Conceptual model of salt marsh management on Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Florida: final report

Diking and holding water on salt marshes ("impounding" the marsh) is a management technique used on Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge (MINWR) and elsewhere in the Southeast to: a) prevent the reproduction of saltmarsh mosquitos, and b) attract wintertering waterfowl and other marsh, shore, and wading birds. Because of concern that diking and holding water may interfere with the production of estuarine fish and shellfish, impoundment managers are being asked to consider altering management protocol to reduce or eliminate any such negative influence. How to change protocol and preserve effective mosquito control and wildlife management is a decision of great complexity because: a) the relationships between estuarine organisms and the fringing salt marshes at the land-water interface are complex, and b) impounded marshes are currently good habitat for a variety of species of fish and wildlife. Most data collection by scientists and managers in the area has not been focused on this particular problem. Furthermore, collection of needed data may not be possible before changes in protocol are demanded. Therefore, the purpose of this document is two-fold: 1) to suggest management alternatives, given existing information, and 2) to help identify research needs that have a high probability of leading to improved simultaneous management of mosquitos, waterfowl, other wildlife, freshwater fish, and estuarine fish and shellfish on the marshland of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. (92 page document

Categorized bibliography for a conceptual model of salt marsh management on Merritt Island, Florida

Enclosed is a bibliography of 556 published articles, technical reports, theses, dissertations, and books that form the basis for a conceptual model of salt marsh management on Merritt Island, Florida (Section 1). A copy of each item is available on file at the Florida Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Gainesville. Some relevant proprietary items and unpublished drafts have not been included pending permission of the authors. We will continue to add pertinent references to our bibliography and files. Currently, some topics are represented by very few items. As our synthesis develops, we will be able to indicate a subset of papers most pertinent to an understanding of the ecology and management of Merritt Island salt marshes. (98 page document

Lorentz contraction, Bell's spaceships, and rigid body motion in special relativity

The meaning of Lorentz contraction in special relativity and its connection with Bell's spaceships parable is discussed. The motion of Bell's spaceships is then compared with the accelerated motion of a rigid body. We have tried to write this in a simple form that could be used to correct students' misconceptions due to conflicting earlier treatments.Comment: Modified the discussion in Sec. 2. This version to be published in European Journal of Physic

Self-stimulated Emission of Undulator Radiation

We attract attention that interaction of particle in downstream undulator with its own wavelet emitted in upstream undulator could be as strong as with the frictional field in undulator itself. This phenomenon could be used for enhancement of signal from pickup undulators in optical stochastic cooling methods as well as for increase of damping.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figure

A selected history of expectation bias in physics

The beliefs of physicists can bias their results towards their expectations in a number of ways. We survey a variety of historical cases of expectation bias in observations, experiments, and calculations.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Generalized second-order partial derivatives of 1/r

The generalized second-order partial derivatives of 1/r, where r is the radial distance in 3D, are obtained using a result of the potential theory of classical analysis. Some non-spherical regularization alternatives to the standard spherical-regularization expression for the derivatives are derived. The utility of a spheroidal-regularization expression is illustrated on an example from classical electrodynamics.Comment: 12 pages; as accepted for publication by European Journal of Physic

Differential cross section for neutron-proton bremsstrahlung

The neutron-proton bremsstrahlung process $(np \to np\gamma)$ is known to be sensitive to meson exchange currents in the nucleon-nucleon interaction. The triply differential cross section for this reaction has been measured for the first time at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, using an intense, pulsed beam of up to 700 MeV neutrons to bombard a liquid hydrogen target. Scattered neutrons were observed at six angles between 12$^\circ$ and 32$^\circ$, and the recoil protons were observed in coincidence at 12$^\circ$, 20$^\circ$, and 28$^\circ$ on the opposite side of the beam. Measurement of the neutron and proton energies at known angles allows full kinematic reconstruction of each event. The data are compared with predictions of two theoretical calculations, based on relativistic soft-photon and non-relativistic potential models.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Lightweight XML-based query, integration and visualization of distributed, multimodality brain imaging data

A need of many neuroimaging researchers is to integrate multimodality brain data that may be stored in separate databases. To address this need we have developed a framework that provides a uniform XML-based query interface across multiple online data sources. The development of this framework is driven by the need to integrate neurosurgical and neuroimaging data related to language. The data sources for the language studies are 1) a web-accessible relational database of neurosurgical cortical stimulation mapping data (CSM) that includes patient-specific 3-D coordinates of each stimulation site mapped to an MRI reconstruction of the patient brain surface; and 2) an XML database of fMRI and structural MRI data and analysis results, created automatically by a batch program we have embedded in SPM. To make these sources available for querying each is wrapped as an XML view embedded in a web service. A top level web application accepts distributed XQueries over the sources, which are dispatched to the underlying web services. Returned results can be displayed as XML, HTML, CSV (Excel format), a 2-D schematic of a parcellated brain, or a 3-D brain visualization. In the latter case the CSM patient-specific coordinates returned by the query are sent to a transformation web-service for conversion to normalized space, after which they are sent to our 3-D visualization program MindSeer, which is accessed via Java WebStart through a generated link. The anatomical distribution of pooled CSM sites can then be visualized using various surfaces derived from brain atlases. As this framework is further developed and generalized we believe it will have appeal for researchers who wish to query, integrate and visualize results across their own databases as well as those of collaborators

Raising awareness of anaerobic digestion in the UK - Views of key stakeholders

This is the open access PDF version of an article published in Journal of Environmental and Ecology© 2014.Meeting rising energy demand and sustainable development goals at the same time is a major challenge for policy makers in the 21st century. The situation is further stressed by a rising world population, climate change, natural disasters and food security concerns. Renewable energy technologies such as anaerobic digestion (AD) proffer one solution for policy makers to overcome some of the challenges to sustainable development. The technology has been widely adopted in some parts of Europe (e.g. Germany, Denmark, Austria and Sweden), the United States and also parts of Asia and Africa. However in the United Kingdom (UK), the technology is under-developed, as was recognised in its anaerobic digestion strategy and action plan of 2011. This study focused on identifying options for raising awareness of AD technology in the UK. 21 key stakeholders divided into groups according to their expertise, were interviewed to explore their views on the areas of focus in the UK strategy and action plan regarding raising awareness of the technology. The results revealed that aligning AD with sustainable development goals, community AD and localism, small AD plants, provision of an available market for AD products, building UK skills and diversifying biogas use from AD are positive options for raising awareness of AD in the UK. Challenges to these options and possible solutions to the challenges were also identified and discussed