Some observations of the feeding habits of a Weddell seal,and measurements of its prey,Dissostichus mawsoni,at McMurdo Sound,Antarctica

During December 1966, observations were made on the hunting and feeding habits of an individual Weddell seal (Leptonychotes weddelli Lesson) at a fishing hole in the ice above a depth of 300 m of water, near McMurdo Station. The seal appeared regularly every day, usually within 10 minutes of 1800 hours, and started feeding, sometimes for as long as 8 hours. The prey fish, once caught, was killed and eaten underwater, with the seal frequently surfacing to breathe. The fish caught varied in weight between 15 and 65 1b, and were all the same species, identified as Dissostichus mawsoni Norman.

The average daily weight of the seal's catch was estimated to be about 150 lb.     

#Earthquake: Twitter as a Distributed Sensor System

Social media feeds are rapidly emerging as a novel avenue for the contribution and dissemination of information that is often geographic. Their content often includes references to events occurring at, or affecting specific locations. Within this article we analyze the spatial and temporal characteristics of the twitter feed activity responding to a 5.8 magnitude earthquake which occurred on the East Coast of the United States (US) on August 23, 2011. We argue that these feeds represent a hybrid form of a sensor system that allows for the identification and localization of the impact area of the event. By contrasting this with comparable content collected through the dedicated crowdsourcing ‘Did You Feel It?’ (DYFI) website of the U.S. Geological Survey we assess the potential of the use of harvested social media content for event monitoring. The experiments support the notion that people act as sensors to give us comparable results in a timely manner, and can complement other sources of data to enhance our situational awareness and improve our understanding and response to such events.     

Calibration of an M L scale for South Africa using tectonic earthquake data recorded by the South African National Seismograph Network: 2006 to 2009

A relation to determine local magnitude (M _L) based on the original Richter definition is empirically derived from synthetic Wood–Anderson seismograms recorded by the South African National Seismograph Network. In total, 263 earthquakes in the distance range 10 to 1,000 km, representing 1,681 trace amplitudes measured in nanometers from synthesized Wood–Anderson records on the vertical channel were considered to derive an attenuation relation appropriate for South Africa through multiple regression analysis. Additionally, station corrections were determined for 26 stations during the regression analysis resulting in values ranging between ?0.31 and 0.50. The most appropriate M _L scale for South Africa from this study satisfies the equation: $$ {M_{{{\bf L}}}} = {\text{lo}}{{\text{g}}_{{10}}}(A) + 1.149\;{\text{lo}}{{\text{g}}_{{10}}}(R) + 0.00063R + 2.04 - S $$ The anelastic attenuation term derived from this study indicates that ground motion attenuation is significantly different from Southern California but comparable with stable continental regions.     

From the dawn of organic geochemistry (1933, 1938): Estrogenic substances in bituminous deposits and in the Dead Sea

We describe several pioneering organic geochemical studies from the 1930s on estrogenic substances isolated from various fossil fuels and bituminous materials and from water and sediments of the Dead Sea. The techniques employed were bioanalytical and not chemical. One of the studies, although not done on the same molecular level as his, precedes the work of Alfred Treibs, who is considered the father of organic geochemistry. By shedding light on a relatively unknown chapter of organic geochemistry, the roots of this discipline are shown to extend wider than usually recognized.     

Comment on “Reassessment of rain experiments and operations in Israel including synoptic considerations” by Zev Levin,Noam Halfon and Pinhas Alpert [Atmos. Res. 97 (2010) 513–525]

Levin et al. (referred here as LHA) made a sweeping conclusion that cloud seeding has been ineffective in Israel. They claimed that the results of the Israel-2 experiment could be fully ascribed to synoptic bias. However, the cross over analysis of Israel-2 has shown the same already in 1990 by Gabriel and Rosenfeld. While LHA only showed differences in the 850 hPa winds being stronger in the north seeded days of Israeli-2, Rosenfeld and Farbstein had already shown quantitatively in 1992 that this synoptic bias explains less than half of the indicated seeding effect in the north. Furthermore, accepting that a cross over design protects against synoptic bias means that the highly positive and statistically significant indicated seeding effect in Israeli-1, which was based on a cross-over design, cannot be explained by such synoptic bias. Instead, LHA completely ignored the Israeli-1 experiment.LHA's evaluation of the operational seeding used implied assumption that amounted to historical comparisons that have already been shown to be invalid, especially for the Israeli situation due to the decreasing trend of target–control ratio, especially over the eastern upper Galilee. For all of the above reasons, the conclusion of LHA that cloud seeding is ineffective in Israel is not supported by the data.Given the uncertainties, both physical and statistical, the Israeli water authority has embarked on the Israeli-4 randomized cloud seeding experiment, which is aimed at testing the hypothesis that cloud seeding might be affecting mainly the precipitation in the orographic clouds developing over the hills in the catchment of the Jordan River.     

Stratigraphic and Ecophysical Characterizations of Salt Pools: Dynamic Landforms of the Webhannet Salt Marsh,Wells, ME,USA

Salt pools are water-filled depressions common to north-temperate salt marshes. In Wells, ME, USA, cores reveal a unique salt pool signature consisting of water-saturated dark-gray mud often containing fragments of Ruppia maritima. Cores through pool sediment reenter salt marsh peat, not tidal flat sediment, demonstrating that most pools are of secondary origin. A principal component analysis of attribute data collected from 119 pools defines three distinct pool types: those with (1) surrounding high-marsh vegetation and thick heavily undercut banks (40% of the variance), (2) surrounding low-marsh vegetation and thicker slightly undercut banks (18% of the variance), and (3) surrounding low-marsh vegetation and less thick moderately undercut banks, containing R. maritima and a surficial drainage (15% of the variance). Cores and spatiotemporal analyses of aerial photographs between 1962 and 2003 reveal dramatic salt marsh surface dynamism suggesting that salt pools influence the geomorphological evolution of coastal marshes.     

Detecting and mapping slums using open data: a case study in Kenya

ABSTRACT

The worldwide slum population currently stands at over one billion, with substantial growth expected in the coming decades. Traditionally, slums have been mapped using information derived mainly from either physical indicators using remote sensing data, or socio-economic indicators using census data. Each data source on its own provides only a partial view of slums, an issue further compounded by data poverty in less-developed countries. To overcome such issues, this paper explores the fusion of traditional with emerging open data sources and data mining tools to identify additional indicators that can be used to detect and map the presence of slums, map their footprint, and map their evolution. Towards this goal, we develop an indicator database for slums using open sources of physical and socio-economic data that can be used to characterize slum settlements. Using this database, we then leverage data mining techniques to identify the most suitable combination of these indicators for mapping slums. Using three cities in Kenya as test cases, results show that the fusion of these data can improve the mapping accuracy of slums. These results suggest that the proposed approach can provide a viable solution to the emerging challenge of monitoring the growth of slums.