Prescribed Burning Guidelines in the Northern Great Plains

This publication provides guidelines with reasons, criteria, techniques, and examples of simple prescriptions which aid in the planning and execution of a safe and effective prescribed burning program for wildlife enhancement in grassland areas of the Northern Great Plains

Effects of Fire in the Northern Great Plains

This publication is a review of selected literature about prescribed burning in the Northern Great Plains for management of wildlife. It discusses the effect of fire on soil nutrients and minerals, upland grasses and forbs, undesirable species, shrubs, trees, certain plant species, emergent vegetation in prairie wetlands, insects, nongame birds, upland game birds, waterfowl, shorebirds, small mammals, and livestock

Prescribed Burning Guidelines in the Northern Great Plains

The use of fire to manage grasslands for wildlife is a relatively new management option for resource managers in the Northern Great Plains (NGP). Nearly all of the burning during the past 20-25 years has been conducted without the aid of specific guidelines for the region. This state-of-the-art set of recommendations was compiled because of this void. Records of 902 grassland fires (primarily on U.S. Fish and Wildlife lands), personal experiences, and synopses of other published fire research were used in developing the guidelines in this manual. Fifty-two percent of the 902 fires were in native prairie grasslands with lesser amounts in tame and native grass plantings, wetlands, and woodlands. Prescription grassland fires averaged 31 ha (77 acres) per burn. The personnel needed to safely conduct a grassland fire depended on the size of the burn, the kind of firebreaks, available equipment, and weather conditions. Costs and hours of effort to conduct fires were inversely related to burn area size. Cost ratios are extremely high for fires of less than 4 ha (10 acres). They are essentially the same for burns of 16 to 113 ha (40 to 280 acres). The two primary reasons for burning grasslands are wildlife habitat improvement and native prairie restoration. Fire use steadily increased between 1965 and 1984, but the greatest increase occurred following workshop instruction in 1978. These guidelines present a set of reasons, criteria, techniques, and examples of simple prescriptions which aid in the planning and execution of a safe and effective prescribed burning program for wildlife enhancement in grassland areas of the NGP

Effects of Fire in the Northern Great Plains

Fire has been used inconsistently to manage native and tame grasslands in the Northern Great Plains (NGP) of the north-central U.S. and south-central Canada, particularly the grasslands found in prairies, plains, agricultural land retirement programs, and moist soil sites. This has happened for three primary reasons: (1) the reduction of American Indian use of fire after 1875, (2) fire suppression and land use changes that put increasingly more acres under annual tillage since about the same time, and (3) a growing resistance to the use of fire since about 1940, largely due to media overemphasis of its harmful effects (e.g., Bambi and Smokey the Bear ). Little can be done to change the first two factors but there is ample opportunity to change human attitudes about fire. Attitudes change when the knowledge (or lack of it) changes. We believe that people have been reluctant to include fire in resource management programs in the NGP because of a lack of adequate information about the effects of fire on the soils, plants, and animals in the region. This document provides information concerning fire effects on the grassland biome of the NGP, with special emphasis on the use of fire for wildlife management. In several instances we have drawn from published literature outside the geographic region, but only to provide a more complete reference for readers and decision makers. In most instances, we only state or abstract the published findings of others without interpretation, either pro or con. Readers can fit the information into their specific circumstances. English and scientific names are from Flora of the Great Plains by the Great Plains Flora Association and from the Checklist of Vertebrates of the United States, the U.S. territories, and Canada by RC. Banks, R.W. McDiarmid, and A.L. Gardner

Annotated Bibliography of Fire Literature

Natural resource managers have greatly increased the use of fire to manage grassland habitats during the past two decades in the northern Great Plains region of the United States and Canada. In support of these efforts, we have compiled this annotated bibliography to provide a condensed reference of fire literature for those managers with an interest in fire ecology. References are arranged alphabetically by author and year, numbered consecutively, and referenced by number in the author and subject indexes that follow the bibliography. The intent in compiling the bibliography and indexes is more to identify subject matter and to direct the reader to sources rather than to provide a digested interpretation of each manuscript

Genetic risk and a primary role for cell-mediated immune mechanisms in multiple sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis is a common disease of the central nervous system in which the interplay between inflammatory and neurodegenerative processes typically results in intermittent neurological disturbance followed by progressive accumulation of disability. Epidemiological studies have shown that genetic factors are primarily responsible for the substantially increased frequency of the disease seen in the relatives of affected individuals, and systematic attempts to identify linkage in multiplex families have confirmed that variation within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) exerts the greatest individual effect on risk. Modestly powered genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have enabled more than 20 additional risk loci to be identified and have shown that multiple variants exerting modest individual effects have a key role in disease susceptibility. Most of the genetic architecture underlying susceptibility to the disease remains to be defined and is anticipated to require the analysis of sample sizes that are beyond the numbers currently available to individual research groups. In a collaborative GWAS involving 9,772 cases of European descent collected by 23 research groups working in 15 different countries, we have replicated almost all of the previously suggested associations and identified at least a further 29 novel susceptibility loci. Within the MHC we have refined the identity of the HLA-DRB1 risk alleles and confirmed that variation in the HLA-A gene underlies the independent protective effect attributable to the class I region. Immunologically relevant genes are significantly overrepresented among those mapping close to the identified loci and particularly implicate T-helper-cell differentiation in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis

Effect of natalizumab on disease progression in secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (ASCEND). a phase 3, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial with an open-label extension

Background: Although several disease-modifying treatments are available for relapsing multiple sclerosis, treatment effects have been more modest in progressive multiple sclerosis and have been observed particularly in actively relapsing subgroups or those with lesion activity on imaging. We sought to assess whether natalizumab slows disease progression in secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, independent of relapses. Methods: ASCEND was a phase 3, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial (part 1) with an optional 2 year open-label extension (part 2). Enrolled patients aged 18–58 years were natalizumab-naive and had secondary progressive multiple sclerosis for 2 years or more, disability progression unrelated to relapses in the previous year, and Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) scores of 3·0–6·5. In part 1, patients from 163 sites in 17 countries were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive 300 mg intravenous natalizumab or placebo every 4 weeks for 2 years. Patients were stratified by site and by EDSS score (3·0–5·5 vs 6·0–6·5). Patients completing part 1 could enrol in part 2, in which all patients received natalizumab every 4 weeks until the end of the study. Throughout both parts, patients and staff were masked to the treatment received in part 1. The primary outcome in part 1 was the proportion of patients with sustained disability progression, assessed by one or more of three measures: the EDSS, Timed 25-Foot Walk (T25FW), and 9-Hole Peg Test (9HPT). The primary outcome in part 2 was the incidence of adverse events and serious adverse events. Efficacy and safety analyses were done in the intention-to-treat population. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT01416181. Findings: Between Sept 13, 2011, and July 16, 2015, 889 patients were randomly assigned (n=440 to the natalizumab group, n=449 to the placebo group). In part 1, 195 (44%) of 439 natalizumab-treated patients and 214 (48%) of 448 placebo-treated patients had confirmed disability progression (odds ratio [OR] 0·86; 95% CI 0·66–1·13; p=0·287). No treatment effect was observed on the EDSS (OR 1·06, 95% CI 0·74–1·53; nominal p=0·753) or the T25FW (0·98, 0·74–1·30; nominal p=0·914) components of the primary outcome. However, natalizumab treatment reduced 9HPT progression (OR 0·56, 95% CI 0·40–0·80; nominal p=0·001). In part 1, 100 (22%) placebo-treated and 90 (20%) natalizumab-treated patients had serious adverse events. In part 2, 291 natalizumab-continuing patients and 274 natalizumab-naive patients received natalizumab (median follow-up 160 weeks [range 108–221]). Serious adverse events occurred in 39 (13%) patients continuing natalizumab and in 24 (9%) patients initiating natalizumab. Two deaths occurred in part 1, neither of which was considered related to study treatment. No progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy occurred. Interpretation: Natalizumab treatment for secondary progressive multiple sclerosis did not reduce progression on the primary multicomponent disability endpoint in part 1, but it did reduce progression on its upper-limb component. Longer-term trials are needed to assess whether treatment of secondary progressive multiple sclerosis might produce benefits on additional disability components. Funding: Biogen

Multiple sclerosis genomic map implicates peripheral immune cells and microglia in susceptibility

We analyzed genetic data of 47,429 multiple sclerosis (MS) and 68,374 control subjects and established a reference map of the genetic architecture of MS that includes 200 autosomal susceptibility variants outside the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), one chromosome X variant, and 32 variants within the extended MHC. We used an ensemble of methods to prioritize 551 putative susceptibility genes that implicate multiple innate and adaptive pathways distributed across the cellular components of the immune system. Using expression profiles from purified human microglia, we observed enrichment for MS genes in these brain-resident immune cells, suggesting that these may have a role in targeting an autoimmune process to the central nervous system, although MS is most likely initially triggered by perturbation of peripheral immune responses

Reproducibility in the absence of selective reporting : An illustration from large-scale brain asymmetry research

Altres ajuts: Max Planck Society (Germany).The problem of poor reproducibility of scientific findings has received much attention over recent years, in a variety of fields including psychology and neuroscience. The problem has been partly attributed to publication bias and unwanted practices such as p-hacking. Low statistical power in individual studies is also understood to be an important factor. In a recent multisite collaborative study, we mapped brain anatomical left-right asymmetries for regional measures of surface area and cortical thickness, in 99 MRI datasets from around the world, for a total of over 17,000 participants. In the present study, we revisited these hemispheric effects from the perspective of reproducibility. Within each dataset, we considered that an effect had been reproduced when it matched the meta-analytic effect from the 98 other datasets, in terms of effect direction and significance threshold. In this sense, the results within each dataset were viewed as coming from separate studies in an "ideal publishing environment," that is, free from selective reporting and p hacking. We found an average reproducibility rate of 63.2% (SD = 22.9%, min = 22.2%, max = 97.0%). As expected, reproducibility was higher for larger effects and in larger datasets. Reproducibility was not obviously related to the age of participants, scanner field strength, FreeSurfer software version, cortical regional measurement reliability, or regional size. These findings constitute an empirical illustration of reproducibility in the absence of publication bias or p hacking, when assessing realistic biological effects in heterogeneous neuroscience data, and given typically-used sample sizes