Life Stage, Gender and Movement of Blue Crabs (Callinectis sapidus) in Lake Mattamuskeet and Connecting Canals

In their ranges on east and south coasts of the Americas as well as their established invasions in the Adriatic and Baltic, blue crabs, Callinectis sapidus, inhabit estuaries, sounds and coastal oceans and are commercially and ecologically important. How crabs move in response to physical variables is important to management. We monitored life stages at canal control structures, assessed gender ratios with recreational crabbing, learned from crabbers, and studied movements of tagged crabs in a canal connecting Lake Mattamuskeet to the Pamlico sound.  Juveniles enter the lake  through two of 4 canals connecting to the sounds.  Females migrate out through one canal. The lake standing population is about 70% male.  Movements of 240 crabs in August 2012 and 102 crabs in October 2014 were quantified using RFID tags with co-located meteorological and oceanographic devices. Non-spawning females and males are nomadic.  Crabs released in the canal move in response to changes in water depth and go with the flow, toward the Pamlico Sound (summer 76% and fall 78%). What crabbers describe as a fall migration  appears to be concentration of crabs in warmer deeper canals and then southern movement with flow generated by strong north winds. To be effective, management strategies like migratory corridors require understanding of crab movements

Observations of spatial flow patterns at the coral colony scale on a shallow reef flat

Although small-scale spatial flow variability can affect both larger-scale circulation patterns and biological processes on coral reefs, there are few direct measurements of spatial flow patterns across horizontal scales 1), had similarspatial patterns to wakes, while higher-frequency variations (0.05-0.1 Hz, KC<1) had no observable spatial structure. On the reef flat, both drag and inertial forces exerted by coral colonies could have significant effects on flow, but within different frequency ranges; drag dominates for low-frequency flow variations and inertial forces dominate for higher frequency variations, including the wave band. Our scaling analyses suggest that spatial flow patterns at colony and patch scales could have important implications or both physical and biological processes at larger reef scales through their effects on forces exerted on the flow, turbulent mixing, and dispersion. © 2013. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved

Transient Tidal Circulation and Momentum Balances at a Shallow Inlet

An analysis of transient momentum balances is carried out to elucidate circulation, dynamics, and exchange mechanisms at shallow barotropic tidal inlets. Circulation is computed using a depth-integrated, fully nonlinear, time-stepping, finite-element model with variably spaced grids having horizontal resolution down to 50 m. Velocity and elevation fields from the model are used to directly evaluate the contribution of each term in the momentum equations to the overall momentum balance. A transformation of the x-y momentum terms into an s-n coordinate system is used to simplify the interpretation of the dynamics and provide vivid illustrations of the forces and resulting accelerations in the flow. The analysis is conducted for an idealized inlet and contrasted with a highly detailed model of Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina. Results show that momentum balances in the immediate vicinity of these inlets vary significantly in time and space and oscillate between two dynamical states. Near maximum ebb or flood, the alongstream momentum balances are dominated by advective acceleration, pressure gradient, and bottom friction. Cross-stream balances are dominated by centrifugal acceleration and pressure gradients. Near slack, balances more closely follow linear wave dynamics, with local accelerations balancing pressure gradients, and (to a lesser degree) Coriolis. Comparisons between the idealized inlet and Beaufort Inlet show broad similarities in these momentum balances. However, natural inlet geometry and bottom topography, as well as the tidal transmission characteristics of the sounds behind Beaufort Inlet produce strong asymmetries. Moreover, momentum balances are highly localized, often with subkilometer length scales. The dynamics are used to explain the physical mechanisms for inlet exchange. In particular, the results indicate that the cross-stream dynamics generate a ''wall'' along the length of an inlet during the stronger phases of the tide. The wall is established by opposing cross-inlet pressure gradients and centrifugal forces, and it poses a significant barrier to cross-inlet exchange during the stronger phases of the tide but is absent near slack

The Peroxisome Proliferator Activated Receptor‐γ Pioglitazone Improves Vascular Function and Decreases Disease Activity in Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139088/1/jah3374.pd

High frequency temperature variability reduces the risk of coral bleaching

Coral bleaching is the detrimental expulsion of algal symbionts from their cnidarian hosts, and predominantly occurs when corals are exposed to thermal stress. The incidence and severity of bleaching is often spatially heterogeneous within reef-scales (&lt;1 km), and is therefore not predictable using conventional remote sensing products. Here, we systematically assess the relationship between in situ measurements of 20 environmental variables, along with seven remotely sensed SST thermal stress metrics, and 81 observed bleaching events at coral reef locations spanning five major reef regions globally. We find that high-frequency temperature variability (i.e., daily temperature range) was the most influential factor in predicting bleaching prevalence and had a mitigating effect, such that a 1 °C increase in daily temperature range would reduce the odds of more severe bleaching by a factor of 33. Our findings suggest that reefs with greater high-frequency temperature variability may represent particularly important opportunities to conserve coral ecosystems against the major threat posed by warming ocean temperatures

The role of the chemical composition of monetite on the synthesis and properties of α-tricalcium phosphate

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Very high resolution mapping of coral reef state using airborne bathymetric LiDAR surface-intensity and drone imagery

International audienceVery high resolution (VHR) airborne data enable detection and physical measurements of individual coral reef colonies. The bathymetric LiDAR system, as an active remote sensing technique, accurately computes the coral reef ecosystem’s surface and reflectance using a single green wavelength at the decimetre scale over 1-to-100 km2 areas. A passive multispectral camera mounted on an airborne drone can build a blue-green-red (BGR) orthorectified mosaic at the centimetre scale over 0.01-to-0.1 km2 areas. A combination of these technologies is used for the first time here to map coral reef ecological state at the submeter scale. Airborne drone BGR values (0.03 m pixel size) serve to calibrate airborne bathymetric LiDAR surface and intensity data (0.5 m pixel size). A classification of five ecological states is then mapped through an artificial neural network (ANN). The classification was developed over a small area (0.01 km2) in the lagoon of Moorea Island (French Polynesia) at VHR (0.5 m pixel size) and then extended to the whole lagoon (46.83 km2). The ANN was first calibrated with 275 samples to determine the class of coral state through LiDAR-based predictors; then, the classification was validated through 135 samples, reaching a satisfactory performance (overall accuracy = 0.75)

Simulating social-ecological systems: the Island Digital Ecosystem Avatars (IDEA) consortium

Abstract Systems biology promises to revolutionize medicine, yet human wellbeing is also inherently linked to healthy societies and environments (sustainability). The IDEA Consortium is a systems ecology open science initiative to conduct the basic scientific research needed to build use-oriented simulations (avatars) of entire social-ecological systems. Islands are the most scientifically tractable places for these studies and we begin with one of the best known: Moorea, French Polynesia. The Moorea IDEA will be a sustainability simulator modeling links and feedbacks between climate, environment, biodiversity, and human activities across a coupled marine-terrestrial landscape. As a model system, the resulting knowledge and tools will improve our ability to predict human and natural change on Moorea and elsewhere at scales relevant to management/conservation actions

Reading and Ownership

First paragraph: ‘It is as easy to make sweeping statements about reading tastes as to indict a nation, and as pointless.’ This jocular remark by a librarian made in the Times in 1952 sums up the dangers and difficulties of writing the history of reading. As a field of study in the humanities it is still in its infancy and encompasses a range of different methodologies and theoretical approaches. Historians of reading are not solely interested in what people read, but also turn their attention to the why, where and how of the reading experience. Reading can be solitary, silent, secret, surreptitious; it can be oral, educative, enforced, or assertive of a collective identity. For what purposes are individuals reading? How do they actually use books and other textual material? What are the physical environments and spaces of reading? What social, educational, technological, commercial, legal, or ideological contexts underpin reading practices? Finding answers to these questions is compounded by the difficulty of locating and interpreting evidence. As Mary Hammond points out, ‘most reading acts in history remain unrecorded, unmarked or forgotten’. Available sources are wide but inchoate: diaries, letters and autobiographies; personal and oral testimonies; marginalia; and records of societies and reading groups all lend themselves more to the case-study approach than the historical survey. Statistics offer analysable data but have the effect of producing identikits rather than actual human beings. The twenty-first century affords further possibilities, and challenges, with its traces of digital reader activity, but the map is ever-changing