Bird problems and their solution in Britain

The background and organization of research on bird pests in Britain are described and the main projects are outlined. Work is currently concentrated on bullfinches, starlings, rooks, and woodpigeons together with behavioural studies aimed at developing better bird scarers

Vibrophonocardiograph Patent

Vibrophonocardiograph comprising low weight and small volume piezoelectric microphone with amplifier having high imput impedance for high sensitivity and low frequency respons

Large-scale computation of pseudospectra using ARPACK and eigs

ARPACK and its MATLAB counterpart, eigs, are software packages that calculate some eigenvalues of a large non-symmetric matrix by Arnoldi iteration with implicit restarts. We show that at a small additional cost, which diminishes relatively as the matrix dimension increases, good estimates of pseudospectra in addition to eigenvalues can be obtained as a by-product. Thus in large-scale eigenvalue calculations it is feasible to obtain routinely not just eigenvalue approximations, but also information as to whether or not the eigenvalues are likely to be physically significant. Examples are presented for matrices with dimension up to 200,000

Valuing the attributes of renewable energy investments in Scotland

This study was funded by a grant from the Scottish Economic Policy Network (SEPN) with funding assistance provided by the University of Glasgow, Department of Economics (Professor Nick Hanley) and the University of Sterling (Robert Wright). The goal of the project was to determine the value of differing types of renewable energy projects by how they would effect environmental and community quality of life factors. The key issues examined include; air quality, landscape, wildlife, and long term local employment. Stated preference methods were employed through the use of a discrete choice experiment survey approach. Willingness-to-pay for different types of renewable energy projects was estimated, i.e., moderate onshore windmill farms, large onshore windmill farms, offshore windmill farms, and biomass fueled power plants. The most significant findings were that rural areas likely to be most highly impacted by the new energy projects were willing to accept low or moderate environmental damage in exchange for commercial development gains. Urban respondents on the other hand were more likely to oppose any disturbance to the landscape or wildlife and had no value placed on the economics development gains for the rural areas; income level of households showed no significant difference in environmental values

The development of an integrated modelling system to support decisions on organic farms

This paper was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference of the Colloquium of Organic Researchers (COR). An Integrated Decision Support System (IDSS) is developed which synthesises current understanding of organic farming by means of a multiple objective framework incorporating GIS, biophysical models and socio-economic models of the farming goals. The IDSS uses a multitiered concept of a farming system as a collection of micro-enterprises at the field level, with individual resource endowments, objectives and activities. Farm-level decision drivers trickle down to affect the micro-level field enterprise selection. Biophysical models describe typical forage, cereal, root and legume output and a user-friendly interfaces permits easy access and output display via a GIS. A prototype of the IDSS framework, being developed as a part of the SAC organic research programme is presented

Genetic Variation in Resistance of Scotch Pine to Zimmerman Pine Moth

(excerpt) Scotch pine (Pinus sylvestris L.), a forest tree introduced from Eurasia, is commonly planted for Christmas tree and timber use in northeastern United States. In this country it has numerous insect enemies. Among the most important are European pine shoot moth, Rhyacionia buoliana (Schiffermiieller); pine root collar weevil, Hylobius radicis Buchanan;,European pine sawfly, Neodiprion sertifer (Geoffroy); and eastern white-pine shoot borer, Eucosma gloriola Heinrich. Previous studies (Wright et al., 1967; Wright and Wilson, 1972; Steiner, 1974) have revealed large genetic differences in resistance to some of these pests. Another destructive pest is the Zimmerman pine moth, Dioryctria zimmermani (Grote). In 1968 this insect, native to the United States, was found attacking trees in a Scotch pine provenance test in southwestern Michigan. The attack rate was heavy and by 1973 it was obvious that some rams or varieties were attacked more heavily than others. This is a report on those differences

The Massive Star Forming Region, Cygnus OB2

We present results from a catalogue of 1696 X-ray point sources detected in the massive star forming region (SFR) Cygnus OB2, the majority of which have optical or near-IR associations. We derive ages of 3.5 and 5.25 Myrs for the stellar populations in our two fields, in agreement with recent studies that suggest that the central 1-3 Myr OB association is surrounded and contaminated by an older population with an age of 5-10 Myrs. The fraction of sources with proto-planetary disks, as traced by K-band excesses, are unusually low. Though this has previously been interpreted as due to the influence of the large number of OB stars in Cyg OB2, contamination from an older population of stars in the region could also be responsible. An initial mass function is derived and found to have a slope of Gamma = -1.27, in agreement with the canonical value. Finally we introduce the recently approved Chandra Cygnus OB2 Legacy Survey that will image a 1 square degree area of the Cygnus OB2 association to a depth of 120 ks, likely detecting ~10,000 stellar X-ray sources.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. To appear in the proceedings of IAU Symposium 266, Star Clusters: Basic Galactic Building Blocks Throughout Time and Space, eds. R. de Grijs and J. Lepin

ranger: A Fast Implementation of Random Forests for High Dimensional Data in C++ and R

We introduce the C++ application and R package ranger. The software is a fast implementation of random forests for high dimensional data. Ensembles of classification, regression and survival trees are supported. We describe the implementation, provide examples, validate the package with a reference implementation, and compare runtime and memory usage with other implementations. The new software proves to scale best with the number of features, samples, trees, and features tried for splitting. Finally, we show that ranger is the fastest and most memory efficient implementation of random forests to analyze data on the scale of a genome-wide association study

Resettlement of young people leaving custody: Lessons from the literature

This literature review aims to set out the research and practice evidence about effective resettlement services for children and young adults and can be used to inform future policy and practice to ensure service delivery is evidence based. The findings of the review will help to steer the focus of Beyond Youth Custody’s research over the duration of the programme and act as a baseline to assess how our understanding has advanced in terms of what works in facilitating the transition from youth custody to the community and beyond. In addition, the review highlights some examples of good practice, as well as the emerging key principles of effective resettlement provision