Bowhead whales overwinter in the Amundsen Gulf and Eastern Beaufort Sea

The bowhead whale is the only baleen whale endemic to the Arctic and is well adapted to this environment. Bowheads live near the polar ice edge for much of the year and although sea ice dynamics are not the only driver of their annual migratory movements, it likely plays a key role. Given the intrinsic variability of open water and ice, one might expect bowhead migratory plasticity to be high and linked to this proximate environmental factor. Here, through a network of underwater passive acoustic recorders, we document the first known occurrence of bowheads overwintering in what is normally their summer foraging grounds in the Amundsen Gulf and eastern Beaufort Sea. The underlying question is whether this is the leading edge of a phenological shift in a species' migratory behaviour in an environment undergoing dramatic shifts due to climate change

Bowhead whales overwinter in the Amundsen Gulf and Eastern Beaufort Sea

The bowhead whale is the only baleen whale endemic to the Arctic and is well adapted to this environment. Bowheads live near the polar ice edge for much of the year and although sea ice dynamics are not the only driver of their annual migratory movements, it likely plays a key role. Given the intrinsic variability of open water and ice, one might expect bowhead migratory plasticity to be high and linked to this proximate environmental factor. Here, through a network of underwater passive acoustic recorders, we document the first known occurrence of bowheads overwintering in what is normally their summer foraging grounds in the Amundsen Gulf and eastern Beaufort Sea. The underlying question is whether this is the leading edge of a phenological shift in a species' migratory behaviour in an environment undergoing dramatic shifts due to climate change.</jats:p

The combined use of visual and acoustic data collection techniques for winter killer whale (Orcinus orca) observations

AbstractObservations of cetaceans during the winter are difficult, if not impossible in some locations, yet their presence, habitat use, and behaviour during this period are important for conservation and management. Typically, observations come from vessel surveys, with citizen science networks increasingly adding significant sighting data. In compliment to this, acoustic data collection systems can be deployed to collect information remotely over long periods, and in almost any conditions. Here we describe how the combination of these data collection techniques works to fill knowledge gaps, with data from a well-established citizen science network, and a single passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) recorder integrated to identify killer whale presence during winter months in Clayoquot Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island.Together these data show the overwinter use of Clayoquot Sound by killer whales is greater than previously thought. During the study period, February 21 to April 25, 2015, the citizen science network noted 14 visual encounters ranging from Amphitrite Point to Hot Spring Cove, Vancouver Island. The PAM recorded 17 acoustic encounters within the 10 km detection radius of the recorder, deployed off Siwash Point, Flores Island. This included 15 encounters not recorded by the visual network. Both resident and Bigg’s (transient) transient whale groups were recorded, although analysis of vocalizations determined that the majority of the encounters recorded acoustically were of northern resident killer whales. This may be a function of life history, with Bigg’s killer whales typically noted to be less acoustically active, or could represent greater site use by this group. This first use of acoustic monitoring over the winter, complemented with visual data, can establish a better understanding of year-round use of this area by killer whales and has broader application to other sites

LVQ-Based Hand Gesture Recognition Using a Data Glove

This paper presents a real-time hand gesture recognizer based on a Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ) classi fier. The recognizer is formed by two modules. The first module, mainly composed of a data glove, performs the feature extraction. The second module, the classifi er, is performed by means of LVQ. The recognizer, tested on a dataset of 3900 hand gestures, performed by people of diff erent gender and physique, has shown very high recognition rate

Many roads to flexibility. How large firms built autarchic regional production systems in France

This paper discusses the adjustment of large firms in France, in particular how they regionalized their production structures in the 1980s. Throughout the "Golden Age," large firms had geographically reorganized their activities: strategic planning remained in Paris, while the actual production was decentralized into the provinces, primarily to address cost and labour conflict issues. When the large firms faced a profitability crisis in the 1980s, and the traditional state-financed way out of the problems was no longer available, they saw in these proto-regional production systems a chance to become more competitive. They relied on the decentralization policies of the governments in the 1980s, and used the second-order effects of the new policies as a means to modernise their own operations