cardiac interactome and demonstrate that TBX5, long considered a transcriptional activator, interacts biochemically and genetically with the Nucleosome Remodeling and Deacetylase (NuRD) repressor complex. Incompatible gene programs are repressed by TBX5 in the developing heart. CHD missense mutations that disrupt the TBX5-NuRD interaction cause depression of a subset of repressed genes. Furthermore, the TBX5-NuRD interaction is required for heart development. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the TBX5-NuRD interaction domain evolved during early diversification of vertebrates, simultaneous with the evolution of cardiac septation. Collectively, this work defines a TBX5-NuRD interaction essential to cardiac development and the evolution of the mammalian heart, and when altered may contribute to human CHD