Proceedings of the Second workshop on scientific results of FORV Sagar Sampada

Since inception in 1984, the Fisheries and Oceanographic Research Vessel Sagar Sampada, with sophisticated modern facilities onboard, has undertaken more than 140 cruises all over the Indian Ocean primarily in our Exclusive Economic Zone for fishery and oceanographic survey. Scientists from many institutions have made use of this facility to explore the resource potential in our sea and to understand its correlation with the environmental parameters. These survey and exploration efforts are continuing. This volume contains many papers which are the outcome of research work carried out onboard 'Sagar Sampada' during last five years (1989-1993) and presented in a Workshop to evaluate the scientific work. About 60 papers, included in this volume, bring out the results pertaining to environmental assessment, hydrology, productivity estimates, fishery resources availability, fishing technology, pollution monitoring etc. These relate mainly to the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and Lakshadweep, Andaman and Nicobar Islands groups in the EEZ of India. These efforts along with other mission-oriented cruises have yielded valuable information on the fishery resources and their distribution in space and time

Functional microperimetry and SD-OCT confirm consecutive retinal atrophy from optic nerve pit

A congenital anomaly, optic nerve pit is often associated with serous retinal detachment involving macula. Long standing serous detachment leads to outer retinal atrophy and decrease in visual sensitivity. Recently, spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been reported to demonstrate a communication between the optic nerve sheath and the subretinal space. Vitreous cavity is proposed as an alternate source of fluid for accumulation in the subretinal space. We imaged a patient with optic nerve pit with Spectralis OCT and report the findings seen including the presence of an area of peripapapillary retinal atrophy, due to the spontaneous resolution of associated long-standing retinal detachment

A study on few biochemical parameters of clinically suspected and laboratory confirmed Leptospirosis cases

A study on biochemical parameters in clinically suspected and laboratory- confirmed leptospirosis cases was conducted in the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli. Out of 50 clinically suspected samples of leptospirosis, 38% were positive from both ELISA IgM and rapid card test. In the present study, liver markers such as bilirubin, Serum Glutamate Oxalo acetic Transaminase (SGOT) and Serum Glutamate Pyruvic Transaminase (SGPT) encountered elevation 68%, 100% and 89% respectively in leptospiosis positive patent while 89% and 48 %of positive patients showed elevation in kidney marker, creatinine and blood urea. On the basis of liver and renal functions, a hospital can develop its own clinical algorithm to suspect the case of leptospirosis

Comparing PyMorph and SDSS photometry. II. The differences are more than semantics and are not dominated by intracluster light

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey pipeline photometry underestimates the brightnesses of the most luminous galaxies. This is mainly because (i) the SDSS overestimates the sky background and (ii) single or two-component Sersic-based models better fit the surface brightness profile of galaxies, especially at high luminosities, than does the de Vaucouleurs model used by the SDSS pipeline. We use the PyMorph photometric reductions to isolate effect (ii) and show that it is the same in the full sample as in small group environments, and for satellites in the most massive clusters as well. None of these are expected to be significantly affected by intracluster light (ICL). We only see an additional effect for centrals in the most massive halos, but we argue that even this is not dominated by ICL. Hence, for the vast majority of galaxies, the differences between PyMorph and SDSS pipeline photometry cannot be ascribed to the semantics of whether or not one includes the ICL when describing the stellar mass of massive galaxies. Rather, they likely reflect differences in star formation or assembly histories. Failure to account for the SDSS underestimate has significantly biased most previous estimates of the SDSS luminosity and stellar mass functions, and therefore Halo Model estimates of the z ~ 0.1 relation between the mass of a halo and that of the galaxy at its center. We also show that when one studies correlations, at fixed group mass, with a quantity which was not used to define the groups, then selection effects appear. We show why such effects arise, and should not be mistaken for physical effects.Comment: 15 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. The PyMorph luminosities and stellar masses are available at https://www.physics.upenn.edu/~ameert/SDSS_PhotDec

The high mass end of the stellar mass function: Dependence on stellar population models and agreement between fits to the light profile

We quantify the systematic effects on the stellar mass function which arise from assumptions about the stellar population, as well as how one fits the light profiles of the most luminous galaxies at z ~ 0.1. When comparing results from the literature, we are careful to separate out these effects. Our analysis shows that while systematics in the estimated comoving number density which arise from different treatments of the stellar population remain of order < 0.5 dex, systematics in photometry are now about 0.1 dex, despite recent claims in the literature. Compared to these more recent analyses, previous work based on Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) pipeline photometry leads to underestimates of rho_*(> M_*) by factors of 3-10 in the mass range 10^11 - 10^11.6 M_Sun, but up to a factor of 100 at higher stellar masses. This impacts studies which match massive galaxies to dark matter halos. Although systematics which arise from different treatments of the stellar population remain of order < 0.5 dex, our finding that systematics in photometry now amount to only about 0.1 dex in the stellar mass density is a significant improvement with respect to a decade ago. Our results highlight the importance of using the same stellar population and photometric models whenever low and high redshift samples are compared.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. The PyMorph luminosities and stellar masses are available at https://www.physics.upenn.edu/~ameert/SDSS_PhotDec