A Framework to Evaluate Wildlife Feeding in Research, Wildlife Management, Tourism and Recreation

Feeding of wildlife occurs in the context of research, wildlife management, tourism and in opportunistic ways. A review of examples shows that although feeding is often motivated by good intentions, it can lead to problems of public safety and conservation and be detrimental to the welfare of the animals. Examples from British Columbia illustrate the problems (nuisance animal activity, public safety risk) and consequences (culling, translocation) that often arise from uncontrolled feeding. Three features of wildlife feeding can be distinguished: the feasibility of control, the effects on conservation and the effects on animal welfare. An evaluative framework incorporating these three features was applied to examples of feeding from the literature. The cases of feeding for research and management purposes were generally found to be acceptable, while cases of feeding for tourism or opportunistic feeding were generally unacceptable. The framework should allow managers and policy-makers to distinguish acceptable from unacceptable forms of wildlife feeding as a basis for policy, public education and enforcement. Many harmful forms of wildlife feeding seem unlikely to change until they come to be seen as socially unacceptable

Inhibition of Sonic hedgehog signaling in vivo results in craniofacial neural crest cell death

Background: Sonic hedgehog (Shh) is well known for its role in patterning tissues, including structures of the head. Haploinsufficiency for SHH in humans results in holoprosencephaly, a syndrome characterized by facial and forebrain abnormalities. Shh null mice have cyclopia and loss of branchial arch structures. It is unclear, however, whether these phenotypes arise solely from the early function of Shh in patterning midline structures, or whether Shh plays other roles in head development. Results: To address the role of Shh after floorplate induction, we inhibited Shh signaling by injecting hybridoma cells that secrete a function-blocking anti-Shh antibody into the chick cranial mesenchyme. The antibody subsequently bound to Shh in the floorplate, notochord, and the pharyngeal endoderm. Perturbation of Shh signaling at this stage resulted in a significant reduction in head size after 1 day, loss of branchial arch structures after 2 days, and embryos with smaller heads after 7 days. Cell death was significantly increased in the neural tube and neural crest after 1 day, and neural crest cell death was not secondary to the loss of neural tube cells. Conclusions: Reduction of Shh signaling after neural tube closure resulted in a transient decrease in neural tube cell proliferation and an extensive increase in cell death in the neural tube and neural crest, which in turn resulted in decreased head size. The phenotypes observed after reduction of Shh are similar to those observed after cranial neural crest ablation. Thus, our results demonstrate a role for Shh in coordinating the proliferation and survival of cells of the neural tube and cranial neural crest

Regional requirements for Dishevelled signaling during Xenopus gastrulation: separable effects on blastopore closure, mesendoderm internalization and archenteron formation

During amphibian gastrulation, the embryo is transformed by the combined actions of several different tissues. Paradoxically, many of these morphogenetic processes can occur autonomously in tissue explants, yet the tissues in intact embryos must interact and be coordinated with one another in order to accomplish the major goals of gastrulation: closure of the blastopore to bring the endoderm and mesoderm fully inside the ectoderm, and generation of the archenteron. Here, we present high-resolution 3D digital datasets of frog gastrulae, and morphometrics that allow simultaneous assessment of the progress of convergent extension, blastopore closure and archenteron formation in a single embryo. To examine how the diverse morphogenetic engines work together to accomplish gastrulation, we combined these tools with time-lapse analysis of gastrulation, and examined both wild-type embryos and embryos in which gastrulation was disrupted by the manipulation of Dishevelled (Xdsh) signaling. Remarkably, although inhibition of Xdsh signaling disrupted both convergent extension and blastopore closure, mesendoderm internalization proceeded very effectively in these embryos. In addition, much of archenteron elongation was found to be independent of Xdsh signaling, especially during the second half of gastrulation. Finally, even in normal embryos, we found a surprising degree of dissociability between the various morphogenetic processes that occur during gastrulation. Together, these data highlight the central role of PCP signaling in governing distinct events of Xenopus gastrulation, and suggest that the loose relationship between morphogenetic processes may have facilitated the evolution of the wide variety of gastrulation mechanisms seen in different amphibian species

Undergraduate students\u27 attitudes and perceptions towards a possibly coercive sexual encounter

This research addressed undergraduate students\u27 current attitudes and perceptions regarding a possibly coercive sexual encounter and the use of date rape drugs. A sample of undergraduate students from a Southern California university was surveyed. Attitudes and perceptions were examined using a self-administered survey in a classroom setting

The Grand Illusion: The Myth of Software Portability and Implications for ML Progress

Pushing the boundaries of machine learning often requires exploring different hardware and software combinations. However, the freedom to experiment across different tooling stacks can be at odds with the drive for efficiency, which has produced increasingly specialized AI hardware and incentivized consolidation around a narrow set of ML frameworks. Exploratory research can be restricted if software and hardware are co-evolving, making it even harder to stray away from mainstream ideas that work well with popular tooling stacks. While this friction increasingly impacts the rate of innovation in machine learning, to our knowledge the lack of portability in tooling has not been quantified. In this work, we ask: How portable are popular ML software frameworks? We conduct a large-scale study of the portability of mainstream ML frameworks across different hardware types. Our findings paint an uncomfortable picture -- frameworks can lose more than 40% of their key functions when ported to other hardware. Worse, even when functions are portable, the slowdown in their performance can be extreme and render performance untenable. Collectively, our results reveal how costly straying from a narrow set of hardware-software combinations can be - and suggest that specialization of hardware impedes innovation in machine learning research.Comment: 28 pages, 13 figures, repo can be found at associated https://github.com/for-ai/portabilit

Real Lives; Real Difference: Service User and Carer Involvement in Professional Education. Conference Summary Report

First paragraph: On the 4th of June 2013, eight Scottish universities involved in the Scottish Inter-University Social Work Service User and Carers' Network, supported by the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) and the Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS), collaborated to produce the first national service user and carer conference aimed at highlighting the importance of involving people who have experience of using Social Work and/or health services in the education of Social Workers and other professionals. The day was deemed "interesting, informative and successful" and involved approximately 45 people delivering presentations and workshops to just over 100 conference delegates. The one-day conference included a keynote speaker and a research presentation delivered by leading academics in Social Work education, poetry recitations delivered by a Social Work service user and workshops delivered by Social Work and Nursing academics, Service Users and carers and social work students

Affective equality: love matters

The nurturing that produces love, care, and solidarity constitutes a discrete social system of affective relations. Affective relations are not social derivatives, subordinate to economic, political, or cultural relations in matters of social justice. Rather, they are productive, materialist human relations that constitute people mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially. As love laboring is highly gendered, and is a form of work that is both inalienable and noncommodifiable, affective relations are therefore sites of political import for social justice. We argue that it is impossible to have gender justice without relational justice in loving and caring. Moreover, if love is to thrive as a valued social practice, public policies need to be directed by norms of love, care, and solidarity rather than norms of capital accumulation. To promote equality in the affective domains of loving and caring, we argue for a four-dimensional rather than a three-dimensional model of social justice as proposed by Nancy Fraser (2008). Such a model would align relational justice, especially in love laboring, with the equalization of resources, respect, and representation

Ecological Solutions for Linear Infrastructure Networks: The key to green infrastructure development

The rapid expansion of linear infrastructure networks poses a global threat to biodiversity and ecosystem services (Laurance and Balmford 2013, van der Ree et al. 2015). Over the last few decades, research and careful planning have led to solutions which begin mitigating the negative effects of these infrastructures (Lesbarrères and Fahrig 2012, van der Grift et al. 2013, Rytwinski et al. 2016). Transport monitoring protocols and data are becoming more widely available, and novel actions are being tested and promoted (Vercayie and Herremans 2015, Schwartz et al. 2020). Robust protocols, landscape genetics, ecological connectivity modeling, remote sensing including GPS animal tracking, among other tools, are being frequently used in infrastructure planning and management (Balkenhol and Waits 2009, Carvalho et al. 2018, Valerio et al. 2020, Zeller et al. 2020, Shilling et al., 2020). The approach towards linear infrastructure planning is also transforming. Linear Infrastructure-related habitats are increasingly valued for the biodiversity conservation opportunity they provide and have become a key contributor to Green Infrastructure development (Dániel-Ferreira et al. 2020, Ouédraogo et al. 2020). There is also a growing awareness about the need for coexistence between infrastructure and biodiversity, and citizens participate in this process (Périquet et al. 2018, Waetjen and Shilling 2018). IENE (Infrastructure & Ecology Network Europe) is a network of experts on linear infrastructures (LI) and biodiversity from Europe and across the world. The main aim of IENE is to provide a platform to promote cross-boundary cooperation in research, mitigation and planning of LI (Seiler and Helldin 2015), facilitated by frequent national and international meetings. IENE organizes an international conference every two years, focusing on biodiversity and transportation (IENE 2021). These conferences provide a way to present innovative research, identity critical questions and problems, discuss ways to increase the efficiency of solutions, and improve the communication among decision makers, planners, and researchers. IENE is also a founding member of the Global Congress on Linear Infrastructure and Environment, which brings together experts from every continent to discuss globally important issues of the interaction between linear infrastructure and the environment. Furthermore, IENE, together with other international transport and ecology conference organizations, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has helped to develop The Global Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Transport and other Linear Infrastructure, a strategy to support biodiversity conservation and enhance ecological connectivity at the governance, policies, planning and implementation stages of transport projects around the world (Georgiadis et al., 2020). The IENE2020 International Conference “LIFE LINES – Linear Infrastructure Networks with Ecological Solutions” aimed to improve environmental sustainability of infrastructure by bringing together and sharing the experiences of experts involved in the planning, research and administration of linear infrastructures around the world. The Conference focused on transportation infrastructures, but it also included other linear infrastructures such as electric power lines. The Conference was held online from 12 to 14 January 2021, and was organized by the University of Évora, LIFE LINES project (LIFE14 NAT/PT/001081 https://lifelines.uevora.pt/), and IENE. The Conference was attended by over 300 participants from 31 countries, representing different stakeholders including ecologists, road and linear infrastructure technicians, NGOs, and policymakers. Participations were highly diverse, with 197 presentations, 13 workshops and two side events (LIFE SAFE CROSSING workshop and LIFE LINES Final Seminar), covering several important topics such as: (1) Innovative Solutions for Linear Infrastructure Impact assessment, Mitigation and Monitoring; (2) Challenges and Opportunities for Infrastructure-Related Habitats; (3) Linear Infrastructure Ecology; (4) Citizen Science and the Involvement of Civil Society; and (5) Legislation and Policy (IENE 2020 Organising and Programme committees, 2021)

Molecular Recognition via Hydrogen Bonding in Supramolecular Complexes : A Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy Study

A.M.F. and D.Z. would like to acknowledge the School of Engineering (University of Aberdeen) for funding. M.P., L.O. and A.M.-F. would like to acknowledge the Spanish Ministry of Science for the MAT2017-84838-P project. Acknowledgments: A.M.-F. and F.B. would like to thank Euan Bain and Brian Paterson for their assistance during some experiments (University of Aberdeen).Peer reviewedPublisher PD