Two South Australian canyons, one shelf-incising (du Couedic) and one slope-limited (Bonney) were compared for macrofaunal patterns on the shelf and slope that spanned three water masses. It was ...hypothesized that community structure would (H1) significantly differ by water mass, (H2) show significant regional differences and (H3) differ significantly between interior and exterior of each canyon. Five hundred and thirty-one species of macrofauna ≥ 1 mm were captured at 27 stations situated in depth stratified transects inside and outside the canyons from 100 to 1500 m depth. The macrofauna showed a positive relationship to depth in abundance, biomass, species richness and community composition while taxonomic distinctness and evenness remained high at all depths. Biotic variation on the shelf was best defined by variation in bottom water primary production while sediment characteristics and bottom water oxygen, temperature and nutrients defined biotic variation at greater depth. Community structure differed significantly (p<0.01) among the three water masses (shelf-flowing South Australian current, upper slope Flinders current and lower slope Antarctic Intermediate Water) (H1). Although community differences between the du Couedic and Bonney regions were marginally above significance at p = 0.05 (H2), over half of the species captured were unique to each region. This supports the evidence from fish and megafaunal distributions that the du Couedic and Bonney areas are in different bioregions. Overall, the canyon interiors were not significantly different in community composition from the exterior (H3). However, both canyons had higher abundance and/or biomass, increased species dominance, different species composition and coarser sediments near the canyon heads compared to outside the canyons at the same depth (500 m), suggestive of heightened currents within the canyons that influence community composition there. At 1000-1500 m, the canyon interiors were depauperate, typical of V-shaped canyons elsewhere. The large number of species captured, given the relatively low sampling effort and focus on the larger macrofauna, support previous studies that identify the South Australian coast as a high biodiversity area.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the importance of redesigning, reusing, remanufacturing, recovering, recycling and reducing (6R) to sustainable manufacturing and discuss the ...general procedure to reconfigure robots. Two critical challenges in adopting industrial robots in small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) are flexibility and cost, as the number of tasks of the same type can be limited because of the size of an SME. The challenges can be alleviated by 6R. The 6R processes allow a robot to adopt new tasks, increase its utilization rate and reduce unit costs of products.
Design/methodology/approach
There is no shortcut to implement sustainable manufacturing. All of the manufacturing resources in a system should be planned optimally to reduce waste and maximize the utilization rates of resources. In this paper, modularization and reconfiguration are emphasized to implement 6R processes in sustainable manufacturing; robots are especially taken into consideration as core functional modules in the system. Modular architecture makes it feasible to integrate robots with low-cost customized modules for various tasks for the high utilization rates. A case study is provided to show the feasibility.
Findings
Finding the ways to reuse manufacturing resources could bring significant competitiveness to an SME, in the sense that sophisticated machines and tools, such as robots, can be highly utilized even in a manufacturing environment with low or medium product volumes. The concepts of modularization and 6R processes can be synergized to achieve this goal.
Research limitations/implications
The authors propose the strategy to enhance the utilization rates of core manufacturing resources using modular architecture and 6R practice. The axiomatic design theory can be applied as the theoretical fundamental to guide the 6R processes; however, a universal solution in the implementation is not available. The solutions have to be tailored to specific SMEs, and the solutions should vary with respect to time.
Practical implications
To operate a sustainable manufacturing system, a continuous design effort is required to reconfigure existing resources and enhance their capabilities to fulfill new tasks in the dynamic environment.
Social implications
The authors focus on the importance of sustainable manufacturing to modern society, and they achieve this goal by reusing robots as system components in different applications.
Originality/value
Sustainable manufacturing has attracted a great deal of attention, although the operable guidance for system implementation is scarce. The presented work has thrown some light in this research area. The 6R concept has been introduced in a modular system to maximize the utilizations of critical manufacturing resources. It is particularly advantageous for SMEs to adopt sophisticated robots cost-effectively.
For sponges (phylum Porifera), there is no reliable molecular protocol available for species identification. To address this gap, we developed a multilocus-based Sponge Identification Protocol (SIP) ...validated by a sample of 37 sponge species belonging to 10 orders from South Australia. The universal barcode COI mtDNA, 28S rRNA gene (D3-D5), and the nuclear ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 region were evaluated for their suitability and capacity for sponge identification. The highest Bit Score was applied to infer the identity. The reliability of SIP was validated by phylogenetic analysis. The 28S rRNA gene and COI mtDNA performed better than the ITS region in classifying sponges at various taxonomic levels. A major limitation is that the databases are not well populated and possess low diversity, making it difficult to conduct the molecular identification protocol. The identification is also impacted by the accuracy of the morphological classification of the sponges whose sequences have been submitted to the database. Re-examination of the morphological identification further demonstrated and improved the reliability of sponge identification by SIP. Integrated with morphological identification, the multilocus-based SIP offers an improved protocol for more reliable and effective sponge identification, by coupling the accuracy of different DNA markers.
A new species of Tethya Lamarck, 1815 is described from a depth of 1000 m on the continental slope of the Great Australian Bight (GAB), southern Australia. The GAB slope was explored as part of ...systematic benthic surveys to understand unexplored communities in the light of current oil and gas exploration activity in the area. Tethya irisae sp. nov. was present at 1000 m in six of eight longitudinal depth surveys. Three molecular markers were obtained: COI, 28S (D3–D5) and ITS1-5.8S-ITS2. COI and 28S phylogenetic analyses show that the new species fits clearly within the genus Tethya. This is the 28th species of Tethya reported from Australia; it is unusual in that it has a stalk. The presence of a stalk as a morphological character to split genera in this family is questioned. The description of this new species is an opportunity to revisit the molecular phylogeny of the Tethyida Morrow & Cárdenas, 2015 using comprehensive datasets of COI and 28S markers. As in previous analyses, four Tethya clades were retrieved; we discuss the possibility of using external colour to support some of these clades. Despite unclear phylogenetic relationships amongst Tethyidae Gray, 1848 from Australia, our results suggest that tethyid genera Tethytimea Laubenfels, 1936, Tectitethya Sarà, 1994, Laxotethya Sarà & Sarà, 2002, Stellitethya Sarà, 1994, and Xenospongia Gray, 1858 derive from species of Tethya. We show that asters have been secondarily lost at least twice in the Hemiasterellidae Lendenfeld, 1889: in Liosina Thiele, 1899 and a potential new genus from northern Australia. We formally propose the reallocation of Liosina from Dictyonellidae van Soest, Diaz & Pomponi, 1990 to Hemiasterellidae Lendenfeld, 1889.
The Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory Aab, A.; Abreu, P.; Aglietta, M. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
10/2015, Volume:
798, Issue:
C
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The Pierre Auger Observatory, located on a vast, high plain in western Argentina, is the world׳s largest cosmic ray observatory. The objectives of the Observatory are to probe the origin and ...characteristics of cosmic rays above 1017eV and to study the interactions of these, the most energetic particles observed in nature. The Auger design features an array of 1660 water Cherenkov particle detector stations spread over 3000km2 overlooked by 24 air fluorescence telescopes. In addition, three high elevation fluorescence telescopes overlook a 23.5km2, 61-detector infilled array with 750m spacing. The Observatory has been in successful operation since completion in 2008 and has recorded data from an exposure exceeding 40,000km2sryr. This paper describes the design and performance of the detectors, related subsystems and infrastructure that make up the Observatory.
The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger Observatory and is used to detect the radio emission of cosmic-ray air showers. These observations are compared to the data of the ...surface detector stations of the Observatory, which provide well-calibrated information on the cosmic-ray energies and arrival directions. The response of the radio stations in the 30-80 MHz regime has been thoroughly calibrated to enable the reconstruction of the incoming electric field. For the latter, the energy deposit per area is determined from the radio pulses at each observer position and is interpolated using a two-dimensional function that takes into account signal asymmetries due to interference between the geomagnetic and charge-excess emission components. The spatial integral over the signal distribution gives a direct measurement of the energy transferred from the primary cosmic ray into radio emission in the AERA frequency range. We measure 15.8 MeV of radiation energy for a 1 EeV air shower arriving perpendicularly to the geomagnetic field. This radiation energy-corrected for geometrical effects-is used as a cosmic-ray energy estimator. Performing an absolute energy calibration against the surface-detector information, we observe that this radio-energy estimator scales quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy as expected for coherent emission. We find an energy resolution of the radio reconstruction of 22% for the data set and 17% for a high-quality subset containing only events with at least five radio stations with signal.
The emission of radio waves from air showers has been attributed to the so-called geomagnetic emission process. At frequencies around 50 MHz this process leads to coherent radiation which can be ...observed with rather simple setups. The direction of the electric field induced by this emission process depends only on the local magnetic field vector and on the incoming direction of the air shower. We report on measurements of the electric field vector where, in addition to this geomagnetic component, another component has been observed that cannot be described by the geomagnetic emission process. The data provide strong evidence that the other electric field component is polarized radially with respect to the shower axis, in agreement with predictions made by Askaryan who described radio emission from particle showers due to a negative charge excess in the front of the shower. Our results are compared to calculations which include the radiation mechanism induced by this charge-excess process.
Background The Great Australian Bight (GAB) comprises the majority of Australia’s southern coastline, but to date its deep water fauna has remained almost unknown. Recent issuing of oil and gas ...leases in the region has highlighted this lack of baseline biological data and established a pressing need to characterise benthic abyssal fauna. Methods From 2013 to 2017, six large-scale systematic surveys of the GAB were conducted from 200 to 5000 m depth, constituting the deepest systematic biological sampling in Australia. Sampling was conducted on soft sediment and hard substrates, both at pre-determined depth intervals along north-south transect lines and at sites of interest identified by multibeam sonar. Results A total of 66,721 invertebrate specimens were collected, comprising 1267 species, with 401 species (32%) new to science. In addition to the novelty of the fauna, there was a high degree of rarity, with 31% of species known only from single specimens. Conclusions In this paper, we provide an annotated checklist of the benthic invertebrate fauna of the deep GAB, supplemented with colour photos of live specimens and commentary on taxonomy, diversity and distributions. This work represents an important addition to knowledge of Australia’s deep sea fauna, and will provide the foundation for further ecological, biogeographical and systematic research.
This paper describes the epifaunal macro-invertebrate assemblages of the continental shelf in the eastern Great Australian Bight (GAB) in relation to environmental factors, including water depth and ...sediment type. Patterns of species composition are used to assess the effectiveness of the Benthic Protection Zone (BPZ) of the GAB Marine Park in representing regional biodiversity. A total of 753
kg of benthos belonging to 797 species and 10 phyla were collected in 65 5-min tows using a 1.8
m wide and 0.6
m high epibenthic sled, fitted with a 50
mm mesh bag. Results suggest that the eastern GAB supports one of the world's most diverse soft-sediment ecosystems. Sessile, suspension-feeding organisms (primarily poriferans, ascidians and bryozoans) dominated samples, and collectively comprised over 96% of the biomass and 74% of the species collected. Correlation analyses revealed a significant positive relationship between species richness and biomass and highlighted a general decline in both parameters with increasing depth and percentage mud in sediments. Six epifaunal assemblages identified in this study were correlated with depth and sediment type. Large total biomasses and high numbers of species were recorded in inner shelf waters of the western Eyre Peninsula, which support high levels of plankton production, and at the Head of the Bight, where sediments are fine grained. All six of the assemblages and 54% of the species collected were found in the BPZ, suggesting that the zone may effectively represent the epifaunal assemblages of the continental shelf in the eastern GAB.
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