Portable light detection system for the blind

System can be used to detect "ready" light on automatic cooking device, to tell if lights are on for visitors, or to tell whether it is daylight or dark outside. Device is actuated like flashlight. Light impinging on photo cell activates transistor which energizes buzzer to indicate presence of light

Cruise Report C-102 : scientific activities, Woods Hole - Antigua - Grenada - Carriacou - St. Thomas, 14 October 1988 - 22 December 1988, SSV Corwith Cramer

Woods Hole, MA - Antigua - Grenada - Carriacou - St. Thomas, 14 October 1988 - 22 December 1988This cruise report presents a basic outline of the academic program and scientific research conducted on board the SSV Corwith Cramer during the fall of 1988. It consists of a brief cruise narrative describing operations during our six weeks at sea as well as tabulated information on the location and type of samples taken. Some raw data are included; detailed cruise logs and full student reports are available through Sea Education Association and the Chief Scientist

Cruise Report C-115 : scientific activities undertaken - SSV Corwith Cramer, Lisbon, Portugal - Funchal, Madeira - Port Royal, Antigua - Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, November 29, 1990 to January 7, 1991

Lisbon, Portugal - Funchal, Madeira - Port Royal, Antigua - Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, November 29, 1990 to January 7, 1991Figure 29 [last page] has been reduced from its original size (9" x 48")This cruise report outlines the scientific research and academic program conducted on board SSV Corwith Cramer during late fall of 1990

Southeast United States fisheries bycatch reduction research in shrimp trawl fisheries

Presented in the paper are the two devices that were developed by some states in the southeast United States to reduce fisheries bycatch in shrimp trawls. These were Turtle Excluder Device (TED) and Bycatch Reduction Device (BRD). First, the use of TEDs were strongly resisted by some fishermen, however, when it was mandatory and regulations effectively enforced, fishermen found that it improved shrimp production and the quality of catch. Moreover, also presented in the paper are the two bycatch reduction devices that are being regulated into use in United States, the Fisheye BRD, and the Extended Funnel BRD that are found to effectively reduce the finfish bycatch

In pursuit of the dynamic optimality conjecture

In 1985, Sleator and Tarjan introduced the splay tree, a self-adjusting binary search tree algorithm. Splay trees were conjectured to perform within a constant factor as any offline rotation-based search tree algorithm on every sufficiently long sequence---any binary search tree algorithm that has this property is said to be dynamically optimal. However, currently neither splay trees nor any other tree algorithm is known to be dynamically optimal. Here we survey the progress that has been made in the almost thirty years since the conjecture was first formulated, and present a binary search tree algorithm that is dynamically optimal if any binary search tree algorithm is dynamically optimal.Comment: Preliminary version of paper to appear in the Conference on Space Efficient Data Structures, Streams and Algorithms to be held in August 2013 in honor of Ian Munro's 66th birthda

The self-assembly and evolution of homomeric protein complexes

We introduce a simple "patchy particle" model to study the thermodynamics and dynamics of self-assembly of homomeric protein complexes. Our calculations allow us to rationalize recent results for dihedral complexes. Namely, why evolution of such complexes naturally takes the system into a region of interaction space where (i) the evolutionarily newer interactions are weaker, (ii) subcomplexes involving the stronger interactions are observed to be thermodynamically stable on destabilization of the protein-protein interactions and (iii) the self-assembly dynamics are hierarchical with these same subcomplexes acting as kinetic intermediates.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

A model for leveraging animal movement to understand spatio-temporal disease dynamics

The ongoing explosion of fine-resolution movement data in animal systems provides a unique opportunity to empirically quantify spatial, temporal and individual variation in transmission risk and improve our ability to forecast disease outbreaks. However, we lack a generalizable model that can leverage movement data to quantify transmission risk and how it affects pathogen invasion and persistence on heterogeneous landscapes. We developed a flexible model ‘Movement-driven modelling of spatio-temporal infection risk’ (MoveSTIR) that leverages diverse data on animal movement to derive metrics of direct and indirect contact by decomposing transmission into constituent processes of contact formation and duration and pathogen deposition and acquisition. We use MoveSTIR to demonstrate that ignoring fine-scale animal movements on actual landscapes can mis-characterize transmission risk and epidemiological dynamics. MoveSTIR unifies previous work on epidemiological contact networks and can address applied and theoretical questions at the nexus of movement and disease ecology

The Future of Micro-grids in Ecuador

An analysis is made on the development of power lines worldwide and that offer the approaches of the impacts that are generated in the economic and environmental, which justify the application of smart grids in Ecuador, as an effective way to raise the efficiency of the electric power service and to achieve a more efficient use of the energy that is generated by showing the different technologies used in electricity generation where renewable energy sources are incorporated. A comparative analysis of how the installed generation power has been increasing until 2016 is shown