Recent progress toward reducing seawalls in Puget Sound

Recovery efforts for Puget Sound have focused on improving shoreline function by reducing seawalls (e.g. rock and concrete bank protection) and encouraging alternatives, such as soft shore protection. Shoreline armor was one of the key stressors identified by the Puget Sound Partnership in 2010 to protect and restore habitat. Armor is one of the Puget Sound Vital Signs, those measures used by the Puget Sound Partnership to track ecosystem health. One of the targets associated with the Vital Sign, a net reduction of the total extent of armor between 2011 and 2020, is tracked using the Hydraulic Project Approval (HPA) permitting database maintained by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Projects are categorized as new, replacement and removed armor. A summary of permit information indicates that generally, trend in new shoreline armor decreased from 2005 – 2016, while the pace of hard armor removal increased. Two additional targets identified by the Partnership, emphasizes the importance of keeping intact eroding bluffs (locally referred to as feeder bluffs) that maintain Puget Sound beaches, and encouraging the use of softer, nature-based approaches to erosion control. The HPA data, combined with recent detailed mapping of coastal landforms, provide an indication of progress towards the feeder bluff target. Soft shoreline techniques have long been of interest on Puget Sound, but have been slow to be widely adopted. These soft techniques are difficult to categorize, as many are hybrids, combining natural elements and beach nourishment with more conventional rock or concrete structural measures. New technical guidance, combined with increased regulatory emphasis and locally-based outreach efforts, have led to improvements in the implementation and the success of new methods of addressing erosion. We describe significant regulatory, educational, scientific, and restoration efforts focused on this issue in Puget Sound

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Effects of the Environment and Deprivation Condition in Aged Rats Trained to Discriminate Between 22- and 2-hr Food Deprivation

Color poster with text and graphs.Jewett and collegues (2005) have previously trained rats to discriminate between food deprivation of 2 hours and 22 hours, and found 20 minute access to food reduced the stimulus effects of food consumption. In our studies, we attempted to determine if rats trained to discriminate between 2 hours and 22 hours of food deprivation conditions would demonstrate altered behavior occuring after short access to food.University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates Grant; University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Research and Creative Activity Grant; University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Program

Discriminative Stimulus Effects of Naltrexone and Haloperidol in Rats With Chronic, Intermittent Access to Sucrose

Color poster with text, graphs, and charts.Our previous research has shown that naltrexone can be established as a discriminative stimulus for rats given daily sucrose solutions and trained under a 3.2 mg/kg training dose (TD). Our current study attempts to establish naltrexone as a discriminative stimulus under a 0.32 mg/kg TD.University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates Grant; University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Research and Creative Activity Grant; Student Differential Tuition; Minnesota Obesity Center; University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Program

The sequence and analysis of duplication rich human chromosome 16

We report here the 78,884,754 base pairs of finished human chromosome 16 sequence, representing over 99.9 percent of its euchromatin. Manual annotation revealed 880 protein coding genes confirmed by 1,637 aligned transcripts, 19 tRNA genes, 341 pseudogenes and 3 RNA pseudogenes. These genes include metallothionein, cadherin and iroquois gene families, as well as the disease genes for polycystic kidney disease and acute myelomonocytic leukemia. Several large-scale structural polymorphisms spanning hundreds of kilobasepairs were identified and result in gene content differences across humans. One of the unique features of chromosome 16 is its high level of segmental duplication, ranked among the highest of the human autosomes. While the segmental duplications are enriched in the relatively gene poor pericentromere of the p-arm, some are involved in recent gene duplication and conversion events which are likely to have had an impact on the evolution of primates and human disease susceptibility

The sequence and analysis of duplication-rich human chromosome 16

Human chromosome 16 features one of the highest levels of segmentally duplicated sequence among the human autosomes. We report here the 78,884,754 base pairs of finished chromosome 16 sequence, representing over 99.9% of its euchromatin. Manual annotation revealed 880 protein-coding genes confirmed by 1,670 aligned transcripts, 19 transfer RNA genes, 341 pseudogenes and three RNA pseudogenes. These genes include metallothionein, cadherin and iroquois gene families, as well as the disease genes for polycystic kidney disease and acute myelomonocytic leukaemia. Several large-scale structural polymorphisms spanning hundreds of kilobase pairs were identified and result in gene content differences among humans. Whereas the segmental duplications of chromosome 16 are enriched in the relatively gene-poor pericentromere of the p arm, some are involved in recent gene duplication and conversion events that are likely to have had an impact on the evolution of primates and human disease susceptibility.Joel Martin, Cliff Han, Laurie A. Gordon, Astrid Terry, Shyam Prabhakar, Xinwei She, Gary Xie, Uffe Hellsten, Yee Man Chan, Michael Altherr, Olivier Couronne, Andrea Aerts, Eva Bajorek, Stacey Black, Heather Blumer, Elbert Branscomb, Nancy C. Brown, William J. Bruno, Judith M. Buckingham, David F. Callen, Connie S. Campbell, Mary L. Campbell, Evelyn W. Campbell, Chenier Caoile, Jean F. Challacombe, Leslie A. Chasteen, Olga Chertkov, Han C. Chi, Mari Christensen, Lynn M. Clark, Judith D. Cohn, Mirian Denys, John C. Detter, Mark Dickson, Mira Dimitrijevic-Bussod, Julio Escobar, Joseph J. Fawcett, Dave Flowers, Dea Fotopulos, Tijana Glavina, Maria Gomez, Eidelyn Gonzales, David Goodstein, Lynne A. Goodwin, Deborah L. Grady, Igor Grigoriev, Matthew Groza, Nancy Hammon, Trevor Hawkins, Lauren Haydu, Carl E. Hildebrand, Wayne Huang, Sanjay Israni, Jamie Jett, Phillip B. Jewett, Kristen Kadner, Heather Kimball, Arthur Kobayashi, Marie-Claude Krawczyk, Tina Leyba, Jonathan L. Longmire, Frederick Lopez, Yunian Lou, Steve Lowry, Thom Ludeman, Chitra F. Manohar, Graham A. Mark, Kimberly L. McMurray, Linda J. Meincke, Jenna Morgan, Robert K. Moyzis, Mark O. Mundt, A. Christine Munk, Richard D. Nandkeshwar, Sam Pitluck, Martin Pollard Paul Predki, Beverly Parson-Quintana, Lucia Ramirez, Sam Rash, James Retterer, Darryl O. Ricke, Donna L. Robinson, Alex Rodriguez, Asaf Salamov, Elizabeth H. Saunders, Duncan Scott, Timothy Shough, Raymond L. Stallings, Malinda Stalvey, Robert D. Sutherland, Roxanne Tapia, Judith G. Tesmer, Nina Thayer, Linda S. Thompson, Hope Tice, David C. Torney, Mary Tran-Gyamfi, Ming Tsai, Levy E. Ulanovsky, Anna Ustaszewska, Nu Vo, P. Scott White, Albert L. Williams, Patricia L. Wills, Jung-Rung Wu, Kevin Wu, Joan Yang, Pieter DeJong, David Bruce, Norman A. Doggett, Larry Deaven, Jeremy Schmutz, Jane Grimwood, Paul Richardson, Daniel S. Rokhsar, Evan E. Eichler, Paul Gilna, Susan M. Lucas, Richard M. Myers, Edward M. Rubin and Len A. Pennacchi