Pronounced and prevalent intersexuality does not impede the ‘Demon Shrimp’ invasion

Crustacean intersexuality is widespread and often linked to infection by sex-distorting parasites. However, unlike vertebrate intersexuality, its association with sexual dysfunction is unclear and remains a matter of debate. The ‘Demon Shrimp,’ Dikerogammarus haemobaphes, an amphipod that has invaded continental waterways, has recently become widespread in Britain. Intersexuality has been noted in D. haemobaphes but not investigated further. We hypothesise that a successful invasive population should not display a high prevalence of intersexuality if this condition represents a truly dysfunctional phenotype. In addition, experiments have indicated that particular parasite burdens in amphipods may facilitate invasions. The rapid and ongoing invasion of British waterways represents an opportunity to determine whether these hypotheses are consistent with field observations. This study investigates the parasites and sexual phenotypes of D. haemobaphes in British waterways, characterising parasite burdens using molecular screening, and makes comparisons with the threatened Gammarus pulex natives. We reveal that invasive and native populations have distinct parasitic profiles, suggesting the loss of G. pulex may have parasite-mediated eco-system impacts. Furthermore, the parasite burdens are consistent with those previously proposed to facilitate biological invasions. Our study also indicates that while no intersexuality occurs in the native G. pulex, approximately 50% of D. haemobaphes males present pronounced intersexuality associated with infection by the microsporidian Dictyocoela berillonum. This unambiguously successful invasive population presents, to our knowledge, the highest reported prevalence of male intersexuality. This is the clearest evidence to date that such intersexuality does not represent a form of debilitating sexual dysfunction that negatively impacts amphipod populations

Fast widefield techniques for fluorescence and phase endomicroscopy

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityEndomicroscopy is a recent development in biomedical optics which gives researchers and physicians microscope-resolution views of intact tissue to complement macroscopic visualization during endoscopy screening. This thesis presents HiLo endomicroscopy and oblique back-illumination endomicroscopy, fast widefield imaging techniques with fluorescence and phase contrast, respectively. Fluorescence imaging in thick tissue is often hampered by strong out-of-focus background signal. Laser scanning confocal endomicroscopy has been developed for optically-sectioned imaging free from background, but reliance on mechanical scanning fundamentally limits the frame rate and represents significant complexity and expense. HiLo is a fast, simple, widefield fluorescence imaging technique which rejects out-of-focus background signal without the need for scanning. It works by acquiring two images of the sample under uniform and structured illumination and synthesizing an optically sectioned result with real-time image processing. Oblique back-illumination microscopy (OBM) is a label-free technique which allows, for the first time, phase gradient imaging of sub-surface morphology in thick scattering tissue with a reflection geometry. OBM works by back-illuminating the sample with the oblique diffuse reflectance from light delivered via off-axis optical fibers. The use of two diametrically opposed illumination fibers allows simultaneous and independent measurement of phase gradients and absorption contrast. Video-rate single-exposure operation using wavelength multiplexing is demonstrated

Taking the Softer Option? Aspects of Year 9 Pupils' Attitudes to Using Materials

This paper is developed from research undertaken as part of a Masters degree programme at Middlesex University by T. Ford. The objective of the research was to try to understand Year 9 pupils' attitudes to the activity 'making'. It was hoped to abstract from the data: whether pupils preferred working with certain resistant materials over others and to derive a comparison with previous Crafts Council findings ('Pupils as Makers', 1995) pupils' views on the realised, practical outcomes of the making activity The work develops and to some extent supports the view that pupils have clear ideas of their own about the materials that they like to work with and how they should be applied to making products. These preferences correlate to the above Crafts Council findings

The co-production critical mix: the relationship between the small enterprise and business support

This paper sets out to identify how value is added for small enterprises engaging in business support and how this effects strategy development, using theories of co-production in the relationship between the business advisor and the small enterprise owner/manager and, more specifically, in the application of the critical mix (Brudney and England 1983)

An Examination of an Ongoing Process of Transition of an Older Generation Church to a Narrative Form of Preaching

Preaching remains central to the Evangelical Church tradition. This research examined whether the style of preaching in one such church could usefully be transitioned into another style which might be more widely helpful for congregants. Analysis of this church’s archives suggested a preaching pattern that tended towards a single style, often in ‘points’ and ‘sub-points’ irrespective of the literary genres of the biblical text preached upon. The style primarily conveyed information to the listeners and in varying degrees offered ‘application’ to their lives. The aim of the research was to examine whether a focus on the narrative of the Bible, from individual texts to the biblical meta-narrative, and setting this within the congregational life narratives, would offer a better and more varied style of preaching. The proposed preaching style emphasises engagement with the text rather than primarily offering information about it. Richard Osmer’s reflective cycle was adopted as the methodological framework for this thesis. The research was conducted within the church community and was largely a qualitative inquiry. Congregants reflected on past and present preaching, and on a series of sermons preached in a narrative style. The congregational research was then examined in the light of established homiletic literature. The main findings were a positive response to the new style, and unexpectedly that there was an interest in congregants being directly involved in sermons through interjections, particularly in offering life illustrations that relate to what the preacher is saying. This moves away from a preacher and hearer framework to that of the sermon being a shared event. As a result of the research a preaching model called ‘threefold narrativity’ is proposed in the thesis. This model allows for variations of the style of individual sermons within the model, and a means by which a preacher may monitor the balance of sermons is offered. Ways of implementing change in order to utilise this model were then considered, and a final meta-reflection of the process is made

The Athletic Profile of Fast Bowling in Cricket : A Review

Cricket is a global sport played in over 100 countries with elite performers attracting multimillion dollar contracts. Therefore, performers maintaining optimum physical fitness and remaining injury free is important. Fast bowlers have a vital position in a cricket team, and there is an increasing body of scientific literature that has reviewed this role over the past decade. Previous research on fast bowlers has tended to focus on biomechanical analysis and injury prevention in performers. However, this review aims to critically analyze the emerging contribution of physiological-based literature linked to fast bowling in cricket, highlight the current evidence related to simulated and competitive in-match performance, and relate this practically to the conditioning coach. Furthermore, the review considers limitations with past research and possible avenues for future investigation. It is clear with the advent of new applied mobile monitoring technology that there is scope for more ecologically valid and longitudinal exploration capturing in-match data, providing quantification of physiological workloads, and analysis of the physical demands across the differing formats of the game. Currently, strength and conditioning specialists do not have a critical academic resource with which to shape professional practice, and this review aims to provide a starting point for evidence in the specific areaPeer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

The Infinity Mirror Test for Graph Models

Graph models, like other machine learning models, have implicit and explicit biases built-in, which often impact performance in nontrivial ways. The model's faithfulness is often measured by comparing the newly generated graph against the source graph using any number or combination of graph properties. Differences in the size or topology of the generated graph therefore indicate a loss in the model. Yet, in many systems, errors encoded in loss functions are subtle and not well understood. In the present work, we introduce the Infinity Mirror test for analyzing the robustness of graph models. This straightforward stress test works by repeatedly fitting a model to its own outputs. A hypothetically perfect graph model would have no deviation from the source graph; however, the model's implicit biases and assumptions are exaggerated by the Infinity Mirror test, exposing potential issues that were previously obscured. Through an analysis of thousands of experiments on synthetic and real-world graphs, we show that several conventional graph models degenerate in exciting and informative ways. We believe that the observed degenerative patterns are clues to the future development of better graph models.Comment: This was submitted to IEEE TKDE 2020, 12 pages and 8 figure

Online media literacy intervention in Indonesia reduces misinformation sharing intention

Media literacy is widely viewed as an important tool in the fight against the spread of misinformation online. However, efforts to boost media literacy have primarily focused on Western-media and Western-oriented social media platforms, which are substantively different from the media and platforms used widely in the Global South. In the present work, we focus on the media ecosystem of Indonesia and report the results of an online media literacy intervention consisting of short-videos that were targeted specifically to social media users in Indonesia (N= 656). We found that participants in our media literacy intervention were 64% more likely to reduce their sharing intentions of false headlines than our control group (p \u3c 0.001). Our novel media literacy intervention shows promise as a useful tool to reduce misinformation in Southeast Asia