Accommodating Dynamic Oceanographic Processes and Pelagic Biodiversity in Marine Conservation Planning

Pelagic ecosystems support a significant and vital component of the ocean's productivity and biodiversity. They are also heavily exploited and, as a result, are the focus of numerous spatial planning initiatives. Over the past decade, there has been increasing enthusiasm for protected areas as a tool for pelagic conservation, however, few have been implemented. Here we demonstrate an approach to plan protected areas that address the physical and biological dynamics typical of the pelagic realm. Specifically, we provide an example of an approach to planning protected areas that integrates pelagic and benthic conservation in the southern Benguela and Agulhas Bank ecosystems off South Africa. Our aim was to represent species of importance to fisheries and species of conservation concern within protected areas. In addition to representation, we ensured that protected areas were designed to consider pelagic dynamics, characterized from time-series data on key oceanographic processes, together with data on the abundance of small pelagic fishes. We found that, to have the highest likelihood of reaching conservation targets, protected area selection should be based on time-specific data rather than data averaged across time. More generally, we argue that innovative methods are needed to conserve ephemeral and dynamic pelagic biodiversity

Changing Medical Education, Overnight: The Curricular Response to COVID-19 of Nine Medical Schools

Issue: Calls to change medical education have been frequent, persistent, and generally limited to alterations in content or structural re-organization. Self-imposed barriers have prevented adoption of more radical pedagogical approaches, so recent predictions of the ‘inevitability’ of medical education transitioning to online delivery seemed unlikely. Then in March 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic forced medical schools to overcome established barriers overnight and make the most rapid curricular shift in medical education’s history. We share the collated reports of nine medical schools and postulate how recent responses may influence future medical education. Evidence: While extraneous pandemic-related factors make it impossible to scientifically distinguish the impact of the curricular changes, some themes emerged. The rapid transition to online delivery was made possible by all schools having learning management systems and key electronic resources already blended into their curricula; we were closer to online delivery than anticipated. Student engagement with online delivery varied with different pedagogies used and the importance of social learning and interaction along with autonomy in learning were apparent. These are factors known to enhance online learning, and the student-centered modalities (e.g. problem-based learning) that included them appeared to be more engaging. Assumptions that the new online environment would be easily adopted and embraced by ‘technophilic’ students did not always hold true. Achieving true distance medical education will take longer than this ‘overnight’ response, but adhering to best practices for online education may open a new realm of possibilities. Implications: While this experience did not confirm that online medical education is really ‘inevitable,’ it revealed that it is possible. Thoughtfully blending more online components into a medical curriculum will allow us to take advantage of this environment’s strengths such as efficiency and the ability to support asynchronous and autonomous learning that engage and foster intrinsic learning in our students. While maintaining aspects of social interaction, online learning could enhance pre-clinical medical education by allowing integration and collaboration among classes of medical students, other health professionals, and even between medical schools. What remains to be seen is whether COVID-19 provided the experience, vision and courage for medical education to change, or whether the old barriers will rise again when the pandemic is over

Glutamate neurotoxicity, transport and alternate splicing of transporters

Glutamate is the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system and its levels in the synaptic cleft are tightly controlled by high affinity glutamate transporters (also known as Excitatory Amino Acid Transporters or EAATs). The EAAT family is comprised of five members (EAAT1-5), and these transporters are subject to alternative splicing. Alternative splicing of the EAAT genes is a fundamental mechanism that can give rise to multiple distinct mRNA transcripts, producing protein isoforms with potentially altered functions. Numerous splice variants of EAATs have been identified in humans, rodents, and other mammalian species. All splice variants of EAATs cloned to date are either exon-skipping and/or intron-retaining types. These modifications may impact upon protein structure, posttranslational modification, function, cellular localization, and trafficking. Message and protein for these splice variants are detectable in the normal brain and, in many instances, have been shown to be induced by pathophysiological insults such as hypoxia. In addition, aberrant expression of EAAT splice variants has been reported in neurodegenerative conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, ischemic stroke, and age- related macular degeneration. These EAAT variants may represent therapeutic targets and thus require an improved understanding of their regulation. This chapter describes recent developments in investigating the molecular heterogeneity, localization, function, structure, and regulation of the EAATs and their splice variants