Integrated Safety, Environmental and Emergency Management System (ISEEMS)

The Risk Management and NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) Department of Sandia National Laboratories/New Mexico (SNL/NM) recognized the need for hazard and environmental data analysis and management to support the line managers` need to know, understand, manage and document the hazards in their facilities and activities. The Integrated Safety, Environmental, and Emergency Management System (ISEEMS) was developed in response to this need. SNL needed a process that would quickly and easily determine if a facility or project activity contained only standard industrial hazards and therefore require minimal safety documentation, or if non-standard industrial hazards existed which would require more extensive analysis and documentation. Many facilities and project activities at SNL would benefit from the quick screening process used in ISEEMS. In addition, a process was needed that would expedite the NEPA process. ISEEMS takes advantage of the fact that there is some information needed for the NEPA process that is also needed for the safety documentation process. The ISEEMS process enables SNL line organizations to identify and manage hazards and environmental concerns at a level of effort commensurate with the hazards themselves by adopting a necessary and sufficient (graded) approach to compliance. All hazard-related information contained within ISEEMS is location based and can be displayed using on-line maps and building floor plans. This visual representation provides for quick assimilation and analysis

Cephalopod-omics: emerging fields and technologies in cephalopod biology

Few animal groups can claim the level of wonder that cephalopods instill in the minds of researchers and the general public. Much of cephalopod biology, however, remains unexplored: the largest invertebrate brain, difficult husbandry conditions, complex (meta-)genomes, among many other things, have hindered progress in addressing key questions. However, recent technological advancements in sequencing, imaging, and genetic manipulation have opened new avenues for exploring the biology of these extraordinary animals. The cephalopod molecular biology community is thus experiencing a large influx of researchers, emerging from different fields, accelerating the pace of research in this clade. In the first post-pandemic event at the Cephalopod International Advisory Council (CIAC) conference in April 2022, over 40 participants from all over the world met and discussed key challenges and perspectives for current cephalopod molecular biology and evolution. Our particular focus was on the fields of comparative and regulatory genomics, gene manipulation, single cell transcriptomics, metagenomics and microbial interactions. This article is a result of this joint effort, summarizing the latest insights from these emerging fields, their bottlenecks and potential solutions. The article highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the cephalopod -omics community and provides an emphasis on continuous consolidation of efforts and collaboration in this rapidly evolving field

Integrated Safety, Environmental, & Emergency Management Systems (ISEEMS)

Sandia`s Risk Management and NEPA Department recognized the need for hazard and environmental data analysis and management to support the line managers` need to know, understand, manage and document the hazards inherent in their facilities and activities. ISEEMS (Integrated Safety, Environmental, & Emergency Management System) was developed in response to this need. ISEEMS takes advantage of the fact that there is some information needed for the NEPA process that is also needed for the safety documentation process. The ISEEMS process enables Sandia to identify and manage hazards and environmental concerns at a level of effort commensurate with the hazards themselves by adopting a necessary and sufficient (graded) approach to compliance. The Preliminary Hazard Screening module of ISEEMS determines the facility or project activity hazard classification and facility designation. ISEEMS` geo-referenced icon allows immediate, visual integration of hazard information across geographic boundaries resulting in significant information compression. At Sandia, ISEEMS runs on the Sandia Internal Restricted Network, in an MS-Windows environment on standard PC hardware. The possibility of transporting ISEEMS to a ``WEB-like`` environment is being explored

“What’s in a Name?” The Taxonomy & Phylogeny of Early Homo

Hominin systematics, encompassing both taxonomy and phylogeny (Strait, 2013), has significant implications for how the evolution of species and traits are understood and communicated. Following a recent influx of fossils (e.g., Brown et al., 2004; Lordkipanidze et al., 2013; Villmoare et al., 2015a; Berger et al., 2015) the amount of diversity in fossil morphology has increased correspondingly. As researchers do not yet approach diversity in a uniform manner, the literature has been flooded with conflicting theories and methodologies (Strait, 2013). Particularly volatile has been the study of the origin of the genus Homo and the extent of variation therein: much controversy arises from conflicting views of the number of valid species subsumed within ‘early Homo’ given unspecified definitions of species and genera. Additionally, there is still a lack of understanding of the extent of and mechanism behind variation, especially within Hominina. The first section of the following paper addresses ‘how can species be identified?’ and ‘how should species be classified into higher taxa?’ The second section reviews the prevalent arguments used to systematise fossils frequently classified as ‘early Homo.’ It considers: the validity of Homo rudolfensis; the morphological, spatial & temporal overlap of earlier Homo with Homo ergaster; the systematic significance of the recently discovered LD 350-1; and finally, the appropriateness of ‘early Homo’ as an adaptive grade.© 2016 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/. The attached file is the published version of the article

Asa Issie, Aramis and the origin of Australopithecus

International audienc