Variation beneath the surface: Quantifying complex thermal environments on coral reefs in the Caribbean, Bahamas and Florida

Analysis of in situ temperature records collected on six coral reefs in the Caribbean, Bahamas, and Florida Keys reveal significant variability across a range of temporal and spatial scales from minutes to seasons, across depths, and among sites. Subsurface variability occurring at daily and faster frequencies is prevalent across the region, likely driven by combinations of diurnal heating and cooling, wind driven advection, and internal waves at tidal and faster frequencies. This high frequency variability is not detected in records of remotely-sensed sea surface temperature alone. Diurnal variability likely caused by diurnal solar heating and cooling and possibly by advection associated with diurnal winds (daily sea breeze) was significant at all sites and showed greatest magnitude of variation at shallowest depths. Temperature fluctuations at tidal and faster frequencies were common at 5 out of the 6 sites. The magnitude of this variability is not well explained by measured vertical temperature stratification combined with oscillations of the water column associated with barotropic surface tides. Rather, the magnitude and nature of the temperature changes point to the presence of internal waves generated at tidal and faster frequencies. Power spectra calculated seasonally show greatest variability within both diurnal and semi-diurnal frequency bands in Spring and Summer at Florida, Bahamas, Jamaica, and St. Croix. Variability within the semi-diurnal frequency band at Belize and Bonaire was greatest in Winter. Warming in Summer estimated as degree-hours per day above 29.0°C increased with increasing latitude and varied significantly among sites and depths in a manner not predictable from remotely sensed SST data alone. Site latitude was directly related to the amplitude of the seasonal thermal variability, but was not tightly related to variability at daily and faster frequencies which was greatest at the highest and lowest latitude sites. The interactions of depth, site, and season across the study region are associated with distinct signals of thermal variability, and have significant implications for the physiology and ecology of corals and other reef organisms

Structural and Compositional Changes in Aging Bone: Osteopenia in Lumbar Vertebrae of Wistar Female Rats

Changes in vertebral bone mineral content and density during aging were quantified in female Wistar rats. This study represents a longitudinal follow up utilizing single photon absorptiometry for the measurement of bone mineral content (BMC), quantitative computed tomography (OCT) for the measurement of bone mineral density (BMD), and image analysis histomorphometry for the measurement of trabecular bone volume (TBV) and bone cortical area (BCA). The above measurements were accompanied by biochemical assays of calcium concentrations in the respective bones. All aging animals experienced significant decreases in BMC, BMD, TBV, BCA and in the calcium content of their bones. The above features have been further emphasized through the use of scanning electron micrographs showing the age-related structural changes in a three-dimentional fashion. New, advanced technologies will enable the quantitation of 3-dimensional images that are currently obtained from the scanning electron micrograph; thus will provide new consideration as related to trabecular bone compactness (density). Energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy indicated that the nature of crystals in aging bones does not differ markedly from that encountered in young specimens. Data are also provided with regard to the health of the animals, and it became apparent that aging rats undergo changes in their kidneys yet do not show any significant change in renal functional parameters as measured in both the serum and the urine. Hence, new noninvasive methodologies are currently available for longitudinal studies related to the skeleton in laboratory animals enabling reliable monitoring of age-related and hormonally induced changes in bones (spine and hip) of well defined experimental models

IMPROVED CLASSIFICATION OF SATELLITE IMAGERY USING SPATIAL FEATURE MAPS EXTRACTED FROM SOCIAL MEDIA

In this work, we consider the exploitation of social media data in the context of Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. To this end, we explore a way of augmenting and integrating information represented by geo-located feature vectors into a system for the classification of satellite images. For that purpose, we present a quite general data fusion framework based on Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and an initial examination of our approach on features from geo-located social media postings on the Twitter and Sentinel images. For this examination, we selected six simple Twitter features derived from the metadata, which we believe could contain information for the spatial context. We present initial experiments using geotagged Twitter data from Washington DC and Sentinel images showing this area. The goal of classification is to determine local climate zones (LCZ). First, we test whether our selected feature maps are not correlated with the LCZ classification at the geo-tag position. We apply a simple boost tree classifier on this data. The result turns out not to be a mere random classifier. Therefore, this data can be correlated with LCZ. To show the improvement by our method, we compare classification with and without the Twitter feature maps. In our experiments, we apply a standard pixel-based CNN classification of the Sentinel data and use it as a baseline model. After that, we expand the input augmenting additional Twitter feature maps within the CNN and assess the contribution of these additional features to the overall F1-score of the classification, which we determine from spatial cross-validation

Suspended particulates at the Point Loma, California wastewater outfall

A recent study conducted at the Point Loma wastewater outfall in San Diego used a novel sampling technique, the Pelagic Laser Tomographer (PLT), in combination with traditional water column profiling instruments to analyze suspended particulate distributions and effluent plume dynamics. Coastal wastewater discharges create buoyant plumes that interact with the surrounding water, and the tracking and mapping of the resulting diluted effluent is essential for monitoring outfall system performance. The results from the PLT sampling highlight the utility of high spatial and temporal resolution estimates of suspended particulate size spectra to help capture the dynamics of the plume interactions with the coastal current flow field. In addition, new tools like the PLT can help marine scientists estimate natural and anthropogenic particulate size distributions that are essential to our understanding sediment and pollutant transport, nutrient cycling, and ecosystem energy dynamics

Determination of parking space and its concurrent usage over time using semantically segmented mobile mapping data

Public space is a scarce good in cities. There are many concurrent usages, which makes an adequate allocation of space both difficult and highly attractive. A lot of space is allocated by parking cars - even if the parking spaces are not occupied by cars all the time. In this work, we analyze space demand and usage by parking cars, in order to evaluate, when this space could be used for other purposes. The analysis is based on 3D point clouds acquired at several times during a day. We propose a processing pipeline to extract car bounding boxes from a given 3D point cloud. For the car extraction we utilize a label transfer technique for transfers from semantically segmented 2D RGB images to 3D point cloud data. This semantically segmented 3D data allows us to identify car instances. Subsequently, we aggregate and analyze information about parking cars. We present an exemplary analysis of the urban area where we extracted 15.000 cars at five different points in time. Based on this aggregated we present analytical results for time dependent parking behavior, parking space availability and utilization

Obesity: should there be a law against it? Introduction to a symposium

The rapid rise in rates of overweight and obesity among adults and children in Australia and New Zealand has intensified debate about the most effective policies for obesity prevention. Law has much to contribute to this policy discussion, although its role is often misunderstood. The articles in this symposium follow on from a conference hosted in September 2006 by the Centre for Health Governance, Law & Ethics in the Faculty of Law, University of Sydney, titled: Obesity: should there be a law against it? In different ways, these articles provide a variety of perspectives on regulatory responses to obesity, including theoretical justifications for a legal approach, conceptual models that assist in making sense of law's role, as well as specific legal strategies for obesity prevention in various settings

Pituitary blastoma: a pathognomonic feature of germ-line DICER1 mutations.

Individuals harboring germ-line DICER1 mutations are predisposed to a rare cancer syndrome, the DICER1 Syndrome or pleuropulmonary blastoma-familial tumor and dysplasia syndrome [online Mendelian inheritance in man (OMIM) #601200]. In addition, specific somatic mutations in the DICER1 RNase III catalytic domain have been identified in several DICER1-associated tumor types. Pituitary blastoma (PitB) was identified as a distinct entity in 2008, and is a very rare, potentially lethal early childhood tumor of the pituitary gland. Since the discovery by our team of an inherited mutation in DICER1 in a child with PitB in 2011, we have identified 12 additional PitB cases. We aimed to determine the contribution of germ-line and somatic DICER1 mutations to PitB. We hypothesized that PitB is a pathognomonic feature of a germ-line DICER1 mutation and that each PitB will harbor a second somatic mutation in DICER1. Lymphocyte or saliva DNA samples ascertained from ten infants with PitB were screened and nine were found to harbor a heterozygous germ-line DICER1 mutation. We identified additional DICER1 mutations in nine of ten tested PitB tumor samples, eight of which were confirmed to be somatic in origin. Seven of these mutations occurred within the RNase IIIb catalytic domain, a domain essential to the generation of 5p miRNAs from the 5' arm of miRNA-precursors. Germ-line DICER1 mutations are a major contributor to PitB. Second somatic DICER1 "hits" occurring within the RNase IIIb domain also appear to be critical in PitB pathogenesis