Placing Women's Voices in the Centre of a Strategy for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse: Speaking from Our Strengths

The premise for this paper is both basic and profound: survivors of child sexual abuse have the knowledge, experience, and perspective to lead in the efforts to stop it. It describes a draft strategy to prevent child sexual abuse, placing survivors at the core of the plan, that was generated at a two day gathering for female survivors of childhood sexual abuse.La prémisse pour cet article est à la fois fondamentale et profonde : les survivantes d'abus sexuel d'enfant ont la connaissance, l'expérience, et la perspective pour guider les efforts pour l'arrêter. L'article fait la description d' une ébauche de stratégie pour prévenir l'abus sexuel sur enfant en plaçant les survivantes au centre du plan, qui fût élaboré lors d'une rencontre de deux jours de femmes survivantes d'abus sexuel d'enfant

Using blubber explants to investigate adipose function in grey seals:glycolytic, lipolytic and gene expression responses to glucose and hydrocortisone

Adipose tissue is fundamental to energy balance, which underpins fitness and survival. Knowledge of adipose regulation in animals that undergo rapid fat deposition and mobilisation aids understanding of their energetic responses to rapid environmental change. Tissue explants can be used to investigate adipose regulation in wildlife species with large fat reserves, when opportunities for organismal experimental work are limited. We investigated glucose removal, lactate, glycerol and NEFA accumulation in media, and metabolic gene expression in blubber explants from wild grey seals. Glycolysis was higher in explants incubated in 25 mM glucose (HG) for 24 h compared to controls (C: 5.5 mM glucose). Adipose-derived lactate likely contributes to high endogenous glucose production in seals. Lipolysis was not stimulated by HG or high hydrocortisone (HC: 500 nM hydrocortisone) and was lower in heavier animals. HC caused NEFA accumulation in media to decrease by ~30% relative to C in females, indicative of increased lipogenesis. Lipolysis was higher in males than females in C and HG conditions. Lower relative abundance of 11-β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase 1 mRNA in HG explants suggests glucose involvement in blubber cortisol sensitivity. Our findings can help predict energy balance responses to stress and nutritional state in seals, and highlight the use of explants to study fat tissue function in wildlife

OPTIC: Orbiting Plutonian Topographic Image Craft Proposal for an Unmanned Mission to Pluto

The proposal for an unmanned probe to Pluto is presented and described. The Orbiting Plutonian Topographic Image Craft's (OPTIC's) trip will take twenty years and after its arrival, will begin its data collection which includes image and radar mapping, surface spectral analysis, and magnetospheric studies. This probe's design was developed based on the request for proposal of an unmanned probe to Pluto requirements. The distinct problems which an orbiter causes for each subsystem of the craft are discussed. The final design revolved around two important factors: (1) the ability to collect and return the maximum quantity of information on the Plutonian system; and (2) the weight limitations which the choice of an orbiting craft implied. The velocity requirements of this type of mission severely limited the weight available for mission execution-owing to the large portion of overall weight required as fuel to fly the craft with present technology. The topics covered include: (1) scientific instrumentation; (2) mission management; (3) power and propulsion; (4) attitude and articulation control; (5) structural subsystems; and (6) command, control, and communication

Trends in Twentieth-Century U.S. Snowfall Using a Quality-Controlled Dataset

A quality assessment of daily manual snowfall data has been undertaken for all U.S. long-term stations and their suitability for climate research. The assessment utilized expert judgment on the quality of each station. Through this process, the authors have identified a set of stations believed to be suitable for analysis of trends. Since the 1920s, snowfall has been declining in the West and the mid-Atlantic coast. In some places during recent years the decline has been more precipitous, strongly trending downward along the southern margins of the seasonal snow region, the southern Missouri River basin, and parts of the Northeast. Snowfall has been increasing since the 1920s in the lee of the Rocky Mountains, the Great Lakes– northern Ohio Valley, and parts of the north-central United States. These areas that are in opposition to the overall pattern of declining snowfall seem to be associated with specific dynamical processes, such as upslope snow and lake-effect snow that may be responding to changes in atmospheric circulation

Trends in Twentieth-Century U.S. Snowfall Using a Quality-Controlled Dataset

A quality assessment of daily manual snowfall data has been undertaken for all U.S. long-term stations and their suitability for climate research. The assessment utilized expert judgment on the quality of each station. Through this process, the authors have identified a set of stations believed to be suitable for analysis of trends. Since the 1920s, snowfall has been declining in the West and the mid-Atlantic coast. In some places during recent years the decline has been more precipitous, strongly trending downward along the southern margins of the seasonal snow region, the southern Missouri River basin, and parts of the Northeast. Snowfall has been increasing since the 1920s in the lee of the Rocky Mountains, the Great Lakes– northern Ohio Valley, and parts of the north-central United States. These areas that are in opposition to the overall pattern of declining snowfall seem to be associated with specific dynamical processes, such as upslope snow and lake-effect snow that may be responding to changes in atmospheric circulation

Trends in Twentieth-Century U.S. Extreme Snowfall Seasons

Temporal variability in the occurrence of the most extreme snowfall years, both those with abundant snowfall amounts and those lacking snowfall, was examined using a set of 440 quality-controlled, homogenous U.S. snowfall records. The frequencies with which winter-centered annual snowfall totals exceeded the 90th and 10th percentile thresholds at individual stations were calculated from 1900–01 to 2006–07 for the conterminous United States, and for 9 standard climate regions. The area-weighted conterminous U.S. results do not show a statistically significant trend in the occurrence of either high or low snowfall years for the 107-yr period, but there are regional trends. Large decreases in the frequency of low-extreme snowfall years in the west north-central and east north-central United States are balanced by large increases in the frequency of low-extreme snowfall years in the Northeast, Southeast, and Northwest. During the latter portion of the period, from 1950–51 to 2006–07, trends are much more consistent, with the United States as a whole and the central and northwest U.S. regions in particular showing significant declines in high-extreme snowfall years, and four regions showing significant increases in the frequency of low-extreme snowfall years (i.e., Northeast, Southeast, south, and Northwest). In almost all regions of the United States, temperature during November–March is more highly correlated than precipitation to the occurrence of extreme snowfall years. El Nin ̃ o events are strongly associated with an increase in low-extreme snowfall years over the United States as a whole, and in the northwest, northeast, and central regions. A reduction in low-extreme snowfall years in the Southwest is also associated with El Nin ̃ o. The impacts of La Nin ̃ a events are strongest in the south and Southeast, favoring fewer high-extreme snowfall years, and, in the case of the south, more low-extreme snowfall years occur. The Northwest also has a significant reduction in the chance of a low-extreme snowfall year during La Nin ̃ a. A combination of trends in temperature in the United States and changes in the frequency of ENSO modes influences the frequency of extreme snowfall years in the United States

Economic Impact of Withdrawing Specific Agricultural Pesticides in the Lower Rio Grande Valley

The Air, Pesticides, and Toxics Division of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has encouraged all states to develop a plan to manage the use of pesticides to prevent application that would result in unreasonable risks to human health and the environment from contamination of ground water. In February, 1988, EPA proposed a strategy where by they would regulate certain pesticides by prohibiting their use in areas vulnerable to leaching unless a state develops and implements a management plan acceptable to EPA. However, banning the use of a pesticide in a region is the worst case scenario available to the TWC for managing water quality. The Texas Water Commission (TWC) assessed the State for areas vulnerable to leaching and found the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) to be a highly vulnerable area. This study examines three pesticides (atrazine, dicrotophos, and aldicarb) currently used in the LRGV that were identified by the TWC as potential contaminants of ground water. Alternative methods of controlling pests in this region were identified, and the economic impacts of withdrawing one or all three of these pesticides from the study area were estimated. Regional impacts on gross receipts (sales), variable costs, and net returns were determined. If atrazine use were banned in the LRGV, corn and sorghum sales would decrease by approximately $1 million, variable costs to produce corn, sorghum, and sugarcane would increase by almost$2 million dollars, leaving farmers in the region with a $3 million dollar 1088 in net income per year. If dicrotophos use were prohibited in the LRGV, variable cost to produce cotton would increase by over$600,000 for the region as a whole. Banning aldicarb use in the study area would reduce citrus sales by almost $3 million, increase variable costs to produce citrus by over$200,000, and reduce farmer net income by over $3 million annually

Signs of life:oxygen sensors confirm viability, measure oxygen consumption and provide rapid, effective contamination monitoring for field-based tissue culture

Understanding the ecology and evolution of wildlife and domesticated species requires knowledge of their physiological responses to environmental change and the constraints under which they operate. However, whole animal experiments are often limited in sample size and can be logistically and ethically challenging. Culture techniques represent a powerful approach, but are used infrequently in field research due to practical constraints. We used minimal tissue culture equipment in a remote field site for in vitro explant experiments using blubber from wild grey seals Halichoerus grypus. Assessing explant viability and detecting microbial contamination in remote field sites, where facilities are often small, unspecialised and more vulnerable to bacterial or fungal infection, present major challenges. We investigated whether oxygen‐sensitive planar optodes (OSPO) in closed system respirometry could be used to assess oxygen consumption by blubber explants from suckling and fasting wild seal pups as a proxy for viability. We also explored whether OSPOs could provide rapid information on whole animal relevant physiological metrics by determining whether explant oxygen consumption correlated with the nutritional state of the animal, blubber depth and other tissue metabolic properties, including glucose uptake, lactate production and lipolysis. Vials containing blubber explants consumed significant amounts of oxygen compared to controls, showing tissues were metabolically active. Oxygen consumption differed between nutritional states and blubber tissue depth. These differences were reflected in other tissue metabolic properties. Dissolved oxygen levels remained consistent over 24 hr in 94% of control vials containing only culture media. In 6% of control vials extremely rapid oxygen consumption preceded, by 2–3 days, colour changes in the phenol‐red containing media that indicate lactic acidosis from microbial metabolic activity. Oxygen use in control vials was, therefore, an effective monitoring system that provided vital early warning of media contamination, allowing stocks to be discarded, which prevented erroneous results and avoided waste of valuable field time and irreplaceable samples. OSPO are thus a useful tool for simultaneously assessing tissue oxygen consumption, investigating functional physiological differences and monitoring microbiological contamination in culture experiments, particularly in field laboratories studying live tissues from wildlife

Trend Identification in Twentieth-Century U.S. Snowfall: The Challenges

There is an increasing interest in examining long-term trends in measures of snow climatology. An examination of the U.S. daily snowfall records for 1900–2004 revealed numerous apparent inconsistencies. For example, long-term snowfall trends among neighboring lake-effect stations differ greatly from insignificant to +100% century -1. Internal inconsistencies in the snow records, such as a lack of upward trends in maximum seasonal snow depth at stations with large upward trends in snowfall, point to inhomogeneities. Nationwide, the frequency of daily observations with a 10:1 snowfall-to-liquid-equivalent ratio declined from 30% in the 1930s to a current value of around 10%, a change that is clearly due to observational practice. There then must be biases in cold-season liquid-equivalent precipitation, or snowfall, or both. An empirical adjustment of snow-event, liquid-equivalent precipitation indicates that the potential biases can be statistically significant. Examples from this study show that there are nonclimatic issues that complicate the identification of and significantly change the trends in snow variables. Thus, great care should be taken in interpretation of time series of snow-related variables from the Cooperative Observer Program (COOP) network. Furthermore, full documentation of optional practices should be required of network observers so that future users of these data can properly account for such practices