Deterring effects of 8-45 kHz tone pulses on harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) in a large pool

The marine aquaculture industry suffers losses due to pinniped attacks which damage net enclosures and fish stocks. Acoustic harassment devices (AHDs) emit loud sounds which are intended to deter pinnipeds from approaching aquaculture enclosures. At present, many AHDs emit sounds in the 8-20 kHz frequency range. It is not known whether sounds of higher frequencies have a deterrent effect on seals. Therefore five captive harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) were subjected to four series of tone pulses together spanning a broad frequency range (8, 16, 32 and 45 kHz). Pulse duration was 250 ms and pulse interval was 5s. Each of the four sounds was made deterrent by increasing the amplitude. The seals reacted by swimming away from the sounds. The displacement effect of each sound was judged by comparing the animals' surface positions, and number of surfacings, during ten 45 min baseline periods with ten 45 min test periods per frequency (one frequency per day in rotation, 40 sessions in total). The seals were displaced by all four frequencies throughout the 40 trial days. The seals came to the surface more often when the test tones were produced than in the baseline periods. The initial displacement distances did not change over the 40 test days. This suggests that operating AHDs for only short periods will be more effective and less likely to result in habituation by the seals than operating them continuously. The discomfort threshold sound pressure level (SPL) was established for each of the four pulse frequencies. The acoustic discomfort threshold SPL is defined as the boundary SPL between the area that the animals generally occupied during the transmission of the sounds and the area that they generally did not enter during sound transmission. The discomfort threshold SPL may depend on the context.     

VAN不能预报地震—任何别的人也不能

已经不止15a了,Varotsos和他的同事们(依据他们第一篇文章的作者的首字母,通常被称为VAN)一直宣称他们有能力预报希腊的地震。正如下面所解释的那样,这种宣称是不真实的。如需了解更多的细节,请读我关于VAN的84页的文章     

一种综合地图匹配算法的设计与实现

根据位置点匹配算法和基于加权系统的地图匹配算法的一般原理,设计并实现了一种综合地图匹配算法,在不同的道路条件下采用不同的匹配策略,并考虑了道路网的连通性因素,实验证明算法的正确匹配率达到了86%,在道路交叉路口的匹配时间约0.34s,基本上可以满足车辆导航定位系统的要求。     

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