Circumpolar connections between Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba Dana) populations: investigating the roles of ocean and sea ice transport

Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba Dana, has a heterogeneous circumpolar distribution in the Southern Ocean. Krill have a close association with sea ice which provides access to a critical food source and shelter, particularly in the early life stages. Advective modelling of transport pathways of krill have until now been on regional scales and have not taken explicit account of sea ice. Here we present Lagrangian modelling studies at the circumpolar scale that include interaction with sea ice. The advection scheme uses ocean velocity output from the Ocean Circulation and Climate Advanced Modelling (OCCAM) project model together with satellite-derived sea ice motion vectors to examine the potential roles of the ocean and sea ice in maintaining the observed circumpolar krill distribution. We show that the Antarctic Coastal Current is likely to be important in generating the large-scale distribution and that sea ice motion can substantially modify the ocean transport pathways, enhancing retention or dispersal depending upon location. Within the major krill region of the Scotia Sea, the effect of temporal variability in both the ocean and sea ice velocity fields is examined. Variability in sea ice motion increases variability of influx to South Georgia, at times concentrating the influx into pulses of arrival. This variability has implications for the ecosystem around the island. The inclusion of sea ice motion leads to the identification of source regions for the South Georgia krill populations additional to those identified when only ocean motion is considered. This study indicates that the circumpolar oceanic circulation and interaction with sea ice is important in determining the large-scale distribution of krill and its associated variability

Agreement in dry eye management between optometrists and general practitioners in primary health care in the Netherlands

The final publication is available at Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.clae.2015.03.005 © 2015. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Purpose: To investigate the agreement in dry eye care management between general practitioners (GPs) and optometrists in the Netherlands. Methods: A web-based survey was used to investigate the agreement in symptoms associated with dry eye, causes of developing dry eye, and investigative techniques used in practice, between GPs and optometrists. Additional questions surveyed knowledge of the latest research, and co-management of dry eye disease in primary healthcare. The anonymised questionnaire contained 16 forced-choice questions with Likert scales, and was sent to 1471 general medical practitioners and 870 registered optometrists. The response data was stored on an online database, and was converted directly to text format for analysis using SPSS 21 statistical analysis software. Results: 138 optometrists and 93 GPs responded to the survey (Cronbach α = 0.885, optometrists, and 0.833, GPs). Almost no agreement was found for all the questions: a statistically significant difference (Chi-square p 0.0001), and dry eye symptoms, except for ‘burning sensation of the eye’ and ‘irritation of the eye’ as agreed symptoms, and agreement that dry eye is an age-related disease. Conclusions: As the optometrist and the GP are the gatekeepers for secondary healthcare, the fundamental differences in the methods of investigation and interpretation of dry eye-related symptoms, the possible cause of developing dry eye disease, and the therapy given by GPs and optometrists in the Netherlands, may have a significant impact on consistency of patient care.The authors extend their appreciation to the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht for funding this researc

Automatic Detection of Laryngeal Pathology on Sustained Vowels Using Short-Term Cepstral Parameters: Analysis of Performance and Theoretical Justification

The majority of speech signal analysis procedures for automatic detection of laryngeal pathologies mainly rely on parameters extracted from time domain processing. Moreover, calculation of these parameters often requires prior pitch period estimation; therefore, their validity heavily depends on the robustness of pitch detection. Within this paper, an alternative approach based on cepstral- domain processing is presented which has the advantage of not requiring pitch estimation, thus providing a gain in both simplicity and robustness. While the proposed scheme is similar to solutions based on Mel-frequency cepstral parameters, already present in literature, it has an easier physical interpretation while achieving similar performance standards

Simplified amino acid alphabets based on deviation of conditional probability from random background

The primitive data for deducing the Miyazawa-Jernigan contact energy or BLOSUM score matrix consists of pair frequency counts. Each amino acid corresponds to a conditional probability distribution. Based on the deviation of such conditional probability from random background, a scheme for reduction of amino acid alphabet is proposed. It is observed that evident discrepancy exists between reduced alphabets obtained from raw data of the Miyazawa-Jernigan's and BLOSUM's residue pair counts. Taking homologous sequence database SCOP40 as a test set, we detect homology with the obtained coarse-grained substitution matrices. It is verified that the reduced alphabets obtained well preserve information contained in the original 20-letter alphabet.Comment: 9 pages,3figure

The IL-1RI co-receptor TILRR (FREM1 isoform 2) controls aberrant inflammatory responses and development of vascular disease

Summary Expression of the interleukin-1 receptor type I (IL-1RI) co-receptor Toll-like and interleukin-1 receptor regulator (TILRR) is significantly increased in blood monocytes following myocardial infarction and in the atherosclerotic plaque, whereas levels in healthy tissue are low. TILRR association with IL-1RI at these sites causes aberrant activation of inflammatory genes, which underlie progression of cardiovascular disease. The authors show that genetic deletion of TILRR or antibody blocking of TILRR function reduces development of atherosclerotic plaques. Lesions exhibit decreased levels of monocytes, with increases in collagen and smooth muscle cells, characteristic features of stable plaques. The results suggest that TILRR may constitute a rational target for site- and signal-specific inhibition of vascular disease

Anisotropic Transport of Quantum Hall Meron-Pair Excitations

Double-layer quantum Hall systems at total filling factor $\nu_T=1$ can exhibit a commensurate-incommensurate phase transition driven by a magnetic field $B_{\parallel}$ oriented parallel to the layers. Within the commensurate phase, the lowest charge excitations are believed to be linearly-confined Meron pairs, which are energetically favored to align with $B_{\parallel}$. In order to investigate this interesting object, we propose a gated double-layer Hall bar experiment in which $B_{\parallel}$ can be rotated with respect to the direction of a constriction. We demonstrate the strong angle-dependent transport due to the anisotropic nature of linearly-confined Meron pairs and discuss how it would be manifested in experiment.Comment: 4 pages, RevTex, 3 postscript figure

Continuous moulting by Antarctic krill drives major pulses of carbon export in the north Scotia Sea, Southern Ocean

Antarctic krill play an important role in biogeochemical cycles and can potentially generate high-particulate organic carbon (POC) fluxes to the deep ocean. They also have an unusual trait of moulting continuously throughout their life-cycle. We determine the krill seasonal contribution to POC flux in terms of faecal pellets (FP), exuviae and carcasses from sediment trap samples collected in the Southern Ocean. We found that krill moulting generated an exuviae flux of similar order to that of FP, together accounting for 87% of an annual POC flux (22.8 g m−2 y−1). Using an inverse modelling approach, we determined the krill population size necessary to generate this flux peaked at 261 g m−2. This study shows the important role of krill exuviae as a vector for POC flux. Since krill moulting cycle depends on temperature, our results highlight the sensitivity of POC flux to rapid regional environmental change

Early prenatal vitamin D concentrations and social-emotional development in infants

Background: Many pregnant women in the United States have suboptimal vitamin D, but the impact on infant development is unclear. Moreover, no pregnancy-specific vitamin D recommendations have been widely accepted. Aims: Given the ubiquitous expression of vitamin D receptors in the brain, we investigated the association between early prenatal plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) concentrations and children’s social and emotional development in the Newborn Epigenetic Study, a prospective study of pregnancies from 2009 to 2011 in Durham, North Carolina. Methods: We measured 25(OH)D concentrations in first or second trimester plasma samples and categorized 25(OH)D concentrations into quartiles. Covariates were derived from maternal questionnaires. Mothers completed the Infant Toddler Social-Emotional Development Assessment when children were 12–24 months of age. We used multivariable linear regression to evaluate associations between 25(OH)D and specific behavior scores, adjusted for season of blood draw, maternal age, education, parity, smoking, marital status, prepregnancy BMI, and infant gender. We investigated effect-measure modification by race/ethnicity. Results: Of the 218 mother–infant pairs with complete data, Black mothers had much lower 25(OH)D concentrations as compared to White and Hispanic mothers. After adjustment, lower prenatal 25(OH)D was associated with slightly higher (less favorable) Internalizing scores among White children, but lower (more favorable) Internalizing scores among Black and Hispanic children. Lower prenatal 25(OH)D also appears to be associated with higher (less favorable) dysregulation scores, though only among White and Hispanic children. Conclusions: Though imprecise, preliminary results warrant further investigation regarding a role for prenatal vitamin D on children’s early social and emotional development

Skyrmion Excitations in Quantum Hall Systems

Using finite size calculations on the surface of a sphere we study the topological (skyrmion) excitation in quantum Hall system with spin degree of freedom at filling factors around $\nu=1$. In the absence of Zeeman energy, we find, in systems with one quasi-particle or one quasi-hole, the lowest energy band consists of states with $L=S$, where $L$ and $S$ are the total orbital and spin angular momentum. These different spin states are almost degenerate in the thermodynamic limit and their symmetry-breaking ground state is the state with one skyrmion of infinite size. In the presence of Zeeman energy, the skyrmion size is determined by the interplay of the Zeeman energy and electron-electron interaction and the skyrmion shrinks to a spin texture of finite size. We have calculated the energy gap of the system at infinite wave vector limit as a function of the Zeeman energy and find there are kinks in the energy gap associated with the shrinking of the size of the skyrmion. breaking ground state is the state with one skyrmion of infinite size. In the presence of Zeeman energy, the skyrmion size is determined by the interplay of the Zeeman energy and electron-electronComment: 4 pages, 5 postscript figures available upon reques