Evaluation of a modified neck snare to live-capture coyotes :: essays research papers

Pruss, S.D., N.L. Cool, R.J. Hudson and A.R. Gaboury. 2002. Evaluation of a modified neck snare to live-capture coyotes. Wildlife Society bulletin. 30(2):508-516. Many researchers opt for the most humane and safe techniques when obtaining live animals for study. A variety of devices are employed in the trapping of coyotes (Canis latrans), one option being the neck snare. Since all trapping methods have their dangers, researchers in the article â€Å"Evaluation of a modified neck snare to live-capture coyotes,† are motivated to improve trap safety to decrease mortality rates. The modified neck snare consisted of a supporting wire, swivel, locking neck snare and a diazepam tab sedative. The thick, supporting anchor wire (firmly attached to a tree or log) was secured to a snare swivel. Connected to the swivel was the locking snare, which was comprised of a Cam-LocTM. The lock was set to 27cm so that coyotes could be caught safely while reducing the capture of non-subject animals (i.e. elk, moose, deer, and bison). The diazepam tab, also attached to the swivel, consisted of 40mg of crushed diazepam between two strips of cotton. Consumed at the time of capture, this sedative was important to live-captures by decreasing aggression thus lowering incident of injury (lacerations or bruising) and death due to stress or fatal injuries. Research of coyotes occurred in a 194-km2 area of Elk Island National Park (EINP), of Alberta, Canada. 51 coyotes were captured between 15 November-1 April over a period of 9,379 trap nights and 7,421 trap days. Researchers took care in assembling the snares so that any traces of human scent were masked. The traps were then set up along game trails avoiding any exposed or hazardous sites. Every 12-24 hours they were checked to reduce capture time, further reducing stress and injury. Once captured, the coyote was restrained and the immobilizing anesthetic, Telazol, was administered to keep them stationary. The animal was kept warm during the cleaning and stitching of injuries, recording of weight, fitting of eartags and radiocollars, blood collection and injection of antibiotics and an antiparasitic agent.

Maps of Geology

There are different phenomena happening in the earth’s crust and some of those are the occurrence of folds and faults. Both phenomena are caused by forces like tension and compression. Folds are bends in the rock surfaces while Faults are fractures in the earth’s crust which allows blocks of rocks to move relative to one another. When this movement becomes rapid, it results to earthquakes (â€Å"What is a fault? ,† 2008). Since there are two blocks of rocks involved in a fault, the block which is above the fault plane is the Hanging-wall while the block below the fault plane is called the Footwall (Laske, 2006).There are three general types of faults: the Dip-slip, Strike-slip and the Oblique faults. A Dip-slip fault is a type of fault wherein the movement is vertical. Here, one block of rock moves up and the other moves down. In the Dip-slip fault, the fracture may be classified as either a Normal or a Reverse fault. For the Normal type, the Hanging-wall moves d own while the Footwall moves up. This type of fault is caused by tensional stress. Unlike the Normal type, the Reverse fault has a Hanging-wall that moves up and a Footwall that moves down.The force responsible for this fault is the compressional stress. A Strike-slip fault is a type of fault where the movement of the blocks is horizontal. Strike-slip faults can be classified according to the displacement of the block farther when viewed facing the fault line. If the displacement is to the left, then it is a left-lateral fault otherwise it is a right-lateral fault (Gore, 1996). As for faults exhibiting the vertical as well as the horizontal movement, those are classified as the Oblique type of fault (â€Å"What is a fault? ,† 2008).A famous right-lateral fault is the San Andreas Fault which involves the North American and Pacific plates. If this would continue its activity, there will be more earthquakes in the area and it is also possible that the two plates involved will be really far from each other as time Faults, Folds, Maps 3 comes (Fialko, 2006). With this, one should be really prepared because reported earthquakes in this area are dangerous. People there should be taught on how to deal with this type of situation. Mapping has already been an important part of society.Maps can show a lot of information about a place depending on what kind of map that is. One kind of map used is the Topographic map wherein contour lines are used to show the surface of the earth. These lines are imaginary lines with equal elevations that can be used for detailed features of an area like streets, vegetation and buildings (â€Å"Topographic Map Symbols,† 2005). Another kind of map used is the Geologic map. Unlike the Topographic map, this map’s concern is to show the geologic details of the area like locations of folds and faults and types of rock present.Also, geologic maps have distinctive colors which represent different geological units (â€Å"Geol ogic Maps,† 2000). Figure 1 is an illustration of a mountain and to be able to identify the slope of the land surface, one can use a Topographic map. If the contour lines that will be seen after mapping the area lie close to each other, the slope is steep otherwise; the land surface has a gradual slope (Rosenberg, 2007). Building a house in a location like that of the illustration may be hard but it may be possible if the location that will be chosen has rocks and soil that are stable and far from folds and fault lines.This is because one would not want a house built in a place with frequent earthquakes and can be easily ruined by landslides and the like. This may be done by mapping the area through a geologic map. Faults, Folds, Maps 4 Figure 1. An illustration of a cone of a former mountain. As said earlier, different phenomena are caused by different stresses. The compressional, shear and tensional stresses can help form structural features in rocks such as faults, dikes, s ills, and bedding planes. Locations for establishing a place also depends on these factors.Canmore community for example may have been established in its location because of that. Faults, Folds, Maps 5 References Fialko, Y. (2006). Interseismic strain accumulation and the earthquake potential on the southern San Andreas fault system. Nature, 441(June 22 2006), 968-971. Geologic Maps. (2000, September 25, 2000). Retrieved June 30, 2008, from http://www. nature. nps. gov/geology/usgsnps/gmap/gmap1. html#color Gore, P. J. W. (1996). Faults. Retrieved June 30, 2008, from http://facstaff. gpc. edu/~pgore/geology/geo101/faults. htm Laske, G. (2006). Earthquakes and Seismology.Retrieved June 30, 2008, from http://quakeinfo. ucsd. edu/~gabi/erth15-06/Lecture06. html National Mapping Discipline, U. S. Geological Survey. Topographic Map Symbols. (2005). from http://erg. usgs. gov/isb/pubs/booklets/symbols/ Rosenberg, M. (2007). Topographic Maps: An Overview of Topographic Maps [Electronic Ver sion]. Retrieved June 30, 2008, from http://geography. about. com/od/topographicmaps/a/topographicmaps. htm UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory. What is a fault? (2008). Retrieved June 30, 2008, from http://seismo. berkeley. edu/faq/fault_0. html

History of the Michelson-Morley Experiment

The Michelson-Morley experiment was an attempt to measure the motion of the Earth through the luminous ether. Though often called the Michelson-Morley experiment, the phrase actually refers to a series of experiments carried out by Albert Michelson in 1881 and then again (with better equipment) at Case Western University in 1887 along with chemist Edward Morley. Though the ultimate result was negative, the experiment key in that it opened the door for an alternative explanation for the strange wave-like behavior of light. How It Was Supposed to Work By the end of the 1800s, the dominant theory of how light worked was that it was a wave of electromagnetic energy, because of experiments such as Youngs double slit experiment. The problem is that a wave had to move through some sort of medium. Something has to be there to do the waving. Light was known to travel through outer space (which scientists believed was a vacuum) and you could even create a vacuum chamber and shine a light through it, so all of the evidence made it clear that light could move through a region without any air or other matter. To get around this problem, physicists hypothesized that there was a substance which filled the entire universe. They called this substance the luminous ether (or sometimes luminiferous aether, though it seems like this is just kind of throwing in pretentious-sounding syllables and vowels). Michelson and Morley (probably mostly Michelson) came up with the idea that you should be able to measure the motion of the Earth through the ether. The ether was typically believed to be unmoving and static (except, of course, for the vibration), but the Earth was moving quickly. Think about when you hang your hand out of the car window on a drive. Even if its not windy, your own motion makes it seem windy. The same should be true for the ether. Even if it stood still, since the Earth moves, then light that goes in one direction should be moving faster along with the ether than light that goes in the opposite direction. Either way, so long as there was some sort of motion between the ether and the Earth, it should have created an effective ether wind that would have either pushed or hindered the motion of the light wave, similar to how a swimmer moves faster or slower depending on whether he is moving along with or against the current. To test this hypothesis, Michelson and Morley (again, mostly Michelson) designed a device that split a beam of light and bounced it off mirrors so that it moved in different directions and finally hit the same target. The principle at work was that if two beams traveled the same distance along different paths through the ether, they should move at different speeds and therefore when they hit the final target screen those light beams would be slightly out of phase with each other, which would create a recognizable interference pattern. This device, therefore, came to be known as the Michelson interferometer (shown in the graphic at the top of this page). The Results The result was disappointing because they found absolutely no evidence of the relative motion bias they were looking for. No matter which path the beam took, light seemed to be moving at precisely the same speed. These results were published in 1887. One other way to interpret the results at the time was to assume that the ether was somehow connected to the motion of the Earth, but no one really could come up with a model that allowed this that made sense. In fact, in 1900 the British physicist Lord Kelvin famously indicated that this result was one of the two clouds that marred an otherwise complete understanding of the universe, with a general expectation that it would be resolved in relatively short order. It would take nearly 20 years (and the work of Albert Einstein) to really get over the conceptual hurdles needed to abandon the ether model entirely and adopt the current model, in which light exhibits wave-particle duality. Source Find the full text of their paper published in the 1887 edition of the American Journal of Science, archived online at the AIP website.