The Asian red seaweed Grateloupia turuturu (Rhodophyta) invades the Gulf of Maine

We report the invasion of the Gulf of Maine, in the northwest Atlantic Ocean, by the largest red seaweed in the world, the Asian Grateloupia turuturu. First detected in 1994 in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, south of Cape Cod, this alga had expanded its range in the following years only over to Long Island and into Long Island Sound. In July 2007 we found Grateloupia in the Cape Cod Canal and as far north (east) as Boston, Massachusetts, establishing its presence in the Gulf of Maine. Grateloupia can be invasive and may be capable of disrupting low intertidal and shallow subtidal seaweeds. The plant\u27s broad physiological tolerances suggest that it will be able to expand possibly as far north as the Bay of Fundy. We predict its continued spread in North America and around the world, noting that its arrival in the major international port of Boston may now launch G. turuturu on to new global shipping corridors

Micrometeorological processes driving snow ablation in an Alpine catchment

Mountain snow covers typically become patchy over the course of a melting season. The snow pattern during melt is mainly governed by the end of winter snow depth distribution and the local energy balance. The objective of this study is to investigate micrometeorological processes driving snow ablation in an Alpine catchment. For this purpose we combine a meteorological model (ARPS) with a fully distributed energy balance model (Alpine3D). Turbulent fluxes above melting snow are further investigated by using data from eddy-correlation systems. We compare modelled snow ablation to measured ablation rates as obtained from a series of Terrestrial Laser Scanning campaigns covering a complete ablation season. The measured ablation rates indicate that the advection of sensible heat causes locally increased ablation rates at the upwind edges of the snow patches. The effect, however, appears to be active over rather short distances except for very strong wind conditions. Neglecting this effect, the model is able to capture the mean ablation rates for early ablation periods but strongly overestimates snow ablation once the fraction of snow coverage is below a critical value. While radiation dominates snow ablation early in the season, the turbulent flux contribution becomes important late in the season. Simulation results indicate that the air temperatures appear to overestimate the local air temperature above snow patches once the snow coverage is below a critical value. Measured turbulent fluxes support these findings by suggesting a stable internal boundary layer close to the snow surface causing a strong decrease of the sensible heat flux towards the snow cover. Thus, the existence of a stable internal boundary layer above a patchy snow cover exerts a dominant control on the timing and magnitude of snow ablation for patchy snow covers.<br/

Fargo: Seeing the significance of style in television poetics?

This article explores the adaptation of the original film to television and how a strain of art or independent cinema contributed to the development of the first series of Fargo (2014–present). By making this comparison, the transition to television of the storyworld established by the Coen brothers raises questions about who is talking in the TV drama – the Coens or makers of the series. At the same time, Fargo can be more easily explained and understood as a strategy by writers, directors and producers that further complicate ideas to do with Noah Hawley, as its showrunner and the show’s single-author status. In Fargo, fidelity to the Coen brothers as a testament to the memory of the original film is set against questions about the reliability of storytelling using complex imagery. By alternating between different levels of narration signified by its stylistic tonal qualities, Fargo succeeds in producing multiple meanings, representations and effects that call attention to textual pleasures in the complex television series

Influence of box height on inter-limb asymmetry and box jump performance

Box jumps are often included in training programs as an introductory exercise to novice athletes and untrained individuals and are an efficient option of lower-body explosiveness training. However, it is unclear whether the use of boxes of differing heights affect the inter-limb asymmetry during this exercise. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of box height in inter-limb asymmetry during box jumps. Recreationally active young males (n = 14) and females (n = 16) performed three jumps at boxes that corresponded to approximately 0, 20, 40, 60, and 80% of their individual countermovement jumps. The selected performance variables were peak force (PF), peak power (PP), rate of force development (RFD), and time to take-off (TToff). The intraclass correlation coefficients ranged from 0.76 to 0.99, and the coefficient of variation ranged from 4.03 to 16.52%. A series of one-way repeated measures ANOVA tests were used to test for significant differences of the performance variables and inter-limb asymmetries. The females’ PF at 80% was significantly higher from 0% (p < 0.05). No significant differences were observed for inter-limb asymmetry across box heights (p ≥ 0.25). This study shows that the box height does not affect the overall intra-session inter-limb asymmetries in recreationally active individuals

Agent-based Social Psychology: from Neurocognitive Processes to Social Data

Moral Foundation Theory states that groups of different observers may rely on partially dissimilar sets of moral foundations, thereby reaching different moral valuations. The use of functional imaging techniques has revealed a spectrum of cognitive styles with respect to the differential handling of novel or corroborating information that is correlated to political affiliation. Here we characterize the collective behavior of an agent-based model whose inter individual interactions due to information exchange in the form of opinions are in qualitative agreement with experimental neuroscience data. The main conclusion derived connects the existence of diversity in the cognitive strategies and statistics of the sets of moral foundations and suggests that this connection arises from interactions between agents. Thus a simple interacting agent model, whose interactions are in accord with empirical data on conformity and learning processes, presents statistical signatures consistent with moral judgment patterns of conservatives and liberals as obtained by survey studies of social psychology.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, 2 C codes, to appear in Advances in Complex System

Effect of Age on Flow-Rate, Protein and Electrolyte Composition of Stimulated Whole Saliva in Healthy, Non-Smoking Women

As relatively little is known about the effect of age on salivary electrolytes we studied the composition of saliva as function of age to provide reference values for healthy non-smoking women. All non-medicated and non-smoking 30-59-year-old subjects (n=255) selected from among 1030 women participating in a screening program formed the material of the present study. Salivary calcium, inorganic phosphate, magnesium, sodium, potassium, protein and flow-rate of stimulated whole saliva were measured. We found age-related changes in salivary calcium and phosphate concentrations (p=0.001 and p=0.004, respectively, one-way ANOVA). Peak values occurred at around 50-54 years of age. Age had no effect on flow-rate, magnesium, sodium, potassium or proteins. The concentration of sodium correlated positively, while phosphate, potassium, magnesium and protein correlated negatively with the salivary flow-rate. Calcium was the only electrolyte which had no association with flow-rate. Our study provides reference values for salivary electrolytes of 30-59-year-old women

Genetic Influences on Educational Achievement in Cross-National Perspective

There is a growing interest in how social conditions moderate genetic influences on education [gene–environment interactions (GxE)]. Previous research has focused on the family, specifically parents’ social background, and has neglected the institutional environment. To assess the impact of macro-level influences, we compare genetic influences on educational achievement and their social stratification across Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. We combine well-established GxE-conceptualizations with the comparative stratification literature and propose that educational systems and welfare-state regimes affect the realization of genetic potential. We analyse population-representative survey data on twins (Germany and the United States) and twin registers (Norway and Sweden), and estimate genetically sensitive variance decomposition models. Our comparative design yields three main findings. First, Germany stands out with comparatively weak genetic influences on educational achievement suggesting that early tracking limits the realization thereof. Second, in the United States genetic influences are comparatively strong and similar in size compared to the Nordic countries. Third, in Sweden genetic influences are stronger among disadvantaged families supporting the expectation that challenging and uncertain circumstances promote genetic expression. This ideosyncratic finding must be related to features of Swedish social institutions or welfare-state arrangements that are not found in otherwise similar countries

Combining classifiers for robust PICO element detection

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Formulating a clinical information need in terms of the four atomic parts which are Population/Problem, Intervention, Comparison and Outcome (known as PICO elements) facilitates searching for a precise answer within a large medical citation database. However, using PICO defined items in the information retrieval process requires a search engine to be able to detect and index PICO elements in the collection in order for the system to retrieve relevant documents.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In this study, we tested multiple supervised classification algorithms and their combinations for detecting PICO elements within medical abstracts. Using the structural descriptors that are embedded in some medical abstracts, we have automatically gathered large training/testing data sets for each PICO element.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Combining multiple classifiers using a weighted linear combination of their prediction scores achieves promising results with an <it>f</it>-measure score of 86.3% for P, 67% for I and 56.6% for O.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our experiments on the identification of PICO elements showed that the task is very challenging. Nevertheless, the performance achieved by our identification method is competitive with previously published results and shows that this task can be achieved with a high accuracy for the P element but lower ones for I and O elements.</p