Delivering on seafood traceability under the new U.S. import monitoring program

The United States is the world’s largest fish importer. Recent reports, however, indicate that 25–30% of wild-caught seafood imported into the US is illegally caught, heightening concerns over the country’s significant role in driving Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing. In January 2017, NOAA enacted the Seafood Import Monitoring Program in an effort to combat IUU fishing through mandating improved seafood traceability requirements. This program requires reporting of fisheries data from harvest to arrival at the US border. Given the role of the US as a major global importer of seafood, this regulation could be a transformative action on fisheries worldwide if implementation includes two key components—(1) applying best available and most appropriate technologies and (2) building monitoring and enforcement capacity among trading nations. This paper provides insightful commentary on the potential for this US policy to lead by example and improve an essential natural resource that over a billion people worldwide depend on for nutrition and livelihoods

Genomic signatures of host-associated divergence and adaptation in a coral-eating snail, Coralliophila violacea (Kiener, 1836).

The fluid nature of the ocean, combined with planktonic dispersal of marine larvae, lowers physical barriers to gene flow. However, divergence can still occur despite gene flow if strong selection acts on populations occupying different ecological niches. Here, we examined the population genomics of an ectoparasitic snail, Coralliophila violacea (Kiener 1836), that specializes on Porites corals in the Indo-Pacific. Previous genetic analyses revealed two sympatric lineages associated with different coral hosts. In this study, we examined the mechanisms promoting and maintaining the snails' adaptation to their coral hosts. Genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data from type II restriction site-associated DNA (2b-RAD) sequencing revealed two differentiated clusters of C. violacea that were largely concordant with coral host, consistent with previous genetic results. However, the presence of some admixed genotypes indicates gene flow from one lineage to the other. Combined, these results suggest that differentiation between host-associated lineages of C. violacea is occurring in the face of ongoing gene flow, requiring strong selection. Indeed, 2.7% of all SNP loci were outlier loci (73/2,718), indicative of divergence with gene flow, driven by adaptation of each C. violacea lineage to their specific coral hosts

A rapid response to the COVID-19 outbreak: the meta-evidence project

Early in the pandemic, as scientific reports and preliminary research on both clinical and public health aspectsof COVID-19 were rapidly generated, we recognised the need for a dynamic, interactive tool that could captureand collate emerging evidence sources to inform research and decision-making efforts. In particular, we observed that numerous similar research efforts across the globe were happening in parallel - prompting an urgent need to connect research teams with each other and maximize research efficiency. Our colleagues in China provided daily translations of emerging evidence to aid networking between research groups working across the world. Here we describe how the meta-evidence project met daily and ongoing challenges and what was learned as a result. We describe the benefit of finding ways to instead work with better resourced teams and promote collective and open efforts to synthesise the evidence, which in the end, outweighed the considerable costs

Does the social equitability of community and incentive based conservation interventions in non-OECD countries, affect human well-being? A systematic review protocol

Background: An increasing number of conservation interventions aim to reduce their negative impacts on vulnerable people and to provide incentives aimed at improving overall human well-being. Community and incentive based conservation interventions have had variable rates of success in producing well-being outcomes, yet it is unclear why. Researchers have hypothesised that socially equitable conservation interventions will improve their likelihood of success. However, for community and incentive based interventions, there is a lack of evidence synthesis for the effect that social equity has on human well-being outcomes. Using this protocol, we will undertake a systematic review of relevant literature with the aim of using existing knowledge to address this gap. Methods: This protocol outlines the methodology we will use to examine the research question: Does the social equitability of community and incentive based conservation interventions in non-OECD countries, affect human well-being? We will conduct a systematic review of available studies, using articles that measure the effect of social equity, defined as the absence of avoidable and unfair, cost and benefit distributions between socially stratifying factors. To make this process efficient, and in order to prevent replication, we will utilize and update a literature search, and sub-set of data, collected in a previous systematic map that assessed the quantity and strength of evidence to support the effects conservation interventions have on human wellbeing. We will critically appraise each study we identify and capture the degree to which interventions integrated social equity within project participation and outcomes. Where integrated, we will determine if studies record or describe the effect that social equity had on human well-being. We have developed a conceptual framework that describes the expected effect of social equity, in order to capture and understand these effects. To understand the strength of relationships in our framework, and where data availability allows, we will undertake and combine a series of qualitative and quantitative data syntheses. By undertaking this study, we intend to understand how social equity considerations, specifically within community and incentive based conservation interventions, can affect human well-being. A better understanding of these features will inform conservation practitioners and researchers on the extent to which they ought to incorporate social equity into interventions in order to promote human well-being

Countdown to the Future

At the NASA Ames Research Center in California, the next generation of space biologists are working to understand the effects of long duration space flight on model organisms, and are developing ways to protect the health of future astronauts

Fast fault location scheme for distribution systems based on fault transients

This paper presents a combined double-end and single-end fault locator for distribution systems. The technique lies under the impedance based category and uses the fault generated high frequency components to locate the faults. The combination of double-end and single-end allows the method to discriminate between faults on the main feeder and those on laterals. Also, the method only requires a short data window as it depends on the high frequency components. The evaluation of the method considers different system and fault parameters e.g. loading taps, loading unbalance, fault type and fault resistance. To validate the proposed technique, the IEEE 34 nodes system is used to simulate different test cases

Software support for environmental evidence synthesis

Ecological research is central to efforts to ensure the provision of critical societal needs such as clean water, carbon abatement, and to avert the loss of biodiversity. The amount of research published on these subjects has increased enormously in recent ears, yet this research is not always used to improve environmental management or policy4. This ‘research-implementation gap’ is sustained by many factors including low access to scientific research outside of academia, a lack of flexible decision-making structures to incorporate new information, and mismatches between management and scientific priorities. A key step towards bridging the research-implementation gap, however, is to gather insights from the entire body of available evidence to ensure that scientific advice is as consistent and accurate as possible. This requires evidence synthesis; work by individuals or teams that take scientific outputs (articles and reports) and use them to understand the effectiveness of an intervention in a range of contexts. Consequently, applied synthesis has become indispensable to the application of scientific information to socio-ecological problems

Failure of PCR to Detect Treponema pallidum ssp. pertenue DNA in Blood in Latent Yaws.

Yaws, caused by Treponema pallidum ssp. pertenue, is a neglected tropical disease closely related to venereal syphilis and is targeted for eradication by 2020. Latent yaws represents a diagnostic challenge, and current tools cannot adequately distinguish between individuals with true latent infection and individuals who are serofast following successful treatment. PCR on blood has previously been shown to detect T. pallidum DNA in patients with syphilis, suggesting that this approach may be of value in yaws. We performed real-time PCR for Treponema pallidum ssp. pertenue on blood samples from 140 children with positive T. pallidum Particle Agglutination (TPPA) and Rapid Plasma Reagin (RPR) tests and 7 controls (negative serology), all collected as part of a prospective study of yaws in the Solomon Islands. All samples were also tested by a nested PCR for T. pallidum. 12 patients had clinical evidence of active yaws whilst 128 were considered to have latent yaws. 43 children had high titre rapid plasma reagins (RPRs) of ≥1:32. PCR testing with both assays gave negative results in all cases. It is possible that the failure to detect T. pallidum ssp. pertenue in blood reflects lower loads of organism in latent yaws compared to those in latent infection with T. pallidum ssp. pertenue, and/or a lower propensity for haematogenous dissemination in yaws than in syphilis. As the goal of the yaws control programme is eradication, a tool that can differentiate true latent infection from individuals who are serofast would be of value; however, PCR of blood is not that tool