Oak Savanna Restoration: A Case Study

A degraded oak savanna in southwestern Wisconsin is being restored using intensive cutting of undesirable shrubs- buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), prickly ash (Zanthoxylum americanum), honeysuckle (Lonicera spp.)-and selective removal of trees that are crowding the open-grown bur (Quercus macrocarpa) and white (Q. alba) oaks. Land use records and historic aerial photographs have been used to guide the restoration process. Slippery elm (Ulmus rubra), black walnut (Juglans nigra), black cherry (Prunus serotina), and black oak (Q. velutina) are being removed by cutting and burning or by converting to lumber or firewood. Hundreds of aspen (Populus tremuloides and P. grandentata) have been killed by girdling with subsequent cutting and burning. Management involves controlled burns and extensive weed control. Removal of invasive shrubs and trees has exposed the ground layer to higher light intensities and stimulated the growth of savanna forbs and grasses. A number of typical herbaceous savanna species have reappeared after clearing or have been successfully introduced from local sources. However, control of brambles (Rubus spp.) and regrowth of buckthorn and honeysuckle remain principal problems. One savanna species endangered in Wisconsin-purple milkweed (Asclepias purpurascens)-was first seen in the savanna after a single controlled burn, and appears to be spreading. The redheaded woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus), a typical savanna bird, was first seen after shrub and canopy clearing in the savanna. Tree removal is a slow and expensive operation, and strategies for preventing damage to the groundlayer during tree removal had to be devised. About 70 acres (28 hectares) of savanna have been restored during nine years

Periodontal-Systemic Disease Education in United States Dental Hygiene Programs

The relationship between periodontal disease and systemic disease has gained much attention in recent years in the dental profession and from national health care agencies. Two third-party providers are now modifying their dental reimbursements for patients who have periodontal disease and are pregnant or have cardiovascular disease. However, there are few reports in the dental or dental hygiene literature about how students are taught this information and how it is incorporated into the didactic and clinical aspects of the curriculum. A thirty-item survey and cover letter on these subjects were emailed to the directors of the 286 accredited dental hygiene programs in the United States in 2007. The response rate was 63 percent. According to these responses, the three most emphasized topics regarding oral-systemic disease are diabetes, tobacco use, and cardiovascular disease. Most programs (90 percent) use journal articles for instructional content, and 87 percent use the American Academy of Periodontology website for reference. Only 4 percent have content taught jointly with nursing, medical, or allied health students. The majority of directors (87 percent) indicated they could use more evidence-based educational materials to help teach the concepts to students. Only 9 percent of survey respondents thought that nurses and physicians are knowledgeable about the relationship of oral health to systemic disease. The findings indicate that dental hygiene program directors are confident about the education on oral-systemic content provided to their dental hygiene students, but would like additional evidence-based materials to help their students learn this topic

WS 1207 Community Workshops

For my thesis, I have chosen to adapt the abandoned office/warehouse at 1207 North Boulevard for use as a community workshop for all of Richmond\u27s urban neighborhoods. The community workshop\u27s focus will be to provide open workshops, classes, a resource library and design consultation to low and middle income homeowners, affordable housing properties, and community parks. In addition, the center welcomes all of Richmond city residents to join and partake in 1207\u27s resources in order to grow a multi-faceted community focused on improving the lives of all of Richmond City\u27s residents. The center will function as a gathering space for all urban residents and will promote both the individual and the community through a Do It Yourself\u27 approach to home design and care that will instill pride and self reliance to all members of the community

Transitioning Traditional Aviation Weather Instruction to a Space Launch Weather Support Course: Operational Considerations

Weather support to space launch operations, while similar to that for traditional aviation, presents significant additional challenges. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) currently offers three courses in traditional aviation meteorology, two needed by aeronautical science students seeking private pilot through airline transport pilot (ATP) FAA certifications, and one to provide meteorology majors with operational experience supporting an actual air race. However, with the advent of a new degree program in Commercial Space Operations (CSO), the need to modify and extend traditional aviation weather instruction to include space launch weather requirements has become increasingly important. While the traditional aviation meteorology coursework is beneficial, it does not cover the full-spectrum of weather impacts on space launch and suborbital space flight operations that both CSO and meteorology students will need. To address this challenge, ERAU (with guidance from the 45th Weather Squadron at Patrick Air Force Base) is working to create a new course focused on weather support to these operations, utilizing the new suborbital space flight simulator and lab housed in the Department of Applied Aviation Sciences. This presentation explores the operational considerations of transitioning traditional terrestrial aviation weather instruction to a suborbital space flight weather support course. These considerations include: more stringent spacecraft and system weather sensitivities, triggered lightning, vertical wind-shear profile analysis, attention to atmospheric conditions above the troposphere, and space weather impacts

Night-time lighting alters the composition of marine epifaunal communities

Marine benthic communities face multiple anthropogenic pressures that compromise the future of some of the most biodiverse and functionally important ecosystems in the world. Yet one of the pressures these ecosystems face, night-time lighting, remains unstudied. Light is an important cue in guiding the settlement of invertebrate larvae, and altering natural regimes of nocturnal illumination could modify patterns of recruitment among sessile epifauna. We present the first evidence of night-time lighting changing the composition of temperate epifaunal marine invertebrate communities. Illuminating settlement surfaces with white light-emitting diode lighting at night, to levels experienced by these communities locally, both inhibited and encouraged the colonization of 39% of the taxa analysed, including three sessile and two mobile species. Our results indicate that ecological light pollution from coastal development, shipping and offshore infrastructure could be changing the composition of marine epifaunal communities.European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework programme (FP7/2007-2013

Dynamic association between perfusion and white matter integrity across time since injury in Veterans with history of TBI.

ObjectiveCerebral blood flow (CBF) plays a critical role in the maintenance of neuronal integrity, and CBF alterations have been linked to deleterious white matter changes. Although both CBF and white matter microstructural alterations have been observed within the context of traumatic brain injury (TBI), the degree to which these pathological changes relate to one another and whether this association is altered by time since injury have not been examined. The current study therefore sought to clarify associations between resting CBF and white matter microstructure post-TBI.Methods37 veterans with history of mild or moderate TBI (mmTBI) underwent neuroimaging and completed health and psychiatric symptom questionnaires. Resting CBF was measured with multiphase pseudocontinuous arterial spin labeling (MPPCASL), and white matter microstructural integrity was measured with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The cingulate cortex and cingulum bundle were selected as a priori regions of interest for the ASL and DTI data, respectively, given the known vulnerability of these regions to TBI.ResultsRegression analyses controlling for age, sex, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms revealed a significant time since injury × resting CBF interaction for the left cingulum (p < 0.005). Decreased CBF was significantly associated with reduced cingulum fractional anisotropy (FA) in the chronic phase; however, no such association was observed for participants with less remote TBI.ConclusionsOur results showed that reduced CBF was associated with poorer white matter integrity in those who were further removed from their brain injury. Findings provide preliminary evidence of a possible dynamic association between CBF and white matter microstructure that warrants additional consideration within the context of the negative long-term clinical outcomes frequently observed in those with history of TBI. Additional cross-disciplinary studies integrating multiple imaging modalities (e.g., DTI, ASL) and refined neuropsychiatric assessment are needed to better understand the nature, temporal course, and dynamic association between brain changes and clinical outcomes post-injury

Global marine bacterial diversity peaks at high latitudes in winter.

Genomic approaches to characterizing bacterial communities are revealing significant differences in diversity and composition between environments. But bacterial distributions have not been mapped at a global scale. Although current community surveys are way too sparse to map global diversity patterns directly, there is now sufficient data to fit accurate models of how bacterial distributions vary across different environments and to make global scale maps from these models. We apply this approach to map the global distributions of bacteria in marine surface waters. Our spatially and temporally explicit predictions suggest that bacterial diversity peaks in temperate latitudes across the world's oceans. These global peaks are seasonal, occurring 6 months apart in the two hemispheres, in the boreal and austral winters. This pattern is quite different from the tropical, seasonally consistent diversity patterns observed for most macroorganisms. However, like other marine organisms, surface water bacteria are particularly diverse in regions of high human environmental impacts on the oceans. Our maps provide the first picture of bacterial distributions at a global scale and suggest important differences between the diversity patterns of bacteria compared with other organisms