Microbiota, Oral Microbiome, and Pancreatic Cancer

Only 30% of patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer survive one year post-diagnosis. Progress in understanding the causes of pancreatic cancer has been made, including solidifying the associations with obesity and diabetes, and a proportion of cases should be preventable through lifestyle modifications. Unfortunately, identifying reliable biomarkers of early pancreatic cancer has been extremely challenging, and no effective screening modality is currently available for this devastating form of cancer. Recent data suggest the microbiota may play a role in the disease process, but many questions remain. Future studies focusing on the human microbiome, both etiologically and as a marker of disease susceptibility, should shed light on how to better tackle prevention, early detection, and treatment of this highly fatal disease

Alien Registration- Michaud, Raoul S. (Madawaska, Aroostook County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/35414/thumbnail.jp

The Role of Aquatourism in Sustaining Maine’s Working Waterfronts

Maine tourism relies heavily on the iconic imagery of working waterfronts, including harbors bobbing with lobster boats surrounded by shingled shacks in a rainbow of buoys. Adapted from agritourism, aquatourism is an experience that engages visitors with the landscape and stories of those who fish. According to the literature on the Experience Economy, the emotions generated by such experiences can translate into sales in real time as well as behavioral intentions to purchase in the future. What role can aquatourism play in sustaining working waterfronts? Using a mixed methods approach, this research study utilizes interviews from both producers and consumers to understand the value that aquatourism can generate for the Maine fishing industry. This research shows that with a design that incorporates Participation, People, Product, and Place, the fishing industry and its partners can engage visitors in memorable experiences that could transform them into loyal consumers of Maine fishery products

On the possible existence of a self-regulating hydrodynamical process in slowly rotating stars II. Lithium Plateau in Halo Stars and Primordial Abundance

The lithium plateau observed in halo stars has long appeared as a paradox in the general context of the lithium abundance behavior in stellar outer layers. First, the plateau is flat, second, the lithium abundance dispersion is extremely small. This seems in contradiction with the large lithium variations observed in younger stars. It is also difficult to understand theoretically as lithium nuclei are easily destroyed by nuclear reactions, and subject to microscopic diffusion which, in the case of halo stars, should also lead to depletion. Several ideas have been proposed to account for the lithium behavior in halo stars. The most promising possibilities were rotational-induced mixing, which could reduce lithium in the same way for all the stars, and mass-loss, which could oppose the lithium settling. In both cases however, the parameters should be tightly adjusted to prevent any dispersion in the final results. Vauclair 1999 (paper I) pointed out that the mu-gradient terms which appear in the computations of the meridional circulation velocity were not introduced in previous computations of rotationally-induced mixing. This can lead to a self-regulating process which reduces the efficiency of the meridional circulation as well as the microscopic diffusion. Here we present numerical computations of this process and its influence on the lithium abundance variations in halo stars. We show that in slowly rotating stars, under some conditions, lithium can be depleted by a factor of up to two with a dispersion smaller than 0.1 dex in the middle part of the lithium plateau. We derive a primordial lithium abundance of 2.5 +/- 0.1, consistent with the recent determinations of D/H and 4He/H.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures. to be published in A&

Beyond the iron group: heavy metals in hot subdwarfs

We report the discovery of strong photospheric resonance lines of Ga III, Ge IV, Sn IV and Pb IV in the UV spectra of more than two dozen sdB and sdOB stars at temperatures ranging from 22000 K to 40000 K. Lines of other heavy elements are also detected, however in these cases more atomic data are needed. Based on these discoveries, we present a hypothesis to explain the apparent lack of silicon in sdB stars hotter than ~32000 K. The existence of triply ionised Ge, Sn, and Pb suggests that rather than silicon sinking deep into the photosphere, it is removed from the star in a fractionated stellar wind. This hypothesis provides a challenge to diffusion models of sdB stars.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, to appear in A&A Letter

Injecting New Workforce Leaders in Tourism, Hospitality and Environmental Science: A Community-Engaged Learning and Immersion Class

Tourism, especially nature-based tourism, is a major and growing industry in Maine. Therefore, it is important that colleges and universities graduate leaders into the Maine workforce with specific knowledge of the tourism and hospitality industry and with a connection to the environment in which it is flourishing. To graduate these potential leaders, schools must do a better job at retaining and graduating students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Community-engaged learning, including immersion classes, are a key strategy to increase student persistence in some programs at the University of Southern Maine (USM). Two academic units at USM, the Program in Tourism and Hospitality and the Department of Environmental Science and Policy, collaborate in delivering a colocated intensive immersion class for all new majors. This engagement early in their college career fosters a sense of community among the students and with the industry in which they will work. We argue that this community engagement is a factor contributing to student retention and success in these programs and will help create the creative, resilient, locally active leaders needed to guide sustainable tourism development in Maine

Asteroseismic signatures of helium gradients in late F-type stars

Element diffusion is expected to occur in all kinds of stars : according to the relative effect of gravitation and radiative acceleration, they can fall or be pushed up in the atmospheres. Helium sinks in all cases, thereby creating a gradient at the bottom of the convective zones. This can have important consequences for the sound velocity, as has been proved in the sun with helioseismology. We investigate signatures of helium diffusion in late F-type stars by asteroseismology. Stellar models were computed with different physical inputs (with or without element diffusion) and iterated in order to fit close-by evolutionary tracks for each mass. The theoretical oscillation frequencies were computed and compared for pairs of models along the tracks. Various asteroseismic tests (large separations, small separations, second differences) were used and studied for the comparisons. The results show that element diffusion leads to changes in the frequencies for masses larger than 1.2 Msun. In particular the helium gradient below the convective zone should be detectable through the second differences.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The official date of acceptance is 03/05/200