An assessment of scup (Stenotomus chrysops) and black sea bass (Centropristas striata) discards in the directed otter trawl fisheries in the Mid-Atlantic Bight

This study was undertaken to re-assess the level of scup (Stenotomus chrysops) discards by weight and to evaluate the effect of various codend mesh sizes on the level of scup discards in the winter-trawl scup fishery. Scup discards were high in directed scup tows regardless of codend mesh — typically one to five times the weight of landings. The weight of scup discards in the present study did not differ significantly from that recorded in scup-targeted tows in the NMFS observer database. Most discards were required as such by the 22.86 cm TL (total length) fish-size limit for catches. Mesh sizes ≤12.7 cm, including the current legal mesh size (11.43 cm) did not adequately filter out scup smaller than 22.86 cm. The median length of scup discards was about 19.83 cm TL. Lowering the legal size for scup from 22.86 to 19.83 cm TL would greatly reduce discard mortality. Scup discards were a small fraction (0.4%) of black sea bass (Centropristis striata) landings in blacksea-bass−targeted tows. The black sea bass fishery is currently regulated under the small-mesh fishery gearrestricted area plan in which fishing is prohibited in some areas to reduce scup mortality. Our study found no evidence to support the efficacy of this management approach. The expectations that discarding would increase disproportionately as the trip limit (limit [in kilograms] on catch for a species) was reached towards the end of the trip and that discards would increase when the trip limit was reduced from 4536 kg to 454 kg at the end of the directed fishing season were not supported. Trip limits did not significantly affect discard mortality

Razz Berries

Dancing raspberries on silver platterhttps://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/cht-sheet-music/13372/thumbnail.jp

Faunal Studies of the Sappington Sandstone of Southwestern Montana

The exact upper boundary of the Devonian of Mont­ana has long been a controversy, as is true of the Dev­onian-Mississippian contact in many other localities. In an effort to delimit the upper Devonian, various paleontologic studies have been made, more especially in the southwestern part of the state

Inpatient charges and mental illness: Findings from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample 1999–2007

Inpatient costs related to mental illness are substantial, though declining as a percentage of overall mental health treatment costs. The public sector has become increasingly involved in funding and providing mental health services. Nationwide Inpatient Sample data for the years 1999–2007 were used to: 1) examine Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance charges related to mental illness hospitalizations, including trends over time; and 2) examine trends in mental comorbidity with physical illness and its effect on charges. There were an estimated 12.4 million mental illness discharges during the 9-year period, with Medicare being the primary payer for 4.3 million discharges, Medicaid for 3.3 million, private insurance for 3.2 million, and 1.6 million for all other payers. Mean inflation-adjusted charges per hospitalization were US$17,528, US$15,651, US$10,539, and US$11,663, respectively. Charges to public sources increased for schizophrenia and dementia-related discharges, with little private/public change noted for mood disorders. Comorbid mood disorders increased dramatically from 1.5 million discharges in 1999 to 3.4 million discharges in 2007. Comorbid illness was noted in 14.0% of the 342 million inpatient discharges during the study period and was associated with increased charges for some medical conditions and decreased charges for other medical conditions

Elevated acetate concentrations in the rhizosphere of Spartina alterniflora and potential influences on sulfate reduction

Acetate is important in anaerobic metabolism of non-vegetated sediments but its role in salt marsh soils was not investigated thoroughly. Acetate concentrations, oxidation (C-14) and SO4(2-) reduction (S-35) were measured in S. alterniflora soils in NH and MA. Pore water from cores contained greater than 0.1 mM acetate and in some instances greater than 1.0 mM. Non-destructive samples contained less than 0.01 mM. Acetate was associated with roots and concentrations were highest during vegetative growth and varied with changes in plant physiology. Acetate turnover was very low whether whole core or slurry incubations were used. Radiotracers injected directly into soils yielded rates of SO4(2-) reduction and acetate oxidation not significantly different from core incubation techniques. Regardless of incubation method, acetate oxidation did not account for a significant percentage of SO4(2-) reduction. These results differ markedly from data for non-vegetated coastal sediments where acetate levels are low, oxidation rate constants are high and acetate oxidation rates greatly exceed rates of SO4(2-) reduction. The discrepancy between rates of acetate oxidation and SO4(2-) reduction in marsh soils may be due either to the utilization of substrates other than acetate by SO4(2-) reducers or artifacts associated with measurements of organic utilization by rhizosphere bacteria

Midnight Song

Photograph of Van EPS-Banta Trio against Masquerade party backgroundhttps://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/cht-sheet-music/13351/thumbnail.jp

Predicting the Next Best View for 3D Mesh Refinement

3D reconstruction is a core task in many applications such as robot navigation or sites inspections. Finding the best poses to capture part of the scene is one of the most challenging topic that goes under the name of Next Best View. Recently, many volumetric methods have been proposed; they choose the Next Best View by reasoning over a 3D voxelized space and by finding which pose minimizes the uncertainty decoded into the voxels. Such methods are effective, but they do not scale well since the underlaying representation requires a huge amount of memory. In this paper we propose a novel mesh-based approach which focuses on the worst reconstructed region of the environment mesh. We define a photo-consistent index to evaluate the 3D mesh accuracy, and an energy function over the worst regions of the mesh which takes into account the mutual parallax with respect to the previous cameras, the angle of incidence of the viewing ray to the surface and the visibility of the region. We test our approach over a well known dataset and achieve state-of-the-art results.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, to be published in IAS-1