Habitat Assessment for Nebraska\u27s At-risk Species: Descriptions of Species Models used in the CHAT (Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool) Species of Concern Data Layer

As part of an effort across the western U.S. states led by the Western Governors’ Association, the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission synthesized information related to habitat for at-risk native species and natural plant communities. The result, submitted to the WGA in the fall of 2013, is coarse-scale, landscape-level information that can be used by anyone for land-use planning. The product of this west-wide collaboration is called the Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool (CHAT). The information, provided through an online GIS-mapping tool, is non-regulatory and gives project planners and the general public access to credible scientific data on a broad scale for use in project analysis, siting, and planning. In the CHAT data and map product, the landscape is divided into one-square-mile hexagons, and values ranging from 1-6 are assigned. The value for the hexagons is based on the values from five contributing data layers, representing large intact blocks of habitat, wetlands, natural communities, and species of concern, respectively. The values for each one-square-mile hexagon in each of the contributing data sets are also available in the CHAT product. This document focuses on the Species of Concern data layer and specifically on models which were incorporated into the data layer. While documented occurrences of species of concern were used when available, survey data is limited. Distribution models were used to help fill in the gaps between survey locations. The models help identify areas which may have suitable habitat and may be occupied by at-risk species

The Nebraska Natural Legacy Project: State Wildlife Action Plan 2nd edition

Nebraska’s rich biological diversity is composed of thousands of plant and animal species interacting with each other and the environment. The flora and fauna of the state, along with the natural habitats they occupy, form Nebraska’s natural heritage – a legacy that should be treasured just as much as our cultural heritage. Unfortunately, populations of many once common species have declined because of a variety of stresses, including habitat loss, habitat degradation, diseases, and competition and predation from invasive species. While conservation actions in the past have had notable successes, they have not been sufficient to stem the overall tide of species decline. There is a need for a comprehensive, systematic and proactive approach to conserving the full array of Nebraska’s biological diversity. The goals of the Nebraska Natural Legacy Project are to: 1. Reverse the decline of at-risk species (and avoid the need for state or federal listing as threatened or endangered) 2. Recover currently listed species and allow for their de-listing 3. Keep common species common 4. Conserve natural communities Almost all existing natural habitat in Nebraska, and the biological diversity it supports, resides on lands under private ownership. All Nebraskans can benefit from the strong conservation tradition and sound stewardship of private landowners. The Nebraska Natural Legacy Project seeks to continue this tradition, while at the same time creating new opportunities for collaboration between farmers, ranchers, communities, private and governmental organizations and others for conserving Nebraska’s biological diversity, our natural heritage. The Nebraska Natural Legacy Project is non-regulatory, voluntary, incentive-based conservation. As stewards for the next generation, it is everyone’s responsibility to ensure the treasures that were handed to us by nature and our predecessors are still here for future generations of Nebraskans to enjoy

A Trivalent Virus-Like Particle Vaccine Elicits Protective Immune Responses against Seasonal Influenza Strains in Mice and Ferrets

There is need for improved human influenza vaccines, particularly for older adults who are at greatest risk for severe disease, as well as to address the continuous antigenic drift within circulating human subtypes of influenza virus. We have engineered an influenza virus-like particle (VLP) as a new generation vaccine candidate purified from the supernatants of Sf9 insect cells following infection by recombinant baculoviruses to express three influenza virus proteins, hemagglutinin (HA), neuraminidase (NA), and matrix 1 (M1). In this study, a seasonal trivalent VLP vaccine (TVV) formulation, composed of influenza A H1N1 and H3N2 and influenza B VLPs, was evaluated in mice and ferrets for the ability to elicit antigen-specific immune responses. Animals vaccinated with the TVV formulation had hemagglutination-inhibition (HAI) antibody titers against all three homologous influenza virus strains, as well as HAI antibodies against a panel of heterologous influenza viruses. HAI titers elicited by the TVV were statistically similar to HAI titers elicited in animals vaccinated with the corresponding monovalent VLP. Mice vaccinated with the TVV had higher level of influenza specific CD8+ T cell responses than a commercial trivalent inactivated vaccine (TIV). Ferrets vaccinated with the highest dose of the VLP vaccine and then challenged with the homologous H3N2 virus had the lowest titers of replicating virus in nasal washes and showed no signs of disease. Overall, a trivalent VLP vaccine elicits a broad array of immunity and can protect against influenza virus challenge

Photometric Supernova Cosmology with BEAMS and SDSS-II

Supernova cosmology without spectroscopic confirmation is an exciting new frontier which we address here with the Bayesian Estimation Applied to Multiple Species (BEAMS) algorithm and the full three years of data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey II Supernova Survey (SDSS-II SN). BEAMS is a Bayesian framework for using data from multiple species in statistical inference when one has the probability that each data point belongs to a given species, corresponding in this context to different types of supernovae with their probabilities derived from their multi-band lightcurves. We run the BEAMS algorithm on both Gaussian and more realistic SNANA simulations with of order 10^4 supernovae, testing the algorithm against various pitfalls one might expect in the new and somewhat uncharted territory of photometric supernova cosmology. We compare the performance of BEAMS to that of both mock spectroscopic surveys and photometric samples which have been cut using typical selection criteria. The latter typically are either biased due to contamination or have significantly larger contours in the cosmological parameters due to small data-sets. We then apply BEAMS to the 792 SDSS-II photometric supernovae with host spectroscopic redshifts. In this case, BEAMS reduces the area of the (\Omega_m,\Omega_\Lambda) contours by a factor of three relative to the case where only spectroscopically confirmed data are used (297 supernovae). In the case of flatness, the constraints obtained on the matter density applying BEAMS to the photometric SDSS-II data are \Omega_m(BEAMS)=0.194\pm0.07. This illustrates the potential power of BEAMS for future large photometric supernova surveys such as LSST.Comment: 25 pages, 15 figures, submitted to Ap

High lift aerodynamics

The current program is aimed at providing a physical picture of the flow physics and quantitative turbulence data of the interaction of a high Reynolds number wake with a flap element. The impact of high lift on aircraft performance is studied for a 150 passenger transport aircraft with the goal of designing optimum high lift systems with minimum complexity

Organization of the Drosophila larval visual circuit

Visual systems transduce, process and transmit light-dependent environmental cues. Computation of visual features depends on the types of photoreceptor neurons (PR) present, the organization of the eye and the wiring of the underlying neural circuit. Here, we describe the circuit architecture of the visual system of Drosophila larvae by mapping the synaptic wiring diagram and neurotransmitters. By contacting different targets, the two larval PR-subtypes create parallel circuits potentially underlying the computation of absolute light intensity and temporal light changes already within this first visual processing center. Locally processed visual information then signals via dedicated projection interneurons to higher brain areas including the lateral horn and mushroom body. The stratified structure of the LON suggests common organizational principles with the adult fly and vertebrate visual systems. The complete synaptic wiring diagram of the LON paves the way to understanding how circuits with reduced numerical complexity control wide ranges of behaviors

Quantitative neuroanatomy for connectomics in Drosophila

Neuronal circuit mapping using electron microscopy demands laborious proofreading or reconciliation of multiple independent reconstructions. Here, we describe new methods to apply quantitative arbor and network context to iteratively proofread and reconstruct circuits and create anatomically enriched wiring diagrams. We measured the morphological underpinnings of connectivity in new and existing reconstructions of Drosophila sensorimotor (larva) and visual (adult) systems. Synaptic inputs were preferentially located on numerous small, microtubule-free 'twigs' which branch off a single microtubule-containing 'backbone'. Omission of individual twigs accounted for 96% of errors. However, the synapses of highly connected neurons were distributed across multiple twigs. Thus, the robustness of a strong connection to detailed twig anatomy was associated with robustness to reconstruction error. By comparing iterative reconstruction to the consensus of multiple reconstructions, we show that our method overcomes the need for redundant effort through the discovery and application of relationships between cellular neuroanatomy and synaptic connectivity.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Strong Lensing Analysis of A1689 from Deep Advanced Camera Images

We analyse deep multi-colour Advanced Camera images of the largest known gravitational lens, A1689. Radial and tangential arcs delineate the critical curves in unprecedented detail and many small counter-images are found near the center of mass. We construct a flexible light deflection field to predict the appearance and positions of counter-images. The model is refined as new counter-images are identified and incorporated to improve the model, yielding a total of 106 images of 30 multiply lensed background galaxies, spanning a wide redshift range, 1.0$<$z$<$5.5. The resulting mass map is more circular in projection than the clumpy distribution of cluster galaxies and the light is more concentrated than the mass within $r<50kpc/h$. The projected mass profile flattens steadily towards the center with a shallow mean slope of $d\log\Sigma/d\log r \simeq -0.55\pm0.1$, over the observed range, r$<250kpc/h$, matching well an NFW profile, but with a relatively high concentration, $C_{vir}=8.2^{+2.1}_{-1.8}$. A softened isothermal profile ($r_{core}=20\pm2$\arcs) is not conclusively excluded, illustrating that lensing constrains only projected quantities. Regarding cosmology, we clearly detect the purely geometric increase of bend-angles with redshift. The dependence on the cosmological parameters is weak due to the proximity of A1689, $z=0.18$, constraining the locus, $\Omega_M+\Omega_{\Lambda} \leq 1.2$. This consistency with standard cosmology provides independent support for our model, because the redshift information is not required to derive an accurate mass map. Similarly, the relative fluxes of the multiple images are reproduced well by our best fitting lens model.Comment: Accepted by ApJ. For high quality figures see http://wise-obs.tau.ac.il/~kerens/A168

Treatment strategies and prognostic factors of patients with primary germ cell tumors in the mediastinum

Se presenta una paciente que fue intervenida quirúrgicamente por presentar una lesión tumoral a nivel del mediastino anterior, totalmente asintomática y descubierta, de forma incidental (incidentaloma), en el estudio preoperatorio por padecer litiasis vesicular. La tumoración resultó ser, histológicamente, un teratoma quístico maduro. La paciente evolucionó satisfactoriamente.It presents a patient who was surgery because of a tumor at the level of the anterior mediastinum, totally asymptomatic and uncovered, incidentally (incidentaloma), in the preoperative study due to vesicular lithiasis. The tumor turned out to be, histologically, a mature cystic teratoma. The patient evolved satisfactorily