Effects of urbanisation and landscape heterogeneity mediated by feeding guild and body size in a community of coprophilous beetles

Although the impacts of urbanisation on biodiversity are well studied, the precise response of some invertebrate groups remains poorly known. Dung-associated beetles are little studied in an urban context, especially in temperate regions. We considered how landscape heterogeneity, assessed at three spatial scales (250, 500 and 1000 metre radius), mediates the community composition of coprophilous beetles on a broad urban gradient. Beetles were sampled using simple dung-baited traps, placed at 48 sites stratified across three distance bands around a large urban centre in England. The most urban sites hosted the lowest abundance of saprophagous beetles, with a lower mean body length relative to the least urban sites. Predicted overall species richness and the richness of saprophagous species were also lowest at the most urban sites. Ordination analyses followed by variation partitioning revealed that landscape heterogeneity across the urban gradient explained a small but significant proportion of community composition. Heterogeneity data for a 500-metre radius around each site provided the best fit with beetle community data. Larger saprophagous species were associated with lower amounts of manmade surface and improved grassland. Some individual species, particularly predators, appeared to be positively associated with urban or urban fringe sites. This study is probably the first to examine the response of the whole coprophilous beetle community to urbanisation. Our results suggest that the response of this community to urbanisation matches expectations based on other taxonomic groups, whilst emphasising the complex nature of this response, with some smaller-bodied species potentially benefitting from urbanisation

Preseason Lower Extremity Functional Test Scores Are Not Associated With Lower Quadrant Injury - A Validation Study With Normative Data on 395 Division III Athletes

Background: Preseason performance on the lower extremity functional test (LEFT), a timed series of agility drills, has been previously reported to be associated with future risk of lower quadrant (LQ = low back and lower extremities) injury in Division III (D III) athletes.Validation studies are warranted to confirm or refute initial findings. Hypothesis/Purpose: The primary purpose of this study was to examine the ability of the LEFT to discriminate injury occurrence in D III athletes, in order to validate or refute prior findings. It was hypothesized that female and male D III athletes slower at completion of the LEFT would be at a greater risk for a non-contact time-loss injury during sport. Secondary purposes of this study are to report other potential risk factors based on athlete demographics and to present normative LEFT data based on sport participation. Methods: Two hundred and six (females = 104; males = 102) D III collegiate athletes formed a validation sample. Athletes in the validation sample completed a demographic questionnaire and performed the LEFT at the start of their sports preseason. Athletic trainers tracked non-contact time-loss LQ injuries during the season. A secondary analysis of risk based on preseason LEFT performance was conducted for a sample (n = 395) that consisted of subjects in the validation sample (n = 206) as well as athletes from a prior LEFT related study (n = 189). Study Design: Prospective cohort Results: Male athletes in the validation sample completed the LEFT [98.6 (± 8.1) seconds] significantly faster than female athletes [113.1 (± 10.4) seconds]. Male athletes, by sport, also completed the LEFT significantly faster than their female counterparts who participated in the same sport. There was no association between preseason LEFT performance and subsequent injury, by sex, in either the validation sample or the combined sample. Females who reported starting primary sport participation by age 10 were two times (OR = 2.4, 95% CI: 1.2, 4.9; p = 0.01) more likely to experience a non-contact time-loss LQ injury than female athletes who started their primary sport at age 11 or older. Males who reported greater than three hours per week of plyometric training during the six-week period prior to the start of the preseason were four times more likely (OR = 4.0, 95% CI: 1.1, 14.0; p = 0.03) to experience a foot or ankle injury than male athletes who performed three or less hours per week. Conclusions: The LEFT could not be validated as a preseason performance measure to predict future sports injury risk. The data presented in this study may aid rehabilitation professionals when evaluating an injured athlete’s ability to return to sport by comparing their LEFT score to population norms

Initial experimental evidence that the ability to choose between items alters attraction to familiar versus novel persons in different ways for men and women

Nonhuman species may respond to novel mates with increased sexual motivation (‘The Coolidge Effect1). In humans, novel technological advances, such as online dating platforms, are thought to result in ‘Choice Overload’2. This may undermine the goal of finding a meaningful relationship3, orienting the user toward novel possible partners versus committing to a partner. Here, we used a paradigm measuring change in attraction to familiar faces (i.e. rated on second viewing4) to investigate Coolidge-like phenomena in humans primed with choice of potential online dating partners. We examined two pre-registered hypotheses (https://osf.io/xs74r/files/). First, whether experimentally priming choice (viewing a slideshow of online dating images) directly reduces the attractiveness of familiar preferred sex faces compared to our control condition. Second, whether the predicted effect is stronger for men than women given the role of the Coolidge effect in male sexual motivation5.<br/

Considerations for the use of medical devices in dermatology.

This manuscript addresses the significant considerations concerning the development and use of medical devices in dermatology. With the rapidly growing demand and booming market for medical devices, especially lasers, it is crucial that dermatologists become familiar with the nuances associated with supporting clinical studies, consumer-driven marketing strategies, and the complex relationships that exist between physicians, industry, and consumers. An examination of these relationships includes an overview of the potential biases pertaining to advisory panels and treating clinicians. The aim of this paper is to serve as an introduction to the background of medical devices and to offer dermatologists important information on what should be considered before recommending treatment

Traffic Way Conceptual Plan: Arroyo Grande, California

In this project, the undergraduate second-year design class proposed an urban design project for Traffic Way, a commercial corridor in the City of Arroyo Grande, California. The area is a “jumble” of uses, architectural styles, and vacant lots, and the project concentrated on infill development and area improvements, such as pedestrian-oriented streetscaping

Steering Taste: Ernest Marsh, a study of private collecting in England in the early 20th Century

The primary aim of this thesis is to focus attention on the bourgeois, 'un-named' collector. The driving force behind most museum and art gallery collections of the Victorian and Edwardian period. British museum and art gallery records of gifted collections, bequests and loans usually note their donors. However, with a few notable exceptions, little is known about the collectors, their activities and motivation in making such presentations. Using the interests and activities of the Quaker miller and collector Ernest Marsh (1843-1945) as a case study, this thesis explores how in the period 1890-1945 a collector came to be a key agent in the construction and manifestation of taste in British Applied Arts and to a lesser degree in the Fine Arts. Through primary visual and documentary evidence of the Marsh home, and reference to contemporary and later commentaries it considers the relative influences of husband and wife on decorating and furnishing the domestic interior, the evolution of taste, and, for Ernest Marsh, its impact upon his artistic interests within the public arena. By examination of private papers, metropolitan and provincial art gallery and museum archives it also considers evidence of the inter-relationships between donors and curators, and the mutual advantages and disadvantages accruing to both, particularly focussing on the processes in bringing about changes in individual and institutional collecting policy. Further, by review of records of, in particular, the Contemporary Art Society and the Greenslade archive, it examines the degree to which private benefactors and those in public or semi-public office, acting as fund-raisers and spenders exercise influence through patronage of particular practitioners, choice of works and initiating new designs

Functional Singular Spectrum Analysis: Nonparametric Decomposition and Forecasting Approaches for Functional Time Series

In this dissertation, we develop nonparametric decomposition methods and the subsequent forecasting techniques for functional, time-dependent data known as functional time series (FTS). We use ideas from functional data analysis (FDA) and singular spectrum analysis (SSA) to introduce the nonparametric decomposition method known as functional SSA (FSSA) and its associated forecasting techniques. We also extend these developed methodologies into multivariate FSSA (MFSSA) over different dimensional domains and its subsequent forecasting routines so that we may perform nonparametric decomposition and prediction of multivariate FTS (MFTS). The FSSA algorithm may be viewed as a signal extraction technique and we find that the method outperforms other competing approaches in estimating the underlying deterministic nature of an FTS. We then develop the FSSA recurrent forecasting (FSSA R-forecasting) and FSSA vector forecasting (FSSA V-forecasting) algorithms to predict future observations and we find that these methods outperform the current gold standard for nonparametric forecasting of periodic FTS. Finally, we finish with the implementation of MFSSA and the respective forecasting algorithms (MFSSA R-forecasting and MFSSA V-forecasting), which are used to decompose and forecast MFTS. We find that the MFSSA methods outperform their univariate FSSA counterparts in signal extraction and forecasting of MFTS data

Identifying Genetic Differences Among African American And Caucasian Triple Negative Breast Cancer Genotypes

Triple negative breast cancers (TNBC) are closely related to basal-like cancers and classified based on their molecular signatures and their progenitor cell type. TNBCs lack the presence of three common types of receptors known to fuel breast cancer growth: estrogen receptors (ER), progesterone receptors (PR), and human epidermal growth factor receptors 2 (HER2neu). TNBC represent 10-20% of all molecular breast cancer subtypes. Even though genomic and transcriptome analyses show that many of the molecular signatures associated with TNBC are not related to ethnicity, clinicians and researchers find that African American (AA) TNBC women have higher mortality rates compared to Caucasian (CA) women. The high mortality rates are linked to socioeconomic factors like access to adequate healthcare, but researchers are exploring the possibility that genetic differences between AA and CA patients may also play a role in racial disparities. Microarray analyses have been instrumental in characterizing TNBC and many other types of breast cancer. Related to TNBC, microarray analyses (a) validate the negative receptor-status of the cancers (b) identify and define the six sub-categories of TNBC validating the heterogeneity of the cancers as defined by Lehmann et al and (c) the microarray gene expression platform is proving to be useful towards determining genes differentially represented in AA and CA TNBC. Our approach is to use the microarray platform (and a cell line model) to further examine the differences between the transcriptomes of CA and AA women. For more accurate transcriptome comparisons, we’ve identified and compared AA Basal-A TNBC to CA Basal-A TNBC, and separately AA Basal-B TNBC compared to CA Basal-B TNBC. Bioinformatic analyses show that TCEAL8 and TCEAL9 genes, both located on X-chromosome are differentially expressed in AA compared to CA TNBC. The EFHD1 gene is identified as differentially expressed in AA Basal-B compared to CA Basal- B TNBC. These data serve as a preliminary study towards further characterizing molecular differences between the transcriptomes of AA compared to CA TNBC patient populations