The effect of mesh orientation on netting drag and its application to innovative prawn trawl design

© 2014 . Prawn fisheries around the world comprise fuel intensive enterprises currently stressed financially by rising diesel costs. An avenue for relieving the situation is to improve the energy efficiency of trawling by raising the productivity of fishing per litre of fuel consumed. This paper presents work to develop a new prawn trawl design that leads to reduced trawl system drag. The trawl has a 'double-tongue' format, which refers to extensions forward of the upper and lower panels to form two additional towing points for the trawl. For this design concept, named 'W' trawl, drag generated in the trawl is largely directed to the centreline tongues and transferred forward to the trawler through a connected sled and towing wire. The associated reduction of drag-transfer to the wings makes the trawl substantially easier to spread and results in smaller otter boards being required and subsequently reduced overall drag of the trawl system. The study determined the effect on frame-line tensions of implementing T0 (diamond) and T45 (square) mesh in the main body and side sections of trawl models of conventional and 'W' configuration, with the aim to establish an optimal combination of mesh orientation for the principle parts of the 'W' trawl. The objective was to achieve minimum netting drag and beneficial strain transfer within the trawl such that maximum trawling performance (catch per unit of fuel) might be obtained in the field. T45 mesh in the side sections of the trawl was found to exhibit a progressively lower drag compared to T0 mesh as the flow speed increased, but the extent of drag reduction was not of practical significance. The 'W' trawl showed a capacity of redirecting 59% of the total netting drag to the centre line tongues when T45 netting was implemented in the body section, and only 40% when T0 orientation was used. However, the introduction of bracing ropes (at E=. 0.71) along the upper and lower centrelines of the T0 version of the "W" trawl improved the drag transfer to the tongues from 40% to 50% of the total drag. Overall, the most practical and economic configuration of the model 'W' designs tested produced an estimated drag reduction of 8.3%. ±. 0.6%, compared to the conventional trawl. It is expected that drag saving benefits in practice will be more substantial as the tested trawl models were not completely representative of practical commercial gear in that they had minimum twine area to make the experiment most sensitive to the drag-effect of mesh orientation

The GOA database in 2009—an integrated Gene Ontology Annotation resource

The Gene Ontology Annotation (GOA) project at the EBI (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/goa) provides high-quality electronic and manual associations (annotations) of Gene Ontology (GO) terms to UniProt Knowledgebase (UniProtKB) entries. Annotations created by the project are collated with annotations from external databases to provide an extensive, publicly available GO annotation resource. Currently covering over 160 000 taxa, with greater than 32 million annotations, GOA remains the largest and most comprehensive open-source contributor to the GO Consortium (GOC) project. Over the last five years, the group has augmented the number and coverage of their electronic pipelines and a number of new manual annotation projects and collaborations now further enhance this resource. A range of files facilitate the download of annotations for particular species, and GO term information and associated annotations can also be viewed and downloaded from the newly developed GOA QuickGO tool (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/QuickGO), which allows users to precisely tailor their annotation set

Beam test results for the FiberGLAST instrument

The FiberGLAST scintillating fiber telescope is a large-area instrument concept for NASA\u27s GLAST program. The detector is designed for high-energy gamma-ray astronomy, and uses plastic scintillating fibers to combine a photon pair tracking telescope and a calorimeter into a single instrument. A small prototype detector has been tested with high energy photons at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. We report on the result of this beam test, including scintillating fiber performance, photon track reconstruction, angular resolution, and detector efficiency

Estimation of GRB detection by FiberGLAST

FiberGLAST is one of several instrument concepts being developed for possible inclusion as the primary Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) instrument. The predicted FiberGLAST effective area is more than 12,000 cm2 for energies between 30 MeV and 300 GeV, with a field of view that is essentially flat from 0°–80°. The detector will achieve a sensitivity more than 10 times that of EGRET. We present results of simulations that illustrate the sensitivity of FiberGLAST for the detection of gamma-ray bursts

Development and testing of a fiber/multianode photomultiplier system for use on FiberGLAST

A scintillating fiber detector is currently being studied for the NASA Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) mission. This detector utilizes modules composed of a thin converter sheet followed by an x, y plane of scintillating fibers to examine the shower of particles created by high energy gamma-rays interacting in the converter material. The detector is composed of a tracker with 90 such modular planes and a calorimeter with 36 planes. The two major component of this detector are the scintillating fibers and their associated photodetectors. Here we present current status of development and test result of both of these. The Hamamatsu R5900-00-M64 multianode photomultiplier tube (MAPMT) is the baseline readout device. A characterization of this device has been performed including noise, cross- talk, gain variation, vibration, and thermal/vacuum test. A prototype fiber/MAPMT system has been tested at the Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices at Louisiana State University with a photon beam and preliminary results are presented

Detection of early age-related macular degeneration using novel functional parameters of the focal cone electroretinogram

The focal cone electroretinogram is a sensitive marker for macular disease, but have we unlocked its full potential? Typically assessment of waveform parameters is subjective and focuses on a small number of locations (e.g. the a-wave). This study evaluated the discriminatory and diagnostic potential of 4 conventional and 15 novel, objectively determined, parameters in patients with early Age-related Macular Degeneration. Focal cone electroretinograms were recorded in 54 participants with early Age-related Macular Degeneration (72.9±8.2 years) and 54 healthy controls (69±7.7 years). Conventional a and b wave amplitudes and implicit times were measured and compared to novel parameters derived from both the 1st and 2nd derivatives and the frequency-domain power spectrum of the electroretinogram.Statistically significant differences between groups were shown for all conventional parameters, the majority of 1st and 2nd derivative parameters and the power spectrum at 25 and 30 Hz. Receiver operating characteristics showed that both conventional and 1st and 2nd derivative implicit times had provided the best diagnostic potential. A regression model showed a small improvement over any individual parameter investigated. The non-conventional parameters enhanced the objective evaluation of the focal electroretinogram, especially when the amplitude was low. Furthermore, the novel parameters described here allow the implicit time of the electroretinogram to be probed at points other than the peaks of the a and b waves. Consequently these novel analysis techniques could prove valuable in future electrophysiological investigation, detection and monitoring of Age-related Macular Degeneration

Gene Ontology: Pitfalls, Biases, and Remedies.

The Gene Ontology (GO) is a formidable resource, but there are several considerations about it that are essential to understand the data and interpret it correctly. The GO is sufficiently simple that it can be used without deep understanding of its structure or how it is developed, which is both a strength and a weakness. In this chapter, we discuss some common misinterpretations of the ontology and the annotations. A better understanding of the pitfalls and the biases in the GO should help users make the most of this very rich resource. We also review some of the misconceptions and misleading assumptions commonly made about GO, including the effect of data incompleteness, the importance of annotation qualifiers, and the transitivity or lack thereof associated with different ontology relations. We also discuss several biases that can confound aggregate analyses such as gene enrichment analyses. For each of these pitfalls and biases, we suggest remedies and best practices

Metabolic syndrome in rural Australia:An opportunity for primary health care

Objective: To measure the impact of a 6-month home-based behaviour change intervention on reducing the risk of chronic disease as determined by metabolic syndrome status and cardiovascular risk score, and discuss implications for primary care in rural areas. Design: A two-arm randomised controlled trial of rural adults. Setting: The rural town of Albany in the Great Southern region of Western Australia. Participants: Participants (n = 401) aged 50-69 years who were classified with or at risk of metabolic syndrome and randomly assigned to intervention (n = 201) or waitlisted control (n = 200) group. Interventions: A 6-month intervention program incorporating goal setting, self-monitoring and feedback, with motivational interviewing was conducted. Main outcome measures: Change in metabolic syndrome status and cardiovascular risk. Results: Significant improvements in metabolic syndrome status and cardiovascular disease risk score (−0.82) were observed for the intervention group relative to control group from baseline to post-test. Conclusion: This home-based physical activity and nutrition intervention reduced participants' risk of experiencing a cardiovascular event in the next 5 years by 1%. Incorporating such prevention orientated approaches in primary care might assist in reducing the burden of long-term chronic diseases. However, for realistic application in this setting, hurdles such as current national health billing system and availability of resources will need to be considered

Targeted copy number variant identification across the neurodegenerative disease spectrum

Background: Although genetic factors are known to contribute to neurodegenerative disease susceptibility, there remains a large amount of heritability unaccounted for across the diagnoses. Copy number variants (CNVs) contribute to these phenotypes, but their presence and influence on disease state remains relatively understudied. Methods: Here, we applied a depth of coverage approach to detect CNVs in 80 genes previously associated with neurodegenerative disease within participants of the Ontario Neurodegenerative Disease Research Initiative (n = 519). Results: In total, we identified and validated four CNVs in the cohort, including: (1) a heterozygous deletion of exon 5 in OPTN in an Alzheimer\u27s disease participant; (2) a duplication of exons 1–5 in PARK7 in an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis participant; (3) a duplication of \u3e3 Mb, which encompassed ABCC6, in a cerebrovascular disease (CVD) participant; and (4) a duplication of exons 7–11 in SAMHD1 in a mild cognitive impairment participant. We also identified 43 additional CNVs that may be candidates for future replication studies. Conclusion: The identification of the CNVs suggests a portion of the apparent missing heritability of the phenotypes may be due to these structural variants, and their assessment is imperative for a thorough understanding of the genetic spectrum of neurodegeneration