Acoustic Detections of Beluga Whales in the Northeastern Chukchi Sea, July 2007 to July 2008

Beluga calls were detected during two consecutive deployments of autonomous acoustic recorders in the northeastern Chukchi Sea. During the first deployment, calls were recorded between July and October 2007, primarily near the Barrow Canyon in July and August. During the second deployment, calls were detected in November 2007 off Point Lay and again between mid-April and June 2008 in a broad area 90 – 150 km off Point Lay and Wainwright, Alaska. The summer and fall 2007 detections were consistent with movement and residency patterns identified through satellite tagging studies. In the following spring, detections were recorded by four out of five monitoring stations for 19 to 37 consecutive days (depending on the station) between 13 April and 21 June 2008. These acoustic detections provide additional information about the timing and distribution of beluga migrations in the Chukchi Sea in spring.Des sons provenant de bélugas ont été détectés sur deux réseaux d’enregistreurs déployés successivement dans le nord-est de la mer des Tchouktches. Lors du premier déploiement, des sons de bélugas ont été détectés entre juillet et octobre 2007, principalement près du canyon de Barrow en juillet et en août. Lors du second déploiement, des sons de bélugas ont également été détectés en novembre 2007 au large de Point Lay et entre la mi-avril et le mois de juin 2008 dans une large zone située entre 90 et 150 kilomètres au large de Point Lay et Wainwright, en Alaska. Les détections de l’été et de l’automne 2007 confirment les modèles de mouvement et de résidence mis en évidence grâce à la télémétrie satellite. Au cours du printemps suivant, des sons de bélugas ont été enregistrés entre le 13 avril et le 21 juin 2008 pendant 19 à 37 jours consécutifs dépendamment des enregistreurs, à quatre des cinq stations de surveillance. Ces détections acoustiques fournissent de nouvelles informations sur la distribution spatiale et temporelle des migrations de bélugas en mer des Tchouktches au printemps

Acoustic Occurrence and Affiliation of Fin Whales Detected in the Northeastern Chukchi Sea, July to October 2007–10

Fin whales are common throughout the North Pacific region, particularly in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea, even though these areas were heavily depleted by decades of whaling. Whalers also took fin whales in the southwestern Chukchi Sea, but only five sightings have been reported for the entire Chukchi Sea in the past 30 years. Large-scale arrays consisting of 26 – 44 bottom-mounted acoustic recorders were deployed in the northeastern Chukchi Sea from July to October in 2007 to 2010. Fin whales were detected off Cape Lisburne and Point Lay in 2007, 2009, and 2010. Large interannual variations in the number of acoustic detections may be related to environmental conditions. Calls detected during summer months consisted primarily of irregular sequences. Stereotyped sequences, called songs, were also detected at the end of the recording period in 2007 and 2010. Their structure matched that of one of the songs recorded in the Bering Sea, suggesting that only one of the stocks occurring in the Bering Sea extends its range into the northeastern Chukchi Sea. These detections currently represent the northernmost fin whale records in the North Pacific region.Les rorquals communs sont relativement abondants dans le Pacifique Nord et en particulier dans le golfe d’Alaska et la mer de Béring, bien qu’ils y aient été décimés par plusieurs décennies de campagnes baleinières. Les baleiniers ont également pris des rorquals communs dans le sud-ouest de la mer des Tchouktches, mais seulement cinq observations ont été rapportées pour l’ensemble de la mer des Tchouktches au cours des 30 dernières années. De juillet à octobre 2007 à 2010, de grands réseaux consistant en 26 à 44 enregistreurs acoustiques ont été déployés dans le nord-est de la mer des Tchouktches. Des rorquals communs ont été détectés au large de la pointe Lay et du cap Lisburne en 2007, 2009 et 2010. Les importantes variations interannuelles du nombre de détections acoustiques pourraient être liées aux conditions environnementales. Les sons détectés consistaient principalement en des séquences irrégulières qui caractérisent le répertoire estival de l’espèce. Des séquences stéréotypées, appelées chants, ont aussi été enregistrées à la fin de l’étude en 2007 et 2010. Leur structure correspondait à celle d’un des chants enregistrés dans la mer de Béring, ce qui suggère que seul un des stocks présents dans la mer de Béring inclut le nord-est de la mer des Tchouktches dans son aire de distribution estivale. Ces détections représentent les mentions de rorquals communs les plus nordiques de la région du Pacifique Nord

The Willingness to Modify Portion Sizes or Eat New Protein Foods Largely Depends on the Dietary Pattern of Protein Intake

International audiencePromoting a more balanced animal/plant dietary protein ratio by changing portion sizes or introducing new foods is a promising means to improve diet quality, but little is known about the willingness of individuals to adopt such changes. Our objective was to assess the willingness to adopt dietary changes by these means. In a French cross-sectional study in 2018 (n = 2055), we analyzed the association between the willingness to eat smaller or larger portions or to introduce non-consumed protein foods and the current dietary patterns of individuals and their socio-demographic characteristics. These modifications had previously been identified as improving the nutrient adequacy of diets. Participants were more willing to eat smaller portion sizes than to introduce new foods and to eat larger portion sizes. The willingness for any modification varied depending on the food groups concerned. Participants were also more willing to eat larger portions and less willing to eat smaller portions when they were the most frequent consumers of the foods concerned. Participants were more willing to eat a new food if it was consumed in large quantities by individuals with a similar dietary pattern. This study underlines the importance of accounting for individual food habits when issuing nutritional recommendations

Examining the Skill Gap in Fashion Education

This research explores the importance of sewing skills within HE fashion education. Recent literature has identified significant discussion concerning a graduate skills gap at the onset of employment. Some industry specialists fear that educators are not doing enough to promote the technical side of fashion. As a consequence, there are concerns of a widening gap in the uptake of technical job roles within the fashion sector. This research investigates potential reasons why students might not make these career choices, focusing mainly on the teaching of construction skills through the development of a resource tool to enhance the curriculum to bridge this recognised gap. To contextualise the development of this project, literature has examined key areas of interest. These include studies relating to skill gaps, manufacture and production techniques as well as the relationship between technical skill and career interests. This research has applied a variety of methodologies, which have explored the skills required for fundamental sewing processes, the value of sewing from educational and industry perspectives and issues relating to the recognised skills gap and career choices. Methods have included object-based study, interviews with manufacturers and a focus group with second year BA (Hons) fashion design students undertaking pattern cutting and manufacture sessions. To evaluate the effectiveness of the resource tool of stitch and garment finishing techniques, questionnaires, observations and examinations were conducted with undergraduate students undertaking sewing sessions. This research has revealed that the resource tool was successful in engaging students with garment construction techniques, and that this was most beneficial when used in conjunction with other methods. During testing it was apparent that students preferred to work more creatively, using inventiveness over memory of previously taught sewing skills when producing samples. Interestingly, the research has also highlighted two distinctions; that further technical knowledge in sewing appears to, in some instances, have limited the creativity of students’ fashion design outcomes when advancing from a foundation to intermediate level of study. However, there is also evidence to suggest that further engagement with sewing had a positive influence on their understanding of garment construction informing feasible design. There appears to be minimal evidence that links strong sewing skill with the ambition to choose careers in the manufacturing sector. The conclusions from this research, including the testing results from the resource tool, support the development of a technical curriculum within the BA curriculum, and the development of a qualification level prior to BA

Fin whale survival and abundance in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada

The fin whale Balaenoptera physalus, the second largest species in the animal kingdom to have lived on Earth, was heavily targeted during the industrial whaling era. North Atlantic whaling for this species ended in 1987 and it is unclear if the populations are recovering. The stock structure in the North Atlantic is still under debate, but several lines of evidence suggest that fin whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence may form a discrete stock with limited exchange with the rest of the North Atlantic. We applied mark-recapture models to 21 yr of photo-identification data from the Jacques-Cartier Passage to estimate the abundance and, for the first time, a survival rate based on live re-sightings for this stock of fin whales. Using the Cormack-Jolly-Seber model, we estimated a unisex non-calf apparent survival rate of 0.955 (95% CI: 0.936 to 0.969) for the period 1990 to 2010, declining in the last 4 yr of the study. The reduced survivorship was likely caused by a lower site fidelity combined with a higher mortality. The POPAN model yielded a super-population estimate of 328 individuals (95% CI: 306 to 350) for the period 2004 to 2010, and confirmed the negative trend in apparent survival and annual abundance, indicating that the population has not increased since the last large-scale surveys from 1974 and 1997.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Network of interacting neurons with random synaptic weights

Since the pioneering works of Lapicque [17] and of Hodgkin and Huxley [16], several types of models have been addressed to describe the evolution in time of the potential of the membrane of a neuron. In this note, we investigate a connected version of N neurons obeying the leaky integrate and fire model, previously introduced in [1–3,6,7,15,18,19,22]. As a main feature, neurons interact with one another in a mean field instantaneous way. Due to the instantaneity of the interactions, singularities may emerge in a finite time. For instance, the solution of the corresponding Fokker-Planck equation describing the collective behavior of the potentials of the neurons in the limit N ⟶ ∞ may degenerate and cease to exist in any standard sense after a finite time. Here we focus out on a variant of this model when the interactions between the neurons are also subjected to random synaptic weights. As a typical instance, we address the case when the connection graph is the realization of an Erdös-Renyi graph. After a brief introduction of the model, we collect several theoretical results on the behavior of the solution. In a last step, we provide an algorithm for simulating a network of this type with a possibly large value of N

Exploring movement patterns and changing distributions of baleen whales in the western North Atlantic using a decade of passive acoustic data

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Davis, G. E., Baumgartner, M. F., Corkeron, P. J., Bell, J., Berchok, C., Bonnell, J. M., Thornton, J. B., Brault, S., Buchanan, G. A., Cholewiak, D. M., Clark, C. W., Delarue, J., Hatch, L. T., Klinck, H., Kraus, S. D., Martin, B., Mellinger, D. K., Moors-Murphy, H., Nieukirk, S., Nowacek, D. P., Parks, S. E., Parry, D., Pegg, N., Read, A. J., Rice, A. N., Risch, D., Scott, A., Soldevilla, M. S., Stafford, K. M., Stanistreet, J. E., Summers, E., Todd, S., & Van Parijs, S. M. Exploring movement patterns and changing distributions of baleen whales in the western North Atlantic using a decade of passive acoustic data. Global Change Biology, (2020): 1-30, doi:10.1111/gcb.15191.Six baleen whale species are found in the temperate western North Atlantic Ocean, with limited information existing on the distribution and movement patterns for most. There is mounting evidence of distributional shifts in many species, including marine mammals, likely because of climate‐driven changes in ocean temperature and circulation. Previous acoustic studies examined the occurrence of minke (Balaenoptera acutorostrata ) and North Atlantic right whales (NARW; Eubalaena glacialis ). This study assesses the acoustic presence of humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae ), sei (B. borealis ), fin (B. physalus ), and blue whales (B. musculus ) over a decade, based on daily detections of their vocalizations. Data collected from 2004 to 2014 on 281 bottom‐mounted recorders, totaling 35,033 days, were processed using automated detection software and screened for each species' presence. A published study on NARW acoustics revealed significant changes in occurrence patterns between the periods of 2004–2010 and 2011–2014; therefore, these same time periods were examined here. All four species were present from the Southeast United States to Greenland; humpback whales were also present in the Caribbean. All species occurred throughout all regions in the winter, suggesting that baleen whales are widely distributed during these months. Each of the species showed significant changes in acoustic occurrence after 2010. Similar to NARWs, sei whales had higher acoustic occurrence in mid‐Atlantic regions after 2010. Fin, blue, and sei whales were more frequently detected in the northern latitudes of the study area after 2010. Despite this general northward shift, all four species were detected less on the Scotian Shelf area after 2010, matching documented shifts in prey availability in this region. A decade of acoustic observations have shown important distributional changes over the range of baleen whales, mirroring known climatic shifts and identifying new habitats that will require further protection from anthropogenic threats like fixed fishing gear, shipping, and noise pollution.We thank Chris Pelkie, David Wiley, Michael Thompson, Chris Tessaglia‐Hymes, Eric Matzen, Chris Tremblay, Lance Garrison, Anurag Kumar, John Hildebrand, Lynne Hodge, Russell Charif, Kathleen Dudzinski, and Ann Warde for help with project planning, field work support, and data management. For all the support and advice, thanks to the NEFSC Protected Species Branch, especially the passive acoustics group, Josh Hatch, and Leah Crowe. We thank the field and crew teams on all the ships that helped in the numerous deployments and recoveries. This research was funded and supported by many organizations, specified by projects as follows: data recordings from region 1 were provided by K. Stafford (funding: National Science Foundation #NSF‐ARC 0532611). Region 2 data: D. K. Mellinger and S. Nieukirk, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) PMEL contribution #5055 (funding: NOAA and the Office of Naval Research #N00014–03–1–0099, NOAA #NA06OAR4600100, US Navy #N00244‐08‐1‐0029, N00244‐09‐1‐0079, and N00244‐10‐1‐0047). Region 3A data: D. Risch (funding: NOAA and Navy N45 programs). Region 3 data: H. Moors‐Murphy and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (2005–2014 data), and the Whitehead Lab of Dalhousie University (eastern Scotian Shelf data; logistical support by A. Cogswell, J. Bartholette, A. Hartling, and vessel CCGS Hudson crew). Emerald Basin and Roseway Basin Guardbuoy data, deployment, and funding: Akoostix Inc. Region 3 Emerald Bank and Roseway Basin 2004 data: D. K. Mellinger and S. Nieukirk, NOAA PMEL contribution #5055 (funding: NOAA). Region 4 data: S. Parks (funding: NOAA and Cornell University) and E. Summers, S. Todd, J. Bort Thornton, A. N. Rice, and C. W. Clark (funding: Maine Department of Marine Resources, NOAA #NA09NMF4520418, and #NA10NMF4520291). Region 5 data: S. M. Van Parijs, D. Cholewiak, L. Hatch, C. W. Clark, D. Risch, and D. Wiley (funding: National Oceanic Partnership Program (NOPP), NOAA, and Navy N45). Region 6 data: S. M. Van Parijs and D. Cholewiak (funding: Navy N45 and Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (BOEM) Atlantic Marine Assessment Program for Protected Species [AMAPPS] program). Region 7 data: A. N. Rice, H. Klinck, A. Warde, B. Martin, J. Delarue, and S. Kraus (funding: New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, and BOEM). Region 8 data: G. Buchanan, and K. Dudzinski (funding: New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the New Jersey Clean Energy Fund) and A. N. Rice, C. W. Clark, and H. Klinck (funding: Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at Cornell University and BOEM). Region 9 data: J. E. Stanistreet, J. Bell, D. P. Nowacek, A. J. Read, and S. M. Van Parijs (funding: NOAA and US Fleet Forces Command). Region 10 data: L. Garrison, M. Soldevilla, C. W. Clark, R. A. Chariff, A. N. Rice, H. Klinck, J. Bell, D. P. Nowacek, A. J. Read, J. Hildebrand, A. Kumar, L. Hodge, and J. E. Stanistreet (funding: US Fleet Forces Command, BOEM, NOAA, and NOPP). Region 11 data: C. Berchok as part of a collaborative project led by the Fundacion Dominicana de Estudios Marinos, Inc. (Dr. Idelisa Bonnelly de Calventi; funding: The Nature Conservancy [Elianny Dominguez]) and D. Risch (funding: World Wildlife Fund, NOAA, and Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs)