Determination of the Spawning Season of Bigmouth Sleeper in Puerto Rico by Examination of Gonad Maturation and Reproductive Hormone Cycles

Bigmouth sleepers, Gobiomorus dormitor, are diadromous fish that have potential for hatchery production as both food and sport fish and for conservation purposes. Understanding of bigmouth sleeper maturation and seasonal hormone cycling are necessary in order to realize hatchery production. Therefore, seasonal trends in gonadosomatic index (GSI) and plasma vitellogenin, estradiol, progesterone and total testosterone concentrations were examined in wild and captive populations in Puerto Rico during the presumed spawning season. The spawning season for wild river populations of bigmouth sleepers was protracted over several months, but peaks in male testosterone (6.5 ng/mL) and female vitellogenin (11.3 ng/mL), estradiol (3.3 ng/mL), and GSI (9.5—12.0%) demonstrated that the bigmouth sleeper spawning season occurred primarily in July and August in southwestern Puerto Rico. Captive female broodstock held in shallow hatchery ponds demonstrated accelerated maturation, presumably due to warmer water temperatures in the ponds. Therefore, induced and natural spawning attempts using captive female bigmouth sleeper broodstock should be conducted from June through July. However, advanced gonadal maturation and increased testosterone production in captive males was minimal. Hence, induced spawning for captive rearing purposes should use wild broodstock captured during the peak of the natural spawning season in July and August

Calderbank-Steane-Shor Holographic Quantum Error Correcting Codes

We expand the class of holographic quantum error correcting codes by developing the notion of block perfect tensors, a wider class that includes previously defined perfect tensors. The relaxation of this constraint opens up a range of other holographic codes. We demonstrate this by introducing the self-dual CSS heptagon holographic code, based on the 7-qubit Steane code. Finally we show promising thresholds for the erasure channel by applying a straightforward, optimal erasure decoder to the heptagon code and benchmark it against existing holographic codes.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

The Innate Immune Receptor PGRP-LC Controls Presynaptic Homeostatic Plasticity

SummaryIt is now appreciated that the brain is immunologically active. Highly conserved innate immune signaling responds to pathogen invasion and injury and promotes structural refinement of neural circuitry. However, it remains generally unknown whether innate immune signaling has a function during the day-to-day regulation of neural function in the absence of pathogens and irrespective of cellular damage or developmental change. Here we show that an innate immune receptor, a member of the peptidoglycan pattern recognition receptor family (PGRP-LC), is required for the induction and sustained expression of homeostatic synaptic plasticity. This receptor functions presynaptically, controlling the homeostatic modulation of the readily releasable pool of synaptic vesicles following inhibition of postsynaptic glutamate receptor function. Thus, PGRP-LC is a candidate receptor for retrograde, trans-synaptic signaling, a novel activity for innate immune signaling and the first known function of a PGRP-type receptor in the nervous system of any organism

The Effectiveness of fMRI Data when Combined with Polygraph Data

The Integrated Zone Comparison Technique (IZCT) was utilized with computerized polygraph instrumentation and the Academy for Scientific Investigative Training’s Horizontal Scoring System ASIT PolySuite algorithm, as part of a blind study in the detection of deception. This paper represents a synergy analysis of combining fMRI only deception data with each of the three individual physiological parameters that are used in polygraph. They include the electro-dermal response (EDR), pneumo, and cardio measurements. In addition, we compared the detection accuracy analysis using each single parameter by itself. Th e fMRI score and each individual polygraph parameter score on individual subjects were averaged to establish an overall score

Thermodynamics as an alternative foundation for zero-temperature density functional theory and spin density functional theory

Thermodynamics provides a transparent definition of the free energy of density functional theory (DFT), and of its derivatives - the potentials, at finite temperatures T. By taking the T to 0 limit, it is shown here that both DFT and spin-dependent DFT (for ground states) suffer from precisely the same benign ambiguities: (a) charge and spin quantization lead to "up to a constant" indeterminacies in the potential and the magnetic field respectively, and (b) the potential in empty subspaces is undetermined but irrelevant. Surprisingly, these simple facts were inaccessible within the standard formulation, leading to recent discussions of apparent difficulties within spin-DFT.Comment: RevTeX, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Comparison of Aquatic-Insect Habitat and Diversity Above and Below Road Crossings in Low-Order Streams

The effects of road crossings on fish communities have been extensively studied; yet little attention has been given to macroinvertebrate communities. This study evaluated physical stream characteristics, water quality, and aquatic-insect richness from above and below road crossings of low-order streams in the Ouachita National Forest in Arkansas. Fifteen road crossings were sampled during October and November 2005. Erosion was significantly higher below road crossings than above. Sites downstream of road crossings had significantly lower pH and significantly higher turbidity than sites upstream of road crossings. Despite differences in water quality and habitat, there was no apparent difference in aquatic-insect richness from above and below road crossings based on the EPT index, suggesting that road crossings did not act as barriers to insect movement. The water-quality differences observed were well within acceptable limits and likely not biologically important

Eulerian simulation of the fluid dynamics of helicopter brownout

A computational model is presented that can be used to simulate the development of the dust cloud that can be entrained into the air when a helicopter is operated close to the ground in desert or dusty conditions. The physics of this problem, and the associated pathological condition known as ‘brownout’ where the pilot loses situational awareness as a result of his vision being occluded by dust suspended in the flow around the helicopter, is acknowledged to be very complex. The approach advocated here involves an approximation to the full dynamics of the coupled particulate-air system. Away from the ground, the model assumes that the suspended particles remain in near equilibrium under the action of aerodynamic forces. Close to the ground, this model is replaced by an algebraic sublayer model for the saltation and entrainment process. The origin of the model in the statistical mechanics of a distribution of particles governed by aerodynamic forces allows the validity of the method to be evaluated in context by comparing the physical properties of the suspended particulates to the local properties of the flow field surrounding the helicopter. The model applies in the Eulerian frame of reference of most conventional Computational Fluid Dynamics codes and has been coupled with Brown’s Vorticity Transport Model. Verification of the predictions of the coupled model against experimental data for particulate entrainment and transport in the flow around a model rotor are encouraging. An application of the coupled model to analyzing the differences in the geometry and extent of the dust clouds that are produced by single main rotor and tandem-rotor configurations as they decelerate to land has shown that the location of the ground vortex and the size of any regions of recirculatory flow, should they exist, play a primary role in governing the extent of the dust cloud that is created by the helicopter