Shade Effects on Athletic Field Playing Characteristics of Overseeded and Non-Overseeded Bermudagrass

In many athletic stadiums around the world, reduced light levels from the stadium structure can significantly reduce turfgrass quality and playing characteristics. In most warm-weather stadiums, the primary surface is bermudagrass which is commonly overseeded with perennial ryegrass to provide a winter and spring playing surface. The objective of this study was to examine the effects of four shade levels on turfgrass quality and playing characteristics of overseeded and non-overseeded bermudagrass (cv. Riviera). Shade levels included a non-shaded control and shade treatments which blocked 30%, 60%, and 90% of ambient light. These shade levels resulted in average daily PAR loads of 45.1, 29.6, 16.7, and 4.7 mol PAR / m2 / day, respectively. Data collection included both quality and playability characteristics. The effects of shading became obvious as the study continued into early summer, with the 90% shade plots losing almost all cover and the 60% shade plots losing up to 40% of coverage through mid-summer. The 30% shade plots had a slight decline in turfgrass coverage, although, still retained close to 90% coverage. Based on these results, a minimum daily light load of approximately 30 mol PAR / m2 / day is needed to sustain Riviera bermudagrass at or near 100% coverage. In the overseeded plots, the only shade treatment that caused a significant reduction in turfgrass coverage was the 90% shade treatment (4.7 mol PAR / m2 / day). There was a significant decrease in the amount of bermudagrass present in the overseeded plots in mid-summer, suggesting that increased shading was causing a shift in population from the warm-season bermudagrass to the cool-season perennial ryegrass. In both overseeded and non-overseeded plots, rotational resistance (traction) decreased even with modest levels of shade , which is likely correlated to a decrease in turfgrass densit

Adaptive response of neonatal sepsis-derived Group B Streptococcus to bilirubin

This work was funded by the Neonatal Unit Endowment Fund, Aberdeen Maternity Hospital. RH is funded by a career researcher fellowship from NHS Research Scotland. SG was funded by the MRC Flagship PhD programme. We are grateful for the support of Dr Phil Cash and Aberdeen Proteomics, at University of Aberdeen, in completing this project. Supplementary information accompanies this paper at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-24811-3.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Ethical and social implications of using predictive modeling for Alzheimer´s disease prevention:a systematic literature review

BACKGROUND: The therapeutic paradigm in Alzheimer's disease (AD) is shifting from symptoms management toward prevention goals. Secondary prevention requires the identification of individuals without clinical symptoms, yet "at-risk" of developing AD dementia in the future, and thus, the use of predictive modeling. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to review the ethical concerns and social implications generated by this new approach. METHODS: We conducted a systematic literature review in Medline, Embase, PsycInfo, and Scopus, and complemented it with a gray literature search between March and July 2018. Then we analyzed data qualitatively using a thematic analysis technique. RESULTS: We identified thirty-one ethical issues and social concerns corresponding to eight ethical principles: (i) respect for autonomy, (ii) beneficence, (iii) non-maleficence, (iv) equality, justice, and diversity, (v) identity and stigma, (vi) privacy, (vii) accountability, transparency, and professionalism, and (viii) uncertainty avoidance. Much of the literature sees the discovery of disease-modifying treatment as a necessary and sufficient condition to justify AD risk assessment, overlooking future challenges in providing equitable access to it, establishing long-term treatment outcomes and social consequences of this approach, e.g., medicalization. The ethical/social issues associated specifically with predictive models, such as the adequate predictive power and reliability, infrastructural requirements, data privacy, potential for personalized medicine in AD, and limiting access to future AD treatment based on risk stratification, were covered scarcely. CONCLUSION: The ethical discussion needs to advance to reflect recent scientific developments and guide clinical practice now and in the future, so that necessary safeguards are implemented for large-scale AD secondary prevention.</p

Elimination of a group II intron from a plastid gene causes a mutant phenotype

Group II introns are found in bacteria and cell organelles (plastids, mitochondria) and are thought to represent the evolutionary ancestors of spliceosomal introns. It is generally believed that group II introns are selfish genetic elements that do not have any function. Here, we have scrutinized this assumption by analyzing two group II introns that interrupt a plastid gene (ycf3) involved in photosystem assembly. Using stable transformation of the plastid genome, we have generated mutant plants that lack either intron 1 or intron 2 or both. Interestingly, the deletion of intron 1 caused a strong mutant phenotype. We show that the mutants are deficient in photosystem I and that this deficiency is directly related to impaired ycf3 function. We further show that, upon deletion of intron 1, the splicing of intron 2 is strongly inhibited. Our data demonstrate that (i) the loss of a group II intron is not necessarily phenotypically neutral and (ii) the splicing of one intron can depend on the presence of another

Rhabdomyolysis recognized after elevation of liver enzymes following prolonged urologic surgery with lateral decubitus position -A case report-

The classic signs and symptoms of rhabdomyolysis are non-specific and not present in all cases, and mild cases might go unrecognized. We present a case of rhabdomyolysis recognized in a 68-year-old man after elevation of liver enzymes following prolonged urologic surgery. The patient's postoperative course was concerned with elevated serum aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase without any clinical manifestations on the first postoperative day. After examining the serum creatine kinase and myoglobin levels, the patient was diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis. After 16 days, he was discharged with fully recovered liver enzymes and creatine kinase. We suggest that sufficient perioperative attentions should be given to patients at a higher risk of rhabdomyolysis

An assessment of Arctic Ocean freshwater content changes from the 1990s to the 2006-2008 period

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers 58 (2011): 173-185, doi:10.1016/j.dsr.2010.12.002.Unprecedented summer-season sampling of the Arctic Ocean during the period 2006−2008 makes possible a quasi-synoptic estimate of liquid freshwater (LFW) inventories in the Arctic Ocean basins. In comparison to observations from 1992−1999, LFW content relative to a salinity of 35 in the layer from the surface to the 34 isohaline increased by 8400 ± 2000 km3 in the Arctic Ocean (water depth greater than 500m). This is close to the annual export of freshwater (liquid and solid) from the Arctic Ocean reported in the literature. Observations and a model simulation show regional variations in LFW were both due to changes in the depth of the lower halocline, often forced by regional wind-induced Ekman pumping, and a mean freshening of the water column above this depth, associated with an increased net sea ice melt and advection of increased amounts of river water from the Siberian shelves. Over the whole Arctic Ocean, changes in the observed mean salinity above the 34 isohaline dominated estimated changes in LFW content; the contribution to LFW change by bounding isohaline depth changes was less than a quarter of the salinity contribution, and non-linear effects due to both factors were negligible.This work was supported by the Co-Operative Project “The North Atlantic as Part of the Earth System: From System Comprehension to Analysis of Regional Impacts” funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) and by the European Union Sixth Framework Programme project DAMOCLES (Developing Arctic Modelling and Observing Capabilities for Long-term Environment Studies), contract number 018509GOCE

The effects of sampling strategy on the quality of reconstruction of viral population dynamics using Bayesian skyline family coalescent methods:A simulation study

The ongoing large-scale increase in the total amount of genetic data for viruses and other pathogens has led to a situation in which it is often not possible to include every available sequence in a phylogenetic analysis and expect the procedure to complete in reasonable computational time. This raises questions about how a set of sequences should be selected for analysis, particularly if the data are used to infer more than just the phylogenetic tree itself. The design of sampling strategies for molecular epidemiology has been a neglected field of research. This article describes a large-scale simulation exercise that was undertaken to select an appropriate strategy when using the GMRF skygrid, one of the Bayesian skyline family of coalescent methods, in order to reconstruct past population dynamics. The simulated scenarios were intended to represent sampling for the population of an endemic virus across multiple geographical locations. Large phylogenies were simulated under a coalescent or structured coalescent model and sequences simulated from these trees; the resulting datasets were then downsampled for analyses according to a variety of schemes. Variation in results between different replicates of the same scheme was not insignificant, and as a result, we recommend that where possible analyses are repeated with different datasets in order to establish that elements of a reconstruction are not simply the result of the particular set of samples selected. We show that an individual stochastic choice of sequences can introduce spurious behaviour in the median line of the skygrid plot and that even marginal likelihood estimation can suggest complicated dynamics that were not in fact present. We recommend that the median line should not be used to infer historical events on its own. Sampling sequences with uniform probability with respect to both time and spatial location (deme) never performed worse than sampling with probability proportional to the effective population size at that time and in that location and frequently was superior. As a result, we recommend this approach in the design of future studies. We also confirm that the inclusion of many recent sequences from a single geographical location in an analysis tends to result in a spurious bottleneck effect in the reconstruction and caution against interpreting this as genuine

Arctic pathways of Pacific Water: Arctic Ocean model intercomparison experiments

Pacific Water (PW) enters the Arctic Ocean through Bering Strait and brings heat, fresh water and nutrients from the northern Bering Sea. The circulation of PW in the central Arctic Ocean is only partially understood due to the lack of observations. In this paper pathways of PW are investigated using simulations with six state-of-the art regional and global Ocean General Circulation Models (OGCMs). In the simulations PW is tracked by a passive tracer, released in Bering Strait. Simulated PW water spreads from the Bering Strait region in three major branches. One of them starts in the Barrow Canyon, bringing PW along continental slope of Alaska into the Canadian Straits and then into Baffin Bay. The other initiates in the vicinity of the Herald Canyon and transports PW along the continental slope of the East-Siberian Sea into the transpolar drift, and then through Fram Strait and the Greenland Sea. The third branch begins near the Herald Shoal and the central Chukchi shelf and brings PW waters into the Beaufort Gyre. Models suggest that the spread of PW through the Arctic Ocean depends on the atmospheric circulation. In the models the wind, acting via Ekman pumping, drives the seasonal and interannual variability of PW in the Canadian Basin of the Arctic Ocean. The wind effects the simulated PW pathways by changing vertical shear of the relative vorticity of the ocean flow in the Canada Basin

Assessing the psychometric and ecometric properties of neighborhood scales using adolescent survey data from urban and rural Scotland

This work was supported by NHS Health Scotland and the University of St Andrews.Background:  Despite the well-established need for specific measurement instruments to examine the relationship between neighborhood conditions and adolescent well-being outcomes, few studies have developed scales to measure features of the neighborhoods in which adolescents reside. Moreover, measures of neighborhood features may be operationalised differently by adolescents living in different levels of urban/rurality. This has not been addressed in previous studies. The objectives of this study were to: 1) establish instruments to measure adolescent neighborhood features at both the individual and neighborhood level, 2) assess their psychometric and ecometric properties, 3) test for invariance by urban/rurality, and 4) generate neighborhood level scores for use in further analysis. Methods:  Data were from the Scottish 2010 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children Survey, which included an over-sample of rural adolescents. The survey responses of interest came from questions designed to capture different facets of the local area in which each respondent resided. Intermediate data zones were used as proxies for neighborhoods. Internal consistency was evaluated by Cronbach’s alpha. Invariance was examined using confirmatory factor analysis. Multilevel models were used to estimate ecometric properties and generate neighborhood scores. Results:  Two constructs labeled neighborhood social cohesion and neighborhood disorder were identified. Adjustment was made to the originally specified model to improve model fit and measures of invariance. At the individual level, reliability was .760 for social cohesion and .765 for disorder, and between .524 and .571 for both constructs at the neighborhood level. Individuals in rural areas experienced greater neighborhood social cohesion and lower levels of neighborhood disorder compared with those in urban areas. Conclusions:  The scales are appropriate for measuring neighborhood characteristics experienced by adolescents across urban and rural Scotland, and can be used in future studies of neighborhoods and health. However, trade-offs between neighborhood sample size and reliability must be considered.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Bourgeois behavior and freeloading in the colonial orb web spider Parawixia bistriata (Araneae, Araneidae).

Spiders of the tropical American colonial orb weaver Parawixia bistriata form a communal bivouac in daytime. At sunset, they leave the bivouac and construct individual, defended webs within a large, communally built scaffolding of permanent, thick silk lines between trees and bushes. Once spiders started building a web, they repelled other spiders walking on nearby scaffolding with a bounce behavior. In nearly all cases (93%), this resulted in the intruder leaving without a fight, akin to the bourgeois strategy, in which residents win and intruders retreat without escalated contests. However, a few spiders (6.5%) did not build a web due to lack of available space.Webless spiders were less likely to leave when bounced (only 42% left) and instead attempted to freeload, awaiting the capture of prey items in nearby webs. Our simple model shows that webless spiders should change their strategy from bourgeois to freeloading satellite as potential web sites become increasingly occupied