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Virtual Sailing Pty Ltd is an Australian company that for over 10 years has invested significant time and resources into developing a ride on sailing simulator, which replicates several classes including the Laser and megabyte sailing dinghies. The simulator provides a means for training and performance assessment of sailors; including the feature of providing rehabilitation and training for disabled body sailors through the V-Sail Access Simulator. Prior to this project, the sailing simulator had not been validated with experimental testing. It was proposed that an experimental Data Acquisition System be used in a series of manoeuvring trials, in order to obtain experimental validation data. Full scale experimental testing was performed at Albert Park Lake, Melbourne. The aim of testing was to acquire validation data including dinghy velocity over land; Apparent Wind Speed (AWS) and Apparent Wind Angle (AWA), Rudder angle and GPS position. Subsequent testing on the simulator using experimental course data from Albert Park Lake was used to systematically repeat full scale course laps and manoeuvres in order to obtain simulated data for comparison with experimental data. Comparison between experimental and simulated data formed the validation component of the project. The validation study found that the manoeuvring model employed in the simulator replicated the results from experimental testing, especially with regard to manoeuvring response of the simulator compared to experimental results. Average dinghy velocity through specific headings relative to true wind angle showed variation to the simulator (within an order of magnitude), which requires further investigation. Specifically, it is recommended that future work investigates the validation of the main resistance and powering components of the simulation, including but not limited to; hydrodynamic hull drag, righting moment provided/required by the sailor, and aerodynamic sail forces. Finally, the Data Acquisition System and supporting equipment was found to be robust, and potentially applicable to other marine vessels.

Headstarting, in which eggs are taken from the nests of wild birds, incubated artificially and the chicks reared in captivity before release to the wild, has been conducted since 2012 on the subarctic breeding grounds of the Critically-Endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper Calidris pygmaea in an attempt to increase the production of fledged juveniles. We used resightings of individually-marked head-started juveniles after they had moved away from the natal release site to assess differences in post-release survival of birds released at the same site on the same date in relation to differences in the age at which they were released. There was an unexpected significant tendency for survival to decrease with increasing age at release, both for survival beyond the period immediately after release and also to one year old. This effect of age at release is likely to be causal because multiple logistic regression analyses indicated that potential confounding effects of year of release and hatching date did not have statistically significant effects when included in models along with age at release. The mechanism underlying the effect of age at release is unknown, but possible explanations include increased stress or risk of disease or injury of individuals kept captive for longer periods. Our results suggest that releasing all juveniles at the typical age at fledging of wild birds (ca. 17 days) would improve post-release survival substantially. Possible further research could include experiments in which groups of juveniles matched for hatching date and other covariates are released at different ages in the same year and correlative studies of the condition and health of captive juveniles in relation to previous avicultural interventions and the duration of time in captivity.

There are significant negative effects of exposure to spent lead ammunition on wildlife and human health. A joint statement was issued by nine UK shooting and rural organisations on 24th February 2020 intended to encourage a voluntary transition to non-lead shotgun ammunition within five years “in consideration of wildlife, the environment and to ensure a market for the healthiest game products”. We dissected carcasses of wild-shot common pheasants Phasianus colchicus sold or offered for human consumption in Britain in the shooting season between 1st October 2020 and 1st February 2021 to recover shotgun pellets. The principal metallic element composing one pellet from each bird was identified using inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry. The results showed that 99% of the 180 pheasants from which shotgun pellets were recovered had been killed using lead shotgun ammunition, compared with 100% in a much smaller study conducted in the 2008/2009 shooting season. We conclude that the shooting and rural organisations’ joint statement, and their subsequent promotional actions, have not yet had a detectable effect on the ammunition types used by shooters supplying pheasants to the British game market., The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Waitrose & Partners and Lincolnshire Game contributed to the costs of materials and reagents for the study.

We synthesized the liquid crystal dimer and trimer members of a series of flexible linear oligomers and characterized their microscopic and nanoscopic properties using resonant soft x-ray scattering and a number of other experimental techniques. On the microscopic scale, the twist-bend phases of the dimer and trimer appear essentially identical. However, while the liquid crystal dimer exhibits a temperature-dependent variation of its twist-bend helical pitch varying from 100 - 170 {\AA} on heating, the trimer exhibits an essentially temperature-independent pitch of 66 {\AA}, significantly shorter than those reported for other twist-bend forming materials in the literature. We attribute this to a specific combination of intrinsic conformational bend of the trimer molecules and a sterically favorable intercalation of the trimers over a commensurate fraction (two-thirds) of the molecular length. We develop a geometric model of the twist-bend phase for these materials with the molecules arranging into helical chain structures, and we fully determine their respective geometric parameters., Comment: supplemental information included

The Critically Endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper Calidris pygmaea breeds in arctic and subarctic Russia and migrates to winter on coastal mudflats in south-east Asia. Its world population is probably about 700 individuals. We report Lincoln-Petersen closed-population estimates of the number of Spoon-billed Sandpipers at Tiaozini, a coastal site in Jiangsu Province, China, based upon resightings and scan surveys of individually-marked leg-flagged birds. Surveys were conducted in September-October, when adult Spoon-billed Sandpipers are moulting their primary feathers and long-distance movements are unlikely. We estimated that 220 birds were present at Tiaozini in 2017 and 224 in 2018. Nearly all of them were adults (one-year old or older), so about 40% of the world population of this age class was estimated to be present. Hence, protection of the mudflats and roost sites at Tiaozini is of global importance for the conservation of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper.

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