Effects of Chemical Inducers on Larval Oyster Settlement in Suboptimal Conditions

Corresponding author (Biological Science): Alexz Carpenter, [email protected]://egrove.olemiss.edu/pharm_annual_posters_2022/1005/thumbnail.jp

Effect of Ploidy on Early Oyster Life Stage Tolerance of Salinity and Temperature

Corresponding author (BioMolecular Sciences): Christian Boudreaux, [email protected]://egrove.olemiss.edu/pharm_annual_posters_2022/1003/thumbnail.jp

Effect of ploidy on salinity and temperature tolerance in early life stages of the Eastern oyster (\u3ci\u3eCrassostrea virginica\u3c/i\u3e)

The U.S. Gulf of Mexico contains the largest remaining wild oyster fishery in the world, but populations have declined in recent decades. A growing interest in off-bottom aquaculture that relies on triploid eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) has emerged in the Gulf region, yet these faster growing oysters suffer high mortality as adults during low salinity (\u3c5) events in warmer summer months. The combined effects of low salinity and high temperature stress on early life stages of triploid oysters are unknown. Early life stages are particularly crucial to understand because triploid oysters do not occur naturally and must be reared in hatchery settings, requiring appropriate water conditions to yield the greatest survival and growth. Thus, we tested the effects of different temperatures (28 ºC and 32 ºC) and salinities (5, 10, and 15) on diploid and triploid oysters at three critical production stages: veliger, pediveliger, and spat. Veliger survival was significantly lower for triploids relative to diploid oysters at all experimental conditions, but triploid veligers had faster growth than diploids at 32 ºC and salinity of 15. Pediveliger settlement was not affected by ploidy type and was reduced only at high temperature (32 ºC) and the lowest salinity (5). Diploid spat showed highest survival at 28 ºC and 15 salinity, while triploids survived best at 32 ºC and 15 salinity. Triploid spat attained greater shell height compared to diploids in our 6- day exposures, but growth decreased for both ploidies at lower salinities. At the salinity and temperature levels examined, diploid early life stages performed best at 28 ºC and 15 salinity, whereas triploids were more successful at 32 ºC and 15 salinity. A broader understanding of the combined effects of environmental stressors will improve the success of hatchery production yields and the resulting economic and environmental benefits of the oyster industry

Evaluation of emergency department performance:A systematic review on recommended performance and quality-in-care measures

BACKGROUND: Evaluation of emergency department (ED) performance remains a difficult task due to the lack of consensus on performance measures that reflects high quality, efficiency, and sustainability. AIM: To describe, map, and critically evaluate which performance measures that the published literature regard as being most relevant in assessing overall ED performance. METHODS: Following the PRISMA guidelines, a systematic literature review of review articles reporting accentuated ED performance measures was conducted in the databases of PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science. Study eligibility criteria includes: 1) the main purpose was to discuss, analyse, or promote performance measures best reflecting ED performance, 2) the article was a review article, and 3) the article reported macro-level performance measures, thus reflecting an overall departmental performance level. RESULTS: A number of articles addresses this study’s objective (n = 14 of 46 unique hits). Time intervals and patient-related measures were dominant in the identified performance measures in review articles from US, UK, Sweden and Canada. Length of stay (LOS), time between patient arrival to initial clinical assessment, and time between patient arrivals to admission were highlighted by the majority of articles. Concurrently, “patients left without being seen” (LWBS), unplanned re-attendance within a maximum of 72 hours, mortality/morbidity, and number of unintended incidents were the most highlighted performance measures that related directly to the patient. Performance measures related to employees were only stated in two of the 14 included articles. CONCLUSIONS: A total of 55 ED performance measures were identified. ED time intervals were the most recommended performance measures followed by patient centeredness and safety performance measures. ED employee related performance measures were rarely mentioned in the investigated literature. The study’s results allow for advancement towards improved performance measurement and standardised assessment across EDs

Reflections on a crisis: political disenchantment, moral desolation, and political integrity

Declining levels of political trust and voter turnout, the shift towards populist politics marked by appeals to ‘the people’ and a rejection of ‘politics-as-usual’, are just some of the commonly cited manifestations of our culture of political disaffection. Democratic politics, it is argued, is in crisis. Whilst considerable energy has been expended on the task of lamenting the status of our politics and pondering over recommendations to tackle this perceived crisis, amid this raft of complaints and solutions lurks confusion. This paper seeks to explore the neglected question of what the precise nature of the crisis with which we are confronted involves, and, in so doing, to go some way towards untangling our confusion. Taking my cue from Machiavelli and his value-pluralist heirs, I argue that there is a rift between a morally admirable and a virtuous political life. Failure to appreciate this possibility causes narrations of crisis to misconstrue the moral messiness of politics in ways that lead us to misunderstand how we should respond to disenchantment. Specifically, I suggest that: (i) we think that there is a moral crisis in politics because we have an unsatisfactorily idealistic understanding of political integrity in the first place; and (ii) it is a mistake to imagine that the moral purification of politics is possible or desirable. Put simply, our crisis is not moral per se but primarily philosophical in nature: it relates to the very concepts we employ—the qualities of character and context we presuppose whilst pondering over political integrity

Improved Optimization of Time-Frequency Based Signal Classifiers

Time-Frequency Pepresentations (TFPs) are efficient tools for nonstationary signal classification. However, the choice of the TFP and of the distance measure employed is critical when no prior information other than a learning set of limited size is available. In this letter, we propose to jointly optimize the TFP and distance mea- sure by minimizing the (estimated) probability of classifi- cation error. The resulting optimized classification method is applied to multicomponent chirp signals and real speech records (speaker recognition). Extensive simulations show the substantial improvement of classification performance obtained with our optimization method