Preliminary Findings: Issues in Surface Movement

The final report for the grant is presented. The recent goals for this project have been: (1) To identify common surface movement challenges which affect the airlines and Air Traffic Control; (2) To map out possible solutions to these challenges; (3) To start generalizing about the information we are receiving so that major, abstract categories of challenges and potential solutions will begin to emerge. In particular, there are several areas of opportunity which are beginning to emerge from the data, dealing with the need for: (1) Tools to support information exchange regarding priorities (both within an individual airline and between the ATC tower and airlines). Such priorities include both concerns affecting departure throughput as well as the ordering of departures to accommodate other airline considerations; (2) Planning tools to help ATC and airline Ramp staff deal with information about priorities; (3) Implementation of strategies to enable greater flexibility in queueing flights for departures; (4) Tools to provide better coordination and situation awareness during taxiing (within an airline as well as between airlines and between the airlines); (5) Tools to support planning and to deal with the interactions between departures and arrivals. Thus far, the initial interviews and observations at three airlines and two ATC facilities have been completed

Panel. Community Engagement and Interpreting Slavery in North Mississippi

The “Behind the Big House” Project / Jodi Skipper, University of Mississippi and Suzanne DavidsonBehind the Big House is a slave dwelling interpretation program in Holly Springs, Mississippi. The program offers a counter-narrative to the Holly Springs Annual Pilgrimage Tour of Historic Homes and Churches, the city’s main tourist attraction which has historically neglected the contributions of enslaved persons. Behind the Big House was initiated by several private property owners who understood that interpreting the structures which housed enslaved persons could help to remedy such omissions. In addition to discussing how historical memory impacts the functions of these sites in the present, Skipper will discuss her role as a Behind the Big House tour guide, and how she incorporates the tour as an applied component in her courses. Slavery and Its Descendants / W. Ralph Eubanks, University of MississippiThe legacy of slavery and its impact across generations of African Americans is often ignored or overlooked, particularly by institutions that benefited from enslaved labor. The University of Mississippi is no exception. Payment records from the 1840s in the archives of the University of Mississippi indicate that Robert Sheegog—who once owned Faulkner’s home Rowan Oak—along with other local slave owners, loaned slaves to the University. This connection between the slaves of Rowan Oak and the building of the University of Mississippi holds the potential to redefine the idea of legacy connections to the University, since inevitably the descendants of several of those slaves are among the university’s alumni. This paper will discuss the on-going work of the University of Mississippi’s slavery research group and the possible outcomes of planned genealogical research to find the descendants of the slaves from Faulkner’s Rowan Oak who built the university.The University of Mississippi Slavery Research Group / Jeffrey Jackson and Charles K. Ross, University of MississippiIn this presentation, we present the story of the University of Mississippi Slavery Research Group focusing on its origins and the various factors that led to its formation. We highlight some of the groups’ most significant recent efforts to better understand how antebellum slavery shaped the formation of the University of Mississippi and life in North Mississippi generally and we discuss some of our initial projects and initiatives that seek to remember, memorialize and interpret the lives of enslaved people for our students, our local community, and our nation.Interpreting Slavery at Burns Belfry and Rowan Oak / George McDaniel, Burns-Belfry African American History MuseumCaroline Barr was a foundational figure in the life of William Faulkner. As he called her, “Mammy Callie,” she had worked for the Falkner family since he was a young boy. Her house and her story demand a further interpretation beyond the gates of Rowan Oak. Using her as a point of departure, this talk will explore African American history within the larger context of the town of Oxford. It will also look at the ways in which that history is being interpreted today and how that interpretation can be improved through building connections between different historical sites. This connectivity allows for a deeper understanding of African American history in Oxford and the world in which Faulkner lived and wrote

A plague of waterfleas (Bythotrephes): impacts on microcrustacean community structure, seasonal biomass, and secondary production in a large inland-lake complex

© 2016, The Author(s). The spiny cladoceran (Bythotrephes longimanus) is an invasive, predaceous zooplankter that is expanding from Great Lakes coastal waters into inland lakes within a northern latitudinal band. In a large, Boundary Water lake complex (largely within Voyageurs National Park), we use two comparisons, a 2-year spatial and a 12-year temporal, to quantify seasonal impacts on food webs and biomass, plus a preliminary calculation of secondary production decline. Bythotrephes alters the seasonal biomass pattern by severely depressing microcrustaceans during summer and early fall, when the predator is most abundant. Cladoceran and cyclopoid copepods suffer the most serious population declines, although the resistant cladoceran Holopedium is favored in spatial comparisons. Microcrustacean biomass is reduced 40–60 % and secondary production declines by about 67 %. The microcrustacean community shifts towards calanoid copepods. The decline in secondary production is due both to summer biomass loss and to the longer generation times of calanoid copepods (slower turnover). The Bythotrephes “top-down” perturbation appears to hold across small, intermediate, and large-sized lakes (i.e. appears scale-independent), and is pronounced when Bythotrephes densities reach 20–40 individuals L−1. Induction tests with small cladocerans (Bosmina) suggest that certain native prey populations do not sense the exotic predator and are “blind-sided”. Failure of prey to deploy defenses could explain the disproportionate community impacts in New World versus Old World lakes

An EIAV field isolate reveals much higher levels of subtype variability than currently reported for the equine lentivirus family

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV), a lentivirus that infects horses, has been utilized as an animal model for the study of HIV. Furthermore, the disease associated with the equine lentivirus poses a significant challenge to veterinary medicine around the world. As with all lentiviruses, EIAV has been shown to have a high propensity for genomic sequence and antigenic variation, especially in its envelope (Env) proteins. Recent studies have demonstrated Env variation to be a major determinant of vaccine efficacy, emphasizing the importance of defining natural variation among field isolates of EIAV. To date, however, published EIAV sequences have been reported only for cell-adapted strains of virus, predominantly derived from a single primary virus isolate, EIAV_Wyoming(EIAV_WY).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We present here the first characterization of the Env protein of a natural primary isolate from Pennsylvania (EIAV_PA) since the widely utilized and referenced EIAV_WYstrain. The data demonstrated that the level of EIAV_PAEnv amino acid sequence variation, approximately 40% as compared to EIAV_WY, is much greater than current perceptions or published reports of natural EIAV variation between field isolates. This variation did not appear to give rise to changes in the predicted secondary structure of the proteins. While the EIAV_PAEnv was serologically cross reactive with the Env proteins of the cell-adapted reference strain, EIAV_PV(derivative of EIAV_WY), the two variant Envs were shown to lack any cross neutralization by immune serum from horses infected with the respective virus strains.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Taking into account the significance of serum neutralization to universal vaccine efficacy, these findings are crucial considerations towards successful EIAV vaccine development and the potential inclusion of field isolate Envs in vaccine candidates.</p

Envelope determinants of equine lentiviral vaccine protection

Lentiviral envelope (Env) antigenic variation and associated immune evasion present major obstacles to vaccine development. The concept that Env is a critical determinant for vaccine efficacy is well accepted, however defined correlates of protection associated with Env variation have yet to be determined. We reported an attenuated equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) vaccine study that directly examined the effect of lentiviral Env sequence variation on vaccine efficacy. The study identified a significant, inverse, linear correlation between vaccine efficacy and increasing divergence of the challenge virus Env gp90 protein compared to the vaccine virus gp90. The report demonstrated approximately 100% protection of immunized ponies from disease after challenge by virus with a homologous gp90 (EV0), and roughly 40% protection against challenge by virus (EV13) with a gp90 13% divergent from the vaccine strain. In the current study we examine whether the protection observed when challenging with the EV0 strain could be conferred to animals via chimeric challenge viruses between the EV0 and EV13 strains, allowing for mapping of protection to specific Env sequences. Viruses containing the EV13 proviral backbone and selected domains of the EV0 gp90 were constructed and in vitro and in vivo infectivity examined. Vaccine efficacy studies indicated that homology between the vaccine strain gp90 and the N-terminus of the challenge strain gp90 was capable of inducing immunity that resulted in significantly lower levels of post-challenge virus and significantly delayed the onset of disease. However, a homologous N-terminal region alone inserted in the EV13 backbone could not impart the 100% protection observed with the EV0 strain. Data presented here denote the complicated and potentially contradictory relationship between in vitro virulence and in vivo pathogenicity. The study highlights the importance of structural conformation for immunogens and emphasizes the need for antibody binding, not neutralizing, assays that correlate with vaccine protection

Individual and joint trajectories of change in bone, lean mass and physical performance in older men.

BackgroundDeclines in bone, muscle and physical performance are associated with adverse health outcomes in older adults. However, few studies have described concurrent age-related patterns of change in these factors. The purpose of this study was to characterize change in four properties of muscle, physical performance, and bone in a prospective cohort study of older men.MethodsUsing repeated longitudinal data from up to four visits across 6.9 years from up to 4681 men (mean age at baseline 72.7 yrs. ±5.3) participating in the Osteoporotic Fractures in Men (MrOS) Study, we used group-based trajectory models (PROC TRAJ in SAS) to identify age-related patterns of change in four properties of muscle, physical performance, and bone: total hip bone mineral (BMD) density (g/m2) and appendicular lean mass/ht2 (kg/m2), by DXA; grip strength (kg), by hand dynamometry; and walking speed (m/s), by usual walking pace over 6 m. We also described joint trajectories in all pair-wise combinations of these measures. Mean posterior probabilities of placement in each trajectory (or joint membership in latent groups) were used to assess internal reliability of the model. The number of trajectories for each individual factor was limited to three, to ensure that the pair-wise determination of joint trajectories would yield a tractable number of groups as well as model fit considerations.ResultsThe patterns of change identified were generally similar for all measures, with three district groups declining over time at roughly similar rates; joint trajectories revealed similar patterns with no cross-over or convergence between groups. Mean posterior probabilities for all trajectories were similar and consistently above 0.8 indicating reasonable model fit to the data.ConclusionsOur description of trajectories of change with age in bone mineral density, grip strength, walking speed and appendicular lean mass found that groups identified by these methods appeared to have little crossover or convergence of change with age, even when considering joint trajectories of change in these factors