Assessing Fish and Motile Fauna around Offshore Windfarms Using Stereo Baited Video

There remains limited knowledge of how offshore windfarm developments influence fish assemblages, particularly at a local scale around the turbine structures. Considering the existing levels of anthropogenic pressures on coastal fish populations it is becoming increasingly important for developers and environmental regulators to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing fish assemblages. Improving our ability to assess such fish populations in close proximity to structures will assist in increasing this knowledge. In the present study we provide the first trial use of Baited Remote Underwater Stereo-Video systems (stereo BRUVs) for the quantification of motile fauna in close proximity to offshore wind turbines. The study was conducted in the Irish Sea and finds the technique to be a viable means of assessing the motile fauna of such environments. The present study found a mixture of species including bottom dwellers, motile crustaceans and large predatory fish. The majority of taxa observed were found to be immature individuals with few adult individuals recorded. The most abundant species were the angular crab (Goneplax rhomboides) and the small-spotted catshark (Scyliorhinus canicula). Of note in this study was the generally low abundance and diversity of taxa recorded across all samples, we hypothesise that this reflects the generally poor state of the local fauna of the Irish Sea. The faunal assemblages sampled in close proximity to turbines were observed to alter with increasing distance from the structure, species more characteristic of hard bottom environments were in abundance at the turbines (e.g. Homarus gammarus, Cancer pagarus, Scyliorhinus spp.) and those further away more characteristic of soft bottoms (e.g. Norwegian Lobster). This study highlights the need for the environmental impacts of offshore renewables on motile fauna to be assessed using targeted and appropriate tools. Stereo BRUVs provide one of those tools, but like the majority of methods for sampling marine biota, they have limitations. We conclude our paper by providing a discussion of the benefits and limitations of using this BRUV technique for assessing fauna within areas close to offshore windfarms

Genetic Ancestry, Social Classification, and Racial Inequalities in Blood Pressure in Southeastern Puerto Rico

The role of race in human genetics and biomedical research is among the most contested issues in science. Much debate centers on the relative importance of genetic versus sociocultural factors in explaining racial inequalities in health. However, few studies integrate genetic and sociocultural data to test competing explanations directly.We draw on ethnographic, epidemiologic, and genetic data collected in Southeastern Puerto Rico to isolate two distinct variables for which race is often used as a proxy: genetic ancestry versus social classification. We show that color, an aspect of social classification based on the culturally defined meaning of race in Puerto Rico, better predicts blood pressure than does a genetic-based estimate of continental ancestry. We also find that incorporating sociocultural variables reveals a new and significant association between a candidate gene polymorphism for hypertension (alpha(2C) adrenergic receptor deletion) and blood pressure.This study addresses the recognized need to measure both genetic and sociocultural factors in research on racial inequalities in health. Our preliminary results provide the most direct evidence to date that previously reported associations between genetic ancestry and health may be attributable to sociocultural factors related to race and racism, rather than to functional genetic differences between racially defined groups. Our results also imply that including sociocultural variables in future research may improve our ability to detect significant allele-phenotype associations. Thus, measuring sociocultural factors related to race may both empower future genetic association studies and help to clarify the biological consequences of social inequalities

Using population admixture to help complete maps of the human genome

Tens of millions of base pairs of euchromatic human genome sequence, including many protein-coding genes, have no known location in the human genome. We describe an approach for localizing the human genome's missing pieces by utilizing the patterns of genome sequence variation created by population admixture. We mapped the locations of 70 scaffolds spanning four million base pairs of the human genome's unplaced euchromatic sequence, including more than a dozen protein-coding genes, and identified eight large novel inter-chromosomal segmental duplications. We find that most of these sequences are hidden in the genome's heterochromatin, particularly its pericentromeric regions. Many cryptic, pericentromeric genes are expressed in RNA and have been maintained intact for millions of years while their expression patterns diverged from those of paralogous genes elsewhere in the genome. We describe how knowledge of the locations of these sequences can inform disease association and genome biology studies