Waste discharge in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park

Waste discharge in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Par

Impact assessment case study the floating hotel at John Brewer Reef

impact assessmentImpact assessment case study the floating hotel at John Brewer Reef

Si elegans: a computational model of C. elegans muscle response to light

It has long been the goal of computational neuroscientists to understand animal nervous systems, but their vast complexity has made it very difficult to fully understand even basic functions such as movement. The C. elegans nematode offers the opportunity to study a fully described connectome and link neural network to behaviour. In this paper a model of the responses of the body wall muscle in C. elegans to a random light stimulus is presented. An algorithm has been developed that tracks synapses in the nematode nervous system from the stimulus in the phototaxis sensory neurons to the muscles cells. A linear second order model was used to calculate the isometric force in each of the C. elegans body wall muscle cells. The isometric force calculated resembles that of previous investigations in muscle modelling

Online object trajectory classification using FPGA-SoC devices

Real time classification of objects using computer vision techniques are becoming relevant with emergence of advanced perceptions systems required by, surveillance systems, industry 4.0 robotics and agricultural robots. Conventional video surveillance basically detects and tracks moving object whereas there is no indication of whether the object is approaching or receding the camera (looming). Looming detection and classification of object movements aids in knowing the position of the object and plays a crucial role in military, vehicle traffic management, robotics, etc. To accomplish real-time object trajectory classification, a contour tracking algorithm is necessary. In this paper, an application is made to perform looming detection and to detect imminent collision on a system-on-chip field-programmable gate array (SoC- FPGA) hardware. The work presented in this paper was designed for running in Robotic platforms, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Advanced Driver Assistance System, etc. Due to several advantages of SoC-FPGA the proposed work is performed on the hardware. The proposed work focusses on capturing images, processing, classifying the movements of the object and issues an imminent collision warning on-the-fly. This paper details the proposed software algorithm used for the classification of the movement of the object, simulation of the results and future work

Bio-inspired ganglion cell models for detecting horizontal and vertical movements

The retina performs the earlier stages of image processing in living beings and is composed of six different groups of cells, namely, the rods, cones, horizontal, bipolar, amacrine and ganglion cells. Each of those group of cells can be sub-divided into other types of cells that vary in shape, size, connectivity and functionality. Each cell is responsible for performing specific tasks in these early stages of biological image processing. Some of those cells are sensitive to horizontal and vertical movements. This paper proposes a multi-hierarchical spiking neural network architecture for detecting horizontal and vertical movements using a custom dataset which was generated in laboratory settings. The proposed architecture was designed to reflect the connectivity, behaviour and the number of layers found in the majority of vertebrates retinas, including humans. The architecture was trained using 2303 images and tested using 816 images. Simulation results revealed that each cell model is sensitive to vertical and horizontal movements with a detection error of 6.75 percent

Observed behaviour of old railway embankments formed of ash and dumped clay fill

Many old railway embankments were originally formed from loose dumped clay fill on which ash fill was subsequently placed to maintain the track level. These have required considerable maintenance, primarily because of embankment movements. They are mostly covered by trees, and tree roots are present in both fills. As part of a London Underground Limited programme of stabilisation works in the 1990s, two embankments were instrumented to investigate the mechanisms and causes of movement. Lateral deformations, settlements and pore pressures were measured. This paper describes the instrumentation and monitoring techniques that were adopted and presents the findings from the study. It was found that non-recoverable seasonal movements occur in both the ash fill and the clay fill. The former occur in dry weather, particularly in the slopes of the embankments crests, due to ash particle mobility under train loading when the ash is dry. Clay fill deformations are exacerbated by the presence of tree roots. Movements correlate well with climate, as quantified by the soil moisture deficit determined from meteorological data. Establishing the mechanisms of movement within these ash–clay fill embankments helped to guide the design of stabilising measures

Aquarium fishes and their collection in the Great Barrier Reef Region

The size and nature of the aquarium fish industry in the Great Barrier Reef Region makes it both economically .and ecologically important. The industry is expanding fast, yet little information is available

The novel use of pop-off satellite tags (PSATs) to investigate the migratory behaviour of European sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax

Peer-reviewed This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: O'Neill, R., Ó Maoiléidigh, N., McGinnity, P., Bond, N., & Culloty, S. (2018). The novel use of pop‐off satellite tags (PSATs) to investigate the migratory behaviour of European sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax. Journal of fish biology, 92(5), 1404-1421, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/jfb.13594. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.A total of 12 adult European sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax were tagged with pop‐off satellite archival tags (PSAT) in Irish coastal waters and in offshore waters in the north‐east Celtic Sea between 2015 and 2016. Archived data were successfully recovered from five of the 12 tags deployed, three from fish released in inshore Irish waters and two from fish released offshore in the eastern Celtic Sea. All three fish tagged in inshore waters were found to undertake migrations into the open ocean coinciding with the spawning period. These fish also exhibited fidelity to inshore sites post‐migration, returning to the same general location (within c. 73 km, which is roughly the predicted mean accuracy of the method) of their original release site. Although the number of tracks obtained here was limited, some degree of aggregation between inshore and offshore tagged fish in the eastern Celtic Sea was noted during the expected spawning period suggesting PSATs can provide new information on specific spawning locations of European sea bass.Beaufort Marine Research Award in Fish Population Genetics Irish Government under the Sea Change Programm