Determining the effects of cattle grazing treatments on Yosemite toads (Anaxyrus [=Bufo] canorus) in montane meadows.

Amphibians are experiencing a precipitous global decline, and population stability on public lands with multiple uses is a key concern for managers. In the Sierra Nevada Mountains (California, USA), managers have specifically identified livestock grazing as an activity that may negatively affect Yosemite toads due to the potential overlap of grazing with toad habitat. Grazing exclusion from Yosemite toad breeding and rearing areas and/or entire meadows have been proposed as possible management actions to alleviate the possible impact of cattle on this species. The primary objective of this study was to determine if different fencing treatments affect Yosemite toad populations. We specifically examined the effect of three fencing treatments on Yosemite toad breeding pool occupancy, tadpoles, and young of the year (YOY). Our hypothesis was that over the course of treatment implementation (2006 through 2010), Yosemite toad breeding pool occupancy and early life stage densities would increase within two fencing treatments relative to actively grazed meadows due to beneficial changes to habitat quality in the absence of grazing. Our results did not support our hypothesis, and showed no benefit to Yosemite toad presence or early life stages in fenced or partially fenced meadows compared to standard USDA Forest Service grazing levels. We found substantial Yosemite toad variation by both meadow and year. This variation was influenced by meadow wetness, with water table depth significant in both the tadpole and YOY models

Bycatch and discarding in the South African demersal trawl fishery

Observers aboard commercial trawlers collected data on the total catch composition of 614 and 479 hauls made by vessels operating off the south and west coasts of South Africa, respectively. On the south coast, four fishing areas were identified on the basis of target species and fishing depth. On the west coast, hauls were separated into those targeting hake Merluccius spp. in four depth ranges (0–300, 301–400, 401–500, and >500 m) and those targeting monkfish Lophius vomerinus. For each area, the catch composition was calculated and the species assemblages were investigated using cluster analysis and multi-dimensional scaling. Finally, for each coast, the weight of fish discarded annually was estimated. On the south coast, although hake dominated, between 21% and 47% of the catch was not hake, depending on the fishing area. In comparison, hake dominated west coast catches, the proportion of hake increasing with depth. For each fishery investigated, approximately 90% of the catch was processed and landed. However, estimates of annual discards indicate that the south and west coast fisheries may annually discard 9000 or 10,000 t and 17,000 or 25,000 t, of undersized and unutilizable fish and offal, respectively, depending on the estimation method used. When developing strategies to limit or enhance utilization of bycatch, cognisance should be taken of the differences in catch composition between the south and west coasts and of the importance of bycatch revenue to south coast fishing companies

To Be, or Not to Be: That Is the Hamletic Question of Cryptic Evolution in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Raja miraletus Species Complex

The ability to correctly identify specimens at the species level is crucial for assessing and conserving biodiversity. Despite this, species-specific data are lacking for many of South Africa’s catsharks due to a high level of morphological stasis. As comprehensive and curated DNA reference libraries are required for the reliable identification of specimens from morphologically similar species, this study reviewed and contributed to the availability of cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) and nicotinamide adenine dehydrogenase subunit 2 (NADH2) sequences for South Africa’s catsharks. A molecular taxonomic approach, implementing species delimitation and specimen assignment methods, was used to assess and highlight any taxonomic uncertainties and/or errors in public databases. The investigated species were summarised into 47 molecular operational taxonomic units (MOTUs), with some conflicting specimen assignments. Two Apristurus specimens sampled in this study remained unidentified, revealing the presence of previously undocumented genetic diversity. In contrast, haplotype sharing within Haploblepharus—attributed to nucleotide ambiguities—resulted in the delimitation of three congeners into a single MOTU. This study reveals that molecular taxonomy has the potential to flag undocumented species and/or misidentified specimens, and further highlights the need to implement integrated taxonomic assessments on catsharks that represent an irreplaceable component of biodiversity in the region

On Secure Workflow Decentralisation on the Internet

Decentralised workflow management systems are a new research area, where most work to-date has focused on the system's overall architecture. As little attention has been given to the security aspects in such systems, we follow a security driven approach, and consider, from the perspective of available security building blocks, how security can be implemented and what new opportunities are presented when empowering the decentralised environment with modern distributed security protocols. Our research is motivated by a more general question of how to combine the positive enablers that email exchange enjoys, with the general benefits of workflow systems, and more specifically with the benefits that can be introduced in a decentralised environment. This aims to equip email users with a set of tools to manage the semantics of a message exchange, contents, participants and their roles in the exchange in an environment that provides inherent assurances of security and privacy. This work is based on a survey of contemporary distributed security protocols, and considers how these protocols could be used in implementing a distributed workflow management system with decentralised control . We review a set of these protocols, focusing on the required message sequences in reviewing the protocols, and discuss how these security protocols provide the foundations for implementing core control-flow, data, and resource patterns in a distributed workflow environment

Managing South Africa's trawl bycatch

Over the past few decades, it has become widely recognized that the management strategies of world fisheries must ensure sustainability of bycatch as well as of target species. South Africa implemented a pilot observer programme from 1995 to 2000 to collect data on the levels and patterns of bycatch and discards in the demersal trawl fishery. Here, the results of that programme are used in conjunction with information on bycatch value and compliance to assess the issues and problems regarding bycatch and discarding in the fishery. In general, bycatch components can be placed into one of three categories (discarded bycatch, retained bycatch, and processing waste), each of which present different management problems and require different management approaches. The results were used to formulate a bycatch management plan for the demersal trawl fishery in South Africa. Given the need to continue monitoring bycatch, the performance of the pilot observer programme is reviewed, and the levels of sampling effort required for a national programme are discussed

The SAMI Galaxy Survey: : extraplanar gas, galactic winds, and their association with star formation history

This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. ©: 2016 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society, the version of record is available on line at doi: 10.1093/mnras/stw017We investigate a sample of 40 local, main-sequence, edge-on disc galaxies using integral field spectroscopy with the Sydney-AAO Multi-object Integral field spectrograph (SAMI) Galaxy Survey to understand the link between properties of the extraplanar gas and their host galaxies. The kinematics properties of the extraplanar gas, including velocity asymmetries and increased dispersion, are used to differentiate galaxies hosting large-scale galactic winds from those dominated by the extended diffuse ionized gas. We find rather that a spectrum of diffuse gas-dominated to wind dominated galaxies exist. The wind-dominated galaxies span a wide range of star formation rates ($-1 \lesssim \log({\rm SFR/M_{\odot} yr^{-1}}) \lesssim 0.5$) across the whole stellar mass range of the sample ($8.5 \lesssim \log({\rm M_{*}/M_{\odot}}) \lesssim 11$). The wind galaxies also span a wide range in SFR surface densities ($10^{-3} \textrm{--} 10^{-1.5}\rm~M_{\odot} ~yr^{-1}~kpc^{-2}$) that is much lower than the canonical threshold of $\rm0.1~M_{\odot} ~yr^{-1}~kpc^{-2}$. The wind galaxies on average have higher SFR surface densities and higher $\rm H\delta_A$ values than those without strong wind signatures. The enhanced $\rm H\delta_A$ indicates that bursts of star formation in the recent past are necessary for driving large-scale galactic winds. We demonstrate with Sloan Digital Sky Survey data that galaxies with high SFR surface density have experienced bursts of star formation in the recent past. Our results imply that the galactic winds revealed in our study are indeed driven by bursts of star formation, and thus probing star formation in the time domain is crucial for finding and understanding galactic winds.Peer reviewe

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