Coherency in space of lake and river temperature and water quality records

Environmental time series observed over 100’s of monitoring locations usually possess some spatial structure in terms of common patterns throughout time, commonly described as temporal coherence. This paper will apply, develop and compare two methods for clustering time series on the basis of their patterns over time. The first approach treats the time series as functional data and applies hierarchical clustering while the second uses a state-space model based clustering approach. Both methods are developed to incorporate spatial correlation and stopping criteria are investigated to identify an appropriate number of clusters. The methods are applied to Total Organic Carbon data from river sites across Scotland

A Flexible Endoscopic Machining Tool

AbstractFlexible endoscopic tools are considerably applied in industrial image based inspecting operations, but none of them are currently effective enough to carry out machining tasks, such as grinding. If machining and inspection can be done in a single step, significant amount of labor force, money and energy can be saved in industrial repairing and maintenance tasks. This paper proposed a concept design of novel endoscopic machining tool, which aims at quantitatively and precisely removing material from imperfect components in hard-to-reach cavities, such as turbine blades in a jet engine. Prediction models are built to estimate the pose, force and material removal rate (MRR) of a modified PENTAX ES-3801 endoscope. Preliminary experimental results show that in two-dimensional (2D) grinding configuration the MRR average error of 22% has been achieved for 18 samples tested. In the end, concept designs of self-stabilized endoscopic grinding tool are proposed and discussed

The Impact Of A Secondary Market On Video Game Purchase Intentions

The secondary market for video game purchases is a multi-billion dollar industry that some believe is unfair to video game developers. Using the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), we investigated user attitudes and subjective norms and their affect on a consumer’s intention to buy new video games. While TRA has been used to study purchase intentions of material goods and digital goods, our study extends this work to investigate video games, which have both a physical and digital component. Based on a survey of 118 undergraduate students, two of the hypothesized relationships are significant predictors of intention to purchase: previous experience in the primary market and access to the secondary market. The results of this study highlight the applicability of TRA to the video game market, suggest marketing strategies for video game developers, and caution against criminalizing the resale of video games

Einstein Cluster Alignments Revisited

We have examined whether the major axes of rich galaxy clusters tend to point toward their nearest neighboring cluster. We have used the data of Ulmer, McMillan, and Kowalski, who used position angles based on X-ray morphology. We also studied a subset of this sample with updated positions and distances from the MX Northern Abell Cluster Survey (for rich clusters ($R \geq 1$) with well known redshifts). A Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test showed no significant signal for nonrandom angles on any scale $\leq 100h^{-1}$Mpc. However, refining the null hypothesis with the Wilcoxon rank-sum test, we found a high confidence signal for alignment. Confidence levels increase to a high of 99.997% as only near neighbors which are very close are considered. We conclude there is a strong alignment signal in the data, consistent with gravitational instability acting on Gaussian perturbations.Comment: Minor revisions. To be published in Ap

Active immunization against virus infections due to antigenic drift by induction of crossreactive cytotoxic T lymphocytes

We have examined whether active immunization with c13 protein, a hybrid protein of the first 81 amino acids of the viral NS1 nonstructural protein and the HA2 subunit of A/PR/8 (H1N1) hemagglutinin, could protect BALB/c mice from challenge with A/PR/8 H1 subtype virus. Mice immunized with the c13 protein had a significant reduction of pulmonary virus titers with A/PR/8 (H1) virus, but failed to limit the replication of A/PC (H3) virus, which reflects the in vitro CTL activity of c13 immune spleen cells. We observed that the epitope recognized by HA2 specific CTL, which are induced by a derivative of c13 protein, is highly conserved among H1 and H2 subtype virus strains. This led us to test whether active immunization with c13 protein would also limit pulmonary virus replication in mice infected with the A/TW virus, a virus of the H1 subtype, which was isolated in 1986, and with a virus of the H2 subtype, A/Japan/305/57. Immunized mice had significantly lower lung virus titers than did control mice, and did not possess any neutralizing antibodies to the challenger viruses. These results indicate that active immunization with a fusion protein containing the cross-reactive CTL epitope protects mice from influenza infection by inducing CTL against influenza A H1 and H2 subtype virus strains, which markedly vary in their antibody binding sites on the HA1. The ability to induce active cross-reactive immunization with a fusion protein which contains a highly conserved CTL epitope offers a model for vaccine approaches against viruses which undergo significant variations in their antibody binding sites

Diet and Selection of Major Prey Species by Lake Michigan Salmonines, 1973–1982

To elucidate prey preferences, we quantified stomach contents of 1,231 salmonines collected from inshore (21 m or shallower) southeastern Lake Michigan during 1973–1982. Predators ate 12 species of fish. Alewife Alosa pseudoharengus made up 48–79% by weight of the diet of brown trout Salmo trutta, chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, coho salmon Oncorhynchus kisutch, lake trout Salvelinus namaycush, and rainbow trout Salmo gairdneri. Alewives eaten ranged from 23 to 245 mm total length; 46% were 150–200 mm. Rainbow smelt Osmerus mordax eaten were 21–245 mm long and made up 4–11% of the salmoninesˈ prey. There were significant direct linear relationships between lengths of alewives and rainbow smelt eaten and lengths of the five predators. Alewives are currently declining in Lake Michigan. If their population collapses, there should be a shift to alternative prey species. We have seen no such shift through 1982, although more recent data of other investigators show a decline in the importance of alewife in salmonine diets. Diets of the midwater‐feeding chinook and coho salmon were heavily dominated by the pelagic alewife, whereas brown and lake trout diets were more diverse. This suggests that trout should have better survival and growth than salmon, because trout would be able to utilize the more benthic yellow perch, Perca flavescens, rainbow smelt, and, to some degree, bloater Coregonus hoyi. The latter species are becoming more abundant with the decline in alewife. Under the current salmonine stocking regime, alewives will continue to supply a lower and variable portion of the salmonine diet, and predatory pressure on alewife should lead to increases in endemic prey speciesˈ populations.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141728/1/tafs0677.pd