The Seasonal Evolution of Albedo across Glaciers and the Surrounding Landscape of Taylor Valley, Antarctica

The McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDVs) of Antarctica are a polar desert ecosystem consisting of alpine glaciers, ice-covered lakes, streams, and expanses of vegetation-free rocky soil. Because average summer temperatures are close to 0 Cel., the MDV ecosystem in general, and glacier melt dynamics in particular, are both closely linked to the energy balance. A slight increase in incoming radiation or change in albedo can have large effects on the timing and volume of meltwater. However, the seasonal evolution or spatial variability of albedo in the valleys has yet to fully characterized. In this study, we aim to understand the drivers of landscape albedo change within and across seasons. To do so, a box with a camera, GPS, and shortwave radiometer was hung from a helicopter that flew transects four to five times a season along Taylor Valley. Measurements were repeated over three seasons. These data were coupled with incoming radiation measured at six meteorological stations distributed along the valley to calculate the distribution of albedo across individual glaciers, lakes, and soil surfaces. We hypothesized that albedo would decrease throughout the austral summer with ablation of snow patches and increasing sediment exposure on the glacier and lake surfaces. However, small snow events (\u3c 6mm water equivalent) coupled with ice whitening caused spatial and temporal variability of albedo across the entire landscape. Glaciers frequently followed a pattern of increasing albedo with increasing elevation, as well as increasing albedo moving from east to west laterally across the ablation zone. We suggest that spatial patterns of albedo are a function of landscape morphology trapping snow and sediment, longitudinal gradients in snowfall magnitude, and wind-driven snow redistribution from east to west along the valley. We also compare our albedo measurements to the MODIS albedo product and found that overall the data have reasonable agreement. The mismatch in spatial scale between these two datasets results in variability, which is reduced after a snow event due to albedo following valley-scale gradients of snowfall magnitude. These findings highlight the importance of understanding the spatial and temporal variability in albedo and the close coupling of climate and landscape response. This new understanding of landscape albedo can constrain landscape energy budgets, better predict meltwater generation on from MDV glaciers, and how these ecosystems will respond to changing climate at the landscape scale

The Compassionate Communities Connectors model for end-of-life care : a community and health service partnership in Western Australia

Background: There is an international drive towards increasing provision of community-led models of social and practical support for people living with advanced illness. Aim: This feasibility project aims to develop, implement and evaluate a model of community volunteers, identified as Compassionate Communities Connectors, to support people living with advanced life limiting illnesses/palliative care needs. The aims also include the development and evaluation of a training programme for volunteers and assessment of the feasibility, acceptability and preliminary effectiveness of this model of care. Methods: The approach seeks to map and mobilise people’s personal networks of care through the Connectors enlisting Caring Helpers (community volunteers). Up to 10 Connectors will be trained to work with at least 30 families selected by the palliative care service as requiring support. The primary outcome is the effect of the intervention on social connectedness. Secondary outcomes are the intervention’s effect on unplanned hospital utilisation, caregiver support needs, advance care plans and satisfaction with intervention for patients/carers, volunteers and service providers. Conclusion: It is expected that this intervention will enhance patient, carer and family social, psychological and practical support and reduce the need for dying people to be admitted to a hospital

The Forms of Bullying Scale (FBS): Validity and reliability estimates for a measure of bullying victimization and perpetration in adolescence

The study of bullying behavior and its consequences for young people depends on valid and reliable measurement of bullying victimization and perpetration. Although numerous self-report bullying-related measures have been developed, robust evidence of their psychometric properties is scant, and several limitations inhibit their applicability. The Forms of Bullying Scale (FBS), with versions to measure bullying victimization (FBS-V) and perpetration (FBS-P), was developed on the basis of existing instruments, for use with 12-to 15-year-old adolescents to economically, yet comprehensively measure both bullying perpetration and victimization. Measurement properties were estimated. Scale validity was tested using data from 2 independent studies of 3,496 Grade 8 and 783 Grade 8-10 students, respectively. Construct validity of scores on the FBS was shown in confirmatory factor analysis. The factor structure was not invariant across gender. Strong associations between the FBS-V and FBS-P and separate single-item bullying items demonstrated adequate concurrent validity. Correlations, in directions as expected with social-emotional outcomes (i.e., depression, anxiety, conduct problems, and peer support), provided robust evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Responses to the FBS items were found to be valid and concurrently reliable measures of self-reported frequency of bullying victimization and perpetration, as well as being useful to measure involvement in the different forms of bullying behaviors

Automated Analysis of Cryptococcal Macrophage Parasitism Using GFP-Tagged Cryptococci

The human fungal pathogens Cryptococcus neoformans and C. gattii cause life-threatening infections of the central nervous system. One of the major characteristics of cryptococcal disease is the ability of the pathogen to parasitise upon phagocytic immune effector cells, a phenomenon that correlates strongly with virulence in rodent models of infection. Despite the importance of phagocyte/Cryptococcus interactions to disease progression, current methods for assaying virulence in the acrophage system are both time consuming and low throughput. Here, we introduce the first stable and fully characterised GFP–expressing derivatives of two widely used cryptococcal strains: C. neoformans serotype A type strain H99 and C. gattii serotype B type strain R265. Both strains show unaltered responses to environmental and host stress conditions and no deficiency in virulence in the macrophage model system. In addition, we report the development of a method to effectively and rapidly investigate macrophage parasitism by flow cytometry, a technique that preserves the accuracy of current approaches but offers a four-fold improvement in speed

Synergistic malaria vaccine combinations identified by systematic antigen screening.

A highly effective vaccine would be a valuable weapon in the drive toward malaria elimination. No such vaccine currently exists, and only a handful of the hundreds of potential candidates in the parasite genome have been evaluated. In this study, we systematically evaluated 29 antigens likely to be involved in erythrocyte invasion, an essential developmental stage during which the malaria parasite is vulnerable to antibody-mediated inhibition. Testing antigens alone and in combination identified several strain-transcending targets that had synergistic combinatorial effects in vitro, while studies in an endemic population revealed that combinations of the same antigens were associated with protection from febrile malaria. Video microscopy established that the most effective combinations targeted multiple discrete stages of invasion, suggesting a mechanistic explanation for synergy. Overall, this study both identifies specific antigen combinations for high-priority clinical testing and establishes a generalizable approach that is more likely to produce effective vaccines

Performance of Proximity Loggers in Recording Intra- and Inter-Species Interactions: A Laboratory and Field-Based Validation Study

Knowledge of the way in which animals interact through social networks can help to address questions surrounding the ecological and evolutionary consequences of social organisation, and to understand and manage the spread of infectious diseases. Automated proximity loggers are increasingly being used to record interactions between animals, but the accuracy and reliability of the collected data remain largely un-assessed. Here we use laboratory and observational field data to assess the performance of these devices fitted to a herd of 32 beef cattle (Bos taurus) and nine groups of badgers (Meles meles, n  = 77) living in the surrounding woods. The distances at which loggers detected each other were found to decrease over time, potentially related to diminishing battery power that may be a function of temperature. Loggers were highly accurate in recording the identification of contacted conspecifics, but less reliable at determining contact duration. There was a tendency for extended interactions to be recorded as a series of shorter contacts. We show how data can be manipulated to correct this discrepancy and accurately reflect observed interaction patterns by combining records between any two loggers that occur within a 1 to 2 minute amalgamation window, and then removing any remaining 1 second records. We make universally applicable recommendations for the effective use of proximity loggers, to improve the validity of data arising from future studies

Evidence that breast cancer risk at the 2q35 locus is mediated through IGFBP5 regulation.

GWAS have identified a breast cancer susceptibility locus on 2q35. Here we report the fine mapping of this locus using data from 101,943 subjects from 50 case-control studies. We genotype 276 SNPs using the 'iCOGS' genotyping array and impute genotypes for a further 1,284 using 1000 Genomes Project data. All but two, strongly correlated SNPs (rs4442975 G/T and rs6721996 G/A) are excluded as candidate causal variants at odds against >100:1. The best functional candidate, rs4442975, is associated with oestrogen receptor positive (ER+) disease with an odds ratio (OR) in Europeans of 0.85 (95% confidence interval=0.84-0.87; P=1.7 × 10(-43)) per t-allele. This SNP flanks a transcriptional enhancer that physically interacts with the promoter of IGFBP5 (encoding insulin-like growth factor-binding protein 5) and displays allele-specific gene expression, FOXA1 binding and chromatin looping. Evidence suggests that the g-allele confers increased breast cancer susceptibility through relative downregulation of IGFBP5, a gene with known roles in breast cell biology

Plastome-wide rearrangements and gene losses in carnivorous Droseraceae

The plastid genomes of four related carnivorous plants (Drosera regia, Drosera erythrorhiza, Aldrovanda vesiculosa and Dionaea muscipula) were sequenced to examine changes potentially induced by the transition to carnivory. The plastid genomes of the Droseraceae show multiple rearrangements, gene losses and large expansions or contractions of the inverted repeat. All the ndh genes are lost or non-functional, as well as in some of the species, clpP1, ycf1, ycf2 and some tRNA genes. Uniquely amongst land plants, the trnK gene has no intron. Carnivory in the Droseraceae coincides with changes in plastid gene content similar to those induced by parasitism and mycoheterotrophy, suggesting parallel changes in chloroplast function due to the similar switch from autotrophy to (mixo-) heterotrophy. A molecular phylogeny of the taxa based on all shared plastid genes indicates that the ‘snap-traps’ of Aldrovanda and Dionaea have a common origin