34 research outputs found
SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE FISHERY OF LAOANG, NORTHERN SAMAR, PHILIPPINES
Between September 2015 and August 2017 the author lived and worked in Laoang, a municipality in the province of Northern Samar in the Philippines. The author worked as a Coastal Resource Management Volunteer with the Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Office. This report discusses current and potential management strategies concerning the fishery of Laoang, particularly concerning the Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) placed at the edge of the municipal waters. Information was compiled during the development of two 10-hectare Marine Protected Areas and a Fish Catch Monitoring program. Various strategies for both the FAD and coastal areas of the fishery are discussed, including enhanced environmental education and protection, limiting adding FADs to the municipal waters, and promoting tourism. While many of the programs discussed already exist in Laoang, these programs can potentially be expanded on to enhance the sustainability of the fishery to promote food security and income
Adaptive Radiation within Marine Anisakid Nematodes: A Zoogeographical Modeling of Cosmopolitan, Zoonotic Parasites
Parasites of the nematode genus Anisakis are associated with aquatic organisms. They can be found in a variety of marine hosts including whales, crustaceans, fish and cephalopods and are known to be the cause of the zoonotic disease anisakiasis, a painful inflammation of the gastro-intestinal tract caused by the accidental consumptions of infectious larvae raw or semi-raw fishery products. Since the demand on fish as dietary protein source and the export rates of seafood products in general is rapidly increasing worldwide, the knowledge about the distribution of potential foodborne human pathogens in seafood is of major significance for human health. Studies have provided evidence that a few Anisakis species can cause clinical symptoms in humans. The aim of our study was to interpolate the species range for every described Anisakis species on the basis of the existing occurrence data. We used sequence data of 373 Anisakis larvae from 30 different hosts worldwide and previously published molecular data (n = 584) from 53 field-specific publications to model the species range of Anisakis spp., using a interpolation method that combines aspects of the alpha hull interpolation algorithm as well as the conditional interpolation approach. The results of our approach strongly indicate the existence of species-specific distribution patterns of Anisakis spp. within different climate zones and oceans that are in principle congruent with those of their respective final hosts. Our results support preceding studies that propose anisakid nematodes as useful biological indicators for their final host distribution and abundance as they closely follow the trophic relationships among their successive hosts. The modeling might although be helpful for predicting the likelihood of infection in order to reduce the risk of anisakiasis cases in a given area
Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search
Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe
New tools in local energy planning: experimenting with scenarios, public participation and environmental assessment
Management of local fisheries: A case study of Laoang, Northern Samar, Philippines
This paper investigates the ongoing management of fish resources at the municipality-level in the Philippines. The paper presents a case study of the current and potential management strategies for the fishery of Laoang, Philippines. Ongoing management activities include the placement of Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) in the municipal waters, development of two 10-hectare Marine Protected Areas, and a Fish Catch Monitoring program. Local management efforts for using the FADs and the improvement of the coastal areas of the fishery are discussed, including enhanced environmental education and protection and limits on adding FADs to the municipal waters. The FADs have shown to increase average catch about 5 kg. In order to achieve the goals of managing the local fishery to promote food security and income, three management steps must be achieved: the appropriate organizational structure needs to be in place, management programs need to be seen as meeting community needs, and the momentum must be continued by increasing existing programs and adding new ones
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Resolution of anuric acute kidney injury in a dog with multiple organ dysfunction syndrome.
ObjectiveTo describe the management and resolution of anuric acute kidney injury (AKI) in a dog with multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) associated with gallbladder wall necrosis.Case summaryAn 11-year-old neutered female spayed dog was referred for evaluation of anuria following cholecystectomy. Following surgery, the patient became anuric with no response to appropriate medical therapy. During the course of hospitalization, the patient developed MODS as evidenced by alteration in renal function, but also cardiovascular dysfunction, coagulation disorders, and hypoglycemia. Several hemodialysis treatments were performed and, along with intensive care, led to resolution of clinical signs and return of urine production.New or unique informationThis report describes resolution of anuria in a dog with AKI and MODS. In this clinical setting, despite a poor prognosis, survival and recovery of adequate renal function were possible with medical management that included hemodialysis
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Constraining nucleation, condensation, and chemistry in oxidation flow reactors using size-distribution measurements and aerosol microphysical modeling
Oxidation flow reactors (OFRs) allow the concentration of a given atmospheric oxidant to be increased beyond ambient levels in order to study secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation and aging over varying periods of equivalent aging by that oxidant. Previous studies have used these reactors to determine the bulk OA mass and chemical evolution. To our knowledge, no OFR study has focused on the interpretation of the evolving aerosol size distributions. In this study, we use size-distribution measurements of the OFR and an aerosol microphysics model to learn about size-dependent processes in the OFR. Specifically, we use OFR exposures between 0.09 and 0.9 equivalent days of OH aging from the 2011 BEACHON-RoMBAS and GoAmazon2014/5 field campaigns. We use simulations in the TOMAS (TwO-Moment Aerosol Sectional) microphysics box model to constrain the following parameters in the OFR: (1) the rate constant of gas-phase functionalization reactions of organic compounds with OH, (2) the rate constant of gas-phase fragmentation reactions of organic compounds with OH, (3) the reactive uptake coefficient for heterogeneous fragmentation reactions with OH, (4) the nucleation rate constants for three different nucleation schemes, and (5) an effective accommodation coefficient that accounts for possible particle diffusion limitations of particles larger than 60nm in diameter. We find the best model-to-measurement agreement when the accommodation coefficient of the larger particles (Dp>60nm) was 0.1 or lower (with an accommodation coefficient of 1 for smaller particles), which suggests a diffusion limitation in the larger particles. When using these low accommodation-coefficient values, the model agrees with measurements when using a published H2SO4-organics nucleation mechanism and previously published values of rate constants for gas-phase oxidation reactions. Further, gas-phase fragmentation was found to have a significant impact upon the size distribution, and including fragmentation was necessary for accurately simulating the distributions in the OFR. The model was insensitive to the value of the reactive uptake coefficient on these aging timescales. Monoterpenes and isoprene could explain 24%-95% of the observed change in total volume of aerosol in the OFR, with ambient semivolatile and intermediate-volatility organic compounds (S/IVOCs) appearing to explain the remainder of the change in total volume. These results provide support to the mass-based findings of previous OFR studies, give insight to important size-distribution dynamics in the OFR, and enable the design of future OFR studies focused on new particle formation and/or microphysical processes.United States. Department of Energy. Office of Biological and Environmental Research (grant no. DE-SC0011780)United States. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Office of Atmospheric Chemistry, Carbon Cycle, and Climate Program (cooperative agreement award no. NA17OAR430001)United States. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Office of Atmospheric Chemistry, Carbon Cycle, and Climate Program (cooperative agreement award no. NA17OAR4310002)National Science Foundation (U.S.). Atmospheric Chemistry program (grant no. AGS-1559607)National Science Foundation (U.S.). Atmospheric Chemistry program (grant no. AGS-1558966)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do AmazonasFundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São PauloBrazil Scientific Mobility ProgramUnited States. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (grant NA10OAR4310106 (MIT))National Science Foundation (U.S.)Austrian Science Fund (project no. L518-N20
In situ secondary organic aerosol formation from ambient pine forest air using an oxidation flow reactor
An oxidation flow reactor (OFR) is a vessel inside which the concentration
of a chosen oxidant can be increased for the purpose of studying SOA
formation and aging by that oxidant. During the BEACHON-RoMBAS
(Bio-hydro-atmosphere interactions of Energy, Aerosols, Carbon, H<sub>2</sub>O,
Organics & Nitrogen–Rocky Mountain Biogenic Aerosol Study) field
campaign, ambient pine forest air was oxidized by OH radicals in an OFR to
measure the amount of SOA that could be formed from the real mix of ambient
SOA precursor gases, and how that amount changed with time as precursors
changed. High OH concentrations and short residence times allowed for
semicontinuous cycling through a large range of OH exposures ranging from
hours to weeks of equivalent (eq.) atmospheric aging. A simple model is
derived and used to account for the relative timescales of condensation of
low-volatility organic compounds (LVOCs) onto particles; condensational loss
to the walls; and further reaction to produce volatile, non-condensing
fragmentation products. More SOA production was observed in the OFR at
nighttime (average 3 µg m<sup>−3</sup> when LVOC fate corrected) compared to
daytime (average 0.9 µg m<sup>−3</sup> when LVOC fate corrected), with maximum
formation observed at 0.4–1.5 eq. days of photochemical aging. SOA
formation followed a similar diurnal pattern to monoterpenes,
sesquiterpenes, and toluene+<i>p</i>-cymene concentrations, including a
substantial increase just after sunrise at 07:00 local time. Higher
photochemical aging (> 10 eq. days) led to a decrease in new SOA
formation and a loss of preexisting OA due to heterogeneous oxidation
followed by fragmentation and volatilization. When comparing two different
commonly used methods of OH production in OFRs (OFR185 and OFR254-70),
similar amounts of SOA formation were observed. We recommend the OFR185 mode
for future forest studies. Concurrent gas-phase measurements of air after OH
oxidation illustrate the decay of primary VOCs, production of small oxidized
organic compounds, and net production at lower ages followed by net
consumption of terpenoid oxidation products as photochemical age increased.
New particle formation was observed in the reactor after oxidation,
especially during times when precursor gas concentrations and SOA formation
were largest. Approximately 4.4 times more SOA was formed in the reactor
from OH oxidation than could be explained by the VOCs measured in ambient
air. To our knowledge this is the first time that this has been shown when
comparing VOC concentrations with SOA formation measured at the same time, rather than
comparing measurements made at different times. Several recently developed
instruments have quantified ambient semivolatile and intermediate-volatility organic
compounds (S/IVOCs) that were not detected by a proton transfer reaction
time-of-flight mass spectrometer (PTR-TOF-MS). An SOA yield of
18–58 % from those compounds can explain the observed SOA formation.
S/IVOCs were the only pool of gas-phase carbon that was large enough to explain the observed SOA formation. This
work suggests that these typically unmeasured gases play a substantial role
in ambient SOA formation. Our results allow ruling out condensation sticking
coefficients much lower than 1. These measurements help clarify the
magnitude of potential SOA formation from OH oxidation in forested
environments and demonstrate methods for interpretation of ambient OFR
measurements
Purely electronic zero-phonon line as the foundation stone for high-resolution matrix spectroscopy, single-impurity-molecule spectroscopy, and persistent spectral hole burning. Recent developments
A few examples of recent progress in the study and applications of purely electronic zerophonon line (ZPL) and its offshoots are briefly considered: new experimental values of the narrowest ZPL; time-and-space-domain holography in the femtosecond domain, and the realization of a femtosecond Taffoli gate by it; single-impurity-molecule spectroscopy, its relation to single-photon interference and to the realization of quantum computing; the promises of quantum computing compared to what has already been done in holography