Evicted

The critically acclaimed New York Times best-seller Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City has been selected for the University of Mississippi‘s Common Reading Experience for 2019. Written by Matthew Desmond, a Princeton sociologist and recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, Evicted was awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for being “a deeply researched expose that showed how mass evictions after the 2008 economic crash were less a consequence than a cause of poverty.” The book has been described as “a landmark work of scholarship and reportage that will forever change the way we look at poverty in America.” Since its publication, Evicted has been credited with transforming how the nation understands “extreme poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving a devastating, uniquely American problem.”https://egrove.olemiss.edu/umreads/1000/thumbnail.jp

Kelp-forest response to light limitation

The loss of canopy-forming macroalgae is one aspect of coastal ecosystem degradation that is being driven by anthropogenic stressors. The drivers of canopy loss are, in many cases, well understood, but the effect of light availability is a factor that has been relatively overlooked given its importance. Light availability controls marine productivity and is a fundamental factor that shapes the structure of kelp-forest communities. When the variability of light availability exceeds natural thresholds as a result of anthropogenic stress, macroalgae struggle to acclimate or adapt and community structure and productivity is altered. Significant modification of the coastal light environment has likely occurred in many of the world’s coastal seas, and further increases in turbidity are predicted as a result of land use intensification, sea level rise and changing climatic conditions. This prediction forms the premise for this body of work. The primary objective was to detail the effect of light availability on the structure and function of kelp-forest communities, and to quantify the physiological processes that underpin this relationship. From this, a better understanding of how kelp-forest communities will respond to future changes in light availability is possible, and more accurate predictions of kelp-forest productivity can be made. Subtidal light availability was significantly less on reefs adjacent to coastlines dominated by urban, agricultural and forestry land use when compared to similar reefs associated with coastlines of native forest. When averaged over a seasonal cycle, light availability at 10 m on the low-light reefs was approximately half that measured on high-light reefs. The kelp-forest communities inhabiting these reefs were also shown to differ significantly. Although similar macroalgal species were shared between regions, community biomass was two to five times greater on high-light reefs. This was primarily due to a greater contribution by large canopy forming macroalgae. Additionally, macroalgae typically had a larger and deeper depth distribution on high-light reefs, in effect, providing more habitat and food to the kelp-forest ecosystem. This resulted in 0.7 – 2.8 times more epifaunal biomass being supported per square metre in high- compared to low-light reefs. Although this difference was largely due to greater habitat availability on high-light reefs, habitat quality was also shown to influence epifaunal biomass. The invasive kelp, Undaria pinnatifida, contributed significantly to community biomass on low-light reefs but was shown to support low epifaunal biomass as it offers low refuge value and, being an annual species, is an unstable host. Light limitation and the way that light is delivered to kelp-forest communities was shown to significantly influence the physiological processes of photoacclimation and photosynthesis. A photoacclimation response to light limitation was observed at the individual and kelp-forest community level between the low- and high-light reefs. In both cases greater pigment concentrations and accessory pigment to chlorophyll a ratios were recorded within the low-light setting. The cost of acclimation under low-light conditions helps to explain the disparity in standing biomass between the low- and high-light reefs, as energy, otherwise used for growth, is diverted to synthesise additional photosynthetic pigments. There was also evidence that a number of species on the low-light reef were living at the edge of their photosynthetic ability, and that a further reduction in light would likely result in a loss of those species at deeper depths. The rate that light is delivered to kelp-forest communities was shown to significantly affect macroalgal productivity, and in some cases may be more influential than the total amount of light that they receive. Greater photosynthetic efficiency at lower light intensity was shown to compensate for even large disparities in the total amount of light that dominant kelp-forest species received. This demonstrates that both the limitation of light and variability of its delivery are key determinants of kelp-forest structure and productivity. This thesis provides evidence that is suggestive of a change in kelp-forest communities in southern New Zealand as a result of light limitation. The findings from this study are applicable at a global scale and provide important information that will help improve estimates of kelp-forest productivity and persistence, now, and under future light regimes

Compositional Generalization in Image Captioning

Image captioning models are usually evaluated on their ability to describe a held-out set of images, not on their ability to generalize to unseen concepts. We study the problem of compositional generalization, which measures how well a model composes unseen combinations of concepts when describing images. State-of-the-art image captioning models show poor generalization performance on this task. We propose a multi-task model to address the poor performance, that combines caption generation and image--sentence ranking, and uses a decoding mechanism that re-ranks the captions according their similarity to the image. This model is substantially better at generalizing to unseen combinations of concepts compared to state-of-the-art captioning models.Comment: To appear at CoNLL 2019, EMNL

Murine obscurin and Obsl1 have functionally redundant roles in sarcolemmal integrity, sarcoplasmic reticulum organization, and muscle metabolism.

Biological roles of obscurin and its close homolog Obsl1 (obscurin-like 1) have been enigmatic. While obscurin is highly expressed in striated muscles, Obsl1 is found ubiquitously. Accordingly, obscurin mutations have been linked to myopathies, whereas mutations in Obsl1 result in 3M-growth syndrome. To further study unique and redundant functions of these closely related proteins, we generated and characterized Obsl1 knockouts. Global Obsl1 knockouts are embryonically lethal. In contrast, skeletal muscle-specific Obsl1 knockouts show a benign phenotype similar to obscurin knockouts. Only deletion of both proteins and removal of their functional redundancy revealed their roles for sarcolemmal stability and sarcoplasmic reticulum organization. To gain unbiased insights into changes to the muscle proteome, we analyzed tibialis anterior and soleus muscles by mass spectrometry, uncovering additional changes to the muscle metabolism. Our analyses suggest that all obscurin protein family members play functions for muscle membrane systems

How alternative urban stream channel designs influence ecohydraulic conditions.

Streams draining urban catchments ubiquitously undergo negative physical and ecosystem changes, recognized to be primarily driven by frequent stormwater runoff input. The common management intervention is rehabilitation of channel morphology. Despite engineering design intentions, ecohydraulic benefits of urban channel rehabilitation are largely unknown and likely limited. This investigation uses an ecohydraulic modeling approach to investigate the performance of alternative channel design configurations intended to restore key ecosystem functioning in urban streams. Channel reconfiguration design scenarios, specified to emulate the range of channel topographic complexity often used in rehabilitation are compared against a reference 'natural' scenario using ecologically relevant hydraulic metrics. The results showed that the ecohydraulic conditions were incremental improved with the addition of natural oscillations to an increasing number of individual topographic variables in a degraded channel. Results showed that reconfiguration reduced excessive frequency of bed mobility, loss of habitat and hydraulic diversity particularly as more topographic variables were added. However, the results also showed that none of the design scenarios returned the ecohydraulics to their reference conditions. This indicate that channel-based restoration can offer some potential changes to hydraulic habitat conditions but are unlikely to completely mitigate the effects of hydrologic change. We suggest that while reach-scale channel modification may be beneficial to restore urban stream, addressing altered hydrology is critical to fully recover natural ecosystem processes

The Assessment of Water Surface Elevation Uncertainty in a Hydraulics Laboratory

Physical model testing forms a critical part of the development process for offshore renewable energy (ORE) technologies. Devices and structures generally follow a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) development pathway which has nine steps ranging from the initial idea (TRL1) to commercialisation (TRL9). In ORE, technologies are tested extensively in laboratory environments up to TRL4 after which a decision is made as to whether a particular technology has sufficient potential to justify moving to open sea environments where the costs can be much higher. Therefore, physical model testing plays a critical role in the development process and in recent years increased emphasis has been placed on improving quality procedures and implementing best practice methodologies. The International Towing Tank Conference (ITTC) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) have been developing testing standards whilst European Union funded projects such as Equimar, MaRINET and MaRINET2 have been working with testing infrastructures in developing a more uniform approach to testing. However, a standardised approach to the assessment of uncertainty in physical testing has yet to emerge. This paper focuses on and estimates the variation associated with wave elevation measurements using conductive wave probes in a hydraulics laboratory, a key input in all physical testing analysis

Access to a floating wind turbine

The offshore wind turbine service industry is now well established with a large number of turbines being successfully operated and maintained. A number of methods and technologies are available to allow the safe transfer of service crews to these primarily fixed monopile installations. The most common of these is the bow transfer method which uses a combination of a high friction fender and a large vessel thrust to minimise relative motion between the bow and the turbine foundation. An upcoming challenge for the offshore wind turbine service industry will be the increasing use of floating foundations in far offshore and deep water sites. A number of structures are currently being developed and the first commercial floating wind farm is expected to be commissioned in late 2017. The use of floating structures will make it more difficult to ensure crew safety and comfort during transfer operations as the interaction between two floating bodies needs to be considered. Thus, the bow transfer method used to access fixed foundations may not be suitable for accessing floating turbine platforms. This paper will use a combination of physical and numerical modelling to assess the ability of a wind farm service vessel to maintain contact with a floating offshore wind turbine structure by use of the bow transfer method

Saccadic Eye Movement Characteristics in Adult Niemann-Pick Type C Disease: Relationships with Disease Severity and Brain Structural Measures

Niemann-Pick Type C disease (NPC) is a rare genetic disorder of lipid metabolism. A parameter related to horizontal saccadic peak velocity was one of the primary outcome measures in the clinical trial assessing miglustat as a treatment for NPC. Neuropathology is widespread in NPC, however, and could be expected to affect other saccadic parameters. We compared horizontal saccadic velocity, latency, gain, antisaccade error percentage and self-paced saccade generation in 9 adult NPC patients to data from 10 age-matched controls. These saccadic measures were correlated with appropriate MRI-derived brain structural measures (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, frontal eye fields, supplemental eye fields, parietal eye fields, pons, midbrain and cerebellar vermis) and with measures of disease severity and duration. The best discriminators between groups were reflexive saccade gain and the two volitional saccade measures. Gain was also the strongest correlate with disease severity and duration. Most of the saccadic measures showed strongly significant correlations with neurophysiologically appropriate brain regions. While our patient sample is small, the apparent specificity of these relationships suggests that as new diagnostic methods and treatments become available for NPC, a broader range of saccadic measures may be useful tools for the assessment of disease progression and treatment efficacy.No external funding was received for this study. JCLL self-funded computational, travel and accommodation costs to conduct his component of this research in Melbourne