Influence of Habitat on Distribution and Abundance of the Eastern Woodrat in Kansas

Anthropogenic modification of native woodlands and grasslands in the Great Plains has altered the abundance and distribution of many species of mammals. To study habitat effects on the eastern woodrat (Neotoma floridana), we surveyed nests of the eastern woodrat in woodlands, grasslands, and croplands along 77 km of secondary roads in three counties in north-central Kansas. All nests were located in woodlands ( \u3c 2 %of habitat), although grasslands and croplands constituted 36% and 62% of habitat surveyed, respectively. In our survey, nests were associated positively with shelterbelts (3.6 nests per 100 m of road edge) but not with shrub patches (1.1 nests per 100 m of road edge) or riparian woodlands (0.3 nests per 100 m of road edge). Consequently, we specifically censused nests in an additional 12 riparian woodlands and 12 shelterbelts. Nests of eastern woodrats were less dense in riparian woodlands (9.4 nests/ha) than in shelterbelts (55.5 nests/ha). Density of woodrat nests decreased as width of a wooded area increased. Further, nests per 100 m of length of woodland did not increase as the width of woodland increased. These patterns suggest that woodland edge, not woodland interior, is the primary factor in abundance of eastern woodrats in this region. Although the eastern woodrat has previously been considered a woodland species, our results suggest that this assessment is incorrect. Our observations demonstrate that anthropogenic modification of the Great Plains, in the form of planted shelterbelts and expanded riparian woodland, likely has increased the distribution and abundance of eastern woodrats, compared to the mid-1800s

A CubeSat for Calibrating Ground-Based and Sub-Orbital Millimeter-Wave Polarimeters (CalSat)

We describe a low-cost, open-access, CubeSat-based calibration instrument that is designed to support ground-based and sub-orbital experiments searching for various polarization signals in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). All modern CMB polarization experiments require a robust calibration program that will allow the effects of instrument-induced signals to be mitigated during data analysis. A bright, compact, and linearly polarized astrophysical source with polarization properties known to adequate precision does not exist. Therefore, we designed a space-based millimeter-wave calibration instrument, called CalSat, to serve as an open-access calibrator, and this paper describes the results of our design study. The calibration source on board CalSat is composed of five "tones" with one each at 47.1, 80.0, 140, 249 and 309 GHz. The five tones we chose are well matched to (i) the observation windows in the atmospheric transmittance spectra, (ii) the spectral bands commonly used in polarimeters by the CMB community, and (iii) The Amateur Satellite Service bands in the Table of Frequency Allocations used by the Federal Communications Commission. CalSat would be placed in a polar orbit allowing visibility from observatories in the Northern Hemisphere, such as Mauna Kea in Hawaii and Summit Station in Greenland, and the Southern Hemisphere, such as the Atacama Desert in Chile and the South Pole. CalSat also would be observable by balloon-borne instruments launched from a range of locations around the world. This global visibility makes CalSat the only source that can be observed by all terrestrial and sub-orbital observatories, thereby providing a universal standard that permits comparison between experiments using appreciably different measurement approaches

Child maltreatment in the "children of the nineties" : a cohort study of risk factors

Aim: To analyze the multiple factors affecting the risk of maltreatment in young children within a comprehensive theoretical framework. Methods: The research is based on a large UK cohort study, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Out of 14,256 children participating in the study, 293 were investigated by social services for suspected maltreatment and 115 were placed on local child protection registers prior to their 6th birthday. Data on the children have been obtained from obstetric data and from a series of parental questionnaires administered during pregnancy and the first 3 years of life. Risk factors have been analyzed using an hierarchical approach to logistic regression analysis. Results: In the stepwise hierarchical analysis, young parents, those with low educational achievement, and those with a past psychiatric history or a history of childhood abuse were all more likely to be investigated for maltreatment, or to have a child placed on the child protection register, with odds ratios between 1.86 and 4.96 for registration. Examining strength of effect, the highest risks were found with indicators of deprivation (3.24 for investigation and 11.02 for registration, after adjusting for parental background factors). Poor social networks increased the risk of both investigation (adjusted OR 1.93) and registration (adjusted OR 1.90). Maternal employment seemed to reduce the risk of both outcomes but adjusted odds ratios were no longer significant for registration. After adjusting for higher order confounders, single parents and reordered families were both at higher risk of registration. Reported domestic violence increased the risk of investigation and registration but this was no longer significant after adjusting for higher order variables. Low birthweight children were at higher risk of registration as were those whose parents reported few positive attributes of their babies. Conclusions: This study supports previous research in the field demonstrating that a wide range of factors in the parental background, socio-economic and family environments affect the risk of child maltreatment. By combining factors within a comprehensive ecological framework, we have demonstrated that the strongest risks are from socio-economic deprivation and from factors in the parents' own background and that parental background factors are largely, but not entirely, mediated through their impact on socio-economic factors

Assessment of the revised Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scales among adolescents and adults with severe mental illness

The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) comprising 36 items has been widely used across age, gender, psychopathology, language, and culture. Recently several alternative abridged forms have been introduced, namely, the DERS-16 (Bjureberg et al. 2016), the DERS-SF (Kaufman et al. 2016), and the DERS-18 (Victor and Klonsky, 2016), each composed of 16 or 18 items, to provide researchers and clinicians with a shorter measure of emotion dysregulation. However, no study to date has directly compared the psychometrics of these alternative forms. In the present study, using confirmatory factor analysis we first examined the factor structure of the four models of the DERS in two inpatient samples of 636 adolescents in the age-range of 12–17 years (M = 15.33, SD = 1.43), and 1807 adults in the age-range of 18–76 years (M = 34.86, SD = 14.63) with severe mental illness. Next, measurement invariance was tested comparing the two age groups across the four models of DERS. Only the DERS-SF established metric and scalar measurement invariance. Findings suggest that the factor structure of the original and the abridged models of DERS have acceptable fit, however only DERS-SF had equivalence of factor loadings and item intercepts across adolescents and adults

Orbital-scale environmental and climatic changes recorded in a new ∼200,000-year-long multiproxy sedimentary record from Padul, southern Iberian Peninsula

Padul is one of the few wetland sites in southern Europe and the Mediterranean region that exhibits an unusually large temporal span (>100 kyr) and continuous Quaternary sedimentary record. Previous core-based studies from Padul yielded paleoecological datasets (i.e., pollen and organic geochemistry), but with a poor age control that resulted in rather arbitrary climate inferences. Therefore, precise age control and a multidisciplinary approach is necessary to understand long-term regional environmental and climate change and the associated local response of the Padul wetland environment. Here we present a new long sediment record (Padul-15-05) from this wetland in the southern Iberian Peninsula with the aim of improving the age control of the sedimentary sequence and carrying out up-to-date high-resolution multiproxy analyses. In this study the age control is based on 61 AMS radiocarbon dates for the last ca. 50 kyr BP and on the extent of amino acid racemization (AAR) in mollusc shells extending back ∼118 kyr BP. No numerical ages are available for the bottom part of the core but the sediment accumulation rates (SAR) and the cyclostratigraphic analysis of the multiproxy data suggest that the core preserves a continuous record of the last ∼197 kyr (from late MIS 7 to present) with millennial-scale time resolution. Sedimentological (lithology, magnetic susceptibility, XRD, color), geochemical (XRF, TOC, C/N, % carbonate content) and paleontological (pollen, charophytes, gastropods) data show co-varying cyclical paleoenvironmental changes linked to orbital-scale climatic variability. Silicon, magnetic susceptibility (MS) and total organic carbon (TOC) data show periodicities between ∼26.2–19.6 kyr linked to insolation, which is strongly dominated by precession cycles at this latitude. High values of Si and MS data have been related to high siliciclastic/detrital input from Sierra Nevada range during minima in insolation due to enhanced soil weathering/erosion during regional aridity and lower forest cover recorded by the arboreal pollen, which could also be favored by a minor biogenic productivity. In addition, warm climate conditions during maxima in insolation mostly resulted in negative precipitation/evapotranspiration balance and low lake levels, while cold glacial and stadial periods were mainly characterized by positive precipitation/evapotranspiration balance, and therefore, high lake levels. The improved chronology of the Padul sedimentary sequence along with a multiproxy study permitted us to better relate environmental and vegetation changes to climatic events and to demonstrate how both local (i.e., lake level, sedimentation) and regional (i.e., vegetation) environments responded to orbital-scale climate changes

Biochemical and molecular studies of 132 patients with galactosemia

We evaluated 132 galactosemia patients for the Q188R (glutamine-188 to arginine) mutation in the human galactose-1-phosphate uridyltransferase (GALT) gene and for GALT activity in their hemolysates by a sensitive radioisotopic method. In those without any detectable GALT activity (GG), the Q188R mutation constituted 67% of the alleles. In patients with detectable GALT activity (GV), only 16% of the alleles were accounted for by Q188R. In all patients who were homozygous for the Q188R mutation, no erythrocyte GALT activity could be demonstrated. There was an extensive variation in the amount of detectable GALT activity ranging from 0.1% to 5% of the normal values among the GV patients. There was a difference in the frequency of Q188R mutation in the GALT alleles among patients belonging to different racial and ethnic groups. In Caucasian and Hispanic patients, the frequency was not far different (64% and 58%, respectively). On the other hand, only 12% of the GALT alleles with Q188R were found in African-American patients.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/47637/1/439_2004_Article_BF00201593.pd