The View from Augusta: Developments Growing Out of the Speaker’s 2013 Round Table Discussions and 2014 Aging Summit

Mark Eves and Jessica Maurer describe the significant progress made in Maine since 2013 in addressing aging-related issues through collaboration between legislative and community-based efforts. The Maine Aging Initiative, formed in 2014 and coordinated through the Maine Council on Aging and the House Speaker’s office, plays a significant role in supporting these efforts

Measurements of total scattering spectra from bocaccio (Sebastes paucispinis)

Marine sportfishing in southern California is a huge industry with annual revenues totaling many billions of dollars. However, the stocks of lingcod and six rockfish species have been declared overfished by the Pacific Fisheries Management Council. As part of a multifaceted fisheries management plan, marine conservation areas, covering many million square nautical miles, have been mandated. To monitor the recovery of the rockfish stocks in these areas, scientists are faced with the following challenges: 1) multiple species of rockfish exist in these areas; 2) the species reside near or on the bottom at depths of 80 to 300 m; and 3) they are low in numerical density. To meet these challenges, multifrequency echosounders, multibeam sonar, and cameras mounted on remotely operated vehicles are frequently used (Reynolds et al., 2001). The accuracy and precision of these echosounder results are largely dependent upon the accuracy of the species classification and target strength estimation (MacLennan and Simmonds, 1992)

A comparison of spatial frequency tuning for judgments of eye gaze and facial identity

AbstractHumans use the direction of eye gaze and facial identity to make important social judgments. We carried out the first measurements of spatial frequency (SF) tuning for judgments of eye gaze, and compared SF tuning for judgments of facial identity and eye gaze. In Experiment 1, participants discriminated between leftward and rightward shifts of gaze, or between two male faces or two female faces. Faces were masked with visual noise that blocked one of 10 SF bands. For each task and masking SF, we measured contrast thresholds for human observers, and used an ideal observer to measure the amount of visual information available to perform the task. As in previous research, low to mid SFs were most important for judgments of facial identity. Mid to high SFs were most important for judgments of eye gaze, and the highest SF important for these judgments was higher than that for identity. In Experiment 2, participants discriminated horizontal and vertical shifts of gaze. The highest SF important for judgments of gaze did not differ between the horizontal and vertical axes. However, SFs above and below this value were more important for judgments of vertical shifts of gaze than for horizontal shifts of gaze. These results suggest that the visual system relies on higher SFs for judgments of eye gaze than for judgments of facial identity, and that SF tuning is broader for judgments of vertical shifts of gaze than for horizontal shifts of gaze

Credit Spreads And Systematic RiskIn The U.S. Banking Industry - A Neural Network Model Approach

This paper shows that systematic risk in the U.S. banking industry displayed historical responsiveness to variations in the AAA-Baa credit spread. Critically, through the development of a series of single hidden layer perceptron neural network models, the principal credit spreads in the fixed income market catalyzed a defined regime shift in systematic risk proximate the financial crisis, and was more influential to the quantification of realized systematic risk than the statistical specifications of beta. As an intriguing result of the learned model simulations, the beta slope coefficients for the largest banks in the study exhibited significant acceleration in the statistical dependence on credit spread variations

Retirement Security and the Financial and Economic Crisis: An Overview

This volume explores how retirement planning and long-term financial security have changed, following the crisis. This paper provides an overview of key lessons and conclusions

Behavioral Recovery and Early Decision Making in Patients with Prolonged Disturbance in Consciousness after Traumatic Brain Injury

The extent of behavioral recovery that occurs in patients with traumatic disorders of consciousness (DoC) following discharge from the acute care setting has been under-studied and increases the risk of overly pessimistic outcome prediction. The aim of this observational cohort study was to systematically track behavioral and functional recovery in patients with prolonged traumatic DoC following discharge from the acute care setting. Standardized behavioral data were acquired from 95 patients in a minimally conscious (MCS) or vegetative state (VS) recruited from 11 clinic sites and randomly assigned to the placebo arm of a previously completed prospective clinical trial. Patients were followed for 6 weeks by blinded observers to determine frequency of recovery of six target behaviors associated with functional status. The Coma Recovery Scale-Revised and Disability Rating Scale were used to track reemergence of target behaviors and assess degree of functional disability, respectively. Twenty percent (95% confidence interval [CI]: 13-30%) of participants (mean age 37.2; median 47 days post-injury; 69 men) recovered all six target behaviors within the 6 week observation period. The odds of recovering a specific target behavior were 3.2 (95% CI: 1.2-8.1) to 7.8 (95% CI: 2.7-23.0) times higher for patients in MCS than for those in VS. Patients with preserved language function ("MCS+") recovered the most behaviors (p ≤ 0.002) and had the least disability (p ≤ 0.002) at follow-up. These findings suggest that recovery of high-level behaviors underpinning functional independence is common in patients with prolonged traumatic DoC. Clinicians involved in early prognostic counseling should recognize that failure to emerge from traumatic DoC before 28 days does not necessarily portend unfavorable outcome

Cryoprotection of Platelets by Grafted Polymers

Unlike red blood cells (RBC) which are stored at 4°C, platelets are stored at 22–24°C (room temperature) due to biophysical and biochemical changes induced by cold temperatures aggregately known as the ‘cold storage lesion’ (CSL). However, 22°C storage greatly increases the risk of microbial growth, thus limiting the safe storage of platelets to only 5–7 days (versus 42 days for RBC). Consequent to the short shelf life of platelets, blood services face chronic shortages of these life-saving cells. To overcome both the risk of microbial contamination and the constrained supplies of platelets, renewed research into attenuating the CSL and/or determining where cold stored platelets are clinically suitable are ongoing. In this chapter, we show that the covalent grafting of methoxypolyethylene glycol (mPEG), a biocompatible polymer, to the membrane of platelets attenuates the CSL. Moreover, the grafted mPEG serves as a potent cryoprotectant allowing platelets to be stored at 4°C, or frozen at −20°C, while retaining normal platelet counts and biologic function. The successful development of platelet PEGylation may provide a means by which the cold storage of platelets can be achieved with a minimal loss of platelet quality while improving both platelet microbial safety and inventory

Eggshell pigment composition covaries with phylogeny but not with life history or with nesting ecology traits of British passerines

No single hypothesis is likely to explain the diversity in eggshell coloration and patterning across birds, suggesting that eggshell appearance is most likely to have evolved to fulfill many nonexclusive functions. By controlling for nonindependent phylogenetic associations between related species, we describe this diversity using museum eggshells of 71 British breeding passerine species to examine how eggshell pigment composition and concentrations vary with phylogeny and with life-history and nesting ecology traits. Across species, concentrations of biliverdin and protoporphyrin, the two main pigments found in eggshells, were strongly and positively correlated, and both pigments strongly covaried with phylogenetic relatedness. Controlling for phylogeny, cavity-nesting species laid eggs with lower protoporphyrin concentrations in the shell, while higher biliverdin concentrations were associated with thicker eggshells for species of all nest types. Overall, these relationships between eggshell pigment concentrations and the biology of passerines are similar to those previously found in nonpasserine eggs, and imply that phylogenetic dependence must be considered across the class in further explanations of the functional significance of avian eggshell coloration

How much calcium to shell out? Eggshell calcium carbonate content is greater in birds with thinner shells, larger clutches, and longer lifespans

The avian eggshell is a bio-ceramic structure that protects the embryo. It is composed almost entirely of calcium carbonate and a small amount of organic material. An optimal amount of calcium carbonate in the eggshell is essential for the embryo's development, yet how the ratio of calcium carbonate to organic matter varies between species has not been investigated. Calcium is a limiting resource for most birds, so its investment in their eggs should be optimized for a bird's life history. We measured the relative calcium carbonate content of eggshells in 222 bird species and tested hypotheses for how this trait has evolved with the life-history strategies of these species and other traits of their respective egg physiologies. We found that (i) eggshell calcium carbonate content was positively correlated with species having thinner eggshells and smaller than expected eggs relative to incubating parental mass, (ii) species with small mean clutch sizes had lower calcium carbonate content in their eggshells, and (iii) for species with larger clutch sizes, eggshell calcium carbonate content was negatively correlated with their mean lifespan. The pattern of lower eggshell calcium carbonate in longer lived, larger clutched birds suggests that calcium provision to the eggshell has long-term costs for the individual