Law of the Land: Tribal Sovereignty and Legally Legitimated Resource-Based Control of Native Americans

In this article we reject the premise that race is merely an independent variable when studying the relationship between Native Americans and U.S. law. Instead we advance a new theory construct that more accurately understands the specific relationship between tribal sovereignty and inequality in the U.S. legal system. We term this new theoretical approach resource-based control that considers 1) how groups are racialized in their economic relationships with the United States, 2) how that process is derivative of the continuing process of U.S. settler-colonialism, and 3) how U.S. law functions to protect the capital of the United States. We test resource-based control using a newly created tribal sovereignty index and corresponding measures of U.S. legal interference and Tribal legal disruption. We find that tribal sovereign power predicts both US legal action and tribal legal action, lending support to our theory of resource-based control as the attempts of U.S. law to erode tribal sovereignty, but also recognizing the agency of tribes to protect it

Association studies of up to 1.2 million individuals yield new insights into the genetic etiology of tobacco and alcohol use

Tobacco and alcohol use are leading causes of mortality that influence risk for many complex diseases and disorders 1 . They are heritable 2,3 and etiologically related 4,5 behaviors that have been resistant to gene discovery efforts 6–11 . In sample sizes up to 1.2 million individuals, we discovered 566 genetic variants in 406 loci associated with multiple stages of tobacco use (initiation, cessation, and heaviness) as well as alcohol use, with 150 loci evidencing pleiotropic association. Smoking phenotypes were positively genetically correlated with many health conditions, whereas alcohol use was negatively correlated with these conditions, such that increased genetic risk for alcohol use is associated with lower disease risk. We report evidence for the involvement of many systems in tobacco and alcohol use, including genes involved in nicotinic, dopaminergic, and glutamatergic neurotransmission. The results provide a solid starting point to evaluate the effects of these loci in model organisms and more precise substance use measures

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Investigating the Effects of Disease on Predator-prey Dynamics in a Protozoan/Bacterial Model System

The relatively new field of eco-epidemiology investigates how diseases spread in relation to fundamental ecological topics. Knowing how diseases affect predator-prey dynamics, an important topic in ecology, may have beneficial applications in both conservation biology and biocontrol. However, most work in this field up to the current date has been purely theoretical (especially involving mathematical modeling). Experimental and observational evidence may or may not actually support mathematical models in the real world. In this experiment, we created microcosm communities with the ciliated protist species Tetrahymena pyriformis (predator), the bacterial species E. coli (prey), and bacteriophage T4 (pathogen) in order to determine how a pathogen affects predator-prey dynamics at the community level in a laboratory setting. The results indicate that T4 populations are benefited by the presence of the predator Tetrahymena, which may be due to the emergence of E. coli strains resistant to T4. If this is the case, Tetrahymena could be both hurting T4 on an ecological scale while helping T4 on an evolutionary scale.Jiang, Lin - Faculty Mentor ; Green, Linda - Committee Member/Second Reade

Quantification of Boat Visitation Rates at Artificial and Natural Reefs in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico Using Acoustic Recorders

Artificial reefs are commonly used as a management tool, in part to provide ecosystem services, including opportunities for recreational fishing and diving. Quantifying the use of artificial reefs by recreational boaters is essential for determining their value as ecosystem services. In this study, four artificial–natural reef pairs in the eastern Gulf of Mexico (off western Florida) were investigated for boat visitation rates using autonomous acoustic recorders. Digital SpectroGram (DSG) recorders were used to collect sound files from April 2013 to March 2015. An automatic detection algorithm was used to identify boat noise in individual files using the harmonic peaks generated by boat engines, and by comparing the sound amplitude of each file with surrounding files. In all four pairs, visitation rates were significantly higher at the artificial reef than the natural reef. This increase in boat visitation was likely due to actual or perceived increased quality of fishing and diving at the artificial reefs, or to lack of knowledge of the presence or locations of the natural reefs. Inshore reefs ( \u3c 15 m depth) had high variability in monthly visitation rates, which were generally highest in warmer months. However the seasonal signal was dampened on offshore reefs ( \u3e 25 m depth). This study appears to be the first to use acoustic data to measure participant use of boating destinations, and highlights the utility of acoustic monitoring for the valuation of this important ecosystem service provided by artificial reefs

Reefs investigated in study.

<p>Reefs investigated in study.</p

Map of study area.

<p>Map of study area, showing artificial and natural reef sites used in the study, and the locations of the 2008 recorders (recordings used in algorithm testing). Locations of passes shown by numbers: 1 = Hurricane Pass, 2 = Dunedin Pass, 3 = Clearwater Pass, 4 = John’s Pass, 5 = Blind Pass, 6 = Pass-a-Grille Pass, 7 = Bunces Pass, 8 = Egmont Channel. Data source for land and bathymetry: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission—Fish and Wildlife Research Institute.</p

Mean visitation rates for Pinellas II / Caves.

<p>Mean boat visitation rates (± SE) for Pinellas II artificial reef and Caves natural reef. “*” indicates missing data.</p

Spectrogram of boat noise.

<p>2048 point resolution spectrogram of typical boat noise produced by an outboard engine driven boat at high speed. Arrows show several harmonics, which here extend upward to about 9000 Hz.</p

Mean visitation rates for Clearwater / 21 HS.

<p>Mean boat visitation rates (± SE) for Clearwater artificial reef and 21 HS Ledge natural reef. “*” indicates missing data.</p