Rapid bioconcentration of steroids in the plasma of three-spined stickleback Gasterosteus aculeatus exposed to waterborne testosterone and 17β-oestradiol

The relationship over time between the concentrations of two steroids, singly and in combination, in a static exposure system and in the blood of three-spined stickleback Gasterosteus aculeatus, held within the exposure system was investigated. Groups of three-spined stickleback were exposed (nominally) to either 1000 ng l1 17β-oestradiol (E2), testosterone (T) or E2 and T in combination at the same concentrations for 6 days. Both water and fish were sampled at intervals and steroid concentrations in both compartments were determined. The plasma steroid time profile revealed a rapid bioconcentration within the first 6 h of exposure. The plasma steroid levels attained at this time point (20–90 ng ml1) were up to 50-fold (E2) and 200-fold (T) greater than the actual levels of steroid measured in the exposure water, while levels in the blood of control fish did not exceed 4 ng ml1. The substantial elevation of plasma steroid levels relative to the concentrations of steroid to which the fish were exposed in the ambient water gives scope for delivery of the steroids to target endocrine tissues at levels far in excess of what might be predicted on the basis of passive branchial uptake alone. These results are discussed in relation to endocrine disruption, and in particular the occurrence of effects in fish exposed to levels of endocrine active substances that are seemingly physiologically irrelevant

Iterative Equalization and Source Decoding for Vector Quantized Sources

In this contribution an iterative (turbo) channel equalization and source decoding scheme is considered. In our investigations the source is modelled as a Gaussian-Markov source, which is compressed with the aid of vector quantization. The communications channel is modelled as a time-invariant channel contaminated by intersymbol interference (ISI). Since the ISI channel can be viewed as a rate-1 encoder and since the redundancy of the source cannot be perfectly removed by source encoding, a joint channel equalization and source decoding scheme may be employed for enhancing the achievable performance. In our study the channel equalization and the source decoding are operated iteratively on a bit-by-bit basis under the maximum aposteriori (MAP) criterion. The channel equalizer accepts the a priori information provided by the source decoding and also extracts extrinsic information, which in turn acts as a priori information for improving the source decoding performance. Simulation results are presented for characterizing the achievable performance of the iterative channel equalization and source decoding scheme. Our results show that iterative channel equalization and source decoding is capable of achieving an improved performance by efficiently exploiting the residual redundancy of the vector quantization assisted source coding

The JCMT Gould Belt Survey: understanding the influence of outflows on Gould Belt clouds

JOURThis is the final version of the article. It was first published by Oxford Journals for the Royal Astronomical Society via http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnrasl/slv202Using James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) Gould Belt Survey data from CO J = 3 → 2 isotopologues, we present a meta-analysis of the outflows and energetics of star-forming regions in several Gould Belt clouds. The majority of the regions are strongly gravitationally bound. There is evidence that molecular outflows transport large quantities of momentum and energy. Outflow energies are at least 20 per cent of the total turbulent kinetic energies in all of the regions studied and greater than the turbulent energy in half of the regions. However, we find no evidence that outflows increase levels of turbulence, and there is no correlation between the outflow and turbulent energies. Even though outflows in some regions contribute significantly to maintaining turbulence levels against dissipation, this relies on outflows efficiently coupling to bulk motions. Other mechanisms (e.g. supernovae) must be the main drivers of turbulence in most if not all of these regions

Twisted topological structures related to M-branes

Studying the M-branes leads us naturally to new structures that we call Membrane-, Membrane^c-, String^K(Z,3)- and Fivebrane^K(Z,4)-structures, which we show can also have twisted counterparts. We study some of their basic properties, highlight analogies with structures associated with lower levels of the Whitehead tower of the orthogonal group, and demonstrate the relations to M-branes.Comment: 17 pages, title changed on referee's request, minor changes to improve presentation, typos correcte

Iterative Joint Video and Channel Decoding in a Trellis-Based Vector-Quantized Video Codec and Trellis-Coded Modulation Aided Wireless Videophone

We propose a Vector-Quantized (VQ) video codec that induces deliberately-introduced code constraints. The complete set of these code constraints are unambiguously described by a novel block-based modification of a symbol-based variable length coding trellis structure. This trellis is employed during VQ encoding to represent video information with a Minimum Mean Squared Error (MMSE) reconstruction. Additionally, the proposed trellis structure is employed in the video decoder to obtain a posteriori probability based MMSE estimates of the transmitted VQ tiles. Since the trellis structure unambiguously describes the code constraints induced by the video codec, its employment guarantees the automatic recovery of valid sets of VQ tiles. The proposed video codec is serially concatenated with a trellis-coded modulation scheme for transmission over a fast-fading Rayleigh fading channel. In the receiver, iterative-decoding convergence that eliminates all perceivable channel-induced video distortion is shown to be supported within 1.29 dB of the system's 2 bit/s/Hz channel-capacity limit of 3.96 dB

Joint Iterative-Detection of Reversible Variable-Length Coded Constant Bit Rate Vector-Quantized Video and Coded Modulation

Joint video-coding, channel-coding and modulation schemes based on a Constant Bit Rate (CBR) video codec, Variable Length Codes (VLCs) as well as Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM) and Turbo TCM (TTCM) schemes are proposed. These arrangements have a latency of a single video frame duration. significant coding gain is achieved without bandwidth expansion with the advent of iterative decoding exchanging extrinsic information between the VLC and the TCM or TTCM decoders. The performance of the proposed schemes was evaluated for transmission over uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels and the best scheme was found to be about 3~dB from the Rayleigh channel's capacity limit

A left-handed simplicial action for euclidean general relativity

An action for simplicial euclidean general relativity involving only left-handed fields is presented. The simplicial theory is shown to converge to continuum general relativity in the Plebanski formulation as the simplicial complex is refined. This contrasts with the Regge model for which Miller and Brewin have shown that the full field equations are much more restrictive than Einstein's in the continuum limit. The action and field equations of the proposed model are also significantly simpler then those of the Regge model when written directly in terms of their fundamental variables. An entirely analogous hypercubic lattice theory, which approximates Plebanski's form of general relativity is also presented.Comment: Version 3. Adds current home address + slight corrections to references of version 2. Version 2 = substantially clarified form of version 1. 29 pages, 4 figures, Latex, uses psfig.sty to insert postscript figures. psfig.sty included in mailing, also available from this archiv

A Simple Method to Check the Reliability of Annual Sunspot Number in the Historical Period 1610-1847

A simple method to detect inconsistencies in low annual sunspot numbers based on the relationship between these values and the annual number of active days is described. The analysis allowed for the detection of problems in the annual sunspot number series clustered in a few specific periods and unambiguous, namely: i) before Maunder minimum, ii) the year 1652 during the Maunder minimum, iii) the year 1741 in Solar Cycle -1, and iv) the so-called "lost" solar cycle in 1790s and subsequent onset of the Dalton Minimum.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, to be published in Solar Physic