Impacts of Lake Elevation Decline on Tui Chub, A Critical Forage Species for Lahontan Cutthroat Trout in Pyramid Lake, Nevada, USA

Lake level decline affects lakes worldwide, changing the availability and character of nearshore habitat used by fish to spawn, and increasing total dissolved solids (TDS), similar to salinity, a factor that negatively impacts fish health. Lake level decline can affect different lakes in different ways, but typically when lake level declines significantly, there is less nearshore habitat overall, and what nearshore habitat remains has less diverse habitat for fish. We investigated whether both impacts of lake level decline may be causing declines of Tui Chub Siphateles bicolor, a large minnow native to Pyramid Lake that spawns in nearshore habitat. Tui Chub are the main food source for Lahontan Cutthroat Trout, a sought after, and vulnerable, sportfish also native to the lake. Pyramid Lake declined 98 feet from 1891 to 1967 because of human water use and remains low today. We used nets to capture Tui Chub during their spawning season to determine their preferred spawning habitat. We then used topographic data of the Pyramid Lake basin to understand the amount of spawning habitat at historical, and potentially future, lake levels if lake levels continue to decline in Pyramid Lake. We tested the response of Tui Chub eggs and larvae to TDS by spawning Tui Chub at a range of TDS levels. Based on our results, Tui Chub spawn in some of the warmest water found in Pyramid Lake during the summer and seek rocky areas to deposit their eggs, habitat features that may be reduced in Pyramid Lake with further lake level decline. With an additional 26 feet of lake level decline, Pyramid Lake will have less nearshore habitat than all other historical and contemporary lake elevations we investigated, potentially seriously restricting habitat available for Tui Chub spawning. Tui Chub eggs and larvae in our experiment were unable to hatch at TDS levels greater than those already found in Pyramid Lake. However, we experienced artificially high levels of toxic ammonia in most replicates such that all egg deaths could not be attributed to the TDS treatments. Our results have important implications for water demand for Pyramid Lake to make sure there are enough Tui Chub to support the population of Lahontan Cutthroat Trout in the lake

Differentiating Epileptic from Psychogenic Nonepileptic EEG Signals using Time Frequency and Information Theoretic Measures of Connectivity

Differentiating psychogenic nonepileptic seizures from epileptic seizures is a difficult task that requires timely recording of psychogenic events using video electroencephalography (EEG). Interpretation of video EEG to distinguish epileptic features from signal artifacts is error prone and can lead to misdiagnosis of psychogenic seizures as epileptic seizures resulting in undue stress and ineffective treatment with antiepileptic drugs. In this study, an automated surface EEG analysis was implemented to investigate differences between patients classified as having psychogenic or epileptic seizures. Surface EEG signals were grouped corresponding to the anatomical lobes of the brain (frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital) and central coronal plane of the skull. To determine if differences were present between psychogenic and epileptic groups, magnitude squared coherence (MSC) and cross approximate entropy (C-ApEn) were used as measures of neural connectivity. MSC was computed within each neural frequency band (delta: 0.5Hz-4Hz, theta: 4-8Hz, alpha: 8-13Hz, beta: 13-30Hz, and gamma: 30-100Hz) between all brain regions. C-ApEn was computed bidirectionally between all brain regions. Independent samples t-tests were used to compare groups. The statistical analysis revealed significant differences between psychogenic and epileptic groups for both connectivity measures with the psychogenic group showing higher average connectivity. Average MSC was found to be lower for the epileptic group between the frontal/central, parietal/central, and temporal/occipital regions in the delta band and between the temporal/occipital regions in the theta band. Average C-ApEn was found to be greater for the epileptic group between the frontal/parietal, parietal/frontal, parietal/occipital, and parietal/central region pairs. These results suggest that differences in neural connectivity exist between psychogenic and epileptic patient groups

Unusual nickel and copper to noble-metal ratios from the Råna Layered Intrusion, northern Norway

Rocks from the Rana Layered Intrusion usually have low concentrations of noble metals but have normal Ni and Cu concentrations. Consequently the rocks have higher Cu/Ir, Ni/Ir, Cu/Pb and Ni/Pd ratios than extrusive rocks from the literature. If a small amount of sulphide was removed from the magma prior to its emplacement at Rana the magma would be depleted in noble metals relative to Ni and Cu, and rocks forming from it would have high Ni and Cu to noble-metal ratios

Longitudinal Examination of Forms of Childrens Antipathetic Relationships and Peer Social Competence: An Autoregressive Cross-Lagged Panel Analysis

Longitudinal Examination of Forms of Childrens Antipathetic Relationships and Peer Social Competence: An Autoregressive Cross-Lagged Panel Analysi

Mass and Reliability System (MaRS)

The Safety and Mission Assurance (S&MA) Directorate is responsible for mitigating risk, providing system safety, and lowering risk for space programs from ground to space. The S&MA is divided into 4 divisions: The Space Exploration Division (NC), the International Space Station Division (NE), the Safety & Test Operations Division (NS), and the Quality and Flight Equipment Division (NT). The interns, myself and Arun Aruljothi, will be working with the Risk & Reliability Analysis Branch under the NC Division's. The mission of this division is to identify, characterize, diminish, and communicate risk by implementing an efficient and effective assurance model. The team utilizes Reliability and Maintainability (R&M) and Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) to ensure decisions concerning risks are informed, vehicles are safe and reliable, and program/project requirements are realistic and realized. This project pertains to the Orion mission, so it is geared toward a long duration Human Space Flight Program(s). For space missions, payload is a critical concept; balancing what hardware can be replaced by components verse by Orbital Replacement Units (ORU) or subassemblies is key. For this effort a database was created that combines mass and reliability data, called Mass and Reliability System or MaRS. The U.S. International Space Station (ISS) components are used as reference parts in the MaRS database. Using ISS components as a platform is beneficial because of the historical context and the environment similarities to a space flight mission. MaRS uses a combination of systems: International Space Station PART for failure data, Vehicle Master Database (VMDB) for ORU & components, Maintenance & Analysis Data Set (MADS) for operation hours and other pertinent data, & Hardware History Retrieval System (HHRS) for unit weights. MaRS is populated using a Visual Basic Application. Once populated, the excel spreadsheet is comprised of information on ISS components including: operation hours, random/nonrandom failures, software/hardware failures, quantity, orbital replaceable units (ORU), date of placement, unit weight, frequency of part, etc. The motivation for creating such a database will be the development of a mass/reliability parametric model to estimate mass required for replacement parts. Once complete, engineers working on future space flight missions will have access a mean time to failures and on parts along with their mass, this will be used to make proper decisions for long duration space flight mission

Language Variation In Young Children

The present research was designed to explore individual variation in young children’s one-word utterances. It begins with a critical review of the research literature relating to language variation in terms firstly of sociolingistic sources of variation and secondly of evidence for language variation from the psycholinguistic literature. Five hypotheses were developed from the literature review. These were as follows: Some children show a preference for nouns and other children a preference for pronouns at the one-word stage of development; referential and expressive speech styles will emerge based on pragmatic codings; the focus of reference is objects in referential speech and the focus of reference is people in expressive speech; referential speech most often occurs in response to adult speech; and referential speakers will use more nouns, will have a higher proportion of responses and will talk proportionally more about the object world, whereas expressive speakers will use more pronouns, will initiate conversations more often and their speech will refer more to people than to things. The sample consisted of 32 children drawn from the Bristol Language Development Project. An analysis was made of all one-word utterances produced on three separate occasions over a six month period. All one-word speech was coded into systems of discourse features, pragmatic function, imitation, focus of reference. All word types were categorized by parts of speech. Percentage data was analyzed using ANOVAs, T-Tests and cluster analyses. In general, the results supported the hypotheses. However, the support was not always as clear-cut as had been hoped. The results were then discussed in terms of their relevance to the study of language variation

The design of caring environments and the quality of life of older people

There has been little systematic research into the design of care environments for older people. This article reviews empirical studies from both the architectural and the psychological literature. It outlines the instruments that are currently available for measuring both the environment and the quality of life of older people, and it summarises the evidence on the layout of buildings, the sensory environment and the privacy of residents. The conclusion is drawn that all evidence-based design must be a compromise or dynamic and, as demands on the caring environment change over time, this compromise must be re-visited in the form of post-occupancy evaluation

The Role of Emotional Intelligence and Emotion Regulation in Promoting Social Support among Young Adults Victimized during Childhood

Social support has been linked to fewer difficulties following childhood victimization. However, few studies have investigated how support might vary among individuals with victimization histories. This study examined the relation between childhood poly-victimization and social support from family and friends in emerging adulthood. Variations in this relation across gender were examined, in addition to the potential mediating roles of emotional intelligence and emotion dysregulation. Results revealed no significant gender differences, and that more childhood poly-victimization was significantly related to lower perceptions of support from family and friends. Emotion dysregulation, but not emotional intelligence, was positively related to childhood poly-victimization. Additionally, emotion dysregulation partially mediated the relation between childhood poly-victimization and support from family, suggesting that the ability to regulate one\u27s emotions may be influential in perceptions of family support. Results underscore the enduring consequences of childhood poly-victimization, and offter directions for intervention efforts targeted at emerging adults with poly-victimization histories