EDUCATION POLICIES AND THE EFFECT ON THE SKILLED TRADES WORK FORCE

The United Stated of America has pushed for all to gain a higher level of education. For many years schools steered underperforming students into vocational studies. This placed a stigma on those who learn or perform vocational careers to be less than those whom have completed a college degree. Now (2019) America is facing a shortage of skilled trades persons. Those who entered a vocation soon learn that many of the skilled trades are demanding positions which require not only skill, but knowledge and dedication to learn. With the growth of technology, many of the trades require higher levels of math and science skills. Less people are learning what is needed to build, repair, or maintain that which is used daily or that will last a life time. Has education policy and reform affected the skill trades labor force? The perception of young people needing furtherance of education through means of college to become successful in life may have driven people away from working with their hands. A series of quantitative research was used to determine if education policy and reform has affected the skilled trades industry in a negative way. There is an increasing shortage of those who are entering the field on a yearly basis coupled with those who are leaving the many trades, has started a bidding war for talent. Most students find they are receiving job offers before they finish school. With the rising cost of college tuition compared to the lower cost of vocational trade school and the un-known employment market for certain degrees versus the almost guarantee of employment, one would think a shortage would not be upon us. The research shows a correlation of those who have sought higher education and the shrinkage that occurred in the skilled trades

Coupling and Elastic Loading Affect the Active Response by the Inner Ear Hair Cell Bundles

Active hair bundle motility has been proposed to underlie the amplification mechanism in the auditory endorgans of non-mammals and in the vestibular systems of all vertebrates, and to constitute a crucial component of cochlear amplification in mammals. We used semi-intact in vitro preparations of the bullfrog sacculus to study the effects of elastic mechanical loading on both natively coupled and freely oscillating hair bundles. For the latter, we attached glass fibers of different stiffness to the stereocilia and observed the induced changes in the spontaneous bundle movement. When driven with sinusoidal deflections, hair bundles displayed phase-locked response indicative of an Arnold Tongue, with the frequency selectivity highest at low amplitudes and decreasing under stronger stimulation. A striking broadening of the mode-locked response was seen with increasing stiffness of the load, until approximate impedance matching, where the phase-locked response remained flat over the physiological range of frequencies. When the otolithic membrane was left intact atop the preparation, the natural loading of the bundles likewise decreased their frequency selectivity with respect to that observed in freely oscillating bundles. To probe for signatures of the active process under natural loading and coupling conditions, we applied transient mechanical stimuli to the otolithic membrane. Following the pulses, the underlying bundles displayed active movement in the opposite direction, analogous to the twitches observed in individual cells. Tracking features in the otolithic membrane indicated that it moved in phase with the bundles. Hence, synchronous active motility evoked in the system of coupled hair bundles by external input is sufficient to displace large overlying structures

Modelling a Historic Oil-Tank Fire Allows an Estimation of the Sensitivity of the Infrared Receptors in Pyrophilous Melanophila Beetles

Pyrophilous jewel beetles of the genus Melanophila approach forest fires and there is considerable evidence that these beetles can detect fires from great distances of more than 60 km. Because Melanophila beetles are equipped with infrared receptors and are also attracted by hot surfaces it can be concluded that these infrared receptors are used for fire detection

Contributions of a global network of tree diversity experiments to sustainable forest plantations

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Tree diversity and species identity effects on soil fungi, protists and animals are context dependent

Plant species richness and the presence of certain influential species (sampling effect) drive the stability and functionality of ecosystems as well as primary production and biomass of consumers. However, little is known about these floristic effects on richness and community composition of soil biota in forest habitats owing to methodological constraints. We developed a DNA metabarcoding approach to identify the major eukaryote groups directly from soil with roughly species-level resolution. Using this method, we examined the effects of tree diversity and individual tree species on soil microbial biomass and taxonomic richness of soil biota in two experimental study systems in Finland and Estonia and accounted for edaphic variables and spatial autocorrelation. Our analyses revealed that the effects of tree diversity and individual species on soil biota are largely context dependent. Multiple regression and structural equation modelling suggested that biomass, soil pH, nutrients and tree species directly affect richness of different taxonomic groups. The community composition of most soil organisms was strongly correlated due to similar response to environmental predictors rather than causal relationships. On a local scale, soil resources and tree species have stronger effect on diversity of soil biota than tree species richness per se

HEATR2 Plays a Conserved Role in Assembly of the Ciliary Motile Apparatus

Cilia are highly conserved microtubule-based structures that perform a variety of sensory and motility functions during development and adult homeostasis. In humans, defects specifically affecting motile cilia lead to chronic airway infections, infertility and laterality defects in the genetically heterogeneous disorder Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (PCD). Using the comparatively simple Drosophila system, in which mechanosensory neurons possess modified motile cilia, we employed a recently elucidated cilia transcriptional RFX-FOX code to identify novel PCD candidate genes. Here, we report characterization of CG31320/HEATR2, which plays a conserved critical role in forming the axonemal dynein arms required for ciliary motility in both flies and humans. Inner and outer arm dyneins are absent from axonemes of CG31320 mutant flies and from PCD individuals with a novel splice-acceptor HEATR2 mutation. Functional conservation of closely arranged RFX-FOX binding sites upstream of HEATR2 orthologues may drive higher cytoplasmic expression of HEATR2 during early motile ciliogenesis. Immunoprecipitation reveals HEATR2 interacts with DNAI2, but not HSP70 or HSP90, distinguishing it from the client/chaperone functions described for other cytoplasmic proteins required for dynein arm assembly such as DNAAF1-4. These data implicate CG31320/HEATR2 in a growing intracellular pre-assembly and transport network that is necessary to deliver functional dynein machinery to the ciliary compartment for integration into the motile axoneme

Is forest diversity driving ecosystem function and service?

Forests unfold an exceptionally large ecosystem volume and expose a vast biotic surface, providing crucial ecosystem functions and services, including carbon sequestration and regional climate regulation. However, there is only little insight into the role of tree diversity in forest functioning. Hence, currently we cannot assess the consequences of species loss under global change for forest functioning. Here we review recent studies on tree diversity and ecosystem functioning in forests. Although several studies confirm the positive relationship between tree diversity and functions related to productivity, communities of biota, and soil parameters, many studies find stronger effects of species identity than diversity. We discuss the methodological shortcomings of the present study designs, including an isolated view on specific functions and the general negligence of confounding factors, and conclude that future studies can profit from exploiting information gained at the scale of tree individuals

Tree neighbourhood matters – Tree species composition drives diversity–productivity patterns in a near-natural beech forest

European beech forest with a variable admixture is one of the most important forest types in Central Europe. Growing evidence has demonstrated the positive effect of increased biodiversity on vital forest ecosystem functions and services such as productivity and nutrient cycling. Both complementarity in resource use and species identity are known to influence tree productivity but they have received relatively little attention in observational studies. Using a large dataset of repeat inventory trees in a nearnatural deciduous forest in Central Germany we test whether tree diversity enhances tree productivity at the tree and the stand level, whilst accounting for tree size, tree vitality, local topography and the potentially confounding effects of spatial autocorrelation and negative growth estimates. Beech and hornbeam individual tree growth was sensitive to their neighbourhood diversity and composition whilst ash trees were only sensitive to the neighbourhood tree density. Neighbourhood complementarity effects were driven by differences in species’ competitive strengths, whilst at the stand level productivity gains were primarily attributable to the density of ash and diversity effects were less prominent. We conclude that small-scale admixture with patches of different species promotes tree growth in European beech forest; congruent with current management plans for beech and hardwood forests

Data management in a linked world: Presentation held at 42nd Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. From Basic ecology to the challenges of modern society 2012, Vol.3, 10.09.2012 - 14.9.2012, Lüneburg, Germany

Background / Purpose: Sharing primary data is a key component for scientifically informed decision making in integrated biodiversity research. We present a web portal for data management that can share data and metadata, given data owner granted access rights. Main conclusion: Using web applications such as BEFdata presented here boosts scientific analysis by opening up data and naming conventions to the semantic web. Copyrights: Table 2 was reproduced with kind permission from Nadrowski et al (2012) presented at GeNeMe 2012: virtual enterprises, research communities and social media networks