Potential Impact of PCB's on Bluefish, Pomatomus saltatrix, Management

Since 1979, anglers along the U.S. Atlantic coast have landed by weight more bluefish, Pomatomus saltatrix, than any other marine species. A fishery management plan has been developed jointly by three fishery management councils and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to preserve the bluefish resource. Major objectives of the plan include prevention of recruitment overfishing and reduction in waste of bluefish. In 1985, a Federal survey found PCB concentrations in larger bluefish (over 500 mm fork length) that exceeded the U.S. Food and Drug Administration tolerance level of 2 parts per million. Harvest strategies are presented in this article to protect the reproductive capability of bluefish while minimizing human health risks associated with dietary intake of PCB's

Effects of dredge deposits on seagrasses : an integrative model for Laguna Madre : concluding report. Volume I, Executive Summary.

Interagency Coordination Team, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Galveston District, The University of Texas Marine Science Institute, Texas A&M University Department of Oceanography, Texas Parks and Wildlife DepartmentThis report presents the results of an interdisciplinary collaborative effort to develop an integrative model for seagrass productivity in Laguna Madre. One of the major components of this integrative model is the Laguna Madre Seagrass Model (LMSM) which was designed to interface with other component models described in this report, including carbon and nitrogen allocation, sediment diagenesis, and spectral irradiance and radiative transfer. Linkage with hydrodynamic and sediment transport models provided a potentially valuable management tool to assess the effects of maintenance dredging and resuspension of dredged material deposits on seagrasses of Laguna Madre.Texas A&M University and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Galveston District) 96-PL-03Marine Scienc

Diurnal variations in catches of selected species of ichthyoneuston by the Boothbay neuston net off Charleston, South Carolina

The Boothbay neuston net is becoming a standard gear for collection of ichthyoneuston. Sherman and Lewis (1967) reported using this gear for collection of lobster larvae. Personnel participating in Cooperative Investigations of the Caribbean and Adjacent Regions activities have prepared a "Plan for Sampling the Early Development Stages of Pelagic Fish during CICAR Operations" which describes the use of the neuston net (FA03). The Boothbay neuston net, initially adopted as the standard for the Marine Resources Monitoring, Assessment and Prediction Program, consists of a pipe frame 2 m wide by 1 m deep with an 8.5-m long net.4 Because little was known concerning the sampling performance of this gear, an experiment was designed to test the operating characteristics of two types of frame (galvanized pipe and aluminum pipe) and two lengths of net (4.9 m and 8.5 m with ratios of mouth to open mesh aperture areas of 1:6 and 1:11, respectively). The nets were of 0.947-mm Nitex5 mesh. The results of the experiment defining the operating characteristics of the two types offrame and two lengths ofnet were described by Eldridge et al. (1977). The present report will describe mainly diurnal variations in catches of ichthyoneuston during the latter experiment, which was conducted during 9-15 July 1973 utilizing the RV Dolphin

Climate legacies drive global soil carbon stocks in terrestrial ecosystems

Climatic conditions shift gradually over millennia, altering the rates at which carbon (C) is fixed from the atmosphere and stored in the soil. However, legacy impacts of past climates on current soil C stocks are poorly understood. Weused data from more than 5000 terrestrial sites from three global and regional data sets to identify the relative importance of current and past (Last Glacial Maximum andmid-Holocene) climatic conditions in regulating soil C stocks in natural and agricultural areas. Paleoclimate always explained a greater amount of the variance in soil C stocks than current climate at regional and global scales. Our results indicate that climatic legacies help determine global soil C stocks in terrestrial ecosystems where agriculture is highly dependent on current climatic conditions. Our findings emphasize the importance of considering how climate legacies influence soil C content, allowing us to improve quantitative predictions of global C stocks under different climatic scenarios

Plant attributes explain the distribution of soil microbial communities in two contrasting regions of the globe

We lack strong empirical evidence for links between plant attributes (plant community attributes and functional traits) and the distribution of soil microbial communities at large spatial scales. Using datasets from two contrasting regions and ecosystem types in Australia and England, we report that aboveground plant community attributes, such as diversity (species richness) and cover, and functional traits can predict a unique portion of the variation in the diversity (number of phylotypes) and community composition of soil bacteria and fungi that cannot be explained by soil abiotic properties and climate. We further identify the relative importance and evaluate the potential direct and indirect effects of climate, soil properties and plant attributes in regulating the diversity and community composition of soil microbial communities. Finally, we deliver a list of examples of common taxa from Australia and England that are strongly related to specific plant traits, such as specific leaf area index, leaf nitrogen and nitrogen fixation. Together, our work provides new evidence that plant attributes, especially plant functional traits, can predict the distribution of soil microbial communities at the regional scale and across two hemispheres

Systematic techniques for assisting recruitment to trials (START): study protocol for embedded, randomized controlled trials

BACKGROUND: Randomized controlled trials play a central role in evidence-based practice, but recruitment of participants, and retention of them once in the trial, is challenging. Moreover, there is a dearth of evidence that research teams can use to inform the development of their recruitment and retention strategies. As with other healthcare initiatives, the fairest test of the effectiveness of a recruitment strategy is a trial comparing alternatives, which for recruitment would mean embedding a recruitment trial within an ongoing host trial. Systematic reviews indicate that such studies are rare. Embedded trials are largely delivered in an ad hoc way, with interventions almost always developed in isolation and tested in the context of a single host trial, limiting their ability to contribute to a body of evidence with regard to a single recruitment intervention and to researchers working in different contexts. METHODS/DESIGN: The Systematic Techniques for Assisting Recruitment to Trials (START) program is funded by the United Kingdom Medical Research Council (MRC) Methodology Research Programme to support the routine adoption of embedded trials to test standardized recruitment interventions across ongoing host trials. To achieve this aim, the program involves three interrelated work packages: (1) methodology - to develop guidelines for the design, analysis and reporting of embedded recruitment studies; (2) interventions - to develop effective and useful recruitment interventions; and (3) implementation - to recruit host trials and test interventions through embedded studies. DISCUSSION: Successful completion of the START program will provide a model for a platform for the wider trials community to use to evaluate recruitment interventions or, potentially, other types of intervention linked to trial conduct. It will also increase the evidence base for two types of recruitment intervention. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The START protocol covers the methodology for embedded trials. Each embedded trial is registered separately or as a substudy of the host trial

Developing standards for reporting implementation studies of complex interventions (StaRI): a systematic review and e-Delphi

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited