Questions of Sovereignty: Pyramid Lake and the Northern Paiute Struggle for Water and Rights

The current U.S. government policy of Indian Self-Determination is determined by the principle of tribal sovereignty, which defines how issues identified in Indian Country are addressed. However, tribal sovereignty represents an ideal that has regularly been ignored or contested by private and corporate entities, as well as state and federal government agencies. My research explores this case study of the successful assertion of tribal sovereignty by the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe as they worked to save Pyramid Lake, the spiritual and economic heart of their reservation. The Pyramid Lake Tribe employed several strategies to secure water for Pyramid Lake and to save the endangered endemic species of fish, the cui-ui and Lahonton cutthroat trout, from extinction. They were opposed by an iron triangle composed of the Nevada Group, an interest group of Nevada water users, the Bureau of Reclamation, and Nevada\u27s congressional delegation which tried to monopolize the waters of the Truckee River. Through numerous court cases and lobbying Congress, the Pyramid Lake Tribe was able to establish that no water issues could be settled without their input. With this nearly all stake holders entered into negotiations to reach an agreement that would serve the needs of every group: the Truckee-Carson-Pyramid Lake Negotiated Settlement Agreement, or PL101-618. The Truckee River Operating agreement was then worked out over the next eighteen years to operationalize PL101-618. I also explore the question of where sovereignty lies, which has important implications for legitimacy of government. For the U.S. government, sovereignty on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Indian reservation lies with the enrolled members of the tribe; however, there is evidence that for some of the people at Pyramid Lake, sovereignty lies with the families. I suggest this disconnect may drive factional conflict within the Pyramid Lake Tribe, which interferes with tribal governance. The members of the Pyramid Lake Tribe and their council are actively working to find solutions to issues created by the limitations of tribal sovereignty and resolutions to the internal conflict that creates animosity among the tribal members. They favor solutions that do not limit their sovereignty

Spatial Models to Account for Variation in Observer Effort in Bird Atlases

To assess the importance of variation in observer effort between and within bird atlas projects and demonstrate the use of relatively simple conditional autoregressive (CAR) models for analyzing grid-based atlas data with varying effort. Pennsylvania and West Virginia, United States of America. We used varying proportions of randomly selected training data to assess whether variations in observer effort can be accounted for using CAR models and whether such models would still be useful for atlases with incomplete data. We then evaluated whether the application of these models influenced our assessment of distribution change between two atlas projects separated by twenty years (Pennsylvania), and tested our modeling methodology on a state bird atlas with incomplete coverage (West Virginia). Conditional Autoregressive models which included observer effort and landscape covariates were able to make robust predictions of species distributions in cases of sparse data coverage. Further, we found that CAR models without landscape covariates performed favorably. These models also account for variation in observer effort between atlas projects and can have a profound effect on the overall assessment of distribution change. Accounting for variation in observer effort in atlas projects is critically important. CAR models provide a useful modeling framework for accounting for variation in observer effort in bird atlas data because they are relatively simple to apply, and quick to run

Volume 19. Article 2. Aspects of oceanography of Long Island Sound.

https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/bulletin_yale_bingham_oceanographic_collection/1166/thumbnail.jp

Soil warming accelerates biogeochemical silica cycling in a temperate forest.

© The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Gewirtzman, J., Tang, J., Melillo, J. M., Werner, W. J., Kurtz, A. C., Fulweiler, R. W., & Carey, J. C. Soil warming accelerates biogeochemical silica cycling in a temperate forest. Frontiers in Plant Science, 10, (2019): 1097, doi:10.3389/fpls.2019.01097.Biological cycling of silica plays an important role in terrestrial primary production. Soil warming stemming from climate change can alter the cycling of elements, such as carbon and nitrogen, in forested ecosystems. However, the effects of soil warming on the biogeochemical cycle of silica in forested ecosystems remain unexplored. Here we examine long-term forest silica cycling under ambient and warmed conditions over a 15-year period of experimental soil warming at Harvard Forest (Petersham, MA). Specifically, we measured silica concentrations in organic and mineral soils, and in the foliage and litter of two dominant species (Acer rubrum and Quercus rubra), in a large (30 × 30 m) heated plot and an adjacent control plot (30 × 30 m). In 2016, we also examined effects of heating on dissolved silica in the soil solution, and conducted a litter decomposition experiment using four tree species (Acer rubrum, Quercus rubra, Betula lenta, Tsuga canadensis) to examine effects of warming on the release of biogenic silica (BSi) from plants to soils. We find that tree foliage maintained constant silica concentrations in the control and warmed plots, which, coupled with productivity enhancements under warming, led to an increase in total plant silica uptake. We also find that warming drove an acceleration in the release of silica from decaying litter in three of the four species we examined, and a substantial increase in the silica dissolved in soil solution. However, we observe no changes in soil BSi stocks with warming. Together, our data indicate that warming increases the magnitude of silica uptake by vegetation and accelerates the internal cycling of silica in in temperate forests, with possible, and yet unresolved, effects on the delivery of silica from terrestrial to marine systems.This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF PLR-1417763 to JT), the Geological Society of America (Stephen G. Pollock Undergraduate Research Grant to JG), the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, and the Marine Biological Laboratory. Sample analysis and Fulweiler’s involvement were supported by Boston University and a Bullard Fellowship from Harvard University. The soil warming experiment was supported by the National Science Foundation (DEB-0620443) and Department of Energy (DE-FC02-06-ER641577 and DE-SC0005421)

Proglacial icings as indicators of glacier thermal regime : ice thickness changes and icing occurrence in Svalbard

Proglacial icings (also known as naled or aufeis) are frequently observed in the forefields of polar glaciers. Their formation has been ascribed to the refreezing of upwelling groundwater that has originated from subglacial melt, and thus the presence of icings has been used as evidence of polythermal glacier regime. We provide an updated analysis of icing occurrence in Svalbard and test the utility of icings as an indicator of thermal regime by comparing icing presence with: (1) mean glacier thickness, as a proxy for present thermal regime; and (2) evidence of past surge activity, which is an indicator of past thermal regime. A total of 279 icings were identified from TopoSvalbard imagery covering the period 2008-2012, of which 143 corresponded to icings identified by Bukowska-Jania and Szafraniec (2005) from aerial photographs from 1990. Only 46% of icings observed in 2008-2012 were found to occur at glaciers with thicknesses consistent with a polythermal regime, meaning a large proportion were associated with glaciers predicted to be of a cold or transitional thermal regime. As a result, icing presence alone may be an unsuitable indicator of glacier regime. We further found that, of the 279 glaciers with icings, 63% of cold-based glaciers and 64% of transitional glaciers were associated with evidence of surge activity. We therefore suggest that proglacial icing formation in Svalbard may reflect historical (rather than present) thermal regime, and that icings possibly originate from groundwater effusion from subglacial taliks that persist for decades following glacier thinning and associated regime change

Cell-free DNA screening for rare autosomal trisomies and segmental chromosome imbalances

Funding Information: Ben W. Mol is supported by a NHMRC Investigator grant (GNT1176437). Ben W. Mol reports consultancy for ObsEva and Merck and travel support and research grants from Merck. The authors declare no conflict of interest. The authors wish to acknowledge the staff of Monash Ultrasound for Women, Sydney Ultrasound for Women, and Ultrasound Care for their diligent and compassionate care of the women involved in this study. Open access publishing facilitated by Monash University, as part of the Wiley - Monash University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Secondary Structure and Glycosylation of Mucus Glycoproteins by Raman Spectroscopies

The major structural components of protective mucus hydrogels on mucosal surfaces are the secreted polymeric gel-forming mucins. The very high molecular weight and extensive O-glycosylation of gel-forming mucins, which are key to their viscoelastic properties, create problems when studying mucins using conventional biochemical/structural techniques. Thus, key structural information, such as the secondary structure of the various mucin subdomains, and glycosylation patterns along individual molecules, remains to be elucidated. Here, we utilized Raman spectroscopy, Raman optical activity (ROA), circular dichroism (CD), and tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS) to study the structure of the secreted polymeric gel-forming mucin MUC5B. ROA indicated that the protein backbone of MUC5B is dominated by unordered conformation, which was found to originate from the heavily glycosylated central mucin domain by isolation of MUC5B O-glycan-rich regions. In sharp contrast, recombinant proteins of the N-terminal region of MUC5B (D1-D2-D′-D3 domains, NT5B), C-terminal region of MUC5B (D4-B-C-CK domains, CT5B) and the Cys-domain (within the central mucin domain of MUC5B) were found to be dominated by the β-sheet. Using these findings, we employed TERS, which combines the chemical specificity of Raman spectroscopy with the spatial resolution of atomic force microscopy to study the secondary structure along 90 nm of an individual MUC5B molecule. Interestingly, the molecule was found to contain a large amount of α-helix/unordered structures and many signatures of glycosylation, pointing to a highly O-glycosylated region on the mucin

Acute effects of active breaks during prolonged sitting on subcutaneous adipose tissue gene expression: an ancillary analysis of a randomised controlled trial.

Active breaks in prolonged sitting has beneficial impacts on cardiometabolic risk biomarkers. The molecular mechanisms include regulation of skeletal muscle gene and protein expression controlling metabolic, inflammatory and cell development pathways. An active communication network exists between adipose and muscle tissue, but the effect of active breaks in prolonged sitting on adipose tissue have not been investigated. This study characterized the acute transcriptional events induced in adipose tissue by regular active breaks during prolonged sitting. We studied 8 overweight/obese adults participating in an acute randomized three-intervention crossover trial. Interventions were performed in the postprandial state and included: (i) prolonged uninterrupted sitting; or prolonged sitting interrupted with 2-minute bouts of (ii) light- or (iii) moderate-intensity treadmill walking every 20 minutes. Subcutaneous adipose tissue biopsies were obtained after each condition. Microarrays identified 36 differentially expressed genes between the three conditions (fold change ≥0.5 in either direction; p < 0.05). Pathway analysis indicated that breaking up of prolonged sitting led to differential regulation of adipose tissue metabolic networks and inflammatory pathways, increased insulin signaling, modulation of adipocyte cell cycle, and facilitated cross-talk between adipose tissue and other organs. This study provides preliminary insight into the adipose tissue regulatory systems that may contribute to the physiological effects of interrupting prolonged sitting

Adipocytes promote pancreatic cancer cell proliferation via glutamine transfer

AbstractAdipocytes promote progression of multiple cancers, but their role in pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PanIN) and ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is poorly defined. Nutrient transfer is a mechanism underlying stromal cell-cancer crosstalk. We studied the role of adipocytes in regulating in vitro PanIN and PDAC cell proliferation with a focus on glutamine metabolism. Murine 3T3L1 adipocytes were used to model adipocytes. Cell lines derived from PKCY mice were used to model PanIN and PDAC. Co-culture was used to study the effect of adipocytes on PanIN and PDAC cell proliferation in response to manipulation of glutamine metabolism. Glutamine secretion was measured with a bioanalyzer. Western blotting was used to study the effect of PanIN and PDAC cells on expression of glutamine-related enzymes in adipocytes. Adipocytes promote proliferation of PanIN and PDAC cells, an effect that was amplified in nutrient-poor conditions. Adipocytes secrete glutamine and rescue PanIN and PDAC cell proliferation in the absence of glutamine, an effect that was glutamine synthetase-dependent and involved PDAC cell-induced down-regulation of glutaminase expression in adipocytes. These findings suggest glutamine transfer as a potential mechanism underlying adipocyte-induced PanIN and PDAC cell proliferation