The Ecosystem Baseline For Particle Flux In the Northern Gulf of Mexico

Response management and damage assessment during and after environmental disasters such as the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill require an ecological baseline and a solid understanding of the main drivers of the ecosystem. During the DWH event, a large fraction of the spilled oil was transported to depth via sinking marine snow, a routing of spilled oil unexpected to emergency response planners. Because baseline knowledge of particle export in the Northern Gulf of Mexico and how it varies spatially and temporally was limited, we conducted a detailed assessment of the potential drivers of deep (~1400 m depth) particle fluxes during 2012–2016 using sediment traps at three contrasting sites in the Northern Gulf of Mexico: near the DWH site, at an active natural oil seep site, and at a site considered typical for background conditions. The DWH site, located ~70 km from the Mississippi River Delta, showed flux patterns that were strongly linked to the Mississippi nitrogen discharge and an annual subsequent surface bloom. Fluxes carried clear signals of combustion products, which likely originated from pyrogenic sources that were transported offshore via the Mississippi plume. The seep and reference sites were more strongly influenced by the open Gulf of Mexico, did not show a clear seasonal flux pattern, and their overall sedimentation rates were lower than those at the DWH site. At the seep site, based on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon data, we observed indications of three different pathways for “natural” oiled-snow sedimentation: scavenging by sinking particles at depth, weathering at the surface before incorporation into sinking particles, and entry into the food web and subsequent sinking in form of detritus. Overall, sedimentation rates at the three sites were markedly different in quality and quantity owing to varying degrees of riverine and oceanic influences, including natural seepage and contamination by combustion products

The measurement of commitment to work

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43493/1/11111_2004_Article_BF00972537.pd

Mouse Chromosome 3

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/46995/1/335_2004_Article_BF00648421.pd

Mouse Chromosome 11

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/46996/1/335_2004_Article_BF00648429.pd

Lesions of the head direction cell system impair direction discrimination

Previous results suggest that directional information from the head direction cell circuit may inform hippocampal place cell firing when an animal is confronted with visually identical environments. To investigate whether such information might also be essential for spatial behavior, we tested adult, male Lister Hooded rats that had received either bilateral lateral mammillary nuclei (LMN) lesions or sham lesions on a four-way, conditional odor-location discrimination in compartments arranged at 60° to one another. We found that significantly fewer rats in the LMN lesion group were able to learn the task compared to the Sham group. We also found that the extent of the behavioral impairment was highly correlated with the degree of tissue loss in the LMN resulting from the lesion. Animals with LMN lesions were also impaired in a nonmatching-to-sample task in a T maze, and the extent of impairment likewise depended on the extent of the lesion. Performance in the odor-location and T-maze tasks was not affected by tissue loss in the medial mammillary nuclei. Together, these results indicate that the LMN, a key node in the head direction circuit, is critical for solving a spatial task that requires a directional discrimination.</p