Employment Protection and Domestic Violence: Addressing Abuse in the Labor Grievance Process

The effects of domestic violence are not limited to the home environment. Its effects are felt in employment when abused employees are absent from work and when violent incidents erupt in the workplace. For example, a bruised employee might be too injured and embarrassed to attend work, or an estranged spouse might stalk and harass a victim on the job. Another issue arises in that employers often discipline victims of domestic violence for absenteeism and incidents of violence that occur in the workplace. Discipline of union members is governed by collective bargaining agreements and subject to the labor grievance process. These grievances often end in arbitration, where the union represents the battered employee. Because of this occurrence, employers, unions, and arbitrators must be educated about domestic violence to ensure victims of abuse receive adequate job protection

Interactions between temperature and energy supply drive microbial communities in hydrothermal sediment

Temperature and bioavailable energy control the distribution of life on Earth, and interact with each other due to the dependency of biological energy requirements on temperature. Here we analyze how temperature-energy interactions structure sediment microbial communities in two hydrothermally active areas of Guaymas Basin. Sites from one area experience advective input of thermogenically produced electron donors by seepage from deeper layers, whereas sites from the other area are diffusion-dominated and electron donor-depleted. In both locations, Archaea dominate at temperatures >45 °C and Bacteria at temperatures <10 °C. Yet, at the phylum level and below, there are clear differences. Hot seep sites have high proportions of typical hydrothermal vent and hot spring taxa. By contrast, high-temperature sites without seepage harbor mainly novel taxa belonging to phyla that are widespread in cold subseafloor sediment. Our results suggest that in hydrothermal sediments temperature determines domain-level dominance, whereas temperature-energy interactions structure microbial communities at the phylum-level and below

In-situ mechanical weakness of subducting sediments beneath a plate boundary décollement in the Nankai Trough

© 2018, The Author(s). The study investigates the in-situ strength of sediments across a plate boundary décollement using drilling parameters recorded when a 1180-m-deep borehole was established during International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 370, Temperature-Limit of the Deep Biosphere off Muroto (T-Limit). Information of the in-situ strength of the shallow portion in/around a plate boundary fault zone is critical for understanding the development of accretionary prisms and of the décollement itself. Studies using seismic reflection surveys and scientific ocean drillings have recently revealed the existence of high pore pressure zones around frontal accretionary prisms, which may reduce the effective strength of the sediments. A direct measurement of in-situ strength by experiments, however, has not been executed due to the difficulty in estimating in-situ stress conditions. In this study, we derived a depth profile for the in-situ strength of a frontal accretionary prism across a décollement from drilling parameters using the recently established equivalent strength (EST) method. At site C0023, the toe of the accretionary prism area off Cape Muroto, Japan, the EST gradually increases with depth but undergoes a sudden change at ~ 800 mbsf, corresponding to the top of the subducting sediment. At this depth, directly below the décollement zone, the EST decreases from ~ 10 to 2 MPa, with a change in the baseline. This mechanically weak zone in the subducting sediments extends over 250 m (~ 800–1050 mbsf), corresponding to the zone where the fluid influx was discovered, and high-fluid pressure was suggested by previous seismic imaging observations. Although the origin of the fluids or absolute values of the strength remain unclear, our investigations support previous studies suggesting that elevated pore pressure beneath the décollement weakens the subducting sediments. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]

Electronic Effects of the Substituents on Relaxometric and CEST Behaviour of Ln(III)-DOTA-Tetraanilides

Three different 1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane-1,4,7,10-tetraacetamide (DOTAM) derivatives bearing as amide N-substituents phenyl, p-methoxyphenyl and p-ethylbenzoate groups were synthesized and the 1H and 17O NMR relaxometric behaviour of the Gd(III)-chelates and chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) effect of the Eu(III) complexes were evaluated. The electronic properties of the substituents were shown to strongly influence the coordinated water exchange rate (kex), resulting in five times faster kex for the electron donating phenylmethoxy group compared to the electron withdrawing ethylbenzoate group

Ammonia‐oxidizing B

Sediments across the Namibian continental margin feature a strong microbial activity gradient at their surface. This is reflected in ammonium concentrations of < 10 μM in oligotrophic abyssal plain sediments near the South Atlantic Gyre compared with ammonium concentrations of > 700 μM in upwelling areas near the coast. Here we address changes in apparent abundance and structure of ammonia‐oxidizing archaeal and bacterial communities (AOA and AOB) along a transect of seven sediment stations across the Namibian shelf by analysing their respective ammonia monooxygenase genes (amoA). The relative abundance of archaeal and bacterial amoA (g(−1) DNA) decreased with increasing ammonium concentrations, and bacterial amoA frequently outnumbered archaeal amoA at the sediment–water interface [0–1 cm below seafloor (cmbsf)]. In contrast, AOA were apparently as abundant as AOB or dominated in several deeper (> 10 cmbsf), anoxic sediment layers. Phylogenetic analyses showed a change within the AOA community along the transect, from two clusters without cultured representatives at the gyre to N itrososphaera and N itrosopumilus clusters in the upwelling region. AOB almost exclusively belonged to the N itrosospira cluster 1. Our results suggest that this predominantly marine AOB lineage without cultured representatives can thrive at low ammonium concentrations and is active in the marine nitrogen cycle

Carbon sources of benthic fauna in temperate lakes across multiple trophic states

Previous studies have shown that microbially produced methane can be a dominant carbon source of lacustrine sedimentary macrofauna in eutrophic lakes, most likely through grazing on methane-oxidizing bacteria. Here we investigate the contributions of different carbon sources to macrofaunal biomass across five lakes in central Switzerland that range from oligotrophic to highly eutrophic. Macrofaunal communities change with trophic state, with chironomid larvae dominating oligotrophic and tubificid oligochaetes dominating eutrophic lake sediments. 13C-isotopic data suggest that the average contribution of methane-derived carbon to the biomass of both macrofaunal groups is similar, but consistently remains minor, ranging from only ~ 1 % in the oligotrophic lake to at most 12 % in the eutrophic lakes. The remaining biomass can be explained with assimilation of detritus-derived organic carbon. Low abundances of methane cycling microorganisms in macrofaunal specimens, burrows, and surrounding sediment based on 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequences and copy numbers of genes involved in anaerobic and aerobic methane cycling (mcrA, pmoA) support the interpretation of isotopic data. Notably, 16S rRNA gene sequences of macrofauna, including macrofaunal guts, are highly divergent from those in tubes or sediments. Many macrofaunal specimens are dominated by a single 16S rRNA phylotype of Fusobacteria, α-, β-, γ-, or ε-Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, or Parcubacteria. This raises the question whether dominant lake macrofauna live in so far uncharacterized relationships with detrital organic matter-degrading bacterial endosymbionts.ISSN:1810-6277ISSN:1810-628