Seasonal composition and abundance of decapod and stomatopod crustaceans from coastal habitats, southeastern United States

Decapod and stomatopod crustaceans were collected by trawl during seasonal cruises from Cape Fear, North Carolina to Cape Canaveral. Florida at depths from 4 to 20 m. A total of 60 species of decapod and 3 species of stomatopod crustaceans were collected. Fifteen species accounted for 95% of the total number of individuals and 96% of the total biomass. Season was an important factor affecting the number of individuals and species collected during the study. No consistent changes in number of species. total number of individuals, and mean total weight occurred with latitude. Cluster analysis indicated season and latitude were important factors determining species assemblages in the coastal zone. Although changes in species composition occur seasonally, most species groups delineated by cluster analysis were not consistently collected nor restricted to particular site groups. A seasonally ubiquitous faunal assemblage in the coastal zone was composed of numerically dominant species. Those assemblages which were characterized as being restricted to site groups consisted of relatively rare species or those which were associated with hard-bottom habitat

On the NP-Hardness of Approximating Ordering Constraint Satisfaction Problems

We show improved NP-hardness of approximating Ordering Constraint Satisfaction Problems (OCSPs). For the two most well-studied OCSPs, Maximum Acyclic Subgraph and Maximum Betweenness, we prove inapproximability of $14/15+\epsilon$ and $1/2+\epsilon$. An OCSP is said to be approximation resistant if it is hard to approximate better than taking a uniformly random ordering. We prove that the Maximum Non-Betweenness Problem is approximation resistant and that there are width-$m$ approximation-resistant OCSPs accepting only a fraction $1 / (m/2)!$ of assignments. These results provide the first examples of approximation-resistant OCSPs subject only to P $\neq$ \NP

Sampling the Charleston Bump: finding a needle in a haystack

This powerpoint presentation is a photo documentary of exploring the ocean floor at the Charleston Bump. In summary much remains to be known about deep sea life and habitats, sampling can be a challenge at deep depths, a variety of techniques that include quantitative and non-quantitative methods must be used and visualization of the habitat and organisms using a submersible and underwater camera provides a wealth of information

Drawings as Diagnostic Cues for Metacomprehension Judgment

The accuracy of comprehension monitoring affects the effectiveness of rereading, which in turn affects comprehension. Thus, much research has focused on finding ways to improve monitoring accuracy. The cue-utilization framework of metacognitive monitoring provides a framework for understanding how to improve monitoring accuracy. It suggests that accuracy is driven by cues people use to judge comprehension. When people utilize cues that are highly diagnostic of performance on a test of comprehension, accuracy should improve. Many interventions that have been shown to improve monitoring accuracy have attributed the improved accuracy to increased access to highly diagnostic cues, but have failed to identify highly diagnostic cues. In our recent research, we found that instructing students to generate drawings before judging comprehension improved monitoring accuracy. Using graphic analyses protocol, we identified highly diagnostic cues. In this chapter, we will describe the procedure we used to identify these cues contained in drawings

Dynamics of the salt marsh

The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources published a series of educational webpages and brochures on marine science. This issue focuses on salt marshes and salt march ecology

Ragged claws under silent seas : deep water crabs of the Charleston Bump

This powerpoint presentation is a photodocumentary of deepwater crabs. It covers feeding, respiration, coral mounds, high relief ledges and commonly encountered bump crabs

Compressed sensing quantum process tomography for superconducting quantum gates

We apply the method of compressed sensing (CS) quantum process tomography (QPT) to characterize quantum gates based on superconducting Xmon and phase qubits. Using experimental data for a two-qubit controlled-Z gate, we obtain an estimate for the process matrix $\chi$ with reasonably high fidelity compared to full QPT, but using a significantly reduced set of initial states and measurement configurations. We show that the CS method still works when the amount of used data is so small that the standard QPT would have an underdetermined system of equations. We also apply the CS method to the analysis of the three-qubit Toffoli gate with numerically added noise, and similarly show that the method works well for a substantially reduced set of data. For the CS calculations we use two different bases in which the process matrix $\chi$ is approximately sparse, and show that the resulting estimates of the process matrices match each ther with reasonably high fidelity. For both two-qubit and three-qubit gates, we characterize the quantum process by not only its process matrix and fidelity, but also by the corresponding standard deviation, defined via variation of the state fidelity for different initial states.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figure

Rapid Onset Pressor Response During Isometric Exercise in Postmenopausal Hypertensive Women

Please view abstract in the attached PDF file