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Using UAVs in seabird research & monitoring: workshop at the 14th International Seabird Group Conference 2018 Organisers: Matt Wood (University of Gloucestershire) & Matty Murphy (Natural Resources Wales) Workshop outline: Rapidly advancing drone technology offers opportunities and challenges to both seabird researchers and the relevant regulatory bodies. This workshop will bring together experts in the practise and policy of using UAVs for seabirds, to share best practise on the design of UAV surveys to capture useful imagery whilst minimising disturbance. We aim to combine our experience with UAVs, to guide their future use and inform the development of policy. Participants will gain: - Insights on how to carry out an effective UAV survey whilst minimising disturbance to seabirds - Understanding of the regulatory framework that UAV users must follow - Opportunity to feed into a review of best practice in the use of UAVs for seabird surveys Time: 1400-1530 (1730, Monday 3 September 2018 Location: Central Teaching Hub, University of Liverpool Programme: Case studies of the use of UAVs with seabirds: Start: Matt Wood (University of Gloucestershire) Intro & Welcome 3min 45s: Norm Ratcliffe (BAS) A seabirder’s guide to UAVs 31min: Matty Murphy (NRW) UAVs and environmental law 46min: Robin Ward (NIRAS) Drone-captured still imagery to survey cliff-nesting seabirds at Flamborough & Filey pSPA 1h 03min: Graham Rush, Megan Stone, Lucy Clarke & Matt Wood (University of Gloucestershire). Semi-automated counts of breeding gulls 1h 18min 30s: Alex Banks & Alex Kilcoyne (Natural England). The use of UAVs to count inland breeding Lesser Black-backed Gulls in the Forest of Bowland 1h 33min 45s: Andy Webb (HiDef Aerial Surveying) Census of nesting common gulls in Aberdeenshire 1h 43min 50s: Kyle Elliot (McGill University). The use of UAV’s to count cliff-nesting seabirds in North America Recordings of presentations: Part 1: https://youtu.be/RmkBt4MLYdY Part 2: https://youtu.be/pbVB0_PiMvE (last 7 minutes of Kyle Elliot's presentation) A Seabirder's Guide to UAVs (Norm Ratcliffe, 25 mins) https://youtu.be/FEx0fcCKszM

Surveillance and monitoring responses to Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) Workshop 15th International Seabird Group Conference - Monday 22 August 2022, University College Cork, Ireland The 2021-22 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) outbreak in wild birds has devastated populations of North Atlantic seabirds - bonxies, gannets and terns in particular. In this workshop we will bring together disease experts and seabirders, to identify the issues around HPAI and seabirds and what we can do to address them. - How can we carry out effective HPAI surveillance? - What biosecurity measures could help reduce the chances of an outbreak? - Should an outbreak occur, how might we carry out HPAI monitoring? - How might we adapt monitoring protocols (e.g., Seabird Monitoring Programme) to minimise HPAI transmission? - What are demographic and movement study priorities to understand the transmission and impact of HPAI? - How can policy frameworks respond to the risks of HPAI now and in the future? These are questions we have for now, but we will want to hear from you, to develop solution-focused thinking that looks to 2023 and beyond. Sadly, HPAI is likely to return and we must adapt and be ready to continue our work to understand and conserve our internationally important seabird populations. Organisers - Amandine Gamble, University of Glasgow / Cornell University (@AmandineGamble on Twitter) - Emma Philip, NatureScot (@EmmaPhilip20 on Twitter) - Matt Wood, University of Gloucestershire (@wood_mj on Twitter) More information about the conference: corkseabirdconference.com Program of talks: (available below) 1. Michelle Wille (University of Sydney, Doherty Institute) - Avian influenza 101 & context of seabird outbreaks 2. Thijs Kuiken (Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam) - Recent changes in the epidemiology of the Goose/Guangdong lineage of HPAI virus 3. Ibrahim Alfarwi (RSPB) - The avian flu outbreak on Coquet Island, Northumberland 4. Emma Cunningham (University of Edinburgh) - Seabirds and avian flu - Where do we go from here? 5. Tom Hart (University of Oxford) - Remote monitoring solutions: cameras, drones and AI 6. Emma Philip (NatureScot) - Weathering the storm - A policy response (Please cite the talks using the DOI here on OSF)

Funder: JNCC Seabird Monitoring Programme, Funder: Mary Griffiths Award, Funder: University of Gloucestershire, Understanding the points in a species breeding cycle when they are most vulnerable to environmental fluctuations is key to understanding interannual demography and guiding effective conservation and management. Seabirds represent one of the most threatened groups of birds in the world, and climate change and severe weather is a prominent and increasing threat to this group. We used a multi-state capture-recapture model to examine how the demographic rates of a long-lived trans-oceanic migrant seabird, the Manx shearwater Puffinus puffinus, are influenced by environmental conditions experienced at different stages of the annual breeding cycle and whether these relationships vary with an individual's breeding state in the previous year (i.e., successful breeder, failed breeder and non-breeder). Our results imply that populations of Manx shearwaters are comprised of individuals with different demographic profiles, whereby more successful reproduction is associated with higher rates of survival and breeding propensity. However, we found that all birds experienced the same negative relationship between rates of survival and wind force during the breeding season, indicating a cost of reproduction (or central place constraint for non-breeders) during years with severe weather conditions. We also found that environmental effects differentially influence the breeding propensity of individuals in different breeding states. This suggests individual spatio-temporal variation in habitat use during the annual cycle, such that climate change could alter the frequency that individuals with different demographic profiles breed thereby driving a complex and less predictable population response. More broadly, our study highlights the importance of considering individual-level factors when examining population demography and predicting how species may respond to climate change.

Plastic debris is ubiquitous in the marine environment, and seabirds are among the most impacted\ud marine vertebrates. Plastic ingestion was investigated in an internationally-important breeding\ud population of Manx Shearwaters Puffinus puffinus on Skomer Island, Wales in 2018–19. Opportunistic\ud necropsies were carried out on a total of 34 birds to collect contents of the gastrointestinal tract: 13\ud adults in April – July 2018 and 12 fledglings during September 2019, and a further nine opportunistic\ud necropsies carried out from adults in July – September 2018. The presence, quantity, size and colour\ud of plastic in the gastrointestinal tract was investigated. Plastic was found in 71% of stomach contents\ud (68% of adults, 75% of fledglings). Adults were found to have larger plastic pieces in their\ud gastrointestinal tract than fledglings, and lighter birds had larger pieces of plastic in their tracts than\ud heavier birds. This study shows that Manx Shearwaters on Skomer Island are vulnerable to plastic\ud ingestion, and that adults are likely to pass plastic to their chicks.

The literature on autonomous public agencies often adopts a top‐down approach, focusing on the means with which those agencies can be steered and controlled. This article opens up the black box of the agencies and zooms in on their CEO's and their perceptions of hierarchical accountability. The article focuses on felt accountability, denoting the manager's (a) expectation to have to explain substantive decisions to a parent department perceived to be (b) legitimate and (c) to have the expertise to evaluate those decisions. We explore felt accountability of agency‐CEO's and its institutional antecedents with a survey in seven countries combining insights from public administration and psychology. Our bottom‐up perspective reveals close connections between de facto control practices rather than formal institutional characteristics and felt accountability of CEO's of agencies. We contend that felt accountability is a crucial cog aligning accountability holders' expectations and behaviors by CEO's. publishedVersion

Leach’s Storm Petrel Hydrobates leucorhous has undergone substantial population declines at North Atlantic colonies over recent decades, but censusing the species is challenging because it nests in burrows and is only active at colonies at night. Acoustic playback surveys allow birds present in nest sites to be detected when they respond to recordings of vocalisations. However, not all birds respond to playback on every occasion, response rate is likely to decline with increasing distance between the bird and the playback location, and the observer may not detect all responses. As a result, various analysis methods have been developed to measure and correct for these imperfect response and detection probabilities. We applied two classes of methods (calibration plot and hierarchical distance sampling) to acoustic survey data from the two largest colonies of breeding Leach’s Storm Petrels in the northeast Atlantic: the St Kilda archipelago off the coast of northwest Scotland, and the island of Elliðaey in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago off the southwest of Iceland. Our results indicate an overall decline of 68% for the St Kilda archipelago between 2000 and 2019, with a current best estimate of ~8,900 (95% CI: 7,800–10,100) pairs. The population on Elliðaey appears to have declined by 40 –49% between 1991 and 2018, with a current best estimate of ~5,400 (95% CI: 4,300–6,700) pairs. We also discuss the relative efficiency and precision of the two survey methods.

We present the results of an analysis of data covering 1.5 years of the dwarf nova V447 Lyr. We detect eclipses of the accretion disk by the mass donating secondary star every 3.74 hrs which is the binary orbital period. V447 Lyr is therefore the first dwarf nova in the Kepler field to show eclipses. We also detect five long outbursts and six short outbursts showing V447 Lyr is a U Gem type dwarf nova. We show that the orbital phase of the mid-eclipse occurs earlier during outbursts compared to quiescence and that the width of the eclipse is greater during outburst. This suggests that the bright spot is more prominent during quiescence and that the disk is larger during outburst than quiescence. This is consistent with an expansion of the outer disk radius due to the presence of high viscosity material associated with the outburst, followed by a contraction in quiescence due to the accretion of low angular momentum material. We note that the long outbursts appear to be triggered by a short outburst, which is also observed in the super-outbursts of SU UMa dwarf novae as observed using Kepler., Accepted by MNRAS

The Telescope Array's Middle Drum fluorescence detector was constructed using refurbished telescopes from the High Resolution Fly's Eye (HiRes) experiment. As such, there is a direct comparison between these two experiments' fluorescence energy spectra. An energy spectrum has been calculated based on one year of collected data by the Middle Drum site of Telescope Array and agrees well with the HiRes monocular spectra. The quality of the Middle Drum results has also been determined to show good agreement., Poster presented at the XVI International Symposium on Very High Energy Cosmic Ray Interactions (ISVHECRI 2010), Batavia, IL, USA (28 June - 2 July 2010). 4 pages, 9 figures

This is the authors' accepted version of the article. We report 323 hours of nearly uninterrupted time series photometric observations of the DBV star GD 358 acquired with the Whole Earth Telescope (WET) during May 23rd to June 8th, 2000. We acquired more than 232 000 independent measurements. We also report on 48 hours of time-series photometric observations in Aug 1996. We detected the non-radial g-modes consistent with degree ℓ = 1 and radial order 8 to 20 and their linear combinations up to 6th order. We also detect, for the first time, a high amplitude ℓ = 2 mode, with a period of 796 s. In the 2000 WET data, the largest amplitude modes are similar to those detected with the WET observations of 1990 and 1994, but the highest combination order previously detected was 4th order. At one point during the 1996 observations, most of the pulsation energy was transferred into the radial order k = 8 mode, which displayed a sinusoidal pulse shape in spite of the large amplitude. The multiplet structure of the individual modes changes from year to year, and during the 2000 observations only the k = 9 mode displays clear normal triplet structure. Even though the pulsation amplitudes change on timescales of days and years, the eigenfrequencies remain essentially the same, showing the stellar structure is not changing on any dynamical timescale.

Using WFPC2 on the Hubble Space Telescope, we have isolated a sample of 258 white dwarfs (WDs) in the Galactic globular cluster M4. Fields at three radial distances from the cluster center were observed and sizeable WD populations were found in all three. The location of these WDs in the color-magnitude diagram, their mean mass of 0.51($ \pm 0.03$)M$_{\odot}$, and their luminosity function confirm basic tenets of stellar evolution theory and support the results from current WD cooling theory. The WDs are used to extend the cluster main-sequence mass function upward to stars that have already completed their nuclear evolution. The WD/red dwarf binary frequency in M4 is investigated and found to be at most a few percent of all the main-sequence stars. The most ancient WDs found are about 9 Gyr old, a level which is set solely by the photometric limits of our data. Even though this is less than the age of M4, we discuss how these cooling WDs can eventually be used to check the turnoff ages of globular clusters and hence constrain the age of the Universe., Comment: 46 pages, latex, no figures included, figures available at ftp://ftp.astro.ubc.ca/pub/richer/wdfig.uu size 2.7Mb. To be published in the Astrophysical Journal

Principal Topic Why some companies grow, and others do not? Answering this question has been one of the main tasks for entrepreneurship researchers (Audretsch et al., 2014; Gilbert et al., 2006; McKelvie & Wiklund, 2010). Differences in managerial motivation is one explanation for varying growth rates in entrepreneurial firms: variation among human motivation and abilities to act has been claimed to have important effects on all phases of the entrepreneurial process (Tominc & Rebernik, 2007), and this relates to the actual firm growth (Delmar & Wiklund, 2008). On a more general level, motivation and the effort that an entrepreneur intends to make have been referred to as growth intentions (Hermans et al., 2015) or growth orientation when examined on a firm level (McKelvie et al., 2017). However, the empirical evidence shows that the magnitude of effects of various motivational constructs ranges from small to medium at best (Levie & Autio, 2013; McKelvie et al., 2017). This fairly weak relationship presents a puzzle: intention is one of the key determinants of human action and owner-managers should have agency over their firms. Based on these considerations, the growth intention of an owner-manager should have a strong impact on firm growth. To explain this disconnection between theory and empirical evidence, researchers have proposed that managers might have limited volitional control over firm growth (Delmar & Wiklund, 2008) or that the relationship between intention and growth is complex and distant and thus not well-captured by a linear, direct effect (Levie & Autio, 2013). In this paper, we develop a two-part argument regarding how growth intention affects growth. First, we argue that the higher growth intentio the better probability of higher growth. This argument is consistent with motivational theories applied in prior research. Second, we also argue that high growth intention increases firm’s probability of failure by lacking growth or even declining over time. The key rationale is that aiming for high growth necessarily increases the risk level (Sapienza et al., 2006) and may lead to sacrificing profitability (Davidsson et al., 2009). By considering these two processes that produce opposite outcomes, we hypothesize that the linear effect of growth intention on expected growth is weak or non-existent at best, but that growth motivation increases the variance of growth outcomes. Thus, growth motivation should be viewed as a necessary but insufficient condition (Dul, 2016) for growth. Altogether, while firms lacking intention to grow are less likely to develop (Levie & Autio, 2013, p. 9), increasing growth intention is insufficient for increasing the growth rate but can also have an opposite effect. Method We test the relationship between growth intention and growth using longitudinal, annually collected survey data from 2,243 small and medium-sized Finnish IT companies (NACE codes 6202 and 6201). We measure growth intention by a self-constructed scale with eight five-point Likert questions, developed from existing literature and piloted with several managers from the study sample. The questions are similar to the ones used by McKelvie et al (2017) and reflect the importance of growth in general, risk resilience for growth achievement and intentions for international expansion. The survey provided us with 4,221 observations collected between 2007-2016. Growth was operationalized as relative change in revenue using one and three-year changes, obtained from Orbis database with almost complete revenue history available for the sample up to 2019. Prior studies, demonstrating a clear linear relationship between growth intention and growth, suffer from two endogeneity problems. First, growth and growth intention are likely to form a feedback loop (Delmar & Wiklund, 2008), that cross-sectional designs do not capture. Second, those studies that apply longitudinal datasets and estimate cross-lagged models, ignore the possibility of unmeasured stable between firm differences, such as the quality of opportunity or initial resource endowment, that are likely to affect growth intention and firm growth causing a spurious correlation; this is a general problem with cross-lagged models (Hamaker et al., 2015). To address these concerns, we start by analyzing our data with cross-lagged random intercept models that simultaneously take in to account both problems explained above (Hamaker et al., 2015; Zyphur et al., 2019). Thereafter we test our variance hypothesis using location-scale models (McNeish, 2020) and by graphical means. To account for missing data in our unbalanced panel, we apply FIML estimation. Results and Implications The preliminary results show that past growth has a positive and statistically significant effect on growth intention and growth intention has a statistically significant and positive effect on future growth, supporting the existence of a feedback loop. Yet, the effects are fairly small and random intercepts for the variables are correlated. Thus, at least partly endogeneity can explain positive correlations found between growth and various operationalizations of growth intention or its dimensions in previous studies. More interestingly, the preliminary analysis shows that while the mean growth rate (expected value) is weakly affected by growth intention, the effect of growth intention on the variance of growth rate, i.e. the prevalence of both extreme positive and negative outcomes is much more pronounced. Additionally to some earlier studies about firm growth being performed with low accuracy (Wright & Stigliani, 2013), there are available research questions concerning firm growth decisions, modes, patterns and reasoning that have received insufficient attention (Clarysse et al., 2011; Iacobucci & Rosa, 2010). This paper contributes to ongoing entrepreneurship research conversations by explaining why relying on growth intention in forecasting growth rates is ineffective solution, which obliterates problems of endogeneity. Our conclusion that increasing willingness or intention to grow a firm only weakly influences on the subsequent growth rate carries value for managers in those companies that intend to grow: they should reconsider the way and the key components of growth to invest in. nonPeerReviewed

Importance Evidence regarding corticosteroid use for severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is limited. Objective To determine whether hydrocortisone improves outcome for patients with severe COVID-19. Design, Setting, and Participants An ongoing adaptive platform trial testing multiple interventions within multiple therapeutic domains, for example, antiviral agents, corticosteroids, or immunoglobulin. Between March 9 and June 17, 2020, 614 adult patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 were enrolled and randomized within at least 1 domain following admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) for respiratory or cardiovascular organ support at 121 sites in 8 countries. Of these, 403 were randomized to open-label interventions within the corticosteroid domain. The domain was halted after results from another trial were released. Follow-up ended August 12, 2020. Interventions The corticosteroid domain randomized participants to a fixed 7-day course of intravenous hydrocortisone (50 mg or 100 mg every 6 hours) (n = 143), a shock-dependent course (50 mg every 6 hours when shock was clinically evident) (n = 152), or no hydrocortisone (n = 108). Main Outcomes and Measures The primary end point was organ support–free days (days alive and free of ICU-based respiratory or cardiovascular support) within 21 days, where patients who died were assigned –1 day. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model that included all patients enrolled with severe COVID-19, adjusting for age, sex, site, region, time, assignment to interventions within other domains, and domain and intervention eligibility. Superiority was defined as the posterior probability of an odds ratio greater than 1 (threshold for trial conclusion of superiority >99%). Results After excluding 19 participants who withdrew consent, there were 384 patients (mean age, 60 years; 29% female) randomized to the fixed-dose (n = 137), shock-dependent (n = 146), and no (n = 101) hydrocortisone groups; 379 (99%) completed the study and were included in the analysis. The mean age for the 3 groups ranged between 59.5 and 60.4 years; most patients were male (range, 70.6%-71.5%); mean body mass index ranged between 29.7 and 30.9; and patients receiving mechanical ventilation ranged between 50.0% and 63.5%. For the fixed-dose, shock-dependent, and no hydrocortisone groups, respectively, the median organ support–free days were 0 (IQR, –1 to 15), 0 (IQR, –1 to 13), and 0 (–1 to 11) days (composed of 30%, 26%, and 33% mortality rates and 11.5, 9.5, and 6 median organ support–free days among survivors). The median adjusted odds ratio and bayesian probability of superiority were 1.43 (95% credible interval, 0.91-2.27) and 93% for fixed-dose hydrocortisone, respectively, and were 1.22 (95% credible interval, 0.76-1.94) and 80% for shock-dependent hydrocortisone compared with no hydrocortisone. Serious adverse events were reported in 4 (3%), 5 (3%), and 1 (1%) patients in the fixed-dose, shock-dependent, and no hydrocortisone groups, respectively. Conclusions and Relevance Among patients with severe COVID-19, treatment with a 7-day fixed-dose course of hydrocortisone or shock-dependent dosing of hydrocortisone, compared with no hydrocortisone, resulted in 93% and 80% probabilities of superiority with regard to the odds of improvement in organ support–free days within 21 days. However, the trial was stopped early and no treatment strategy met prespecified criteria for statistical superiority, precluding definitive conclusions.