DETECTION OF SUBSURFACE FACILITIES INCLUDING NON-METALLIC PIPE

CyTerra has leveraged our unique, shallow buried plastic target detection technology developed under US Army contracts into deeper buried subsurface facilities and including nonmetallic pipe detection. This Final Report describes a portable, low-cost, real-time, and user-friendly subsurface plastic pipe detector (LULU- Low Cost Utility Location Unit) that relates to the goal of maintaining the integrity and reliability of the nation's natural gas transmission and distribution network by preventing third party damage, by detecting potential infringements. Except for frequency band and antenna size, the LULU unit is almost identical to those developed for the US Army. CyTerra designed, fabricated, and tested two frequency stepped GPR systems, spanning the frequencies of importance (200 to 1600 MHz), one low and one high frequency system. Data collection and testing was done at a variety of locations (selected for soil type variations) on both targets of opportunity and selected buried targets. We developed algorithms and signal processing techniques that provide for the automatic detection of the buried utility lines. The real time output produces a sound as the radar passes over the utility line alerting the operator to the presence of a buried object. Our unique, low noise/high performance RF hardware, combined with our field tested detection algorithms, represents an important advancement toward achieving the DOE potential infringement goal

Effects of Male age and Size on Mating Success in the Bumblebee Bombus terrestris

In social insects, the reproductive strategies adopted by colonies emerge as a complex property of individual behaviours, but as yet we are often unable to fully explain them in evolutionary terms. In bumblebees, colonies adopt either a short-lived strategy specializing in male production, or a longer-lived strategy in which mainly new queens are produced, but this results in males emerging long before mates are available; this strategy can only easily be explained if older males are at a significant reproductive advantage. Here we examine how age and morphological characters influence mating success of male bumblebees. In two separate experiments in which single virgin males and females were confined together, we found that young males and heavy males mated more swiftly and copulated for less time compared to old males or lighter males, respectively. However, in competitive situations age proved to be unimportant and the only factors to influence mating success were the lengths of the fore and hind tibiae, with strong directional selection for long leg length. Fore and hind legs are both used in courtship, so both traits are associated with plausible mechanisms under selection. It has previously been argued that, in times of food stress, bumblebee colonies should produce males as male size is less likely to be strongly correlated with fitness than female size. Our results suggest that this may not be so, since aspects of male size directly impact on their mating success. Our results leave unexplained the emergence of males many days before new queens