Length at maturity in three pelagic sharks (Lamna nasus, Isurus oxyrinchus, and Prionace glauca) from New Zealand

Reproductive data collected from porbeagle, shortfin mako, and blue sharks caught around New Zealand were used to estimate the median length at maturity. Data on clasper development, presence or absence of spermatophores or spermatozeugmata, uterus width, and pregnancy were collected by observers aboard tuna longline vessels. Direct maturity estimates were made for smaller numbers of sharks sampled at recreational fishing competitions. Some data sets were sparse, particularly over the vital maturation length range, but the availability of multiple indicators of maturity made it possible to develop estimates for both sexes of all three species. Porbeagle shark males matured at 140–150 cm fork length and females at about 170–180 cm. New Zealand porbeagles therefore mature at shorter lengths than they do in the North Atlantic Ocean. Shortfin mako males matured at 180–185 cm and females at 275 –285 cm. Blue shark males matured at about 190 –195 cm and females at 170–190 cm; however these estimates were hampered by small sample sizes, difficulty obtaining representative samples from a population segregated by sex and maturity stage, and maturation that occurred over a wide length range. It is not yet clear whether regional differences in median maturity exist for shortfin mako an

Enhanced ferromagnetism from electron-electron interactions in double exchange type models

The magnetic properties of a variety of materials with promise for technological applications have been described by models in which fermions are coupled to local moment spins. Monte Carlo studies of such models usually ignore electron-electron interactions, even though the energy scale corresponding to these interactions may be comparable to or larger than other relevant energy scales. In this work we add on-site interactions between fermions to the double exchange model which we study with a Monte Carlo scheme in which temporal fluctuations of local moment spins are fully accounted for and electron-electron interactions are treated at a mean field level. We show that when the number of fermions is considerably less than the number of local moments even moderate interactions can lead to significant enhancement of ferromagnetism and the Curie temperature.Comment: 4 + epsilon pages, 3 figure

Citizenship, community, and counter-terrorism : UK security discourse, 2001-2011

This paper analyses a corpus of UK policy documents which sets out national security policy as an exemplar of the contemporary discourse of counter-terrorism in Europe, the USA and worldwide. A corpus of 148 documents (c. 2.8 million words) was assembled to reflect the security discourse produced by the UK government before and after the 7/7 attacks on the London Transport system. To enable a chronological comparison, the two sub-corpora were defined: one relating to a discourse of citizenship and community cohesion (2001-2006); and one relating to the ‘Preventing Violent Extremism’ discourse (2007-2011). Wordsmith Tools (Scott 2008) was used to investigate keywords and patterns of collocation. The results present themes emerging from a comparative analysis of the 100 strongest keywords in each sub- corpus; as well as a qualitative analysis of related patterns of the collocation, focusing inparticular on features of connotation and semantic prosody

Sun-synchronous highly elliptical orbits using low-thrust propulsion

Due to restrictions within the current architecture of the global observing system (GOS), space-based remote sensing of Earth suffers from an acute data-deficit over the critical polar-regions. Currently, observation of high-latitude regions is conducted using composite images from spacecraft in geostationary (GEO) and low-Earth orbits (LEOs) [1]. However, the oblique viewing geometry from GEO-based systems to latitudes above around 55 deg [2] and the insufficient temporal resolution of spacecraft in LEO means there is currently no source of continuous imagery for polar-regions obtained with a data refresh rate of less than 15 minutes, as is typically available elsewhere for meteorological observations

Pseudo Market Timing and Predictive Regressions

A number of studies claim that aggregate managerial decision variables, such as aggregate equity issuance, have power to predict stock or bond market returns. Recent research argues that these results may be driven by an aggregate time-series version of Schultz's (2003) pseudo market timing bias. We use standard simulation techniques to estimate the size of the aggregate pseudo market timing bias for a variety of predictive regressions based on managerial decision variables. We find that the bias can explain only about one percent of the predictive power of the equity share in new issues, and that it is also much too small to overturn prior inferences about the predictive power of corporate investment plans, insider trading, dividend initiations, or the maturity of corporate debt issues.