Detection of an endangered mammalian species using environmental DNA analysis

Poster presented at The Mammal Society 63rd Spring Conference & AGM, 31st March-2nd April, 2017, Cambridge, UK

Environmental DNA analysis – detection of endangered and invader species in wildlife conservation

Poster presented at Human Identification Solutions (HIDS) 2016, 10th-11th May, 2016, Barcelona, Spain

Environmental DNA analysis – non-invasive detection of endangered species in aquatic and terrestrial environments

Poster presented at Human Identification Solutions (HIDS) 2017, 16th-17th May, 2017, Vienna, Austria

Use of environmental DNA analysis to detect the presence of water vole

© 2018 The Authors. Published by Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://cieem.net/resource/in-practice-issue-99-genetic-techniques-and-technologies-march-2018/The UK water vole population has fallen dramatically in recent years. Accurate and reliable methods of detecting the presence or absence of water vole at specific locations are critical to conservation efforts. Traditional survey methods can, in some cases, be invasive, inaccurate or difficult to carry out. This study aimed to develop a novel method based on identification of environmental DNA (eDNA) to detect the presence of water vole via analysis of water samples. The results demonstrate that the technique offers an accurate method of detection. However, this study was based on a relatively small sample and certain limitations of the technique have been identified, which will be explored with further research. Nevertheless, used and interpreted correctly, the technique can provide reliable evidence of presence or absence

Tailoring pharmacotherapy to specific eating behaviours in obesity: Can recommendations for personalised therapy be made from the current data?

Pharmacotherapy provides an adjunct to behaviour modification in the management of obesity. There are a number of new drug therapies purportedly targeting appetite; liraglutide, and bupropion/naltrexone, which are European Medicines Agency and US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved, and lorcaserin and phentermine/topiramate, which have FDA approval only. Each of the six drugs, used singly or in combination, has distinct pharmacological, and presumably distinct behavioural, mechanisms of action, thus the potential to provide defined therapeutic options to personalise the management of obesity. Yet, with regard to pharmacotherapy for obesity, we are far from true personalised medicine. We review the limited mechanistic data with four mono and combination pharmacotherapies, to assess the potential for tailoring their use to target specific obesogenic behaviours. Potential treatment options are considered, but in the absence of adequate research in respect to effects of these drugs on eating behaviour, neural activity and psychological substrates that underlie poorly controlled eating, we are far from definitive therapeutic recommendations. Specific mechanistic studies and broader behavioural phenotyping, possibly in conjunction with pharmacogenetic research, are required to characterise responders for distinct pharmacotherapeutic options

Effect Of Phasing-Sector Angular Extent In Fm Reticles

A technique is presented for increasing the useful power of the FM modulation signal from a spinning FM reticle with a phasing sector. Spinning FM reticles often determine a target location by using a combination of a phasing sector to establish the angular target location and a radial frequency variation to establish the radial target location. Typically, the phasing sector of this reticle type consists of a semicircular transmissive sector with the other semicircular sector which provides FM modulation. The power of the FM modulation signal is increased by matching the phased-sector geometry to the size that corresponds to the period of the modulation frequency. This type of reticle is compared and contrasted with the more typical semicircular phasing-sector reticle in both the time and frequency domains. © 1992 Optical Society of America

Staring Array Infrared Search And Track Performance With Dither And Stare Step

Operationally significant infrared search and track (IRST) systems have been primarily second-generation thermal imager technology with scanned time-delay-integration (TDI) detector operation. The benefit of the scanned technology provides for large aperture, gimbal-scanned sensors with extremely wide field of regard, but with low revisit rates. Dramatic progress in large format staring arrays has provided the possibility of higher performance systems with lower complexity. These large format infrared staring arrays may be able to provide systems with higher performance (due to detector count) with less complexity (fewer gimbal scan limitations). In fact, lower performance IRST systems may satisfy operational requirements without scanning or stare-step operation in a strap-down architecture. The first step in a full capability staring system IRST design requires a thorough knowledge of staring array IRST performance. This knowledge includes a basic understanding of signal to noise (SNR) in both undersampled and well-sampled systems, with and without a matched filter. For undersampled systems, unresolved targets result in low SNR in both the average case and worst-case scenarios. We assess (using SNR as our primary metric) how the staring IRST system benefits from typical staring operations, such as dither and stare step. We provide a comparison of staring IRST system performance in the midwave infrared (MWIR) and longwave infrared (LWIR) with three modes of operation: basic staring (no sensor movement), dither, and stare step. In addition, we introduce a metric that allows comparison of different types of IRST systems. We use this metric to compare the performance of MWIR and LWIR as well as staring, dither, and stare-step systems. In the future, we will compare scanned systems to staring IRST systems