Republican-Majority Appellate Panels Increase Execution Rates for Capital Defendants

We use the quasi-random assignment of cases to three-judge panels on the US Courts of Appeals to assess the consistency of adjudication of death penalty appeals. We find clear evidence that panels apply different standards depending on whether a majority of the panel was appointed by Democratic or Republican presidents. Unlike previous work on panel effects in the US Courts of Appeals, we show that these effects persist to the end of the process of adjudication. Since the early 1980s, the probability of ultimate execution has been increased for inmates when their first court of appeals case was assigned to a panel with a majority of Republican appointees

Mapping Functional Connectivity between Neuronal Ensembles with Larval Zebrafish Transgenic for a Ratiometric Calcium Indicator

The ability to map functional connectivity is necessary for the study of the flow of activity in neuronal circuits. Optical imaging of calcium indicators, including FRET- based genetically encoded indicators and extrinsic dyes, is an important adjunct to electrophysiology and is widely used to visualize neuronal activity. However, techniques for mapping functional connectivities with calcium imaging data have been lacking. We present a procedure to compute reduced functional couplings between neuronal ensembles undergoing seizure activity from ratiometric calcium imaging data in three steps: 1) calculation of calcium concentrations and neuronal firing rates from ratiometric data; 2) identification of putative neuronal populations from spatio-temporal timeseries of neural bursting activity; and then, 3) derivation of reduced connectivity matrices that represent neuronal population interactions. We apply our method to the larval zebrafish central nervous system undergoing chemoconvulsant induced seizures. These seizures generate propagating, central nervous system-wide neural activity from which population connectivities may be calculated. This automatic functional connectivity mapping procedure provides a practical and user-independent means for summarizing the flow of activity between neuronal ensembles

Tertiary Treatment of Wastewater Using Oxidation Ponds

The purpose of the project was to determine the value of using lagoons as a supplemental process for treating the effluent from an activated sludge wastewater treatment plant. Only tentative conclusions can be suggested since the project was not carried to completion. It appears that lagoons will have only minimal effect on the amounts of total nitrogen and phosphate in the plant effluent, although conversion of a portion of the ammonia to nitrate can be expected. However, the concentration of ammonia was never lower than that required by EPA guidelines. Some reduction of soluble BOD appears to occur, perhaps through conversion to new cell material. Suspended solids concentrations can be expected to increase during periods of algae growth. The numbers of both fecal and total coliform bacteria decreased substantially during the detention period provided by the lagoon system. Although not confirmed, it was concluded that the most probable cause for the decrease was the intensity and duration of sunlight. The lagoon served very effectively as a buffer between the treatment plant and the receiving stream, providing a considerable measure of protection to the stream even during those periods during which the plant was by-passing a portion of the inflow

The Impact of Malolactic Fermentation Conducted by Oenococcus oeni on Brettanomyces bruxellensis Growth and Volatile Phenol Production

Wine is particularly vulnerable to infection by Brettanomyces bruxellensis during or shortly after malolactic fermentation (MLF). While different methods and techniques enable winemakers to prevent wine spoilage due to this organism, no single intervention is universally sufficient. Moreover application of sulfur dioxide, the most commonly used of these methods, is unavailable to winemakers during MLF due to the sensitivity of Oenococcus oeni to that substance. It is therefore generally suggested that winemakers carry out a rapid and healthy MLF in order to reduce the time a wine is without the protection of sulfur dioxide. In recent years however, some studies have suggested that MLF may also act to inhibit wine spoilage by Brettanomyces bruxellensis. This study investigated this additional benefit of MLF by studying the influence of MLF on the growth and volatile phenol production of Brettanomyces bruxellensis. Additionally, the impacts of microbial strain and wine ethanol concentration were also investigated with respect to that influence. Potential causes for the inhibitory interactions between O. oeni and B. bruxellensis were also explored. Experiments were conducted in Pinot noir wine produced in the 2018 and 2019 winegrowing seasons. A strain of Brettanomyces bruxellensis that had previously shown potential sensitivity to MLF, strain UCD-2049, was inoculated into wine at the end of a 14 day MLF conducted by ten different strains of Oenococcus oeni. UCD-2049 populations declined after inoculation after MLF for all strains of O. oeni tested. When inoculated into a control wine that had not undergone MLF with O. oeni, no suppression of growth was observed. Significantly higher concentrations of 4-ethyl phenol and 4-ethyl guaiacol were measured in wine that had not undergone MLF when compared to wine that had undergone MLF using any of the ten strains tested. To determine possible mechanisms of inhibition an experiment was conducted where B. bruxellensis was inoculated into wine that had just completed MLF but O. oeni cells were separated from B. bruxellensis by a dialysis membrane. The dialysis membrane allowed physical separation of the microorganisms but free flow of wine. While B. bruxellensis populations declined rapidly and remained repressed for many weeks when in direct contact with O. oeni, populations only declined slightly and quickly recovered if O. oeni was separated from B. bruxellensis by a dialysis membrane. This finding suggests that inhibition by O. oeni is related to cell to cell contact rather than depletion of nutrients or production of an inhibitory compound. Strain variation in Brettanomyces bruxellensis was tested by selecting a highly “suppressive” strain of Oenococcus oeni, strain Alpha, and determining the effect of MLF by this strain on the growth and volatile phenol production of a number of strains of Brettanomyces bruxellensis. The impact of Oenococcus oeni strain Alpha was tested by inoculating each different Brettanomyces bruxellensis strain into a wine at the end of a 14 day MLF. B. bruxellensis populations in both the control and MLF treated wines recovered to a similar level by the end of the experiment. The possibility that ethanol tolerance differences between the B. bruxellensis strains contributed to their variable susceptibility to inhibition by O. oeni was investigated. B. bruxellensis strains were inoculated into wines that had been adjusted to a high or low ethanol content and that had or had not just completed MLF. While B. bruxellensis populations behaved similarly to the control groups in the low ethanol wines, in the high ethanol wines two of the three strains of B. bruxellensis tested were inhibited in the MLF treated wines with respect to the control. For the third B. bruxellensis strain, the reverse was true. B. bruxellensis strain was a major factor in volatile phenol production, though some suppression of volatile phenol production by MLF was observed in cases where there was no suppression of growth. This study demonstrated that Brettanomyces bruxellensis response to MLF is dependent on Brettanomyces bruxellensis strain, and that this response may be impacted by the ethanol concentration of the wine. It was also determined that sensitivity to MLF with respect to culturable cell growth is likely related to cell-cell contact between Brettanomyces bruxellensis and Oenococcus oeni

Environmental Enrichment Factors Associated with the Activity Level of Bottlenose Dolphins under Professional Care

Environmental enrichment can be used to improve the welfare of dolphins in zoos and aquariums. Bottlenose dolphins under professional care are typically provided with a range of enrichment that has a variety of features and levels of complexity at various frequencies. In the present study, a subset of data from a larger study entitled “Towards understanding the welfare of cetaceans in zoos and aquariums” (colloquially called the Cetacean Welfare Study) was used to examine the relationship between activity level and enrichment buoyancy as well as enrichment provisioning schedules. Survey data were collected from accredited zoos and aquariums related to the types of enrichment provided to the dolphins and the frequency and duration they were supplied. Non-invasive bio-logging devices were used to record the dolphin kinematics one day per week over the course of two five-week data collection periods. Activity level related positively with the total duration of time non-stationary enrichment was provided. In addition, providing a larger number of enrichment types each between 26% and 50% of the days in a month (i.e., rotating many different types of enrichment across days on a moderate schedule) was positively related to activity level. Activity level was negatively related to the number of times sinking enrichment was provided. Understanding how the temporal schedule and features of various types of enrichment are related to activity levels will aid in developing progressively more effective enrichment programs

On the Temperature Dependence of the Lifetime of Thermally Isolated Metastable Clusters

The temperature dependence of the lifetime of the thermally isolated metastable N8 cubane up to its decay into N2 molecules has been calculated by the molecular dynamics method. It has been demonstrated that this dependence significantly deviates from the Arrhenius law. The applicability of the finite heat bath theory to the description of thermally isolated atomic clusters has been proved using statistical analysis of the results obtained.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

Attribution of space-time variability in global-ocean dissolved inorganic Carbon

The inventory and variability of oceanic dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) is driven by the interplay of physical, chemical, and biological processes. Quantifying the spatiotemporal variability of these drivers is crucial for a mechanistic understanding of the ocean carbon sink and its future trajectory. Here, we use the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean-Darwin ocean biogeochemistry state estimate to generate a global-ocean, data-constrained DIC budget and investigate how spatial and seasonal-to-interannual variability in three-dimensional circulation, air-sea CO2 flux, and biological processes have modulated the ocean sink for 1995–2018. Our results demonstrate substantial compensation between budget terms, resulting in distinct upper-ocean carbon regimes. For example, boundary current regions have strong contributions from vertical diffusion while equatorial regions exhibit compensation between upwelling and biological processes. When integrated across the full ocean depth, the 24-year DIC mass increase of 64 Pg C (2.7 Pg C year−1) primarily tracks the anthropogenic CO2 growth rate, with biological processes providing a small contribution of 2 (1.4 Pg C). In the upper 100 m, which stores roughly 13 (8.1 Pg C) of the global increase, we find that circulation provides the largest DIC gain (6.3 Pg C year−1) and biological processes are the largest loss (8.6 Pg C year−1). Interannual variability is dominated by vertical advection in equatorial regions, with the 1997–1998 El Niño-Southern Oscillation causing the largest year-to-year change in upper-ocean DIC (2.1 Pg C). Our results provide a novel, data-constrained framework for an improved mechanistic understanding of natural and anthropogenic perturbations to the ocean sink. © 2022. The Authors