An assessment of the sportfishery on artificial "Liberty Ship" reefs off Port Aransas, Texas

The concept of using surplus World War II Liberty Ships for the construction of artificial reefs to increase the availability of sportfish off the Texas coast was originally suggested in 1974. It became a reality, under the guidance of the Texas Coastal and Marine Council, when three ships were sunk off Port Aransas in the winter of 1976. Since that time, the ships have rapidly become encrusted with algae, anemones, sea urchins, gorgonian coral and other attached marine life. These in turn have provided refuge and food source for a host of small invertebrates and fishes. In June of 1977, one and a half years after ·sinking the first ship, the Texas Coastal and Marine Council commissioned this study to evaluate the impact of the Liberty Ship reefs on sportfishing in the Port Aransas area. For a project such as the Liberty Ship reefs to be successful, there are two criteria: the ships must increase the supply of desirable sportfish and fishermen must be willing to utilize the new resource. The present study is an attempt to evaluate both aspects of the project. A user survey was conducted to determine the amount and type of recreational usage the Liberty Ships receive.A report to the Texas Coastal and Marine Council in fulfillment of Contract No. IAC(76-77)-2149Submitted September 1977Marine Scienc

Conductance Fluctuations in PbTe Wide Parabolic Quantum Wells

We report on conductance fluctuations which are observed in local and non-local magnetotransport experiments. Although the Hall bar samples are of macroscopic size, the amplitude of the fluctuations from the local measurements is close to e^2/h. It is shown that the fluctuations have to be attributed to edge channel effects.Comment: postscript file including 3 figs, 3 pages, Paper presented at 3rd Int. Symposium on "New Phenomena in Mesoscopic Structures" in Maui, Hawaii 199

Microscopic details of stripes and bubbles in the quantum Hall regime

We use a fully self-consistent laterally resolved Hartree-Fock approximation for numerically addressing the electron configurations at higher Landau levels in the quantum Hall regime for nearmacroscopic sample sizes. At low disorder we find, spatially-resolved, stripe- and bubble-like charge density modulations and show how these emerge depending on the filling factor. The microscopic details of these boundary regions determine the geometrical boundary conditions for aligning the charge density modulation either as stripes or bubbles. Transport is modelled using a non-equilibrium network model giving a pronounced anisotropy in direction of the injected current in the stripe regime close to half filling. We obtain a stripe period of 2.9 cyclotron radii. Our results provide an intuitive understanding of its consequences in strong magnetic fields and indicate the dominance of many particle physics in the integer quantum Hall regime when studied at legnth scales

Human well-being and causality in social epidemiology

This paper discusses the work of Ballas and Dorling on life events and happiness. I believe epidemiologists have things they could learn from economists (and vice versa). Here I emphasize the issue of how to establish causality, and try to suggest some ways forward

Are People Willing to Pay to Reduce Others' Incomes?.

This paper studies utility interdependence in the laboratory. We design an experiment where subjects can reduce ("burn") other subjects' money. Those who burn the money of others have to give up some of their own cash. Despite this cost, and contrary to the assumptions of economics textbooks, the majority of our subjects choose to destroy at least part of others' money holdings. We vary experimentally the amount that subjects have to pay to reduce other people's cash. The implied price elasticity of burning is calculated; it is mostly less than unity. There is a strong correlation between wealth, or rank, and the amounts by which subjects are burnt.INCOME ; MONEY ; PRICES

Anomalous magnetotransport in wide quantum wells

We present magneto transport experiments of quasi 3D PbTe wide quantum wells. A plateau-like structure in the Hall resistance is observed, which corresponds to the Shubnikov de Haas oscillations in the same manner as known from the quantum Hall effect. The onsets of plateaux in Rxy do not correspond to 2D filling factors but coincide with the occupation of 3D (bulk-) Landau levels. At the same time a non-local signal is observed which corresponds to the structure in Rxx and Rxy and fulfils exactly the Onsager-Casimir relation (Rij,kl(B) = Rkl,ij(-B)). We explain the behaviour in terms of edge channel transport which is controlled by a permanent backscattering across a system of "percolative EC - loops" in the bulk region. Long range potential fluctuations with an amplitude of the order of the subband splitting are explained to play an essential role in this electron system.Comment: postscript file including 3 figs, 5 page

Natural History Specimen Collections

The Fish Collection described in this document was transferred in 1992 to the Fish Collection of the University of Texas at Austin in Austin (at that time administratively in the Texas Memorial Museum, but at the time of publication of this digital version of the document it is one (https://biodiversity.utexas.edu/resources/collections/ichthyology) of the Biodiversity Collections in the University's Biodiversity Center (https://biodiversity.utexas.edu/). Thus, the data on the specimens in the Fish Collection described here are now included in the data published to GBIF (https://www.gbif.org/dataset/6080b6cc-1c24-41ff-ad7f-0ebe7b56f311) and other global biodiversity data aggregators by the UT Biodiversity Center's Fish Collection. The same data are also included in the Fishes of Texas Project (http://fishesoftexas.org - Hendrickson, Dean A., and Adam E. Cohen. 2015. “Fishes of Texas Project Database (Version 2.0)” doi:10.17603/C3WC70). Some of the UTMSI Fish Collection specimens remained at the UT Marine Science Insitute on long-term loan from 1992 until sometime in 2017 when the MSI disposed of all remaining specimens (including also Invertebrates). Some were disposed of by a professional HazMat company, but many were apparently taken to the Smithsonian Institution's (USNM) division of Invertebrate Biology. The fate of fish specimens, however, remains unresolved, but the Ichthyology Division at USNM had no knowledge of them at the time this report was archived here. Dean A. Hendrickson, Curator of Ichthyology, UT Austin, May 1, 2019The University of Texas Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas Marine Laboratory, Natural History Collection of Marine Organisms was initiated in the mid-1940's. Since that time specimens have been added from studies in the Gulf of Mexico, associated estuaries, and marine-influenced terrestrial habitats, with emphasis on the Texas and Mexico coasts. These studies were the baseline surveys for this area and have resulted in the collection of valuable marine organisms. The collection now holds approximately 5,000 catalogued specimens including all forms of biota, vertebrates, invertebrates, algae and flowering plants. The collection includes the marine fish and invertebrate specimens of the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department, incorporated into the UTMSI-PAML collection in 1976. This state collection, numbering 3,000, is composed primarily of Texas Gulf coast species of fish and invertebrates, representing baseline surveys conducted by the state fisheries biologists. With this collection are card catalogues by specimen number and phylogenetic order. Other collections incorporated are those from R/V Oregon cruises (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, exploratory fishing vessel), H. H. Hildebrand's faunal surveys of the brown and pink shrimp grounds , Whitten et al.'s faunal survey of Texas coast jetties , J. W. Hedgepeth’s specimens collected during numerous faunal surveys, tide trap studies, and vegetation and algal surveys. Noteworthy studies from which specimens have been added to the collection are listed in Table 1. The museum collection is housed in an air-conditioned building in a room specifically designed for this collection. The present facility contains 924 square feet with 1089 square feet of shelf space, which can be trebled to accommodate BLM collections. There are at present 32 1' x 12' shelves, totaling 384 square feet; 194 18" x 12-1/2" shelves, totaling 303 square feet; and 120 11-1/2" x 42" shelves, totaling 402 5 square feet. The collection is a working museum open to the scientific community; specimens are available on loan to members of this community. Specimens may be used by visiting researchers, graduate-level students, professors, and classes. Attached is an invoice form, "Invoice of Specimens" - a standard form used for loan of collection items. The Port Aransas Marine Laboratory is committed to the continuing curation of specimens and will continue to provide the supplies necessary to maintain the natural history specimen collections. The University of Texas Marine Science Institute, Port Aransas Marine Laboratory is willing to incorporate the Bureau of Land Management collection into its collection. Funding is requested from BLM to obtain and incorporate all archived BLM specimens from the S.T.O.C.S. survey into the collection.Integrative Biolog

An Examination of Relational-interdependent Self-construal, Communal Strength, and Pro-relationship Behaviors in Friendships

Individual differences in relational-interdependent self-construal (RISC) are associated with positive relationship characteristics. This suggests that RISC is positively associated with the degree to which individuals view their relationships as communally-oriented (i.e., governed by norms of responsiveness), which should in turn be associated with increased use of pro-relationship behaviors. Thus, the current study explored the associations between RISC, communal strength, and pro-relationship behaviors in friendships. As predicted, RISC was positively associated with pro-relationship behavior use, but this association was mediated by greater communal strength. This suggests that increased RISC is associated with greater relationship satisfaction because the manner in which individuals view their relationships (i.e., communally) explains the association between RISC and constructive relationship behavior

The icthyofaunal composition and trophic interactions of the artificial "Liberty Ship" reefs off Port Aransas, Texas

This study is an assessment of the biological effects resulting from the construction of an artificial reef consisting of three surplus Liberty Ships that were sunk off Port Aransas, Texas in 1976. ... Systematic monthly assessment of the Liberty Ship Reefs presented a unique sampling problem. Snagging problems made trawling and other methods of netting unfeasible while depth, turbidity and currents precluded diver transects, baited camera recorders, or hook and line assessments, at least during the winter sampling periods. Fish traps were proposed as a reliable and cost effective means of sampling in all types of weather and sea conditions. Fish traps allow concurrent sampling of open bottom areas and reef with the same ship, making possible a true comparison of the relative productivity of artificial reefs. They also allow consistent day-night sampling and seasonal replication without the inherent variations in skill that bias diver transects and hook and line assessments. This initial report describes the construction and deployment of traps and summarizes the data collected during January-February sampling cruises. These initial sampling cruises indicate that fish traps are a practical method of assessing the productivity of the artificial "Liberty Ship" reefs.Winter seasonal report submitted to the Texas Coastal and Marine Council in partial fulfillment of IAC (78-79)--0869Submitted March 1978Marine Scienc