Diets,population structure,and seasonal activity patterns of mudpuppies (Necturus maculosus) in an urban,Great Lakes coastal habitat

Freshwater species native to the Laurentian Great Lakes region face numerous environmental stressors, and the conservation status and ecological relationships of many remain poorly understood. One such species, the mudpuppy (Necturus maculosus), is declining, but better information on their natural history and development of more effective population monitoring techniques is needed. We assessed seasonal variation in capture success, biases in capture techniques, and feeding ecology of mudpuppies in Wolf Lake, a highly perturbed and urban former estuarine wetland complex to Lake Michigan. Trapping periods of ≥ 3 consecutive nights occurred from January to May 2015, and October 2015 to March 2016. Overall trapping success differed among trapping periods (p = 0.01) and declined precipitously at water temperatures above 14.1 °C (p < 0.001). Mudpuppies in traps (mean 26.9 ± 0.5 cm) were larger than those caught with hand nets (mean 14.7 ± 0.8 cm, p < 0.0001), suggesting that multiple methods may be needed to accurately assess demographics. Stomach contents obtained through gastric lavage included mollusks, leeches, insects, isopods, amphipods, crayfish, fish, a frog, and a juvenile conspecific. Invasive species, including rusty crayfish (Orconectes rusticus), round gobies (Neogobius melanostomus), and zebra/quagga mussels (Dreissena spp.) were present in guts, suggesting mudpuppy foraging has changed along with aquatic communities in the region. Prey community analyses revealed differences in overall diet among size classes of mudpuppies (p = 0.001), but relatively weak similarity within size classes. Results suggest that mudpuppies in lake ecosystems occupy a broad niche that changes as they grow.     

Reduced-Complexity Time-Domain Equalization for Turbo-MIMO Systems

A reduced-complexity time-domain equalization scheme for wideband turbo-multiple-input multiple-output (turbo-MIMO) systems is presented. This scheme, called iterative trellis search equalization, is based on a modified version of the M-Bahl-Cocke-Jelinek-Raviv (M-BCJR) algorithm, applied to a suitably chosen trellis representation of the wideband MIMO channel process. Exploiting the properties of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signal constellations with block-partitionable labels, this modified M-BCJR algorithm has complexity per bit that is independent of the constellation size, and polynomial in the number of transmit antennas and channel memory. Results from computer simulations show that the new scheme successfully mitigates intersymbol interference even if only a very small fraction of trellis state transitions is considered. It is also demonstrated that asynchronous transmission of the spatially multiplexed symbol streams can result in considerable performance improvement compared to synchronous MIMO systems.     

Turbo-MIMO for wireless communications

This article reviews an important class of MIMO wireless communications, known collectively as turbo-MIMO systems. A distinctive property of turbo-MIMO wireless communication systems is that they can attain a channel capacity close to the Shannon limit and do so in a computationally manageable manner. The article focuses attention on a subclass of turbo-MIMO systems that use space-time coding based on bit-inter-leaved coded modulation. Different computationally manageable decoding (detection) strategies are briefly discussed. The article also includes computer experiments that are intended to improve the understanding of specific issues involved in the design of turbo-MIMO systems.     

Optimization and performance evaluation of multicarriertransmission

Optimization of the performance of multicarrier transmission over a linear dispersive channel is presented. The optimum data and power assignment to the subcarriers are derived for both the conventional error probability criterion, and a new criterion based on the normalized mean-square error. The assignments and algorithms hold for channels where performance is degraded by additive noise, intersymbol and interchannel interference. Lower bounds on throughput are derived and are used to compare multicarrier performance with conventional single-carrier quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) with both linear and decision feedback equalization. It is seen that multicarrier transmission can provide a significant improvement at low and intermediate channel signal-to-noise ratios. As an example, the optimization is applied to the high-speed digital subscriber loop, and multicarrier transmission is demonstrated to be superior to decision feedback equalized single-carrier QAM     

Improving power allocation to MIMO eigenbeams under imperfect channel estimation

Eigenbeamforming exploits the spatial diversity of the MIMO channel by multiplexing data substreams along orthogonal modes. Estimation errors result in self-interference, which must be taken into account in the selection of modes for transmission and the allocation of transmitter power. Using perturbation analysis to evaluate the self-interference, a technique is proposed for determining the power allocation which achieves a specified performance, based only on the information available at the receiver.     

Diversity-multiplexing trade-off for mobile urban environments

Measured data from an urban microcell has been used to determine typical operational diversity-multiplexing trade-offs provided by MIMO channels at finite SNRs. It is seen that the optimal relationship obtained using theoretical channel models is overly optimistic     

Wide-Sense Stationarity of Mobile MIMO Radio Channels

Tests for the wide-sense stationarity (WSS) of multivariate random processes are developed and applied to measured multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) radio channel responses. Evolutionary spectral density functions are used to estimate the time-dependent power spectral density, and analysis of variance procedures are applied to determine whether the first and second moments of the data series exhibit statistically significant changes over short intervals. It is found that while the assumption of WSS is met in 40%-70% of half-second intervals for a single element at the transmitter and receiver, only 2%-12% of intervals with two elements at the transmitter and receiver are jointly WSS; furthermore, the occurrence of non-WSS intervals is not dependent on the antenna separation. The analyses also show that WSS intervals are interspersed with long non-WSS intervals.     

Toxic Effects of Lemon Peel Constituents on Ceratitis capitata

A series of experiments were conducted to evaluate the toxicity of lemon peel extracts incorporated into mediterranean fruit fly Ceratitis capitata diet. Extracts were obtained with different solvents: diethyl ether, ethyl acetate, and methanol. All three extracts were toxic to some extent; the diethyl ether extract was selected for further studies. Ether extracts of lemon peel were prepared weekly over a 2-month period, from fruits collected on the 1st d of the bioassay. Weekly GC-MS and UV analyses of the extracts demonstrated that the concentration of citral and coumarins decreased in the peel after harvest. We conducted a series of bioassays to evaluate the toxicity of the ether extract, and mixtures of this extract with citral, 5,7-dimethoxycoumarin. and linalool incorporated to C. capitata larvae's natural diet (lemon slices endocarp) at a concentration of 250 microg/g of diet. Significant larvicidal activity can be obtained from a fresh lemon peel extract; however, when the extract was obtained from stored lemons, toxicity decreased. Addition of small amounts of citral or 5,7-dimethoxycoumarin, and linalool to the stored lemon peel extract would bring back the toxicity to the rates of fresh lemons extracts. Finally, female adults of C. capitata fed on diets containing additional amounts of ether extract, 5,7-dimethoxycoumarin, and linalool, were exposed to different photoperiods to test for phototoxicity. The treatment was toxic and affected the oviposition capacity of females depending on photoperiod.     

Overloaded Array Processing Using Genetic Algorithms With Soft-Biased Initialization

The application of genetic algorithm (GA) techniques to the problem of overloaded arrays, in which the number of transmitted narrowband signals is greater than the number of receiver array elements, is explored. A new receiver algorithm is presented, which achieves nearly optimal performance but requires significantly less complexity than the maximum-likelihood joint detection (MLJD) receiver. It uses GA techniques with soft-biased initialization, which is efficiently generated using spatial filtering, providing dramatic convergence improvements compared with other initialization schemes. Simulations using both idealized channel models and measured channel responses are used to investigate the impact of spatial correlation and imperfect channel state information (CSI).     

Valuation of the effects of intersymbol interference indecision-feedback equalizers

For channels which suffer predominantly from additive noise and intersymbol interference, the decision-feedback equalizer has provided a relatively simple solution for reducing the effects of interfering symbols at the input to the decision device. A technique is developed that enables fast, accurate calculation of the error performance of decision-feedback equalization for a number of channel models. The method is to calculate the n-step transition probability for an associated Markov process and then use this transition probability as an approximation to the stationary probability distribution. For systems with finite memory, it is proved that the method converges. If the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is high and the signal amplitude is more than twice the worst-case interference, it is shown that the convergence is rapid. Numerical results indicate that the convergence is rapid enough to make this an efficient method of calculation, even for channels for which the interference does not fully satisfy this condition. Two examples are given here, but the technique has been tested on most of the examples that have been presented in the literature. The method yields results in closer agreement with simulation results than previous results obtained using bounding techniques, especially at low to moderate SNRs, and requires less computation