Notes on the Algal Flora of Illinois, III. Additons to the Chlorophyceae

Author Institution: Biology Department, Western Kentucky University and Botany Department, Southern Illinois UniversityThis paper lists several species of chlorophycean algae previously unreported or infrequently reported as occurring in Illinois. A total of 125 species and varieties arc enumerated, of which 27 are new records for the State. Included are first records for species of the genera Dunaliella, Chlorogonium, Platymonas, Pteromonas, Dysmorphococcus, Asterococcus, Stylosphaeridium, Elakatothrix, Geminella, Pseudendoclonium, Westella, Planktosphaeria, Eremosphaera, and Spirotaenia

Back to Nature: Native Flora for Wildlife and People. The Lincoln University Native Plants Program

Presentation made at Latinos in the Heartland (12th : 2014 : St. Louis, Mo.) and published in the annual conference proceedingThe overall objective of the Lincoln University Cooperative Extension (LUCE) Sprouts and Roots Program (SRP) is to improve the well-being of minorities and other underserved communities through gardening and to promote intergenerational activities in Jefferson City and elsewhere in Missouri. To meet this objective, training is offered on nutrition, wellness, and gardening. The effects of gardening and healthy habits on the physical and psychological health of seniors and youth are being evaluated in an ongoing research study. Recruitment was done in schools, senior centers, Boys and Girls clubs, churches, and other locations with the assistance of the LUCE Paula Carter Center on Minority Health and Aging. Flyers, emails, calls, and personal visits were used to contact potential participants. Children and seniors attended indoor and outdoor classes in spring and fall, and pretests and posttests were provided to determine their change in knowledge of particular topics. Participants practiced their new knowledge to grow their own food at the community garden located on campus. Sixteen adult seniors and 16 children participated in 2012. The farmers market, also located on campus and adjacent to the garden, is offering the opportunity to SRP participants and area farmers to sell produce, baked goods, and other value-added products. An average of 14 vendors, and a total of 43, attended the market in 2012 where fresh or value-added products were sold on Thursdays and Saturdays during the growing season. Some vendors continued selling their products during the winter months. More than 4,000 people of different ethnicities, ages, and genders attended the market on Saturdays in 2012, compared to 1,305 in 2011. The SRP is providing communities the opportunity to develop their own value-added products by facilitating their access to a commercial kitchen recently opened to the public, located next to the market and community garden

Cross-cultural and experiential learning in El Salvador for extension specialists : lessons learned in the field

A delegation from Lincoln University (LU) Cooperative Extension of Missouri participated in a 12-day exchange program that included visits to communities and institutions in Central and Western El Salvador. The delegation included LU Native Plants Program (LU-NPP) staff and members of four communities in Missouri. The objectives were: 1. For the LU delegation to be immersed in the Salvadoran culture and learn how communities protect their resources and use native plants in their daily lives; 2. To exchange lessons learned between the LU-NPP, Salvadoran educators, producers, farmers, and communities; and 3. Identify organizations or agencies interested in forming alliances with the LU-NPP. Joint collaborative efforts between LU and organizations in El Salvador will help empower small farmers and will further advance agricultural and ecological education for low-income students in El Salvador and in Missouri. During site visits, local leaders from different agencies and community organizations and the LU delegation engaged in conversations to learn from each other's experiences. Salvadoran specialists were surprised to learn that Lincoln University also works with low-income communities and that farms in Missouri do not only grow cash crops. Many of the Native Plant Program's lessons learned in Missouri could be adopted in El Salvador to help small farmers and rural entrepreneurs. Evaluations from participants of this exchange program indicate that the delegation members increased their level of understanding of Latino culture and some had the opportunity to practice their Spanish skills which they can also use in Missouri. This program was funded by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and was part of two Capacity Building Grants

Can We Detect Changes in Amazon Forest Structure Using Measurements of the Isotopic Composition of Precipitation?

Large‐scale (>500 km) spatial gradients of precipitation oxygen isotope‐ratios (δ18Op) hold information about the hydrological cycle. They result from the interplay between rainout and evapotranspiration along air‐parcel paths, but these counteracting effects are difficult to disentangle complicating quantification of the effect of land cover change on δ18Op. We show that disentangling can qualitatively be achieved using climate model simulations with a land‐derived precipitation tracer for tropical South America. We then either vary land cover as observed since 1870 or by replacing Amazon forests with bare land to determine the resulting signals. Our results indicate that effects of historically changing land cover on annual mean δ18O isotope‐ratio gradients are small and unlikely detectable, although there is a noticeable signal during the dry season. Furthermore, the effect of changes in water recycling on Amazon δ18Op in paleo‐records may have been overestimated and need reinterpretation

Theory of commensurable magnetic structures in holmium

The tendency for the period of the helically ordered moments in holmium to lock into values which are commensurable with the lattice is studied theoretically as a function of temperature and magnetic field. The commensurable effects are derived in the mean-field approximation from numerical calculations of the free energy of various commensurable structures, and the results are compared with the extensive experimental evidence collected during the last ten years on the magnetic structures in holmium. In general the stability of the different commensurable structures is found to be in accord with the experiments, except for the tau=5/18 structure observed a few degrees below T_N in a b-axis field. The trigonal coupling recently detected in holmium is found to be the interaction required to explain the increased stability of the tau=1/5 structure around 42 K, and of the tau=1/4 structure around 96 K, when a field is applied along the c-axis.Comment: REVTEX, 31 pages, 7 postscript figure

Ocean circulation drifts in multi-millennial climate simulations: the role of salinity corrections and climate feedbacks

Low-resolution, complex general circulation models (GCMs) are valuable tools for studying the Earth system on multi-millennial timescales. However, slowly evolving salinity drifts can cause large shifts in climatic and oceanic regimes over thousands of years. We test two different schemes for neutralising unforced salinity drifts in the FAMOUS GCM: surface flux correction and volumetric flux correction. Although both methods successfully maintain a steady global mean salinity, local drifts and subsequent feedbacks promote cooling (≈ 4 °C over 6000 years) and freshening (≈ 2 psu over 6000 years) in the North Atlantic Ocean, and gradual warming (≈ 0.2 °C per millennium) and salinification (≈ 0.15 psu per millennium) in the North Pacific Ocean. Changes in the surface density in these regions affect the meridional overturning circulation (MOC), such that, after several millennia, the Atlantic MOC (AMOC) is in a collapsed state, and there is a strong, deep Pacific MOC (PMOC). Furthermore, the AMOC exhibits a period of metastability, which is only identifiable with run lengths in excess of 1500 years. We also compare simulations with two different land surface schemes, demonstrating that small biases in the surface climate may cause regional salinity drifts and significant shifts in the MOC (weakening of the AMOC and the initiation then invigoration of PMOC), even when the global hydrological cycle has been forcibly closed. Although there is no specific precursor to the simulated AMOC collapse, the northwest North Pacific and northeast North Atlantic are important areas that should be closely monitored for trends arising from such biases

Building Community with a Farmers Market, Commercial Kitchen and Community Garden The Sprouts and Roots Program at Lincoln University

Presentation made at Latinos in the Heartland (12th : 2014 : St. Louis, Mo.) and published in the annual conference proceedingThe overall objective of the Lincoln University Cooperative Extension (LUCE) Sprouts and Roots Program (SRP) is to improve the well-being of minorities and other underserved communities through gardening and to promote intergenerational activities in Jefferson City and elsewhere in Missouri. To meet this objective, training is offered on nutrition, wellness, and gardening. The effects of gardening and healthy habits on the physical and psychological health of seniors and youth are being evaluated in an ongoing research study. Recruitment was done in schools, senior centers, Boys and Girls clubs, churches, and other locations with the assistance of the LUCE Paula Carter Center on Minority Health and Aging. Flyers, emails, calls, and personal visits were used to contact potential participants. Children and seniors attended indoor and outdoor classes in spring and fall, and pretests and posttests were provided to determine their change in knowledge of particular topics. Participants practiced their new knowledge to grow their own food at the community garden located on campus. Sixteen adult seniors and 16 children participated in 2012. The farmers market, also located on campus and adjacent to the garden, is offering the opportunity to SRP participants and area farmers to sell produce, baked goods, and other value-added products. An average of 14 vendors, and a total of 43, attended the market in 2012 where fresh or value-added products were sold on Thursdays and Saturdays during the growing season. Some vendors continued selling their products during the winter months. More than 4,000 people of different ethnicities, ages, and genders attended the market on Saturdays in 2012, compared to 1,305 in 2011. The SRP is providing communities the opportunity to develop their own value-added products by facilitating their access to a commercial kitchen recently opened to the public, located next to the market and community garden. www.cambio.missouri.edu/Library/ Keywords: urban agriculture, gardening, immigrant healt

Interplay between distribution of live cells and growth dynamics of solid tumours

Experiments show that simple diffusion of nutrients and waste molecules is not sufficient to explain the typical multilayered structure of solid tumours, where an outer rim of proliferating cells surrounds a layer of quiescent but viable cells and a central necrotic region. These experiments challenge models of tumour growth based exclusively on diffusion. Here we propose a model of tumour growth that incorporates the volume dynamics and the distribution of cells within the viable cell rim. The model is suggested by in silico experiments and is validated using in vitro data. The results correlate with in vivo data as well, and the model can be used to support experimental and clinical oncology

Salivary cortisol response to infant distress in pregnant women with depressive symptoms.

The Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis has been proposed as a potential underlying biological mechanism linking prenatal depression with adverse offspring outcomes. However, it is unknown whether the reactivity of this system to stress is altered in pregnant women experiencing depression. The objective of this study was to investigate whether salivary cortisol response to a distressed infant film is enhanced in pregnant women with symptoms of depression compared with non-depressed controls. Salivary cortisol and subjective mood responses to the film were measured in 53 primiparous women, between 11 and 18 weeks gestation. Both groups showed similar increases in state anxiety in response to the film, but there was a significantly increased cortisol response in women experiencing symptoms of depression. Depression during pregnancy is associated with increased reactivity of the HPA axis. This is consistent with altered HPA axis functioning being a key mechanism by which prenatal mood disturbance can impact upon fetal development

Integrating protein networks and machine learning for disease stratification in the Hereditary Spastic Paraplegias.

The Hereditary Spastic Paraplegias are a group of neurodegenerative diseases characterized by spasticity and weakness in the lower body. Owing to the combination of genetic diversity and variable clinical presentation, the Hereditary Spastic Paraplegias are a strong candidate for protein-protein interaction network analysis as a tool to understand disease mechanism(s) and to aid functional stratification of phenotypes. In this study, experimentally validated human data were used to create a protein-protein interaction network based on the causative genes. Network evaluation as a combination of topological analysis and functional annotation led to the identification of core proteins in putative shared biological processes, such as intracellular transport and vesicle trafficking. The application of machine learning techniques suggested a functional dichotomy linked with distinct sets of clinical presentations, indicating that there is scope to further classify conditions currently described under the same umbrella-term of Hereditary Spastic Paraplegias based on specific molecular mechanisms of disease