An environmental assessment of the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park and the Key Largo Coral Reef Marine Sanctuary (Unpublished 1983 Report)

The Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park was established in 1960 and the Key Largo National Marine Sanctuary in 1975. Field studies, funded by NOAA, were conducted in 1980 - 1981 to determine the state of the coral reefs and surrounding areas in relation to changing environmental conditions and resource management that had occurred over the intervening years. Ten reef sites within the Sanctuary and seven shallow grass and hardbottom sites within the Park were chosen for qualitative and quantitative studies. At each site, three parallel transects not less than 400 m long were run perpendicular to the reef or shore, each 300 m apart. Observations, data collecting and sampling were done by two teams of divers. Approximately 75 percent of the bottom within the 18-m isobath was covered by marine grasses, predominantly turtle grass. The general health of the seagrasses appeared good but a few areas showed signs of stress. The inner hardbottom of the Park was studied at the two entrances to Largo Sound. Though at the time of the study the North Channel hardbottom was subjected to only moderate boat traffic, marked changes had taken place over the past years, the most obvious of which was the loss of the extensive beds of Sargassum weed, one of the most extensive beds of this alga in the Keys. Only at this site was the green alga Enteromorpha encountered. This alga, often considered a pollution indicator, may denote the effects of shore run off. The hardbottom at South Channel and the surrounding grass beds showed signs of stress. This area bears the heaviest boat traffic within the Park waters causing continuous turbidity from boat wakes with resulting siltation. The offshore hardbottom and rubble areas in the Sanctuary appeared to be in good health and showed no visible indications of deterioration. Damage by boat groundings and anchors was negligible in the areas surveyed. The outer reefs in general appear to be healthy. Corals have a surprising resiliency to detrimental factors and, when conditions again become favorable, recover quickly from even severe damage. It is, therefore, a cause for concern that Grecian Rocks, which sits somewhat inshore of the outer reef line, has yet to recover from die-off in 1978. The slow recovery, if occurring, may be due to the lower quality of the inshore waters. The patch reefs, more adapted to inshore waters, do not show obvious stress signs, at least those surveyed in this study. It is apparent that water quality was changing in the keys. Water clarity over much of the reef tract was observed to be much reduced from former years and undoubtedly plays an important part in the stresses seen today over the Sanctuary and Park. (PDF contains 119 pages

The German Bight (North Sea) is a nursery area for both locally and externally produced sprat juveniles

To better understand the role of the German Bight (GB) as a nursery area for juvenile North Sea sprat Sprattus sprattus we sought to determine whether the area may receive only locally or also externally produced offspring. We sampled juveniles during 3 trawl surveys in the GB in August, September, and October 2004 and applied otolith microstructure analysis in order to reconstruct their distributions of the day-of-first-increment-formation (dif). These were contrasted with spatial and seasonal patterns of sprat egg abundance in the GB and its adjacent areas, observed during 6 monthly plankton surveys. It was found that the majority of juveniles originated mainly from April/May 2004, coinciding with high spawning activity west of the GB, whereas spawning and larval production inside the GB peaked notably later, in May/June. This indicated that a large proportion of juveniles was produced outside the GB and transported subsequently into it through passive and/or active migration. Shifts to later mean difs from one survey to the next and length distributions indicative of the simultaneous presence of multiple cohorts, supported the notion that the GB is a complex retention and nursery area for sprat offspring from different North Sea spawning grounds and times. Later born juveniles had significantly faster initial growth rates than earlier born conspecifics, which was likely temperature-mediated, given the strong correlation between back-calculated growth histories and sea surface temperature as a proxy for thermal histories of juveniles (r(2) = 0.52). (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Northern Hemisphere interdecadal variability: A coupled air-sea mode

A coupled air–sea mode in the Northern Hemisphere with a period of about 35 years is described. The mode was derived from a multicentury integration with a coupled ocean–atmosphere general circulation model and involves interactions of the thermohaline circulation with the atmosphere in the North Atlantic and interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere in the North Pacific. The authors focus on the physics of the North Atlantic interdecadal variability. If, for instance, the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation is anomalously strong, the ocean is covered by positive sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies. The atmospheric response to these SST anomalies involves a strengthened North Atlantic Oscillation, which leads to anomalously weak evaporation and Ekman transport off Newfoundland and in the Greenland Sea, and the generation of negative sea surface salinity (SSS) anomalies. These SSS anomalies weaken the deep convection in the oceanic sinking regions and subsequently the strength of the thermohaline circulation. This leads to a reduced poleward heat transport and the formation of negative SST anomalies, which completes the phase reversal. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans seem to be coupled via an atmospheric teleconnection pattern and the interdecadal Northern Hemispheric climate mode is interpreted as an inherently coupled air–sea mode. Furthermore, the origin of the Northern Hemispheric warming observed recently is investigated. The observed temperatures are compared to a characteristic warming pattern derived from a greenhouse warming simulation with the authors’ coupled general circulation model and also with the Northern Hemispheric temperature pattern associated with the 35-yr climate mode. It is shown that the recent Northern Hemispheric warming projects well onto the temperature pattern of the interdecadal mode under consideration

Analysis of SPDEs Arising in Path Sampling Part I: The Gaussian Case

In many applications it is important to be able to sample paths of SDEs conditional on observations of various kinds. This paper studies SPDEs which solve such sampling problems. The SPDE may be viewed as an infinite dimensional analogue of the Langevin SDE used in finite dimensional sampling. Here the theory is developed for conditioned Gaussian processes for which the resulting SPDE is linear. Applications include the Kalman-Bucy filter/smoother. A companion paper studies the nonlinear case, building on the linear analysis provided here

A study of fresh shell egg futures deliveries and general observation of future contract deliveries

Cover title.Includes bibliographical references

Incremental and Transitive Discrete Rotations

A discrete rotation algorithm can be apprehended as a parametric application $f\_\alpha$ from \ZZ[i] to \ZZ[i], whose resulting permutation ``looks like'' the map induced by an Euclidean rotation. For this kind of algorithm, to be incremental means to compute successively all the intermediate rotate d copies of an image for angles in-between 0 and a destination angle. The di scretized rotation consists in the composition of an Euclidean rotation with a discretization; the aim of this article is to describe an algorithm whic h computes incrementally a discretized rotation. The suggested method uses o nly integer arithmetic and does not compute any sine nor any cosine. More pr ecisely, its design relies on the analysis of the discretized rotation as a step function: the precise description of the discontinuities turns to be th e key ingredient that will make the resulting procedure optimally fast and e xact. A complete description of the incremental rotation process is provided, also this result may be useful in the specification of a consistent set of defin itions for discrete geometry

The role of egg laws in egg pricing

Cover title."This study is a part of the research conducted in cooperation with the Economic Research Service, twelve State Agricultural Experiment Stations, and the Consumer and Marketing Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture ... the basic publication ... is Marketing Research Report No. 850, 'Pricing systems for eggs' by George B. Rogers and Leonard A. Voss, Economic Research Service, USDA, May, 1969"--P. [2] of cover.Includes bibliographical references (page 10)

Airway responses and inflammation in subjects with asthma after four days of repeated high-single-dose allergen challenge

Background: Both standard and low-dose allergen provocations are an established tool in asthma research to improve our understanding of the pathophysiological mechanism of allergic asthma. However, clinical symptoms are less likely to be induced. Therefore, we designed a protocol for repetitive high-dose bronchial allergen challenges to generate clinical symptoms and airway inflammation. Methods: A total of 27 patients aged 18 to 40 years with positive skin-prick tests and mild asthma underwent repetitive high-dose allergen challenges with household dust mites for four consecutive days. Pulmonary function and exhaled NO were measured at every visit. Induced sputum was analysed before and after the allergen challenges for cell counts, ECP, IL-5, INF-γ, IL-8, and the transcription factor Foxp3. Results: We found a significant decrease in pulmonary function, an increased use of salbutamol and the development of a late asthmatic response and bronchial hyperresponsiveness, as well as a significant induction of eNO, eosinophils, and Th-2 cytokines. Repeated provocation was feasible in the majority of patients. Two subjects had severe adverse events requiring prednisolone to cope with nocturnal asthma symptoms. Conclusions: Repeated high-dose bronchial allergen challenges resulted in severe asthma symptoms and marked Th-2-mediated allergic airway inflammation. The high-dose challenge model is suitable only in an attenuated form in diseased volunteers for proof-of-concept studies and in clinical settings to reduce the risk of severe asthma exacerbations. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.govNCT0067720