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In the present work, analytical and experimental investigations were performed on creep buckling. Special attention was focussed on bifurcation behavior during creep deformation. The finite element method was used to analyze creep buckling of circular cylindrical shells without initial imperfection. The number of circumferential waves obtained from the analyses agrees well with those of the experiments. The present experimental investigation shows that the circumferential waves are suddenly caused near a bulge. It is also found that there is no correlation between the wavelength of the circumferential waves observed at creep buckling and that of the circumferential initial imperfection. Deformation patterns at the bifurcation creep buckling obtained from the analyses are analogous to those of the experiments. It is concluded from the analyses and the experiments that the circumferential waves observed in creep buckling experiments are due to bifurcation buckling during creep deformation.

The establishment of a sexing technique at an early developmental stage is an important issue in sturgeon aquaculture, yet the mechanism of sex differentiation in sturgeons remains poorly understood. This study aimed to identify genes involved in gonadal sex differentiation and to investigate sexually dimorphic gene expression in undifferentiated gonads. RNA-seq analyses using next-generation sequencers were carried out on undifferentiated gonads of five 9-month-old juvenile Russian sturgeon Acipenser gueldenstaedtii. A total of 45 686 832 (8498 Mb) and 79 743 269 (7887 Mb) quality-controlled reads were obtained using Ion PGM and Hi Seq 2000 sequencers, respectively, and were assembled into 338 648 contigs (N50: 532 b). t BLASTx analyses identified 26 transcripts potentially involved in gonadal differentiation. Read-mapping analyses were performed to obtain relative transcript levels ( RPKM values). Multivariate analyses of the RPKM values of five transcripts ( gsdf, dmrt1a, dmrt1b, foxl2 and cyp19a1a) showed that the five individuals could be separated into two distinct groups. One group, comprising two individuals, had increased levels of foxl2, hsd17b1 and cyp19a1a, suggesting differentiation into females. Alternatively, levels of gsdf were higher in the other three individuals, suggesting differentiation into males. We describe the levels of 26 transcripts potentially involved in gonadal differentiation in undifferentiated sturgeon gonads and suggest that levels of gsdf, foxl2, hsd17b1 and cyp19a1a are appropriate sexing markers for sturgeon at an early developmental stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive collections were made of the larvae of the temperate Japanese eel Anguilla japonica and the tropical giant mottled eel Anguilla marmorata in an overlapping area of the North Equatorial Current region of the western North Pacific Ocean. Collections of 189 A. marmorata and > 2500 A. japonica larvae during nine surveys from 1991 to 2007 showed that these two anguillid eels have similar spawning areas just west of the southern West Mariana Ridge. In July to August 2006 and August 2007, morphologically and genetically identified A. marmorata preleptocephali were mainly collected between 14·5–15° N and 142–142·5° E, where A. japonica preleptocephali were also caught in some of the same net tows. Fewer A. marmorata preleptocephali, however, were collected ( n = 31) compared to those of A. japonica ( n = c. 165), and fewer small larvae of A. marmorata were collected per tow than A. japonica ( n = 1–10 and 1–294, respectively), suggesting relatively smaller spawning aggregations of A. marmorata. The distribution of preleptocephali and small larvae was wider in longitude in A. marmorata (131– 143° E) than in A. japonica (137–143° E), while the latitudinal range was almost the same (12–17° N). Although spawning by these two species overlaps both spatially and temporally, the tropical eels of the North Pacific population of A. marmorata probably have a much longer spawning season with fewer spawners, at least in summer, and recruit to a much wider latitudinal range of growth habitats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]