Swordfish (Xiphias gladius) are large, economically and ecologically important predatory fish with a wide circumglobal distribution. While swordfish are coveted by anglers, development of ...recreational fisheries has been limited historically, due in part to the species’ tendency to migrate into the mesopelagic zone during the day, effectively out of reach of typical game fishing methods. Recently, however, the adoption of ‘deep-dropping’, targeting swordfish during daytime with baits at > 300 m depth, has expanded access to the fish and led to the emergence of new regional fisheries. In 2014 a deep-dropping recreational swordfish fishery emerged in temperate southeast Australia and attracted international attention after yielding several swordfish line-class weight records. However, information is needed to guide best practices for emerging deep-dropping swordfish fisheries. Here, we present the first assessment of capture-related morbidity and post-release survival of swordfish caught by deep-dropping in southeast Australia. Among swordfish assessed to be in suitable condition for release, affixed pop-up satellite archival tags indicated 85.6% (57.8 – 95.7%; n = 13) survived after release. Including swordfish assessed as moribund after attempted resuscitation as mortalities, the survival rate for landed swordfish was 44% (95% CI 25.1 – 64.8%; n = 25). Severe abdominal distension (a notably protruding abdomen presumably due to swim bladder overinflation) and observed internal hooking injury (in the gut or gill area) were strong predictors of reduced survival (odds ratios 0.008 and 0.015 respectively), while angling duration and fish weight did not have a discernible effect on mortality. While the swordfish fishery is superficially like more common istiophorid billfish game fishing, the unique physiology and behaviour of swordfish and depths at which they are targeted present a unique challenge for stewardship as the typical catch-and-release billfish game fishing ethos may not be appropriate. The results of this preliminary study suggest swordfish caught deep-dropping are a poor candidate for purely catch-and-release angling. Predictors of post-release mortality are readily observable, so fishers should be prepared to humanely dispatch fish exhibiting symptoms of injury from gill or gut hooking, or abdominal distension severe enough to prevent the fish from righting itself beyond a brief resuscitation period.
ObjectiveAiming at the encirclement tactics adopted by enemy ships, this study focuses on the problem of planning an escape strategy when an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) is surrounded by enemy ...ships. MethodsA hybrid sampling deep Q-network (HS-DQN) reinforcement learning algorithm is proposed which gradually increases the playback frequency of important samples and retains a certain level of exploration to prevent it from falling into local optimization. The state space, action space and reward function are designed to obtain the USV's optimal escape strategy, and its performance is compared with that of the deep Q-network (DQN) algorithm in terms of reward and escape success rate. ResultsThe simulation results show that using the HS-DQN algorithm for training increases the escape success rate by 2% and the convergence speed by 20%. ConclusionsThe HS-DQN algorithm can reduce the number of useless explorations and speed up the convergence of the algorithm. The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the USV escape strategy.
We study the circle formation problem for a group of anonymous mobile agents in a plane, in which the agents are required to converge onto a circle with a preset target as the center, as well as to ...maintain the desired relative positions when rotating around the target at the same speed. Each agent is modeled as a kinematic point and can merely perceive the relative positions of the target and its limited neighbors. In order to solve the circle formation problem, a limit-cycle-based decoupled-design approach is delivered. We divide the overall control objective into two subobjectives, where the first is target circling that all agents converge onto the circle around the target, and the second is spacing adjustment that each agent maintains the desired distance from its neighbors. Then, we propose to use a controller comprised of converging part and layout part to deal with these two subobjectives, respectively. The former part is based on a limit-cycle oscillator using only the relative position from the target, and the latter is designed by also perceiving the relative position from the agent's neighbors. An important feature of the controller is that it guarantees that no collision between agents ever takes place throughout the system's evolution. Another feature is that some of the parameters in the proposed controller have explicit physical meanings related to the agents' rotating motion around the target, so that they can be set more reasonable and easily in real applications. Numerical simulations are given to show the effectiveness and performance of the proposed circle formation controller.
Willis covered stents are used in clinical practice for some complex cerebrovascular diseases. However, the performance of the Willis covered stent requires further investigation. In this study, we ...investigate the safety and efficacy of Willis covered stents for the treatment of complex vascular diseases of the internal carotid artery (ICA).
Thirteen patients with complex ICA diseases treated with the Willis covered stent system at our institution from October 2016 to January 2018 were analyzed retrospectively. Follow-up observation and digital subtraction angiography (DSA) examination were conducted at about 6–10 months after the treatment.
The complex vascular diseases of the ICA were successfully treated in 12 patients. The technical success rate was 92.3%. Pathologically, 13 lesions included blood blister-like aneurysm (n = 7), traumatic pseudoaneurysm (n = 1), traumatic carotid artery rupture (n = 1), and aneurysm with arteriovenous fistula (n = 4). Thirteen patients with complex vascular diseases of the ICA were treated with 15 Willis covered stents. The release sites of Willis covered stents were the C7 (n = 2), C6 (n = 1), C5 and/or C4 (n = 9), and the C2 (n = 3) segment of the ICA. DSA performed immediately after stent deployment revealed that complete occlusion of the lesion was achieved in 11 patients and endoleak was observed in 2 patients. Of the 11 patients, postoperative DSA examination indicated that the lesions were occluded completely. Among 2 patients, who had a second stent implantation at the break of the ICA, the traumatic ICA rupture was essentially completely obstructed in 1 patient. The endoleak remained in 1 patient with carotid cavernous sinus fistula because the placement of the second stent system was difficult with his ICA tortuosity. No recurrence of aneurysms, hemorrhagia, and other lesions was observed, and the patients’ parent arteries were patent without stenosis. No procedure-related complications or deaths occurred during follow-up.
For the treatment of complex vascular diseases in the ICA, Willis covered stent implantation is safe and effective. However, longer follow-up, large-sample controlled studies, and multicenter studies are needed for further confirmation.
It is proved that certain discrete analogues of maximally modulated singular integrals of Stein-Wainger type are bounded on ℓp(Zn) for all p∈(1,∞). This extends earlier work of the authors concerning ...the case p=2. Some open problems for further investigation are briefly discussed.
Cilj je rada prikazati davoračko božićno šetano kolo kao specifičnu kulturnu praksu kojom se stoljećima čuvao i prenosio kolektivni identitet zajednice. Ono u dosadašnjoj literaturi nije opisivano ni ...valorizirano. Nakon uvoda ukratko se pojašnjavaju osnovni teorijski pojmovi vezani uz temu rada – kolektivni identitet i kulturno pamćenje – nakon čega se donosi kratak pregled povijesti naselja Davora kao prostora u/na kojem se oblikovala spomenuta kulturna praksa. Središnji dijelovi rada donose pregled pisanih tragova o kolu u Slavoniji pri čemu je naglasak na šetanom ili pjevanom kolu kao njegovoj specifičnoj podvrsti te prikaz davoračkoga božićnog šetanog kola s njegovim posebnostima. Na kraju se rada utvrđuje kako je davoračko božićno šetano kolo sudjelovalo u izgradnji i čuvanju kolektivnoga identiteta zajednice.
This aim of this paper is to present the Davor Christmas walking circle kolo dance as a specific cultural practice. It is a centuries-old practice that has played a vital role in the preservation and transmission of the community’s collective identity. It has not yet been described or evaluated in the existing scholarly literature. The introduction briefly explains the concepts of collective identity and cultural memory as the basic theoretical concepts related to the topic of the paper, followed by a brief overview of the history of the settlement of Davor as the space in which the mentioned cultural practice was formed. The main parts of the paper provide an overview of the written traces of the circle dance in Slavonia, with an emphasis on the walking or singing circle dance as a specific subtype, and a detailed description of the Davor Christmas walking circle dance with its particular characteristics. The paper ends with the conclusion that the Davor Christmas walking circle dance contributed to the establishment and preservation of the community’s collective identity.
The Golden ratio (“phi” or “Ф”) has been known to us for ages and its use in art and architectural designs has enhanced its exquisiteness. Even some of the astounding creations of nature do follow ...this principle of Golden or divine proportions. Three centuries ago the circle of Willis at the base of the brain was first described and illustrated by Thomas Willis. Classically it was described as being circular in shape, however, the gross anatomy reveals a slightly different picture. The components of this complex neurovascular structure are so arranged that it appears more like a pentagon than a circle. A regular pentagon, unlike a circle, is a Golden shape that mathematically obeys the laws of Golden proportions. Like most other marvelous structures in nature, the close resemblance of the circle of Willis to a pentagon is more of a conscious effort of nature to establish consonance with aesthetic perception, rather than just a mere coincidence.
Detection of specific genes related to drug action can provide scientific guidance for personalized medicine. Taking the detection of a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping related to the ...chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) therapy as an example, a novel biosensor with high sensitivity and selectivity was developed based on the hyperbranched rolling circle amplification (HRCA) in this work. The single-base mutant DNA (mutDNA) sequence can perfectly hybridize with the specially designed discrimination padlock probe and initiate the HRCA reaction. Subsequently, a great abundant of double-strand DNA sequences were released and a strong fluorescence signal can be detected after adding SYBR Green I. In particular, the enhanced fluorescence intensity exhibits a linear relationship with the logarithm of mutDNA concentration ranging from 0.1 nM to 40 nM with a low detection limit of 0.05 nM. However, when there was even a single base mismatch in the target DNA, the HRCA was suppressed and fluorescence response process could not occur, resulting in a high selectivity of this biosensor. Moreover, this detection strategy also performs well in human serums, demonstrating its potential application in detecting SNPs in real biological samples.
A novel biosensor with high sensitivity and selectivity for single-nucleotide polymorphisms detection was constructed based on the hyperbranched rolling circle amplification technique. Display omitted
•A novel biosensor for SNPs detection was constructed based on the hyperbranched rolling circle amplification technique.•The proposed fluorescent biosensor possesses high sensitivity and selectivity for SNPs detection.•This biosensor performs well in both buffer solution and human serum samples.•This HRCA-based biosensor has broad application prospects in detecting various SNPs by selecting suitable probes.
This paper is based on the Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE) which was compiled by Mark Davies in 2013. The GloWbE corpus consists of web data from 20 different English speaking countries. ...This research is constructed on the GloWbE corpus to investigate the variations in certain verb-preposition combinations in informal Englishes. As the corpus is divided into two sections, such as – general and blog, this study is based on the blog section to compare web data from two inner circle countries such as The USA and Great Britain and two outer circle countries such as – India and Bangladesh. The reason for selecting the blog is that, in the GloWbE corpus, blog section consists of informal data, whereas general section consists of formal data. It is to be noted that the inner circle countries use English as their native tongue, whereas the outer circle countries use English as their second or foreign language. This paper argues that, the verb-preposition combinations or prepositional verbs vary in their frequency and meaning in the aforementioned countries and this paper investigates the following five prepositional verbs from The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language proposed by Huddleston and Pullum in 2002– come up with, look out for, put up with, stand up to, and get along with in the GloWbE corpus to prove that the frequency and meaning of these phrases varies from country to country based on social, cultural and political contexts as seen in the results. The investigation specifically shows the trends of the above five prepositional verbs in the four countries.
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