Transport of Riverine Material From Multiple Rivers in the Chesapeake Bay: Important Control of Estuarine Circulation on the Material Distribution

Driven by estuarine circulation, material released from lower Chesapeake Bay tributaries has the potential to be transported to the upper Bay. How far and what fraction of the material from tributaries can be carried to the upper estuary have not been quantitatively investigated. For an estuary system with multiple tributaries, the relative contribution from each tributary can provide valuable information for source assessment and fate prediction for riverine materials and passive moving organisms. We conducted long-term numerical simulations using multiple passive tracers that are independently released in the headwater of five main rivers (i.e., Susquehanna, Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James Rivers) and calculated the relative contribution of each river to the total material in the mainstem. The results show that discharge from Susquehanna River exerts the dominant control on the riverine material throughout the entire mainstem. Despite the smaller contribution from the lower-middle Bay tributaries to the total materials in the mainstem, materials released from these rivers have a high potential to be transported to the middle-upper Bay through the bottom inflow by the persistent estuarine circulation. The fraction of the tributary material transported to the upper Bay depends on the location of the tributary. Materials released near the mouth are subject to a rapid flushing process, small retention time, and strong shelf current. Our results reveal three distinct spatial patterns for materials released from the main river, tributary, and coastal oceans. This study highlights the important control of estuarine circulation over horizontal and vertical distributions of materials in the mainstem

Using appreciative inquiry to develop, implement and evaluate a multi-organisation ‘Cultivating Compassion’ programme for health professionals and support staff

The ‘Cultivating Compassion’ project was developed in response to a research and innovation call relating to compassion training for National Health Service staff in the South East of England. The project aims included the following: the use of Appreciative Inquiry to develop, implement and evaluate a sustainable and evidence-based programme of compassion awareness training through engaging with a diverse group of health professionals and support staff; an evaluation of a ‘train the trainers’ approach; and an evaluation of ‘compassion lead’ roles and a multi-modal compassion toolkit. The project team included academics from two universities and one medical school, NHS staff from three separate organisations and service users. The participants recruited to the study included doctors, nurses, receptionists, chaplains and others working in close contact with service users from within four NHS organisations in the South East of England. The main findings from the project using thematic analysis from participant focus groups and interviews identified project enablers and inhibitors, the value of project resources, and shifts in perspectives. Project conclusions highlighted the importance of effective senior-level support and organisational leadership in cultivating compassion within a healthcare organisation and the importance of the integration of compassion-promoting resources within existing staff development initiatives

Conversational Interfaces for Explainable AI: A Human-Centered Approach

One major goal of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), in order to enhance trust in technology, is to enable the user to enquire information and explanation about its functionality directly from an intelligent agent. We propose conversational interfaces (CI) to be the perfect setting, since they are intuitive for humans and computationally processible. While there are many approaches addressing technical issues of this human-agent communication problem, the user perspective appears to be widely neglected. With the purpose of better requirement understanding and identification of implicit expectations from a human-centered view, a Wizard of Oz experiment was conducted, where participants tried to elicit basic information from a pretended artificial agent (What are your capabilities?). The hypothesis that users pursue fundamentally different strategies could be verified with the help of Conversation Analysis. Results illustrate the vast variety in human communication and disclose both requirements of users and obstacles in the implementation of protocols for interacting agents. Finally, we infer essential indications for the implementation of such a CI

The N-Terminal Domain of the Drosophila Retinoblastoma Protein Rbf1 Interacts with ORC and Associates with Chromatin in an E2F Independent Manner

The retinoblastoma (Rb) tumor suppressor protein can function as a DNA replication inhibitor as well as a transcription factor. Regulation of DNA replication may occur through interaction of Rb with the origin recognition complex (ORC).We characterized the interaction of Drosophila Rb, Rbf1, with ORC. Using expression of proteins in Drosophila S2 cells, we found that an N-terminal Rbf1 fragment (amino acids 1-345) is sufficient for Rbf1 association with ORC but does not bind to dE2F1. We also found that the C-terminal half of Rbf1 (amino acids 345-845) interacts with ORC. We observed that the amino-terminal domain of Rbf1 localizes to chromatin in vivo and associates with chromosomal regions implicated in replication initiation, including colocalization with Orc2 and acetylated histone H4.Our results suggest that Rbf1 can associate with ORC and chromatin through domains independent of the E2F binding site. We infer that Rbf1 may play a role in regulating replication directly through its association with ORC and/or chromatin factors other than E2F. Our data suggest an important role for retinoblastoma family proteins in cell proliferation and tumor suppression through interaction with the replication initiation machinery

American Gut: an Open Platform for Citizen Science Microbiome Research

McDonald D, Hyde E, Debelius JW, et al. American Gut: an Open Platform for Citizen Science Microbiome Research. mSystems. 2018;3(3):e00031-18

Social distance between local residents and African-American expatriates in the context of Ghana's slavery-based heritage tourism

This paper explores the social distance between local residents and African-Americans who have settled in Ghana since the 1960s. Data generated from in-depth interviews suggest the African-American expatriates felt their proximity to collective slave memory or particularly slavery heritage conferred on them certain rights to exclude local residents who are more susceptible to forgetting the past. By appropriating traces of the past, the African-American expatriates provide a range of tourism services, albeit to visitors they believed subscribed to socially constructed meanings elicited at slave sites. The study suggests explicit recognition of African-American expatriates in the levels of contestations that result from slavery-based heritage tourism

Jurisprudences of jurisdiction: matters of public authority

This essay examines a number of jurisdictional engagements that point to difficulties in joining or separating relations between public authority, jurisprudences of jurisdiction and the writing of jurisprudence