The diet of Antarctic fur seals Arctocephalus gazella (Peters) during the breeding season at Heard Island

Between September 1987 and February 1988, Antarctic fur seals Arctocephalus gazella (Peters) at Heard Island fed mainly on fish with an average 95.2% of scats in monthly collections containing fish remains. Pelagic myctophids constituted more than 50% of fish taken by fur seals at the beginning of the summer season and again at the end when there was an influx of non-breeding male seals. During the middle period from October to December, fish from the surrounding shelf area comprised the bulk of the diet. These included various benthic nototheniid species, the bentho-pelagic ice fish Champsocephalus gunnari Lönnberg and skate (Bathyraja spp.), the latter being found in over 60% of scats in October and November. The population of Antarctic fur seals at Heard Island is increasing at about the same rate as at South Georgia. There the increase is thought to be due to the high availability of krill E. superba, but in the present study no euphausiid remains were found, so the increasing population at Heard Island has been supported on a diet of fish. Whether this population increase can be sustained in future on a diet of fish is arguable. Trial fishing around Heard Island indicates that one of the major dietary items of the seals (C. gunnari) is of probable commercial importance and therefore any plans for the establishment of a fishery on Heard Island grounds must be considered in this light

Applications of cogeneration with thermal energy storage technologies

The Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) leads the U.S. Department of Energy`s Thermal Energy Storage (TES) Program. The program focuses on developing TES for daily cycling (diurnal storage), annual cycling (seasonal storage), and utility-scale applications [utility thermal energy storage (UTES)]. Several of these storage technologies can be used in a new or an existing power generation facility to increase its efficiency and promote the use of the TES technology within the utility and the industrial sectors. The UTES project has included a study of both heat storage and cool storage systems for different utility-scale applications. The study reported here has shown that an oil/rock diurnal TES system, when integrated with a simple gas turbine cogeneration system, can produce on-peak power for $0.045 to$0.06 /kWh, while supplying a 24-hour process steam load. The molten salt storage system was found to be less suitable for simple as well as combined-cycle cogeneration applications. However, certain advanced TES concepts and storage media could substantially improve the performance and economic benefits. In related study of a chill TES system was evaluated for precooling gas turbine inlet air, which showed that an ice storage system could be used to effectively increase the peak generating capacity of gas turbines when operating in hot ambient conditions

A concise stereoselective synthesis of pterosin B

Pterosin B is a naturally occurring indanone found in bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum) that displays a variety of interesting pharmacological properties, but for which few stereoselective syntheses exist. Herein we describe a 7-step stereoselective synthesis of (2R)-pterosin B via 6-bromo-5,7-dimethylindan-1-one whose structure was confirmed by NOE analysis and structure determination by X-ray crystallography. The hydroxyethyl chain was introduced via a Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reaction. The 2-methyl group was introduced stereoselectively by methylation of a SAMP [(S)-1-amino-2-methoxymethyl)pyrrolidine] hydrazone and the chiral auxiliary was removed to produce (2R)-pterosin B. The structure of pterosin B was confirmed by specific rotation and structural determination by X-ray crystallography

Infrared Behavior of the Gluon Propagator on a Large Volume Lattice

The first calculation of the gluon propagator using an order a^2 improved action with the corresponding order a^2 improved Landau gauge fixing condition is presented. The gluon propagator obtained from the improved action and improved Landau gauge condition is compared with earlier unimproved results on similar physical lattice volumes of 3.2^3 \times 6.4 fm^4. We find agreement between the improved propagator calculated on a coarse lattice with lattice spacing a = 0.35 fm and the unimproved propagator calculated on a fine lattice with spacing a = 0.10 fm. This motivates us to calculate the gluon propagator on a coarse large-volume lattice 5.6^3 \times 11.2 fm^4. The infrared behavior of previous studies is confirmed in this work. The gluon propagator is enhanced at intermediate momenta and suppressed at infrared momenta. Therefore the observed infrared suppression of the Landau gauge gluon propagator is not a finite volume effect.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, minor typos corrected and repsonse to referees comment

Continuum limit of amorphous elastic bodies: A finite-size study of low frequency harmonic vibrations

The approach of the elastic continuum limit in small amorphous bodies formed by weakly polydisperse Lennard-Jones beads is investigated in a systematic finite-size study. We show that classical continuum elasticity breaks down when the wavelength of the sollicitation is smaller than a characteristic length of approximately 30 molecular sizes. Due to this surprisingly large effect ensembles containing up to N=40,000 particles have been required in two dimensions to yield a convincing match with the classical continuum predictions for the eigenfrequency spectrum of disk-shaped aggregates and periodic bulk systems. The existence of an effective length scale \xi is confirmed by the analysis of the (non-gaussian) noisy part of the low frequency vibrational eigenmodes. Moreover, we relate it to the {\em non-affine} part of the displacement fields under imposed elongation and shear. Similar correlations (vortices) are indeed observed on distances up to \xi~30 particle sizes.Comment: 28 pages, 13 figures, 3 table

Demonstration of a Transportable 1 Hz-Linewidth Laser

We present the setup and test of a transportable clock laser at 698 nm for a strontium lattice clock. A master-slave diode laser system is stabilized to a rigidly mounted optical reference cavity. The setup was transported by truck over 400 km from Braunschweig to D\"usseldorf, where the cavity-stabilized laser was compared to a stationary clock laser for the interrogation of ytterbium (578 nm). Only minor realignments were necessary after the transport. The lasers were compared by a Ti:Sapphire frequency comb used as a transfer oscillator. The thus generated virtual beat showed a combined linewidth below 1 Hz (at 1156 nm). The transport back to Braunschweig did not degrade the laser performance, as was shown by interrogating the strontium clock transition.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figure

Automatic service categorisation through machine learning in emergent middleware

The modern environment of mobile, pervasive, evolving services presents a great challenge to traditional solutions for enabling interoperability. Automated solutions appear to be the only way to achieve interoperability with the needed level of flexibility and scalability. While necessary, the techniques used to determine compatibility, as a precursor to interaction, come at a substantial computational cost, especially when checks are performed between systems in unrelated domains. To overcome this, we apply machine learning to extract high-level functionality information through text categorisation of a system's interface description. This categorisation allows us to restrict the scope of compatibility checks, giving an overall performance gain when conducting matchmaking between systems. We have evaluated our approach on a corpus of web service descriptions, where even with moderate categorisation accuracy, a substantial performance benefit can be found. This in turn improves the applicability of our overall approach for achieving interoperability in the Connect project

Hawaiʻi Coral Disease database (HICORDIS):species-specific coral health data from across the Hawaiian archipelago

AbstractThe Hawaiʻi Coral Disease database (HICORDIS) houses data on colony-level coral health condition observed across the Hawaiian archipelago, providing information to conduct future analyses on coral reef health in an era of changing environmental conditions. Colonies were identified to the lowest taxonomic classification possible (species or genera), measured and assessed for visual signs of health condition. Data were recorded for 286,071 coral colonies surveyed on 1819 transects at 660 sites between 2005 and 2015. The database contains observations for 60 species from 22 genera with 21 different health conditions. The goals of the HICORDIS database are to: i) provide open access, quality controlled and validated coral health data assembled from disparate surveys conducted across Hawaiʻi; ii) facilitate appropriate crediting of data; and iii) encourage future analyses of coral reef health. In this article, we describe and provide data from the HICORDIS database. The data presented in this paper were used in the research article “Satellite SST-based Coral Disease Outbreak Predictions for the Hawaiian Archipelago” (Caldwell et al., 2016) [1]