The Dynamics of Presidential Legacies

It has been said that one of the few things you can’t do in life a second time is to make a first impression; however, in politics, and especially presidential politics, while it may not be possible to change that first impression, it is possible to change the public’s opinion, and how one might be perceived long after their political career is over. The 43 men who have been the U.S president have been analyzed and scrutinized throughout their lives and political careers. Prior to running for president, they establish a resume that puts them in the public eye. Later, during their campaign, the American public decides whether they have the confidence in the candidate to entrust them with the duties as president. While in office, they are evaluated daily by the press and news media along with the onslaught of polls measuring the publics’ satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, with their performance. The evaluations while in office offer them the opportunity to see how “well” they are doing, and also provide insights as to whether they may or may not be residing in the White House at the end of their first term

Below-ground impacts on microbial diversity of afforestation and woodland succession in Great Britain

PhD ThesisWoodland restoration on farmland is gaining support as a method of habitat restoration and carbon sequestration. To understand the consequences of afforestation on soil microbial communities we require comparisons across agricultural, afforested, and established woodlands that differentiate changes in total soil diversity and diversity pertaining to soil functioning. I examine two natural-experiment, afforestation chronosequences describing changes to bacterial and fungal diversity in soils and on decomposing leaf litter using metabarcoding to identify taxa. The use and applications of metabarcoding are described in Chapter 1. Chapters 2 and 3 report the abiotic and microbiological differences between agricultural and woodland soils over an afforestation and succession gradient. I study land use differences across 21 Woodland creation & Ecological Networks (WrEN) project sites – an afforestation chronosequence - with mixed-effect and multivariate models. The next chapters model how leaf litter decomposition (Chapter 4) and how decomposing litter associated microbes (Chapter 5) vary across woodland age categories (young, mature, and ancient) in 27 woodlands in the North East of England, across five tree species’ litter, during spring and summer. In the first experiment I show key soil changes to carbon and nitrogen concentrations, and to C:N ratio across my afforestation gradient. I also demonstrate the rapid differentiation of woodland microbial communities from agricultural ones, with additional changes resulting from soil properties such as pH. In the second experiment I observe notable, but non-significant increases in decomposition in ancient woodland, as well as significant effects of species, sampling season, and woodland age on microbial diversity, beyond that of the changes expected from soil properties alone. In chapter 6 I discuss how these results integrate into the existing literature on the succession of decomposer communities over long timescales and their implications for woodland management. The work highlights the value of both afforestation and conservation of older woods.The Woodland Trus

A Systematic Review - The Effect of Hospice and Palliative Care

Many older adults nearing death experience unnecessarily invasive and costly healthcare treatments, often causing more harm than good. Hospice and palliative care interventions offer a possible solution to this problem by prioritizing high-quality and cost-effective care with a strong focus on comfort and satisfaction. The authors of this paper seek to answer the following question: Do hospice and palliative care interventions directed toward older adults at the end of life improve quality of life, cost of care, and satisfaction? This paper thoroughly reviews and critically appraises existing research related to the effect of hospice and palliative care directed toward older adults at the end of life. Twenty primary studies published between 2011 and 2016 were identified, reviewed, and critically evaluated in an effort to answer this question. The publications were diverse in objective, scope, and design, but all contributed to the conversation regarding this potential solution to substandard care for older adults at the end of life. Based on the existing evidence, the authors came to the following conclusion: hospice and palliative care interventions are associated with improved quality of life in five out of six measured areas, decreased cost of care, and high satisfaction for care recipients and providers alike. Ten recommendations for clinical practice and five recommendations for future research are discussed

Species reintroduction and community-level consequences in dynamically simulated ecosystems

Global biodiversity, and its associated ecosystem services, are threatened due to species extinctions. Reintroducing locally extinct species may be a partial solution to this problem. However, the success and possible consequences of any artificial reintroduction will depend on its ecological community, and the reaction of that community to the species' extinction and reintroduction. Mathematical models can offer useful insights by identifying the key features of communities and reintroduced species most likely to result in successful reintroductions. Here we simulated extinctions and reintroductions for a range of theoretical food webs generated using an established bioenergetics model. This allows the probability of successful reintroductions to be quantified as a function of two important ecological factors: the connectance of the food web, and of the time between extinctions and reintroductions. Reintroduction success is measured across an ensemble of 1796 simulated communities, with connnectances of 0.05, 0.15 and 0.3, using three criteria: presence of the reintroduced species in the final community, unchanged species richness in the final community compared to the pre-extinction persistent community and the complete restoration of the community (including both species richness and equilibrium biomass distributions). Although only 12 reintroduced species fail to re-establish according to minimal criteria, the process of extinction and reintroduction frequently has a large effect on the community composition. Increasing time to reintroduction increases both the probability of species loss, and equilibrium biomass change in the community. Proportionally, these community-level impacts occur more frequently when the reintroduced species is a primary producer or top predator. These results indicate that ignoring broader measures of reintroduction success could seriously underestimate the impact of reintroductions on the ecological community. These quantitative results can be compared to empirical literature and may help reveal which factors are most important to the success of reintroductions

The DNA repair component Metnase regulates Chk1 stability

Chk1 both arrests replication forks and enhances repair of DNA damage by phosphorylation of downstream effectors. Metnase (also termed SETMAR) is a SET histone methylase and transposase nuclease protein that promotes both DNA double strand break (DSB) repair and re-start of stalled replication forks. We previously found that Chk1 phosphorylation of Metnase on S495 enhanced its DNA DSB repair activity but decreased its ability to re-start stalled replication forks. Here we show that phosphorylated Metnase feeds back to increase the half-life of Chk1. Chk1 half-life is regulated by DDB1 targeting it to Cul4A for ubiquitination and destruction. Metnase decreases Chk1 interaction with DDB1, and decreases Chk1 ubiquitination. These data define a novel pathway for Chk1 regulation, whereby a target of Chk1, Metnase, feeds back to amplify Chk1 stability, and therefore enhance replication fork arrest

Investigating the effect of enhanced oil recovery on the noble gas signature of casing gases and produced waters from selected California oil fields

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Tyne, R. L., Barry, P. H., Karolyte, R., Byrne, D. J., Kulongoski, J. T., Hillegonds, D. J., & Ballentine, C. J. Investigating the effect of enhanced oil recovery on the noble gas signature of casing gases and produced waters from selected California oil fields. Chemical Geology, 584, (2021): 120540. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemgeo.2021.120540.In regions where water resources are scarce and in high demand, it is important to safeguard against contamination of groundwater aquifers by oil-field fluids (water, gas, oil). In this context, the geochemical characterisation of these fluids is critical so that anthropogenic contaminants can be readily identified. The first step is characterising pre-development geochemical fluid signatures (i.e., those unmodified by hydrocarbon resource development) and understanding how these signatures may have been perturbed by resource production, particularly in the context of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques. Here, we present noble gas isotope data in fluids produced from oil wells in several water-stressed regions in California, USA, where EOR is prevalent. In oil-field systems, only casing gases are typically collected and measured for their noble gas compositions, even when oil and/or water phases are present, due to the relative ease of gas analyses. However, this approach relies on a number of assumptions (e.g., equilibrium between phases, water-to-oil ratio (WOR) and gas-to-oil ratio (GOR) in order to reconstruct the multiphase subsurface compositions. Here, we adopt a novel, more rigorous approach, and measure noble gases in both casing gas and produced fluid (oil-water-gas mixtures) samples from the Lost Hills, Fruitvale, North and South Belridge (San Joaquin Basin, SJB) and Orcutt (Santa Maria Basin) Oil Fields. Using this method, we are able to fully characterise the distribution of noble gases within a multiphase hydrocarbon system. We find that measured concentrations in the casing gases agree with those in the gas phase in the produced fluids and thus the two sample types can be used essentially interchangeably. EOR signatures can readily be identified by their distinct air-derived noble gas elemental ratios (e.g., 20Ne/36Ar), which are elevated compared to pre-development oil-field fluids, and conspicuously trend towards air values with respect to elemental ratios and overall concentrations. We reconstruct reservoir 20Ne/36Ar values using both casing gas and produced fluids and show that noble gas ratios in the reservoir are strongly correlated (r2 = 0.88–0.98) to the amount of water injected within ~500 m of a well. We suggest that the 20Ne/36Ar increase resulting from injection is sensitive to the volume of fluid interacting with the injectate, the effective water-to-oil ratio, and the composition of the injectate. Defining both the pre-development and injection-modified hydrocarbon reservoir compositions are crucial for distinguishing the sources of hydrocarbons observed in proximal groundwaters, and for quantifying the transport mechanisms controlling this occurrence.This work was supported by a Natural Environment Research Council studentship to R.L.Tyne (Grant ref. NE/L002612/1) and the U.S. Geological Survey (Grant ref. 15-080-250), as part of the California State Water Resource Control Board's Oil and Gas Regional Groundwater Monitoring Program (RMP)

A framework for incorporating evolutionary genomics into biodiversity conservation and management

Evolutionary adaptation drives biodiversity. So far, however, evolutionary thinking has had limited impact on plans to counter the effects of climate change on biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. This is despite habitat fragmentation diminishing the ability of populations to mount evolutionary responses, via reductions in population size, reductions in gene flow and reductions in the heterogeneity of environments that populations occupy. Research on evolutionary adaptation to other challenges has benefitted enormously in recent years from genomic tools, but these have so far only been applied to the climate change issue in a piecemeal manner. Here, we explore how new genomic knowledge might be combined with evolutionary thinking in a decision framework aimed at reducing the long-term impacts of climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem services. This framework highlights the need to rethink local conservation and management efforts in biodiversity conservation. We take a dynamic view of biodiversity based on the recognition of continuously evolving lineages, and we highlight when and where new genomic approaches are justified. In general, and despite challenges in developing genomic tools for non-model organisms, genomics can help management decide when resources should be redirected to increasing gene flow and hybridisation across climate zones and facilitating in situ evolutionary change in large heterogeneous areas. It can also help inform when conservation priorities need to shift from maintaining genetically distinct populations and species to supporting processes of evolutionary change. We illustrate our argument with particular reference to Australia’s biodiversity.This paper arose out of a workshop funded through the Office of the Chief Executive Science Team at CSIRO and the Science Industry Endowment Fund

Landscape genomic prediction for restoration of a Eucalyptus foundation species under climate change

As species face rapid environmental change, we can build resilient populations through restoration projects that incorporate predicted future climates into seed sourcing decisions. Eucalyptus melliodora is a foundation species of a critically endangered community in Australia that is a target for restoration. We examined genomic and phenotypic variation to make empirical based recommendations for seed sourcing. We examined isolation by distance and isolation by environment, determining high levels of gene flow extending for 500 km and correlations with climate and soil variables. Growth experiments revealed extensive phenotypic variation both within and among sampling sites, but no site-specific differentiation in phenotypic plasticity. Model predictions suggest that seed can be sourced broadly across the landscape, providing ample diversity for adaptation to environmental change. Application of our landscape genomic model to E. melliodora restoration projects can identify genomic variation suitable for predicted future climates, thereby increasing the long term probability of successful restoration.Australian Research Council Linkage Grant LP130100455; Jason G Bragg, Linda M Broadhurst, Adrienne B Nicotra, Margaret Byrne, Justin O Borevit

An Information Management Framework for Environmental Digital Twins (IMFe) as a concept and pilot

Environmental science is concerned with assessing the impacts of changing environmental conditions upon the state of the natural world. Environmental Digital Twins (EDT) are a new technology that enable environmental change scenarios for real systems to be modelled and their impacts visualised. They will be particularly effective with delivering understanding of these impacts on the natural environment to non-specialist stakeholders. The UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) recently published its first digital strategy, which sets out a vision for digitally enabled environmental science for the next decade. This strategy places data and digital technologies at the heart of UK environmental science. EDT have been made possible by the emergence of increasingly large, diverse, static data sources, networks of dynamic environmental data from sensor networks and time-variant process modelling. Once combined with visualisation capabilities these provide the basis of the digital twin technologies to enable the environmental scientists community to make a step-change in understanding of the environment. Components may be developed separately by a network but can be combined to improve understanding provided development follows agreed standards to facilitate data exchange and integration. Replicating the behaviours of environmental systems is inevitably a multi-disciplinary activity. To enable this, an information management framework for Environmental digital twins (IMFe) is needed that establishes the components for effective information management within and across the EDT ecosystem. This must enable secure, resilient interoperability of data, and is a reference point to facilitate data use in line with security, legal, commercial, privacy and other relevant concerns. We present recommendations for developing an IMFe including the application of concepts such as an asset commons and balanced approach to standards to facilitate minimum interoperability requirements between twins while iteratively implementing an IMFe. Achieving this requires components to be developed that follow agreed standards to ensure that information can be trusted by the user, and that they are semantically interoperable so data can be shared. A digital Asset Register will be defined to provide access to and enable linking of such components. This previously conceptual project has now been enhanced into the Pilot IMFe project aiming to define the architectures, technologies, standards and hardware infrastructure to develop a fully functioned environmental digital twin. During the project lifespan this will be tested with by construction of a pilot EDT for the Haig Fras Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ) that both enables testing of the proposed IMFe concepts and will provide a clear demonstration of the power of EDT to monitor and scenario test a complex environmental system for the benefit of stakeholders

Dynamics of heteropolymers in dilute solution: effective equation of motion and relaxation spectrum

The dynamics of a heteropolymer chain in solution is studied in the limit of long chain length. Using functional integral representation we derive an effective equation of motion, in which the heterogeneity of the chain manifests itself as a time-dependent excluded volume effect. At the mean field level, the heteropolymer chain is therefore dynamically equivalent to a homopolymer chain with both time-independent and time-dependent excluded volume effects. The perturbed relaxation spectrum is also calculated. We find that heterogeneity also renormalizes the relaxation spectrum. However, we find, to the lowest order in heterogeneity, that the relaxation spectrum does not exhibit any dynamic freezing, at the point when static (equilibrium) ``freezing'' transition occurs in heteropolymer. Namely, the breaking of fluctuation-dissipation theorem (FDT) proposed for spin glass dynamics does not have dynamic effect in heteropolymer, as far as relaxation spectrum is concerned. The implication of this result is discussed