Year 1 report for ‘Conserving Texas Biodiversity: Status, Trends, and Conservation Planning for Fishes of Greatest Conservation Need’

State Wildlife Grant Program, grant TX T-106-1 (CFDA# 15.634), Contract No. 459125 UTA14-001402Substantive progress was made on all major Project Activities in this first year: Activity 1. Coordinate and Facilitate Science and Conservation Actions for Conserving Texas Biodiversity - We expanded and strengthened UT-TPWD coordination, transitioning the relationship between these partners into a much more collaborative one than was previously realized. The flow of data between TPWD and the Fishes of Texas Project (supported in part by this project) has become much more bi-directional. Many newly collected TPWD specimens, agency databases, legacy data products and reports, and feedback from resource managers are now beginning to contribute substantively to growth and diversity (now including non-specimen-vouchered records) of data served through the FoTX Project’s websites. Work on cleaning and normalizing of FoTX’s online specimen-vouchered database continued, and the updated FoTX occurrence and distribution data are being actively used. Most recently they were used by this project, together with expert (TPWD, UT and others’) opinions, to develop recommendations on conservation status of native fishes of Texas’ Species of Greatest Conservation Need for TPWD’s consideration in anticipated updates to the Texas Conservation Action Plan. Within two months of this report, a new and substantially larger and improved version of the FoTX website/database and related collection of images, field notes, and ancillary datasets, will be formally announced. Activity 2. Identify Priority Geographic Management Units for Conserving Fishes of Greatest Conservation Need - We used FoTX data in a systematic conservation area prioritization analysis to identify Native Fish Conservation Areas (NFCAs) for large portions of Texas where such comprehensive planning had not been previously carried out. Updated and new FoTX data for all Texas fish Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) were used in production of newly improved Species Distribution Models for input into this planning process, and the results of the planning exercise have already been integrated by TPWD into management prioritizations of both those species and the resultant NFCAs. Activity 3. Develop Monitoring and Conservation Plans for Native Fish Conservation Areas - Monitoring and conservation plans were delivered to TPWD for all NFCAs identified in Activity 2. Activity 4. Conduct Field-Based Surveys Detailed Biodiversity Assessments (i.e. Bioblitzing), and Citizen-Based Monitoring - Field surveys with detailed biodiversity assessments (“bioblitzes”) and citizen-based monitoring were conducted in three areas selected collaboratively by TPWD and FoTX Project staff from within the identified NFCAs: Nueces River headwaters, Big Cypress Bayou basin, and Village Creek basin. Along with this field effort, FoTX Project staff developed and circulated guidelines and best practices, and provided training for citizen-based monitoring that leverages iNaturalist for capture and reporting of photo-vouchered occurrence records in ways that will help assure scientifically useful data are obtained. All specimens acquired during these field efforts, and from many other routine specimen acquisitions from across the state (1845 total records/jars of specimens), were cataloged in the UT Fish Collection database. From there, these new records will soon be fed into GBIF, VertNet, FishNet2 and other major online data aggregators, including the online Fishes of Texas database.Texas Parks and Wildlife Department; U.S. Fish and Wildlife ServiceIntegrative Biolog

American Eel in Texas – what we do, don’t, and need to, know

Copy of the oral presentation made by the first author to the January 2016 meeting of the Texas Chapter of American Fisheries Society in Kerrville, Texas. Presentation is provided in several file formats. Data mapped in the presentation are also included in kml format (Google Earth).American Eel is undoubtedly one of the most studied freshwater fishes of North America. Many recent discoveries have added new insights that re-write important aspects of the “text book” knowledge of the species’ complex life history in ways that could have significant impacts on management. Despite all of this new information, debate about the species’ conservation status continues, and new threats, such as continued habitat loss and major clandestine fisheries driven by extremely high value in the global market, have further complicated management. Though USFWS recently decided that the species does not merit listing as “Endangered,” in 2012 Canada changed that country’s assessment of the species’ status from “Special Concern” (since 2006) to “Threatened” and IUCN upped its classification in 2013 to “Endangered.” Ontario has considered it “Endangered” since 2007. All U.S. Atlantic states vowed to work together to produce, in 1999, the American Eel Benchmark Stock Assessment, which mandated each state conduct standardized monitoring of recruitment and later, mandatory catch and effort monitoring. Given all that activity and data generation, it is remarkable that still so little is known about the populations of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and its tributary rivers that making any management decisions in that large, neglected part of the species’ range is virtually impossible. The Fishes of Texas Project team has been collating and improving the limited and scattered data on occurrences of the species in the region and concludes it important to promote a broad scale (Gulf of Mexico) collaborative community effort to acquire and share data and carefully curated specimens and, hopefully, develop a GOM-wide collaborative research and management plan like that implemented by Atlantic states. Here we’ll review the literature and state of knowledge about the species in Texas and GOM, and suggest ways to begin work toward such an effort.University of Texas at AustinIntegrative Biolog

To the question of the distribution and diagnosis of typhoid and typhus in the military field conditions (based on the materials of the Great Patriotic War)

The article analyzes the problems of diagnostics of typhoid and typhus during the Great Patriotic War. The main difficulties in diagnosing these diseases in military conditions and the ways to overcome them are highlightedВ статье проанализированы проблемы диагностики брюшного и сыпного тифа во время Великой Отечественной войны. Освещены основные трудности диагностики данных заболеваний в военных условиях и пути их преодолени

Quality gap of educational services in viewpoints of students in Hormozgan University of medical sciences

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Higher education is growing fast and every day it becomes more and more exposed to globalization processes. The aim of this study was to determine the quality gap of educational services by using a modified SERVQUAL instrument among students in Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional study was carried out at Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences in 2007. In this study, a total of 300 students were selected randomly and asked to complete a questionnaire that was designed according to SERVQUAL methods. This questionnaire measured students' perceptions and expectations in five dimensions of service that consists of assurance, responsiveness, empathy, reliability and tangibles. The quality gap of educational services was determined based on differences between students' perceptions and expectations.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The results demonstrated that in each of the five SERVQUAL dimensions, there was a negative quality gap. The least and the most negative quality gap means were in the reliability (-0.71) and responsiveness (-1.14) dimensions respectively. Also, there were significant differences between perceptions and expectations of students in all of the five SERVQUAL dimensions (p < 0.001).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Negative quality gaps mean students' expectations exceed their perceptions. Thus, improvements are needed across all five dimensions.</p

Open data platforms and their usability: Proposing a framework for evaluating citizen intentions

Governments across the world are releasing public data in an effort to increase transparency of how public services are managed whilst also enticing citizens to participate in the policy decision-making processes. The channel for making open data available to citizens in the UK is the data.gov.uk platform, which brings together data relating to various public services in one searchable website. The data.gov.uk platform currently offers access to 25,500 datasets that are organized across key public service themes including health, transport, education, environment, and public spending in towns and cities. While the website reports 5,438,159 site visits as of June 2015, the average time spent on the site has been recorded at just 02:12 min per visitor. This raises questions regarding the actual use and usability of open data platforms and the extent to which they fulfill the stated outcomes of open data. In this paper, the authors examine usability issues surrounding open data platforms and propose a framework that can be used to evaluate their usability