LI changes from this value are represented as percentage change, Results 200 CHF patients (67±11 years-old, male- 85%, LVEF- 26±9%) at NYHA II/III/IV (77/90/33) were recruited after index ...hospitalization for acute heart failure (AHF) and followed in an outpatient clinic for 26±22 months.
Sea turtles were targeted by fisheries in the Mediterranean from 1920 to 1970 and have undergone severe exploitation. At least 30,000 to 40,000 turtles were caught along the Palestinian coastline ...during the 1920s to 1930s. Although intentional cap- ture of marine turtles is now illegal, sea turtles are still incidentally caught by the fishing industry, making it a major cause of sea turtle mortality. The present study as- sesses the impact of the Israeli fishery fleet on the turtle population in the Levantine basin based on on-board observations and a fishermen survey. The results show that gillnets and trawlers are the main threats to sea turtles in this area. 21 turtles were caught during 1385.5 hours of trawling observations – a catch rate of 0.015 turtles per hour. We estimate that a total of 1,315 turtles are caught annually by Israeli trawlers. According to the fishermen survey, ∼21 turtles are caught each year by a single gillnet vessel, yielding an annual estimate of 1,672 turtles for the whole gillnet fleet. We have also found that only a small fraction of the turtles injured by trawlers is represented in the strandings. The mortality rate through trawling and the stranding density is the highest in the region, emphasizing the urgent need to regulate the Israe- li fishery. This fishery poses a major threat to the whole Levantine sea turtle popula- tion, especially during the vulnerable reproduction stage.
Abundant in coastal areas, sea turtles are affected by high-intensity acoustic anthropogenic sounds. In this paper, we offer a pattern analysis-based detection approach to serve as a warning system ...for the existence of nearby sea turtles. We focus on the challenge of overcoming the low signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR) caused by reverberations. Assuming that, due to low SCR, target reflections within the point cloud are received in groups, our detector searches for patterns through clustering to identify possible 'blobs' in the point cloud of reflections, and to classify them as either clutter or a target. Our unsupervised clustering is based on geometrical and spectral constraints over the blob's member relations. In turn, the classification of identified blobs as either a target or clutter is based on features extracted from the reflection pattern. To this end, assuming reflections from a sea turtle are stable but include spectral diversity due to distortions within the turtles body, we quantify the stability of the blob's members and their spectral entropy. We test our detector in both modeled simulations, and at sea, for the detection of sea turtles released after rehabilitation. The results show robustness to highly-fluctuating target intensity and ability to detect at low SCR.
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