Dynamics of dental evolution in ornithopod dinosaurs.

Ornithopods were key herbivorous dinosaurs in Mesozoic terrestrial ecosystems, with a variety of tooth morphologies. Several clades, especially the 'duck-billed' hadrosaurids, became hugely diverse and abundant almost worldwide. Yet their evolutionary dynamics have been disputed, particularly whether they diversified in response to events in plant evolution. Here we focus on their remarkable dietary adaptations, using tooth and jaw characters to examine changes in dental disparity and evolutionary rate. Ornithopods explored different areas of dental morphospace throughout their evolution, showing a long-term expansion. There were four major evolutionary rate increases, the first among basal iguanodontians in the Middle-Late Jurassic, and the three others among the Hadrosauridae, above and below the split of their two major clades, in the middle of the Late Cretaceous. These evolutionary bursts do not correspond to times of plant diversification, including the radiation of the flowering plants, and suggest that dental innovation rather than coevolution with major plant clades was a major driver in ornithopod evolution

An Analysis of the Growth of the Palm Oil Industry in Sumatra, Indonesia: As Detected by Satellite Imagery, 2000-2018

Palm oil trees are rapidly spreading across the landscape in Sumatra, Indonesia. The province of Bengkulu is a prime example of this, and it is hard to go anywhere and not see palm oil trees. Finding an accurate way to monitor plantation growth would be of great benefit as scientists and others attempt to monitor how Indonesia’s palm oil boom is affecting climate change. Several studies have indicated that the surge of palm oil production is causing great environmental and social harm to Indonesia as well as the rest of the world. This research details a methodology for utilizing satellite imagery to accurately differentiate palm trees from other forms of vegetation on a plantation scale. The research applied as unsupervised classification process found in ArcMap to a series of LANDSAT’s 4-5, 7, and 8 satellite imagery for palm tree detection. The results of this study show that the rate of palm oil expansion was still growing up to 2018. However, the study was inconclusive as to whether or not the Indonesian government is in compliance with the New York Declaration on Forests, signed in 2014, where they pledged to not deforest any new land

Beliefs about item memorability affect metacognitive control in item-method directed forgetting

Across six experiments, I examined the role of metacognitive control in item-method directed forgetting. In Experiment 1, participants studied loud and quiet items, which were subsequently cued as to-be-remembered (TBR) or to-be-forgotten (TBF). Typically, the volume of stimuli does not influence recall, although loud items are judged as more memorable than quiet items (Rhodes & Castel, 2009). In contrast, there was a unique recall advantage for loud TBR items when participants engaged in directed forgetting. Giving participants extra opportunities to engage rehearsal does not produce the selective advantage for loud items (Experiment 2), nor does emphasizing the importance of some items over others (Experiments 3 and 4). Experiment 5 manipulated the encoding fluency of the stimuli using a font type manipulation, which did not produce recall differences between the fluently and less fluently processed items despite the effect of font type on judgments of learning. Finally, Experiment 6 investigated participants' beliefs about what helps them disengage from TBF items and what helps them retain TBR items. Specifically, after TBF or TBR items, participants were told to select earlier studied line drawings that varied both in perceptual size (small vs. large size image) and conceptual size (drawing of a small vs. large object in real life). I propose two mechanisms to explain the results. According to the rehearsal strategy mechanism, people use beliefs about item memorability to selectively rehearse certain items as a way to forget other items. According to the salience mechanism, people are drawn to perceptually salient stimuli when performing directed forgetting

A comparative analysis of funding formulas applied to the North Carolina Community College System

The purpose of this study was to contrast the FTE funding formula used to fund the North Carolina Community College System with other funding formulas used in other states to fund their respective community colleges. The methodology for this study included surveying four senior level administrators—one representing either academic affairs, continuing education, financial affairs or student affairs--at each of the fifty-eight community colleges in North Carolina concerning the concepts of adequacy and equity in funding along with other factors that should be included in a funding formula. Predicated on an analysis of data, it was concluded that North Carolina's present FTE funding formula does not address the concepts of adequacy and equity in funding; that the formula should be expanded to include new program start-up funding, a more timely cost recovery system for the colleges, allowance for unanticipated program growth in the formula along with funding for equipment and facilities; and that North Carolina should consider revisions to its FTE formula to allow for differentiated funding based on program costs

Subclinical Eating Disorders Among Female

The purpose of this present study was to examine subclinical eating disorders among female collegiate athletes. Specifically, this study investigated the prevalence of subclinical eating disorders among athletes, compared the prevalence among athletes and non-athletes, and explored differences in the prevalence among sports. Also, the present study investigated athletic identity and self-presentational perfectionism as possible risk factors associated with subclinical eating disorders. Two hundred forty-five female athletes from ten different sports at four universities and sixty-one female non-athlete students from two different universities participated in this study. Those over the age of 24 or who had previously been diagnosed with a clinical eating disorder were excluded. All participants completed surveys including demographic information, the Drive for Thinness, Body Dissatisfaction, and Bulimia subscales of the Eating Disorder Inventory, the Eating Attitudes Test, the Body Shape Questionnaire, the Body Attractiveness subscale of the Physical Self Perception Profile, the Eating Disorder Inventory Symptom Checklist, the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale, and the Perfectionistic Self-Presentation Scale. The results indicated that athletes do not have a greater prevalence of subclinical eating disorders than non-athletes. However, 7% of athletes still met the classification criteria for a subclinical eating disorder. Also, athletes exhibited a high frequency in meeting each of the 6 criteria (ranging from 8.2% to 71.8%), which indicated that eating pathology was evident among the athletes. There was no significant difference in the prevalence of subclinical eating disorders among different sports, which suggests that all sports are at risk. Finally, athletic identity and self-presentational perfectionism were found to be risk factors associated with subclinical eating disorders for athletes

Individual differences in forgetting strategies

Two experiments employed a combination of item method and list method directed forgetting methodologies (Bjork, LaBerge, & Legrand, 1968). Participants studied two lists of items, half of which were subsequently cued to-be-forgotten (TBF) or to-be-remembered (TBR). After the first study list, half of the participants were told to forget the entire list, whereas the remaining participants were told to remember it for a later test (e.g., list-method). The list-method forgetting instruction impaired recall of List 1 TBF and TBR items to the same extent. However, it enhanced recall of List 2 TBR items, but not TBF items. These results were found only among participants who reported engaging in effortful forgetting, whereas participants who reported doing nothing showed no effects of list-method directed forgetting. In Experiment 2, along with receiving a mid-list forget instruction, participants were given specific types of forgetting strategies that were most frequently reported in Experiment 1. The results showed that some strategies produced greater forgetting of List 1 items than others. Taken together, these findings highlight the role of effort required to achieve intentional forgetting. Implications for directed forgetting theories are discussed

Factors affecting high-level college administrators' attitudes toward information from and frequency of use of various sources of information

The purpose of this study is to explore the following for high-level college administrators: identify the attitudes toward arid frequency of use of information from various sources; investigate factors affecting the attitudes toward and frequency of use of information from various sources. Information sources were modeled along two dimensions, degree of systemization (formal or informal) and location of the source (internal or external to the user’s organization). A questionnaire was mailed to 155 administrators of the University of North Carolina system. These administrators held the rank of chancellor, vice chancellor, associate vice chancellor, or assistant vice chancellor. Usable responses were received from 89 of the administrators

Interpretations of Oliver Cromwell, 1647-1970

In 1658 Oliver Cromwell was buried in Westminster Abbey with more pomp and ceremony than had been given to any other Englishman except a king; two years later his body was exhumed, hanged, drawn, and quartered as if he had been a common thief or traitor. Since then men have had remarkably different and often violent reactions towards Cromwell. Historians have been digging him up ever since; such a paradoxical figure, it would appear, could never be allowed to remain peacefully in his grave. The complex evolution of historical interpretation of Cromwell illustrates not only the general development of British historiography but also how popular judgments are often perverted and subject to the political climate of a particular age. Moreover, certain assessments transcend the age or school of history, as in the case of the repeated stress on Cromwell's contradictory character and the excellence of his foreign policy. Men have continued to bring him into their own time, and have reinterpreted him in terms of their own age

The influence of the accessory genome on bacterial pathogen evolution

Bacterial pathogens exhibit significant variation in their genomic content of virulence factors. This reflects the abundance of strategies pathogens evolved to infect host organisms by suppressing host immunity. Molecular arms-races have been a strong driving force for the evolution of pathogenicity, with pathogens often encoding overlapping or redundant functions, such as type III protein secretion effectors and hosts encoding ever more sophisticated immune systems. The pathogens’ frequent exposure to other microbes, either in their host or in the environment, provides opportunities for the acquisition or interchange of mobile genetic elements. These DNA elements accessorise the core genome and can play major roles in shaping genome structure and altering the complement of virulence factors. Here, we review the different mobile genetic elements focusing on the more recent discoveries and highlighting their role in shaping bacterial pathogen evolution

Quantum Simulation of Tunneling in Small Systems

A number of quantum algorithms have been performed on small quantum computers; these include Shor's prime factorization algorithm, error correction, Grover's search algorithm and a number of analog and digital quantum simulations. Because of the number of gates and qubits necessary, however, digital quantum particle simulations remain untested. A contributing factor to the system size required is the number of ancillary qubits needed to implement matrix exponentials of the potential operator. Here, we show that a set of tunneling problems may be investigated with no ancillary qubits and a cost of one single-qubit operator per time step for the potential evolution. We show that physically interesting simulations of tunneling using 2 qubits (i.e. on 4 lattice point grids) may be performed with 40 single and two-qubit gates. Approximately 70 to 140 gates are needed to see interesting tunneling dynamics in three-qubit (8 lattice point) simulations.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure