Role of managed marine areas on the diversity and individual responses of rocky intertidal shore grazers in Central Chile

Many different types of marine benthic herbivores or “grazers” inhabit coastal intertidal zones and play a crucial role in inter- and shallow subtidal ecosystems. Chile has one of the most diverse intertidal zones, but many intertidal grazers are exploited for human consumption. Marine protected areas (MPAs) and marine management and exploitation areas (MEAs) are promising tools for Chile to combat over exploitation of these grazer and other marine resources. This study surveyed the impact of sites with contrasting management on the diversity and abundance of all intertidal grazers and their impact on the size frequency and shell length-body weight allometry of the keyhole limpet Fissurella crassa, the chiton Chiton granosus, the scurrinid limpet Scurria araucana, and the pulmonated limpet Siphonaria lessoni, four of the most abundant intertidal grazers. Data was collected from three sites: an open access site in Las Cruces, Chile, a limited removal management area in El Quisco, Chile, and a no-take marine reserve at the Estación Costera de Investigaciones Marinas (ECIM) in Las Cruces, Chile. Field experiments examined species diversity and abundance at each site and length and weight measurements were also collected from the four previously mentioned species. A total of 6 different families and 21 different species were observed across all sites. Site diversity and the abundance of 17 species among sites were not significantly different. However, the lengths and length-weight relationships of some species were significantly impacted by human disturbance. The results show F. crassa and C. granosus having the lowest abundance in the open access site and the longest lengths in the marine reserve reflecting their exploitation by humans. All species’ individual body weight increased with increasing length as expected, but shell length-body weight allometries varied among sites for F. crassa and C. granosus. Their body mass was highest in the management area or marine reserve suggesting there is a behavior response to management areas needing further research to pinpoint the mechanism. This study demonstrates that protected marine areas have the potential to be greatly beneficial, especially to exploited species, but their creation is not enough, they need to also be effectively managed and enforced

Fish diversity and distribution in the seagrass-coral reef continuum at two sites off the western coast of Isla Bastimentos, Bocas del Toro, Panama

Coral reefs are the most diverse marine ecosystem and the largest biogenic structure on Earth. They serve as shelter for many reef fishes and are a food source for resident and visiting fish species. In the tropics, coral reefs are often in close proximity to seagrass beds and the two contiguous marine habitats are not only highly interconnected but also highly understudied. The seagrass-coral reef continuum offers a wide array of services to human society as well as to various life stages of reef fishes resulting in diel, temporal, or yearly migrations of fish between the two habitats. Tropical reef fish diversity, abundance, and evenness were measured in both habitats in the morning and afternoon to determine if any significant differences in results between habitats or times of day could be observed. Underwater video recordings were taken of 15 m transects in the seagrass bed and coral reef at two sites, one sheltered and one more exposed, off Isla Bastimentos, Bocas del Toro, Panama. The recordings were used in calculating fish diversity, abundance, and evenness and in surveying the benthic composition of the coral reef. Sixteen transects were recorded in each habitat at each time of day at each site and a total of 3587 fish were observed representing 14 different families and 32 different species. Site 1 had low live coral coverage and was composed of mainly hard open substrate while Site 2 was composed mainly of macroalgae and live coral. Ultimately, no significant differences were found between fish abundance or evenness however, significant differences were found in fish diversity between the seagrass bed and coral reef (P\u3c0.001, df=3493) as well as between the morning and the afternoon (P\u3c0.001, df=3454). Based on these results, it can be concluded that habitat and time of day play significant roles in fish diversity and even though fish abundance and evenness were not significantly different, they generally aligned with conclusions made in previous studies

A very high speed lossless compression/decompression chip set

A chip is described that will perform lossless compression and decompression using the Rice Algorithm. The chip set is designed to compress and decompress source data in real time for many applications. The encoder is designed to code at 20 M samples/second at MIL specifications. That corresponds to 280 Mbits/second at maximum quantization or approximately 500 Mbits/second under nominal conditions. The decoder is designed to decode at 10 M samples/second at industrial specifications. A wide range of quantization levels is allowed (4...14 bits) and both nearest neighbor prediction and external prediction are supported. When the pre and post processors are bypassed, the chip set performs high speed entropy coding and decoding. This frees the chip set from being tied to one modeling technique or specific application. Both the encoder and decoder are being fabricated in a 1.0 micron CMOS process that has been tested to survive 1 megarad of total radiation dosage. The CMOS chips are small, only 5 mm on a side, and both are estimated to consume less than 1/4 of a Watt of power while operating at maximum frequency

Factors Associated with Intervention by Bystanders in Sexual Violence Crimes

Kitty Genovese’s case in 1964 remains the classic example in discussions of bystander intervention. In recent years, people heard similar cases where bystanders act indifferently or are slow to report the crime. This made me ask the research question of this Capstone: What factors are associated with intervention by bystanders? The data set I used here is the incident data file from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data, which covers the years 1992-2013. I pulled out 11 explanatory variables including victim characteristics, offender characteristics, and external/environmental factors. I used a regression model with robust standard errors to examine the multi-variate relations between the dependent variable and explanatory variables. The results of my regression model indicate that after controlling the impacts from other explanatory variables, victim household income, incident time and whether the offender had the right to be at the criminal site were significant factors relating to bystander intervention. Victims with a household income larger than $75,000 were more likely to receive bystander intervention. If the offender had no right to be in the crime site, the victim was more likely to get bystander intervention compared to offenders who had right to be in the crime site. In addition, if the crime happened in daytime, it was likely for victims to receive help. Women are attacked more often; however, this does not motivate more bystander intervention. There are programs and media campaigns that have paid some attention to this social problem in recent years, but still, more things need to be done by authorities

Patent Protection of Medical Records—Focusing on Ethical Issues

The following is a translation of “Patent Protection of Medical Methods—Focusing on Ethical Issues,” an article written by Professor Yūsuke Satō in the June 2007 issue of the Japanese periodical Annual of Industrial Property Law. In Japan, despite the lack of an explicit statutory prohibition, methods of medical treatment have never been patentable. The Japan Patent Office (“JPO”) has rejected patenting medical processes on ethical grounds, interpreting that they do not fulfill the statutory requirement of “industrial applicability” in the main sentence of Article 29, Section 1 of the Patent Act, and courts have been confirming this practice. In light of recent developments in biotechnology, this prohibition is now in question. Reforms are being discussed from the perspective that Japan’s patent system should encourage the development of new medical technology. In this article, Professor Satō examines the underlying ethical reasons for excluding medical methods from patent protection and discusses whether they are appropriate. He compares the treatment of medical methods under the Japanese patent system to that of the European Patent Convention (“EPC”), where Article 52, Section 4 explicitly provides that medical processes do not have “industrial applicability.” He also compares the same to the United States Patent Act (“U.S. Patent Act”), 35 U.S.C. § 1 et seq. where, while medical processes are patentable, Section 287(c) immunizes medical practitioners from liability from medical process patent infringements. After reviewing a wide range of theories, Professor Satō argues that the ethical issues surrounding Japan’s patent system should be viewed from the standpoint of whether the patent system could be socially justified and whether it would lead to industrial development. To do so, the elements of “industry,” as well as limitations of patent rights enforcement, should be kept in mind when considering patentability requirements

Ally or Acquire? Case Studies of Compaq and Cisco as Additional Tests of the External Technology Life Cycle Model

In our first paper we proposed a dynamic theory relating alliances and acquisitions to the evolution of a technology and the market it serves. Industry structure and critical success factors change as the underlying technology evolves from phase to phase, competitive pressures exerted on a firm vary, and companies respond by adopting changing approaches to inter- firm collaboration. During the fluid phase new technology companies often form marketing alliances with established technology firms and pursue an aggressive licensing strategy to gain market recognition. The proliferation of technology startups provides an opportunity for established technology companies to obtain new technologies or enter niche markets through acquisitions or minority equity investments. Anticipating the emergence of a dominant design, companies can form standards alliances to promote their own proprietary technologies. During the transitional phase, companies with dominant designs gain recognition from the stock market, and soaring stock prices make it possible for them to acquire some of their competitors. During the mature phase, technology is well defined and competition becomes intense. Companies can form technology alliances to cut R&D costs. If a particular technology cannot be developed in-house, companies can acquire it on the open market. Marketing alliances frequently help companies target latent markets and expand into new geographic markets. During the phase of technological discontinuities the market is invaded by new technologies. Incumbents can utilize their resources to acquire the technologies needed for the newly defined marketplace. Attackers can gain market recognition through forming strategic supply alliances with established technology companies, which for the attackers is akin to the fluid phase behavior described above. In that first paper we illustrated these phenomena with a detailed case study of Microsoft, the world's leading software firm, from its origins until 2000. In this paper we further examine this hypothesized technology life cycle model through additional case studies of two high-tech companies during the same time period as the Microsoft analysis (i.e., until the year 2000): Compaq Computer and Cisco Systems. Compaq Computer was then the No.1 personal computer (PC) manufacturer in the world and is now a major portion of HP Corporation, and Cisco Systems was and still is the leading computer networking company. Each of these companies faced unique challenges at each stage of development of its underlying technologies and markets, which in turn affected its choice and extent of use of collaborative strategies. The additional case studies illustrate varying degrees of concurrence with the hypothesized dynamic model, and raise new issues for theory building. Each company's history is synopsized at the end of this paper in accord with the technology life cycle theor

Do They Pursue the Same? A Cross-culture Research on Career Anchor of IT/IS Personnel

While career anchor has been mainly studied in US society; this study extends research to Chinese cultural context to investigate the implications of career anchor in terms of job/career satisfaction and subsequent turnover intention among information technology/information systems (IT/IS) personnel in Taiwan and United Arab Emirates (UAE) societies. Chinese guanxi culture could be plays key roles in shaping career anchor and in affecting employees\u27 assessing their job/career and turnover decision. A survey study will be used for conducted to validate the hypotheses and compare the different with Taiwan and UAE two societies

AN AUDIT TO COMPARE DISCHARGE RATES BETWEEN ANTIDEPRESSANT MONOTHERAPIES PRESCRIBED FOR PURE UNIPOLAR DEPRESSION VERSUS DEPRESSION IN THE PRESENCE OF OTHER INDICATIONS

Introduction: It has been demonstrated that there are differences in the efficacy and acceptability of commonly prescribed antidepressants (Cipriani et al. 2009). This meta-analysis showed that escitalopram, sertraline, venlafaxine and mirtazapine were the most effective in the acute treatment of unipolar depression in adults. In this audit, these most effective antidepressants will be referred to as ‘the four’, whilst other antidepressants will be referred to as ‘the others’. We aimed to analyse prescribing patterns of antidepressant monotherapies in Bedford East Community Mental Health Team. We also aimed to compare the efficacy of antidepressant monotherapies in patients with unipolar depression or patients with depressed mood and also other psychiatric indications within Bedford East Community Mental Health Team, using discharge rates from the out-patient clinic as the outcome measure. We aimed to compare the efficacy of ‘the four’ versus ‘the others’ in patients with unipolar depression patients with depressed mood and also other psychiatric indications at within Bedford East Community Mental Health Team , using discharge rates from the out-patient clinic as the outcome measure. Subjects and Methods: We included all patients on an antidepressant monotherapy in Bedford East Community Mental Health Team in our analysis (206 patients in total) (Figure 1). We examined the clinical notes for each patient to assess whether they were diagnosed with unipolar depression or another psychiatric condition, and whether they had been discharged from the out-patient clinic after being prescribed the antidepressant. This allowed us to calculate discharge rates for each antidepressant monotherapy. Results: For patients with unipolar depression, discharge rates were higher when they were prescribed one of ‘the four’ and highest when prescribed escitalopram. For patients with other indications, discharge rates were higher for ‘the others’ and highest for fluoxetine . Discussion: A greater percentage of patients with unipolar depression were discharged from clinic compared with patients treated with antidepressant monotherapy for depressed mood and also other psychiatric indications. Conclusion: These results suggest that co-morbid undiagnosed other mental illness may be a cause of ‘resistant depression’