Montana's Crucial Areas and Connectivity Assessment: An Update and Demonstration of the Crucial Areas Mapping Service

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) completed the Comprehensive Fish and Wildlife Conservation Strategy (CFWCS) in October 2005 as a landscape level plan to identify aquatic and terrestrial focus areas important to species and habitats of "Greatest Conservation Need." As implementation of the CFWCS began, FWP saw a need to refine the conservation scale and include terrestrial game and sport fish, FWP lands, and other recreational values into a Comprehensive Plan for Conservation. The "Crucial Areas and Connectivity Assessment" is an attempt to refine the conservation scale and identify important game and nongame fish and wildlife habitats, critical corridors, and valued recreational areas using a combination of empirical data, modeling based on these data, and expert opinion. The goal of this project is to identify and display critical and important habitats for fish and wildlife. Multiple benefits are perceived through achievement of this goal: increased efficiency in planning and commenting on development proposals, effective targeting and planning for the conservation of valued habitats, and increased opportunity for coordination with other agencies states. FWP spent the past year developing data layers, vetting the layers both internally and within the scientific community. Layers available to date include: game quality, game fish life history, watershed integrity, species of concern, aquatic connectivity, angler use, terrestrial species richness, and core area index. In parallel, FWP has developed an interactive Crucial Areas Mapping Service (CAMS) that depicts these resource values and allows users to relate each resource value to risk factors including energy development, urbanization, and subdivision. As the project develops and nears completion, best management practices and policy related to critical habitats will be produced. In mid-March, we plan to release CAMS to the public as a preplanning tool and comprehensive decision support system

The effect of a contralateral contraction on maximal voluntary activation and central fatigue in elbow flexor muscles

The original publication can be found at www.springerlink.comA long-duration, submaximal contraction of a hand muscle increases central fatigue during a subsequent contraction in the other hand. However, this 'cross-over' of central fatigue between limbs is small and the location within the central nervous system at which this effect occurs is unknown. We investigated this 'cross-over' by measurement of the force and EMG responses to transcranial magnetic stimulation of the motor cortex (TMS). To produce central fatigue, we used sustained maximal voluntary contractions (MVCs). In the first study, subjects (n=10) performed four 1-min sustained MVCs of the elbow flexors, alternating between the left and right arms (two MVCs per arm). The sustained MVCs were performed consecutively with no rest periods. In the second study, the same subjects made two sustained 1-min MVCs with the same arm with a 1-min rest between efforts. During each sustained MVC, a series of TMS and brachial plexus stimuli were delivered. Surface EMG was recorded from biceps brachii and brachioradialis muscles bilaterally. Voluntary activation was estimated during each MVC using measurement of the force increments to TMS. On average during each sustained MVC, voluntary activation declined by 7-12% (absolute change, P<0.001) and voluntary force declined by 35-45% MVC (P<0.001), whereas the cortical motor-evoked potential increased (P<0.001) and the subsequent silent period lengthened (P<0.001). The average voluntary activation and voluntary force were similar during two sustained MVCs performed by the same arm, when separated by 1 min of rest. However, when the 1-min rest interval was replaced with a sustained contraction performed by the other arm, the average voluntary activation was 2.9% worse in the second contraction (absolute change, P<0.05), while it did not alter voluntary force production or the EMG responses to TMS. Therefore, in maximal exercise of 4 min duration, the 'cross-over' of central fatigue between limbs is small in the elbow flexors and has a minor functional effect. Our data suggest that voluntary drive from the motor cortex is slightly less able to drive the muscle maximally after a fatiguing voluntary contraction on the contralateral side.Gabrielle Todd, Nicolas T. Petersen, Janet L. Taylor, S. C. Gandevi

Effects of once-weekly exenatide on cardiovascular outcomes in type 2 diabetes

BACKGROUND: The cardiovascular effects of adding once-weekly treatment with exenatide to usual care in patients with type 2 diabetes are unknown. METHODS: We randomly assigned patients with type 2 diabetes, with or without previous cardiovascular disease, to receive subcutaneous injections of extended-release exenatide at a dose of 2 mg or matching placebo once weekly. The primary composite outcome was the first occurrence of death from cardiovascular causes, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or nonfatal stroke. The coprimary hypotheses were that exenatide, administered once weekly, would be noninferior to placebo with respect to safety and superior to placebo with respect to efficacy. RESULTS: In all, 14,752 patients (of whom 10,782 [73.1%] had previous cardiovascular disease) were followed for a median of 3.2 years (interquartile range, 2.2 to 4.4). A primary composite outcome event occurred in 839 of 7356 patients (11.4%; 3.7 events per 100 person-years) in the exenatide group and in 905 of 7396 patients (12.2%; 4.0 events per 100 person-years) in the placebo group (hazard ratio, 0.91; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.83 to 1.00), with the intention-to-treat analysis indicating that exenatide, administered once weekly, was noninferior to placebo with respect to safety (P<0.001 for noninferiority) but was not superior to placebo with respect to efficacy (P=0.06 for superiority). The rates of death from cardiovascular causes, fatal or nonfatal myocardial infarction, fatal or nonfatal stroke, hospitalization for heart failure, and hospitalization for acute coronary syndrome, and the incidence of acute pancreatitis, pancreatic cancer, medullary thyroid carcinoma, and serious adverse events did not differ significantly between the two groups. CONCLUSIONS: Among patients with type 2 diabetes with or without previous cardiovascular disease, the incidence of major adverse cardiovascular events did not differ significantly between patients who received exenatide and those who received placebo

The ALICE Transition Radiation Detector: construction, operation, and performance

The Transition Radiation Detector (TRD) was designed and built to enhance the capabilities of the ALICE detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). While aimed at providing electron identification and triggering, the TRD also contributes significantly to the track reconstruction and calibration in the central barrel of ALICE. In this paper the design, construction, operation, and performance of this detector are discussed. A pion rejection factor of up to 410 is achieved at a momentum of 1 GeV/ c in p–Pb collisions and the resolution at high transverse momentum improves by about 40% when including the TRD information in track reconstruction. The triggering capability is demonstrated both for jet, light nuclei, and electron selection