Fine-scale determinants of female grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) pupping site and habitat preferences at North Rona, Scotland.

The grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) is widespread in the Northern Hemisphere and throughout its range hauls out to breed terrestrially on a variety of substrates. A major breeding site in the eastern North Atlantic is the remote island of North Rona, Scotland, which is characterised by undulating grassy terrain, with limited access to the sea, punctuated by irregularly spaced fresh to brackish water pools of variable size. Previous long term research at North Rona has suggested that the distribution of breeding females is influenced by key habitat features including proximity to pools of water and to access from the sea. Using distributional information available for the North Rona colony in conjunction with a set of ecologically relevant environmental predictors within an extensive GIS database, the ecological niche of the grey seal at North Rona was modelled using Ecological Niche Factor Analysis. This was used to determine the distribution of suitable habitat at the North Rona colony and to elucidate the environmental determinants of female pupping site, and subsequent habitat, preferences over multiple years spanning 1998-2010. The environmental predictors utilised were chosen based on the conclusions of previous research. Following the delineation of basic environmental preferences, the influence of social interactions was considered within this modelling approach to further help explain the distribution of pups of various stages. Adult female grey seals show a preference for both pupping sites and subsequent habitat near to pools of water of low salinity at intermediate distances to access points to the sea, though appear to exhibit stronger preferences regarding the characteristics of their habitat than pupping site. It is concluded that these preferences are a result of a requirement for proximity to pools for thermoregulation and for drinking water to avoid a negative water balance. However, females do not typically choose sites directly next to or within pools, this is a result of a trade-off between proximity to pools and proximity to their pup, which is at greater risk when separated from its mother, or close to pools in areas of high adult density. It also appears likely that females choose sites at intermediate proximity to access points as sites directly next to access points experience greater disturbance from other seals arriving to, or leaving, the colony. The widespread availability of apparently suitable habitat suggests that the North Rona colony is not restricted in size by limited availability of suitable pupping sites; other potential drivers of the decline of the North Rona colony are therefore discussed, with recommendations for future research. A parallel analysis investigating pup habitat use showed that weaned pups, unlike neonates, appear to avoid locations near to adult female grey seals. It is concluded that this is a result of social interactions driving weaned pups into areas abandoned, or not yet colonised, by adult females, which are aggressive towards conspecifics during lactation. Overall, the ENFA has provided an excellent means to assess the terrestrial pupping site and subsequent habitat preferences of the grey seal, though alternative approaches are suggested for also assessing social influences on space use

Teaching with Enterprise Systems

With the wide-spread adoption of Enterprise Systems (ES), such as SAP, Oracle, and Peoplesoft, in medium and large-sized organizations, there is increasing demand for students who know how to work with such systems. While the demand for ES developers and integrators has declined, the demand for employees that can help companies achieve benefits from these systems continues to grow. Such employees need skills in decision-making and process design in an integrated, data-rich environment enabled by an ES. This paper provides advice about teaching with enterprise systems at the undergraduate and graduate levels within the IS curriculum and across management and engineering curricula. This advice is provided by five professors from five different schools, California State University at Chico, Louisiana State University, Queensland University of Technology, Bentley College, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute that together have many years of experience in teaching with SAP or with the Oracle e-business suite. This paper includes a summary of the experiences at each of these schools, advice based on questions from the audience at an AMCIS 2005 panel, and references to resources that may be helpful to those considering, or already engaged in, teaching with enterprise systems

The Murdoch-Godfrey Letters of 1869: A Nova Scotia - Maine Historical Correspondence

An introduction, source notes, and transcription of three letters from Beamis Murdoch in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to John Edward Godfrey in Bangor, Maine, February 8 to 27, 1869

Daily, Weekly and Monthly Variation in Lunch Time Calories

Introduction & Background Despite the level of attention that healthy and unhealthy eating receive from academic research, policymakers and the wider public, objective data on food consumption is limited. This is because studies of individual eating patterns using food diaries are subject to underreporting, particularly by people who are overweight. For example, the UK population is estimated to consume between 30% to 50% more calories than they report in surveys. New data sources such as office canteen ordering systems and individual records of supermarket transactions recorded through supermarket loyalty or bonus cards offer larger and potentially more robust data on real world individual eating behaviours. Objectives & Approach We used 2,831,403 machine-recorded ‘meal deal’ transactions from 205,781 individuals over the course of one year from one of the UK’s largest suppliers of lunch time foods to investigate whether there is a relationship between patterns of choice and higher calorie consumption. A meal deal comprises three items; a main (e.g., a sandwich or a salad), a snack (e.g., crisps, fruit or a chocolate bar) and a drink (e.g., a smoothie or a bottle of water). In contrast to diary studies or aggregate transactional data from supermarkets, our dataset included “meal deal’ purchase which is highly likely to be made by an individual for their own consumption or soon afterwards. Relevance to Digital Footprints Lunch time food consumption can reflect the overall diet the individual is exposed to, helping to understand population level patterns of people’s food choices through a type of digital footprints data - shopping history records. Results Controlling for gender, general index of variety in the choice of lunch food items, income and education, we found that individuals who vary in their calorie consumption most across the time of day, day of the week, and month of the year are the individuals who consume the greatest number of calories overall. These time sensitivity effects are large, together explaining a substantial amount of variance in calorie consumption. Time sensitivity effects are strongly correlated across all three time scales suggesting they measure a stable underlying trait. Conclusions & Implications Individuals vary calorific composition of their lunch over time of the day, day of the week and month of the year by 100 calories per meal between highest and lowest in sensitivity which is about 9% of the recommended amount of lunchtime calories. Those whose consumption varies the most with time consume the most calories, independently of income and gender. The variation in calories at all three time scales demonstrates the properties of an individual disposition. These findings can be used to understand why and when people make unhealthy food choices

T-Cell Responses to the M3 Immune Evasion Protein of Murid Gammaherpesvirus 68 Are Partially Protective and Induced with Lytic Antigen Kinetics

DNA vaccination with the M3 gene, encoding an immune evasion molecule expressed during both the acute lytic and persistent phases of murid gammaherpesvirus 68 infection, yielded a significantly lower titer of virus in the lung than controls. The protection seen was dependent on T cells, and we mapped an epitope recognized by CD8 T cells. The immune response to this epitope follows the same kinetics as lytic cycle antigens, despite the fact that this gene is expressed in both lytic and persistent stages of infection. This has important implications for our understanding of T-cell responses to putative latency-associated gammaherpesvirus proteins and how vaccination may improve control of these viruses

The Passing of Print

This paper argues that ephemera is a key instrument of cultural memory, marking the things intended to be forgotten. This important role means that when ephemera survives, whether accidentally or deliberately, it does so despite itself. These survivals, because they evoke all those other objects that have necessarily been forgotten, can be described as uncanny. The paper is divided into three main sections. The first situates ephemera within an uncanny economy of memory and forgetting. The second focuses on ephemera at a particular historical moment, the industrialization of print in the nineteenth century. This section considers the liminal place of newspapers and periodicals in this period, positioned as both provisional media for information as well as objects of record. The third section introduces a new configuration of technologies – scanners, computers, hard disks, monitors, the various connections between them – and considers the conditions under which born-digital ephemera can linger and return. Through this analysis, the paper concludes by considering digital technologies as an apparatus of memory, setting out what is required if we are not to be doubly haunted by the printed ephemera within the digital archive

Nondestructive Electromagnetic Material Characterization using a Dual Waveguide Probe: A Full Wave Solution

A nondestructive technique for determining the complex permittivity and permeability of a perfect electric conductor backed magnetic shielding material using a dual waveguide probe is presented. The dual waveguide probe allows for the simultaneous collection of reflection and transmission coefficients which distinguishes it from single probe methods common in the literature. Theoretical development of these coefficients, which is accomplished through a coupled magnetic field integral equations formulation using Love\u27s equivalence principle and solved via the method of moments (MOM), is discussed. Evaluation of the resulting MOM impedance matrix elements is performed using complex plane integration leading to enhanced computational efficiency and physical insight. Comparison of the theoretical and measured reflection and transmission coefficients using a root finding algorithm leads to the desired permittivity and permeability. Measurement results of a magnetic shielding material are presented and compared to traditional methods for the purpose of validating the new technique. The probe\u27s sensitivity to aperture alignment, sample thickness, and flange thickness is also investigated.Abstract © AGU