Photoperiodic Response of Abrostola asclepiadis (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), a Candidate Biological Control Agent for Swallow-worts (Vincetoxicum, Apocynaceae)

A biological control program is in development for two swallow-wort species (Vincetoxicum, Apocynaceae), European vines introduced into northeastern North America. One candidate agent is the defoliator Abrostola asclepiadis (Denis and Schiffermüller) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae). The moth reportedly has up to two generations in parts of its native range. We assessed the potential multivoltinism of Russian and French populations of the moth by rearing them under constant and changing photoperiods, ranging from 13:11 to 16:8 hour (L:D). The French population was also reared outdoors under naturally-changing day lengths at a latitude similar to northern New York State. Less than six adult moths emerged, with one exception, for any photoperiod treatment. We expect A. asclepiadis to be univoltine if it were to be released into North America, limiting its potential impact on swallow-worts. It should therefore be given a lower priority for release

Transiently Transfected Purine Biosynthetic Enzymes Form Stress Bodies

It has been hypothesized that components of enzymatic pathways might organize into intracellular assemblies to improve their catalytic efficiency or lead to coordinate regulation. Accordingly, de novo purine biosynthesis enzymes may form a purinosome in the absence of purines, and a punctate intracellular body has been identified as the purinosome. We investigated the mechanism by which human de novo purine biosynthetic enzymes might be organized into purinosomes, especially under differing cellular conditions. Irregardless of the activity of bodies formed by endogenous enzymes, we demonstrate that intracellular bodies formed by transiently transfected, fluorescently tagged human purine biosynthesis proteins are best explained as protein aggregation.This work was supported by grants from the United States National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and Welch (F1515) and Packard Foundations to EMM. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Cellular and Molecular Biolog

Ingestion of amniotic fluid enhances the facilitative effect of VTA morphine on the onset of maternal behavior in virgin rats

Previous research has shown that injection of morphine into the ventral tegmental area(VTA) facilitates the onset of maternal behavior in virgin female rats, and injection of the opioid antagonist naltrexone into the VTA disrupts the onset of maternal behavior in parturient rats. Placentophagia – ingestion of placenta and amniotic fluid, usually at parturition – modifies central opioid processes. Ingestion of the active substance in placenta and amniotic fluid, Placental Opioid-Enhancing Factor (POEF), enhances the hypoalgesic effect of centrally administered morphine, and more specifically, enhances δ- and κ-opioid-receptor-\ud mediated hypoalgesia and attenuates μ-opioid-receptor-mediated hypoalgesia. POEF (in placenta or amniotic fluid) ingestion does not, by itself, produce hypoalgesia. In the\ud present study, we tested the hypothesis that ingestion of amniotic fluid enhances the facilitative effect of opioid activity (unilateral morphine injection) in the VTA on the rate of onset of maternal behavior. Virgin female Long-Evans rats were given one intra-VTA injection of morphine sulfate (0.0, 0.01, or 0.03 μg, in saline) and an orogastric infusion of 0.25 ml amniotic fluid or saline once each day of the first three days of the 10-day testing\ud period. Subjects were continuously exposed to foster pups that were replaced every 12 h; replacement of pups was followed by a 15-min observation period. Maternal behavior\ud latency was determined by the first of two consecutive tests wherein the subject displayed pup retrieval, pup licking in the nest, and crouching over all foster pups, during the 15-min observation. We confirmed the previous finding that the VTA injection, alone, of 0.03 μg morphine shortened the latency to show maternal behavior and that 0.0 μg and 0.01 μg morphine did not. Ingestion of amniotic fluid (and therefore POEF) facilitated the onset of\ud maternal behavior in rats receiving an intra-VTA microinjection of an otherwise subthreshold dose of morphine (0.01 μg)

Case 5: Making Oral Health Care More Palatable

Oral health is a major indicator for overall health; however, it is not covered under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP), making oral health care relatively inaccessible to a large population. A large and diverse municipality has recently conducted a needs assessment that shows that there is a need to improve accessibility to dental care for its citizens. A Community Health Centre (CHC) spearheaded the development of an oral health coalition to help unify and steer the direction of oral health care in the region. The goal of the coalition is to bring oral health to the forefront of healthcare. Under the supervision of the CHC’s CEO, a health promoter, Emily, and a Master of Public Health candidate, Nick, must help inform and develop the oral health coalition through a steering committee. This set-up is based on the American example of state-wide oral health coalitions. With the guidance of regional oral health leadership, Emily and Nick must develop a stakeholder engagement plan which identifies key stakeholders, a purpose, and terms of reference for the coalition, all with backing from the literature and other oral health coalitions. The goal of this case is for the reader to practice skills in identifying a broad base of stakeholders, engagement, and health promotion strategies and in developing multidisciplinary work. Through the development of the case, readers will work in groups to determine appropriate stakeholders and the utility of coalition building. These skills relating to stakeholder engagement, critical thinking, and planning in a multidisciplinary team can be used in multiple areas of public health when needing to garner a broad-base of support for programs or initiatives for policy change

Effects of Opportunistic Shooting on Trap Visitation by Wild Pigs

Wild pigs (Sus scrofa) are a non-native, invasive species that cause in excess of $1.5 billion of damage annually in the United States. Although lethal removal by trapping is oftentimes the most cost- and time-effective means for managing local wild pig populations, many landowners and natural resource professionals implement additional non-trapping techniques such as opportunistic daytime shooting, night shooting, hunting with dogs, and shooting over bait to further enhance removal rates. However, these non-trapping techniques may significantly alter the behavior of wild pigs and subsequently reduce trapping success. Our objective was to provide a preliminary assessment of the effects non-trapping techniques on wild pig visitation to traps. During the summer of 2012, we monitored trap visitation of wild pig sounders and boars using game cameras at 26 corral traps on 6 study sites in Alabama. We implemented combinations of non-trapping removal techniques (recreational stalk hunting, night shooting, and shooting of pigs at traps) coupled with increase vehicular (ATV and truck) traffic along property trails (hereafter collectively termed disturbance) for 3-5 days on 3 study sites while continually monitoring sounder and boar visitation to traps on all 6 study sites. On each site, we prebaited traps for ≥2 weeks to condition approximately 3-4 sounders to visit traps and used game cameras to determine sounder composition. Once sounders became conditioned to visiting traps daily, we recorded the total number of days traps were visited, number of visits per 24-hour period, and the duration (min) of all visits during a one-week period prior to the implementation of disturbance. Repeated trap visits were segregated by ≥ 1 hour absence of pigs between image recordings and visit duration began when the first pig of a sounder was recorded on camera until after the last pig of the sounder left the trap. After one week of monitoring visitation metrics, we applied disturbance to one of each pair of sites. We classified non-trapping removal techniques as either direct or indirect disturbance. Indirect disturbance was a combination of non-trapping removal techniques that were not knowingly applied directly to wild pigs, such as stalk hunting and the periodic discharge of firearms and cracker shells in the immediate vicinity of traps and increased vehicular traffic. Direct disturbances were applied directly to specific wild pigs, mainly the shooting of non-trapped pigs while they are at a trap which is somewhat of a common practice among novice pig control operators. To simulate this direct disturbance, we set several traps to capture a portion of pigs from a sounder. Once captured, we then released the pigs while discharging several rounds as the pigs exited the trap. After disturbance was implemented, we continued monitoring trap visitation metrics on both sites within each pair of study sites. We used a Before-AfterControl-Impact (BACI) design to test for interaction effects among the visitation metrics between treatment and control sites before and after disturbance implementation. We monitored trap visitation of 16 sounders and 8 boars and 10 sounders and 8 boars on treatment and control sites, respectively. Overall, we applied 39 hours of indirect disturbance and 3 hours of direct disturbance (via use of dogs) including the discharge of 112 cracker shells and 63 high-powered rifle rounds on treatment (disturbance) sites. Additionally, we simulated the shooting of pigs while at traps (direct disturbance) on an additional 6 sounders. Total number of days (P=0.349) and total number of visits (P=0.130) 1-week before and after disturbance on treatment and control sites were similar; however, total visit duration differed before and after disturbance on treatment and control sites (P=0.038), demonstrating a change in pig behavior in response to disturbance. Although we did not detect treatment effects for total days visited and total number of visits, we speculate this may be due to our relatively small sample sizes coupled with inherent variability in pig response. Moreover, we only applied disturbance for a relatively short period of time (3-5 days) with somewhat minimal levels of disturbance. Within the context of one year of data, we suggest non-trapping techniques be implemented cautiously, and strategically, when conducting wild pig removal as these techniques may reduce overall trapping success

Online Active Learning For Sound Event Detection

Data collection and annotation is a laborious, time-consuming prerequisite for supervised machine learning tasks. Online Active Learning (OAL) is a paradigm that addresses this issue by simultaneously minimizing the amount of annotation required to train a classifier and adapting to changes in the data over the duration of the data collection process. Prior work has indicated that fluctuating class distributions and data drift are still common problems for OAL. This work presents new loss functions that address these challenges when OAL is applied to Sound Event Detection (SED). Experimental results from the SONYC dataset and two Voice-Type Discrimination (VTD) corpora indicate that OAL can reduce the time and effort required to train SED classifiers by a factor of 5 for SONYC, and that the new methods presented here successfully resolve issues present in existing OAL methods.Comment: Submitted to ICASSP 2024. Publication will belong to IEE

Comparison of surface chlorophyll, primary production, and satellite imagery in hydrographically different sounds off southern New England

Block Island Sound (BIS) and Rhode Island Sound (RIS) are adjacent inner continental shelf ecosystems with contrasting hydrographic regimes. BIS exhibits more energetic tidal mixing, and water column stratification remains weak but persists year-round due to nearby estuarine exchange flow; RIS is less influenced by estuaries, and more seasonal with strong stratification in summer. We compared annual cycles of phytoplankton biomass and primary production in BIS and RIS using measurements (surface chlorophyll, 14C primary production), primary production models (Webb/Platt and BZE models), and satellite ocean color products. During 22 mo of sampling, measured surface chlorophyll was not significantly different between BIS (mean = 1.86 mg m-3) and RIS (1.69 mg m-3), and bimodal peaks of phytoplankton biomass and production occurred concurrently in both Sounds. In contrast, a 12 yr ocean-color based chlorophyll time series indicated higher long-term average surface chlorophyll in the more well-mixed system (BIS, mean = 1.50 mg m-3; RIS, mean = 0.86 mg m-3). BIS annual primary production (318 to 329 g C m-2 yr-1) was higher than RIS (239 to 256 g C m-2 yr-1; p \u3c 0.001). These differences were most apparent during the summer, concurrent with the largest differences in water column stratification. Phytoplankton bloom phenology was driven by physical processes, with chlorophyll significantly related to water column stratification (r = -0.51, p = 0.01), depth of the euphotic zone (r = -0.54, p = 0.05), and surface water salinity (r = 0.54, p = 0.04). Primary production was correlated with surface water temperature (r = 0.57, p = 0.03) but the mechanisms underlying production differences between the Sounds remain unresolved. We hypothesize that different hydrographies give rise to different productivity between the Sounds

Junior Recital: Joe Donohue, percussion

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Performance. Mr. Donohue studies percussion with John Lawless and Justin Chesarek.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1950/thumbnail.jp

Musculoskeletal tissue engineering with human umbilical cord mesenchymal stromal cells

Multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) hold tremendous promise for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, yet with so many sources of MSCs, what are the primary criteria for selecting leading candidates? Ideally, the cells will be multipotent, inexpensive, lack donor site morbidity, donor materials should be readily available in large numbers, immunocompatible, politically benign and expandable in vitro for several passages. Bone marrow MSCs do not meet all of these criteria and neither do embryonic stem cells. However, a promising new cell source is emerging in tissue engineering that appears to meet these criteria: MSCs derived from Wharton’s jelly of umbilical cord MSCs. Exposed to appropriate conditions, umbilical cord MSCs can differentiate in vitro along several cell lineages such as the chondrocyte, osteoblast, adipocyte, myocyte, neuronal, pancreatic or hepatocyte lineages. In animal models, umbilical cord MSCs have demonstrated in vivo differentiation ability and promising immunocompatibility with host organs/tissues, even in xenotransplantation. In this article, we address their cellular characteristics, multipotent differentiation ability and potential for tissue engineering with an emphasis on musculoskeletal tissue engineering