The effects of atrazine on Zostera marina in the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia

This project was designed to assess the effects of agricultural herbicides on submerged aquatic vegetation in the lower Chesapeake Bay. Atrazine was selected for testing because it is the most widely utilized herbicide in the Bay region. Zostera marina was the submerged vegetation studied. The project began with two surveys. The first survey, conducted in 1979, covered forty eight stations throughout the Virginia portion of the Chesapeake Bay. The survey was designed to indicate typical atrazine loading for the lower Bay. A second survey in 1980 was limited to the Severn River, and was intended to indicate the duration of peak atrazine loading. Information generated in the two surveys was ctilized tn design dosing experiments

The First Naked-eye Superflare Detected from Proxima Centauri

Proxima b is a terrestrial-mass planet in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri. Proxima Centauri's high stellar activity, however, casts doubt on the habitability of Proxima b: sufficiently bright and frequent flares and any associated proton events may destroy the planet's ozone layer, allowing lethal levels of UV flux to reach its surface. In 2016 March, the Evryscope observed the first naked-eye-brightness superflare detected from Proxima Centauri. Proxima increased in optical flux by a factor of ∼68 during the superflare and released a bolometric energy of 1033.5 erg, ∼10× larger than any previously detected flare from Proxima. Over the last two years the Evryscope has recorded 23 other large Proxima flares ranging in bolometric energy from 1030.6 to 1032.4 erg; coupling those rates with the single superflare detection, we predict that at least five superflares occur each year. Simultaneous high-resolution High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectroscopy during the Evryscope superflare constrains the superflare's UV spectrum and any associated coronal mass ejections. We use these results and the Evryscope flare rates to model the photochemical effects of NOx atmospheric species generated by particle events from this extreme stellar activity, and show that the repeated flaring may be sufficient to reduce the ozone of an Earth-like atmosphere by 90% within five years; complete depletion may occur within several hundred kyr. The UV light produced by the Evryscope superflare would therefore have reached the surface with ∼100× the intensity required to kill simple UV-hardy microorganisms, suggesting that life would have to undergo extreme adaptations to survive in the surface areas of Proxima b exposed to these flares

Seabird Bycatch in Pelagic Longline Fisheries Is Grossly Underestimated when Using Only Haul Data

Hundreds of thousands of seabirds are killed each year as bycatch in longline fisheries. Seabirds are predominantly caught during line setting but bycatch is generally recorded during line hauling, many hours after birds are caught. Bird loss during this interval may lead to inaccurate bycatch information. In this 15 year study, seabird bycatch was recorded during both line setting and line hauling from four fishing regions: Indian Ocean, Southern Ocean, Coral Sea and central Pacific Ocean. Over 43,000 albatrosses, petrels and skuas representing over 25 species were counted during line setting of which almost 6,000 seabirds attempted to take the bait. Bait-taking interactions were placed into one of four categories. (i) The majority (57%) of bait-taking attempts were “unsuccessful” involving seabirds that did not take the bait nor get caught or hooked. (ii) One-third of attempts were “successful” with seabirds removing the bait while not getting caught. (iii) One-hundred and seventy-six seabirds (3% of attempts) were observed being “caught” during line setting, with three albatross species – Laysan (Phoebastria immutabilis), black-footed (P. nigripes) and black-browed (Thalassarche melanophrys)– dominating this category. However, of these, only 85 (48%) seabird carcasses were retrieved during line hauling. Most caught seabirds were hooked through the bill. (iv) The remainder of seabird-bait interactions (7%) was not clearly observed, but likely involved more “caught” seabirds. Bait taking attempts and percentage outcome (e.g. successful, caught) varied between seabird species and was not always related to species abundance around fishing vessels. Using only haul data to calculate seabird bycatch grossly underestimates actual bycatch levels, with the level of seabird bycatch from pelagic longline fishing possibly double what was previously thought

Risk Alleles for Systemic Lupus Erythematosus in a Large Case-Control Collection and Associations with Clinical Subphenotypes

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a genetically complex disease with heterogeneous clinical manifestations. Recent studies have greatly expanded the number of established SLE risk alleles, but the distribution of multiple risk alleles in cases versus controls and their relationship to subphenotypes have not been studied. We studied 22 SLE susceptibility polymorphisms with previous genome-wide evidence of association (p<5×10−8) in 1919 SLE cases from 9 independent Caucasian SLE case series and 4813 independent controls. The mean number of risk alleles in cases was 15.1 (SD 3.1) while the mean in controls was 13.1 (SD 2.8), with trend p = 4×10−128. We defined a genetic risk score (GRS) for SLE as the number of risk alleles with each weighted by the SLE risk odds ratio (OR). The OR for high-low GRS tertiles, adjusted for intra-European ancestry, sex, and parent study, was 4.4 (95% CI 3.8–5.1). We studied associations of individual SNPs and the GRS with clinical manifestations for the cases: age at diagnosis, the 11 American College of Rheumatology classification criteria, and double-stranded DNA antibody (anti-dsDNA) production. Six subphenotypes were significantly associated with the GRS, most notably anti-dsDNA (ORhigh-low = 2.36, p = 9e−9), the immunologic criterion (ORhigh-low = 2.23, p = 3e−7), and age at diagnosis (ORhigh-low = 1.45, p = 0.0060). Finally, we developed a subphenotype-specific GRS (sub-GRS) for each phenotype with more power to detect cumulative genetic associations. The sub-GRS was more strongly associated than any single SNP effect for 5 subphenotypes (the above plus hematologic disorder and oral ulcers), while single loci are more significantly associated with renal disease (HLA-DRB1, OR = 1.37, 95% CI 1.14–1.64) and arthritis (ITGAM, OR = 0.72, 95% CI 0.59–0.88). We did not observe significant associations for other subphenotypes, for individual loci or the sub-GRS. Thus our analysis categorizes SLE subphenotypes into three groups: those having cumulative, single, and no known genetic association with respect to the currently established SLE risk loci

Differential cross section of the reaction [pi]+ + p --&#62; K+ + Y* (1385) at 4.0 and 5.05 GeV/c

Approximately 1900 events were obtained in the differential cross section measurements of the reaction [pi]+ + p --&gt; K+ + Y* (1385). Forward peaks were found with slopes of 2.3 +/- 0.3 and 2.6 +/- 0.4 (GeV/c)-2 for 4 and 5.05 GeV/c respectively. This data together with that in other decuplet production reactions gives evidence of a large SU(3) violation as would be expected from the mass splitting of the strange and non-strange exchanged particles.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/32884/1/0000262.pd

Fifteen new risk loci for coronary artery disease highlight arterial-wall-specific mechanisms

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although 58 genomic regions have been associated with CAD thus far, most of the heritability is unexplained, indicating that additional susceptibility loci await identification. An efficient discovery strategy may be larger-scale evaluation of promising associations suggested by genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Hence, we genotyped 56,309 participants using a targeted gene array derived from earlier GWAS results and performed meta-analysis of results with 194,427 participants previously genotyped, totaling 88,192 CAD cases and 162,544 controls. We identified 25 new SNP-CAD associations (P &lt; 5 × 10(-8), in fixed-effects meta-analysis) from 15 genomic regions, including SNPs in or near genes involved in cellular adhesion, leukocyte migration and atherosclerosis (PECAM1, rs1867624), coagulation and inflammation (PROCR, rs867186 (p.Ser219Gly)) and vascular smooth muscle cell differentiation (LMOD1, rs2820315). Correlation of these regions with cell-type-specific gene expression and plasma protein levels sheds light on potential disease mechanisms