Research poster: Climate change impacts to groundwater, springs hydrology and aquatic communities Amargosa Desert and Death Valley National Park, Nevada and California

Research poste

Report of the FAO/CRFM/MALMR Regional Workshop on the Collection of Demographic Information on Coastal Fishing Communities and its Use in Community-Based Fisheries and Integrated Coastal Zone Management in the Caribbean

One part of the two-part Science-to-Action Guidebook. The other part was intended for scientists, and this part is for decision-makers. Recognizing the importance of informed decisions and the differences between the scientific and decision-making processes, this guidebook provides practical tips on how to best bring these worlds together. In doing so, this guidebook emphasizes the roles of facilitating, synthesizing, translating, and communicating science to inform conservation action. It is geared toward the perspective of decision-makers working in tropical developing nations and focusing on marine resource management issues. However, the concepts are applicable to a broad range of scientists and decision-makers worldwide

Assessing the value of trees in sustainable grazing systems

The retention of trees in strips provides an option for managing non-remnant woody vegetation in native and sown pastures in northern Australia. However, the impact of tree strips on pasture production has not been previously researched in detail in southern Queensland. The influence of existing tree strips on pasture production in southern Queensland was measured at three grazing properties during 2004 and 2005. Soil and pasture attributes were sampled along transects 80 to 300 metres in length positioned perpendicular to tree strips. The tree strips ranged from 15 to 75 metres wide and were 120 to 500 metres apart. The effects of tree strips along the pasture transect were quantified in terms of pasture microclimate (e.g. temperature, humidity and, at one location, wind), pasture growth in grazed and exclosed situations, soil water, soil nutrients and condition, and nutrient availability. An experimental approach using exclosed pasture transects provided a useful ‘bioassay’ potentially integrating beneficial and competitive effects of tree strips on pasture growth as well as other factors (e.g. soil variability). Averaged across two locations and two years, the competitive effects of the tree strip were compensated to some extent by enhanced pasture growth at distances of 1-6 x tree height from the tree strip edge. However, the observed effects on pasture growth along the transect were likely to be due to different causes: pasture microclimate at one site, soil texture and microtopography at a second site and pasture establishment history at a third site. Thus, the trial highlighted the difficulty of attributing effects in real-world situations, given the number of possible causes including the tree strip effects on pasture microclimate and nutrient availability, soil surface disturbance, and systematic variation on soil and water redistribution due to soil micro-topography and felled timber. Despite these many sources of variation, general effects were derived from the field data consistent with other studies on tree strips and wind breaks across Australia. To extrapolate the project results to other locations, tree strip configurations and climates, a new version of the soil waterpasture growth simulation model GRASP was developed allowing simulation of tree and pasture effects and processes for various distances along a pasture transect perpendicular from the tree strip

Implementing eccentric resistance training—part 1: A brief review of existing methods

The purpose of this review was to provide a physiological rationale for the use of eccentric resistance training and to provide an overview of the most commonly prescribed eccentric training methods. Based on the existing literature, there is a strong physiological rationale for the incorporation of eccentric training into a training program for an individual seeking to maximize muscle size, strength, and power. Specific adaptations may include an increase in muscle cross-sectional area, force output, and fiber shortening velocities, all of which have the potential to benefit power production characteristics. Tempo eccentric training, flywheel inertial training, accentuated eccentric loading, and plyometric training are commonly implemented in applied contexts. These methods tend to involve different force absorption characteristics and thus, overload the muscle or musculotendinous unit in different ways during lengthening actions. For this reason, they may produce different magnitudes of improvement in hypertrophy, strength, and power. The constraints to which they are implemented can have a marked effect on the characteristics of force absorption and therefore, could affect the nature of the adaptive response. However, the versatility of the constraints when prescribing these methods mean that they can be effectively implemented to induce these adaptations within a variety of populations

Determining Ancestry of Unprovenienced Human Remains from the Grenadines, Southern Caribbean: Dental Morphology and Craniometric

1 page poste

Gas Condensation in the Galactic Halo

Using adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) hydrodynamic simulations of vertically stratified hot halo gas, we examine the conditions under which clouds can form and condense out of the hot halo medium to potentially fuel star formation in the gaseous disk. We find that halo clouds do not develop from linear isobaric perturbations. This is a regime where the cooling time is longer than the Brunt-Vaisala time, confirming previous linear analysis. We extend the analysis into the nonlinear regime by considering mildly or strongly nonlinear perturbations with overdensities up to 100, also varying the initial height, the cloud size, and the metallicity of the gas. Here, the result depends on the ratio of cooling time to the time required to accelerate the cloud to the sound speed (similar to the dynamical time). If the ratio exceeds a critical value near unity, the cloud is accelerated without further cooling and gets disrupted by Kelvin-Helmholtz and/or Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities. If it is less than the critical value, the cloud cools and condenses before disruption. Accreting gas with overdensities of 10-20 is expected to be marginally unstable; the cooling fraction will depend on the metallicity, the size of the incoming cloud, and the distance to the galaxy. Locally enhanced overdensities within cold streams have a higher likelihood of cooling out. Our results have implications on the evolution of clouds seeded by cold accretion that are barely resolved in current cosmological hydrodynamic simulations and absorption line systems detected in galaxy halos.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Ap

Recent challenges in condition monitoring of industrial electric machines

The limitations of thermal, vibration, or electrical monitoring of electric machines such as false indications, low sensitivity, and difficulty of fault interpretation have recently been exposed. This has led to a shift in the direction in research towards applying new techniques for improving the reliability of condition monitoring. With the changing environment, the purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the recent trend in the industrial demand and research activity in condition monitoring technology. The new developments in insulation testing, electrical testing, flux analysis, transient analysis, and fault prognostics are summarized. The future challenges and recommendations for future work for the new technologies are also stated to support researchers target research/development efforts according to industrial needs

Survey of Period Variations of Superhumps in SU UMa-Type Dwarf Novae. VIII: The Eighth Year (2015-2016)

Continuing the project described by Kato et al. (2009, arXiv:0905.1757), we collected times of superhump maxima for 128 SU UMa-type dwarf novae observed mainly during the 2015-2016 season and characterized these objects. The data have improved the distribution of orbital periods, the relation between the orbital period and the variation of superhumps, the relation between period variations and the rebrightening type in WZ Sge-type objects. Coupled with new measurements of mass ratios using growing stages of superhumps, we now have a clearer and statistically greatly improved evolutionary path near the terminal stage of evolution of cataclysmic variables. Three objects (V452 Cas, KK Tel, ASASSN-15cl) appear to have slowly growing superhumps, which is proposed to reflect the slow growth of the 3:1 resonance near the stability border. ASASSN-15sl, ASASSN-15ux, SDSS J074859.55+312512.6 and CRTS J200331.3-284941 are newly identified eclipsing SU UMa-type (or WZ Sge-type) dwarf novae. ASASSN-15cy has a short (~0.050 d) superhump period and appears to belong to EI Psc-type objects with compact secondaries having an evolved core. ASASSN-15gn, ASASSN-15hn, ASASSN-15kh and ASASSN-16bu are candidate period bouncers with superhump periods longer than 0.06 d. We have newly obtained superhump periods for 79 objects and 13 orbital periods, including periods from early superhumps. In order that the future observations will be more astrophysically beneficial and rewarding to observers, we propose guidelines how to organize observations of various superoutbursts.Comment: 123 pages, 162 figures, 119 tables, accepted for publication in PASJ (including supplementary information