Food of Lake Trout in Lake Superior

Stomachs were examined from 1,492 lake trout and 83 siscowets collected from Lake Superior. Data are given on the food of lake trout of legal size (17 inches or longer) by year, season, and depth of water, and on the relation between food and size among smaller lake trout.Fish contributed 96.7 to 99.9 per cent of the total volume of food in the annual samples. Ciscoes (Coregonus spp.) were most common (52.2 to 87.5 per cent of the volume) in 1950 to 1953 and American smelt ranked first (65.6 per cent of the volume) in 1963. Cottids were in 8.9 to 12.3 per cent of the stomachs in 1950 to 1953 but in only 4.3 per cent in 1963. Insects ranked second to fish in occurrence (9.6 per cent for the combined samples) and crustaceans followed at 3.9 per cent.The greatest seasonal changes in the food of lake trout were among fish caught at 35 fathoms and shallower. The occurrence of Coregonus increased from 34.6 per cent in February‐March to 71.1 per cent in October‐December. Smelt were in 76.9 per cent of the stomachs in February‐March but in only 2.2 per cent in October‐December. Cottids, Mysis relicta, and insects were most common in the July‐September collections.Lake trout taken at depths greater than 35 fathoms had eaten a higher percentage of Cottidae and Coregonus than had those captured in shallower water. Smelt, ninespine sticklebacks, Mysis, and insects were more frequent in stomachs of lake trout from less than 35 fathoms.Crustaceans comprised more than 70 per cent of the total volume of food for 4.0‐ to 7.9‐inch lake trout but their importance decreased as the lake trout grew larger. Pontoporeia affinis was the most common in the stomachs of 4.0‐ to 6.9‐inch lake trout and Mysis held first rank at 7.0 to 12.9 inches. Ostracods were important only to 4.0‐ to 4.9‐inch lake trout. As the lake trout became larger, the importance of fish grew from 4.4‐per cent occurrence at 5.0 to 5.9 inches to 93.9 per cent at 16.0 to 16.9 inches. Smelt were most commonly eaten by undersize (less than 17 inches) lake trout.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141203/1/tafs0169.pd

Muon and Tau Neutrinos Spectra from Solar Flares

Solar neutrino flares and mixing are considered. Most power-full solar flare as the ones occurred on 23th February 1956, September 29th 1989, 28th October and on 2nd-4th November 2003 are sources of cosmic rays, X, gamma and neutrino bursts. These flares took place both on front or in the edge and in the hidden solar disk. The observed and estimated total flare energy should be a source of a prompt secondary neutrino burst originated, by proton-proton-pion production on the sun itself; a more delayed and spread neutrino flux signal arise by the solar charged flare particles reaching the terrestrial atmosphere. Our first estimates of neutrino signals in largest underground detectors hint for few events in correlation with, gamma,radio onser. Our approximated spectra for muons and taus from these rare solar eruption are shown over the most common background. The muon and tau signature is very peculiar and characteristic over electron and anti-electron neutrino fluxes. The rise of muon neutrinos will be detectable above the minimal muon threshold of 113 MeV. The rarest tau appearence will be possible only for hardest solar neutrino energies above 3.471 GeVComment: 14 pages, 4 figures, Vulcano Conference 200

Unique Observations of a Geomagnetic SI^+ -- SI^- Pair: Solar Sources and Associated Solar Wind Fluctuations

The paper describes the occurrence of a pair of oppositely directed sudden impulses (SI), in the geomagnetic field ($\Delta$X), at ground stations, called SI${^{+}}$ -- SI${^{-}}$ pairs, that occurred between 1835 UT and 2300 UT on 23 April 1998. The SI${^{+}}$ -- SI${^{-}}$ pair, was closely correlated with corresponding variations in the solar wind density, while solar wind velocity and the southward component of the interplanetary magnetic field (Bz) did not show any correspondence. Further, this event had no source on the visible solar disk. However, a rear-side partial halo coronal mass ejection (CME) and an M1.4 class solar flare behind the west limb, took place on 20 April 1998, the date corresponding to the traceback location of the solar wind flows. This event presents empirical evidence, which to our knowledge, is the best convincing evidence for the association of specific solar events to the observations of an SI${^{+}}$ -- SI${^{-}}$ pair. In addition, it shows that it is possible for a rear side solar flare to propagate a shock towards the earth.Comment: The paper has just been accepted in the Journal of Geophysical Research (Space Physics) on 20 September 2010. It is 17 pages with 4 figure

Modelling and experimental validation of a fluidized bed reactor freeboard region: application to natural gas combustion

A theoretical and experimental study of natural gas-air mixture combustion in a fluidized bed of sand particles is presented. The operating temperatures are lower than a critical temperature of 800 °C above which the combustion occurs in the vicinity of the fluidized bed. Our study focusses on the freeboard zone where most of the methane combustion takes place at such temperatures. Experimental results show the essential role of the projection zone in determining the global thermal efficiency of the reactor. The dense bed temperature, the fluidizing velocity and the mean particle diameter significantly affect the thermal behaviours. A model for natural gas-air mixture combustion in fluidized beds is proposed, counting for interactions between dense and dilute regions of the reactor [Pré et al. (1998)] supplemented with the freeboard region modelling of Kunii-Levenspiel (1990). Thermal exchanges due to the convection between gas and particles, and due to the conduction and radiation phenomena between the gas-particle suspension and the reactor walls are counted. The kinetic scheme for the methane conversion is that proposed by Dryer and Glassman (1973). Model predictions are in good agreement with the measurements

Visual Affect Around the World: A Large-scale Multilingual Visual Sentiment Ontology

Every culture and language is unique. Our work expressly focuses on the uniqueness of culture and language in relation to human affect, specifically sentiment and emotion semantics, and how they manifest in social multimedia. We develop sets of sentiment- and emotion-polarized visual concepts by adapting semantic structures called adjective-noun pairs, originally introduced by Borth et al. (2013), but in a multilingual context. We propose a new language-dependent method for automatic discovery of these adjective-noun constructs. We show how this pipeline can be applied on a social multimedia platform for the creation of a large-scale multilingual visual sentiment concept ontology (MVSO). Unlike the flat structure in Borth et al. (2013), our unified ontology is organized hierarchically by multilingual clusters of visually detectable nouns and subclusters of emotionally biased versions of these nouns. In addition, we present an image-based prediction task to show how generalizable language-specific models are in a multilingual context. A new, publicly available dataset of >15.6K sentiment-biased visual concepts across 12 languages with language-specific detector banks, >7.36M images and their metadata is also released.Comment: 11 pages, to appear at ACM MM'1

Larger communities create more systematic languages

Understanding worldwide patterns of language diversity has long been a goal for evolutionary scientists, linguists and philosophers. Research over the past decade has suggested that linguistic diversity may result from differences in the social environments in which languages evolve. Specifically, recent work found that languages spoken in larger communities typically have more systematic grammatical structures. However, in the real world, community size is confounded with other social factors such as network structure and the number of second languages learners in the community, and it is often assumed that linguistic simplification is driven by these factors instead. Here, we show that in contrast to previous assumptions, community size has a unique and important influence on linguistic structure. We experimentally examine the live formation of new languages created in the laboratory by small and larger groups, and find that larger groups of interacting participants develop more systematic languages over time, and do so faster and more consistently than small groups. Small groups also vary more in their linguistic behaviours, suggesting that small communities are more vulnerable to drift. These results show that community size predicts patterns of language diversity, and suggest that an increase in community size might have contributed to language evolution

Habitat Use by Middle Mississippi River Pallid Sturgeon

Little is known about the habitat preferences and needs of pallid sturgeon Scaphirhynchus albus, which was federally listed as endangered in 1990. To learn more about habitat use and selection by pallid sturgeon, sonic transmitters were surgically implanted in 27 individuals from the middle Mississippi River. Study fish were located 184 times (1–23 times/individual) from November 1995 to December 1999. Of the seven macrohabitats identified, pallid sturgeon were found most often in main-channel habitats (39% of all relocations) and main-channel border habitats (26%); the between-wing-dam habitats were used less often (14%). Strauss’s linear selectivity index (Li) values indicated that study fish exhibited positive selection for the main-channel border, downstream island tips, between-wing-dam, and wing-dam-tip habitats; they showed negative selection for main-channel, downstream of wing dams, and upstream of wing dam habitats. Comparison of Li values for four temperature ranges and three daily mean discharge ranges revealed little change in habitat selection due to temperature or discharge. Habitat use patterns also were similar across seasons and discharge regimes, except during spring months when between-wingdam habitats saw greater use and main-channel and main-channel border habitat use declined. These changes may have been a response to high river stages associated with spring flooding, which may create favorable feeding areas in the between-wing-dam habitats. Enhancement and restoration of habitat diversity, particularly downstream island tip and between-wing-dam habitats, may be necessary for the recovery of pallid sturgeon in the middle Mississippi River