A Survey of the Fishes of the Mulberry River, Arkansas

Announcement of plans to dam Mulberry River, Arkansas, by the United States Army Corps of Engineers has generated some dispute. Most agruments against damming the stream revolve around environmental degradation and loss of aesthetic values. This report serves as a pre-impoundment survey of the fishes of the Mulberry River so that possible effects of impoundment can be more objectively assessed. Knowledge on the fishes of the Mulberry River is severely lacking. The first study was by Jordan and Gilbert (1886) who collected in the southern U.S. in July, August, and September, 1884. They collected in many streams in Arkansas including several tributaries of the Arkansas River

Vertebrate Natural History Notes from Arkansas, 2017

Because meaningful observations of natural history are not always part of larger studies, important pieces of information often are unreported. Small details, however, can fills gaps in understanding and also lead to interesting questions about ecological relationships or environmental change. We have compiled recent observations of foods, reproduction, record size, parasites, and distribution of 30 species of fishes, new records of distribution and parasites of 2 species of amphibians, and new records of distribution, parasites, reproduction and anomalies of 11 species of mammals

Controlling Legionella pneumophila in water systems at reduced hot water temperatures with copper and silver ionization

Background: Hospital-acquired Legionnaires’ disease is associated with the presence of Legionella pneumophila in hospital water systems. In the United Kingdom, the Department of Health recommends maintaining hot water temperatures >55°C and cold water temperatures <20°C at the point of delivery to prevent proliferation of L pneumophila in water systems. In this study, we evaluated the efficacy of copper and silver ionization to control L pneumophila at deliberately reduced hot water temperatures (43°C) within a newly installed water system in a new building linked to a large health care facility in the United Kingdom. / Methods: One thousand, five hundred ninety-eight water samples were collected between September 2011 and June 2017. Samples were tested using accredited methods for L pneumophila, copper and silver ion levels, and total viable counts. Energy consumption and water usage data were also collected to permit carbon emission calculations. / Results: The results of 1,598 routine samples from September 2011 to June 2017, and the recordings of temperatures at outlets in this facility, demonstrated effective (100%) L pneumophila control throughout the study period with an average hot water temperature of 42°C. The energy savings and reduction of carbon emissions were calculated to amount to 33% and 24%, respectively, compared to an equivalent temperature-controlled system. Water system management interventions were required to achieve consistently adequate levels of copper and silver across outlets. / Conclusions: This study demonstrated that it is possible to control L pneumophila independent of temperature when copper and silver ionization is introduced into a new building in conjunction with an appropriately managed water system

Statistical analysis plan for the LAKANA trial: a cluster-randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blinded, parallel group, three-arm clinical trial testing the effects of mass drug administration of azithromycin on mortality and other outcomes among 1–11-month-old infants in Mali

BACKGROUND:The Large-scale Assessment of the Key health-promoting Activities of two New mass drug administration regimens with Azithromycin (LAKANA) trial in Mali aims to evaluate the efficacy and safety of azithromycin (AZI) mass drug administration (MDA) to 1–11-month-old infants as well as the impact of the intervention on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and mechanisms of action of azithromycin. To improve the transparency and quality of this clinical trial, we prepared this statistical analysis plan (SAP). METHODS/DESIGN: LAKANA is a cluster randomized trial that aims to address the mortality and health impacts of biannual and quarterly AZI MDA. AZI is given to 1–11-month-old infants in a high-mortality setting where a seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) program is in place. The participating villages are randomly assigned to placebo (control), two-dose AZI (biannual azithromycin-MDA), and four-dose AZI (quarterly azithromycin-MDA) in a 3:4:2 ratio. The primary outcome of the study is mortality among the intention-to-treat population of 1–11-month-old infants. We will evaluate relative risk reduction between the study arms using a mixed-effects Poisson model with random intercepts for villages, using log link function with person-years as an offset variable. We will model outcomes related to secondary objectives of the study using generalized linear models with considerations on clustering. CONCLUSION: The SAP written prior to data collection completion will help avoid reporting bias and data-driven analysis for the primary and secondary aims of the trial. If there are deviations from the analysis methods described here, they will be described and justified in the publications of the trial results. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT04424511. Registered on 11 June 2020

Building connectomes using diffusion MRI: why, how and but

Why has diffusion MRI become a principal modality for mapping connectomes in vivo? How do different image acquisition parameters, fiber tracking algorithms and other methodological choices affect connectome estimation? What are the main factors that dictate the success and failure of connectome reconstruction? These are some of the key questions that we aim to address in this review. We provide an overview of the key methods that can be used to estimate the nodes and edges of macroscale connectomes, and we discuss open problems and inherent limitations. We argue that diffusion MRI-based connectome mapping methods are still in their infancy and caution against blind application of deep white matter tractography due to the challenges inherent to connectome reconstruction. We review a number of studies that provide evidence of useful microstructural and network properties that can be extracted in various independent and biologically-relevant contexts. Finally, we highlight some of the key deficiencies of current macroscale connectome mapping methodologies and motivate future developments

On the role of mass diffusion and fluid dynamics in the dissipation of chunk mix

When numerically simulating multicomponent turbulent flows, subgrid-scale diffusion of chemical species requires closure. This mixing of chemical species at the molecular level dissipates concentration uctuations, which limits possible demixing and affects other pro- cesses such as energy transport and reaction rates at the subgrid level. We discuss some of the physical processes that reduce small chunks of a heavy material in a light gas or plasma to a mixture at the atomic level. Preliminary direct numerical simulations of these processes are presented using the dissipation of small spheres of heavy gas in a light gas as an archetypal process in turbulent micromixing in multicomponent ows, including classical uid instabilities and shock ejecta. We use a detailed approach for the diffusion process, directly solving the Stefan-Maxwell equations for the mass fluxes. We discuss the dissipa- tion of a 24&micro;m sphere of xenon in helium in three different flow regimes, and we present suggestions for future work intended as input to improved subgrid-scale turbulence models

Are accurate equation of state parameters important in Richtmyer-Meshkov instabilities?

The Richtmyer-Meshkov instability is a classical fluid dynamical instability that has been extensively studied to help understand turbulent mixing. A recent numerical simulation of a shock tube experiment with an air-SF6 interface and a weak shock (Mach 1.2) used the ideal gas equation of state for air and an artificially low temperature as a surrogate for the correct SF6 gas physics. We have run a similar problem with both the correct gas physics and three versions of the air surrogate to understand the errors thereby introduced. We find that for the weakly driven single-mode case considered here, the instability amplitude is not affected, the interface location is affected only slightly, but the thermodynamic states are quite different. This result is not surprising because the flow far from the shock waves is essentially incompressible

Numerical Experiments Using a Convective Flux Limiter on a Turbulent Single-Mode Rayleigh-Taylor Instability

Direct numerical simulation and large eddy simulations are powerful tools for studying turbulent flows. Unfortunately, they are computationally demanding in terms of run times, storage, and accuracy of the numerical method used. In particular, high order methods promise high accuracy on a given grid, but they often fail to deliver the expected accuracy due to dispersive truncation errors that appear as unphysical oscillations in the numerical solutions. This report describes a nonlinear flux limiter that has been applied to the second-order tensor viscosity method and markedly reduces the dispersive truncation errors. A Rayleigh-Taylor instability is simulated to show how well the flux limiter works