A profile of the Monterey squid fleet in 1992

There were approximately 20 vessels active in the 1992 Monterey Bay squid fishery. The size of the fleet has not changed since the early 1970's when 15 to 20 vessels participated in the fishery. Since 1977, eleven steel hulled vessels have been added to the fleet, replacing smaller wooden hulled vessels that were in use during the 1960's. The hold capacity of the new fleet remains about 800 tons, because the new larger vessels replaced small vessels that used lighters (20 - 25 ton capacity non-motorized barges). Purse seines were legalized in 1989 and have replaced lamparas which were in use during the 1960'S and 1970's. Seines used in the squid fishery are small and shallow, ranging from 120 to 200 fm in length with most less than 25 fm deep. Crew size has been reduced nearly 50% by the addition of net reels, power blocks, submersible fish pumps, and vacuum pumps used for unloading at dockside. In the 1970's flasher type fathometers were used by the fleet and few vessels had navigational aids. Today most of the fleet have sonar, radar, and loran C. Three vessels carry global positioning systems. In 1988 squid attracting lights were legalized and the entire fleet used lights during the 1992 season. (21pp.

Plasmonic Nanostructure Design for Efficient Light Coupling into Solar Cells

We demonstrate that subwavelength scatterers can couple sunlight into guided modes in thin film Si and GaAs plasmonic solar cells whose back interface is coated with a corrugated metal film. Using numerical simulations, we find that incoupling of sunlight is remarkably insensitive to incident angle, and that the spectral features of the coupling efficiency originate from several different resonant phenomena. The incoupling cross section can be spectrally tuned and enhanced through modification of the scatterer shape, semiconductor film thickness, and materials choice. We demonstrate that, for example, a single 100 nm wide groove under a 200 nm Si thin film can enhance absorption by a factor of 2.5 over a 10 μm area for the portion of the solar spectrum near the Si band gap. These findings show promise for the design of ultrathin solar cells that exhibit enhanced absorption

Modeling Light Trapping in Nanostructured Solar Cells

The integration of nanophotonic and plasmonic structures with solar cells offers the ability to control and confine light in nanoscale dimensions. These nanostructures can be used to couple incident sunlight into both localized and guided modes, enhancing absorption while reducing the quantity of material. Here we use electromagnetic modeling to study the resonances in a solar cell containing both plasmonic metal back contacts and nanostructured semiconductor top contacts, identify the local and guided modes contributing to enhanced absorption, and optimize the design. We then study the role of the different interfaces and show that Al is a viable plasmonic back contact material

Third edge for a graphene nanoribbon: A tight-binding model calculation

The electronic and transport properties of an extended linear defect embedded in a zigzag nanoribbon of realistic width are studied, within a tight binding model approach. Our results suggest that such defect profoundly modify the properties of the nanoribbon, introducing new conductance quantization values and modifying the conductance quantization thresholds. The linear defect along the nanoribbon behaves as an effective third edge of the system, which shows a metallic behavior, giving rise to new conduction pathways that could be used in nanoscale circuitry as a quantum wire.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures. Two new figures and a few references adde

Supply Chain Practice, Supply Chain Performance Indicators and Competitive Advantage of Australian Beef Enterprises: A Conceptual Framework

This research focuses on an Australian agribusiness supply chain, the Australian Beef Supply Chain. The definition of the Australian Beef Supply Chain is the chain or sequence of all activities from the breeding property to the domestic or overseas consumers. The beef sector in Australia is undergoing rapid change because of globalisation, a highly competitive beef market (local and export), quicker production cycle and delivery times and consequently reduced inventories, a general speed-up of the rate of change in the business environment, the trend toward more outsourcing of activities, and the rapid development of IT. In this business environment, advanced supply chain systems have the potential to provide significant contributions to Australian beef industry performance. A conceptual framework of the research project has been proposed. There are three elements of conceptual framework. Firstly, supply chain practice of Australian beef industry consists of five sub-elements such as strategic supplier partnerships, customer relationships, information sharing, information quality and a lean system. Moreover, there is an antecedent of cooperative behaviour such as trust and commitment influencing supply chain practice and supply chain performance indicators. Secondly, supply chain performance indicators include four sub-elements such as flexibility, efficiency, food quality and responsiveness. Finally, the competitive advantage framework of the Australian beef enterprises consists of price, quality, export sales growth and time to market. As a further step of the research after developing the conceptual framework, the research project focuses the analysis on how the antecedents of the sub-elements of supply chain practice affect supply chain performance in Australian beef enterprises, how trust and commitment in trading partners affect supply chain performance, how attributes such as flexibility, efficiency, food quality and responsiveness influence the sub-elements of competitive advantage. The research project leads on to further work on how Australian beef enterprises measure their supply chain performance and what the major difficulties are arising when implementing supply chain management in the Australian beef industry and what kind of changes can be made to beef supply chains to enhance their performance.Agribusiness,

MitoNEET: Reduction in Insulin Resistance through Ameliorated Oxidative Stress?

MitoNEET is a mitochondrial iron-sulfur protein with poorly-understood functions. Proposed functions of mitoNEET include regulating of oxidative capacity, reactive oxygen homeostasis, and other possible roles. Investigating the interactions of mitoNEET with other proteins might help identify functional roles of this protein. MitoNEET was discovered in 2004 to identify physiological targets of pioglitazone hydrochloride, a drug that is commonly used to treat type-2 diabetes. Type-2 diabetes is a metabolic disease and, although the exact pathology is complex, the role of the mitochondrion in cellular energy production and glucose oxidation indicates that this organelle has a role in type-2 diabetes. Because of the specific location of mitoNEET and its interaction with pioglitazone, there is the potential for this protein to have a role in diabetes treatment and/or prevention. My protein pull-down experiments indicated a direct interaction between mitoNEET and the enzyme catalase, which decomposes hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). Ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy of catalase, before and after the addition of mitoNEET, showed changes in absorbance at λ = 270, 320 and 400 nm, indicating an interaction between the proteins. The rate of catalase activity was measured by following the breakdown of H2O2 over time. The average rate of catalase activity in absence of mitoNEET was 0.0899 ± 0.0195 nM H2O2 min-1 μg protein-1 and this rate increased after addition of mitoNEET to 0.0126 ± 0.0253 nM H2O2 min-1 μg protein-1. My findings may indicate that mitoNEET decreases cellular H2O2 levels through activation of catalase, and thereby reduces the probability to develop oxidative stress induced insulin resistance