Intermediate Scale Coastal Behaviour: Measurement, Modelling And Prediction

LONG-TERM GOAL: Our overall goal is to achieve a better understanding and better predictions of coastal behaviour at intermediate (event/season/year/decade) scales. We aim to bring together researchers from Europe and North America to gain the best possible benefit from developments in field observation, theory and numerical modelling.Award #: N00014-97-1-079

Biopsy and selective recall compared with immediate large loop excision in management of women with low grade abnormal cervical cytology referred for colposcopy : multicentre randomised controlled trial

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Prediction of thermal spray coatings performance in marine environments by combination of laboratory and field tests

Cost-effective corrosion mitigation of offshore steel structures can be achieved by thermal spray coatings. These coatings, when comprised of Al, Zn and their alloys, provide a physical barrier against the environment when intact, and cathodic protection to underlying steel when damaged. Due to the complexity of marine environments, laboratory tests should be combined with field work in order to understand the corrosion protection offered by these coatings. The work presented here was carried out with thermal spray coatings of aluminum alloys (AA1050, AA1100, Al-5Mg) and Zn-15Al prepared by Twin Wire Arc Spray onto low carbon steel substrates. The resulting coatings were ~300 μm in thickness, and 5% of surface area defects were artificially machined in order to expose the steel substrate, simulating mechanical damage or erosion of the coating. Electrochemical data collected over a 90 days period showed a good correlation between laboratory and real marine environment results. Aluminum alloys showed better corrosion protection in fully immersed conditions, while zinc alloys performed better in atmospheric and splash zones. Overall, these results aim to improve design of thermal spray coatings to protect carbon steel in marine environments

Intermediate Scale Coastal Behaviour: Measurement, Modelling and Prediction

N00014-97-1-079

Behavioral Genetics: Investigating the genes of a complex phenotype in fruit flies

Synopsis: This laboratory exercise uses both inquiry-based and active-learning approaches to uncover the genetic architecture of behavior in the model organism, Drosophila melanogaster. The exercise can be performed in either a single two-hour or two 60-minute lab periods and requires access to computers with an internet connection to help introduce students to modern genetic and genomic analysis. Students first will quantify behavioral interactions associated with mating in wildtype fruit flies. They will then connect these phenotypic ontologies to individual candidate genes using curated data from Drosophila's model organism database, FlyBase. Students will explore known characteristics of chosen candidate genes including models of genic structure, genomic context, and known functional attributes including patterns of spatial and temporal gene expression. Introduction

The Allen Telescope Array

The Allen Telescope Array, originally called the One Hectare Telescope (1hT) [1] will be a large array radio telescope whose novel characteristics will be a wide field of view (3.5 deg-GHz HPBW), continuous frequency coverage of 0.5 - 11 GHz, four dual-linear polarization output bands of 100 MHz each, four beams in each band, two 100 MHz spectral correlators for two of the bands, and hardware for RFI mitigation built in. Its scientific motivation is for deep SETI searches and, at the same time, a variety of other radio astronomy projects, including transient (e.g. pulsar) studies, HI mapping of the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, Zeeman studies of the galactic magnetic field in a number of transitions, mapping of long chain molecules in molecular clouds, mapping of the decrement in the cosmic background radiation toward galaxy clusters, and observation of HI absorption toward quasars at redshifts up to z=2. The array is planned for 350 6.1-meter dishes giving a physical collecting area of about 10,000 square meters. The large number of components reduces the price with economies of scale. The front end receiver is a single cryogenically cooled MIMIC Low Noise Amplifier covering the whole band. The feed is a wide-band log periodic feed of novel design, and the reflector system is an offset Gregorian for minimum sidelobes and spillover. All preliminary and critical design reviews have been completed. Three complete antennas with feeds and receivers are under test, and an array of 33 antennas is under construction at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory for the end of 2004. The present plan is to have a total of about 200 antennas completed by the summer of 2006 and the balance of the array finished before the end of the decade

The Allen Telescope Array Pi GHz Sky Survey I. Survey Description and Static Catalog Results for the Bootes Field

The Pi GHz Sky Survey (PiGSS) is a key project of the Allen Telescope Array. PiGSS is a 3.1 GHz survey of radio continuum emission in the extragalactic sky with an emphasis on synoptic observations that measure the static and time-variable properties of the sky. During the 2.5-year campaign, PiGSS will twice observe ~250,000 radio sources in the 10,000 deg^2 region of the sky with b > 30 deg to an rms sensitivity of ~1 mJy. Additionally, sub-regions of the sky will be observed multiple times to characterize variability on time scales of days to years. We present here observations of a 10 deg^2 region in the Bootes constellation overlapping the NOAO Deep Wide Field Survey field. The PiGSS image was constructed from 75 daily observations distributed over a 4-month period and has an rms flux density between 200 and 250 microJy. This represents a deeper image by a factor of 4 to 8 than we will achieve over the entire 10,000 deg^2. We provide flux densities, source sizes, and spectral indices for the 425 sources detected in the image. We identify ~100$ new flat spectrum radio sources; we project that when completed PiGSS will identify 10^4 flat spectrum sources. We identify one source that is a possible transient radio source. This survey provides new limits on faint radio transients and variables with characteristic durations of months.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ; revision submitted with extraneous figure remove

Mitral regurgitation quantification by cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) remains reproducible between software solutions [version 3; peer review: 1 approved, 1 approved with reservations]

BACKGROUND: The reproducibility of mitral regurgitation (MR) quantification by cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging using different software solutions remains unclear. This research aimed to investigate the reproducibility of MR quantification between two software solutions: MASS (version 2019 EXP, LUMC, Netherlands) and CAAS (version 5.2, Pie Medical Imaging). METHODS: CMR data of 35 patients with MR (12 primary MR, 13 mitral valve repair/replacement, and ten secondary MR) was used. Four methods of MR volume quantification were studied, including two 4D-flow CMR methods (MRMVAV and MRJet) and two non-4D-flow techniques (MRStandard and MRLVRV). We conducted within-software and inter-software correlation and agreement analyses. RESULTS: All methods demonstrated significant correlation between the two software solutions: MRStandard (r=0.92, p<0.001), MRLVRV (r=0.95, p<0.001), MRJet (r=0.86, p<0.001), and MRMVAV (r=0.91, p<0.001). Between CAAS and MASS, MRJet and MRMVAV, compared to each of the four methods, were the only methods not to be associated with significant bias. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that 4D-flow CMR methods demonstrate equivalent reproducibility to non-4D-flow methods but greater levels of agreement between software solutions

The Allen Telescope Array Twenty-centimeter Survey - A 690-Square-Degree, 12-Epoch Radio Dataset - I: Catalog and Long-Duration Transient Statistics

We present the Allen Telescope Array Twenty-centimeter Survey (ATATS), a multi-epoch (12 visits), 690 square degree radio image and catalog at 1.4GHz. The survey is designed to detect rare, very bright transients as well as to verify the capabilities of the ATA to form large mosaics. The combined image using data from all 12 ATATS epochs has RMS noise sigma = 3.94mJy / beam and dynamic range 180, with a circular beam of 150 arcsec FWHM. It contains 4408 sources to a limiting sensitivity of S = 20 mJy / beam. We compare the catalog generated from this 12-epoch combined image to the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS), a legacy survey at the same frequency, and find that we can measure source positions to better than ~20 arcsec. For sources above the ATATS completeness limit, the median flux density is 97% of the median value for matched NVSS sources, indicative of an accurate overall flux calibration. We examine the effects of source confusion due to the effects of differing resolution between ATATS and NVSS on our ability to compare flux densities. We detect no transients at flux densities greater than 40 mJy in comparison with NVSS, and place a 2-sigma upper limit on the transient rate for such sources of 0.004 per square degree. These results suggest that the > 1 Jy transients reported by Matsumura et al. (2009) may not be true transients, but rather variable sources at their flux density threshold.Comment: 41 pages, 19 figures, ApJ accepted; corrected minor typo in Table

A multidisciplinary approach for generating globally consistent data on mesophotic, deep-pelagic, and bathyal biological communities

Approaches to measuring marine biological parameters remain almost as diverse as the researchers who measure them. However, understanding the patterns of diversity in ocean life over different temporal and geographic scales requires consistent data and information on the potential environmental drivers. As a group of marine scientists from different disciplines, we suggest a formalized, consistent framework of 20 biological, chemical, physical, and socioeconomic parameters that we consider the most important for describing environmental and biological variability. We call our proposed framework the General Ocean Survey and Sampling Iterative Protocol (GOSSIP). We hope that this framework will establish a consistent approach to data collection, enabling further collaboration between marine scientists from different disciplines to advance knowledge of the ocean (deep-sea and mesophotic coral ecosystems)