Greater Hartford Reentry Welcome Center: Year One Evaluation Sept 2018 - Sept 2019

The Greater Hartford Reentry Welcome Center (GH-RWC) officially opened its doors on September 17, 2018. Community Partners in Action administers the Center with in-kind support from the City of Hartford, the Connecticut Department of Correction, the Connecticut Judicial Branch-Court Support Services Division and over thirty community based organizations. The GH-RWC's mission is to ensure that "individuals returning home will have access to support, information, resources, and referrals to vital services in one location. These services are key to an individual's successful reintegration back into our community." This report presents process evaluation findings from the first year of implementation. Its purpose is to identify what is and what is not working well and to provide strategic recommendations for areas needing improvement and to leverage emergent promising practices. This is the first in a series of reports for a three-year formative evaluation comprising process and outcome findings

Greater Hartford Reentry Welcome Center: Year Three Evaluation September 17, 2020-September 17, 2021

This is the third in a series of evaluation reports for a three-year formative evaluation of the Greater Hartford Reentry Welcome Center (GH-RWC) comprising both process and outcome findings. The purpose of this formative evaluation is to identify what is and what is not working well and to provide strategic recommendations for areas needing improvement and to leverage emergent promising practices. This Year Three report provides the data and findings from CPA's RWC database, observations, surveys, and interviews for the period starting September 17, 2020 through September 17, 2021. The report also includes supplemental findings for the first two quarters of 2022, as the GH-RWC administration began to expand staffing and programming, and to prepare for moving to a new location that could accommodate the growth of the Center. The challenges that were experienced in Years Two and Three are being actively addressed by CPA, so many of the recommendations listed in the Year Three evaluation are already underway in Year Four

Greater Hartford Reentry Welcome Center: Year Two Evaluation September 17, 2019-September 17, 2020

The Greater Hartford Reentry Welcome Center (GH-RWC), located at Hartford City Hall, serves as a centralized hub for anyone with a history of incarceration to receive basic information and assistance, and referrals to other essential services in the Greater Hartford region. The Reentry Welcome Center Program prioritizes care continuity and ongoing case management services for people who are released from prison or jail at the end of their sentence. The goals of this process evaluation report are to document the successes and challenges of implementing the GH-RWC in its second year of operation from September 17, 2019 to September 17, 2020

Heating the superorganism: colony-level responses to environmental change

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Species' traits predict phenological responses to climate change in butterflies

How do species' traits help identify which species will respond most strongly to future climate change? We examine the relationship between species' traits and phenology in a well-established model system for climate change, the U.K. Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS). Most resident U.K. butterfly species have significantly advanced their dates of first appearance during the past 30 years. We show that species with narrower larval diet breadth and more advanced overwintering stages have experienced relatively greater advances in their date of first appearance. In addition, species with smaller range sizes have experienced greater phenological advancement. Our results demonstrate that species' traits can be important predictors of responses to climate change, and they suggest that further investigation of the mechanisms by which these traits influence phenology may aid in understanding species' responses to current and future climate change

Cryptic choice of conspecific sperm controlled by the impact of ovarian fluid on sperm swimming behavior

Despite evidence that variation in male–female reproductive compatibility exists in many fertilization systems, identifying mechanisms of cryptic female choice at the gamete level has been a challenge. Here, under risks of genetic incompatibility through hybridization, we show how salmon and trout eggs promote fertilization by conspecific sperm. Using in vitro fertilization experiments that replicate the gametic microenvironment, we find complete interfertility between both species. However, if either species’ ova were presented with equivalent numbers of both sperm types, conspecific sperm gained fertilization precedence. Surprisingly, the species’ identity of the eggs did not explain this cryptic female choice, which instead was primarily controlled by conspecific ovarian fluid, a semiviscous, protein-rich solution that bathes the eggs and is released at spawning. Video analyses revealed that ovarian fluid doubled sperm motile life span and straightened swimming trajectory, behaviors allowing chemoattraction up a concentration gradient. To confirm chemoattraction, cell migration tests through membranes containing pores that approximated to the egg micropyle showed that conspecific ovarian fluid attracted many more spermatozoa through the membrane, compared with heterospecific fluid or water. These combined findings together identify how cryptic female choice can evolve at the gamete level and promote reproductive isolation, mediated by a specific chemoattractive influence of ovarian fluid on sperm swimming behavior

Lipid rescue of massive verapamil overdose: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Massive intentional verapamil overdose is a toxic ingestion which can cause multiorgan system failure and has no currently known antidote.</p> <p>Case Presentation</p> <p>The patient is a 41-year-old Caucasian woman who ingested 19.2 g of sustained release verapamil in a suicide attempt. Our patient became hypotensive requiring three high-dose vasopressors to maintain arterial pressure. She also developed acute respiratory failure, bradycardic ventricular rhythm necessitating continuous transvenous pacing, and anuric renal failure. Our patient was treated with intravenous calcium, bicarbonate, hyperinsulinemic euglycemic therapy and continuous venovenous hemodialysis without success. On the fourth day after hospital admission continuous intravenous lipid therapy was initiated. Within three hours of beginning lipid therapy, our patient's vasopressor requirement decreased by half. Within 24 hours, she was on minimal vasopressor support and regained an underlying junctional rhythm. After three days of lipid infusion, she no longer required inotropic agents to maintain blood pressure or pacing to maintain stable hemodynamics.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Intravenous fat emulsion therapy may be an effective antidote for massive verapamil toxicity.</p

Post-copulatory opportunities for sperm competition and cryptic female choice provide no offspring fitness benefits in externally fertilizing salmon

There is increasing evidence that females can somehow improve their offspring fitness by mating with multiple males, but we understand little about the exact stage(s) at which such benefits are gained. Here, we measure whether offspring fitness is influenced by mechanisms operating solely between sperm and egg. Using externally-fertilising and polyandrous Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), we employed split-clutch and split-ejaculate in vitro fertilisation experiments to generate offspring using designs that either denied or applied opportunities for sperm competition and cryptic female choice. Following fertilisations, we measured 140 days of offspring fitness after hatch, through growth and survival in hatchery and near-natural conditions. Despite an average composite mortality of 61%, offspring fitness at every life stage was near-identical between groups fertilised under the absence versus presence of opportunities for sperm competition and cryptic female choice. Of the 21,551 and 21,771 eggs from 24 females fertilised under monandrous versus polyandrous conditions, 68% versus 67.8% survived to the 100-day juvenile stage; sub-samples showed similar hatching success (73.1% versus 74.3%), had similar survival over 40 days in near-natural streams (57.3% versus 56.2%), and grew at similar rates throughout. We therefore found no evidence that gamete-specific interactions allow offspring fitness benefits when polyandrous fertilisation conditions provide opportunities for sperm competition and cryptic female choice

Causes and Consequences of Novel Host Plant Use in a Phytophagous Insect: Evolution, Physiology and Species Interactions

Understanding what determines host range--the number and type of different resources used by an individual, population, or species--is a fundamental question in biology. I explore ecological and evolutionary determinants of host plant range in the tobacco hornworm, Manduca sexta. I have taken advantage of both domesticated laboratory populations of M. sexta, and a recent host plant shift in wild M. sexta in the southern US, to examine how the recent evolutionary history, host plant quality, natural enemies and environmental temperatures impact the performance and fitness of M. sexta. Using laboratory experiments, I demonstrated severe reductions in performance and fitness associated with feeding on an evolutionarily novel host plant, devil's claw (Proboscidea louisianica): survival, growth and development rates, immune function, final body size, fecundity and total fitness were all reduced for M. sexta reared on devil's claw compared to their typical host plant, tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum). I found that these costs can be ameliorated under warmer thermal conditions, as the typical negative relationship between body size and rearing temperature was reversed on devil's claw. However, one of the greatest drivers of M. sexta's adoption of devil's claw appears to be escape from an important braconid parasitoid natural enemy, Cotesia congregata. A field experiment demonstrated that the intrinsic costs of using devil's claw were offset by enemy release, resulting in comparable total fitness of M. sexta feeding on devil's claw and tobacco. In general, domesticated laboratory populations of M. sexta exhibited qualitatively similar responses as wild M. sexta; however, there were a few key differences, e.g., domesticated M. sexta exhibited relatively greater reductions in survival and fecundity on devil's claw. My research shows that the selective environment, and abiotic and biotic ecological factors are important components of host range, sometimes interacting in surprising ways to alter overall herbivore fitness and host plant use