A Comparison of Emotional Regulation Strategies

The goal of this study is to examine varying emotional regulation strategies and their efficacy of alleviating psychological distress. Distress is a subjective experience each individual is exposed to on a daily basis and identifying and understanding strategies to alleviate distress is not only valuable in psychological research but can translate to cultivating wellbeing in everyday life

Foraging on human-derived foods by urban bird species

Capsule: Providing peanuts on bird feeders was shown to attract more individuals and more species than providing cheese or bread. Aims: To investigate how the provision of different human-derived foods affected visit rates of urban birds at bird feeders. Methods: A fully replicated study design was set up in parkland, offering a binary choice from three food types (peanuts, bread and cheese) on bird tables. Birds were observed by using a scan-sample method. Results: Peanuts attracted more visits, and a greater diversity of bird species, than cheese or bread. This preference was strongest for Blue Tits Cyanistes caeruleus and Great Tits Parus major, whereas European Robins Erithacus rubecula visited all food types equally, and Blackbirds Turdus merula preferred cheese. Bread was the most consumed food type when measured by mass, but this could be linked to varying bite sizes. Conclusion: Our results indicate that birds preferred to visit feeding stations with the most protein- and energy-rich foods, but that some birds still chose the carbohydrate-rich bread. The findings indicate that peanuts, rather than household scraps like bread and cheese, attract the highest number of species and individuals to bird tables. The findings will be of interest to the public and to organizations providing information on bird feeding for recreational purposes

Initial Response of Bird Populations to Conservation Grasslands in Southern Pennsylvania

The study examined whether bird populations in PA have responded to conservation actions delivered through a Federal conservation program. We found mixed responses, with some species increasing, while others continued long-term population declines

Habitats and Habitat Change

This is part of a culmination of a 10 year collaborative effort involving many state agencies, academic institutions and NGOs. This 612 page atlas, based on the fieldwork of 2000 birdwatchers, provides details on the status and distribution of the Commonwealth’s 190 breeding bird species

Stewardship Responsibility of Pennsylvania Public and Private Lands for Songbird Conservation

Preservation of large blocks of suitable habitat is an important conservation strategy for many species, and such protected areas often are publicly owned. In some cases, however, the extent of private land far exceeds that of public land, or species may prefer habitats that are predominantly privately owned (e.g., agricultural). Thus, it is important to understand the stewardship roles of both public and private land for species conservation. We used hierarchical multispecies occupancy models to evaluate the occurrence probabilities of 59 passerine bird species, including Species of Greatest Conservation Need, on public and private land in Pennsylvania, USA. Species strongly associated with forests disproportionately occupied public land, whereas grassland-associated species were strongly associated with private lands. Species associated with early-successional or shrub/edge habitat had more mixed responses. Our results emphasize that, despite the obvious importance of public land for some species, addressing habitat conservation on private lands is crucial for effective conservation of most passerine species, even in a region with extensive public land and for species strongly associated with public land

nucGEMs probe the biophysical properties of the nucleoplasm

Abstract The cell interior is highly crowded and far from thermodynamic equilibrium. This environment can dramatically impact molecular motion and assembly, and therefore influence subcellular organization and biochemical reaction rates. These effects depend strongly on length-scale, with the least information available at the important mesoscale (10-100 nanometers), which corresponds to the size of crucial regulatory molecules such as RNA polymerase II. It has been challenging to study the mesoscale physical properties of the nucleoplasm because previous methods were labor-intensive and perturbative. Here, we report nuclear Genetically Encoded Multimeric nanoparticles (nucGEMs). Introduction of a single gene leads to continuous production and assembly of protein-based bright fluorescent nanoparticles of 40 nm diameter. We implemented nucGEMs in budding and fission yeast and in mammalian cell lines. We found differences in particle motility between the nucleus and the cytosol at the mesoscale, that mitotic chromosome condensation ejects nucGEMs from the nucleus, and that nucGEMs are excluded from heterochromatin and the nucleolus. nucGEMs enable hundreds of nuclear rheology experiments per hour, and allow evolutionary comparison of the physical properties of the cytosol and nucleoplasm