Intercomparison of ambient acoustic spectra in inland and coastal waters

This paper compares the observed ambient sound levels at two very different sites, relating both to independent estimates of wind speed and rain rate. The spectra for wind-only conditions at the two sites show great differences, especially at low wind speed. The spectra associated with rain were sufficiently different from the wind-only spectra (either in terms of spectral slope or the intensity at 14.5 kHz) to support the development of a generic rather than site-specific rain detection algorithm

Thermodynamic Limit for Spin Glasses. Beyond the Annealed Bound

Using a correlation inequality of Contucci and Lebowitz for spin glasses, we demonstrate existence of the thermodynamic limit for short-ranged spin glasses, under weaker hypotheses than previously available, namely without the assumption of the annealed bound.Comment: 8 page

Ecological indicators to capture the effects of fishing on biodiversityand conservation status of marine ecosystems

IndiSeas (“Indicators for the Seas”) is a collaborative international working group that was established in2005 to evaluate the status of exploited marine ecosystems using a suite of indicators in a comparative framework. An initial shortlist of seven ecological indicators was selected to quantify the effects of fishing on the broader ecosystem using several criteria (i.e., ecological meaning, sensitivity to fishing, data avail-ability, management objectives and public awareness). The suite comprised: (i) the inverse coefficient of variation of total biomass of surveyed species, (ii) mean fish length in the surveyed community, (iii)mean maximum life span of surveyed fish species, (iv) proportion of predatory fish in the surveyed community, (v) proportion of under and moderately exploited stocks, (vi) total biomass of surveyed species,and (vii) mean trophic level of the landed catch. In line with the Nagoya Strategic Plan of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2011–2020), we extended this suite to emphasize the broader biodiversity and conservation risks in exploited marine ecosystems. We selected a subset of indicators from a list of empirically based candidate biodiversity indicators initially established based on ecological significance to complement the original IndiSeas indicators. The additional selected indicators were: (viii) mean intrinsic vulnerability index of the fish landed catch, (ix) proportion of non-declining exploited species in the surveyed community, (x) catch-based marine trophic index, and (xi) mean trophic level of the surveyed community. Despite the lack of data in some ecosystems, we also selected (xii) mean trophic level of the modelled community, and (xiii) proportion of discards in the fishery as extra indicators. These additional indicators were examined, along with the initial set of IndiSeas ecological indicators, to evaluate whether adding new biodiversity indicators provided useful additional information to refine our under-standing of the status evaluation of 29 exploited marine ecosystems. We used state and trend analyses,and we performed correlation, redundancy and multivariate tests. Existing developments in ecosystem-based fisheries management have largely focused on exploited species. Our study, using mostly fisheries independent survey-based indicators, highlights that biodiversity and conservation-based indicators are complementary to ecological indicators of fishing pressure. Thus, they should be used to provide additional information to evaluate the overall impact of fishing on exploited marine ecosystems

Ecological indicators to capture the effects of fishing on biodiversityand conservation status of marine ecosystems

IndiSeas (“Indicators for the Seas”) is a collaborative international working group that was established in2005 to evaluate the status of exploited marine ecosystems using a suite of indicators in a comparative framework. An initial shortlist of seven ecological indicators was selected to quantify the effects of fishing on the broader ecosystem using several criteria (i.e., ecological meaning, sensitivity to fishing, data avail-ability, management objectives and public awareness). The suite comprised: (i) the inverse coefficient of variation of total biomass of surveyed species, (ii) mean fish length in the surveyed community, (iii)mean maximum life span of surveyed fish species, (iv) proportion of predatory fish in the surveyed community, (v) proportion of under and moderately exploited stocks, (vi) total biomass of surveyed species,and (vii) mean trophic level of the landed catch. In line with the Nagoya Strategic Plan of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2011–2020), we extended this suite to emphasize the broader biodiversity and conservation risks in exploited marine ecosystems. We selected a subset of indicators from a list of empirically based candidate biodiversity indicators initially established based on ecological significance to complement the original IndiSeas indicators. The additional selected indicators were: (viii) mean intrinsic vulnerability index of the fish landed catch, (ix) proportion of non-declining exploited species in the surveyed community, (x) catch-based marine trophic index, and (xi) mean trophic level of the surveyed community. Despite the lack of data in some ecosystems, we also selected (xii) mean trophic level of the modelled community, and (xiii) proportion of discards in the fishery as extra indicators. These additional indicators were examined, along with the initial set of IndiSeas ecological indicators, to evaluate whether adding new biodiversity indicators provided useful additional information to refine our under-standing of the status evaluation of 29 exploited marine ecosystems. We used state and trend analyses,and we performed correlation, redundancy and multivariate tests. Existing developments in ecosystem-based fisheries management have largely focused on exploited species. Our study, using mostly fisheries independent survey-based indicators, highlights that biodiversity and conservation-based indicators are complementary to ecological indicators of fishing pressure. Thus, they should be used to provide additional information to evaluate the overall impact of fishing on exploited marine ecosystems

An Integrated TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource to Drive High-Quality Survival Outcome Analytics

For a decade, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program collected clinicopathologic annotation data along with multi-platform molecular profiles of more than 11,000 human tumors across 33 different cancer types. TCGA clinical data contain key features representing the democratized nature of the data collection process. To ensure proper use of this large clinical dataset associated with genomic features, we developed a standardized dataset named the TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource (TCGA-CDR), which includes four major clinical outcome endpoints. In addition to detailing major challenges and statistical limitations encountered during the effort of integrating the acquired clinical data, we present a summary that includes endpoint usage recommendations for each cancer type. These TCGA-CDR findings appear to be consistent with cancer genomics studies independent of the TCGA effort and provide opportunities for investigating cancer biology using clinical correlates at an unprecedented scale. Analysis of clinicopathologic annotations for over 11,000 cancer patients in the TCGA program leads to the generation of TCGA Clinical Data Resource, which provides recommendations of clinical outcome endpoint usage for 33 cancer types

Modelling the sulfate capacity of simulated radioactive waste borosilicate glasses

The capacity of simulated high-level radioactive waste borosilicate glasses to incorporate sulfate has been studied as a function of glass composition. Combined Raman, 57Fe Mössbauer and literature evidence supports the attribution of coordination numbers and oxidation states of constituent cations for the purposes of modelling, and results confirm the validity of correlating sulfate incorporation in multicomponent borosilicate radioactive waste glasses with different models. A strong compositional dependency is observed and this can be described by an inverse linear relationship between incorporated sulfate (mol% SO42−) and total cation field strength index of the glass, Σ(z/a2), with a high goodness-of-fit (R2 ≈ 0.950). Similar relationships are also obtained if theoretical optical basicity, Λth (R2 ≈ 0.930) or non-bridging oxygen per tetrahedron ratio, NBO/T (R2 ≈ 0.919), are used. Results support the application of these models, and in particular Σ(z/a2), as predictive tools to aid the development of new glass compositions with enhanced sulfate capacities

Uncertainty and Surprise Jointly Predict Musical Pleasure and Amygdala, Hippocampus, and Auditory Cortex Activity

Listening to music often evokes intense emotions [1, 2]. Recent research suggests that musical pleasure comes from positive reward prediction errors, which arise when what is heard proves to be better than expected [3]. Central to this view is the engagement of the nucleus accumbens—a brain region that processes reward expectations—to pleasurable music and surprising musical events [4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. However, expectancy violations along multiple musical dimensions (e.g., harmony and melody) have failed to implicate the nucleus accumbens [9, 10, 11], and it is unknown how music reward value is assigned [12]. Whether changes in musical expectancy elicit pleasure has thus remained elusive [11]. Here, we demonstrate that pleasure varies nonlinearly as a function of the listener’s uncertainty when anticipating a musical event, and the surprise it evokes when it deviates from expectations. Taking Western tonal harmony as a model of musical syntax, we used a machine-learning model [13] to mathematically quantify the uncertainty and surprise of 80,000 chords in US Billboard pop songs. Behaviorally, we found that chords elicited high pleasure ratings when they deviated substantially from what the listener had expected (low uncertainty, high surprise) or, conversely, when they conformed to expectations in an uninformative context (high uncertainty, low surprise). Neurally, we found using fMRI that activity in the amygdala, hippocampus, and auditory cortex reflected this interaction, while the nucleus accumbens only reflected uncertainty. These findings challenge current neurocognitive models of music-evoked pleasure and highlight the synergistic interplay between prospective and retrospective states of expectation in the musical experience

Track D Social Science, Human Rights and Political Science

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138414/1/jia218442.pd

On the mechanisms governing gas penetration into a tokamak plasma during a massive gas injection

A new 1D radial fluid code, IMAGINE, is used to simulate the penetration of gas into a tokamak plasma during a massive gas injection (MGI). The main result is that the gas is in general strongly braked as it reaches the plasma, due to mechanisms related to charge exchange and (to a smaller extent) recombination. As a result, only a fraction of the gas penetrates into the plasma. Also, a shock wave is created in the gas which propagates away from the plasma, braking and compressing the incoming gas. Simulation results are quantitatively consistent, at least in terms of orders of magnitude, with experimental data for a D 2 MGI into a JET Ohmic plasma. Simulations of MGI into the background plasma surrounding a runaway electron beam show that if the background electron density is too high, the gas may not penetrate, suggesting a possible explanation for the recent results of Reux et al in JET (2015 Nucl. Fusion 55 093013)