Quantifying the response of Blainville’s beaked whales to U.S. naval sonar exercises in Hawaii

Funding: US Navy Living Marine Resources Program (Grant Number(s): N39430-17-P-1983).Behavioral responses of beaked whales (family Ziphiidae) to naval use of mid-frequency active sonar (MFAS) have been quantified for some species and regions. We describe the effects of MFAS on the probability of detecting diving groups of Blainville's beaked whales on the U.S. Navy Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) in Hawaii and compare our results to previously published results for the same species at the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC) in the Bahamas. We use passive acoustic data collected at bottom-mounted hydrophones before and during six naval training exercises at PMRF along with modelled sonar received levels to describe the effect of training and MFAS on foraging groups of Blainville's beaked whales. We use a multistage generalized additive modeling approach to control for the underlying spatial distribution of vocalizations under baseline conditions. At an MFAS received level of 150 dB re 1 μPa rms the probability of detecting groups of Blainville's beaked whales decreases by 77%, 95% CI [67%, 84%] compared to periods when general training activity was ongoing and by 87%, 95% CI [81%, 91%] compared to baseline conditions. Our results indicate a more pronounced response to naval training and MFAS than has been previously reported.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Book Reviews

Reviews of the following books: Island in Time: A Natural and Human History of the Islands of Maine by Philip W. Conkling; A Seafaring Legacy: The Photographs, Diaries and Memorabilia of a Maine Sea Captain and His Wife by Julianna FreeHand; Coming of Age on Damariscove Island, Maine by Carl R. Griffin III and Alaric Faulkner; The Identity of the St. Francis Indians by Gordon M. Day; Soldiers, Sailors and Patriots of the Revolutionary War: Maine by Carleton E. Fisher and Sue K. Fisher

Anatomy of autoantibody production: Dominant localization of antibody-producing cells to T cell zones in fas-deficient mice

AbstractThe goal of this study was to examine the in vivo site of autoantibody production in normal and autoimmune-prone mice. B cells were identified in tissue sections with IgM- and IgG2a-specific riboprobes that readily distinguished resting cells from antibody-forming cells (AFC). In normal mice, the few identifiable IgG2a-secreting cells were found in the red pulp. By contrast, in Ipr mice exceedingly high numbers of IgG2a and autoantibody-producing cells were found deep within the T cell-rich periarteriolar lymphoid sheaths (PALS). This unusual anatomic location of autoantibody-secreting B cells is unique to Fas dysregulated strains, since IgG2a-producing cells in MRL/+ and (SWR × NZB)F1 mice were found predominantly in the red pulp or outer PALS, similar to normal mice. Furthermore, analysis of spleens from Ipr and non-Ipr anti-DNA immunoglobulin transgenic mice revealed dramatic accumulation of Tg+ cells in the inner PALS only in Ipr mice. These data suggest that in the absence of Fas, autoreactive B cells accumulate in T cell-rich zones, and this anatomic feature may contribute to autoantibody production

Reality conditions for Ashtekar variables as Dirac constraints

We show that the reality conditions to be imposed on Ashtekar variables to recover real gravity can be implemented as second class constraints a la Dirac. Thus, counting gravitational degrees of freedom follows accordingly. Some constraints of the real theory turn out to be non-polynomial, regardless of the form, polynomial or non-polynomial, taken for the reality conditions. We comment upon the compatibility of our approach with the recently proposed Wick transform point of view, as well as on some alternatives for dealing with such second class constraints.Comment: 16 pages, plain LaTeX, submitted to Class. Quant. Grav. E-mail: [email protected]

Widespread recombination, reassortment, and transmission of unbalanced compound viral genotypes in natural arenavirus infections.

Arenaviruses are one of the largest families of human hemorrhagic fever viruses and are known to infect both mammals and snakes. Arenaviruses package a large (L) and small (S) genome segment in their virions. For segmented RNA viruses like these, novel genotypes can be generated through mutation, recombination, and reassortment. Although it is believed that an ancient recombination event led to the emergence of a new lineage of mammalian arenaviruses, neither recombination nor reassortment has been definitively documented in natural arenavirus infections. Here, we used metagenomic sequencing to survey the viral diversity present in captive arenavirus-infected snakes. From 48 infected animals, we determined the complete or near complete sequence of 210 genome segments that grouped into 23 L and 11 S genotypes. The majority of snakes were multiply infected, with up to 4 distinct S and 11 distinct L segment genotypes in individual animals. This S/L imbalance was typical: in all cases intrahost L segment genotypes outnumbered S genotypes, and a particular S segment genotype dominated in individual animals and at a population level. We corroborated sequencing results by qRT-PCR and virus isolation, and isolates replicated as ensembles in culture. Numerous instances of recombination and reassortment were detected, including recombinant segments with unusual organizations featuring 2 intergenic regions and superfluous content, which were capable of stable replication and transmission despite their atypical structures. Overall, this represents intrahost diversity of an extent and form that goes well beyond what has been observed for arenaviruses or for viruses in general. This diversity can be plausibly attributed to the captive intermingling of sub-clinically infected wild-caught snakes. Thus, beyond providing a unique opportunity to study arenavirus evolution and adaptation, these findings allow the investigation of unintended anthropogenic impacts on viral ecology, diversity, and disease potential

Entropy Function for Non-Extremal Black Holes in String Theory

We generalize the entropy function formalism to five-dimensional and four-dimensional non-extremal black holes in string theory. In the near horizon limit, these black holes have BTZ metric as part of the spacetime geometry. It is shown that the entropy function formalism also works very well for these non-extremal black holes and it can reproduce the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of these black holes in ten dimensions and lower dimensions.Comment: 19 pages, no figure, JHEP3 style, to appear in JHE

Black Hole Hair Removal: Non-linear Analysis

BMPV black holes in flat transverse space and in Taub-NUT space have identical near horizon geometries but different microscopic degeneracies. It has been proposed that this difference can be accounted for by different contribution to the degeneracies of these black holes from hair modes, -- degrees of freedom living outside the horizon. In this paper we explicitly construct the hair modes of these two black holes as finite bosonic and fermionic deformations of the black hole solution satisfying the full non-linear equations of motion of supergravity and preserving the supersymmetry of the original solutions. Special care is taken to ensure that these solutions do not have any curvature singularity at the future horizon when viewed as the full ten dimensional geometry. We show that after removing the contribution due to the hair degrees of freedom from the microscopic partition function, the partition functions of the two black holes agree.Comment: 40 pages, LaTe

Electrostatic model of atomic ordering in complex perovskite alloys

We present a simple ionic model which successfully reproduces the various types of compositional long-range order observed in a large class of complex insulating perovskite alloys. The model assumes that the driving mechanism responsible for the ordering is simply the electrostatic interaction between the different ionic species. A possible new explanation for the anomalous long-range order observed in some Pb relaxor alloys, involving the proposed existence of a small amount of Pb^4+ on the B sublattice, is suggested by an analysis of the model.Comment: 4 pages, two-column style with 1 postscript figure embedded. Uses REVTEX and epsf macros. Also available at http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~dhv/preprints/index.html#lb_orde

TeV Astrophysics Constraints on Planck Scale Lorentz Violation

We analyze observational constraints from TeV astrophysics on Lorentz violating nonlinear dispersion for photons and electrons without assuming any a priori equality between the photon and electron parameters. The constraints arise from thresholds for vacuum Cerenkov radiation, photon decay and photo-production of electron-positron pairs. We show that the parameter plane for cubic momentum terms in the dispersion relations is constrained to an order unity region in Planck units. We find that the threshold configuration can occur with an asymmetric distribution of momentum for pair creation, and with a hard photon for vacuum Cerenkov radiation.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX4, 1 figure. Some references and a footnote added, improved discussion on the photon annihilation and GZK cutoff. Minor changes of wording. Main results unchanged. Version to appear as a Rapid Communication in PR