MONITORING MAMMALS AT MULTIPLE SCALES: CASE STUDIES FROM CARNIVORE COMMUNITIES

Carnivores are distributed widely and threatened by habitat loss, poaching, climate change, and disease. They are considered integral to ecosystem function through their direct and indirect interactions with species at different trophic levels. Given the importance of carnivores, it is of high conservation priority to understand the processes driving carnivore assemblages in different systems. It is thus essential to determine the abiotic and biotic drivers of carnivore community composition at different spatial scales and address the following questions: (i) What factors influence carnivore community composition and diversity? (ii) How do the factors influencing carnivore communities vary across spatial and temporal scales? (iii) At local scales, what are the roles of within- and between- guild interactions in structuring carnivore communities? I use carnivore distribution data from protected areas across the global tropics to understand how multiple biodiversity metrics track one another at the regional scale. At the landscape scale, I apply carnivore community data from India to understand how spatiotemporal interactions at the local scale influence carnivore distribution patterns at larger scales. Lastly, at the local scale, I implement a field study of carnivore community occupancy at Kasanka National Park in Zambia using camera traps to understand spatiotemporal patterns of distribution. I employ these studies to delineate the importance of scale in developing a theoretical and applied understanding of community ecology, monitoring mammals at the community level, and conserving carnivore communities. This research shows that carnivore conservation and biodiversity monitoring at the community level is both context-specific and scale dependent

End of life dental service utilization by geriatric patients in a long-term care setting

OBJECTIVE: To understand dental service utilization by frail older adults residing in a long-term care (LTC) setting in the last two years of their life. To understand the types of dental services utilized by this demographic, the frequency of utilization and determine the characteristics that may be predictors of ‘higher dental service utilization’. METHODS: A retrospective cohort study was conducted by an electronic chart review of all LTC patients at two sites who died between 11/1/2014 - 12/30/2016 and had a dental visit in the two-year period prior to death, resulting in a sample of 369 patients. Based on the number of dental appointments attended prior to death, the patients were categorized into five groups: 0,1-2,3-5,6-9 and10 or more appointments. A multivariate logistic regression model was created to identify the factors associated with higher dental service utilization. RESULT: The study found that 84% of patients who died in the study period, utilized on-site dental services in the last two years of their life. Approximately 66% had 3 or more dental appointments. Diagnostic and preventive procedures were most commonly utilized (utilized by 81% and 73% of patients respectively). Multivariate analysis suggested that dentate patients and patients wearing removable dental prosthesis were about 7 and 12 times more likely respectively to have a higher utilization of dental services (OR=6.5 and OR=11.7). Medicaid beneficiaries were more likely (OR=1.9) to have a higher utilization of dental services than the others. CONCLUSIONS: This study showed that a large percentage of frail older adults utilized dental services even in the last years of their lives when given access to these services. As people are living longer and retaining their teeth longer, there is a rising need and subsequent demand for end-of-life dental services. Certain administrative and policy implementation strategies need to be developed to provide dental services to LTC patients in the last years of their lives

A Comparative Study Of The Primary Vascular System Of Conifers. I. Genera With Helical Phyllotaxis

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141889/1/ajb207398.pd

Management of neonatal central nervous system viral infections: Knowledge gaps and research priorities

Congenital CMV, enteroviruses, human parechovirus and herpes simplex virus are all common causes of severe central nervous system (CNS) infection in neonates. The introduction of screening (i.e. newborn hearing screening programme), integration of molecular syndromic testing (i.e. multiplex polymerase chain reaction assays) and increase in sexually transmitted infections (i.e. anogenital herpes) have contributed to increases in each of these infections over the last decade. However, therapeutic options are highly limited in part due to the lack of epidemiological data informing trials. This review will describe our current understanding of the clinical burden and epidemiology of these severe neonatal CNS infections, outline the novel antiviral and vaccines in the pipeline and suggest future research studies which could help develop new therapeutics

Fast Graph Convolutional Recurrent Neural Networks

This paper proposes a Fast Graph Convolutional Neural Network (FGRNN) architecture to predict sequences with an underlying graph structure. The proposed architecture addresses the limitations of the standard recurrent neural network (RNN), namely, vanishing and exploding gradients, causing numerical instabilities during training. State-of-the-art architectures that combine gated RNN architectures, such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) with graph convolutions are known to improve the numerical stability during the training phase, but at the expense of the model size involving a large number of training parameters. FGRNN addresses this problem by adding a weighted residual connection with only two extra training parameters as compared to the standard RNN. Numerical experiments on the real 3D point cloud dataset corroborates the proposed architecture.Comment: 5 pages.Submitted to Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computer

Indirect effects of cytomegalovirus infection: Implications for vaccine development

Development of a cytomegalovirus (CMV) vaccine is a high priority due to its significant global impact—contributing to mortality in immunosuppressed individuals, neurodevelopmental delay in infected neonates and non-genetic sensorineural hearing loss. The impact of CMV on the general population has been less well studied; however, a wide range of evidence indicates that CMV may increase the risk of atherosclerosis, cancer, immunosenescence, and progression of tuberculosis (TB) and human immunodeficiency virus. Due to the high seroprevalence of CMV worldwide, any modulation of risk by CMV is likely to have a significant impact on the epidemiology of these diseases. This review will evaluate how CMV may cause morbidity and mortality outside of the neonatal and immunosuppressed populations and consider the potential impact of a CMV vaccine on these outcomes

A Comparative Study Of The Primary Vascular System Of Conifers. Iii. Stelar Evolution In Gymnosperms

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141141/1/ajb207400.pd