Natural Resource Service Learning to Link Students, Communities, and the Land

University-based Extension specialists often face the dilemma of scheduling time for both teaching and outreach activities. Service learning projects that give hands-on experience in the application of classroom activities while giving back to the community can bridge this gap. A demonstration forest and service learning techniques were used to help 30 undergraduate forestry students lead a forestry field day for 100 elementary school students. Upon completion of the project, undergraduate students were more confident in their forestry knowledge and played an important role in the success of a natural resources Extension demonstration and outreach project

Ecological Factors Influencing Wild Pig Damage to Planted Pine and Hardwood Seedlings

Expanding wild pig (Sus scrofa) populations across the southern United States has the potential to impact longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) restoration efforts. The depredation of planted pine seedlings is the most widespread and economically costly damage caused by wild pigs in forest plantations. A better understanding of the ecological factors affecting depredation rates will allow managers to implement best management practices to reduce seedling mortality from wild pigs at their most vulnerable stage of growth. From March 2016 to March 2017, we evaluated wild pig preferences for planted pine and hardwood species at a 34.4-ha cutover site and 4.7-ha pecan (Carya illinoinensis) orchard in Bullock County, Alabama, USA. Wild pig damage differed for the 5 seedling species tested, with longleaf and cherrybark oak (Quercus pagodaefolia) being the most preferred. Ninety one percent of seedlings destroyed by wild pigs were from the cutover site. Wild pigs at the cutover site experienced substantially more hunting pressure compared to those at the other site. We believe the debris scattering practices of the logging crew following a clearcut created a desirable foraging environment that led to the initial discovery of the seedlings. The short-term protection and minimization of seedling depredation in young forest plantations may be the most realistic solution to reducing the impact of wild pigs on forestry and timber resources

A Gene Expression Fingerprint of C. Elegans Embryonic Motor Neurons

Differential gene expression specifies the highly diverse cell types that constitute the nervous system. With its sequenced genome and simple, well-defined neuroanatomy, the nematode C. elegans is a useful model system in which to correlate gene expression with neuron identity. The UNC-4 transcription factor is expressed in thirteen embryonic motor neurons where it specifies axonal morphology and synaptic function. These cells can be marked with an unc-4::GFP reporter transgene. Here we describe a powerful strategy, Micro-Array Profiling of C. elegans cells (MAPCeL), and confirm that this approach provides a comprehensive gene expression profile of unc-4::GFP motor neurons in vivo.

Pamela: development of the RF system for a non-relativistic non-scaling FFAG

The PAMELA project(Particle Accelerator For MEdical Applications) currently consists of the design of a particle therapy facility. The project, which is in the design phase, contains Non-Scaling FFAG, particle accelerator capable of rapid beam acceleration, giving a pulse repetition rate of 1kHz, far beyond that of a conventional synchrotron. To realise the repetition rate, a key component of the accelerator is the rf accelerating system. The combination of a high energy gain per turn and a high repetition rate is a significant challenge. In this paper, options for the rf system of the proton ring and the status of development are presented

The Wyoming Survey for H-alpha. I. Initial Results at z ~ 0.16 and 0.24

The Wyoming Survey for H-alpha, or WySH, is a large-area, ground-based, narrowband imaging survey for H-alpha-emitting galaxies over the latter half of the age of the Universe. The survey spans several square degrees in a set of fields of low Galactic cirrus emission. The observing program focuses on multiple dz~0.02 epochs from z~0.16 to z~0.81 down to a uniform (continuum+line) luminosity at each epoch of ~10^33 W uncorrected for extinction (3sigma for a 3" diameter aperture). First results are presented here for 98+208 galaxies observed over approximately 2 square degrees at redshifts z~0.16 and 0.24, including preliminary luminosity functions at these two epochs. These data clearly show an evolution with lookback time in the volume-averaged cosmic star formation rate. Integrals of Schechter fits to the extinction-corrected H-alpha luminosity functions indicate star formation rates per co-moving volume of 0.009 and 0.014 h_70 M_sun/yr/Mpc^3 at z~0.16 and 0.24, respectively. The formal uncertainties in the Schechter fits, based on this initial subset of the survey, correspond to uncertainties in the cosmic star formation rate density at the >~40% level; the tentative uncertainty due to cosmic variance is 25%, estimated from separately carrying out the analysis on data from the first two fields with substantial datasets.Comment: To appear in the Astronomical Journa

Prolyl-4-hydroxylase 3 maintains β-cell glucose metabolism during fatty acid excess in mice

The α-ketoglutarate–dependent dioxygenase, prolyl-4-hydroxylase 3 (PHD3), is an HIF target that uses molecular oxygen to hydroxylate peptidyl prolyl residues. Although PHD3 has been reported to influence cancer cell metabolism and liver insulin sensitivity, relatively little is known about the effects of this highly conserved enzyme in insulin-secreting β cells in vivo. Here, we show that the deletion of PHD3 specifically in β cells (βPHD3KO) was associated with impaired glucose homeostasis in mice fed a high-fat diet. In the early stages of dietary fat excess, βPHD3KO islets energetically rewired, leading to defects in the management of pyruvate fate and a shift from glycolysis to increased fatty acid oxidation (FAO). However, under more prolonged metabolic stress, this switch to preferential FAO in βPHD3KO islets was associated with impaired glucose-stimulated ATP/ADP rises, Ca(2+) fluxes, and insulin secretion. Thus, PHD3 might be a pivotal component of the β cell glucose metabolism machinery in mice by suppressing the use of fatty acids as a primary fuel source during the early phases of metabolic stress

Investigating hyper-vigilance for social threat of lonely children

The hypothesis that lonely children show hypervigilance for social threat was examined in a series of three studies that employed different methods including advanced eye-tracking technology. Hypervigilance for social threat was operationalized as hostility to ambiguously motivated social exclusion in a variation of the hostile attribution paradigm (Study 1), scores on the Children’s Rejection-Sensitivity Questionnaire (Study 2), and visual attention to socially rejecting stimuli (Study 3). The participants were 185 children (11 years-7 months to 12 years-6 months), 248 children (9 years-4 months to 11 years-8 months) and 140 children (8 years-10 months to 12 years-10 months) in the three studies, respectively. Regression analyses showed that, with depressive symptoms covaried, there were quadratic relations between loneliness and these different measures of hypervigilance to social threat. As hypothesized, only children in the upper range of loneliness demonstrated elevated hostility to ambiguously motivated social exclusion, higher scores on the rejection sensitivity questionnaire, and disengagement difficulties when viewing socially rejecting stimuli. We found that very lonely children are hypersensitive to social threat

Runs of homozygosity in killer whale genomes provide a global record of demographic histories

Runs of homozygosity (ROH) occur when offspring inherit haplotypes that are identical by descent from each parent. Length distributions of ROH are informative about population history; specifically, the probability of inbreeding mediated by mating system and/or population demography. Here, we investigated whether variation in killer whale (Orcinus orca) demographic history is reflected in genome-wide heterozygosity and ROH length distributions, using a global data set of 26 genomes representative of geographic and ecotypic variation in this species, and two F1 admixed individuals with Pacific-Atlantic parentage. We first reconstructed demographic history for each population as changes in effective population size through time using the pairwise sequential Markovian coalescent (PSMC) method. We found a subset of populations declined in effective population size during the Late Pleistocene, while others had more stable demography. Genomes inferred to have undergone ancestral declines in effective population size, were autozygous at hundreds of short ROH (\u3c1 \u3eMb), reflecting high background relatedness due to coalescence of haplotypes deep within the pedigree. In contrast, longer and therefore younger ROH (\u3e1.5 Mb) were found in low latitude populations, and populations of known conservation concern. These include a Scottish killer whale, for which 37.8% of the autosomes were comprised of ROH \u3e1.5 Mb in length. The fate of this population, in which only two adult males have been sighted in the past five years, and zero fecundity over the last two decades, may be inextricably linked to its demographic history and consequential inbreeding depression

Genomic Imprinting in Mammals: Emerging Themes and Established Theories

The epigenetic events that occur during the development of the mammalian embryo are essential for correct gene expression and cell-lineage determination. Imprinted genes are expressed from only one parental allele due to differential epigenetic marks that are established during gametogenesis. Several theories have been proposed to explain the role that genomic imprinting has played over the course of mammalian evolution, but at present it is not clear if a single hypothesis can fully account for the diversity of roles that imprinted genes play. In this review, we discuss efforts to define the extent of imprinting in the mouse genome, and suggest that different imprinted loci may have been wrought by distinct evolutionary forces. We focus on a group of small imprinted domains, which consist of paternally expressed genes embedded within introns of multiexonic transcripts, to discuss the evolution of imprinting at these loci