Reducing the Risk of Invasive Pathogens to Wildlife Health in the United States

Call to Action In keeping with action items 4.3.1 and 4.3.2 of the 2016–2018 National Invasive Species Council (NISC) Management Plan, the Wildlife Health Task Team of the Invasive Species Advisory Committee (ISAC) was charged with: 1) identifying the major areas of vulnerability to native wildlife from the introduction and spread of invasive pathogens, and 2) making recommendations to address these vulnerabilities, including through potential changes in statute, regulation, policy, or practice of the relevant agencies

Prospects for local co-governance

British local authorities and their partners are increasingly developing new ways of working together with local communities. The nature of this co-working, however, is complex, multi-faceted and little understood. This article argues for greater clarity of thinking on the topic, by analysing this co-working as a form of political co-governance, and drawing attention in particular to issues of scale and democracy. Using evidence from a study of 43 local authority areas, 16 authorities are identified where co-governance is practised, following three main types of approach: service-influencing, service-delivering and parish council developing. It is concluded that strengthening political co-governance is essential for a healthy democracy

The cognitive and emotional effects of cognitive bias modification in interpretations in behaviorally inhibited youth

Cognitive bias modification (CBM) procedures follow from the view that interpretive biases play an important role in the development and maintenance of anxiety. As such, understanding the link between interpretive biases and anxiety in youth at risk for anxiety (e.g., behaviorally inhibited children) could elucidate the mechanisms involved in the development of pediatric anxiety. However, to date, the majority of CBM-I work only studies adult populations. The present article presents the results of a CBM study examining effects of positive interpretive bias modification on mood, stress vulnerability, and threat-related attention bias in a group of behaviorally inhibited children (n = 45). Despite successful modification of interpretive bias in the at-risk youth, minimal effects on stress vulnerability or threat-related attention bias were found. The current findings highlight the need for continued research on cognitive biases in anxiety

Eulerian simulation of the fluid dynamics of helicopter brownout

A computational model is presented that can be used to simulate the development of the dust cloud that can be entrained into the air when a helicopter is operated close to the ground in desert or dusty conditions. The physics of this problem, and the associated pathological condition known as ‘brownout’ where the pilot loses situational awareness as a result of his vision being occluded by dust suspended in the flow around the helicopter, is acknowledged to be very complex. The approach advocated here involves an approximation to the full dynamics of the coupled particulate-air system. Away from the ground, the model assumes that the suspended particles remain in near equilibrium under the action of aerodynamic forces. Close to the ground, this model is replaced by an algebraic sublayer model for the saltation and entrainment process. The origin of the model in the statistical mechanics of a distribution of particles governed by aerodynamic forces allows the validity of the method to be evaluated in context by comparing the physical properties of the suspended particulates to the local properties of the flow field surrounding the helicopter. The model applies in the Eulerian frame of reference of most conventional Computational Fluid Dynamics codes and has been coupled with Brown’s Vorticity Transport Model. Verification of the predictions of the coupled model against experimental data for particulate entrainment and transport in the flow around a model rotor are encouraging. An application of the coupled model to analyzing the differences in the geometry and extent of the dust clouds that are produced by single main rotor and tandem-rotor configurations as they decelerate to land has shown that the location of the ground vortex and the size of any regions of recirculatory flow, should they exist, play a primary role in governing the extent of the dust cloud that is created by the helicopter

Characterization of growth and metabolism of the haloalkaliphile Natronomonas pharaonis

Natronomonas pharaonis is an archaeon adapted to two extreme conditions: high salt concentration and alkaline pH. It has become one of the model organisms for the study of extremophilic life. Here, we present a genome-scale, manually curated metabolic reconstruction for the microorganism. The reconstruction itself represents a knowledge base of the haloalkaliphile's metabolism and, as such, would greatly assist further investigations on archaeal pathways. In addition, we experimentally determined several parameters relevant to growth, including a characterization of the biomass composition and a quantification of carbon and oxygen consumption. Using the metabolic reconstruction and the experimental data, we formulated a constraints-based model which we used to analyze the behavior of the archaeon when grown on a single carbon source. Results of the analysis include the finding that Natronomonas pharaonis, when grown aerobically on acetate, uses a carbon to oxygen consumption ratio that is theoretically near-optimal with respect to growth and energy production. This supports the hypothesis that, under simple conditions, the microorganism optimizes its metabolism with respect to the two objectives. We also found that the archaeon has a very low carbon efficiency of only about 35%. This inefficiency is probably due to a very low P/O ratio as well as to the other difficulties posed by its extreme environment

Design and Construction of Absorption Cells for Precision Radial Velocities in the K Band using Methane Isotopologues

We present a method to optimize absorption cells for precise wavelength calibration in the near-infrared. We apply it to design and optimize methane isotopologue cells for precision radial velocity measurements in the K band. We also describe the construction and installation of two such cells for the CSHELL spectrograph at NASA's IRTF. We have obtained their high-resolution laboratory spectra, which we can then use in precision radial velocity measurements and which can also have other applications. In terms of obtainable RV precision methane should out-perform other proposed cells, such as the ammonia cell ($^{14}$NH$_{3}$) recently demonstrated on CRIRES/VLT. The laboratory spectra of Ammonia and the Methane cells show strong absorption features in the H band that could also be exploited for precision Doppler measurements. We present spectra and preliminary radial velocity measurements obtained during our first-light run. These initial results show that a precision down to 20-30 m s$^{-1}$ can be obtained using a wavelength interval of only 5 nm in the K band and S/N$\sim$150. This supports the prediction that a precision down to a few m s$^{-1}$ can be achieved on late M dwarfs using the new generation of NIR spectrographs, thus enabling the detection of terrestrial planets in their habitable zones. Doppler measurements in the NIR can also be used to mitigate the radial velocity jitter due to stellar activity enabling more efficient surveys on young active stars.Comment: accepted PASP, Apr 2012 (in press). Preprint version with 36 pages, 9 Figures, 2 Table

SciClone: Inferring clonal architecture and tracking the spatial and temporal patterns of tumor evolution

The sensitivity of massively-parallel sequencing has confirmed that most cancers are oligoclonal, with subpopulations of neoplastic cells harboring distinct mutations. A fine resolution view of this clonal architecture provides insight into tumor heterogeneity, evolution, and treatment response, all of which may have clinical implications. Single tumor analysis already contributes to understanding these phenomena. However, cryptic subclones are frequently revealed by additional patient samples (e.g., collected at relapse or following treatment), indicating that accurately characterizing a tumor requires analyzing multiple samples from the same patient. To address this need, we present SciClone, a computational method that identifies the number and genetic composition of subclones by analyzing the variant allele frequencies of somatic mutations. We use it to detect subclones in acute myeloid leukemia and breast cancer samples that, though present at disease onset, are not evident from a single primary tumor sample. By doing so, we can track tumor evolution and identify the spatial origins of cells resisting therapy

Targeting the IL-6-Yap-Snail signalling axis in synovial fibroblasts ameliorates inflammatory arthritis

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors thank staff at the University of Aberdeen’s Animal Facility, Microscopy and Histology Facility, qPCR Facility, and the Iain Fraser Cytometry Centre for their expert support. The authors also thank the NHS Grampian Biorepository for facilitating the collection of human tissue samples. Additionally, thanks is given to Denis Evseenko for critical review of the manuscript. Funding This work was supported by funding from the Medical Research Council (grants MR/L020211/1, MR/L022893/1), Versus Arthritis (formerly Arthritis Research UK, grants 20775, 19429, 21156, 20050, 19667, 20865, 21800), Tenovus Scotland (grant G13/14), and European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Sklodowska Curie (Grant 642414).Peer reviewedPublisher PD