ECG Response of Koalas to Tourists Proximity: A Preliminary Study

Koalas operate on a tight energy budget and, thus, may not always display behavioral avoidance reaction when placed in a stressful condition. We investigated the physiological response of captive koalas Phascolarctos cinereus in a conservation centre to the presence of tourists walking through their habitat. We compared, using animal-attached data-recorders, the electrocardiogram activity of female koalas in contact with tourists and in a human-free area. One of the koalas in the tourist zone presented elevated heart rate values and variability throughout the recording period. The remaining female in the exhibit area showed a higher field resting heart rates during the daytime than that in the isolated area. In the evening, heart rate profiles changed drastically and both the koalas in the exhibit and in the tourist-free zones displayed similar field resting heart rates, which were lower than those during the day. In parallel, the autonomic nervous systems of these two individuals evolved from sympathetic-dominant during the day to parasympathetic-dominant in the evening. Our results report ECG of free-living koalas for the first time. Although they are preliminary due to the difficulty of having sufficient samples of animals of the same sex and age, our results stress out the importance of studies investigating the physiological reaction of animals to tourists

Case Study: Using Web Services for the Management of Environmental Data

CCLRC is involved in the development of grid and data management tools for a number of e-Science projects in the UK including the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded "Environment from the Molecular Level " [1]. CCLRC’s web services based multidisciplinary Data Portal [2], uses an XML metadata model of scientific data [3] to explore and access the content of data resources within CCLRC’s main laboratories in the UK and other facilities in Europe. Last year CCLRC adapted the Data Portal for the project so that earth scientists could store and access their own metadata and datasets, and simultaneously access related metadata and datasets from other facilities around the world. To achieve this the Data Portal was redeveloped using Web Service technology so that the internal services could be accessed via any user interface or system specific to the e-science project community. Previously, access was provided only via a standard web browser. 1

Bacterial community structure in the hindgut of wild and captive dugongs (Dugong dugon)

Dugongs (Dugong dugon) are marine mammals that obtain nutrients through hindgut fermentation of seagrass, however, the microbes responsible have not been identified. This study used dena-turing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and 454-pyrosequencing to profile hindgut bacterial communities in wild dugongs. Faecal samples obtained from 32 wild dugongs representing four size/maturity classes, and two captive dugongs fed on cos lettuce were screened using DGGE. Partial 16S rRNA gene profiles of hindgut bacteria from wild dugong calves and juveniles were grouped together and were different to those in subadults and adults. Marked difference between hindgut bacterial communities of wild and captive dugongs were also observed, except for a single captive whose profile resembled wild adults following an unsuccessful reintroduction to the wild. Pyrosequencing of hindgut communities in two wild dugongs confirmed the stability of bacterial populations, and Firmicutes (average 75.6% of Operational Taxonomic Units [OTUs]) and Bacteroidetes (19.9% of OTUs) dominated. Dominant genera were Roseburia, Clostridium, and Bacteroides. Hindgutmicrobial composition and diversity in wild dugongs is affected by ontogeny and probably diet. In captive dugongs, the absence of the dominant bacterial DNA bands identified in wild dugongs is probably dependent upon prevailing diet and other captive conditions such as the use of antibiotics. This study represents a first step in the characterisation of a novel microbial ecosystem-the marine hindgut of Sirenia

grid infrastructure for molecular simulations: The eMinerals minigrid as a prototype integrated compute and data grid. Molecular Simulations 31

RG6 6AY This paper describes a prototype grid infrastructure, called the “eMinerals minigrid”, for molecular simulation scientists. which is based on an integration of shared compute and data resources. We describe the key components, namely the use of Condor pools, Linux/Unix clusters with PBS and IBM’s LoadLeveller job handling tools, the use of Globus for security handling, the use of Condor-G tools for wrapping globus job submit commands, Condor’s DAGman tool for handling workflow, the Storage Resource Broker for handling data, and the CCLRC dataportal and associated tools for both archiving data with metadata and making data available to other workers

Hasan, Environment from the molecular level: an escience testbed project, AHM 2003

The testbed project has the ambition to push the practical possibilities of atomistic simulations forward to the point where we can perform realistic calculations on important environmental processes. The project has three components: the science driving the project, the development of the simulation codes, and setting up a grid infrastructure for this work. This paper describes these areas of work and gives a status report on each. 1