Uncle Josh\u27s Huskin\u27 Dance

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Arctic Profiles: Second Series

In the June 1982 issue of Arctic, Richard Davis introduced "Arctic Profiles." At the time he said the purpose of the series was to cover "a more subjective and human element that has influenced the history of arctic development." He continued, "Should this series prove successful ..." more could follow. ... Because of the success of the Profiles, Arctic has decided to maintain the series and has asked us to see it through a second phase. ... The second series of profiles will be more contemporary but continue to recognize the contribution of those no longer active or alive. ..

A path reconstruction method integrating dead-reckoning and position fixes applied to humpback whales

PW received a PhD studentship with matched funding from The Netherlands Ministry of Defence (administered by TNO) and the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NE/J500276/1). The 3S2 project was funded by the US Office of Naval Research (N00014-10-1-0355), the Norwegian Ministry of Defence, and The Netherlands Ministry of Defence. Part of this work was supported by the Multi-study Ocean acoustics Human effects Analysis (MOCHA) project funded by the US Office of Naval Research (N00014-12-1-0204).BACKGROUND: Detailed information about animal location and movement is often crucial in studies of natural behaviour and how animals respond to anthropogenic activities. Dead-reckoning can be used to infer such detailed information, but without additional positional data this method results in uncertainty that grows with time. Combining dead-reckoning with new Fastloc-GPS technology should provide good opportunities for reconstructing georeferenced fine-scale tracks, and should be particularly useful for marine animals that spend most of their time under water. We developed a computationally efficient, Bayesian state-space modelling technique to estimate humpback whale locations through time, integrating dead-reckoning using on-animal sensors with measurements of whale locations using on-animal Fastloc-GPS and visual observations. Positional observation models were based upon error measurements made during calibrations. RESULTS: High-resolution 3-dimensional movement tracks were produced for 13 whales using a simple process model in which errors caused by water current movements, non-location sensor errors, and other dead-reckoning errors were accumulated into a combined error term. Positional uncertainty quantified by the track reconstruction model was much greater for tracks with visual positions and few or no GPS positions, indicating a strong benefit to using Fastloc-GPS for track reconstruction. Compared to tracks derived only from position fixes, the inclusion of dead-reckoning data greatly improved the level of detail in the reconstructed tracks of humpback whales. Using cross-validation, a clear improvement in the predictability of out-of-set Fastloc-GPS data was observed compared to more conventional track reconstruction methods. Fastloc-GPS observation errors during calibrations were found to vary by number of GPS satellites received and by orthogonal dimension analysed; visual observation errors varied most by distance to the whale. CONCLUSIONS: By systematically accounting for the observation errors in the position fixes, our model provides a quantitative estimate of location uncertainty that can be appropriately incorporated into analyses of animal movement. This generic method has potential application for a wide range of marine animal species and data recording systems.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Teaching Evidence-Based Literature Retrieval to Medical Students and Residents

With the growth on the emphasis on the importance of Evidence-Based Practice in the 1980s and 90s also came the need for clinicians to have a better understanding of how to find information about best-evidence outcomes in the medical literature. Academic medical librarians responded to this need by creating educational opportunities designed to instruct clinicians in how to most effectively use literature databases to find “the best-evidence needles” in what is often a very-large haystack. Many of these educational opportunities have been directed specifically towards medical students and residents with the goal of providing them with tools that will assist them in using best-evidence in the medical literature as they begin their clinical careers. This poster will demonstrate examples of educational programs focusing upon evidence-based literature retrieval that are in place at many NEGEA affiliated medical school libraries. Poster presented at the Northeast Group on Educational Affairs 2008 Annual Educational Retreat, April 12, 2008, University of Vermont College of Medicine, Burlington, VT

Asymptotic theory for a moving droplet driven by a wettability gradient

An asymptotic theory is developed for a moving drop driven by a wettability gradient. We distinguish the mesoscale where an exact solution is known for the properly simplified problem. This solution is matched at both -- the advancing and the receding side -- to respective solutions of the problem on the microscale. On the microscale the velocity of movement is used as the small parameter of an asymptotic expansion. Matching gives the droplet shape, velocity of movement as a function of the imposed wettability gradient and droplet volume.Comment: 8 fig

Extreme daily rainfall in Pakistan and north India: scale-interactions, mechanisms, and precursors

While much of India is used to heavy precipitation and frequent low-pressure systems during the summer monsoon, towards the northwest and into Pakistan, such events are uncommon. Here, as much as a third of the annual rainfall is delivered sporadically during the winter monsoon by western disturbances. Such events of sparse but heavy precipitation in this region of typically mountainous valleys in the north and desert in the south can be catastrophic, as in the case of the Pakistan floods of July 2010. In this study, we identify extreme precipitation events (EPEs) in a box approximately covering this region (65◦ -78◦W, 25◦ -38◦N) using the APHRODITE gauge-based precipitation product. The role of the large-scale circulation in causing EPEs is investigated: it is found that, during winter, they often coexist with an upper-tropospheric Rossby wave train that has prominent anomalous southerlies over the region of interest. These winter EPEs are also found to be strongly colocated with incident western disturbances whereas those occurring during the summer are found to have a less direct relationship. Conversely, summer EPEs are found to have a strong relationship with tropical lows. A detailed Lagrangian method is used to explore possible sources of moisture for such events, and suggests that in winter, the moisture is mostly drawn from the Arabian Sea, whereas during the summer, it comes from along the African coast and the Indian monsoon trough region

A realistic two-lane traffic model for highway traffic

A two-lane extension of a recently proposed cellular automaton model for traffic flow is discussed. The analysis focuses on the reproduction of the lane usage inversion and the density dependence of the number of lane changes. It is shown that the single-lane dynamics can be extended to the two-lane case without changing the basic properties of the model which are known to be in good agreement with empirical single-vehicle data. Therefore it is possible to reproduce various empirically observed two-lane phenomena, like the synchronization of the lanes, without fine-tuning of the model parameters

Mixture models for distance sampling detection functions

Funding: EPSRC DTGWe present a new class of models for the detection function in distance sampling surveys of wildlife populations, based on finite mixtures of simple parametric key functions such as the half-normal. The models share many of the features of the widely-used “key function plus series adjustment” (K+A) formulation: they are flexible, produce plausible shapes with a small number of parameters, allow incorporation of covariates in addition to distance and can be fitted using maximum likelihood. One important advantage over the K+A approach is that the mixtures are automatically monotonic non-increasing and non-negative, so constrained optimization is not required to ensure distance sampling assumptions are honoured. We compare the mixture formulation to the K+A approach using simulations to evaluate its applicability in a wide set of challenging situations. We also re-analyze four previously problematic real-world case studies. We find mixtures outperform K+A methods in many cases, particularly spiked line transect data (i.e., where detectability drops rapidly at small distances) and larger sample sizes. We recommend that current standard model selection methods for distance sampling detection functions are extended to include mixture models in the candidate set.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

SPACE: Enhancing Life on Earth. Proceedings Report

The proceedings of the 12th National Space Symposium on Enhancing Life on Earth is presented. Technological areas discussed include: Space applications and cooperation; Earth sensing, communication, and navigation applications; Global security interests in space; and International space station and space launch capabilities. An appendices that include featured speakers, program participants, and abbreviation & acronyms glossary is also attached

Potentials of Internet of Things for effective public relations activities: Are professionals ready?

The research explored public relations professionals’ views on the potentials of adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) for their functions. High level of competitiveness in business engendered by globalization and technological advancement has made relationship-building sacrosanct to business survival. The advent of Internet-based communication has increased the sophistication of the target audience of public relations, which requires a matching upgrade of the technological versatility of practitioners. Decisions on customer satisfaction are increasingly based on data and the best sources of data are the customers themselves. Consequently, the IoT offers an unprecedented avenue for data gathering through the “assistance” of customers themselves. This study, therefore, adopted an online survey to evaluate the views of 100 public relations professionals on their need for IoT, and a t-test was used to analyse the data. The findings revealed that independent public relations firms or agencies were more likely to adopt IoT for their activities than in-house departments. It was recommended that public relations professionals should explore actively the benefits of IoT for advanced operations