Developing Cost Effective Monitoring for Rainbow Smelt Using eDNA

Environmental DNA (eDNA) tools developed at the University of Maine were successfully deployed in four coastal streams in Casco Bay, Maine in spring 2018 to detect the presence of anadromous rainbow smelt (Osmerus mordax), the first full application of this emerging technique. Field methods were refined and tested at sites with documented high (2) and low (2) spawning productivity. Samples were collected below known spawning areas immediately upstream of estuarine tidal influence 2-3 times each week during the spawning season. Three replicate samples were collected in the field at each site, as well as a contamination control, and all samples were filtered and preserved for laboratory analysis. Extracted eDNA samples and controls were run on three replicate qPCR assays. Initial efforts to extract eDNA from samples were hampered by the presence of environmental inhibitors. Use of a Zymo OneStep PCR Inhibitor Removal Kits appears to have overcome this problem and field collected eDNA samples were amplified successfully using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). In partnership with a qualified lab, these tools can now provide a low-cost, userfriendly, and reliable method for monitoring the presence of rainbow smelt

The Arendtian Dread: courts with power

Hannah Arendt was fearful not only of a populist President speaking in the name of the people and unbound by legality. She was also concerned that the popular will could be harnessed to support those responsible for limiting it. More concretely, she was fearful of the American Supreme Court relying on popular support. This is the meaning behind her obscure depiction of the American Supreme Court as “the true seat of authority in the American Republic” but as unfit to power. I argue that Arendt’s characterization of authority as requiring “neither coercion nor persuasion” means that the Court’s source of legitimacy is expertise rather than public support. Yet the current dominant understanding among American Justices as well as scholars is that public support is the source of the Court’s authority. In Arendt’s mind, such an understanding means that the Court has become the seat of power. The corruption of the Court’s authority and constitutional law as a language of expertise capable of resisting public opinion will inevitably follow. Arendt would thus be extremely concerned by the continuing erosion in understanding of the American Supreme Court as an expert, and from the rise of the understanding that its source of legitimacy lies in public confidence

Cardiopoietic cell therapy for advanced ischemic heart failure: results at 39 weeks of the prospective, randomized, double blind, sham-controlled CHART-1 clinical trial

Cardiopoietic cells, produced through cardiogenic conditioning of patients' mesenchymal stem cells, have shown preliminary efficacy. The Congestive Heart Failure Cardiopoietic Regenerative Therapy (CHART-1) trial aimed to validate cardiopoiesis-based biotherapy in a larger heart failure cohort

Winter Wanderung

One print from a collection issued by Two Rivers Printmaking Studio, White Junction Vermont. It consists of a limited edition of thirty-seven prints and six artist proofs by each of twenty-six artists affiliated with Two Rivers