Litter on Wheels: An Ocean Garbage Art Car

In the Fall term of 2018, Gettysburg College seniors Bill LeConey and Will Gibson created the world\u27s first Ocean Garbage Art Car, by covering an old Ford truck with plastic bottles (and other trash commonly found in our oceans), to raise awareness about anthropogenic pollution in our seas. Since the 1950’s, plastics have been an essential and ubiquitous commodity in nearly every society on the planet. Plastics find their way into just about every aspect of our lives - from water bottles and cell phone cases, to even advanced medical equipment and space shuttles - it’s no secret how prevalent plastic is. Unfortunately, an overwhelming majority of the ≈450 million tons of plastic produced annually ends up in our oceans, posing a substantial threat to our aquatic life and the ecosystems they reside in. Much of this waste coalesces into gyres called garbage patches - some as large as countries - floating within the water column, and harming the tranquility of the environment they are intruding on. Several environmental art forms similar to our Ocean Garbage Art Car were studied and compared to give a more in depth background on our issue. Many other artists have utilized ocean trash, but ours is a one of a kind. An urgent call to action must take place to cleanup our oceans and to stop the excessive waste of plastic before irreversible repercussions occur. It is our hope that the Ocean Garbage Art Car created in the ES 400 seminar will help raise awareness about this dire issue threatening our planet as we know it

Trunk muscle activity during drop jump performance in adolescent athletes with back pain

It was with great interest we read the recently published article “Trunk Muscle Activity during Drop Jump Performance in Adolescent Athletes with Back Pain.” Investigating back pain (BP) in adolescents is commendable as there is growing evidence that for many, an experience of BP as early as 14 years of age may relate to ongoing pain in adulthood (Coenen et al., 2017). Indeed, the conventional narrative is changing as individual physical factors such as posture, use of schoolbags, and hypermobility are only weakly associated with adolescent BP. Rather, factors which predict BP at a young age are considered to be multi-dimensional and include gender, negative BP beliefs and poor mental health (O\u27Sullivan et al., 2017; Smith et al., 2017). Mueller et al. (2017) have focused on a single physical factor (trunk muscle activation patterns) drawing inferences regarding BP prevention and treatment. This article prompts consideration of three essential aspects regarding research design and interpretation of findings: 1. Interpreting results from cross-sectional designs 2. Interpreting pain-related differences in motor behavior 3. Translating and conveying scientific results to the end-user (patients, healthcare professionals and policy makers)

Post-processing partitions to identify domains of modularity optimization

We introduce the Convex Hull of Admissible Modularity Partitions (CHAMP) algorithm to prune and prioritize different network community structures identified across multiple runs of possibly various computational heuristics. Given a set of partitions, CHAMP identifies the domain of modularity optimization for each partition ---i.e., the parameter-space domain where it has the largest modularity relative to the input set---discarding partitions with empty domains to obtain the subset of partitions that are "admissible" candidate community structures that remain potentially optimal over indicated parameter domains. Importantly, CHAMP can be used for multi-dimensional parameter spaces, such as those for multilayer networks where one includes a resolution parameter and interlayer coupling. Using the results from CHAMP, a user can more appropriately select robust community structures by observing the sizes of domains of optimization and the pairwise comparisons between partitions in the admissible subset. We demonstrate the utility of CHAMP with several example networks. In these examples, CHAMP focuses attention onto pruned subsets of admissible partitions that are 20-to-1785 times smaller than the sets of unique partitions obtained by community detection heuristics that were input into CHAMP.Comment: http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4893/10/3/9

WOLVES (\u3ci\u3eCanis lupus\u3c/i\u3e)

Two species of wolves occur in North America, gray wolves (Canis lupus) and red wolves (Canis rufus). During the 1800s, gray wolves ranged over the North American continent as far south as central Mexico. Gray wolves occupy boreal forests and forest/agricultural edge communities in Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, and northern Michigan. Mech (1970) reported that gray wolves prey mainly on large animals including white-tailed deer, mule deer, moose, caribou, elk, Dall sheep, bighorn sheep, and beaver. Gray wolves are highly social, often living in packs of two to eight or more individuals. The ability of wolves to kill cattle, sheep, poultry, and other livestock is well documented (Young and Goldman 1944, Carbyn 1983, Fritts et al. 1992)

WOLVES (\u3ci\u3eCanis lupus\u3c/i\u3e)

Two species of wolves occur in North America, gray wolves (Canis lupus) and red wolves (Canis rufus). During the 1800s, gray wolves ranged over the North American continent as far south as central Mexico. Gray wolves occupy boreal forests and forest/agricultural edge communities in Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, and northern Michigan. Mech (1970) reported that gray wolves prey mainly on large animals including white-tailed deer, mule deer, moose, caribou, elk, Dall sheep, bighorn sheep, and beaver. Gray wolves are highly social, often living in packs of two to eight or more individuals. The ability of wolves to kill cattle, sheep, poultry, and other livestock is well documented (Young and Goldman 1944, Carbyn 1983, Fritts et al. 1992)

Differences in Shade Tolerance Help Explain Varying Success of Two Sympatric Alnus Species

Alnus maritima and Alnus serrulata are riparian shrubs that occur in similar habitats in the southern and eastern United States.Alnus serrulata is abundant throughout this range, but A. maritima is rare, occurring only in small populations in Oklahoma and Georgia and on the Delmarva Peninsula. Alnus maritima is more resistant than A. serrulata to water and temperature stresses, but the degree to which insolation influences the restricted distribution of A. maritima is unknown. Our goals were to characterize the shade tolerance of A. maritima and A. serrulata and determine whether differences in shade tolerance could help explain the differing ecological success of the two species. Measurements in nature showed that leaves of A. serrulatahave greater concentrations of chlorophyll than do leaves of A. maritima, and a greater percentage of A. serrulata inhabit shaded sites. Two experiments evaluating the resistance of seedlings to light‐deficit stress revealed that A. maritima had a greater photosynthetic capacity and grew more quickly than A. serrulata in full sunlight. In shade, survival of seedlings was lower and reductions in photosynthesis and growth were greater for A. maritima than for A. serrulata. We conclude that A. serrulata is tolerant and A. maritima is intolerant of shade. Moreover, we conclude that shade intolerance strongly restricts the potential niches of A. maritima within the region where the shade‐tolerant A. serrulata is comparatively abundant