Pupal and Adult Parameters as Potential Indicators of Cottonwood Leaf Beetle (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) Fecundity and Longevity

Cottonwood leaf beetle, Chrysomela scripta, pupae from a laboratory colony were weighed and monitored through adult emergence, oviposition, and mortality to determine if correlations existed between various pupal or adult parameters and fecundity or longevity. Forty-three female cottonwood leaf beetles were monitored. Pupal weight was not a good indicator of fecundity, total oviposition events, number of eggs/beetle/day, or adult longevity. In addition, adult weight showed very low correlation with fecundity, adult longevity, total oviposition events, or number of eggs/beetle/day. However, adult weight was a marginal indicator of the number of eggs/beetle/day, and correlated well with adult body length. Adult longevity could be used to predict fecundity

Vertex-Unfoldings of Simplicial Polyhedra

We present two algorithms for unfolding the surface of any polyhedron, all of whose faces are triangles, to a nonoverlapping, connected planar layout. The surface is cut only along polyhedron edges. The layout is connected, but it may have a disconnected interior: the triangles are connected at vertices, but not necessarily joined along edges.Comment: 10 pages; 7 figures; 8 reference

Price Destabilizing Speculation

It is sometimes asserted that rational speculative activity must result in more stable prices because speculators buy when prices are low and sell when they are high. This is incorrect. Speculators buy when the chances of price appreciation are high, selling when the chances are low. Speculative activity in an economy in which all agents are rational, have identical priors, and have access to identical information may destabilize prices, under any reasonable definition of destabilization. It takes extremely strong conditions to ensure that speculative activity (of the commodity storage variety) "stabilizes" prices, even in a very weak sense.Economic

Sustainability Science: A Call to Collaborative Action

Sustainability science is an emerging field directed at advancing sustainable development. Informed by recent scholarship and institutional experiments, we identify key roles for economists and encourage their greater participation in this research. Our call to collaborative action comes from positive experiences with the Sustainability Solutions Initiative based at the University of Maine, where economists collaborate with other experts and diverse stakeholders on real-world problems involving interactions between natural and human systems. We articulate a mutually beneficial setting where economists’ methods, skills, and norms add value to the problem-focused, interdisciplinary research of sustainability science and where resources, opportunities, and challenges from science bolster economic research specifically and land/sea grant institutions broadly

Pupal and Adult Parameters as Potential Indicators of Cottonwood Leaf Beetle (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) Fecundity and Longevity

Cottonwood leaf beetle, Chrysomela scripta, pupae from a laboratory colony were weighed and monitored through adult emergence, oviposition, and mortality to determine if correlations existed between various pupal or adult parameters and fecundity or longevity. Forty-three female cottonwood leaf beetles were monitored. Pupal weight was not a good indicator of fecundity, total oviposition events, number of eggs/beetle/day, or adult longevity. In addition, adult weight showed very low correlation with fecundity, adult longevity, total oviposition events, or number of eggs/beetle/day. However, adult weight was a marginal indicator of the number of eggs/beetle/day, and correlated well with adult body length. Adult longevity could be used to predict fecundity

RCN: Diadromous Species Restoration Research Network (DSRRN)

The primary goal of the Diadromous Species Restoration Research Network (DSRRN) was to advance the science of diadromous fish restoration, promote state-of-the-art scientific approaches to multiple-species restoration on a watershed scale, and facilitate interactions among scientists, managers, and stakeholders throughout the North Atlantic region. This goal was achieved by a series of conferences and workshops over a five-year period between 2008 and 2013. In all, DSRRN organized two multi-day conferences with over 160 participants in attendance and five multiday workshops with an average of 25 participants. The objective of these workshops was to produce new directions for restoration science by exploring key scientific issues related to interdisciplinary scientific approaches to diadromous species restoration

Meningococcal disease in children in Merseyside, England:a 31 year descriptive study

Meningococcal disease (MCD) is the leading infectious cause of death in early childhood in the United Kingdom, making it a public health priority. MCD most commonly presents as meningococcal meningitis (MM), septicaemia (MS), or as a combination of the two syndromes (MM/MS). We describe the changing epidemiology and clinical presentation of MCD, and explore associations with socioeconomic status and other risk factors. A hospital-based study of children admitted to a tertiary children's centre, Alder Hey Children's Foundation Trust, with MCD, was undertaken between 1977 to 2007 (n = 1157). Demographics, clinical presentations, microbiological confirmation and measures of deprivation were described. The majority of cases occurred in the 1-4 year age group and there was a dramatic fall in serogroup C cases observed with the introduction of the meningococcal C conjugate (MCC) vaccine. The proportion of MS cases increased over the study period, from 11% in the first quarter to 35% in the final quarter. Presentation with MS (compared to MM) and serogroup C disease (compared to serogroup B) were demonstrated to be independent risk factors for mortality, with odds ratios of 3.5 (95% CI 1.18 to 10.08) and 2.18 (95% CI 1.26 to 3.80) respectively. Cases admitted to Alder Hey were from a relatively more deprived population (mean Townsend score 1.25, 95% CI 1.09 to 1.41) than the Merseyside reference population. Our findings represent one of the largest single-centre studies of MCD. The presentation of MS is confirmed to be a risk factor of mortality from MCD. Our study supports the association between social deprivation and MCD

Childhood IQ and marriage by mid-life: the Scottish Mental Survey 1932 and the Midspan Studies

The study examined the influence of IQ at age 11 years on marital status by mid-adulthood. The combined databases of the Scottish Mental Survey 1932 and the Midspan studies provided data from 883 subjects. With regard to IQ at age 11, there was an interaction between sex and marital status by mid-adulthood (p = 0.0001). Women who had ever-married achieved mean lower childhood IQ scores than women who had never-married (p < 0.001). Conversely, there was a trend for men who had ever-married to achieve higher childhood IQ scores than men who had never-married (p = 0.07). In men, the odds ratio of ever marrying was 1.35 (95% CI 0.98–1.86&#59; p = 0.07) for each standard deviation increase in childhood IQ. Among women, the odds ratio of ever marrying by mid-life was 0.42 (95% CI 0.27–0.64; p = 0.0001) for each standard deviation increase in childhood IQ. Mid-life social class had a similar association with marriage, with women in more professional jobs and men in more manual jobs being less likely to have ever-married by mid-life. Adjustment for the effects of mid-life social class and height on the association between childhood IQ and later marriage, and vice versa, attenuated the effects somewhat, but suggested that IQ, height and social class acted partly independently

Book Reviews

Reviews of the following books: Schoodic Point: History of the Edge of Acadia National Park by Allen K. Workman; The Irish of Portland, Maine: A History of Forest City Hibernians by Matthew Jude Barker; The Negotiator: A Memoir by George J. Mitchell; The Visual Language of Wabanaki Art by Jeanne Morningstar Kent; Bar Harbor in the Roaring Twenties from Village Life to the High Life on Mount Desert Island by Luann Yetter; The Franco-Americans of Lewiston-Auburn by Mary Rice-DeFosse and James Myall