The Role of an Urban Tallgrass Prairie Remnant in Conservation: A Case Study in Central Iowa (USA)

Although more than 85% of Iowa (USA) was covered by tallgrass prairie at the time of settlement by Europeans in the early 19th century, less than 0.1% remains. The Richard W. Pohl State Preserve at Ames (IA) High School, surrounded on three sides by structures, roads, and other development, protects 4 ha of tallgrass prairie. The preserve, commonly referred to as Ames High Prairie (AHP), was grazed but never plowed under private ownership until its acquisition by the Ames School District in 1959. Although considered for development as a parking lot or football field in the 1960s, the residents of Ames voted in 1970 to award The Nature Conservancy (TNC) a 49-year lease to the property (until 2019). This preserve, almost completely open in the 1930s, has been subject to numerous threats, including encroachment by woody plants, entry of non-native and invasive plant species associated with human activity, and erosion associated with storm water runoff, sewer line repair, foot and bike traffic, and major flood events. Recent management activities at AHP, conducted by volunteer land stewards, high school and college students, TNC summer interns, and private contractors, has consisted of controlled burns, cutting and herbicide treatment of encroaching woody plants, manual removal and herbicide treatment of invasive herbaceous plants, and sowing of seeds (collected on site) into reopened areas. Three vascular plant inventories of the 8.9 ha preserve (1966, 1995, current study) have documented the occurrence of 465 taxa (329 native) at AHP, including 5 Iowa special concern species. This flora includes 147 native prairie plant taxa, which ranks 8th in comparison with the 26 other (and mostly larger) prairies protected as state preserves in Iowa. As a vegetation remnant, AHP protects tallgrass prairie taxa and their gene pools, maintains an example of historically abundant (but now scarce) tallgrass prairie vegetation, and provides citizens an opportunity to experience prairie

Time evolution, cyclic solutions and geometric phases for the generalized time-dependent harmonic oscillator

The generalized time-dependent harmonic oscillator is studied. Though several approaches to the solution of this model have been available, yet a new approach is presented here, which is very suitable for the study of cyclic solutions and geometric phases. In this approach, finding the time evolution operator for the Schr\"odinger equation is reduced to solving an ordinary differential equation for a c-number vector which moves on a hyperboloid in a three-dimensional space. Cyclic solutions do not exist for all time intervals. A necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of cyclic solutions is given. There may exist some particular time interval in which all solutions with definite parity, or even all solutions, are cyclic. Criterions for the appearance of such cases are given. The known relation that the nonadiabatic geometric phase for a cyclic solution is proportional to the classical Hannay angle is reestablished. However, this is valid only for special cyclic solutions. For more general ones, the nonadiabatic geometric phase may contain an extra term. Several cases with relatively simple Hamiltonians are solved and discussed in detail. Cyclic solutions exist in most cases. The pattern of the motion, say, finite or infinite, can not be simply determined by the nature of the Hamiltonian (elliptic or hyperbolic, etc.). For a Hamiltonian with a definite nature, the motion can changes from one pattern to another, that is, some kind of phase transition may occur, if some parameter in the Hamiltonian goes through some critical value.Comment: revtex4, 28 pages, no figur

A study of psychiatrists’ concepts of mental illness

Background: There are multiple models of mental illness that inform professional and lay understanding. Few studies have formally investigated psychiatrists' attitudes. We aimed to measure how a group of trainee psychiatrists understand familiar mental illnesses in terms of propositions drawn from different models. Method: We used a questionnaire study of a sample of trainees from South London and Maudsley National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust designed to assess attitudes across eight models of mental illness (e.g. biological, psychodynamic) and four psychiatric disorders. Methods for analysing repeated measures and a principal components analysis (PCA) were used. Results: No one model was endorsed by all respondents. Model endorsement varied with disorder. Attitudes to schizophrenia were expressed with the greatest conviction across models. Overall, the ‘biological’ model was the most strongly endorsed. The first three components of the PCA (interpreted as dimensions around which psychiatrists, as a group, understand mental illness) accounted for 56% of the variance. Each main component was classified in terms of its distinctive combination of statements from different models: PC1 33% biological versus non-biological; PC2 12% ‘eclectic’ (combining biological, behavioural, cognitive and spiritual models); and PC3 10% psychodynamic versus sociological. Conclusions: Trainee psychiatrists are most committed to the biological model for schizophrenia, but in general are not exclusively committed to any one model. As a group, they organize their attitudes towards mental illness in terms of a biological/non-biological contrast, an ‘eclectic’ view and a psychodynamic/sociological contrast. Better understanding of how professional group membership influences attitudes may facilitate better multidisciplinary working

An evaluation of total starch and starch gelatinization methodologies in pelleted animal feed

Citation: Zhu, L., Jones, C., Guo, Q., Lewis, L., Stark, C. R., & Alavi, S. (2016). An evaluation of total starch and starch gelatinization methodologies in pelleted animal feed. Journal of Animal Science, 94(4), 1501-1507. doi:10.2527/jas2015-9822The quantification of total starch content (TS) or degree of starch gelatinization (DG) in animal feed is always challenging because of the potential interference from other ingredients. In this study, the differences in TS or DG measurement in pelleted swine feed due to variations in analytical methodology were quantified. Pelleted swine feed was used to create 6 different diets manufactured with various processing conditions in a 2 x 3 factorial design (2 conditioning temperatures, 77 or 88 degrees C, and 3 conditioning retention times, 15, 30, or 60 s). Samples at each processing stage (cold mash, hot mash, hot pelletized feed, and final cooled pelletized feed) were collected for each of the 6 treatments and analyzed for TS and DG. Two different methodologies were evaluated for TS determination (the AOAC International method 996.11 vs. the modified glucoamylase method) and DG determination (the modified glucoamylase method vs. differential scanning calorimetry [DSC]). For TS determination, the AOAC International method 996.11 measured lower TS values in cold pellets compared with the modified glucoamylase method. The AOAC International method resulted in lower TS in cold mash than cooled pelletized feed, whereas the modified glucoamylase method showed no significant differences in TS content before or after pelleting. For DG, the modified glucoamylase method demonstrated increased DG with each processing step. Furthermore, increasing the conditioning temperature and time resulted in a greater DG when evaluated by the modified glucoamylase method. However, results demonstrated that DSC is not suitable as a quantitative tool for determining DG in multicomponent animal feeds due to interferences from nonstarch transformations, such as protein denaturation

Childhood and Parental Asthma, Future Risk of Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders: A Population-Based Cohort Study

BACKGROUND: Mounting evidence implicates early life and prenatal immune disturbances in the etiology of severe mental illnesses. Asthma is a common illness associated with chronic aberrant immune responses. We aimed to determine if asthma in childhood and parents is associated with bipolar and schizophrenia spectrum disorders. METHODS: A cohort study including all children born in Sweden 1973–1995 (N > 2 million) assessing associations between childhood hospitalization for asthma, parental asthma during and pre-pregnancy, and subsequent bipolar and schizophrenia spectrum disorders. RESULTS: Children with hospitalizations for asthma between 11 and 15 years had increased rates of bipolar (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] = 1.73, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.21–2.47) and schizophrenia spectrum disorders (aHR = 1.62, 95% CI = 1.08–2.42). However, there was no association with asthma before aged 11. These results were supported by an analysis of siblings discordant for asthma. We found an association between both maternal and paternal asthma and bipolar disorder (aHR = 1.60, 95% CI = 1.27–2.02, and aHR = 1.44, 95% CI = 1.08–1.93, respectively), but not between parental asthma and schizophrenia spectrum disorders. CONCLUSIONS: As far as we are aware, this is the first study to find increased risk of bipolar disorder in children of individuals with asthma. Asthma admissions before aged 11 do not appear to be linked to bipolar or schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Taken together, our results do not suggest a straightforward link between asthma and severe mental illness via neurodevelopmental effects of inflammation, but potentially there is shared genetic vulnerability. This finding has implications for understanding the differential pathogenic mechanisms of bipolar and schizophrenia spectrum disorders

A Bayesian Approach to Locating the Red Giant Branch Tip Magnitude (Part I)

We present a new approach for identifying the Tip of the Red Giant Branch (TRGB) which, as we show, works robustly even on sparsely populated targets. Moreover, the approach is highly adaptable to the available data for the stellar population under study, with prior information readily incorporable into the algorithm. The uncertainty in the derived distances is also made tangible and easily calculable from posterior probability distributions. We provide an outline of the development of the algorithm and present the results of tests designed to characterize its capabilities and limitations. We then apply the new algorithm to three M31 satellites: Andromeda I, Andromeda II and the fainter Andromeda XXIII, using data from the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey (PAndAS), and derive their distances as $731^{(+ 5) + 18}_{(- 4) - 17}$ kpc, $634^{(+ 2) + 15}_{(- 2) - 14}$ kpc and $733^{(+ 13)+ 23}_{(- 11) - 22}$ kpc respectively, where the errors appearing in parentheses are the components intrinsic to the method, while the larger values give the errors after accounting for additional sources of error. These results agree well with the best distance determinations in the literature and provide the smallest uncertainties to date. This paper is an introduction to the workings and capabilities of our new approach in its basic form, while a follow-up paper shall make full use of the method's ability to incorporate priors and use the resulting algorithm to systematically obtain distances to all of M31's satellites identifiable in the PAndAS survey area.Comment: 11 pages, 18 figure

Isospin breaking in the vector current of the nucleon

Extraction of the nucleon's strange form factors from experimental data requires a quantitative understanding of the unavoidable contamination from isospin violation. A number of authors have addressed this issue during the past decade, and their work is reviewed here. The predictions from early models are largely consistent with recent results that rely as much as possible on input from QCD symmetries and related experimental data. The resulting bounds on isospin violation are sufficiently precise to be of value to on-going experimental and theoretical studies of the nucleon's strange form factors.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Presented at the International Workshop "From Parity Violation to Hadronic Structure and more...", Milos, Greece, 16-20 May 2006. Version 2 is only to update Refs. [21] and [25

The nucleon's strange electromagnetic and scalar matrix elements

Quenched lattice QCD simulations and quenched chiral perturbation theory are used together for this study of strangeness in the nucleon. Dependences of the matrix elements on strange quark mass, valence quark mass and momentum transfer are discussed in both the lattice and chiral frameworks. The combined results of this study are in good agreement with existing experimental data and predictions are made for upcoming experiments. Possible future refinements of the theoretical method are suggested.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figure

Factors associated with acute kidney injury or failure in children undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass: a case‐controlled study

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/87176/1/j.1460-9592.2011.03532.x.pd