9,937 research outputs found
AMPHIBIAN RESPONSE TO A LARGE-SCALE HABITAT RESTORATION IN THE PRAIRIE POTHOLE REGION
Over the next half-century, scientists anticipate that nearly one third of the currently recognized 7,450 amphibian species will become extinct. Many organizations have responded to the challenge of conserving amphibian biodiversity, some indirectly. Under the auspices of the Iowa Great Lakes Management Plan, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of Natural Resources, and their partners have been implementing habitat restoration efforts designed to protect water quality, provide recreational opportunities, and benefit wildlife at the regional level. With this program, over 130 wetlands have been created in the past 30 years on recently purchased public lands—one of the largest wetland restoration projects conducted in the Prairie Pothole Region of the Great Plains. While amphibians were not the main target of these restorations, we show that in response, 121 new breeding populations of native Northern Leopard Frogs (Lithobates pipiens; n = 80) and Eastern Tiger Salamanders (Ambystoma tigrinum; n = 41) have been established; in addition, we found 19 populations of non-native American Bullfrogs (L. catesbeianus). Using the program PRESENCE, we show that leopard frog occupancy was greatest in newer (<18 years old), intermediate-sized wetlands, and that tiger salamander occupancy was greatest in small wetlands without fish and larval bullfrogs. These data imply that because native amphibians responded positively to these newly established wetlands, habitat availability has likely been a factor in limiting population numbers. Further, these data suggest the presence of fishes and introduced bullfrogs interferes with the ability of tiger salamanders to colonize restored wetlands
The Effects of a Season of Training and Competition on the Respiratory System of Boys at Dunbar Junior High School
The purpose of this study is to answer four specific questions: 1. What is the breathing rate of a junior high athlete after a training period? 2. What is the recovery rate of a junior high athlete after exercise after a training period? 3. What is the vital capacity of the lungs after a training period? 4. What is the breathing rate of a junior high athlete during the recovery period?
It was hypothesized that the breathing rate would decrease, the vital capacity would increase and the recovery rate of the athlete would be shortened.
This study concerned itself with ten subjects. These subjects were students at the Dunbar Junior High School of Beaumont, Texas. The students were male students, eighth and ninth graders, between the ages of 13 and 15 years. They were students who worked very hard to win
On the Minimum Distance of Generalized Spatially Coupled LDPC Codes
Families of generalized spatially-coupled low-density parity-check (GSC-LDPC)
code ensembles can be formed by terminating protograph-based generalized LDPC
convolutional (GLDPCC) codes. It has previously been shown that ensembles of
GSC-LDPC codes constructed from a protograph have better iterative decoding
thresholds than their block code counterparts, and that, for large termination
lengths, their thresholds coincide with the maximum a-posteriori (MAP) decoding
threshold of the underlying generalized LDPC block code ensemble. Here we show
that, in addition to their excellent iterative decoding thresholds, ensembles
of GSC-LDPC codes are asymptotically good and have large minimum distance
growth rates.Comment: Submitted to the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory
201
Spatially Coupled LDPC Codes Constructed from Protographs
In this paper, we construct protograph-based spatially coupled low-density
parity-check (SC-LDPC) codes by coupling together a series of L disjoint, or
uncoupled, LDPC code Tanner graphs into a single coupled chain. By varying L,
we obtain a flexible family of code ensembles with varying rates and frame
lengths that can share the same encoding and decoding architecture for
arbitrary L. We demonstrate that the resulting codes combine the best features
of optimized irregular and regular codes in one design: capacity approaching
iterative belief propagation (BP) decoding thresholds and linear growth of
minimum distance with block length. In particular, we show that, for
sufficiently large L, the BP thresholds on both the binary erasure channel
(BEC) and the binary-input additive white Gaussian noise channel (AWGNC)
saturate to a particular value significantly better than the BP decoding
threshold and numerically indistinguishable from the optimal maximum
a-posteriori (MAP) decoding threshold of the uncoupled LDPC code. When all
variable nodes in the coupled chain have degree greater than two,
asymptotically the error probability converges at least doubly exponentially
with decoding iterations and we obtain sequences of asymptotically good LDPC
codes with fast convergence rates and BP thresholds close to the Shannon limit.
Further, the gap to capacity decreases as the density of the graph increases,
opening up a new way to construct capacity achieving codes on memoryless
binary-input symmetric-output (MBS) channels with low-complexity BP decoding.Comment: Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Information Theor
Quasi-Cyclic Asymptotically Regular LDPC Codes
Families of "asymptotically regular" LDPC block code ensembles can be formed
by terminating (J,K)-regular protograph-based LDPC convolutional codes. By
varying the termination length, we obtain a large selection of LDPC block code
ensembles with varying code rates, minimum distance that grows linearly with
block length, and capacity approaching iterative decoding thresholds, despite
the fact that the terminated ensembles are almost regular. In this paper, we
investigate the properties of the quasi-cyclic (QC) members of such an
ensemble. We show that an upper bound on the minimum Hamming distance of
members of the QC sub-ensemble can be improved by careful choice of the
component protographs used in the code construction. Further, we show that the
upper bound on the minimum distance can be improved by using arrays of
circulants in a graph cover of the protograph.Comment: To be presented at the 2010 IEEE Information Theory Workshop, Dublin,
Irelan
New Codes on Graphs Constructed by Connecting Spatially Coupled Chains
A novel code construction based on spatially coupled low-density parity-check
(SC-LDPC) codes is presented. The proposed code ensembles are described by
protographs, comprised of several protograph-based chains characterizing
individual SC-LDPC codes. We demonstrate that code ensembles obtained by
connecting appropriately chosen SC-LDPC code chains at specific points have
improved iterative decoding thresholds compared to those of single SC-LDPC
coupled chains. In addition, it is shown that the improved decoding properties
of the connected ensembles result in reduced decoding complexity required to
achieve a specific bit error probability. The constructed ensembles are also
asymptotically good, in the sense that the minimum distance grows linearly with
the block length. Finally, we show that the improved asymptotic properties of
the connected chain ensembles also translate into improved finite length
performance.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theor
Exact Free Distance and Trapping Set Growth Rates for LDPC Convolutional Codes
Ensembles of (J,K)-regular low-density parity-check convolutional (LDPCC)
codes are known to be asymptotically good, in the sense that the minimum free
distance grows linearly with the constraint length. In this paper, we use a
protograph-based analysis of terminated LDPCC codes to obtain an upper bound on
the free distance growth rate of ensembles of periodically time-varying LDPCC
codes. This bound is compared to a lower bound and evaluated numerically. It is
found that, for a sufficiently large period, the bounds coincide. This approach
is then extended to obtain bounds on the trapping set numbers, which define the
size of the smallest, non-empty trapping sets, for these asymptotically good,
periodically time-varying LDPCC code ensembles.Comment: To be presented at the 2011 IEEE International Symposium on
Information Theor
Error Propagation Mitigation in Sliding Window Decoding of Braided Convolutional Codes
We investigate error propagation in sliding window decoding of braided
convolutional codes (BCCs). Previous studies of BCCs have focused on iterative
decoding thresholds, minimum distance properties, and their bit error rate
(BER) performance at small to moderate frame length. Here, we consider a
sliding window decoder in the context of large frame length or one that
continuously outputs blocks in a streaming fashion. In this case, decoder error
propagation, due to the feedback inherent in BCCs, can be a serious problem.In
order to mitigate the effects of error propagation, we propose several schemes:
a \emph{window extension algorithm} where the decoder window size can be
extended adaptively, a resynchronization mechanism where we reset the encoder
to the initial state, and a retransmission strategy where erroneously decoded
blocks are retransmitted. In addition, we introduce a soft BER stopping rule to
reduce computational complexity, and the tradeoff between performance and
complexity is examined. Simulation results show that, using the proposed window
extension algorithm, resynchronization mechanism, and retransmission strategy,
the BER performance of BCCs can be improved by up to four orders of magnitude
in the signal-to-noise ratio operating range of interest, and in addition the
soft BER stopping rule can be employed to reduce computational complexity.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1801.0323
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