Foot Traffic\u27s Impact on Corn Maze Compaction and Soil Organic Matter

Soil samples and compaction readings were taken from a corn maze site at Murray State University Pullen Farm. The scope of this project was compare the years of overlap with the different designs in the corn maze. This foot traffic compaction can be relayed back to the affect of livestock in fields

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as a Window into the Veterinary Profession

Catriona Bell – ORCID: 0000-0001-8501-1697 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8501-1697Item not available in this repository.Previously deposited in Edinburgh University repository at: https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/massive-open-online-courses-moocs-as-a-window-into-the-veterinaryMassive open online courses (MOOCs) are freely available online courses open to anyone who registers and typically are associated with thousands or hundreds of thousands of participants. Using an established online platform, the authors created and delivered a five-week MOOC aimed primarily at prospective veterinary students, but open to anyone with an interest in finding out more about the veterinary profession in general. 11,911 people signed up for the course, and of these, 8137 interacted in some way with the course and 1716 received a certificate of completion. The majority of participants (84 per cent) were female, and there was a wide age range (under 18 to over 65). Most participants were from North America or the UK. 65 per cent of those completing the entry survey were hoping or intending to work in the vet profession in the future, while 33 per cent were not. Qualitative data indicated that the course was helpful in aiding those undecided as to whether they wanted to be a veterinarian or not to decide one way or another whether they want to pursue veterinary medicine as a career. Furthermore, the course was seen as being a useful introduction to the veterinary profession even for those who had no intention of working in the field.https://doi.org/10.1136/vr.103979180pubpub

Epidemiology of COVID-19 among people experiencing homelessness: Early evidence from Boston

People experiencing homelessness are at high risk for coronavirus disease (COVID-19). We estimated population frequencies of confirmed COVID-19 cases among adults experiencing homelessness in Boston relative to the Massachusetts adult population. Over a 15-day period, 182 homeless adults in Boston were diagnosed with COVID-19 for an estimated cumulative frequency of 46.3 cases per 1000 persons, as compared to 1.9 cases per 1000 among Massachusetts adults on the same date. The trajectory and burden of COVID-19 cases among homeless adults suggests that cities should prepare urgently for the possibility of a COVID-19 surge in this population.https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154734/1/Baggett Deep Blue article.pdfDescription of Baggett Deep Blue article.pdf : Main articl

Oxytocin promotes functional coupling between paraventricular nucleus and both sympathetic and parasympathetic cardioregulatory nuclei

The neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) facilitates prosocial behavior and selective sociality. In the context of stress, OXT also can down-regulate hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis activity, leading to consideration of OXT as a potential treatment for many socioaffective disorders. However, the mechanisms through which administration of exogenous OXT modulates social behavior in stressful environmental contexts are not fully understood. Here, we investigate the hypothesis that autonomic pathways are components of the mechanisms through which OXT aids the recruitment of social resources in stressful contexts that may elicit mobilized behavioral responses. Female prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) underwent a stressor (walking in shallow water) following pretreatment with intraperitoneal OXT (0.25 mg/kg) or OXT antagonist (OXT-A, 20 mg/kg), and were allowed to recover with or without their sibling cagemate. Administration of OXT resulted in elevated OXT concentrations in plasma, but did not dampen the HPA axis response to a stressor. However, OXT, but not OXT-A, pretreatment prevented the functional coupling, usually seen in the absence of OXT, between paraventricular nucleus (PVN) activity as measured by c-Fos immunoreactivity and HPA output (i.e. corticosterone release). Furthermore, OXT pretreatment resulted in functional coupling between PVN activity and brain regions regulating both sympathetic (i.e. rostral ventrolateral medulla) and parasympathetic (i.e. dorsal vagal complex and nucleus ambiguous) branches of the autonomic nervous system. These findings suggest that OXT increases central neural control of autonomic activity, rather than strictly dampening HPA axis activity, and provides a potential mechanism through which OXT may facilitate adaptive and context-dependent behavioral and physiological responses to stressors

A Spitzer Transmission Spectrum for the Exoplanet GJ 436b, Evidence for Stellar Variability, and Constraints on Dayside Flux Variations

In this paper we describe a uniform analysis of eight transits and eleven secondary eclipses of the extrasolar planet GJ 436b obtained in the 3.6, 4.5, and 8.0 micron bands using the IRAC instrument on the Spitzer Space Telescope between UT 2007 June 29 and UT 2009 Feb 4. We find that the best-fit transit depths for visits in the same bandpass can vary by as much as 8% of the total (4.7 sigma significance) from one epoch to the next. Although we cannot entirely rule out residual detector effects or a time-varying, high-altitude cloud layer in the planet's atmosphere as the cause of these variations, we consider the occultation of active regions on the star in a subset of the transit observations to be the most likely explanation. We reconcile the presence of magnetically active regions with the lack of significant visible or infrared flux variations from the star by proposing that the star's spin axis is tilted with respect to our line of sight, and that the planet's orbit is therefore likely to be misaligned. These observations serve to illustrate the challenges associated with transmission spectroscopy of planets orbiting late-type stars; we expect that other systems, such as GJ 1214, may display comparably variable transit depths. Our measured 8 micron secondary eclipse depths are consistent with a constant value, and we place a 1 sigma upper limit of 17% on changes in the planet's dayside flux in this band. Averaging over the eleven visits gives us an improved estimate of 0.0452% +/- 0.0027% for the secondary eclipse depth. We combine timing information from our observations with previously published data to produce a refined orbital ephemeris, and determine that the best-fit transit and eclipse times are consistent with a constant orbital period. [ABRIDGED]Comment: 26 pages, 18 figures, 7 tables in emulateapj format. Accepted for publication in Ap