Factors influencing Kemp's ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys kempii) distribution in nearshore waters and implications for management

Post-pelagic juvenile and subadult Kemp's ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys kempii) (20-40 cm straight carapace length) utilize nearshore waters of the northwestern Gulf of Mexico as nursery or developmental feeding grounds. This study utilizes 10 years of entanglement netting data to characterize long-term abundance and distribution of Kemp's ridley sea turtles at index habitats in this region. Netting surveys were conducted during April-October 1993-2002, primarily at Sabine Pass, Texas and Calcasieu Pass, Louisiana. Additionally, this study takes an ecosystem-based approach to understanding factors influencing Kemp's ridley in-water abundance and distribution via the development of a conceptual model incorporating data on nesting dynamics, environmental conditions, prey availability, and predation pressure. Overall monthly mean ridley catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) peaked in the beginning of summer (April-June), probably in response to rising water temperatures and seasonal occurrence of blue crab prey. Annual mean ridley CPUE across all study areas peaked in 1994, 1997, 1999 and 2002, suggesting a 2-3 year cycle in abundance that may be related to patterns in clutch size or hatch success at the Rancho Nuevo, Mexico nesting beach. However, ridley CPUE in nearshore waters remained relatively constant or decreased slightly even as number of hatchlings released from Rancho Nuevo increased exponentially. Annual declines in Texas strandings since 1994 and subsequent increases in Florida counterparts since 1995 suggest a shift in ridley distribution from the western to eastern Gulf in recent years. Significant declines in ridley CPUE at Sabine Pass since 1997 coincided with a concurrent reduction in blue crab size, but a similar trend was not detected at Calcasieu Pass. Kemp's ridley occurrence at study sites was not significantly related to shrimping activity/by-catch. There also were no biologically significant relationships between Kemp's ridley CPUE and abiotic factors, nor were ridleys deterred from utilizing areas frequented by bull sharks. Overall, nesting dynamics and prey availability were conceptual model components appearing to have the greatest influence on nearshore ridley occurrence

Mechanisms of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-Induced Acute Lung Injury

ABSTRACT Systems biology offers considerable promise in uncovering novel pathways by which viruses and other microbial pathogens interact with host signaling and expression networks to mediate disease severity. In this study, we have developed an unbiased modeling approach to identify new pathways and network connections mediating acute lung injury, using severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) as a model pathogen. We utilized a time course of matched virologic, pathological, and transcriptomic data within a novel methodological framework that can detect pathway enrichment among key highly connected network genes. This unbiased approach produced a high-priority list of 4 genes in one pathway out of over 3,500 genes that were differentially expressed following SARS-CoV infection. With these data, we predicted that the urokinase and other wound repair pathways would regulate lethal versus sublethal disease following SARS-CoV infection in mice. We validated the importance of the urokinase pathway for SARS-CoV disease severity using genetically defined knockout mice, proteomic correlates of pathway activation, and pathological disease severity. The results of these studies demonstrate that a fine balance exists between host coagulation and fibrinolysin pathways regulating pathological disease outcomes, including diffuse alveolar damage and acute lung injury, following infection with highly pathogenic respiratory viruses, such as SARS-CoV.IMPORTANCESevere acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) emerged in 2002 and 2003, and infected patients developed an atypical pneumonia, acute lung injury (ALI), and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) leading to pulmonary fibrosis and death. We identified sets of differentially expressed genes that contribute to ALI and ARDS using lethal and sublethal SARS-CoV infection models. Mathematical prioritization of our gene sets identified the urokinase and extracellular matrix remodeling pathways as the most enriched pathways. By infecting Serpine1-knockout mice, we showed that the urokinase pathway had a significant effect on both lung pathology and overall SARS-CoV pathogenesis. These results demonstrate the effective use of unbiased modeling techniques for identification of high-priority host targets that regulate disease outcomes. Similar transcriptional signatures were noted in 1918 and 2009 H1N1 influenza virus-infected mice, suggesting a common, potentially treatable mechanism in development of virus-induced ALI

The units of measure consistency checker for the entity-relationship-attribute requirements model

Typescript (photocopy).Digitized by Kansas Correctional IndustriesDepartment: Computer Science

Babes, Balls, and Babies: A Working Ethnography of Motherhood

275 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005.Women's professional athletics in America---part business venture, part self-help group, part sociological movement---has become an intriguing site for exploring the relationship of women to the global socio-cultural matrix. In American women's sports, particularly team sports, women's bodies and their representations operate as shorthand for the shifting gendered landscape of America. At this junction, we find that even as Chaka Kahn sings, "I'm every woman" all women regardless of race, class or sexual orientation struggled with the supermom/super-person mythos that has become implicated in working motherhood. The Super Mother myth has been is reinforced and even celebrated in the media representations of female athletes. From Sheryl Swoopes to the mothers of the Women's World Cup team motherhood and professional athletics are not only seen as possible but perhaps as natural as shooting a basket or defending the goal. Yet, despite all the media attention we still find that women of all ages, races and sexualities are locked in emotional and psychological battle around the motherhood and reproduction. This dissertation is a critical ethnographic study of motherhood and sports in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The purpose of this project is two-fold. First, to record and highlight working mothers experiences as mothers and as workers with a focus on the role of sport/work in shaping women's emotional, physical and psychological responses to work and motherhood. It explores the cross-section of women's reproductive lives and experiences through interviews with mothers of the Women's National Basketball League (WNBA) and the Women's United Soccer Association (W*USA). Using these interviews as a grounding point this study goes on to explore the often difficult and tense relationship between women, motherhood and work regardless of whether one is a mother or not by including experiences and commentary from women who are not professional athletes but also working mothers and women who desire to be mothers. Second, the purpose is to analyze the methodology of interviewing. It explores the processes of interviewing and the subsequent "writing-up" of interviews by authors. In the tradition of Behar (2003), it advocates for visible presence and vulnerability of the author as both interviewer and writer.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD