: In captive-rearing programs, small sample sizes can limit the quality of information on performance of propagation methods. Bayesian updating can be used to increase information on method performance over time. We demonstrate an application to incubator testing at USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. A new type of incubator was purchased for use in the whooping crane (Grus americana) propa...

As the most basic knowledge of remote sensing, spectral radiances that are reflected from the surface and received by the sensor are under the influence of various physical factors. One of the most important factors is the reflectance properties of the surface such as spatial, spectral and biophysical conditions. On the other hand, Tropical Rainforest is known as the most important for us to su...

Open-sea stevedores of containers provide an alternative way to avoid port congestion. This process involves a mobile harbour equipped with a crane which loads/unloads containers from a large cargo ship. However, the presence of ocean waves and gusty winds can produce an excessive sway to the hoisting ropes of the crane system. This paper presents a second-order sliding mode controller for traj...

Container terminal (CT) operations are often bottlenecked by slow YC (yard crane) movements. PM (prime mover) queues in front of the YCs are common. Hence, efficient YC scheduling to reduce the PM waiting time is critical in increasing a CT’s throughput. We develop an efficient model for YC scheduling by taking into account realistic operational constraints such as inter-crane interference, fix...

A deepwater lifting operation using crane vessel is investigated by a time-domain analysis program for floating crane vessel systems. In the analysis, a coupled analysis of floating vessel and lifted object dynamics connected via crane wire are simulated with and without heave compensator. For deepwater installation cases, amplified vertical motion of lifted object is anticipated even under mil...

One hundred and fifteen Florida sandhill crane (Grus canadensis pratensis) chicks were captured in Osceola and Lake Counties, Florida in 1998 2000 and examined for evidence of disease. Evidence of Eimeria gruis and/or E. reichenowi infection was found in 52% of chicks examined. Ten chicks were positive for antibodies to St. Louis encephalitis virus and 1 of these chicks was also positive for an...

Open-sea stevedores of containers provide an alternative way to avoid port congestion. This process involves a mobile harbour equipped with a crane which loads/unloads containers from a large cargo ship. However, the presence of ocean waves and gusty winds can produce an excessive sway to the hoisting ropes of the crane system. This paper presents a second-order sliding mode controller for traj...

A kind of parametric finite element analysis system for the L type gantry crane’s gate frame is developed by making use of the secondary development on the platform of ANSYS, MATLAB through VC++ programming. The interface technology of VC++, ANSYS, and MATLAB is employed as well as the encapsulation on APDL. To input parameter in the VC++ and to calculate the quality of the L type gantry crane ...

This report compares the performance of three double-cycling algorithms used to determine the sequence with which to load and unload containers from a vessel with a quay crane. Double cycling is a technique which can improve the efficiency of a quay crane and container port by unloading and loading containers in the same crane cycle. The three algorithms, the greedy strategy, the proximal strat...

Overhead cranes are usually operated manually to move heavy loads. Fast and smooth movements of the loads are the main objectives of crane operations. However, both the objectives always contradict with each other, so that it is hard to achieve positioning and swing control simultaneously by using conventional methods. This paper presents the adaptive fuzzy sliding mode controller (AFSMC) to re...