Terrestrial Rabies and Human Postexposure Prophylaxis, New York, USA

During 1993–2002, cats accounted for 2.7% of rabid terrestrial animals in New York but for one third of human exposure incidents and treatments. Nonbite exposures and animals of undetermined rabies status accounted for 54% and 56%, respectively, of persons receiving rabies treatments

Green Infrastructure Assessment Tools for Varying Scales in Coastal South Carolina

2010 S.C. water Resources Conference - Science and Policy Challenges for a Sustainable Futur

Corvidae Feather Pulp and West Nile Virus Detection

We evaluated cloacal swab, vascular pulp of flight feather, and kidney and spleen pool samples from carcasses of members of the family Corvidae as sources of West Nile virus (WNV). The cloacal swab, kidney and spleen pool, and feather pulp, respectively, were the source of WNV in 38%, 43%, and 77% of the carcasses

Simulating economic effects of disruptions in the telecommunications infrastructure.

CommAspen is a new agent-based model for simulating the interdependent effects of market decisions and disruptions in the telecommunications infrastructure on other critical infrastructures in the U.S. economy such as banking and finance, and electric power. CommAspen extends and modifies the capabilities of Aspen-EE, an agent-based model previously developed by Sandia National Laboratories to analyze the interdependencies between the electric power system and other critical infrastructures. CommAspen has been tested on a series of scenarios in which the communications network has been disrupted, due to congestion and outages. Analysis of the scenario results indicates that communications networks simulated by the model behave as their counterparts do in the real world. Results also show that the model could be used to analyze the economic impact of communications congestion and outages

Challenges and opportunities in transdisciplinary science: The experience of next generation scientists in an agriculture and climate research collaboration

Agriculture in the twenty-first century faces unprecedented challenges from increasing climate variability to growing demands on natural resources to globalizing economic markets. These emerging agricultural issues, spanning both human and natural dimensions, are uniquely formulated, exceedingly complex, and difficult to address within existing disciplinary domains (Eigenbrode et al. 2007; Reganold et al. 2011; Foley et al. 2005; Hansen et al. 2013). Therefore, the next generation of scientists working on these issues must not only be highly trained within a disciplinary context but must also have the capacity to collaborate with others to solve systems-level problems

West Nile virus infection in birds and mosquitoes, New York State, 2000.

West Nile (WN) virus was found throughout New York State in 2000, with the epicenter in New York City and surrounding counties. We tested 3,403 dead birds and 9,954 mosquito pools for WN virus during the transmission season. Sixty-three avian species, representing 30 families and 14 orders, tested positive for WN virus. The highest proportion of dead birds that tested positive for WN virus was in American Crows in the epicenter (67% positive, n=907). Eight mosquito species, representing four genera, were positive for WN virus. The minimum infection rate per 1,000 mosquitoes (MIR) was highest for Culex pipiens in the epicenter: 3.53 for the entire season and 7.49 for the peak week of August 13. Staten Island had the highest MIR (11.42 for Cx. pipiens), which was associated with the highest proportion of dead American Crows that tested positive for WN virus (92%, n=48) and the highest number of human cases (n=10)

West Nile Virus Outbreak in North American Owls, Ontario, 2002

Susceptibility of North American owls to WNV is associated with native breeding range

Time in SCCharts

Synchronous languages, such as the recently proposed SCCharts language, have been designed for the rigorous specification of real-time systems. Their sound semantics, which builds on an abstraction from physical execution time, make these languages appealing, in particular for safety-critical systems. However, they traditionally lack built-in support for physical time. This makes it rather cumbersome to express things like time-outs or periodic executions within the language. We here propose several mechanisms to reconcile the synchronous paradigm with physical time. Specifically, we propose extensions to the SCCharts language to express clocks and execution periods within the model. We draw on several sources, in particular timed automata, the Clock Constraint Specification Language, and the recently proposed concept of dynamic ticks. We illustrate how these extensions can be mapped to the SCChart language core, with minimal requirements on the run-time system, and we argue that the same concepts could be applied to other synchronous languages such as Esterel, Lustre or SCADE

Dopamine and opioid systems interact within the nucleus accumbens to maintain monogamous pair bonds

Prairie vole breeder pairs form monogamous pair bonds, which are maintained through the expression of selective aggression toward novel conspecifics. Here, we utilize behavioral and anatomical techniques to extend the current understanding of neural mechanisms that mediate pair bond maintenance. For both sexes, we show that pair bonding up-regulates mRNA expression for genes encoding D1-like dopamine (DA) receptors and dynorphin as well as enhances stimulated DA release within the nucleus accumbens (NAc). We next show that D1-like receptor regulation of selective aggression is mediated through downstream activation of kappa-opioid receptors (KORs) and that activation of these receptors mediates social avoidance. Finally, we also identified sex-specific alterations in KOR binding density within the NAc shell of paired males and demonstrate that this alteration contributes to the neuroprotective effect of pair bonding against drug reward. Together, these findings suggest motivational and valence processing systems interact to mediate the maintenance of social bonds