The state of mammals in Wales: a report by the Mammal Society for Natural Resources Wales

This report summarises the current knowledge of the mammal species found in Wales, reporting population sizes, geographical ranges, trends and, for native species, their Regional Red List status according to International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) standards. Produced in association with Wales Mammal Biodiversity Action Forum

Wetland Manipulation in the Yalahau Region of the Northern Maya Lowlands

Manipulation of wetlands for agricultural purposes by the ancient Maya of southern Mexico and Central America has been a subject of much research and debate since the 1970s. Evidence for wetland cultivation systems, in the form of drained or channelized fields, and raised planting platforms, has been restricted primarily to the southern Maya Lowlands. New research in the Yalahau region of Quintana Roo, Mexico, has recorded evidence for wetland manipulation in the far northern lowlands, in the form of rock alignments that apparently functioned to control water movement and soil accumulation in seasonally inundated areas. Nearby ancient settlements date primarily to the Late Preclassic period (ca. 100 B.C. to A.C. 350), and this age is tentatively attributed to wetland management in the area

Using biological records to infer long-term occupancy trends of mammals in the UK

Conservation action is usually triggered by detecting trends in species’ population size, geographical range, or occupancy (proportion of sites occupied). Robust estimates of these metrics are often required by policy makers and practitioners, yet many species lack dedicated monitoring schemes. An alternative source of data for trend estimation is provided by biological records, i.e., species presence information. In the UK, there are millions of such records, but biological trend assessments are often hindered by biases caused by the unstructured way in which they are collected. Recent advances in occupancy modelling that account for changes in survey effort and detectability over time mean that robust occupancy trends can now be estimated from these records. By grouping mammal species into survey assemblages — species likely to be recorded at the same time — and applying occupancy models, this study provides estimates of long-term (1970 to 2016) occupancy trends for 37 terrestrial mammal species from the UK. The inter-annual occupancy growth rates for these species ranged from -4.26% to 11.25%. This information was used to classify two species as strongly decreasing, five as decreasing, 12 as no change, 11 as increasing and seven as strongly increasing. Viewing the survey assemblages as a whole, the occupancy growth rates for small mammals were, on average, decreasing (-0.8% SD 1.57), whereas bats and deer (0.9% SD 1.30) were increasing (3.8% SD 3.25; 0.9% SD 1.30 respectively), and mid-sized mammals were stable (-0.3 SD 1.72). These results contribute much-needed information on a number of data deficient species, and provide evidence for prioritising conservation action

Impact of Optimized Breastfeeding on the Costs of Necrotizing Enterocolitis in Extremely Low Birthweight Infants

To estimate risk of NEC for ELBW infants as a function of preterm formula and maternal milk (MM) intake and calculate the impact of suboptimal feeding on NEC incidence and costs

A Spatial Analysis of Pleistocene-Holocene Transition Sites in the Southern Columbia Plateau and Northern Great Basin of North America

The Western Pluvial Lakes Tradition was proposed by Stephen Bedwell in 1973 to account for an early Holocene lake-marsh-grassland environment adaptation for hunter-gatherers living in the southern Columbia Plateau and western Great Basin of North America. Since then, archaeological site research and regional syntheses have supported this hypothesis with information on concentrations of early archaeological sites found on ancient wetland margins. However, Plateau-Basin archaeology tends to focus on site- and basin-specific analyses to support early subsistence-settlement hypotheses. To explore whether pluvial lakes were central to regional resource use and mobility patterns at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, it is necessary to broaden the scale of analysis from typical basin-focused studies. Paleoenvironmental and archaeological spatial data from the Burns and Vale Oregon Bureau of Land Management districts are used in this thesis to explore the centrality of pluvial lakes for early peoples across the dynamic landscape of the Plateau-Basin region at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. This research utilizes data collected in a cultural resource management environment to study spatial bias in data collection and analysis, as well as explore the potential benefits of using under-utilized isolate data collected in a cultural resource management research environment. The statistical analyses in this study confirm a regional association between early Holocene archaeological sites and pluvial lakes, but also indicate that the early Holocene economy was more diverse than is typically suggested in Western Pluvial Lakes Tradition research

Lifeways in the Northern Mayan Lowlands: New Approaches to Archaeology in the Yucatán Peninsula

The flat, dry reaches of the northern Yucatán Peninsula have been largely ignored by archaeologists drawn to the more illustrious sites of the south. This book is the first volume to focus entirely on the northern Maya lowlands, presenting a broad cross-section of current research projects in the region by both established and up-and-coming scholars. To address the heretofore unrecognized importance of the northern lowlands in Maya prehistory, the contributors cover key topics relevant to Maya studies: the environmental and historical significance of the region, the archaeology of both large and small sites, the development of agriculture, resource management, ancient politics, and long-distance interaction among sites. As a volume in the series Native Peoples of the Americas, it adds a human dimension to archaeological findings by incorporating modern ethnographic data.By exploring various social and political levels of Maya society through a broad expanse of time, Lifeways in the Northern Maya Lowlands not only reconstructs a little-known past, it also suggests the broad implications of archaeology for related studies of tourism, household economies, and ethnoarchaeology. It is a benchmark work that pointedly demonstrates the need for researchers in both north and south to ignore modern geographic boundaries in their search for new ideas to further their understanding of the ancient Maya.https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/mono/1140/thumbnail.jp

Applying the Quadruple Process model to evaluate change in implicit attitudinal responses during therapy for panic disorder

OBJECTIVE: This study explored the automatic and controlled processes that may influence performance on an implicit measure across cognitive-behavioral group therapy for panic disorder. METHOD: The Quadruple Process model was applied to error scores from an Implicit Association Test evaluating associations between the concepts Me (vs. Not Me) + Calm (vs. Panicked) to evaluate four distinct processes: Association Activation, Detection, Guessing, and Overcoming Bias. Parameter estimates were calculated in the panic group (n=28) across each treatment session where the IAT was administered, and at matched times when the IAT was completed in the healthy control group (n=31). RESULTS: Association Activation for Me + Calm became stronger over treatment for participants in the panic group, demonstrating that it is possible to change automatically activated associations in memory (vs. simply overriding those associations) in a clinical sample via therapy. As well, the Guessing bias toward the calm category increased over treatment for participants in the panic group. CONCLUSIONS: This research evaluates key tenets about the role of automatic processing in cognitive models of anxiety, and emphasizes the viability of changing the actual activation of automatic associations in the context of treatment, versus only changing a person’s ability to use reflective processing to overcome biased automatic processing