Further observations on the morphological characters of Acipenser sturio L., 1758 from the Iberian Peninsula: A comparison with North and Adriatic Sea populations

Forty-two Acipenser sturio L., 1758 from Spain and Portugal were morphologically analysed. These Iberian sturgeons were collected in the Bay of Biscay, mouths of the Mondego and Tagus, and the Douro, Guadalquivir and Ebro Rivers. Specimens captured in the North and Adriatic Seas were compared with these Iberian specimens. In addition, morphological characters of various specimens of Acipenser naccarii Bonaparte, 1836 were included in this comparative analysis. Various morphological features, as well as 39 morphometric and 12 meristic characters, were determined and compared among specimens. Principal Component Analysis (PCA), using a correlation matrix, was used to assess meristic and shape variations. This technique revealed morphological differences between A. sturio and A. naccarii, and grouped all A. sturio from the three geographical areas considered. Nonetheless, univariate analysis revealed significant differences among North Sea specimens, and both Iberian and Adriatic A. sturio. Intra-specific variation of morphological patterns in A. sturio warrants further comparative research, adding specimens from other European regions, particularly from the Gironde estuary and from the Black and Baltic Seas.Se ha estudiado la morfología de cuarenta y dos ejemplares de Acipenser sturio L., 1758 conservados en colecciones de España y Portugal. Estos esturiones ibéricos proceden del mar Cantábrico, de las desembocaduras del Mondego y del Tajo, y de los ríos Duero, Guadalquivir y Ebro. Asimismo, ejemplares de A. sturio del Mar del Norte y del Adriático fueron comparados con los de la península Ibérica. Los caracteres morfológicos de algunos ejemplares de Acipenser naccarii Bonaparte, 1836 también fueron incluidos en el análisis. Se estudiaron algunos caracteres morfológicos cualitativos, así como 39 caracteres morfométricos y 12 merísticos. Para evaluar la variación merística y de la forma utilizamos el análisis de componentes principales (ACP), a partir de una matriz de correlación. Este análisis multivariado mostró diferencias morfológicas entre los ejemplares de A. sturio y los de A. naccarii, pero no marcó diferencias apreciables entre grupos para los ejemplares de A. sturio de las tres áreas investigadas. Sin embargo, cuando aplicamos un análisis univariado, encontramos algunas diferencias significativas de los ejemplares de A. sturio del Mar del Norte frente a los ibéricos y adriáticos. Estas variaciones intraespecíficas del patrón morfológico deben ser contrastadas incluyendo muestras adicionales de otras regiones europeas, principalmente del estuario del Gironda y de los mares Báltico y Negro.Instituto Español de Oceanografí

Examining burnout in Division I collegiate athletes: Identifying the major factors and level of importance in an athlete’s life

Burnout is a concept that has been studied within the past 35+ years becoming widely known and recognized around 1980 in various disciplines ranging from the professional workforce, to athletic coaches, to youth sports. The first burnout study conducted within a sport setting focused on coaching burnout, and since then, new developments have occurred concentrating on athletes. Burnout is a term defined as a withdrawal from a particular sport noted by a reduced sense of accomplishment, devaluation or resentment of the sport, with proponents of physical and psychological exhaustion. Thus, the focus of this study is to examine athletic burnout in Division I collegiate athletics. The purpose is to identify the major factors that lead to burnout and the level of importance, or in other words, the factors that have the biggest impact in an athlete’s life. The literature identifies which factors lead and contribute to burnout in athletes including psychological and motivational factors, but fails to accurately point out what specific factors contribute the most to dropout, and more importantly, burnout in sport. Therefore, the study presented here intended to solve this issue by presenting what factors that contribute the most to burnout as identified by the data collected from the athletes. The research question presented is what are the major factors that lead to burnout and which of these factors have the biggest impact and level of importance as identified by the athletes? The participants in this study are all Division I student-athletes (males and females, graduates and undergraduates) at Kennesaw State University (KSU) present at the time that this study took place. The methodology will incorporate a Qualtrics online self-administered computer survey. The survey consists of twenty open-ended and closed-type of questions. The hypothesis is that the KSU student-athletes will identify that 50% of their burnout is attributed to the following four factors: Scholarship implications, coaches’ pressure, parents’ pressure, and the prospect of a lucrative professional career; with scholarship implications contributing to over 70% of the burnout. The hopes of the findings in regard to this study to be able to ascertain which factor(s) or sources induce the largest level of stress and burnout overall for Division I college athletes, and how to mitigate the impact of these factors in the future. Future studies should expand this study to all divisions in collegiate athletics and across multiple universities

Acipenser sturio L., 1758 conservation resources on the World Wide Web

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the information currently available on the World Wide Web regarding Acipenser sturio L., 1758, featuring 113 selected sites concerning its conservation, biology, and related subjects. Web sites with additional information on other sturgeon species' conservation are also included. A Web page of links to the main sources of news on A. sturio and the conservation of other sturgeons can be accessed at http://www.ucm.es/ info/zoo/Vertebrados/elvira.htm.Este trabajo comprende un análisis detenido de la información disponible sobre conservación y otros temas relacionados de Acipenser sturio L., 1758 localizada en la World Wide Web. Se seleccionaron 113 páginas con información relevante sobre la biología y conservación del esturión atlántico. Asimismo, se incluyen las direcciones Web con información complementaria sobre conservación de esturiones. Una página Web que contacta con las principales fuentes de noticias sobre conservación de A. sturio y otros esturiones se encuentra disponible en http://www.ucm.es/info/zoo/Vertebrados/elvira.htm.Instituto Español de Oceanografí

Preliminary results from characterization of the Iberian Peninsula sturgeon based on analysis of the mtDNA cytochrome b

Historically, the Atlantic sturgeon Acipenser sturio L., 1758 was considered the only sturgeon species that inhabited rivers of the Iberian Peninsula. Nevertheless, in a recent paper, Garrido- Ramos et al. (1997) identified specimen EBD 8174 (museum collection of the Doñana Biological Station, Spain), from the Guadalquivir River, as the Adriatic sturgeon Acipenser naccarii Bonaparte, 1836, suggesting that both A. sturio and A. naccarii could be native to Spain. To test this theory, we compared partial mitochondrial cytochrome b (cyt b) gene sequences obtained from museum specimens of A. sturio that originated from the Iberian Peninsula, the Adriatic and the North Sea, as well as from live individuals of the Gironde River population in France. Specimens of A. naccarii and of the Siberian sturgeon Acipenser baerii Brandt, 1869 from fish farms were also included in the study. DNA from museum specimens was successfully amplified using the protocol of France and Kocher (1996) for DNA extraction from formalin-fixed and ethanol-preserved samples. Phylogenetic analysis was performed on partial cyt b gene sequences (over 402-bp and 245-bp). We identified specimen EBD 8174 as A. sturio, confirming the opinion that A. sturio is the only sturgeon species of the Iberian Peninsula. Further molecular analyses of museum specimens are needed for a description of the historical intraspecies genetic variation within A. sturio. This information is crucial for any future recovery plan for this species. Our comparison also showed interspecies sequence divergence ranging from 6.91% (A. sturio/A. naccarii) to 7.43% (A. sturio/A. baerii).Históricamente, el esturión atlántico Acipenser sturio L., 1758 ha sido considerado la única especie de esturión que vive en los ríos de la península Ibérica, siendo así demostrado por múltiples estudios morfológicos recientes. Sin embargo, un trabajo reciente identificó el ejemplar del río Guadalquivir EBD 8174 como Acipenser naccarii Bonaparte, 1836, sugiriendo que ambas especies de esturión podrían ser nativas de España. Para comprobar esta nueva teoría, se han analizado las secuencias del gen citocromo b mitocondrial en muestras de esturión atlántico preservadas en varios museos procedentes de la península Ibérica, el mar Adriático y el mar del Norte, así como material fresco del río Garona. Además, se han estudiado con fines comparativos varias muestras de A. naccarii y Acipenser baerii Brandt, 1869 procedentes de piscifactorías. Las muestras de museos fueron amplificadas con éxito usando un protocolo específico utilizado para material fijado en formol y preservado en alcohol. La muestra de esturión de España (EBD 8174) fue identificada como A. sturio. Este resulta do confirma que A. sturio es la única especie de esturión en la península Ibérica. De cualquier manera, antes de abordar los planes de recuperación, sería necesario realizar análisis moleculares complementarios para describir las posibles variaciones genéticas existentes entre poblaciones. La comparación de las secuencias de citocromo b de A. sturio con A. naccarii y A. baerii mostró valores de divergencia de 6,91% y 7,43% respectivamente.Instituto Español de Oceanografí

A Tool Suite to Enable Web Designers, Web Application Developers and End-users to Handle Semantic Data

Current web application development requires highly qualified staff, dealing with an extensive number of architectures and technologies. When these applications incorporate semantic data, the list of skill requirements becomes even larger, leading to a high adoption barrier for the development of semantically enabled Web applications. This paper describes VPOET, a tool focused mainly on two types of users: web designers and web application developers. By using this tool, web designers do not need specific skills in semantic web technologies to create web templates to handle semantic data. Web application developers incorporate those templates into their web applications, by means of a simple mechanism based in HTTP messages. End-users can use these templates through a Google Gadget. As web designers play a key role in the system, an experimental evaluation has been conducted, showing that VPOET provides good usability features for a representative group of web designers in a wide range of competencies in client-side technologies, ranging from amateur HTML developers to professional web designers

Linkage disequilibrium mapping of the gene for Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome to chromosome 10q23. 1-q23.3

Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome (HPS) is an autosomal recessive disorder characterized by the triad of tyrosinase-positive oculocutaneous albinism, bleeding diathesis due to storage-pool deficiency of platelets, and a lysosomal ceroid storage disease. The disorder is particularly frequent in Puerto Rico and in an isolated village in the Swiss Alps. We have used a linkage disequilibrium mapping approach to localize the HPS gene in both of these groups to a 0.6 centiMorgan interval in chromosome segment 10q23.1-q23.3. These results indicate that the Puerto Rican and Swiss forms of HPS are either allelic or that they result from mutations in very closely linked genes in this region. This region of distal chromosome 10q is syntenic to the region of mouse chromosome 19 that includes ‘pale ear' (ep) and ‘ruby-eye' (ru), which must be considered as potential murine homologues to human HP

Compendio Bibliográfico de las algas del caribe de Panamá: las algas verdes

Se hace un análisis exhaustivo de la bibliografía en la cual se mencionan las algas verdes macrófitas del Caribe de Panamá, al final del cual se obtiene el reporte para la presencia de: 5 ordenes, 14 familias, 28 géneros y 77 especies, lo que representa un incremento del más del 100%, con respecto a las especies de algas verdes debidamente reportadas con anterioridad. Dentro de éstas, el orden Bryopsidales resultó ser el más representativo con 4 familias, (dominadas por Udoteaceae) 12 géneros y 48 especies; lo que demuestra la existencia de una gran diversidad de estas algas. El estudio del área de distribución mostró la ausencia de informes para el Este de Bocas del Toro, Norte de Veraguas y Oeste de Colón, posiblemente debido a las dificultades que presentan para su acceso