Heat capacity mapping mission project HCM-051

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

Survival Rates of Northern Spotted Owls in Post-fire Landscapes of Southwest Oregon

We estimated annual survival rates (S) of 23 radio-marked Northern Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis caurina) at the Quartz and Timbered Rock burns and adjacent areas in southwest Oregon. We used known-fate models in program MARK to test for differences in survival among three groups (owls dwelling inside of burned areas, owls displaced by wildfire, and owls dwelling outside of burned areas) and to investigate the potential effects of fire severity and cover type on survival. We found that annual survival rates of Spotted Owls that maintained a territory within the burn perimeter (Ŝ = 0.69 ± 0.12) or that had been displaced by the burn (Ŝ = 0.66 ± 0.14) were lower than those owls that had territories outside but adjacent to the burn perimeter (Ŝ = 0.85 ± 0.06). This result indicated that wildfire had a negative impact on Spotted Owl survival, at least in the short-term (i.e., 3-5 yr post-burn). We were unable to identify a significant effect of fire severity or quantity of habitat on Spotted Owl survival, but this inability was likely related to our small sample size and high variability in habitat composition. We recommend long-term monitoring of survival on larger samples of owls to identify the effects of fire severity and habitat on Spotted Owl survival and to determine if wildfire poses a significant threat to the long-term persistence of Spotted Owls.Keywords: Radiotelemetry, Northern Spotted Owl, Post-burn survival, Strix occidentalis caurina, Known-fate models, Wildfir

Relationship Between Wildfire, Salvage Logging, and Occupancy of Nesting Territories by Northern Spotted Owls

The northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) is one of the most intensively studied raptors in the world; however, little is known about the impacts of wildfire on the subspecies and how they use recently burned areas. Three large-scale wildfires in southwest Oregon provided an opportunity to investigate the short-term impacts of wildfire and salvage logging on site occupancy of spotted owls. We used Program MARK to develop single-species, multiple-season models of site occupancy using data collected during demographic surveys of spotted owl territories. In our first analysis, we compared occupancy dynamics of spotted owl nesting territories before (1992–2002) and after the Timbered Rock burn (2003–2006) to a reference area in the south Cascade Mountains that was not affected recently by wildfire. We found that the South Cascades had greater colonization probabilities than Timbered Rock before and after wildfire (^β = 1.31, 95% CI = 0.60–2.03), and colonization probabilities declined over time at both areas (^β = -0.06, 95% CI = -0.12 to 0.00). Extinction probabilities were greater at South Cascades than at Timbered Rock prior to the burn (^β = 0.69, 95% CI = 0.23–2.62); however, Timbered Rock had greater extinction probabilities following wildfire (^β = 1.46, 95% CI = 0.29–2.62). The Timbered Rock and South Cascades study areas had similar patterns in site occupancy prior to the Timbered Rock burn (1992–2006). Furthermore, Timbered Rock had a 64% reduction in site occupancy following wildfire (2002–2006) in contrast to a 25% reduction in site occupancy at South Cascades during the same time period. This suggested that the combined effects of habitat disturbances due to wildfire and subsequent salvage logging on private lands negatively affected site occupancy by spotted owls. In our second analysis, we investigated the relationship between wildfire, salvage logging, and occupancy of spotted owl territories at the Biscuit, Quartz, and Timbered Rock burns from 2003 to 2006. Extinction probabilities increased as the combined area of early seral forests, high severity burn, and salvage logging increased within the core nesting areas (^β = 1.88, 95% CI = 0.10–3.66). We were unable to identify any relationships between initial occupancy and colonization probabilities and the habitat covariates that we considered in our analysis where the b coefficient did not overlap zero. We concluded that site occupancy of spotted owl nesting territories declined in the short-term following wildfire, and habitat modification and loss due to past timber harvest, high severity fire, and salvage logging jointly contributed to declines in site occupancy

On the Quantum Invariant for the Spherical Seifert Manifold

We study the Witten--Reshetikhin--Turaev SU(2) invariant for the Seifert manifold $S^3/\Gamma$ where $\Gamma$ is a finite subgroup of SU(2). We show that the WRT invariants can be written in terms of the Eichler integral of the modular forms with half-integral weight, and we give an exact asymptotic expansion of the invariants by use of the nearly modular property of the Eichler integral. We further discuss that those modular forms have a direct connection with the polyhedral group by showing that the invariant polynomials of modular forms satisfy the polyhedral equations associated to $\Gamma$.Comment: 36 page

Super-A-polynomials for Twist Knots

We conjecture formulae of the colored superpolynomials for a class of twist knots $K_p$ where p denotes the number of full twists. The validity of the formulae is checked by applying differentials and taking special limits. Using the formulae, we compute both the classical and quantum super-A-polynomial for the twist knots with small values of p. The results support the categorified versions of the generalized volume conjecture and the quantum volume conjecture. Furthermore, we obtain the evidence that the Q-deformed A-polynomials can be identified with the augmentation polynomials of knot contact homology in the case of the twist knots.Comment: 22+16 pages, 16 tables and 5 figures; with a Maple program by Xinyu Sun and a Mathematica notebook in the ancillary files linked on the right; v2 change in appendix B, typos corrected and references added; v3 change in section 3.3; v4 corrections in Ooguri-Vafa polynomials and quantum super-A-polynomials for 7_2 and 8_1 are adde

Influence of family and friend smoking on intentions to smoke and smoking-related attitudes and refusal self-efficacy among 9-10 year old children from deprived neighbourhoods: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Smoking often starts in early adolescence and addiction can occur rapidly. For effective smoking prevention there is a need to identify at risk groups of preadolescent children and whether gender-specific intervention components are necessary. This study aimed to examine associations between mother, father, sibling and friend smoking and cognitive vulnerability to smoking among preadolescent children living in deprived neighbourhoods. METHODS: Cross-sectional data was collected from 9-10 year old children (n =1143; 50.7% girls; 85.6% White British) from 43 primary schools in Merseyside, England. Children completed a questionnaire that assessed their smoking-related behaviour, intentions, attitudes, and refusal self-efficacy, as well as parent, sibling and friend smoking. Data for boys and girls were analysed separately using multilevel linear and logistic regression models, adjusting for individual cognitions and school and deprivation level. RESULTS: Compared to girls, boys had lower non-smoking intentions (P = 0.02), refusal self-efficacy (P = 0.04) and were less likely to agree that smoking is 'definitely' bad for health (P < 0.01). Friend smoking was negatively associated with non-smoking intentions in girls (P < 0.01) and boys (P < 0.01), and with refusal self-efficacy in girls (P < 0.01). Sibling smoking was negatively associated with non-smoking intentions in girls (P < 0.01) but a positive association was found in boys (P = 0.02). Boys who had a smoking friend were less likely to 'definitely' believe that the smoke from other people's cigarettes is harmful (OR 0.57, 95% CI: 0.35 to 0.91, P = 0.02). Further, boys with a smoking friend (OR 0.38, 95% CI: 0.21 to 0.69, P < 0.01) or a smoking sibling (OR 0.45, 95% CI: 0.21 to 0.98) were less likely to 'definitely' believe that smoking is bad for health. CONCLUSION: This study indicates that sibling and friend smoking may represent important influences on 9-10 year old children's cognitive vulnerability toward smoking. Whilst some differential findings by gender were observed, these may not be sufficient to warrant separate prevention interventions. However, further research is needed

The Higher-Order Prover Leo-II.

Leo-II is an automated theorem prover for classical higher-order logic. The prover has pioneered cooperative higher-order-first-order proof automation, it has influenced the development of the TPTP THF infrastructure for higher-order logic, and it has been applied in a wide array of problems. Leo-II may also be called in proof assistants as an external aid tool to save user effort. For this it is crucial that Leo-II returns proof information in a standardised syntax, so that these proofs can eventually be transformed and verified within proof assistants. Recent progress in this direction is reported for the Isabelle/HOL system.The Leo-II project has been supported by the following grants: EPSRC grant EP/D070511/1 and DFG grants BE/2501 6-1, 8-1 and 9-1.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10817-015-9348-y

Constraints on the Ultra High Energy Photon flux using inclined showers from the Haverah Park array

We describe a method to analyse inclined air showers produced by ultra high energy cosmic rays using an analytical description of the muon densities. We report the results obtained using data from inclined events (60^{\circ}<\theta<80^{\circ}) recorded by the Haverah Park shower detector for energies above 10^19 eV. Using mass independent knowledge of the UHECR spectrum obtained from vertical air shower measurements and comparing the expected horizontal shower rate to the reported measurements we show that above 10^19 eV less than 48 % of the primary cosmic rays can be photons at the 95 % confidence level and above 4 X 10^19 eV less than 50 % of the cosmic rays can be photonic at the same confidence level. These limits place important constraints on some models of the origin of ultra high-energy cosmic rays.Comment: 45 pages, 25 figure