Inducing Private Wildfire Risk Mitigation: Experimental Investigation of Measures on Adjacent Public Lands

Increasing private wildfire risk mitigation is an important part of the larger forest restoration policy challenge. Data from an economic experiment are used to evaluate the effectiveness of providing fuel treatments on public land adjacent to private land to induce private wildfire risk mitigation. Results show evidence of “crowding out” where public spending can decrease the level of private risk mitigation. However, a policy prescription that ameliorates this crowding out is identified. Participants undertake more mitigation when fuel treatments on publicly owned lands are conditional on a threshold level of private mitigation effort and information describing each participant’s spending is provided. Key Words:

Environmental Stress and Adaptational Responses: Consequences for Human Health Outcomes

With the dramatic pace of modernization of the world’s population, human adaptation as a theoretical construct and paradigm will likely become a focal scientific issue involving scientists from many disciplinary areas during the 21st Century. Macro and micro environments are in rapid flux and human populations are exposed to rapid change. The concept of adaptation, at least in the field of biological anthropology and human biology, will likely remain tied to evolutionary processes and concepts of selection and fitness. In this paper, we discuss the theoretical constructs of adaptation and adaptability and select three current examples from our ongoing research that involve studies of adaptation and evolutionary processes in modernizing populations in different locations worldwide

Functional expression of two glucose transporter isoforms from the parasitic protozoan Leishmania enriettii

The parasitic protozoan Leishmania enriettii contains a family of tandemly repeated genes, designated Pro-1, that encode proteins with significant sequence similarity to mammalian facilitative glucose transporters. Pro-1 mRNAs are expressed almost exclusively in the promastigote or insect stage of the parasite life cycle. The Pro-1 tandem repeat encodes two isoforms of the putative transporter, iso-1 and iso-2, which have identical predicted amino acid sequences except for their NH2-terminal hydrophilic domains. We have now expressed both iso-1 and iso-2 by microinjecting their RNAs into Xenopus oocytes and assaying these oocytes for transport of various radiolabeled ligands. Both iso-1 and iso-2 transport [3H]2-deoxy-D-glucose, confirming that each protein is a bona fide glucose transporter. Each isoform also transports fructose and, to a much lesser degree, mannose. Compounds which inhibit 2-deoxy-D-glucose transport in L. enriettii promastigotes also inhibit transport in the microinjected oocytes expressing each isoform, indicating that the substrate specificities and pharmacological properties of each isoform are similar to those measured for 2-deoxy-D-glucose transport in intact parasites. The Km for transport of 2-deoxyglucose in oocytes expressing iso-1 is similar to that for oocytes expressing iso-2. These results reveal that both transporter isoforms have closely related functional properties and that the difference in their structures may serve some other purpose such as differential subcellular localization

Inducing private wildfire risk mitigation: Experimental investigation of measures on adjacent public lands

Increasing private wildfire risk mitigation is an important part of the larger forest restoration policy challenge. Data from an economic experiment are used to evaluate the effectiveness of providing fuel treatments on public land adjacent to private land to induce private wildfire risk mitigation. Results show evidence of “crowding out” where public spending can decrease the level of private risk mitigation. However, a policy prescription that ameliorates this crowding out is identified. Participants undertake more mitigation when fuel treatments on publicly owned lands are conditional on a threshold level of private mitigation effort and information describing each participant’s spending is provided

Blog and podcast watch: Pediatric emergency medicine

Introduction: By critically appraising open access, educational blogs and podcasts in emergency medicine (EM) using an objective scoring instrument, this installment of the ALiEM (Academic Life in Emergency Medicine) Blog and Podcast Watch series curated and scored relevant posts in the specific areas of pediatric EM. Methods: The Approved Instructional Resources - Professional (AIR-Pro) series is a continuously building curriculum covering a new subject area every two months. For each area, six EM chief residents identify 3-5 advanced clinical questions. Using FOAMsearch.net to search blogs and podcasts, relevant posts are scored by eight reviewers from the AIR-Pro Board, which is comprised of EM faculty and chief residents at various institutions. The scoring instrument contains five measurement outcomes based on 7-point Likert scales: recency, accuracy, educational utility, evidence based, and references. The AIR-Pro label is awarded to posts with a score of ?26 (out of 35) points. An Honorable Mention label is awarded if Board members collectively felt that the posts were valuable and the scores were \u3e 20. Results: We included a total of 41 blog posts and podcasts. Key educational pearls from the 10 high quality AIR-Pro posts and four Honorable Mentions are summarized. Conclusion: The WestJEM ALiEM Blog and Podcast Watch series is based on the AIR and AIR-Pro series, which attempts to identify high quality educational content on open-access blogs and podcasts. Until more objective quality indicators are developed for learners and educators, this series provides an expert-based, crowdsourced approach towards critically appraising educational social media content for EM clinicians. © 2016 Zaver et al

AIST Overview Advanced Information System Technology Fueling Innovation for Earth Observing

One element of NASA's Earth Science Technology Office is the Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) Program, which funds information technology development for use in the 5-20 year timeframe. The needs are identified in conjunction with the NASA research and applied sciences communities and discussions with other, forward-looking organizations, such as ESA. AIST projects must have a US lead, but collaborations with non-US organizations are encouraged. The AIST Program focuses on two major thrusts and a small collection of concept studies and solicits both evolutionary and disruptive development projects. One thrust seeks to leverage the emergence of smallsats to create constellations of instruments to examine phenomena that could not be studied before using conventional single-satellite instruments. The second thrust develops re-usable tools to support scientific investigations through the interaction with data. The study projects formulate relevant theory, bleeding-edge concepts or to articulate need statements more clearly for highly advanced work. This talk will describe the research and development funded by the AIST Program

Assessing the reliability of the CD4 depletion model in the presence of Ending the HIV Epidemic initiatives

BackgroundAccurate estimates of HIV incidence are necessary to monitor progress towards Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) initiative targets (90% decline by 2030). U.S. incidence estimates are derived from a CD4 depletion model (CD4 model). We performed simulation-based analyses to investigate the ability of this model to estimate HIV incidence when implementing EHE interventions that have the potential to shorten the duration between HIV infection and diagnosis (diagnosis delay).MethodsOur simulation study evaluates the impact of three parameters on the accuracy of incidence estimates derived from the CD4 model: rate of HIV incidence decline, length of diagnosis delay, and sensitivity of using CD4 + cell counts to identify new infections (recency error). We model HIV incidence and diagnoses after the implementation of a theoretical prevention intervention and compare HIV incidence estimates derived from the CD4 model to simulated incidence.ResultsTheoretical interventions that shortened the diagnosis delay (10-50%) result in overestimation of HIV incidence by the CD4 model (10-92%) in the first year and by more than 10% for the first 6 years after implementation of the intervention. Changes in the rate of HIV incidence decline and the presence of recency error had minimal impact on the accuracy of incidence estimates derived from the CD4 model.ConclusionIn the setting of EHE interventions to identify persons with HIV earlier during infection, the CD4 model overestimates HIV incidence. Alternative methods to estimate incidence based on objective measures of incidence are needed to assess and monitor EHE interventions

Habitat Characteristics of Eastern Wild Turkey Nest and Ground-roost Sites in 2 Longleaf Pine Forests

Managing and restoring longleaf pine forests throughout the Southeast is a conservation priority. Prescribed fire is an integral part of these activities, as it is the primary means of controlling hardwood encroachment and maintaining native groundcover. Nest site and preflight brood groundroost site selection of eastern wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) has not been well studied in longleaf pine systems. Therefore, we determined habitat characteristics associated with wild turkey nests and ground-roosts in 2 longleaf pine forests in southwestern Georgia. We radio-tagged 45 female turkeys and evaluated habitat characteristics associated with 84 nests and 51 ground-roosts during the 2011–2013 nesting seasons. Nests were located farther from mature pine and mature pine-hardwood stands and closer to shrub/scrub habitats than expected. Nests were also negatively associated with percent canopy closure and positively associated with percent woody ground cover and vegetation height. Ground-roosts were closer to mature pine-hardwood stands and open water than were random sites. We suggest that management of longleaf pine forests should focus on maintaining open-canopied forests with adequate understory vegetation to serve as nesting and brood-rearing cover. Our findings suggest that frequent prescribed fire (≤ 2 years), when the management goal is to optimize restoration of longleaf ecosystems, is conducive to maintaining wild turkey populations

Cosmic Voids and Galaxy Bias in the Halo Occupation Framework

(Abridged) We investigate the power of void statistics to constrain galaxy bias and the amplitude of dark matter fluctuations. We use the halo occupation distribution (HOD) framework to describe the relation between galaxies and dark matter. After choosing HOD parameters that reproduce the mean space density n_gal and projected correlation function w_p measured for galaxy samples with M_r<-19 and M_r<-21 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we predict the void probability function (VPF) and underdensity probability function (UPF) of these samples by populating the halos of a large, high-resolution N-body simulation. If we make the conventional assumption that the HOD is independent of large scale environment at fixed halo mass, then models constrained to match n_gal and w_p predict nearly identical void statistics, independent of the scatter between halo mass and central galaxy luminosity or uncertainties in HOD parameters. Models with sigma_8=0.7 and sigma_8=0.9 also predict very similar void statistics. However, the VPF and UPF are sensitive to environmental variations of the HOD in a regime where these variations have little impact on w_p. For example, doubling the minimum host halo mass in regions with large scale (5 Mpc/h) density contrast delta<-0.65 has a readily detectable impact on void probabilities of M_r<-19 galaxies, and a similar change for delta<-0.2 alters the void probabilities of M_r<-21 galaxies at a detectable level. The VPF and UPF provide complementary information about the onset and magnitude of density- dependence in the HOD. By detecting or ruling out HOD changes in low density regions, void statistics can reduce systematic uncertainties in the cosmological constraints derived from HOD modeling, and, more importantly, reveal connections between halo formation history and galaxy properties.Comment: emulateapj, 16 pages, 13 figure