Decline in Relative Abundance of Hippodamia convergens (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) in Fall Shoreline Aggregations on Western Lake Superior

In the 1970s, migratory coccinellid aggregations on western Lake Superior shorelines consisted of over 90% Hippodamia convergens Guérin-Méneville. In 2014, the alien Harmonia axyridis (Pallas) accounted for over 80% of shoreline coccinellid aggregations and H. convergens declined to less than 10% of the total. Additional work is needed to elucidate the extent and cause of the decline of H. convergens in western Lake Superior shoreline aggregations

LIMBUSTRACK: STABLE EYE-TRACKING IN IMPERFECT LIGHT CONDITIONS

We are aware of only one serious effort at development of a cheap, accurate, wearable eye tracker: the open source openEyes project. However, its method of ocular feature detection is such that it is prone to failure in variable lighting conditions. To address this deficiency, we have developed a cheap wearable eye tracker. At the heart of our development are novel techniques that allow operation under variable illumination

Police perceptions : external influences affecting work satisfaction

There are many individuals that apply for police officer positions. Some of those hired find the job challenging and rewarding, others leave unexpectedly. The newly hired that separate from the organization early in their career can have a negative impact on the police department. It is believed many of newly hired officers that leave unexpectedly may have not had an accurate perception of what the job entailed from the beginning. To gauge where police applicants from their perceptions of police work, newly hired police officers in Fairfax County were surveyed. The study was designed to take into account common perceptions of police work prior to and after police employment. The findings suggest the media, movies, television and family affect a person\u27s perception of police work to some degree. To overcome inaccurate perceptions of police work, police officials need to form greater partnerships with adolescent children, and other potential police applicants

Young People's Experiences of Receiving Individual Packages of Care in South Australia

Author version made available here in accordance with Publisher copyright policy.The aim of this study was to explore the role that professional foster care – and specifically Individual Packages of Care (IPC) in South Australia – plays in providing an alternative care option for young people who are unable to live with their birth parents due to issues of abuse or neglect, but who also, due to behavioural concerns, are not well suited to a traditional foster care placement. Participants in the study were nine young people who had previously lived in an IPC placement. The findings highlight participants’ experiences of living in the context of an IPC placement, experiences that were at times challenging, but which also provided opportunities for growth and positive change that may not have been possible in a traditional foster care placement

Lack of evidence for decreased protein stability in the 2397 (Met) haplotype of the leucine rich repeat kinase 2 protein implicated in Parkinson’s disease

Missense mutations in the leucine rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) gene are the leading genetic cause of autosomal dominant familial Parkinson’s disease. We previously reported that two mutations within the ROC domain, namely R1441C and A1442P, exhibit increased protein degradation leading to lowered steady state LRRK2 protein levels in HEK293 cells. More recently, the common WD40 domain LRRK2 haplotype, Met2397, which is a risk factor for Crohn’s disease, has been shown to lower steady state protein levels in HEK293 cells. In view of recent evidence implicating LRRK2 and inflame-mation in PD, we investigated the effects of Met2397 on LRRK2 expression, and compared them to the Thr2397 variant and other LRRK2 mutants. In this study, we transfected HEK293 cells with plasmid constructs encoding the different LRRK2 variants, and analyzed the resulting protein levels by Western blot and flow cytometry. Here we found that both the Met2397 and Thr2397 haplotypes yield similar levels of LRRK2 protein expression and do not appear to impact cell viability in HEK293 cells, compared to other LRRK mutants. Thus, we have concluded that the Met2397 haplotype is unlikely to play a role in LRRK2 mediated or idiopathic PD

Combined plasma gas-phase synthesis and colloidal processing of InP/ZnS core/shell nanocrystals

Indium phosphide nanocrystals (InP NCs) with diameters ranging from 2 to 5 nm were synthesized with a scalable, flow-through, nonthermal plasma process at a rate ranging from 10 to 40 mg/h. The NC size is controlled through the plasma operating parameters, with the residence time of the gas in the plasma region strongly influencing the NC size. The NC size distribution is narrow with the standard deviation being less than 20% of the mean NC size. Zinc sulfide (ZnS) shells were grown around the plasma-synthesized InP NCs in a liquid phase reaction. Photoluminescence with quantum yields as high as 15% were observed for the InP/ZnS core-shell NCs

LoCoH: nonparameteric kernel methods for constructing home ranges and utilization distributions.

Parametric kernel methods currently dominate the literature regarding the construction of animal home ranges (HRs) and utilization distributions (UDs). These methods frequently fail to capture the kinds of hard boundaries common to many natural systems. Recently a local convex hull (LoCoH) nonparametric kernel method, which generalizes the minimum convex polygon (MCP) method, was shown to be more appropriate than parametric kernel methods for constructing HRs and UDs, because of its ability to identify hard boundaries (e.g., rivers, cliff edges) and convergence to the true distribution as sample size increases. Here we extend the LoCoH in two ways: "fixed sphere-of-influence," or r-LoCoH (kernels constructed from all points within a fixed radius r of each reference point), and an "adaptive sphere-of-influence," or a-LoCoH (kernels constructed from all points within a radius a such that the distances of all points within the radius to the reference point sum to a value less than or equal to a), and compare them to the original "fixed-number-of-points," or k-LoCoH (all kernels constructed from k-1 nearest neighbors of root points). We also compare these nonparametric LoCoH to parametric kernel methods using manufactured data and data collected from GPS collars on African buffalo in the Kruger National Park, South Africa. Our results demonstrate that LoCoH methods are superior to parametric kernel methods in estimating areas used by animals, excluding unused areas (holes) and, generally, in constructing UDs and HRs arising from the movement of animals influenced by hard boundaries and irregular structures (e.g., rocky outcrops). We also demonstrate that a-LoCoH is generally superior to k- and r-LoCoH (with software for all three methods available at http://locoh.cnr.berkeley.edu)