A previous conference presentation (Baltimore, 2004) introduced the subject of obscured turbo-fans and discussed it in the context of bird strikes. In such a case, the bird will have significant interaction with the internal structure of the aircraft intake during its passage from intake lip to fan and damage to the bird may well occur causing it to pose a significantly different threat to the ...

Automatic off-line classification and recognition of bird vocalizations has been a subject of interest to ornithologists and pattern detection researchers for many years. Several new applications, including bird vocalization classification for aircraft bird strike avoidance, will require real time classification in the presence of noise and other disturbances. The vocalizations of many common b...

In order for airports to manage the bird strike risk effectively, a risk assessment process needs to be carried out to identify the major hazards at the airport, the levels of risk that they produce, and the most cost effective means of reducing that risk. Despite the fact that bird controllers, managers and consultants make informal bird strike risk assessments throughout their working lives, ...

From February to May, 2013, 132 human avian influenza H7N9 cases were identified in China resulting in 37 deaths. We developed a novel, simple and effective compartmental modeling framework for transmissions among (wild and domestic) birds as well as from birds to human, to infer important epidemiological quantifiers, such as basic reproduction number for bird epidemic, bird-to-human infection ...

Army ants (Formicidae: Ecitoninae) are top predators in neotropical forests. Army ant raids support a community of diverse organisms, including birds that attend the raids to collect prey. While elevation and forest fragmentation influence army ant and insectivorous bird communities, their effects on the interaction between army ants and bird species is unknown. We studied the size and species ...

This paper presents an extension of our recent work on recognition of multiple bird species from their vocalisations by incorporating an improved acoustic modelling. The acoustic scene is segmented into spectro-temporal isolated segments by employing a sinusoidal detection algorithm, which is able to handle multiple simultaneous bird vocalisations. Each segment is represented as a temporal sequ...

The effects of bird feeders on local densities of Ixodes scapularis ticks and prevalence of Lyme disease were examined in residential areas of Dutchess County, NY. Ticks were collected, counted, and analyzed forBorrelia burgdorferi spirochetes in 2001Ð2002 on residential properties with and without bird feeders. Tick densities and infection prevalence were not signiÞcantly different on properti...

Private gardens provide habitat and resources for many birds living in human-dominated landscapes. While wild bird feeding is recognised as one of the most popular forms of human-wildlife interaction, almost nothing is known about the use of bird baths. This citizen science initiative explores avian assemblages at bird baths in private gardens in south-eastern Australia and how this differs wit...

Zoos may play an important role in conservation when they maintain and breed large numbers of animals that are threatened with extinction. Bird conservation is in a privileged situation owing to the extensive biological information available about this class. Annual inventories produced by the "Sociedade de Zoológicos do Brasil" in the years 1981, 1990, 2000, and 2005 were analyzed. Variables, ...