The relationship between smolt and postsmolt growth for Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in the Gulf of St. Lawrence

The interaction of ocean climate and growth conditions during the postsmolt phase is emerging as the primary hypothesis to explain patterns of adult recruitment for individual stocks and stock complexes of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). Friedland et al. (1993) first reported that contrast in sea surface temperature (SST) conditions during spring appeared to be related to recruitment of the European stock complex. This hypothesis was further supported by the relationship between cohort specific patterns of recruitment for two index stocks and regional scale SST (Friedland et al., 1998). One of the index stocks, the North Esk of Scotland, was shown to have a pattern of postsmolt growth that was positively correlated with survival, indicating that growth during the postsmolt year controls survival and recruitment (Friedland et al., 2000). A similar scenario is emerging for the North American stock complex where contrast in ocean conditions during spring in the postsmolt migration corridors was associated with the recruitment pattern of the stock complex (Friedland et al., 2003a, 2003b). The accumulation of additional data on the postsmolt growth response of both stock complexes will contribute to a better understanding of the recruitment process in Atlantic salmon

Reliability analysis of bonded joints with variations in adhesive thickness

Bonded joints are used in several industrial applications as a surrogate of more expensive repairs, but their reliability must be ascertained. Failure in a bonded joint mainly occurs in the adhesive due to stress concentrations that directly depend on the adhesive thickness. In practice, it is difficult to ensure a good accuracy of the final adhesive thickness, leading to uncertainty to its spatial variability. This uncertainty greatly influences the strength of the bonded joint. This work deals with one of the main key issues in bonded joints: the influence of the spatial variations in the adhesive thickness on the reliability of the joint and an excessive shear stress level caused by the adhesive thickness variations may lead to failure. This paper provides reliability analysis by considering the adhesive thickness as a stochastic field. The experimental thickness field is obtained so as to identify the stochastic parameters. These parameters are then introduced in a structural reliability model to evaluate the failure probability. Results show the influence of adhesive thickness uncertainty on bonded joint failure. © 2012 Taylor & Francis

Low temperature tunneling current enhancement in silicide/Si Schottky contacts with nanoscale barrier width

The low temperature electrical behavior of adjacent silicide/Si Schottky contacts with or without dopant segregation is investigated. The electrical characteristics are very well modeled by thermionic-field emission for non-segregated contacts separated by micrometer-sized gaps. Still, an excess of current occurs at low temperature for short contact separations or dopant-segregated contacts when the voltage applied to the device is sufficiently high. From two-dimensional self-consistent non-equilibrium Green's function simulations, the dependence of the Schottky barrier profile on the applied voltage, unaccounted for in usual thermionic-field emission models, is found to be the source of this deviation