The effects of short-term sea level rise on vegetation communities in coastal Mississippi

Salt marshes are important habitats that provide many ecosystem services, but they are susceptible to the impacts of sea level rise (SLR), often resulting in emergent vegetation loss. In areas with enough sediment input, marshes can keep pace with SLR by gaining elevation or through upland migration. However, salt marshes in areas with limited sediment input, such as the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, often cannot keep pace with sea level rise. Additionally, the rate of SLR is increasing making it more difficult for marshes to keep pace. To assess the short-term response of marsh vegetation to sea level rise, percent cover, stem density, and elevation, data from 2016 to 2020 in four different marsh elevation zones were analyzed in this study. Results demonstrated that the four marsh elevation zones are responding disparately to SLR. These findings indicate that it is imperative to implement restoration plans to account for site variability to conserve these vital habitats

Differentiation for Gifted and Talented Elementary Students: What Teachers Know and Implement

The purpose of this research was to measure the ways elementary school teachers are differentiating instruction for their gifted and talented students and to gauge their awareness of the need for implementing appropriate differentiation strategies they use in their classrooms. The study surveyed elementary teachers currently teaching in one large school district in Kentucky. Teachers responded to 38 survey items, indicating how often they use specific practices with their gifted students versus with their average-achieving students. The results indicated that there is much work to be done to increase teacher awareness of the importance of differentiated instruction for gifted and talented students. Professional learning in gifted education is essential to ensure that these talented students have the opportunity to reach their full potential in their educational lives

The Pyramid Model: Implementation Glows & Grows from Georgia’s Childcare Centers

In 2015, the Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL) and the Metropolitan Regional Educational Service Agency (RESA) launched the state’s first cohort of childcare centers to implement the Pyramid Model. Come hear from some of these early childhood program providers as they share glows and grows experienced during implementation of the various critical elements essential to the Pyramid Model’s framework such as setting and teaching program-wide expectations, family involvement and more. A brief overview of the DECAL’s continued efforts to expand the Pyramid Model across the state will also be shared

A mean-removed variation of weighted universal vector quantization for image coding

Weighted universal vector quantization uses traditional codeword design techniques to design locally optimal multi-codebook systems. Application of this technique to a sequence of medical images produces a 10.3 dB improvement over standard full search vector quantization followed by entropy coding at the cost of increased complexity. In this proposed variation each codebook in the system is given a mean or 'prediction' value which is subtracted from all supervectors that map to the given codebook. The chosen codebook's codewords are then used to encode the resulting residuals. Application of the mean-removed system to the medical data set achieves up to 0.5 dB improvement at no rate expense

Assessment of Tree Attributes and Understory Vegetation Composition Six Years Post-thinning in Redwood National Park (Northern CA, USA)

Coastal redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) are a resilient tree species that once dominated coastal ecosystems. However, redwood forests have experienced numerous impacts compromising their health and vigor, which has led to greater competition from other tree species. Foresters and Ecologists are utilizing novel restoration strategies to conserve and recover redwood forests. This project’s objective was to assess tree attributes and understory composition six years after a restoration thinning treatment. The study took place in Redwood National Park in Orick, California along Holter Ridge Road at a site named Middle Fork Lost Man Creek. In 2015, a student capstone group from Humboldt State University collected data for three plots before and immediately after a thinning treatment. Six years later (2021), our capstone group resampled the data in these plots and added tree height and understory vegetation parameters. Results found that total basal area/acre increased from 205.4 in 2015 (post-thinning) to 215.0 in 2021 and the quadratic mean diameter increased from 17.5 inches in 2015 (post-thinning) to 18.9 inches in 2021. This project can serve as an example for future treatment in similar ecosystems and can potentially assist the recovery of secondary growth forests, while also assisting in connecting sections of Redwood National Park to promote redwood dominance

FRIENDING AND GOAL ATTAINMENT: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY IN VIRTUAL WORLD

Encouraging individual goal pursuit through social influence is a growing trend. While friendships can be both an asset but also a burden, the impact friends have on goal attainment is not well established in the literature. We explore the influence that friend quantity and quality have on individual task-oriented goal-directed behavior using a unique set of online gaming data with a sample of about 33,000 individuals. Our results indicate a nonlinear relationship that suggests the number as well as the intimacy level of friendships positively impact individual goal achievement, but too much social friending becomes detrimental to individual goal pursuit. Females benefit slightly more from friendship amount and intimacy level, but also suffer more from too many exchanges with friends. Similarly, novice individuals not only benefit more from social influence than more experienced individuals in terms of goal pursuit, but also hurt more from friending behaviors. Our follow-up surveys with actual gamers provide additional evidence that friends indeed proffer information and emotional support that can promote goal attainment. However, too much friending can hurt goal completion due to information overload and time demands. These findings have important implications for consumers and managers regarding how social others influence individual goal attainment

The CaaX specificities of Arabidopsis protein prenyltransferases explain era1 and ggb phenotypes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Protein prenylation is a common post-translational modification in metazoans, protozoans, fungi, and plants. This modification, which mediates protein-membrane and protein-protein interactions, is characterized by the covalent attachment of a fifteen-carbon farnesyl or twenty-carbon geranylgeranyl group to the cysteine residue of a carboxyl terminal CaaX motif. In Arabidopsis, <it>era1 </it>mutants lacking protein farnesyltransferase exhibit enlarged meristems, supernumerary floral organs, an enhanced response to abscisic acid (ABA), and drought tolerance. In contrast, <it>ggb </it>mutants lacking protein geranylgeranyltransferase type 1 exhibit subtle changes in ABA and auxin responsiveness, but develop normally.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We have expressed recombinant Arabidopsis protein farnesyltransferase (PFT) and protein geranylgeranyltransferase type 1 (PGGT1) in <it>E. coli </it>and characterized purified enzymes with respect to kinetic constants and substrate specificities. Our results indicate that, whereas PFT exhibits little specificity for the terminal amino acid of the CaaX motif, PGGT1 exclusively prenylates CaaX proteins with a leucine in the terminal position. Moreover, we found that different substrates exhibit similar K_mbut different k_catvalues in the presence of PFT and PGGT1, indicating that substrate specificities are determined primarily by reactivity rather than binding affinity.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The data presented here potentially explain the relatively strong phenotype of <it>era1 </it>mutants and weak phenotype of <it>ggb </it>mutants. Specifically, the substrate specificities of PFT and PGGT1 suggest that PFT can compensate for loss of PGGT1 in <it>ggb </it>mutants more effectively than PGGT1 can compensate for loss of PFT in <it>era1 </it>mutants. Moreover, our results indicate that PFT and PGGT1 substrate specificities are primarily due to differences in catalysis, rather than differences in substrate binding.</p

A meta-analysis of pharmacotherapy for social anxiety disorder: an examination of efficacy, moderators, and mediators

INTRODUCTION: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is among the most prevalent mental disorders, associated with impaired functioning and poor quality of life. Pharmacotherapy is the most widely utilized treatment option. The current study provides an updated meta-analytic review of the efficacy of pharmacotherapy and examines moderators and mediators of treatment efficacy. Areas Covered: A comprehensive search of the current literature yielded 52 randomized, pill placebo-controlled trials of pharmacotherapy for adults diagnosed with SAD. Data on potential mediators of treatment outcome were collected, as well as data necessary to calculate pooled correlation matrices to compute indirect effects. Expert Opinion: The overall effect size of pharmacotherapy for SAD is small to medium (Hedges' g = 0.41). Effect sizes were not moderated by age, sex, length of treatment, initial severity, risk of study bias, or publication year. Furthermore, reductions in symptoms mediated pharmacotherapy's effect on quality of life. Support was found for reverse mediation. Future directions may include sustained efforts to examine treatment mechanisms of pharmacotherapy using rigorous longitudinal methodology to better establish temporal precedence

The Rotterdam rules : to what extent do they provide appropriate solutions to the shortcomings of the Hague-Visby rules and the Hamburg rules with regard to multimodal transportation, the carrier’s seaworthiness obligation and the nautical fault defence?

Master of Laws in Maritime Law. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2016.Modern international carriage of goods by sea is largely regulated by various international conventions. Such regimes include the Hague Rules, the Hague-Visby Rules and the Hamburg Rules. We may also look to national and regional hybrid regimes that incorporate various elements of these international conventions. These international conventions, however, have significant shortcomings and are considered outdated in modern times. The Hague Rules, although widely accepted, were drafted over ninety years ago, and the Visby amendments only made slight changes. They do not cater for modern trade practises such as containerisation (which allows for multimodal transportation) and door-to-door transport. The Hague and Hague-Visby Rules are considered outdated in this regard as they only apply to sea carriage (‘tackle-to-tackle’). Due to developments in technology and communications, it is also argued that there is no reason why the carrier should only be required to exercise due diligence to make the vessel seaworthy before and at the beginning of the voyage, and not throughout the entire sea voyage. Furthermore, in the modern shipping environment it is questionable why the carrier should still benefit from the nautical fault defence, a contentious defence that exonerates the carrier from liability due to the faults of its employees in the navigation or management of the ship. The Hamburg Rules were an attempt to address the shortcomings of its predecessors, for example, it removed the nautical fault defence from the list of exceptions available to the carrier and extended its scope of application to ‘port-to-port’. However, the Hamburg Rules did not achieve widespread success and have not been ratified by major maritime trading nations. The result of such a multiplicity of rules on the international carriage of goods by sea is that uniformity is undermined, creating legal uncertainty. These challenges are further heightened by the fact that the current sea conventions in force have significant shortcomings, which will be further discussed in this study. The international maritime community responded to these shortcomings by adopting the Rotterdam Rules in 2008. These Rules are intended to serve as a uniform and modern legal regime setting out the rights and obligations of the shipper, carrier and consignee. In attempting to achieve their goals of uniformity and modernity, the Rules have introduced significant changes. The three major changes introduced by the Rotterdam Rules, and which form the basis of this study, are the provision for multimodal transportation, the extension of the carrier’s seaworthiness obligation and the removal of the nautical fault defence. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to critically analyse the three major changes introduced by the Rotterdam Rules and to determine the extent to which they have provided appropriate solutions to the alleged shortcomings of its predecessors, the Hague-Visby Rules and the Hamburg Rules. This study engages in a comparative analysis of the Rotterdam Rules with the Hague-Visby Rules and the Hamburg Rules in relation to the above three major changes. It will be a literature based study (desk-top research) and will analyse relevant international conventions, legislation, case law, journal articles, foreign and South African academic opinion

Inferring Life History Characteristics of the Oceanic Whitetip Shark \u3cem\u3eCarcharhinus longimanus\u3c/em\u3e From Vertebral Bomb Radiocarbon

Oceanic whitetip sharks Carcharhinus longimanus are a cosmopolitan epipelagic species that was once prolific throughout the tropics and subtropics but was recently listed as Critically Endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and as Threatened under the United States Endangered Species Act. Although historically conspicuous in oceanic fisheries catches, relatively little is known about their habitat use, movement, and life history during migration. Given the paucity of data on migratory patterns and lack of age estimate validation available for this species, we evaluated vertebral growth bands for bomb radiocarbon (14C) patterns to derive additional information on these metrics. Individual growth bands (n = 62) were milled from vertebrae of eight individuals caught in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean. Age estimates based on vertebral growth bands ranged 1–13 years, with capture dates spanning 1978–2004. Plots of vertebral Δ14C relative to regional coral, shark, and fish otolith reference curves suggest age estimates based on presumed annual growth bands were accurate, although specimens were not old enough to capture the most informative portion of the bomb radiocarbon reference period. The magnitude of Δ14C varied among individuals, and individual chronologies demonstrated semi-cyclic patterns of Δ14C depletion and subsequent enrichment, which may be indicative of changes to diet as a function of annual migratory patterns and is supported by recently published telemetry, diet, and stable isotope studies. Although these data are preliminary in nature, they provide some evidence that Δ14C patterns in vertebrae can serve as a multi-purpose tool for life history studies of oceanic sharks