Courtship in fast water currents by a male stream goby ( Rhinogobius brunneus) communicates the parental quality honestly

The stream goby Rhinogobius sp. DA (dark color type) shows exclusive paternal care of the eggs. Males court females in the stream current and previous field observations suggest that females favor males that perform their courtship display in faster water currents, and that such males may have high parental ability because of good physical condition. To validate these observations we examined female choice under controlled laboratory conditions. Mate choice experiments indicated clearly that females preferred males that courted in the faster currents, whereas neither sexually different morphological traits, such as body size, nor the water current alone were important. The experiments with food supply treatments indicated that only males of high physical condition are able to court in the fast currents. Furthermore, males that courted in the fast currents achieved good egg survival, whereas males that were unable to court in the currents did not, due to cannibalism of their egg clutch. Thus, the maximum speed of the water current in which a male courts should be indicative of his quality and of the subsequent survival of eggs under his care. We conclude that Rhinogobius sp. DA females utilize the male courtship display in the water current as an honest indicator of parental quality.Communicated by K. LindströmAn erratum to this article can be found at     

The influence of lower extremity postures on kinematics and injuries of cyclists in vehicle side collisions

Objective: A cyclist assumes various cyclic postures of the lower extremities while pushing the pedals in a rotary motion while pedaling. In order to protect cyclists in collisions, it is necessary to understand what influence these postures have on the global kinematics and injuries of the cyclist.

Method: Finite element (FE) analyses using models of a cyclist, bicycle, and car were conducted. In the simulations, the Total Human Model of Safety (THUMS) occupant model was employed as a cyclist, and the simulation was set up such that the cyclist was hit from its side by a car. Three representative postures of the lower extremities of the cyclist were examined, and the kinematics and injury risk of the cyclist were compared to those obtained by a pedestrian FE model. The risk of a lower extremity injury was assessed based on the knee shear displacement and the tibia bending moment.

Results: When the knee position of the cyclist was higher than the hood leading edge, the hood leading edge contacted the leg of the cyclist, and the pelvis slid over the hood top and the wrap-around distance (WAD) of the cyclist's head was large. The knee was shear loaded by the hood leading edge, and the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) ruptured. The tibia bending moment was less than the injury threshold. When the cyclist's knee position was lower than the hood leading edge, the hood leading edge contacted the thigh of the cyclist, and the cyclist rotated with the femur as the pivot point about the hood leading edge. In this case, the head impact location of the cyclist against the car was comparable to that of the pedestrian collision. The knee shear displacement and the tibia bending moment were less than the injury thresholds.

Conclusion: The knee height of the cyclist relative to the hood leading edge affected the global kinematics and the head impact location against the car. The loading mode of the lower extremities was also dependent on the initial positions of the lower extremities relative to the car structures. In the foot up and front posture, the knee was loaded in a lateral shear direction by the hood leading edge and as a result the ACL ruptured. The bicycle frame and the struck-side lower extremity interacted and could influence the loadings on lower extremities.     

Identification of microbial populations contributing to nitrification-associated nitrous oxide emission during cattle manure composting process with forced aeration

Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management - This study was conducted to clarify the fates of whole nitrogen cycle-associated microorganisms during laboratory-scale composting of cattle manure...     

Empirical analysis of reward to return: based on case studies of lunch boxes in Japan

To recycle or reuse used containers, it is necessary first to collect them. One way to do this is to give rewards to persons who return used packaging and containers to designated places. Many Japanese university cooperatives use recyclable lunch boxes for take-out food, and they collect used boxes in a variety of ways, including such reward giving. By analyzing the responses of university cooperatives to questionnaires on the ways that they collect used recyclable lunch boxes, this study examines the effect of this reward giving on the collection rate. The study results suggest that cash rewards are more effective in increasing the rate of return of used containers than setting up collection boxes that offer no rewards upon return, or giving point-based rewards.     

Estimating monthly total nitrogen concentration in streams by using artificial neural network

Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is a flexible and popular tool for predicting the non-linear behavior in the environmental system. Here, the feed-forward ANN model was used to investigate the relationship among the land use, fertilizer, and hydrometerological conditions in 59 river basins over Japan and then applied to estimate the monthly river total nitrogen concentration (TNC). It was shown by the sensitivity analysis, that precipitation, temperature, river discharge, forest area and urban area have high relationships with TNC. The ANN structure having eight inputs and one hidden layer with seven nodes gives the best estimate of TNC. The 1:1 scatter plots of predicted versus measured TNC were closely aligned and provided coefficients of errors of 0.98 and 0.93 for ANNs calibration and validation, respectively. From the results obtained, the ANN model gave satisfactory predictions of stream TNC and appears to be a useful tool for prediction of TNC in Japanese streams. It indicates that the ANN model was able to provide accurate estimates of nitrogen concentration in streams. Its application to such environmental data will encourage further studies on prediction of stream TNC in ungauged rivers and provide a useful tool for water resource and environment managers to obtain a quick preliminary assessment of TNC variations.     

Bacterial community succession during the enrichment of chemolithoautotrophic arsenite oxidizing bacteria at high arsenic concentrations

To generate cost-effective technologies for the removal of arsenic from water, we developed an enrichment culture of chemolithoautotrophic arsenite oxidizing bacteria (CAOs) that could effectively oxidize widely ranging concentrations of As(III) to As(V). In addition, we attempted to elucidate the enrichment process and characterize the microbial composition of the enrichment culture. A CAOs enrichment culture capable of stably oxidizing As(III) to As(V) was successfully constructed through repeated batch cultivation for more than 700 days, during which time the initial As(III) concentrations were increased in a stepwise manner from 1 to 10-12 mmol/L. As(III) oxidation activity of the enrichment culture gradually improved, and 10-12 mmol/L As(III) was almost completely oxidized within four days. Terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis showed that the dominant bacteria in the enrichment culture varied drastically during the enrichment process depending on the As(III) concentration. Isolation and characterization of bacteria in the enrichment culture revealed that the presence of multiple CAOs with various As(III) oxidation abilities enabled the culture to adapt to a wide range of As(III) concentrations. The CAOs enrichment culture constructed here may be useful for pretreatment of water from which arsenic is being removed.