Caterpillar Growth and Consumption Rates as a Measure of Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) and American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) Leaf Quality following an Icing Event

Ice storms are predicted to increase in frequency and intensity with climate change. The impact this will have on northeastern forests is largely unknown. Increased ice storm frequency and intensity will likely change the structure and function of forested ecosystems. The consequences of this change have never before been studied in a controlled, experimental setting. The Ice Storm Experiment (ISE) at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in Woodstock, New Hampshire, imitated ice storms at three levels of severity: low, moderate, and high. Leaves were collected from sugar maple (Acer saccharum) and American beech (Fagus grandifolia) located within the plots. Relative leaf quality was assessed with gypsy moth larvae (Lymantria dispar dispar) bioassays. Larvae were allowed to feed on sugar maple of American beech leaves for approximately 72 hours in an incubation chamber. Caterpillar growth rate and caterpillar consumption rate were calculated to assess relative leaf quality. Growth rate was highest in the plots receiving the highest treatment of ice for both sugar maple and American beech. Consumption rate was lowest in the high treatment plots for both sugar maple and American beech. These findings suggest that leaf quality of these species is highest following a severe ice event. In the future, leaf chemical analyses will be conducted to determine the physical makeup of the leaves

Session A, 2015 First Place: Whatever the Case May Be: Investigating Trichoptera Diversity in Three Adirondack Streams

Caddisfly larvae are used as an indicator species for stream health. Anthropogenic development and pollution threaten the quality of streams and the diversity of macroinvertebrates such as caddisflies. The larvae develop in the stream in cases built from sand and organic matter and adults remain near the stream. We hypothesize that the diversity of larvae will be the same as the diversity of adults in three streams at Cranberry Lake Biological Station. Larvae were collected at ten sites in three streams near the campus using d-nets and forceps. Adults were caught at one site at each stream at night using a UV light trap. The ANOVA/Tukey’s Test, Shannon-Weiner Index, paired t-test, and Sorenson’s Coefficient were all performed to determine the difference in diversity between all three streams and between larvae and adults at each stream. The results of the ANOVA/Tukey’s Test showed no significant difference in diversity between all three sites. We reject our null hypothesis, as the paired t-test done for each stream site between aquatic and terrestrial samples showed no significant difference. We therefore conclude that terrestrial caddisfly diversity can be indicative of stream health

Clockface polygons and the collective joy of making mathematics together

The social and embodied nature at the heart of all knowing, doing, and learning contrasts with the images that pervade our cultural imagination of mathematical work as a solitary, cognitive activity. This article describes a playful experiment by the author group to do collective mathematics, in an extended effort to construct alternative images, instincts, and practices for ourselves. We present a pair of episodes of mathematical exploration that come from our work together and that we have seen as an early success, intimating features of a stabilized collective mathematics that we hope to continue pursuing. Coming from a single investigation of our group, these episodes offer narrative accounts of the parallel inquiries of subgroups, working to define and characterize a mathematical space we had collectively identified, and then to formulate and investigate conjectures about that space. The narratives are followed by a discussion of themes within and across them and reflections on their significance as a step toward self-organized collective mathematics

Performance of a Kinetic Inductance Phonon-Mediated Detector at the NEXUS Cryogenic Facility

Microcalorimeters that leverage microwave kinetic inductance detectors to read out phonon signals in the particle-absorbing target, referred to as kinetic inductance phonon-mediated (KIPM) detectors, offer an attractive detector architecture to probe dark matter (DM) down to the fermionic thermal relic mass limit. A prototype KIPM detector featuring a single aluminum resonator patterned onto a 1-gram silicon substrate was operated in the NEXUS low-background facility at Fermilab for characterization and evaluation of this detector architecture's efficacy for a dark matter search. An energy calibration was performed by exposing the bare substrate to a pulsed source of 470 nm photons, resulting in a baseline resolution on the energy absorbed by the phonon sensor of $2.1\pm0.2$ eV, a factor of two better than the current state-of-the-art, enabled by millisecond-scale quasiparticle lifetimes. However, due to the sub-percent phonon collection efficiency, the resolution on energy deposited in the substrate is limited to $\sigma_E=318 \pm 28$ eV. We further model the signal pulse shape as a function of device temperature to extract quasiparticle lifetimes, as well as the observed noise spectra, both of which impact the baseline resolution of the sensor

On-sky demonstration of the SuperSpec millimeter-wave spectrometer (Conference Presentation)

SuperSpec is an on-chip filter-bank spectrometer designed for wideband moderate-resolution spectroscopy at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. Employing TiN kinetic inductance detectors, the device has demonstrated noise performance suitable for photon noise limited ground-based observations at excellent millimeter-wave observing sites. In these proceedings we present a demonstration instrument featuring six independent single-polarization SuperSpec chips, covering 190-310 GHz with 300 channels. We summarize spectrometer performance, describe the cryostat and optical coupling, and present the readout and telescope control system. In an initial deployment to the Large Millimeter Telescope, we plan to observe submillimeter galaxies in [CII] emission at redshifts 5 < z < 9 and CO emission from lower-redshift galaxies. Real on-sky performance will inform the design of the next generation of instruments using large numbers of SuperSpec devices, which could include multi-object spectrometers or line intensity mapping experiments that target [CII] during the Epoch of Reionization

Efficacy and safety of two neutralising monoclonal antibody therapies, sotrovimab and BRII-196 plus BRII-198, for adults hospitalised with COVID-19 (TICO): a randomised controlled trial

We aimed to assess the efficacy and safety of two neutralising monoclonal antibody therapies (sotrovimab [Vir Biotechnology and GlaxoSmithKline] and BRII-196 plus BRII-198 [Brii Biosciences]) for adults admitted to hospital for COVID-19 (hereafter referred to as hospitalised) with COVID-19. In this multinational, double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled, clinical trial (Therapeutics for Inpatients with COVID-19 [TICO]), adults (aged ≥18 years) hospitalised with COVID-19 at 43 hospitals in the USA, Denmark, Switzerland, and Poland were recruited. Patients were eligible if they had laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 symptoms for up to 12 days. Using a web-based application, participants were randomly assigned (2:1:2:1), stratified by trial site pharmacy, to sotrovimab 500 mg, matching placebo for sotrovimab, BRII-196 1000 mg plus BRII-198 1000 mg, or matching placebo for BRII-196 plus BRII-198, in addition to standard of care. Each study product was administered as a single dose given intravenously over 60 min. The concurrent placebo groups were pooled for analyses. The primary outcome was time to sustained clinical recovery, defined as discharge from the hospital to home and remaining at home for 14 consecutive days, up to day 90 after randomisation. Interim futility analyses were based on two seven-category ordinal outcome scales on day 5 that measured pulmonary status and extrapulmonary complications of COVID-19. The safety outcome was a composite of death, serious adverse events, incident organ failure, and serious coinfection up to day 90 after randomisation. Efficacy and safety outcomes were assessed in the modified intention-to-treat population, defined as all patients randomly assigned to treatment who started the study infusion. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04501978. Between Dec 16, 2020, and March 1, 2021, 546 patients were enrolled and randomly assigned to sotrovimab (n=184), BRII-196 plus BRII-198 (n=183), or placebo (n=179), of whom 536 received part or all of their assigned study drug (sotrovimab n=182, BRII-196 plus BRII-198 n=176, or placebo n=178; median age of 60 years [IQR 50–72], 228 [43%] patients were female and 308 [57%] were male). At this point, enrolment was halted on the basis of the interim futility analysis. At day 5, neither the sotrovimab group nor the BRII-196 plus BRII-198 group had significantly higher odds of more favourable outcomes than the placebo group on either the pulmonary scale (adjusted odds ratio sotrovimab 1·07 [95% CI 0·74–1·56]; BRII-196 plus BRII-198 0·98 [95% CI 0·67–1·43]) or the pulmonary-plus complications scale (sotrovimab 1·08 [0·74–1·58]; BRII-196 plus BRII-198 1·00 [0·68–1·46]). By day 90, sustained clinical recovery was seen in 151 (85%) patients in the placebo group compared with 160 (88%) in the sotrovimab group (adjusted rate ratio 1·12 [95% CI 0·91–1·37]) and 155 (88%) in the BRII-196 plus BRII-198 group (1·08 [0·88–1·32]). The composite safety outcome up to day 90 was met by 48 (27%) patients in the placebo group, 42 (23%) in the sotrovimab group, and 45 (26%) in the BRII-196 plus BRII-198 group. 13 (7%) patients in the placebo group, 14 (8%) in the sotrovimab group, and 15 (9%) in the BRII-196 plus BRII-198 group died up to day 90. Neither sotrovimab nor BRII-196 plus BRII-198 showed efficacy for improving clinical outcomes among adults hospitalised with COVID-19. US National Institutes of Health and Operation Warp Spee