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The 13th Symposium on Polar Science/Ordinary sessions [OB] Polar biology, Wed. 16 Nov.

Relatively little is known about spinner dolphins in Malaysian waters and the wider Southeast Asian region. This note represents the first known acoustic recording of the species sighted opportunistically in the northern Straits of Malacca. Over a brief 20 min sighting, 46 whistles were recorded and four tonal types were detected, with 54.4% being upsweep whistles. The whistle duration ranged from 36 to 977 ms and the frequency ranged from 6.6 to 23.8 kHz. Fifty-seven click trains with a mean interclick interval of 41.5 ± 19.3 ms were detected. These findings provide a baseline for future regional acoustic research on this species.

Synchronous digging activity and emergence from underground nests is important for sea turtle hatchlings, as it reduces predation risk and decreases energy consumption. However, patterns of underground hatching and diel digging activity prior to emergence are invisible and remain largely unknown. In this study, we acoustically monitored the activity of green turtle, Chelonia mydas, hatchlings from hatching to emergence in the field and laboratory. During the hatching period, we did not observe characteristic acoustic events corresponding to pipping and hatching. Hatchlings started digging even though there were still unhatched eggs above them, indicating that green turtles did not hatch as one synchronous group. This observation did not support our hypothesis that synchronized hatching facilitates synchronous emergence. Digging activity tended to increase at night as the hatchlings approached the sand surface and nest emergence became imminent. It is not surprising that there was diel variation in digging activity as the hatchlings approached the surface because diel fluctuations in sand temperature can provide a diel cue. Surprisingly, a diel change in digging activity was also observed when hatchlings were still at a sand depth where temperature remained relatively constant throughout the day (that is, a few days before emergence) and in the laboratory at a constant temperature. This study suggests that the diel activity pattern of hatchling green turtles may occur even in the absence of a diel temperature fluctuation cue.

Rockfish, which are well known for their site fidelity and homing ability, live sympatrically with many conspecifics. Conspecifics may be external drivers influencing rockfish movement, and rockfish may move cohesively while travelling. We tested whether rockfish formed a group when returning to their original habitat after artificial displacement and examined the routes they travelled to return home. A fine-scale multi-individual simultaneous positioning method was used to observe the movement trajectories of tagged fish. Our results showed that tagged fish, released in groups, returned to their original habitat (5 of 8 fish) but generally did not travel with other individuals. There was one exception in which 2 individuals moved together for ~100 s immediately after release. These 2 fish had no designated leader, alternating as leader and follower. Our hypothesis was partially corroborated by these rockfish possibly travelling cohesively. The returning fish tended to travel along the sea bottom and the coastline, independent of current; thus, they likely used visual cues, rather than olfactory or social cues, to return home.

We proposed a simple hyperbolic positioning method that does not require solving simultaneous quadratic equations. Moreover, we introduced the mathematical concept of a “pencil” into analytical calculations in the hyperbolic positioning method for a better understanding. In many recent studies using positioning biotelemetry, the specific procedure for intersection calculation of hyperbolas has rarely been described. This might be one of two major obstacles, with the other being clock synchronisation among receivers, for positioning biotelemetry users, including potential users. We focus only on the intersection calculation in this paper. Therefore, we propose a novel method and introduce the mathematical concept into analytical calculations. The computing performances of the novel method, an analytical method applying the concept of a pencil, and an approximating method using the Newton-Raphson method were compared regarding positioning correctness, accuracy, and calculation speed. In the novel method, hyperbolas were represented using the parameter θ, which was treated as a discrete variant. The finer the tick-width of the parameter θ, the more accurate was its positioning, but it took slightly longer to calculate. By setting the tick-width to 0.01°, a simulated trajectory was correctly and accurately localised, as in the analytical method which always correctly returned the accurate solution. The approximating method has a major limitation concerning correctness. It returns a single solution regardless of two intersections of hyperbolas; however, the positioning is accurate when the hyperbolas intersect at a single point. This study approached one major difficulty in positioning biotelemetry and will help biotelemetry users overcome this drawback with a simple and intuitive understanding of hyperbolic positioning.

We performed a retrospective survey and verification of the medical records of death cases of children (and adolescents; aged18 years) between 2014 and 2016 in pediatric specialty training facilities in Japan. Of the 2,827 registered cases at 163 facilities, 2,348 cases were included. The rate of identified deaths compared with the demographic survey, was 18.2%-21.0% by age group. The breakdown of deaths was determined as follows: 638 cases (27.2%) were due to external factors or unknown causes, 118 (5.0%) were suspected to involve child maltreatment, 932 (39.7%) were of moderate or high preventability or were indeterminable. Further detailed verification was required for 1,333 cases (56.8%). Comparison of the three prefectures with high rates of identified deaths in Japan revealed no significant differences, such as in the distribution of diseases, suggesting that there was little selection bias. The autopsy rate of deaths of unknown cause was 43.4%, indicating a high ratio of forensic autopsies. However, sufficient clinical information was not collected; therefore, thorough evaluations were difficult to perform. Cases with a moderate or high possibility of involvement of child maltreatment accounted for 5%, similar to previous studies. However, more objective evaluation is necessary. Preventable death cases including potentially preventable deaths accounted for 25%, indicating that proposals need to be made for specific preventive measures. Individual primary verification followed by secondary verification by multiple organizations is effective. It is anticipated that a child death review (CDR) system with such a multi-layered structure will be established; however, the following challenges were revealed: The subjects of CDR are all child deaths. Even if natural death cases are entrusted to medical organizations, and complicated cases to other special panels, the numbers are very high. Procedures need to be established to sufficiently verify these cases. Although demographic statistics are useful for identifying all deaths, care must be taken when interpreting such data. Detailed verification of the cause of death will affect the determination of subsequent preventability. Verification based only on clinical information is difficult, so a procedure that collates non-medical information sources should be established. It is necessary to organize the procedures to evaluate the involvement of child maltreatment objectively and raise awareness among practitioners. To propose specific preventive measures, a mechanism to ensure multiprofessional diverse perspectives is crucial, in addition to fostering the foundation of individual practitioners. To implement the proposed measures, it is also necessary to discuss the responsibilities and authority of each organization. Once the CDR system is implemented, verification of the system should be repeated. Efforts to learn from child deaths and prevent deaths that are preventable as much as possible are essential duties of pediatricians. Pediatricians are expected to undertake the identified challenges and promote and lead the implementation of the CDR system. This is a word-for-word translation of the report in J. Jpn. Pediatr. Soc. 2019; 123 (11): 1736-1750, which is available only in the Japanese language.

International audience; AbstractThe simultaneous wing movement by multiple worker bees in a colony produces a hissing sound, which is a novel acoustic and vibrational signal of the honey bees. Hissing of honey bees is thought to be a response to direct, threatening stimuli. However, we discovered Japanese honey bees (Apis cerana japonica) can hiss even without obvious disturbances in previous study. In this study, to understand the temporal characteristics of honey bee hissing, we conducted 24-h sound recordings over 7 months in 2015 and investigated when A. cerana japonica hissed every day. Additionally, we also investigated the relationship of hissing onset and offset times with sunrise and sunset times, and environmental factors. We found that honey bees hiss daily during daytime and most frequently at dawn, with hissing onset/offset occurring mostly within 30 min of sunrise/sunset time. Hissing onset and offset were significantly related to sunrise and sunset times, respectively, and also to solar radiation intensity. The findings reveal that A. cerana japonica hissing has unique temporal patterns, and also shed a new light on vibrational collective behavior in honey bees.

The 11th Symposium on Polar Science/Ordinary sessions: [OB] Polar Biology, Poster presentations, Mon. 16 Nov. - Fri. 18 Dec.

Hissing behavior of honey bees is simultaneous wing movement of multiple honey bees, and loud sounds or vibrations are produced from their movements. In previous the study, hissing sound of honey bees has historically been considered as an aposematic signal. This is because hissing is generally observed when disturbance occur, such as mechanical disturbance or visually disturbing stimuli like hornets approaching the colony. Few studies, however, have investigated situations in which honey bees hiss. In this study, 24-h sound recording and video monitoring were conducted to investigate when the Japanese honey bees (Apis cerana japonica) hissed and checked the external environment of the colony when they hissed. As a result, we found that A. cerana japonica hissed not only when hornets approached but also when there was no obvious threatening stimulus outside the colony. In addition, clear diurnal patterns of hissing were observed. It is still not clear whether hissing in A. cerana japonica is more than aposematic signal or not, but our findings of unique occurrence patterns of their hissing raise question about the potential function of hissing behavior in A. cerana japonica.

Dugongs (Dugong dugon) are seagrass specialists distributed in shallow coastal waters in tropical and subtropical seas. The area and distribution of the dugongs’ feeding trails, which are unvegetated winding tracks left after feeding, have been used as an indicator of their feeding ground utilization. However, current ground-based measurements of these trails require a large amount of time and effort. Here, we developed effective methods to observe the dugongs’ feeding trails using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) images (1) by extracting the dugong feeding trails using deep neural networks. Furthermore, we demonstrated two applications as follows; (2) extraction of the daily new feeding trails with deep neural networks and (3) estimation the direction of the feeding trails. We obtained aerial photographs from the intertidal seagrass bed at Talibong Island, Trang Province, Thailand. The F1 scores, which are a measure of binary classification model’s accuracy taking false positives and false negatives into account, for the method (1) were 89.5% and 87.7% for the images with ground sampling resolutions of 1 cm/pixel and 0.5 cm/pixel, respectively, while the F1 score for the method (2) was 61.9%. The F1 score for the method (1) was high enough to perform scientific studies on the dugong. However, the method (2) should be improved, and there remains a need for manual correction. The mean area of the extracted daily new feeding trails from September 12–27, 2019, was 187.8 m2per day (n = 9). Total 63.9% of the feeding trails was estimated to have direction within a range of 112.5° and 157.5°. These proposed new methods will reduce the time and efforts required for future feeding trail observations and contribute to future assessments of the dugongs’ seagrass habitat use.

Examining characteristics of a species’ fine-scale habitat use contributes to effective and practical spatially explicit conservation. Dugongs (Dugong dugon) are endangered herbivorous mammals that use vocalisation for communication. In a small, specific area of Thai waters, classified here as a “vocal hotspot,” vocalisation rates are elevated, implying that in this area acoustic communication plays an important role. We recorded dugong calls in the vocal hotspot and a nearby feeding area. We then compared temporal patterns of vocalisation between the two sites to investigate the degree of variability in vocalisation between fine-scale habitats, which is important for understanding dugong habitat use by passive acoustic monitoring. From the 489 total hours of recording, 6607 and 2032 calls were observed in the vocal hotspot and feeding area, with mean vocalisation rates (calls per hour) 13.5 and 4.2, respectively. Vocalisation rate had distinctive 24-h periodicity in only the vocal hotspot. Environmental factors that correlated with changes in detected vocalisation rate also differed between the two locations. Water level correlated with vocalisation rate in the feeding area; in contrast, current direction correlated with vocalisation rate in the vocal hotspot. In conclusion, the vocalisation pattern for dugongs differed between the two sites, and we suggest that their habitat use varies at fine spatial scales.

The majority of surveys on food webs of aquatic ecosystems have been conducted during the day owning to difficulties in sampling animals at night. In this study, to examine diurnal changes in predator-prey interactions in a temperate seagrass Zostera marina bed, a quantitative day/night survey of fish, the dominant animal community, coupled with acoustic telemetry of their predators, was conducted. The number of species, abundance, and biomass of piscivorous predators and mean trophic level during the night were significantly higher than those in the day in all seasons. Analysis of the stomach contents of 182 piscivorous predators showed that no fish predation occurred during the day whereas predation occurred during the night in winter, spring, and summer. Acoustic telemetry demonstrated nocturnal visits by dominant piscivorous fish species (rockfishes and conger eel) to the seagrass bed. We conclude that the nocturnal visits by piscivorous fishes increased the predation risk and trophic level in the fish nursery. The ecological functions of seagrass beds should be reevaluated accounting for day/night changes in food webs; these areas serve as nurseries for juvenile and small-sized fishes during the day and as foraging grounds for predators during the night.

Key Clinical Message We present a case of severe Raynaud phenomenon (RP) in an infant. The current strategy of RP treatment is incomplete; excluding secondary Raynaud phenomenon is vital as well. This case aims to help those with similar symptoms in the future by gathering data on cases.

International audience; AbstractTo investigate how to accurately identify bee species using their sounds, we conducted acoustic analysis to identify three pollinating bee species (Apis mellifera, Bombus ardens, Tetralonia nipponensis) and a hornet (Vespa simillima xanthoptera) by their flight sounds. Sounds of the insects and their environment (background noises and birdsong) were recorded in the field. The use of fundamental frequency and mel-frequency cepstral coefficients to describe feature values of the sounds, and supported vector machines to classify the sounds, correctly distinguished sound samples from environmental sounds with high recalls and precision (0.96–1.00). At the species level, our approach could classify the insect species with relatively high recalls and precisions (0.7–1.0). The flight sounds of V.s. xanthoptera, in particular, were perfectly identified (precision and recall 1.0). Our results suggest that insect flight sounds are potentially useful for detecting bees and quantifying their activity.

To determine whether a peripheral capillary oxygen saturation (SpO2) of 95% to 96% should be considered “nonurgent” in school-aged children, as suggested by the Canadian Emergency Department Triage and Acuity Scale. School-aged children (6–12 years old) with a normal body temperature (36.5–37.4°C) who visited our department between September, 2014 and August, 2015 (n = 4556) were divided into 4 groups based on SpO2: group A: 99% to 100%; group B: 97% to 98%; group C: 95% to 96%; and group D: ≤94%. The heart rate (HR), respiratory rate (RR), and hospitalization rate were compared among the groups, and also between children with SpO2 95% to 96% and matched controls with SpO2 ≥97% (n = 280 each). Among 4556 eligible patients, groups A, B, C, and D comprised 2700 patients (59.3%), 1534 patients (33.6%), 280 patients (6.2%), and 42 patients (0.9%), respectively. The median (interquartile range [IQR]) RR significantly increased with decreasing SpO2 (23 [20–25], 24 [20–26], 24 [23–30], and 30 [24–40] breaths/min in groups A–D, respectively; P

This study aimed to investigate the penetration rate of child protection teams (CPTs) in medical institutions and associations between CPT functions and hospital services. We collected data in October of 2015 from 377 hospitals in Japan offering pediatric organ transplantation. The questionnaire included questions regarding the existence of a CPT, the number of child maltreatment cases discussed and reported per year, CPT functions including 21 items about staffing, manuals, meeting, prevention, education, and collaboration, and the services provided by the hospital. Of the 377 institutions, 122 (32.4%) answered the survey. There were significant associations between CPT functions and the number of pediatric beds ( r = .27), number of pediatricians ( r = .27), number of outpatients ( r = .39), number of emergency outpatients ( r = .28), and emergency medical care ( p = .009). In a multiple regression analysis, CPT functions were significantly associated with the number of CPT members, pediatric outpatient numbers, and pediatric emergency outpatient numbers. Japan has no CPT guidelines that outline what CPTs should offer in terms of structure, staffing, functions, and systems. Hospitals with many pediatric and emergency outpatients are expected to play major roles in providing services such as specialty care, intensive care, and education. They are also expected to play a role in detecting and managing child maltreatment, and have, by their own initiative, improved their capacities to achieve these goals.

There is a potential trade-off between grouping and the optimizing of the energetic efficiency of individual locomotion. Although intermittent locomotion, e.g. glide and upward swimming (GAU), can reduce the cost of locomotion at the individual level, the link between the optimization of individual intermittent locomotion and the behavioural synchronization in a group, especially among members with different sizes, is unknown. Here, we continuously monitored the schooling behaviour of a negatively buoyant fish, Pacific bluefin tuna (N= 10; 21.0 ∼ 24.5 cm), for 24 h in an open-sea net cage using accelerometry. All the fish repeated GAU during the recording periods. Although the GAU synchrony was maintained at high levels (overall mean = 0.62 for the cross-correlation coefficient of the GAU timings), larger fish glided for a longer duration per glide and more frequently than smaller fish. Similar-sized pairs showed significantly higher GAU synchrony than differently sized pairs. Our accelerometry results and the simulation based on hydrodynamic theory indicated that the advantage of intermittent locomotion in energy savings may not be fully optimized for smaller animals in a group when faced with the maintenance of group cohesion, suggesting that size assortative shoaling would be advantageous.

Background In 2014, we created the training program for personnel in medical institutions in Japan to combat child maltreatment. Our objective was to document the effectiveness of the program for professionals from multiple disciplines working in medical institutions. Methods The questionnaire designed for the training program included demographic questions such years of practice and area of specialty, i.e. physician, nurse, social worker, public health nurse, technician, and others, as well as experience with suspected child maltreatment cases and training in dealing with such cases. The questionnaire included 15 statements designed to ascertain practical knowledge and attitudes relevant to addressing child maltreatment. We compared baseline scores determined before the lecture with those based on answers given after the lecture. Results 760 participants completed the survey, including 227 physicians, 223 nurses, 38 technologists, 27 social workers, 11 public health nurses, and 174 with other occupations. There was a significant difference between the baseline scores of participants with versus without experience in suspected child maltreatment or training to deal with child maltreatment cases (F: 16.3; P < 0.001). After the lectures, the average score rose above the baseline (11.18 vs 10.57). The rates of correct answers for 9 questionnaire items increased significantly. Conclusions Professionals from a range of fields need clinical skills and judgement to decide if a child's injuries are due to maltreatment. The combination of increased clinical experience along with a high-quality didactic lecture, appears to be the most effective method of raising awareness and enhancing skills. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

To quantitatively examine the complex environmental factors affecting acoustical behavior on marine mammals like dugongs, a combination of passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) and statistical modeling should be effective approach. We deployed automatic underwater sound monitoring systems (AUSOMS) on the sea floor of different two sites and recorded the dugongs' vocalization. The effects of the time period and tidal change to the vocalization rate, which is dugong calls per hour, were estimated with using generalized linear model assuming negative binomial distribution. Time periods is similarly affected to dugongs vocalization in both site; however, tidal effect different between the sites. We could provide the first insight for the effectiveness of the combination of PAM and statistical modeling to dugongs' acoustical behavior itself.

Recent advances in biotelemetry techniques, especially positioning methods, have revealed the detailed behaviour and movement of aquatic organisms. Behavioural intermittence in animal locomotion, such as the Lévy walk, is a popular topic in the field of movement ecology. Previous attempts to describe intermittent locomotion quantitatively have been constrained by the spatial and temporal resolution possible with conventional biotelemetry systems. This study developed a fine-scale spatiotemporal three-dimensional positioning method using a new biotelemetry system with a positional precision of

Dugongs vocalize bird-like calls, such as chirps and trills but the functional definitions of the calls are yet to be clarified. A series of playback experiments was conducted in Thai waters to investigate their call-back behavior. The population was exposed to 4 different playback stimuli; a recorded wild dugong’s chirp, a synthesized down-sweep sound having similar frequencies to the dugong chirp, a synthesized constant-frequency sound, and no sound as a control. Vocalizing dugongs were localized using an array of stereo-underwater-recording systems (AUSOMS-Ds). Total of 4068 calls were observed in reaction to the stimuli. Wild dugongs vocalized more frequently after the playback of dugong chirps (2.8 calls/min) than those of constant-frequency (0.55 calls/min) and control (0.2 calls/min). Ratio of the dugong chirps to all of the call type increased during the playback period. Dugongs were localized on 52 occasions within 25 m range from the playback source. Source level and duration of the chirps from ...