Connecting Seniors in Franklin County Vermont to Community Resources

Vermont currently has the second oldest population in the country and the elderly population is continuing to increase. Senior citizens define aging successfully as having good health, strong friendships, and being able to participate in activities. In order to meet the needs of seniors it is important to find ways to better connect them with available community resources. The aim of this project was to create a pamphlet of community resources available to seniors in Franklin County, Vermont to aid in connecting them to community involvement and support.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1274/thumbnail.jp

Lake Champlain Water Quality: A Study of Public Awareness, Perceptions, and Behavior

Introduction: Lake Champlain serves as a major source of drinking water and a prime recreational area in Vermont. The Vermont Department of Health actively monitors Lake Champlain water quality, generates informational resources, and issues restrictions and advisories as necessary. Key water quality issues include: blue-green algae blooms (BGAB), combined sewer overflow (CSO), mercury-based fish consumption advisories, and suitability for recreational use. Determining public awareness of Lake Champlain water quality, and how perceptions of Lake Champlain water quality influence behavior, are essential to improving communication with at-risk and underinformed populations.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1233/thumbnail.jp

Accuracy and Reliability of Examiners’ Observations of Pre-Practice Warm-Up and FIFA 11+ Injury Prevention Program Exercises

Background: The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) 11+ is an injury prevention program that decreases the incidence of lower extremity injuries. The purpose of the current study was to understand what specific exercises prevented injury from occurring. We thus developed and tested a form to identify these exercises. We hypothesize that trained examiners could accurately and reliably use this form to identify and record individual exercises performed during preparticipation warm-up. Methods: A repeated-measures study design was used in this investigation. After observing five prepractice warm-up videos obtained from multiple high schools, 11 examiners observed and recorded performed exercises at two different times. The videos included four soccer teams and one American football team. Accuracy, interexaminer reliability, and intraexaminer reliability were assessed. Sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and percent agreement with a FIFA 11+ expert were measured for each exercise component. Results: The intraclass correlation coefficients between examiners and individually ranged from 0.22 to 1.00 and 0.58 to 1.00, respectively. Reliability was lowest for exercises with similar movements. The percent agreement across all examiners for individual exercises ranged from 20% to 100%. Additionally, the percent agreement between each examiner and the “gold standard” examiner was high (range, 69.6% to 90.4%). For exercises with similar movements, accuracy and reliability were considerably improved (97%) when combined into one category. Conclusion: We determined that trained examiners with different backgrounds and experience can make accurate and reliable observations of most exercises observed in warm-up programs. Using the proposed form, researchers can accurately record exercises and perform quality and fidelity assessments of warm-up exercise routines

A comparative study of single-leg ground reaction forces in running lizards

The role of different limbs in supporting and propelling the body has been studied in many species with animals appearing to have either similarity in limb function or differential limb function. Differential hindlimb versus forelimb function has been proposed as a general feature of running with a sprawling posture and as benefiting sprawled postured animals by enhancing maneuvering and minimizing joint moments. Yet only a few species have been studied and thus the generality of differential limb function in running animals with sprawled postures is unknown. We measured the limb lengths of seven species of lizard and their single-limb three-dimensional ground reaction forces during high-speed running. We found that all species relied on the hindlimb for producing accelerative forces. Braking forces were forelimb dominated in four species and equally distributed between limbs in the other three. Vertical forces were dominated by the hindlimb in three species and equally distributed between the forelimb and hindlimb in the other four. Medial forces were dominated by the hindlimb in four species and equally distributed in the other three, with all Iguanians exhibiting hindlimbbiased medial forces. Relative hindlimb to forelimb length of each species was related to variation in hindlimb versus forelimb medial forces; species with relatively longer hindlimbs compared with forelimbs exhibited medial forces that were more biased towards the hindlimbs. These results suggest that the function of individual limbs in lizards varies across species with only a single general pattern (hindlimb-dominated accelerative force) being present

The quick and the fast: The evolution of acceleration capacity in Anolis lizards

Abstract. Although of prime ecological relevance, acceleration capacity is a poorly understood locomotor performance trait in terrestrial vertebrates. No empirical data exist on which design characteristics determine acceleration capacity among species and whether these design traits influence other aspects of locomotor performance. In this study we explore how acceleration capacity and sprint speed have evolved in Anolis lizards. We investigate whether the same or different morphological traits (i.e., limb dimensions and muscle mass) correlate with both locomotor traits. Within our sample of Anolis lizards, relative sprint speed and acceleration capacity coevolved. However, whereas the variation in relative acceleration capacity is primarily explained by the variation in relative knee extensor muscle mass, the variation in relative sprint speed is correlated to the variation in relative femur, tibia, and metatarsus length as well as knee extensor muscle mass. The fact that the design features required to excel in either performance trait partly overlap might explain the positive correlation between the variation in relative sprint speed and acceleration capacity. Furthermore, our data show how similar levels of sprint performance can be achieved through different morphological traits (limb segment lengths and muscle mass) suggesting that redundant mapping has potentially played a role in mitigating trade-offs. Key words. Ecomorphology, interspecific, comparison, locomotion, muscle, performance. Received July 12, 2006. Accepted July 20, 2006 Although rarely empirically demonstrated, locomotor performance is believed to be a crucial determinant of organismal fitness (see Surprisingly, an extensive literature search revealed no empirical data on which functional characteristics actually determine acceleration capacity among species, and how. In addition, it is unclear whether the design traits determining acceleration capacity influence other aspects of locomotor performance (e.g., sprint speed) as well. Depending on the functional relationship between design features and different locomotor performance traits, the respective performance 6 Present address: Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003; E-mail: irschick@ tulane.edu. traits will be intercorrelated in one of the following three ways. First, if both performance traits are determined by the same functional design, they are predicted to coevolve in a positive manner. Second, if the two performance traits pose conflicting demands on the same design features, excellence in one performance trait will be achieved at the cost of high performance in the other, resulting in a negative correlation between the two performance traits. Third, if different nonconflicting design traits underlie either performance trait, or if different combinations of design traits result in similar performance capacities, performance traits will evolve independently from one another. Moreover, by investigating how different performance traits are intercorrelated, insights may be gained into the structure-function relationships underlying both locomotor performance traits. In a first attempt to understand the evolution of acceleration capacity, we study how sprint speed and acceleration capacity are functionally related among different species of Anolis lizards. To date, one empirical study has suggested that speed and acceleration capacity are positively correlated among individuals within one lizard species In addition, body size may have opposing effects on speed and acceleration. Although sprint speed generally increases with size (review in Last, at the level of the design of the muscular and musculoskeletal system, force generation and velocity may trade off because muscles and musculoskeletal systems that are designed for fast contractions inevitably produce less force. This may result in a negative relationship between force and velocity at the whole-animal level. Since force and acceleration are tightly related (force ϭ mass ϫ acceleration), the force-velocity trade-off may in turn lead to a trade-off between acceleration and speed. The mechanics of simple lever systems, such as the jaws of fishes and the claws of crabs, corroborate this idea Although some biomechanical principles suggest that speed and acceleration should trade off because they pose conflicting demands on the same design traits, recent theoretical evolutionary models have demonstrated that the same performance may potentially be achieved through many different pathways. Moreover, design traits are often redundant In this study, we test how sprint speed and acceleration capacity are related by examining the evolutionary intercorrelation between sprint speed and acceleration capacity among 16 Anolis lizard species. We use Anolis lizards as our study system because they typically use short and unpredictable locomotor bouts during predator escape, foraging, and social interactions MATERIALS AND METHODS Animals Between November 2001 and June 2002, we captured male individuals of 16 different Anolis species by hand or noose at different localities. One of the species, A. cristatellus, was sampled in two populations (see below). These 16 species were selected because they represent six different ecomorphs (cf. Williams 1983; Losos 1990; Beuttell and Losos 1999; Appendix 1 and 2). On mainland United States; we caught A. carolinensis (New Orleans, LA), A. sagrei, A. distichus, A. equestris, A. garmani, and A. cristatellus (all Miami, FL); A. grahami, A. lineatopus, and A. valencienni were caught in Jamaica (Discovery Bay) ; and A. cristatellus,, A. cuvieri, A. evermanni, A. gundlachi, A. krugi, A. occultus, A. pulchellus, and A. stratulus were all from Puerto Rico (El Verde and Cambalache forests). The nine species from mainland United States and Jamaica were transported back to the laboratory at Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana. Upon arrival in the laboratory, the lizards were housed in pairs in 40-L terraria lined with leaf litter and with a dowel. Terraria were placed in a temperaturecontrolled room (29 Ϯ 2ЊC) illuminated 12 h per day. We fed the animals live crickets dusted with calcium and vitamin supplements three times a week; they were sprayed with water daily. The species from Puerto Rico were taken to the field lab at El Verde upon capture and their performance (see below) was tested on the same or following day (except for A. cuvieri, see below). Morphological measurements were taken im- EVOLUTION OF ACCELERATION CAPACITY IN ANOLIS mediately after the running trials. Lizards were kept in individual plastic bags while they were held at the field station. They were released at the site where they had been caught within 48 h. Morphology We took the following measurements using digital calipers (Mitutoyo [Telford,u.k.] CD-15DC; accuracy of 0.01 mm): snout-vent length (SVL; measured from tip of snout to cloaca), femur length (measured from hip to knee), tibia length (measured from knee to ankle), and metatarsus length (measured from ankle to base of second hind toe). One to three individuals per species (see Appendix 1) were sacrificed using an overdose of ketamine (excluding A. occultus and A. cristatellus from Puerto Rico). They were subsequently preserved in 10% aqueous formaldehyde (24 h) and stored in ethanol (70%) for at least three months prior to dissection. Of these specimens, all hind limb muscles of the right hind limb were dissected. We classified the muscles into nine functional groups: femur protractors, femur retractors, femur abductors, femur adductors, knee flexors, knee extensors, ankle flexors, ankle extensors, and other muscles (e.g., rotators). Muscles were weighed per functional group on a Mettler (Greifenseu, Switzerland) MT5 electronic balance (0.001 mg). Because all individuals were stored in alcohol for such a long period of time, we assume that all muscles regardless of their volume were dehydrated to the same extent. This procedure, therefore, reduced the possibility of artifacts in the interspecific comparison of muscle masses. For the purpose of this paper, we only include data on femur retractor muscle mass and knee and ankle extensor muscle mass because these are the muscle groups predominantly responsible for generating propulsion during locomotion (see Reilly 1995; Nelson and Jayne 2001). Performance Trials Laboratory We induced lizards to run up a plastic dowel (0.08 m diameter) covered with mesh, by clapping hands and/or tapping the lizards slightly on the base of the tail. The dowel was 2 m long and placed against the wall at an angle of 45Њ. We placed a reference grid of 0.2 m ϫ 2 m, consisting of squares of 5 cm ϫ 5 cm, alongside the dowel. Lizards were filmed in lateral view over a distance of 1 m using a highspeed video camera (Redlake [Tucson, AZ] Motionscope PCI camera) set at 250 frames sec Ϫ1 . Filming at this frame rate has been shown to be sufficiently accurate (cf. Walker 1998), particularly for the accelerations and velocities observed in this study (cf. Bergmann and Irschick 2006). We placed the lizards on the dowel so that the lizard was just in view. We performed between five and 10 trials per individual, on several nonconsecutive days. Prior to experimentation and in between trials, the lizards were placed in an incubator set at 32ЊC for at least one hour to attain body temperatures similar to their preferred field body temperatures (see also Field Puerto Rican species were filmed either in the forest where they were captured (A. cuvieri) or at the field station (all other species). The experimental design used to film the lizards differed only slightly from the experimental setup in the lab. The dimensions of the dowel were identical. At the field station, the dowel was placed against a wall; in the forest, it was placed against a tree trunk (both at an angle of 45Њ). We filmed the lizards at 240 frames sec Ϫ1 using a JVC (Yokohama, Japan) high-speed camera (model GR-DVL9500U). Prior to experimentation and in between trials, the lizards were placed in individual plastic bags outside in the shade to attain body temperatures close to the environmental temperatures. At least five runs were recorded per individual on the same or on consecutive days. After filming, we selected all ''good'' sequences per individual. A good sequence was defined as one in which the lizard started from a complete standstill, ran nonstop over a distance of at least 0.20 m (except for A. occultus, see below), and ran on top of the dowel, in a straight line. For these sequences, the tip of the snout was digitized at 250 frames sec Ϫ1 (240 frames sec Ϫ1 for Puerto Rican species) using Peak Performance MOTUS software. (ViconPeak, Oxford, U.K.) At the beginning of each sequence, we digitized four points a known distance apart on the reference grid. We started the frame-by-frame digitization 20 frames before the first movement (i.e., lizard sitting still) and we stopped when the lizard stopped running or ran out of view. The XY coordinates obtained from the digitizations were then smoothed using the quintic spline processor (QSP) implemented in the MOTUS software. The routine fits the fifth degree polynomial to the displacement data and smoothes them based on an estimate of the error variance. The error variance depends on the nature of the data and is estimated for each sequence that is analyzed. We chose to use the QSP because in this routine the derivatives are computed directly from the spline coefficients, and instantaneous velocity and acceleration are subsequently calculated (see also Bergmann and Irschick 2006). However, the QSP method consistently underestimates maximal acceleration (Walker 1998). We subsequently inspected all acceleration profiles visually and discarded those sequences for which the profile showed a scattered or random pattern. As an estimate of an individual's maximal acceleration capacity, we used the highest instantaneous acceleration attained by that individual in any of the trials. However, if the highest acceleration out of all trials for a given individual equaled or was greater than 200% of the second highest acceleration for that individual, we discarded the former estimate and used the latter in further analyses. We noted, per individual, in which trial it attained the highest acceleration. Based on the instantaneous displacement data, we calculated, for each sequence, the average sprint speed over 0.20-m intervals using a QBasic program custom-written by R. Van Damme. In this program, the time it takes a lizard to cover any 0.20-m interval out of the total distance of 1 m (i.e., total distance over which we filmed) is calculated. Sprint speed is subsequently calculated by dividing 0.20 m by the time it takes to cover this distance. This estimate of sprint 2140 BIEKE VANHOOYDONCK ET AL. FIG. 1. Phylogenetic relationships among the 16 Anolis species used in this study. The phylogenetic tree is based on mitochondrial DNA speed is similar to measurements of sprint speed using electronic racetracks (cf. Although lizards typically reach maximal sprint speed within 0.30 m after starting from a standstill (Huey and Hertz 1984; B. Vanhooydonck, pers. obs.), it remains unclear whether all individual lizards reached their maximal attainable speed in our trials. To make sure the sprint speed-acceleration relationship based on our speed data was valid, we tested whether similar results were obtained when using maximal sprint speeds from Subsequently, we checked, per individual, in which trial it attained the highest acceleration and in which the highest speed. In 73% of all cases, individual lizards achieved the highest (individual) acceleration and speed in a different trial. For those cases in which the individual maximum at both performance traits was reached in the same sequence, we randomly used either the second highest acceleration or the second highest speed for that individual in subsequent analyses. In doing so, we circumvent the potential problem of interdependency of the two performance measures. Statistical Analyses Average values per species were calculated for all variables and species, and the averages were logarithmically (log 10 ) transformed. Because species share parts of their evolutionary history, they cannot be regarded as independent datapoints in statistical analyses Both the simulation and the independent contrasts approach require information on the topology and branch lengths of the phylogenetic tree. The phylogeny of the 16 Anolis species under study here is based on a phylogenetic analysis of a much larger number of anole species by EVOLUTION OF ACCELERATION CAPACITY IN ANOLIS comm.). To check whether branch lengths were adequate, we tested whether the absolute values of the standardized contrasts were correlated to their standard deviations (PDTREE program; Ecomorph differences We tested whether ecomorphs differ in acceleration capacity and muscle mass by conducting a phylogenetic AN-COVA (SVL as covariate, ecomorph as factor). First, 1000 Monte Carlo simulations of character evolution along the branches of the phylogenetic tree were performed for each trait separately (PDSIMUL; We only report the statistics for the variables mentiaoned above, because previous studies have already documented significant differences in sprint speed and limb length among ecomorphs (see Since some ecomorph groups only consisted of one species, we were unable to test for differences in slopes among the groups. We only report significance results for the differences among ecomorphs after correcting for differences in SVL (i.e., differences in intercepts). Performance and morphology relationships Independent contrasts (IC) for all morphological and performance variables were calculated using the PDTREE program To test for the existence of a trade-off between sprint speed and acceleration capacity, we first regressed the IC of acceleration capacity and sprint speed against the IC of SVL and calculated the residuals. Subsequently, we regressed the residual IC of acceleration capacity against the residual IC of sprint speed. This analysis was done once with the sprint speed data for 16 species collected in this study and validated with the sprint speed data on 12 species collected by To test whether the variation in size (SVL) is correlated to the variation in acceleration capacity and/or sprint speed, we regressed the IC of each performance trait against the IC of SVL. Subsequently, we regressed the IC of all morphological variables, except SVL, against the IC of SVL and calculated the residuals. To test which of the shape variables (i.e., residuals) best explain the variation in acceleration and sprint speed, we performed two sets of analyses. Using GLM, we compared Akaike information criteria (AIC) and log-likelihoods (LL) of different models and tested whether one model performed better than the other. We subsequently performed a multiple regression analysis in which all the independent variables of the best model were entered to determine the direction of the relationships between performance and morphological traits and to take into account the interaction effect among the different independent variables. For acceleration capacity, we computed two models. In the first, we entered all morphological variables as covariates. Because muscle mass is believed to be of prime importance for determining acceleration capacity (see For sprint speed, we only computed one model. Since both limb segment length and muscle mass are predicted to be important correlates of sprint capacity, we included all morphological variables in this model. We subsequently performed a multiple regression with the residual IC of sprint speed as dependent variable and the residual IC of all six morphological variables as independent variables. Since our estimates of maximal acceleration capacity are based on the double differentiation of displacement data, whereas our estimates of maximal sprint speed are averages over a given distance, the former may be more variable compared to the latter. To make sure the results from the regression analyses are actually based on biological reality rather than on this kind of methodological artifact, we performed a power analysis. We used a Visual Fortran program written by RESULTS Ecomorph Differences Descriptive statistics of SVL, femur, tibia, and metatarsus length, femur retractor, knee extensor, and ankle extensor mass are given per species in Appendix 1; descriptive statistics on acceleration and sprint speed per species are presented in Appendix 2. When comparing the F-statistics from the one-way ANCOVAs (SVL as covariate, ecomorph as factor) to the phylogenetic F-distributions obtained by 1000 simulations along the phylogenetic tree, we found that the traditional F-values were greater than the phylogenetic F-values at the 0.05 significance level for acceleration capacity, and the muscle masses of knee and ankle extensors (all three F trad Ͼ 6.23; all three F phyl Ͻ 4.46). Traditional F-values for the femur retractor muscle mass, however, were lower than the phylogenetic F-values (F trad ϭ 1.38; F phyl ϭ 4.10). Thus, after correcting for differences in SVL, acceleration capacity and knee and ankle extensor muscle mass differ significantly 2142 BIEKE VANHOOYDONCK ET AL. FIG. 2. Plot of residual acceleration versus residual knee extensor muscle mass for 15 Anolis lizard species (nonphylogenetically corrected data). Relative acceleration capacity and knee extensor muscle mass coevolved (independent contrasts; see text for details). Symbols refer to six ecomorphs (•, trunk-crown; Ⅲ, trunk-ground; y, trunk; ࡗ, grass-bush; ᭡, twig; ᭢, crown-giant). FIG. 3. Plot of residual acceleration versus residual sprint speed for all species used in the analyses (nonphylogenetically corrected). Relative acceleration capacity and sprint speed coevolved (independent contrasts; see text for details). Symbols refer to six ecomorphs (•, trunk-crown; Ⅲ, trunk-ground; y, trunk; ࡗ, grass-bush; ᭡, twig; ᭢, crown-giant). among ecomorphs; trunk-ground anoles excel at accelerating and possess the most massive knee and ankle extensors. Twig anoles represent the other extreme, and the rest of the ecomorphs (crown-giant, trunk-crown, trunk, and grass-bush) attain accelerations and have extensor muscle masses in between those two groups (see also Performance and Morphology Relationships Residual IC of acceleration capacity and residual IC of sprint speed correlated positively (r ϭ 0.79, F 1,15 ϭ 25.33, P Ͻ 0.0001). This result is validated using the sprint speed data from Losos (1990) on 12 of the 16 Anolis species under study here (r ϭ 0.80, F 1,10 ϭ 18.09, P ϭ 0.002). A plot of the residual values of the nonphylogenetically corrected acceleration and our sprint speed data of 16 Anolis species and two A. cristatellus populations is shown in For the residual IC of acceleration capacity, comparing the AIC and LL of the model including the residual IC of all morphological variables with the AIC and LL of the model only including the residual IC of the muscle masses (se