Transboundary Movement of Atlantic Istiophorid Billfishes Among International and U.S. Domestic Management Areas Inferred from Mark-Recapture Studies

Billfish movements relative to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas management areas, as well as U.S. domestic data collection areas within the western North Atlantic basin, were investigated with mark-recapture data from 769 blue marlin, Makaira nigricans, 961 white marlin, Tetrapturus albidus, and 1,801 sailfish, Istiophorus platypterus. Linear displacement between release and recapture locations ranged from zero (all species) to 15,744 km (mean 575, median 119, SE 44) for blue marlin, 6,523 km (mean 719, median 216, SE 33) for white marlin, and 3,845 km (mean 294, median 98, SE 13) for sailfish. In total, 2,824 (80.0%) billfish were recaptured in the same management area of release. Days at liberty ranged from zero (all species) to 4,591 (mean 619, median 409, SE 24) for blue marlin, 5,488 (mean 692, median 448, SE 22) for white marlin, and 6,568 (mean 404, median 320, SE 11) for sailfish. The proportions (per species) of visits were highest in the Caribbean area for blue marlin and white marlin, and the Florida East Coast area for sailfish. Blue marlin and sailfish were nearly identical when comparing the percent of individuals vs. the number of areas visited. Overall, white marlin visited more areas than either blue marlin or sailfish. Seasonality was evident for all species, with overall results generally reflecting the efforts of the catch and release recreational fishing sector, particularly in the western North Atlantic. This information may be practical in reducing the uncertainties in billfish stock assessments and may offer valuable insight into management consideration of time-area closure regulations to reduce bycatch mortality of Atlantic billfishes

The Emergence of Gated Communities in Ghana and their Implications on Urban Planning and Management

Over the past few decades, gated communities have emerged as global commodity increasingly gaining patronage. In Sub-Sahara Africa, the city of Accra is fast recording the emergence of these communities. The research therefore examined the implications of the rising phenomenon in urban planning and management. By adopting a mixture of snow ball, simple random and purposive sampling and a face to face interview technique, the research accessed empirical data from planning institutions and households selected from three gated communities in the capital city of Accra. It was found that, gated communities in the capital have relatively good infrastructural facilities and services, the provision of which the real estate developers played a major role. However, a spatial policy gap on gated communities was identified in addition to missing legislative framework and low level of awareness on the part of planning institutions regarding the existence of some gated communities in the capital. In ensuring effective planning and management of gated communities in the urban arena as well as situating their occurrence within a broader spatial and socio-economic development of the country, the research concludes that, formulation of spatial policy and legislative framework and strengthening of planning institutions are requisite. Keywords: gated communities, urban planning, urban managemen

Automatic Home Appliance Switching Using Speech Recognition Software and Embedded System

In most homes, electrical appliances are controlled and operated manually, this could be difficult and challenging to do when tiredness, handicap, morphological variations (height, aging etc.) and inadequate skill stands in the way as impediment. This study aims to implement a better and more flexible means of controlling home appliances by means of an automated switching mechanism using speech recognition technique. Acoustic signals picked by a microphone controlled by a speech recognition application generate digital signals that are passed to a microcontroller, which in turn dispatches commands that operate the relays to which the appliances in the home are connected. The goal of using speech command to automate the switching of home appliances was achieved and proved to be a more convenient means of switching home appliances

Montage: a grid portal and software toolkit for science-grade astronomical image mosaicking

Montage is a portable software toolkit for constructing custom, science-grade mosaics by composing multiple astronomical images. The mosaics constructed by Montage preserve the astrometry (position) and photometry (intensity) of the sources in the input images. The mosaic to be constructed is specified by the user in terms of a set of parameters, including dataset and wavelength to be used, location and size on the sky, coordinate system and projection, and spatial sampling rate. Many astronomical datasets are massive, and are stored in distributed archives that are, in most cases, remote with respect to the available computational resources. Montage can be run on both single- and multi-processor computers, including clusters and grids. Standard grid tools are used to run Montage in the case where the data or computers used to construct a mosaic are located remotely on the Internet. This paper describes the architecture, algorithms, and usage of Montage as both a software toolkit and as a grid portal. Timing results are provided to show how Montage performance scales with number of processors on a cluster computer. In addition, we compare the performance of two methods of running Montage in parallel on a grid.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figure

Hydrochlorothiazide Is Superior to Isradipine for Reduction of Left Ventricular Mass: Results of a Multicenter Trial fn1fn1This study was supported by an unrestricted grant from Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, East Hanover, New Jersey.fn2fn2To discuss this article on-line, visit the ACC Home Page at http://www.acc.org/membersand click on the JACC Forum

AbstractObjectives. We sought to determine the efficacy of isradipine in reducing left ventricular (LV) mass and wall thickness in hypertensive patients.Background. LV hypertrophy on the echocardiogram is a strong predictor of cardiovascular events. Reduction of LV mass may be a desirable goal of drug therapy for hypertension. However, although thiazide diuretic drugs have been advocated as first-line therapy for hypertension, their efficacy in reducing LV mass has been questioned.Methods. Patients with mild to moderate diastolic hypertension and LV mass in excess of 1 SD of normal values were randomized to isradipine (n = 89) or hydrochlorothiazide therapy (n = 45). Evaluations were obtained at baseline, after 3 and 6 months of treatment and 2 weeks after treatment was stopped.Results. At 6 months, LV mass decreased by 43 ± 45 g (mean ± SD) with hydrochlorothiazide (p < 0.001) but only by 11 ± 48 g with isradipine (p = NS; between-group comparison, p < 0.001). Two weeks after drug therapy was stopped, LV mass remained 24 ± 41 g lower than that at baseline in the hydrochlorothiazide group (p = 0.003) but only 7 ± 50 g lower in the isradipine group (p = NS). Septal and posterior wall thicknesses were significantly and equally reduced with both isradipine and hydrochlorothiazide. Greater LV mass reduction with hydrochlorothiazide was related to a 2.8 ± 3.3-mm reduction of LV cavity size with hydrochlorothiazide but no reduction with isradipine. At 6 months of treatment, diastolic blood pressure (BP) by design was equally reduced in both treatment groups. At 3 months, systolic BP was reduced by 17 ± 15 mm Hg with isradipine and by 26 ± 15 and 25 ± 17 mm Hg at 3 and 6 months, respectively, with hydrochlorothiazide (p = 0.003, between-group comparison). However, on stepwise multivariable regression analysis, treatment selection (partial r2= 0.082, p = 0.001), change in average 24-h systolic BP (partial r2= 0.032, p = 0.029) and change in average sitting systolic BP (partial r2= 0.017, p = 0.096) were predictive of LV mass reduction.Conclusions. Despite an equivalent reduction of diastolic BP, 6 months of therapy with hydrochlorothiazide is associated with a substantial reduction of LV mass, greater than that with isradipine. The superior efficacy of hydrochlorothiazide for LV mass reduction is associated with a greater reduction of systolic BP as well as drug selection itself. These data may have important therapeutic implications

Optimization of 40 Gbit/s transmission systems using frequency resolved optical gating characterization techniques

To achieve multiterabit/s capacities in long-haul transport networks, it is anticipated that wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) systems will be upgraded to operate at line rates of 40 Gbit/s. We have shown that by employing the FROG measurement technique to optimize the generation of optical pulses for use in a 40 Gbit/s soliton transmission link, we ensure that the performance of the overall system using the generated optical pulses is optimum

Montage: An Astronomical Image Mosaic Service for the NVO

Montage is a software system for generating astronomical image mosaics according to user-specified size, rotation, WCS-compliant projection and coordinate system, with background modeling and rectification capabilities. Its architecture has been described in the proceedings of ADASS XII and XIII (Berriman et al. 2003, 2004). It has been designed as a toolkit, with independent modules for image reprojection, background rectification and co-addition, and will run on workstations, clusters and grids. The primary limitation of Montage thus far has been in the projection algorithm. It uses a spherical trigonometry approach that is general at the expense of speed. The reprojection algorithm has now been made 30 times faster for commonly used tangent plane to tangent plane reprojections that cover up to several square degrees, through modification of a custom algorithm first derived for the Spitzer Space Telescope. This focus session will describe this algorithm, demonstrate the generation of mosaics in real time, and describe applications of the software. In particular, we will highlight one case study which shows how Montage is supporting the generation of science-grade mosaics of images measured with the Infrared Array Camera aboard the Spitzer Space Telescope

Optimized pulse source based on a gain-switched laser diode in conjuction with a non-linearly chirped grating for 40 Gbit/s systems

A technique based on the design of an optimized source of pico-second optical pulses, which exhibits excellent temporal and spectral purity, is presented. The procedure entails an initial complete intensity and chirp characterization of pulses, from an externally injected-gain switched laser (EI-GSL), using the technique of frequency resolved optical gating (FROG). This characterization yields the parameters that are required for the design of a non-linearly chirped fibre Bragg grating (NC FBG) with a chirp profile that is opposite to that measured across the pulse. By employing the tailor made NC FBG after the gain-switched laser, direct compression of the gain-switched pulses is achieved, to obtain pedestal-free, near transform-limited, 7 ps pulses. The system viability, characterized by simulations, portrays a 6 dB difference in performance between a pulse source with insufficient TPSR and one that exhibits adequate TPSR &(ge; 30 dB)

Montage: a grid-enabled engine for delivering custom science-grade mosaics on demand

This paper describes the design of a grid-enabled version of Montage, an astronomical image mosaic service, suitable for large scale processing of the sky. All the re-projection jobs can be added to a pool of tasks and performed by as many processors as are available, exploiting the parallelization inherent in the Montage architecture. We show how we can describe the Montage application in terms of an abstract workflow so that a planning tool such as Pegasus can derive an executable workflow that can be run in the Grid environment. The execution of the workflow is performed by the workflow manager DAGMan and the associated Condor-G. The grid processing will support tiling of images to a manageable size when the input images can no longer be held in memory. Montage will ultimately run operationally on the Teragrid. We describe science applications of Montage, including its application to science product generation by Spitzer Legacy Program teams and large-scale, all-sky image processing projects