Rotating Away Proton Decay in Flipped Unification

It is shown that by a simple extension of the fermion sector of flipped SU(5) models and other flipped models proton decay coming from dimension-6 operators can be suppressed by fermion mixing angles by an arbitrary amount in a natural way.Comment: 5 page

Radiative Fermion Mass Hierarchy in a Non-supersymmetric Unified Theory

In non-supersymmetric grand unified models a ``radiative fermion mass hierarchy" can be achieved in which the spectrum of quark and lepton masses is determined entirely by physics at the unification scale, with many relations following from the unified gauge symmetry, and with the masses of the lightest family arising from loops. A simple, realistic, and predictive model of this kind is presented. A "doubly lopsided" structure, known to lead to bilarge neutrino mixing, plays a crucial role in the radiative hierarchy.Comment: 14 page

Four Puzzles of Neutrino Mixing

There are four puzzling questions about by the magnitudes of neutrino mixings and mass splittings. A brief sketch is given of the various kinds of models of neutrino masses and how they answer these questions. Special attention is given to so-called "lopsided" models.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX. Talk at NOON2001 conference, Univ. of Tokyo, Dec. 5-8, 200

A Feasibility Study of Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to Survey Avian Abundance by Using Audio Recording

Roadside counts are commonly used to assess songbird abundance, but they result in oversampling habitat edges and underrepresenting core habitats, areas of steep terrain, and wetlands. Accessing off-road habitats can be logistical challenging and time-consuming, resulting in low survey efficiency. Aerial ecological surveys, using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones) have already proven to be valuable in wildlife monitoring. Previous studies have used photography or videography to provide permanent documentation of wildlife surveys through low altitude aerial imagery. A significant advantage of UAVs over manned aircraft is their greater safety and lower costs. We propose that UAVs can also be used to conduct audio surveys of vocal species. Here, we report on experiments to test the feasibility of using UAVs to conduct point counts of songbirds. To establish the detection radius of bird songs recorded with a microphone attached to a UAV (DJI Phantom 2.0), recordings of the songs of five regionally abundant bird species (Wood Thrush, Eastern Towhee, Song Sparrow, Chipping Sparrow, and Eastern Meadowlark) were broadcast at distances of up to 140m from the UAV, which was flown at three altitudes (20m, 40m, and 60m). We found that detection rates and radial detection distances of the broadcasts did not differ with UAV altitude. Bird recordings were clearly audible at radial distances of 60m. We conclude that it is feasible to use UAVs to conduct aerial point counts that are comparable with traditional terrestrial bird point counts, and describe additional field experimentation needed to refine our survey protocols