Visual Representation of Women in Media

https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/feminist_zines/1040/thumbnail.jp

Extrinsic and Intrinsic Factors Associated with Reproductive Success of Caspian Terns (Hydroprogne caspia) at East Sand Island, Columbia River Estuary

Declines in wild salmonid (Oncorhynchus spp.) populations in the Columbia River basin have resulted in managers identifying that avian predation on juvenile salmonids is an important limiting factor for salmonid recovery. Caspian Terns (Hydroprogne caspia), particularly those nesting in the Columbia River estuary, were identified as key avian predators that reduce the survival of juvenile salmonids in the Columbia River basin. To reduce the numbers of juvenile salmonids consumed by Caspian Terns in the Columbia River estuary, the amount of available nesting habitat for Caspian Terns on East Sand Island (ESI) was reduced from 2 ha in 2008 to 0.64 ha in 2012, and then was further reduced to 0.4 ha in 2015. The objective of this management was to reduce the size of the Caspian Tern breeding colony on ESI to about a third of its former size. Caspian Terns are facultative colonial nesters and generally nest in ephemeral habitats. Caspian Terns nesting at ESI, however, have demonstrated very high colony site fidelity due to the consistent maintenance of nesting habitat, as well as the proximity to an abundant food supply and the paucity of terrestrial predators. Reproductive success for the ESI Caspian Tern colony has, on average, declined since 2001, and in both 2011 and 2017 no young were raised at the colony. The objective of my study was to understand variation in reproductive success of Caspian Terns at the ESI colony by investigating potential factors associated with nesting success at the scale of the colony and the individual. I investigated both top-down and bottom-up factors that may have affected the average annual reproductive success at the Caspian Tern colony on ESI during 2001-2017, as well as the relative importance of several intrinsic factors that may have affected reproductive success of individual Caspian Terns over two consecutive breeding seasons, 2015 and 2016. I found that study year and the rate of kleptoparasitism on Caspian Tern bill-load fish by gulls (Larus spp.) during the chick-rearing period best explained the inter-annual variation in average annual reproductive success at the ESI colony during 2001-2017. My results suggest that year was acting as a surrogate variable for other factors that were changing in a gradual, consistent manner at or near the tern colony during the study period, such as nesting habitat availability, nest density, Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) disturbance rates, and gull predation rates on tern eggs and chicks. The impact of average Columbia River discharge in May/June as a driving factor for Caspian Tern reproductive success was particularly evident in 2011 and 2017, the two years when river discharge was the highest recorded during the study period, and the only two years when no young were produced at the colony. My results support the hypothesis that both bottom-up factors (e.g., food availability) and top-down factors (e.g., gull kleptoparasitism rates) are drivers of reproductive success at the East Sand Island Caspian Tern colony. The bottom-up factor of average Columbia River discharge in May/June apparently affected the top-down factor of gull kleptoparasitism rates by altering the food supply of nesting gulls, thus prompting them to switch to stealing Caspian Tern bill-loads. The second study in my thesis sought to gain a better understanding of which factors may influence reproductive success of individual Caspian Terns, based on data collected at the ESI colony in 2015 and 2016. I investigated the relative importance of (1) age, (2) previous breeding experience, (3) timing of breeding, (4) density of nearby conspecific nests, and (5) nest location relative to the colony edge for explaining variation in individual reproductive success. The date when an individual tern initiated its nesting attempt was ranked highest in relative importance among these explanatory variables, with nest success decreasing as the date of nest initiation increased. The density of conspecific nests within 1 meter of an individual’s nest was strongly and positively associated with the odds that the nest was successful. Nests located further from the colony edge were more likely to be successful, but only early in the breeding season; later in the season, nest location had no effect on individual reproductive success. Individuals that initiated nests earlier in the breeding season had more time to lay replacement clutches in the event that their earlier nesting attempts failed, and laying more than one clutch per breeding season was common at the ESI colony during the study period. Some individuals attempted to nest as many as four times in a single breeding season. My study provides a better understanding of those extrinsic and intrinsic factors that are associated with reproductive success of Caspian Terns on two different scales – the breeding colony at ESI as a whole, and the individual Caspian Terns nesting at ESI. Understanding factors influencing reproductive success at each scale increases our knowledge of Caspian Tern breeding ecology at East Sand Island, and can inform managers about which factors likely regulate the size and productivity of the largest Caspian Tern breeding colony in North America. This study can also provide insight into factors that affect other seabird species and organisms that live in seasonal environments, as well as long-lived organisms that may experience considerable variation in overall reproductive success

Developing a stochastic sewer model to support sewer design under water conservation measures

Population growth and climate change place a strain on water resources; hence, there are growing initiatives to reduce household water use. UKWIR (2016) have a stated aim to halve water abstraction by 2050. This will significantly reduce inflow to sewer systems and increase wastewater concentration. This work presents a new stochastic sewer model that can be used to predict both hydraulic and pollutant loading for various water saving scenarios. The stochastic sewer model is based on integration of the stochastic water demand model SIMDEUM® with the InfoWorks ICM® (Sewer Edition) hydraulic model and software. This model has been developed using foul sewer networks, i.e. where household discharges are the dominant inflow; however, it could also be used in combined sewage systems where rainwater flows would add to the stochastic dry weather flow (DWF). The stochastic sewer model was tested and validated on several real catchments in the Wessex Water area of the UK. Calibration was carried out using metered consumption data. The stochastic sewer model gives an accurate prediction of the diurnal patterns of sewage discharge at a household level and was validated using real flow measurements within the catchment. The results obtained indicate that this model can be used to accurately predict changes in flow due to water conservation. A preliminary study for the impact of low water use on this validated network model has been conducted and it was found that overnight and daytime flow was reduced by up to 80% whereas evening flows remained largely similar. Extended stagnation times were observed in the street scale pipes (150 mm) in the low water use scenario.</p

I didn't write this talk because syntax: A syntactic analysis of because NOUN

I didn’t write this talk because syntax The novel construction because X is illustrated in (1), where because appears with a bare noun complement and no linking of. (1) I wore my skeleton leggings on Wednesday because Hallowe’en. In previous work the complement of because has been analysed as a propositional ‘non-sentential’ element (in the sense of Progovac 2006) rather than part of a true subordinate clause, selected and fully integrated into the main clause. This raises an interesting question about the behaviour of negative sentences with this construction. The presence of a because adjunct normally provides the possibility of ambiguity about the scope of the negation, as illustrated in (2) and (3) (and as noted many years ago by e.g. Lakoff (1970) and Linebarger (1987): (2) I didn’t wear my skeleton leggings on Wednesday because of Hallowe’en. = negation scope over the VP = I didn’t wear my skeleton leggings on Wednesday, and the reason was Hallowe’en (perhaps I’m saving them to wear on Thursday, when it is Hallowe’en). (3) I didn’t wear my skeleton leggings on Wednesday because of Hallowe’en. = negation scope over just the because adverbial = I wore my skeleton leggings on Wednesday, but not because of Hallowe’en (perhaps they were the only clean thing I had to wear that day). When the because X construction is used, the ambiguity seems to disappear, leaving only the VP negation reading. This talk describes a study testing this intuition on 74 respondents to an online grammaticality judgement survey. Participants were presented with sentences like those in (1) and (2), both with and without of, and asked whether the meaning corresponded to VP negation, adverbial negation, both, or neither (this allowed respondents to indicate that a sentence was ungrammatical, as this construction is not possible for all speakers). As expected, sentences with a standard CP or PP complement were almost never judged ungrammatical, and just 7% of the because X type were. Of the remaining responses, VP negation was overwhelmingly favoured for both types of sentence, with just under 5% of responses selecting adverbial negation in both cases. However, the crucial question was whether the rate of ‘both’ options fell under the because X condition, as predicted by our hypothesis that the adverbial negation reading is not possible with this sentence structure. This was supported by the data, with ‘both’ responses falling from 29% to just 7% across the pairs, and the ‘VP negation’ option correspondingly increasing along with ‘ungrammatical’. The experiment therefore demonstrates that, without intonational cues, a) VP negation is the unmarked reading; b) Adverbial negation is only possible as a second option if VP negation is also possible; c) The adverbial negation reading is strongly dispreferred in because X sentences. This result in fact answers one of the most fundamental questions about the construction: if one adopts a syntactic analysis of neg-raising (e.g. Collins & Postal 2014), it shows that it cannot be a surface phonological effect, with of simply unpronounced but still present in the syntax. If this were the case, this difference in behaviour is unexplained. In this talk, we argue that the because-adverbial is prevented from either having the option of a high or low adjunction site as generally assumed, and instead being restricted to low adjunction to VP, or from having the inherent focus assumed by Kawamura (2008) that permits the ambiguity of reference. This new, ‘internetese’ usage of English thus provides insight into the scope of negation, focus and adverbial attachment

Therapeutic Targeting of Proteostasis in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis—a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Preclinical Research

Funding This work was supported by AMS: 210JMG 3102 R45620 and CSO and MNDS: 217ARF R45951. Medical Research Council (MRC UK; MR/L016400/1).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Resuscitating the Physician-Patient Relationship: Emergency Department Communication in an Academic Medical Center

Study objective: We characterize communication in an urban, academic medical center emergency department (ED) with regard to the timing and nature of the medical history survey and physical examination and discharge instructions. Methods: Audiotaping and coding of 93 ED encounters (62 medical history surveys and physical examinations, 31 discharges) with a convenience sample of 24 emergency medicine residents, 8 nurses, and 93 nonemergency adult patients. Results: Patients were 68% women and 84% black, with a mean age of 45 years. Emergency medicine providers were 70% men and 80% white. Of 62 medical history surveys and physical examinations, time spent on the introduction and medical history survey and physical examination averaged 7 minutes 31 seconds (range 1 to 20 minutes). Emergency medicine residents introduced themselves in only two thirds of encounters, rarely (8%) indicating their training status. Despite physician tendency (63%) to start with an open-ended question, only 20% of patients completed their presenting complaint without interruption. Average time to interruption (usually a closed question) was 12 seconds. Discharge instructions averaged 76 seconds (range 7 to 202 seconds). Information on diagnosis, expected course of illness, self-care, use of medications, time-specified follow-up, and symptoms that should prompt return to the ED were each discussed less than 65% of the time. Only 16% of patients were asked whether they had questions, and there were no instances in which the provider confirmed patient understanding of the information. Conclusion: Academic EDs present unique challenges to effective communication. In our study, the physician-patient encounter was brief and lacking in important health information. Provision of patient-centered care in academic EDs will require more provider education and significant system support

Tensor Trust: Interpretable Prompt Injection Attacks from an Online Game

While Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly being used in real-world applications, they remain vulnerable to prompt injection attacks: malicious third party prompts that subvert the intent of the system designer. To help researchers study this problem, we present a dataset of over 126,000 prompt injection attacks and 46,000 prompt-based "defenses" against prompt injection, all created by players of an online game called Tensor Trust. To the best of our knowledge, this is currently the largest dataset of human-generated adversarial examples for instruction-following LLMs. The attacks in our dataset have a lot of easily interpretable stucture, and shed light on the weaknesses of LLMs. We also use the dataset to create a benchmark for resistance to two types of prompt injection, which we refer to as prompt extraction and prompt hijacking. Our benchmark results show that many models are vulnerable to the attack strategies in the Tensor Trust dataset. Furthermore, we show that some attack strategies from the dataset generalize to deployed LLM-based applications, even though they have a very different set of constraints to the game. We release all data and source code at https://tensortrust.ai/pape

Deletion of the myeloid endothelin-B receptor confers long-term protection from angiotensin II-mediated renal, retinal &amp; vascular injury

International audienceThe endothelin system may be an important player in hypertensive end-organ injury as endothelin-1 increases blood pressure and is pro-inflammatory. The immune system is emerging as an important regulator of blood pressure and we have shown that the early hypertensive response to angiotensin-II infusion was amplified in mice deficient of myeloid endothelin-B (ETB) receptors (LysM-CreEdnrblox/lox). Hypothesizing that these mice would display enhanced organ injury, we gave angiotensin-II to LysM-CreEdnrblox/lox and littermate controls (Ednrblox/lox) for six weeks. Unexpectedly, LysM-CreEdnrblox/lox mice were significantly protected from organ injury, with less proteinuria, glomerulosclerosis and inflammation of the kidney compared to controls. In the eye, LysM-CreEdnrblox/lox mice had fewer retinal hemorrhages, less microglial activation and less vessel rarefaction. Cardiac remodeling and dysfunction were similar in both groups at week six but LysM-CreEdnrblox/lox mice had better endothelial function. Although blood pressure was initially higher in LysM-CreEdnrblox/lox mice, this was not sustained. A natriuretic switch at about two weeks, due to enhanced ETB signaling in the kidney, induced a hypertensive reversal. By week six, blood pressure was lower in LysM-CreEdnrblox/lox mice than in controls. At six weeks, macrophages from LysM-CreEdnrblox/lox mice were more anti-inflammatory and had greater phagocytic ability compared to the macrophages of Ednrblox/lox mice. Thus, myeloid cell ETB receptor signaling drives this injury both through amplifying hypertension and by inflammatory polarization of macrophages