Continental shelf seafloor mapping, benthic habitat surveys, and reef fish assessments in the eastern Gulf of Mexico

In April 2010, The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill originated in the deep sea 1,500 m below the ocean surface at the edge of the continental shelf off Louisiana. Surface and sub-surface dispersal of the oil eventually encompassed an area of over 200,000 km2. Impacts of DWH on biota of the Gulf of Mexico were severe, wide-spread, and are ongoing even a decade after the spill. Because of its offshore origin, the spill caused injury to many resources on the continental shelf, including important reef fish species (e.g., snappers and groupers, etc.) and protected species including sea turtles. Habitats which these species occupy were oiled which resulted in the loss of key supporting plant and animal species. Because so little of the offshore habitat of reef fish species and sea turtles was mapped and characterized prior to the spill, restoration efforts aimed at improving degraded habitats and strengthening species populations proved difficult. This project was specifically developed to discover additional, high conservation value, habitats of reef fishes and sea turtles on the continental shelf of the Gulf of Mexico off Florida (the West Florida Shelf, WFS). The goal of the project was to map such habitats and quantify the density and biodiversity of species occupying them, and to facilitate additional conservation management decisions to enhance their long-term sustainability. The project resulted in mapping and classifying and characterizing 2,350 km2 of heretofore unmapped habitats, the development of new methods to extrapolate habitat types from a sub-sample from video surveys, and new technologies to automate the counting and identification of fish species and habitat features using artificial intelligence. Project personnel have presented these materials to the competent management authorities responsible for fish and sea turtle management. Here we provide technical detail on the methods, procedures and findings from this project.Funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund (2015 - 2020

Seafloor Geodesy in Shallow Water With GPS on an Anchored Spar Buoy

Measuring seafloor motion in shallow coastal water is challenging due to strong and highly variable oceanographic effects. Such measurements are potentially useful for monitoring near‐shore coastal subsidence, subsidence due to petroleum withdrawal, strain accumulation/release processes in subduction zones and submerged volcanoes, and certain freshwater applications, such as volcano deformation in caldera‐hosted lakes. We have developed a seafloor geodesy system for this environment based on an anchored spar buoy topped by high‐precision GPS. Orientation of the buoy is measured using a digital compass that provides heading, pitch, and roll information. The combined orientation and GPS tracking data are used to recover the three‐dimensional position of the seafloor marker (anchor). A test system has been deployed in Tampa Bay, Florida, for over 1 year and has weathered several major storms without incident. Even in the presence of strong tidal currents which can deflect the top of the buoy several meters from vertical, daily repeatability in the corrected three‐component position estimates for the anchor is 1–2 cm or better.Published12116–121401IT. Reti di monitoraggio e sorveglianzaJCR Journa

Diagnosis and severity criteria for sinusoidal obstruction syndrome/veno-occlusive disease in pediatric patients : a new classification from the European society for blood and marrow transplantation

The advances in hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) over the last decade have led to a transplant-related mortality below 15%. Hepatic sinusoidal obstruction syndrome/veno-occlusive disease (SOS/VOD) is a life-threatening complication of HCT that belongs to a group of diseases increasingly identified as transplant-related, systemic endothelial diseases. In most cases, SOS/VOD resolves within weeks; however, severe SOS/VOD results in multi-organ dysfunction/failure with a mortality rate > 80%. A timely diagnosis of SOS/VOD is of critical importance, given the availability of therapeutic options with favorable tolerability. Current diagnostic criteria are used for adults and children. However, over the last decade it has become clear that SOS/VOD is significantly different between the age groups in terms of incidence, genetic predisposition, clinical presentation, prevention, treatment and outcome. Improved understanding of SOS/VOD and the availability of effective treatment questions the use of the Baltimore and Seattle criteria for diagnosing SOS/VOD in children. The aim of this position paper is to propose new diagnostic and severity criteria for SOS/VOD in children on behalf of the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation.Peer reviewe

Guidance for nuclear medicine staff on radiopharmaceuticals drug interaction

Numerous drug interactions related to radiopharmaceuticals take place every day in hospitals many of which are not reported or detected. Information concerning this kind of reaction is not abundant, and nuclear medicine staff are usually overwhelmed by this information. To better understand this type of reaction, and to help nuclear medicine staff deal with it, a review of the literature was conducted. The results show that almost all of radiopharmaceuticals marketed around the world present drug interactions with a large variety of compounds. This suggests that a logical framework to make decisions based on reviews incorporating adverse reactions must be created. The review also showed that researchers undertaking a review of literature, or even a systematic review that incorporates drug interactions, must understand the rationale for the suggested methods and be able to implement them in their review. Additionally, a global effort should be made to report as many cases of drug interaction with radiopharmaceuticals as possible. With this, a complete picture of drug interactions with radiopharmaceuticals can be drawn.Diversos casos de interações medicamentosas com radiofármacos ocorrem diariamente na rotina hospitalar, contudo muitos deles não são notificados ou mesmo percebidos. Informações a respeito desse tipo de reação não é abundante e os profissionais da medicina nuclear muitas vezes estão assoberbados por essas informações. De modo a entender esse tipo de reação e auxiliar a medicina nuclear a lidar com essa situação uma revisão da literatura foi realizada. Os resultados mostraram que a totalidade dos radiofármacos comercializados no mundo apresentam interação medicamentosa com uma enorme variedade de outros medicamentos. Dessa forma sugere-se que revisões sobre radiofármacos inclua um capítulo sobre efeitos adversos. Além disso, um esforço mundial para notificar efeitos adversos deve ser realizado, pois somente dessa forma se terá um quadro real da situação referente interações medicamentosas com radiofármacos

The Cost to Evict: Identifying the Relationship between Eviction Filing Fee and Eviction Filing Rate

Evictions, the legal process a lawyer can use to remove tenants from rental properties, have risen to an unprecedented level in the US. Over 2.3 million evictions were filed in 2016. That’s 2.3 million adults and families left suddenly homeless, often unable to find a new home due to the “mark” of an eviction, forced to uproot their children from school and accept whatever often unsafe housing they can find. The eviction crisis is quickly moving to the center of the U.S. housing policy conversation, yet scholars have overlooked eviction for so long that barely anything is known about the relationship between eviction and policy. This thesis seeks to move eviction policy research forward by studying the effect of the court fee for filing an eviction case. Using novel county-level data on eviction filing fees, this thesis models the relationship between eviction filing fees and eviction filing rates using a partial pooling model. The model estimates that in eleven of the sixteen states studied, eviction filing fee has a negative effect, significant at the 95 level, on eviction filing rate, and in the remaining 5 states, the estimate was not significant. The model estimated that on average, for all counties, every additional $1 increase of filing fee causes the eviction filing rate to change by -0.0087, with a 95% confidence interval between -0.0146 and -0.0063. This estimate is robust to two adverse possibilities that could have skewed the results: (1) that certain states drastically raised their filing fees between 2016 and 2018, and (2) that counties with low eviction filing rates raised their local filing fees to increase revenue. This thesis’s finding that high eviction filing fees decrease eviction filing rates has implications for policymakers seeking to curb evictions. However, more research must be done into illegal evictions to ensure that an observed decrease in eviction filing rate doesn’t actually indicate that landlords chose to evict tenants illegally outside of the court to avoid paying a high filing fee

Language and Representation in Patricia Grace\u27s Novels

In the novels, Potiki (1986), Baby No-Eyes (1998), and Dogside Story (2001), Patricia Grace creatively manipulates the English language through methods of translational representation, which can be defined as techniques used to represent one or more languages within another language. Some of the methods of translational representation that Grace employs include the direct identification of languages spoken by her characters, the insertion of Maori words or phrases into English sentences or passages, the reproduction of Maori speech patterns in English dialogue, and the use of unexplained culture-specific references and allusions. In this essay, I will argue that Grace uses these methods to effectively hybridize and reappropriate the English language