Management Recommendations for Restoration of the Degraded Olympia Oyster, Ostrea lurida Carpenter 1864 in Tomales Bay, CA

This research addresses the effective restoration of Olympia oyster populations in Tomales Bay, Marin County, California. Chapter 2 provides background information on the Tomales Bay estuary, regional history, and ecology of the Olympia oyster. Following this background discussion, each of the three aforementioned degraders of Olympia oyster populations in Tomales Bay is presented: ocean acidification (Chapter 3), sedimentation (Chapter 4), and invasive species (Chapter 5). Each of these issues creates numerous barriers that require the attention of resource protection managers. Chapter 6 presents overall Research Conclusions and Chapter 7 identifies management recommendations to effectively begin the restoration of the Olympia oyster in Tomales Bay. The Olympia oysters of Tomales Bay endured degradation and limitation due to centuries of human activities. Therefore, it is the responsibility of humans to address and manage the degrading factors. As a federally protected estuary, Tomales Bay enjoys certain protections and restrictions against environmentally harmful activities, but violators like ocean acidification, sedimentation, and invasive species cannot be fined or cited. The only solution to their detrimental impacts is for the National Marine Sanctuary Program, its partners and other resource conservation managers to target them at their sources. The Olympia oyster is a native foundation species whose presence improves the water quality and biodiversity of the entire ecosystem. Therefore, Olympia oyster restoration requires immediate consideration, and this document provides those first needed steps towards restoration

Curiosity Killed the Cat: Investigating a Link between Curiosity and Risk-Taking Propensity

Curiosity, or the drive for information and experiences that motivates exploration, plays a role in intellectual development. Curiosity is perhaps essential to education and intellectual achievement, but curiosity research is limited. Curiosity has been thought a motivation for learning and a cause of non-sanctioned behaviors and behavioral disorders. This prompts a connection with decision-making, specifically risky decision-making, perhaps with curiosity as a motivating force. In Experiment 1, college students were primed with curiosity, then participated in a lab-based behavioral measure of risk-taking, the Balloon Analogue Risk Task, and answered self-report inventories concerning risk-taking and curiosity. In Experiment 2, 4th and 5th grade students were primed with curiosity and then participated in a modified version of the BART. In both experiments, risk-taking did not vary as a function of curiosity. Limitations to the current research, and potential avenues for future investigations, are discussed

Learning How to Influence Others: A Training Module and Experiential Exercise

Effective leaders in the 21st century must be able to elicit desired changes through one-on-one dialogues, in small groups, and through speeches as well as other communication channels directed at broader audiences. Unfortunately, knowledge about influence tactics does not necessarily translate into effective usage. Therefore, we developed a training module and experiential exercise that provide participants, as influence agents, practice using 11 proactive influence tactics. The module also provides participants, as targets, practice in identifying uses of the tactics in various real-life situations. The authors developed training materials and instructions to help participants gain a deeper understanding of the influence process. Materials provided for instructors include an interactive student handout, a two-part homework assignment including a solutions key, a list of sample scenarios, and a list of tactics to be used in the exercise

VASOMOTOR SYMPTOMS AND NEGATIVE AFFECT: AN AMBULATORY ASSESSMENT OF MIDLIFE WOMEN

Background: Hot flashes and night sweats, or vasomotor symptoms (VMS), are reported by an estimated 70-80% of women during the menopausal transition. Measures of negative affect are among the strongest and most consistent correlates of all aspects of VMS experience, though the mechanisms linking these factors are unclear. The current study aimed to examine the within day and day-to-day relationships between vasomotor symptoms and negative affect, and the potential role of sleep disturbance and cortisol dysregulation in these relationships, in a sample of women in midlife. Methods: Fifty-three women (49% African American) who reported daily vasomotor symptoms were enrolled in an ambulatory study. For seven days, participants documented their mood state, VMS experience, sleep, and health behaviors multiple times a day using electronic diaries, and wore Actiwatches to capture additional data related to sleep parameters. Participants also provided morning and bedtime saliva samples for salivary cortisol collection over three days during the observed period. Hierarchical linear regression was used to examine relationships between VMS, negative affect, and related factors. Results: Accounting for a number of health and demographic variables, women reported more negative affect on both the same day (β=1.46, p<.001 for VMS bother) and the day following (β=0.80, p=0.02 for night sweat severity, β=0.61, p=0.02 for night sweat bother) a more negative experience of vasomotor symptoms. A flatter diurnal cortisol slope was related to hot flash severity (β=0.09, p=0.03) and bother (β=0.10, p<.01) as well as negative affect (β=0.68, p=0.01), and partially explained the relationship between negative affect and VMS. Sleep disturbance did not appear to play a role in linking VMS to next day negative affect. Conclusion: The subjective experience of VMS plays a key role in relationships between VMS, negative affect, and health-related factors on a daily basis. The findings of this study do not support a small role of sleep disturbance in linking night sweat severity to next day negative affect, but suggest that further research is warranted to better understand the relationship between daily VMS experience, stress physiology, and negative affect

Respiration of aged soil carbon during fall in permafrost peatlands enhanced by active layer deepening following wildfire but limited following thermokarst

Permafrost peatlands store globally significant amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC) that may be vulnerable to climate change. Permafrost thaw exposes deeper, older SOC to microbial activity, but SOC vulnerability to mineralization and release as carbon dioxide is likely influenced by the soil environmental conditions that follow thaw. Permafrost thaw in peat plateaus, the dominant type of permafrost peatlands in North America, occurs both through deepening of the active layer and through thermokarst. Active layer deepening exposes aged SOC to predominately oxic conditions, while thermokarst is associated with complete permafrost thaw which leads to ground subsidence, inundation and soil anoxic conditions. Thermokarst often follows active layer deepening, and wildfire is an important trigger of this sequence. We compared the mineralization rate of aged SOC at an intact peat plateau (∼70 cm oxic active layer), a burned peat plateau (∼120 cm oxic active layer), and a thermokarst bog (∼550 cm anoxic peat profile) by measuring respired 14C-CO2. Measurements were done in fall when surface temperatures were near-freezing while deeper soil temperatures were still close to their seasonal maxima. Aged SOC (1600 yrs BP) contributed 22.1 ± 11.3% and 3.5 ± 3.1% to soil respiration in the burned and intact peat plateau, respectively, indicating a fivefold higher rate of aged SOC mineralization in the burned than intact peat plateau (0.15 ± 0.07 versus 0.03 ± 0.03 g CO2-C m−2 d−1). None or minimal contribution of aged SOC to soil respiration was detected within the thermokarst bog, regardless of whether thaw had occurred decades or centuries ago. While more data from other sites and seasons are required, our study provides strong evidence of substantially increased respiration of aged SOC from burned peat plateaus with deepened active layer, while also suggesting inhibition of aged SOC respiration under anoxic conditions in thermokarst bogs

Negative Affect and Vasomotor Symptoms in the Daily Hormone Study

Purpose: Vasomotor symptoms (VMS) are linked to poorer health and quality of life, and are common in the menopausal transition. Negative affect is consistently associated with self-reported VMS, but interpretation of the temporal and directional nature of this relationship has been limited by potentially biased retrospective recall of VMS. Using prospective data from end-of-day daily diaries, we examined the daily association and the day-to-day temporal relationship between negative affect and VMS. Methods: Data were from the third wave of the Daily Hormone Study (DHS) (n=625). DHS is a substudy of the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN), a multi-site community-based prospective cohort study of the menopausal transition. Daily affect and VMS were reported in diaries over 12-50 days. Multilevel mixed models, with daily observations nested within women, were used to determine the associations between daily diary-reported VMS and negative affect, adjusted by woman-level covariates (antidepressant use, age, education, menopausal status, self-reported health, and race/ethnicity) drawn from annual SWAN visits. Results: Overall, VMS was reported on at least one day of observation by 327 women (52.3%). Women with higher average negative affect were more likely to ever report VMS (OR 1.79, 95% CI 1.30-2.45, p<.001). Negative affect was also positively associated with VMS (OR 1.76, 95% CI 1.43-2.17, p<.001) within each 24 hour period. Negative affect, adjusted by same day VMS, was not predictive of next day VMS (OR 1.107, 95% CI .85-1.35, p=.55), while VMS, adjusted by same day negative affect, was predictive of negative affect the next day (OR 1.27, 95% CI 1.03-1.58, p=.01). Conclusions: VMS and negative affect were positively associated with each other using prospective daily diaries. Assessment of temporal relationships suggests that VMS precedes acute elevations in negative affect, but negative affect does not increase likelihood of VMS

Cognitive performance in healthy women during induced hypogonadism and ovarian steroid addback

Background—Gynecology clinic-based studies have consistently demonstrated that induced hypogonadism is accompanied by a decline in cognitive test performance. However, a recent study in healthy asymptomatic controls observed that neither induced hypogonadism nor estradiol replacement influenced cognitive performance. Thus the effects of induced hypogonadism on cognition might not be uniformly experienced across individual women. Moreover, discrepancies in the effects of hypogonadism on cognition also could suggest the existence of specific risk phenotypes that predict a woman’s symptomatic experience during the menopause. In this study, we examined the effects of induced hypogonadism and ovarian steroid replacement on cognitive performance in healthy premenopausal women. Methods—Ovarian suppression was induced with a GnRH agonist (Lupron) and then physiologic levels of estradiol and progesterone were re-introduced in 23 women. Cognitive tests were administered during each hormone condition. To evaluate possible practice effects arising during repeated testing, an identical battery of tests was administered at the same time intervals in 11 untreated women. Results—With the exception of an improved performance on mental rotation during estradiol, we observed no significant effects of estradiol or progesterone on measures of attention, concentration, or memory compared with hypogonadism. Conclusions—In contrast to studies in which a decline in cognitive performance was observed in women receiving ovarian suppression therapy for an underlying gynecologic condition, we confirm a prior report demonstrating that short term changes in gonadal steroids have a limited effect on cognition in young, healthy, women. Differences in the clinical characteristics of the women receiving GnRH agonists could predict a risk for ovarian steroid-related changes in cognitive performance during induced, and possibly, natural menopause