Soundscapes on the Arctic Coastal Plain: assessing sound disturbance and the auditory sensitivity of caribou (Rangifer tarandus)

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2022The Arctic Coastal Plain of Alaska is a region on traditional Inupiat land that supports millions of migratory birds and over half a million caribou (Rangifer tarandus) at the most critical time in their life-histories. They are an important part of seasonal subsistence activities for the surrounding rural Indigenous communities. Therefore, conservation efforts that support this ecosystem also bolster food security in the region. Monitoring this system has increasingly become a necessary and prudent task as the landscape evolves under the pressures of resource extraction and climate change. To date, limited research has been conducted on the sounds present in this environment (i.e., 'soundscape'). Monitoring sounds may help reveal the impact of these stressors and ecosystem-wide changes. There is also a need for researchers to evaluate what portion of the soundscape wildlife can actually hear, so we can better understand how soundscape change might affect them. I conducted two studies that apply soundscape monitoring and acoustic perception to the landscape and wildlife of the Arctic Coastal Plain. First, I evaluated the hearing thresholds of domestic Rangifer tarandus (reindeer) at the Large Animal Research Station at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2019 in order to help infer what anthropogenic sounds wild caribou may be sensitive to. Using Brainstem Auditory Evoked Response methods, I found that a caribou's auditory system can detect all forms of anthropogenic sounds that they might encounter on the Arctic Coastal Plain, including low frequency sounds associated with oil and gas exploration. Specifically, I found they can detect sounds as low as 30 Hz with great sensitivity, expanding the known lower limit of their auditory capabilities. This means that caribou may detect sounds of seismic exploration, gravel mine blasting and other anthropogenic sounds associated with resource extraction at a great distance, and may be more affected by these sounds than previously thought. From May through August of 2019, I used acoustic recording units stationed in a random grid across the Arctic Coastal Plain to passively monitor the soundscape study region-wide sound characteristics and their impact on vocal wildlife. Anthropogenic sound (i.e., anthrophony) is a pervasive and often overlooked consequence of land-use change, and something that has been relatively understudied in northern Alaska. For my soundscape research, I modeled the spatial and temporal distribution of anthrophony and bird vocalizations (i.e., biophony) across developed (Oilfields surrounding Prudhoe Bay), and undeveloped (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) areas of the Arctic Coastal Plain. Hourly detections of anthrophony were not associated strongly with infrastructure but tended to increase as the season went on. Birds were more likely to vocalize in hours when anthrophony was present, and this effect was the strongest in the early season, during migratory bird arrival and breeding. Anthrophony's effect on the soundscape may alter biological cues that vocal and non-vocal migrants use to assess habitat patches, and fitness consequences will vary by species. Further research is needed to assess how bird communities and caribou movement respond to anthrophony

Investigating parameter transferability across models and events for a Semiarid Mediterranean Catchment

Physically based distributed hydrologic models (DHMs) simulate watershed processes by applying physical equations with a variety of simplifying assumptions and discretization approaches. These equations depend on parameters that, in most cases, can be measured and, theoretically, transferred across different types of DHMs. The aim of this study is to test the potential of parameter transferability in a real catchment for two contrasting periods among three DHMs of varying complexity. The case study chosen is a small Mediterranean catchment where the TIN-based Real-time Integrated Basin Simulator (tRIBS) model was previously calibrated and tested. The same datasets and parameters are used here to apply two other DHMs-the TOPographic Kinematic Approximation and Integration model (TOPKAPI) and CATchment HYdrology (CATHY) models. Model performance was measured against observed discharge at the basin outlet for a one-year period (1930) corresponding to average wetness conditions for the region, and for a much drier two-year period (1931-1932). The three DHMs performed comparably for the 1930 period but showed more significant differences (the CATHY model in particular for the dry period. In order to improve the performance of CATHY for this latter period, an hypothesis of soil crusting was introduced, assigning a lower saturated hydraulic conductivity to the top soil layer. It is concluded that, while the physical basis for the three models allowed transfer of parameters in a broad sense, transferability can break down when simulation conditions are greatly altered

Holocaust Intersections in 21st-Century Europe: An Introduction

Two vignettes of contemporary memory politics, from the beginning and the end of the very recent period of cultural history that interests us, help to set out in the first part of this Introduction some coordinates for the field of transversal intersections which permeate 21st-century Holocaust legacies and which this special issue of Quest sets out to explore. The first vignette focusses on a strange conjunction at the turn of the millennium between two museum projects, one of them at least obliquely Holocaust-related, both forced to negotiate across fraught transcommunal cultural divides and to relate difficult parallel, convergent and divergent histories. The second picks out an instant, a transient flashpoint from the rolling news media of summer 2016, at which the sites, values and language of Holocaust memory were used to confront, in awkward but powerful ways, immediately contemporary anxieties and atrocities. Following these, the Introduction will move on to address the larger field of intersection between the terms, usages and scholarship of the Holocaust and genocide, including its often problematic aspects. Its aim is to set the stage and provide a framework for the six ‘intersectional’ essays that follow

A Markov model for inferring flows in directed contact networks

Directed contact networks (DCNs) are a particularly flexible and convenient class of temporal networks, useful for modeling and analyzing the transfer of discrete quantities in communications, transportation, epidemiology, etc. Transfers modeled by contacts typically underlie flows that associate multiple contacts based on their spatiotemporal relationships. To infer these flows, we introduce a simple inhomogeneous Markov model associated to a DCN and show how it can be effectively used for data reduction and anomaly detection through an example of kernel-level information transfers within a computer.Comment: 12 page

Quality of information of websites dedicated to obesity: a systematic search to promote high level of information for Internet users and professionals

Background: The Internet is increasingly used as a source of information. This study investigates with a multidimensional methodology the quality of information of websites dedicated to obesity treatment and weight-loss interventions. We compared websites in English, a language that it is used for the international scientific divulgation, and in Italian, a popular local language. Methods: Level of Evidence: Level I, systematic review search on four largely used search engines. Duplicated and unrelated websites were excluded. We checked: popularity with PageRank; technological quality with Nibbler; readability with the Flesch Reading Ease test or the Gulpease readability index; quality of information with the DISCERN scale, the JAMA benchmark criteria, and the adherence to the Health on the Net Code. Results: 63 Italian websites and 41 English websites were evaluated. English websites invested more in the technological quality especially for the marketing, experience of the user, and mobile accessibility. Both the Italian and English websites were of poor quality and readability. Conclusions: These results can inform guidelines for the improvement of health information and help Internet users to achieve a higher level of information. Users must find benefits of treatment, support to the shared decision-making, the sources used, the medical editor's supervision, and the risk of postponing the treatment

Total flow intensity, active flow intensity and volume related flow intensity as new quantitative metrics in optical coherence tomography angiography

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) angiography (OCTA) is a non-invasive tool for the in-vivo study of the intraretinal vascular network. It is based on the analysis of motion particles within the retina to reconstruct the paths followed by the erythrocytes, i.e. retinal capillaries. To date, qualitative and quantitative information are based on the morphological features disclosed by retinal capillaries. In the present study, we proposed new quantitative functional metrics, named Total Flow Intensity (TFI), Active Flow Intensity (AFI), and Volume-related Flow Intensity (VFI), based on the processing of the blood flow signal detected by OCTA. We studied these metrics in a cohort of healthy subjects, and we assessed their clinical utility by including a cohort of age-matched patients affected by Stargardt disease. Moreover, we compared TFI, AFI, and VFI to the widely used vessel density (VD) parameter. TFI, AFI, and VFI were able to describe in detail the different properties of the retinal vascular compartment. In particular, TFI was intended as the overall amount of volumetric retinal blood flow. AFI represented a selective measure of voxels disclosing blood flow signal. VFI was developed to put in relationship the volumetric blood flow information with the not vascularized retinal volume. In conclusion, TFI, AFI, and VFI were proposed as feasible functional OCTA biomarkers based on the analysis of retinal blood flow signal

Two naphthalene degrading bacteria belonging to the genera Paenibacillus and Pseudomonas isolated from a highly polluted lagoon perform different sensitivities to the organic and heavy metal contaminants

Two bacterial strains were isolated in the presence of naphthalene as the sole carbon and energy source from sediments of the Orbetello Lagoon, Italy, which is highly contaminated with both organic compounds and metals. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis of the two isolates assigned the strains to the genera Paenibacillus and Pseudomonas. The effect of different contaminants on the growth behaviors of the two strains was investigated. Pseudomonas sp. ORNaP2 showed a higher tolerance to benzene, toluene, and ethylbenzene than Paenibacillus sp. ORNaP1. In addition, the toxicity of heavy metals potentially present as co-pollutants in the investigated site was tested. Here, strain Paenibacillus sp. ORNaP1 showed a higher tolerance towards arsenic, cadmium, and lead, whereas it was far more sensitive towards mercury than strain Pseudomonas sp. ORNaP2. These differences between the Gram-negative Pseudomonas and the Gram-positive Paenibacillus strain can be explained by different general adaptive response systems present in the two bacteria

Nasal spray formulations based on combined hyalurosomes and glycerosomes loading zingiber officinalis extract as green and natural strategy for the treatment of rhinitis and rhinosinusitis

A total green nanotechnological nasal spray has been manufactured and proposed as an alternative treatment of rhinitis and rhinosinusitis. It was obtained by combining the strengthening effect of liposomes on barrier function, the hydrating and lubricating properties of sodium hyaluro-nan and the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activities of the extract of Zingiber officinalis. To this purpose, the extract was loaded in special phospholipid vesicles immobilized with hyaluronic acid (hyalurosomes), which were further enriched with glycerol in the water phase. Liposomes and glycerosomes were prepared as well and used as reference. Vesicles were oligolamellar and multi-compartment, as confirmed by cryogenic transmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM) observation, small in size (~140 nm) and negatively charged (~-23 mV). Spray characteristics were evaluated by using the Spraytec® and instant images, from which the plume angle was measured. The range of the droplet size distribution and the narrow spray angle obtained suggest a good nebulization and a possible local deposition in the nasal cavity. In vitro studies performed by using human keratinocytes confirmed the high biocompatibility of vesicles and their ability to effectively counteract oxidative damage on cells induced by hydrogen peroxide. The overall collected data suggest that our vesicles are suitable as nasal spray. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland