The Economic Impact of Forest Harvest Practices on Washington State Park Visitation

Washington State receives timber contributions from 34 out of its 39 counties, making it a top producer of timber in the United States. Because of the widespread and abundant number of harvests, many forests that society values are affected via diminished aesthetic appeal. Of these affected areas are Washington State Parks and the areas around them. This study seeks to estimate the economic impact that forest harvest practices have on the visitation of Washington State Parks. Through the use of GIS and fixed effect regression analysis, I estimate the impact that over 100,000 permitted forest cuts have on the visitation of 142 Washington State Parks and find statistically significant negative impacts of both even and uneven timber cutting methods. This study will benefit forest and park managers by evaluating forest harvest techniques with respect to recreation and hopes to inform the policy makers working to ensure the sustainability and prosperity of our Washington State Park System

A Recipe for State Dependent Distributed Delay Differential Equations

We use the McKendrick equation with variable ageing rate and randomly distributed maturation time to derive a state dependent distributed delay differential equation. We show that the resulting delay differential equation preserves non-negativity of initial conditions and we characterise local stability of equilibria. By specifying the distribution of maturation age, we recover state dependent discrete, uniform and gamma distributed delay differential equations. We show how to reduce the uniform case to a system of state dependent discrete delay equations and the gamma distributed case to a system of ordinary differential equations. To illustrate the benefits of these reductions, we convert previously published transit compartment models into equivalent distributed delay differential equations.Comment: 28 page

Polyglutamine repeat proteins disrupt actin structure in Drosophila photoreceptors.

Expansions of polygutamine-encoding stretches in several genes cause neurodegenerative disorders including Huntington\u27s Disease and Spinocerebellar Ataxia type 3. Expression of the human disease alleles in Drosophila melanogaster neurons recapitulates cellular features of these disorders, and has therefore been used to model the cell biology of these diseases. Here, we show that polyglutamine disease alleles expressed in Drosophila photoreceptors disrupt actin structure at rhabdomeres, as other groups have shown they do in Drosophila and mammalian dendrites. We show this actin regulatory pathway works through the small G protein Rac and the actin nucleating protein Form3. We also find that Form3 has additional functions in photoreceptors, and that loss of Form3 results in the specification of extra photoreceptors in the ey

Exploring social-ecological trade-offs in fisheries using a coupled food web and human behavior model

Marine fisheries represent a social-ecological system driven by both complex ecological processes and human interactions. Ecosystem-based fisheries management requires an understanding of both the biological and social components, and management failure can occur when either are excluded. Despite the significance of both, most research has focused on characterizing biological uncertainty rather than on better understanding the impacts of human behavior because of the difficulty of incorporating human behavior into simulation models. In this study, we use the fisheries in Narragansett Bay (Rhode Island, USA) as a case study to demonstrate how coupled modeling can be used to represent interactions between the food web and fishers in a social-ecological system. Narragansett Bay holds both a commercial fishery for forage fish, i.e., Atlantic menhaden (Brevoortia tyrannus) and a recreational fishery for their predators, i.e. striped bass (Morone saxatilis) and bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix). To explore trade-offs between these two fisheries, we created a food web model and then coupled it to a recreational fishers’ behavior model, creating a dynamic social-ecological representation of the ecosystem. Fish biomass was projected until 2030 in both the stand-alone food web model and the coupled social-ecological model, with results highlighting how the incorporation of fisher behavior in modeling can lead to changes in the ecosystem. We examined how model outputs varied in response to three attributes: (1) the forage fish commercial harvest scenario, (2) the predatory (piscivorous) fish abundance-catch relationship in the recreational fishery, and (3) the rate at which recreational fishers become discouraged (termed “satisfaction loss”). Higher commercial harvest of forage fish led to lower piscivorous fish biomass but had minimal effects on the number of piscivorous fish caught recreationally or recreational fisher satisfaction. Both the abundance-catch relationship and satisfaction loss rate had notable effects on the fish biomass, the number of fish caught recreationally, and recreational fisher satisfaction. Currently, the lack of spatial and location-specific fisher behavior data limits the predictive use of our model. However, our modeling framework shows that fisher behavior can be successfully incorporated into a coupled social-ecological model through the use of agent-based modeling, and our results highlight that its inclusion can influence ecosystem dynamics. Because fisher decision making and the ecosystem can influence one another, social responses to changing ecosystems should be explicitly integrated into ecosystem modeling to improve ecosystem-based fisheries management efforts

Exploring Barriers to Primary Care Utilization in Transition-Age Males in Southern Connecticut

Optimus Health Care is a Joint Commission accredited and a federally qualified health center (FQHC) in Southern Connecticut, which serves thousands of male transition-age-youth per year. Attrition among males moving from pediatric to adult primary care is a nationally recognized issue. Literature suggests that there are three key barriers to young men seeking care: (1) concerns about confidentiality; (2) embarrassment and discomfort about disclosing their concerns; and (3) concerns about cost and accessibility (location, limited open hours). Studies highlight the importance of examining demographic trends and establishing consensus among transition protocols. This study seeks to assess the prevalence and magnitude of the young male attrition problem and evaluate transition services available to Optimus patients. This project will focus on the population of male transition age youth (TAY, 18-21 years old) who live within the Southern Connecticut areas (Bridgeport and Stamford) who move from pediatric to adult primary care at any one of Optimus Health Care’s locations.https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/ysph_pbchrr/1022/thumbnail.jp

Hypoxia drives murine neutrophil protein scavenging to maintain central carbon metabolism

Limiting dysfunctional neutrophilic inflammation while preserving effective immunity requires a better understanding of the processes that dictate neutrophil function in the tissues. Quantitative mass-spectrometry identified how inflammatory murine neutrophils regulated expression of cell surface receptors, signal transduction networks, and metabolic machinery to shape neutrophil phenotypes in response to hypoxia. Through the tracing of labeled amino acids into metabolic enzymes, proinflammatory mediators, and granule proteins, we demonstrated that ongoing protein synthesis shapes the neutrophil proteome. To maintain energy supplies in the tissues, neutrophils consumed extracellular proteins to fuel central carbon metabolism. The physiological stresses of hypoxia and hypoglycemia, characteristic of inflamed tissues, promoted this extracellular protein scavenging with activation of the lysosomal compartment, further driving exploitation of the protein-rich inflammatory milieu. This study provides a comprehensive map of neutrophil proteomes, analysis of which has led to the identification of active catabolic and anabolic pathways that enable neutrophils to sustain synthetic and effector functions in the tissues

Percussion Convocation

Program listing performers and works performe

The Selectivity and Functional Connectivity of the Anterior Temporal Lobes

One influential account asserts that the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) is a domain-general hub for semantic memory. Other evidence indicates it is part of a domain-specific social cognition system. Arbitrating these accounts using functional magnetic resonance imaging has previously been difficult because of magnetic susceptibility artifacts in the region. The present study used parameters optimized for imaging the ATL, and had subjects encode facts about unfamiliar people, buildings, and hammers. Using both conjunction and region of interest analyses, person-selective responses were observed in both the left and right ATL. Neither building-selective, hammer-selective nor domain-general responses were observed in the ATLs, although they were observed in other brain regions. These findings were supported by “resting-state” functional connectivity analyses using independent datasets from the same subjects. Person-selective ATL clusters were functionally connected with the brain's wider social cognition network. Rather than serving as a domain-general semantic hub, the ATLs work in unison with the social cognition system to support learning facts about others