444 research outputs found

    Electronic Music Studios in Britain - 1: University of York

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    Review of New Music Vocabulary: A Guide to Notational Signs for Contemporary Music by Howard Risatti

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    The Role of Habitat Management in Shaping Predation, Animal Color, and Gene Flow in a Metapopulation of Florida Scrub Lizards (Sceloporus Woodi)

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    Anthropogenic disturbance is known to affect biological diversity at the community, species, and genetic levels. Habitat fragmentation, in particular, has been shown to impact predator abundance and distribution, impede dispersal, and augment genetic drift. In small populations, which often result from habitat fragmentation, the effects of human disturbance may be disproportionately expressed. Small populations are more susceptible to selection pressures and random drift because genetic and phenotypic frequencies can become rapidly fixed, in comparison to larger populations. In turn, fixation of maladaptive alleles or morphs can accelerate extinction. For example, cryptic color polymorphism can be maintained by apostatic selection, where detection of prey is dependent on the relative frequencies of color morphs. In the event that a conspicuous color morph becomes fixed, the probability of detection by visual predators is likely to increase, thus increasing probability of local extinction. Furthermore, events that alter habitat structure and substrate composition may also increase exposure of cryptic animals to visual predators because crypsis is substrate-dependent. A color morph that is cryptic against one visual background may be conspicuous against a different visual background. Subpopulations of Sceloporus woodi, a cryptic species of lizard, occupy managed stands of sand pine scrub and longleaf pine habitats in the Ocala National Forest. These subpopulations are subjected to prescribe burning, fire suppression, and clear-cutting. Here, I show that habitat alteration, due to management in the Ocala National Forest, results in differential predation between sampling locations. As a result, significant variation in dorsal color is observed across the metapopulation. Furthermore, subpopulations appear to experience little genetic drift, perhaps due to gene flow facilitated by anthropogenically-maintained corridors

    Genetic diversity, infection prevalence, and possible transmission routes of Bartonella spp. in vampire bats

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    Bartonella spp. are globally distributed bacteria that cause endocarditis in humans and domestic animals. Recent work has suggested bats as zoonotic reservoirs of some human Bartonella infections; however, the ecological and spatiotemporal patterns of infection in bats remain largely unknown. Here we studied the genetic diversity, prevalence of infection across seasons and years, individual risk factors, and possible transmission routes of Bartonella in populations of common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) in Peru and Belize, for which high infection prevalence has previously been reported. Phylogenetic analysis of the gltA gene for a subset of PCR-positive blood samples revealed sequences that were related to Bartonella described from vampire bats from Mexico, other Neotropical bat species, and streblid bat flies. Sequences associated with vampire bats clustered significantly by country but commonly spanned Central and South America, implying limited spatial structure. Stable and nonzero Bartonella prevalence between years supported endemic transmission in all sites. The odds of Bartonella infection for individual bats was unrelated to the intensity of bat flies ectoparasitism, but nearly all infected bats were infested, which precluded conclusive assessment of support for vector-borne transmission. While metagenomic sequencing found no strong evidence of Bartonella DNA in pooled bat saliva and fecal samples, we detected PCR positivity in individual saliva and feces, suggesting the potential for bacterial transmission through both direct contact (i.e., biting) and environmental (i.e., fecal) exposures. Further investigating the relative contributions of direct contact, environmental, and vector-borne transmission for bat Bartonella is an important next step to predict infection dynamics within bats and the risks of human and livestock exposures

    Seasonal Variability of Saturn's Tropospheric Temperatures, Winds and Para-H2_2 from Cassini Far-IR Spectroscopy

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    Far-IR 16-1000 μ\mum spectra of Saturn's hydrogen-helium continuum measured by Cassini's Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) are inverted to construct a near-continuous record of upper tropospheric (70-700 mbar) temperatures and para-H2_2 fraction as a function of latitude, pressure and time for a third of a Saturnian year (2004-2014, from northern winter to northern spring). The thermal field reveals evidence of reversing summertime asymmetries superimposed onto the belt/zone structure. The temperature structure that is almost symmetric about the equator by 2014, with seasonal lag times that increase with depth and are qualitatively consistent with radiative climate models. Localised heating of the tropospheric hazes (100-250 mbar) create a distinct perturbation to the temperature profile that shifts in magnitude and location, declining in the autumn hemisphere and growing in the spring. Changes in the para-H2_2 (fpf_p) distribution are subtle, with a 0.02-0.03 rise over the spring hemisphere (200-500 mbar) perturbed by (i) low-fpf_p air advected by both the springtime storm of 2010 and equatorial upwelling; and (ii) subsidence of high-fpf_p air at northern high latitudes, responsible for a developing north-south asymmetry in fpf_p. Conversely, the shifting asymmetry in the para-H2_2 disequilibrium primarily reflects the changing temperature structure (and the equilibrium distribution of fpf_p), rather than actual changes in fpf_p induced by chemical conversion or transport. CIRS results interpolated to the same point in the seasonal cycle as re-analysed Voyager-1 observations show qualitative consistency, with the exception of the tropical tropopause near the equatorial zones and belts, where downward propagation of a cool temperature anomaly associated with Saturn's stratospheric oscillation could potentially perturb tropopause temperatures, para-H2_2 and winds. [ABRIDGED]Comment: Preprint accepted for publication in Icarus, 29 pages, 18 figure

    Investigating intra-host and intra-herd sequence diversity of foot-and-mouth disease virus

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    Due to the poor-fidelity of the enzymes involved in RNA genome replication, foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus samples comprise of unique polymorphic populations. In this study, deep sequencing was utilised to characterise the diversity of FMD virus (FMDV) populations in 6 infected cattle present on a single farm during the series of outbreaks in the UK in 2007. A novel RT–PCR method was developed to amplify a 7.6 kb nucleotide fragment encompassing the polyprotein coding region of the FMDV genome. Illumina sequencing of each sample identified the fine polymorphic structures at each nucleotide position, from consensus level changes to variants present at a 0.24% frequency. These data were used to investigate population dynamics of FMDV at both herd and host levels, evaluate the impact of host on the viral swarm structure and to identify transmission links with viruses recovered from other farms in the same series of outbreaks. In 7 samples, from 6 different animals, a total of 5 consensus level variants were identified, in addition to 104 sub-consensus variants of which 22 were shared between 2 or more animals. Further analysis revealed differences in swarm structures from samples derived from the same animal suggesting the presence of distinct viral populations evolving independently at different lesion sites within the same infected animal
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