AQUATIC INVERTEBRATE COMMUNITY STRUCTURE IN THE NIOBRARA RIVER, AGATE FOSSIL BEDS NATIONAL MONUMENT, NEBRASKA, 1996-2009

Aquatic invertebrates were sampled annually in the Niobrara River, Nebraska, during the period 1996-2009 using Hester-Dendy multiplate samplers. Collections indicated the invertebrate community in the river has shifted from one dominated by Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera (EPT) taxa to one dominated by Chironomidae and Amphipoda. Generally, EPT richness and percentage abundance of EPT of the total community, as well as percentage abundance of Heptageniidae and Leptophlebiidae, has declined across the years. During that same period, percentage abundance of Amphipoda and Chironomidae, taxa evenness, Shannon\u27s Index, and the Hilsenhoff Biotic Index have increased. Stream discharge decreased significantly during the 15-year period when invertebrates were collected (Mann-Kendall trend test, P = 0.04). Water-surface elevation of the river measured with staff gages also gradually increased over time, although the trends were not significant (P \u3e/= 0.15). Although not analyzed statistically, water temperature (Degrees C), conductivity (uS/cm), and pH gradually increased over time while dissolved oxygen concentration (mg/liter) decreased over time. Although other factors cannot be ruled out, a proposed reason for the observed changes in invertebrate community structure may be related to changes in the physical habitat condition in the Niobrara River associated with encroachment of the nonnative and invasive emergent aquatic plant, yellow flag (Iris pseudacorus L.). This weed has expanded into the stream channel, where it blocks streamflow

The Effect of Income Taxes on Optimal Portfolio Selection

The ability to shelter both the periodic contribution and annual returns from income taxes in a qualified retirement plan provides well known advantages. However, given aggressive investing and a continuation of historic rates of return on financial assets, it is probable that both income during the retirement years and the effective tax rate will be higher than in the working years. Consequently, part of the additional expected return to taking greater risk is lost to taxes. This paper demonstrates that efficient (i.e., utility-maximizing) portfolio design must account for the potential for higher average and marginal income tax rates in retirement. Failure to fully consider the ultimate tax effects probably will result in a suboptimal portfolio of assets during both the accumulation and distribution phases. In generally, failure to consider progressive taxes will result in portfolio being overinvested in the high-risk asset

Laboratory Focus on Improving the Culture of Biosafety: Statewide Risk Assessment of Clinical Laboratories That Process Specimens for Microbiologic Analysis

The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene challenged Wisconsin laboratories to examine their biosafety practices and improve their culture of biosafety. One hundred three clinical and public health laboratories completed a questionnaire-based, microbiology-focused biosafety risk assessment. Greater than 96% of the respondents performed activities related to specimen processing, direct microscopic examination, and rapid nonmolecular testing, while approximately 60% performed culture interpretation. Although they are important to the assessment of risk, data specific to patient occupation, symptoms, and travel history were often unavailable to the laboratory and, therefore, less contributory to a microbiology-focused biosafety risk assessment than information on the specimen source and test requisition. Over 88% of the respondents complied with more than three-quarters of the mitigation control measures listed in the survey. Facility assessment revealed that subsets of laboratories that claim biosafety level 1, 2, or 3 status did not possess all of the biosafety elements considered minimally standard for their respective classifications. Many laboratories reported being able to quickly correct the minor deficiencies identified. Task assessment identified deficiencies that trended higher within the general (not microbiology-specific) laboratory for core activities, such as packaging and shipping, direct microscopic examination, and culture modalities solely involving screens for organism growth. For traditional microbiology departments, opportunities for improvement in the cultivation and management of highly infectious agents, such as acid-fast bacilli and systemic fungi, were revealed. These results derived from a survey of a large cohort of small- and large-scale laboratories suggest the necessity for continued microbiology-based understanding of biosafety practices, vigilance toward biosafety, and enforcement of biosafety practices throughout the laboratory setting

Protocol for Monitoring Aquatic Invertebrates of Small Streams in the Heartland Inventory & Monitoring Network, Version 2.1

Executive Summary The Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network (HTLN) is a component of the National Park Service’s (NPS) strategy to improve park management through greater reliance on scientific information. The purposes of this program are to design and implement long-term ecological monitoring and provide information for park managers to evaluate the integrity of park ecosystems and better understand ecosystem processes. Concerns over declining surface water quality have led to the development of various monitoring approaches to assess stream water quality. Freshwater streams in network parks are threatened by numerous stressors, most of which originate outside park boundaries. Stream condition and ecosystem health are dependent on processes occurring in the entire watershed as well as riparian and floodplain areas; therefore, they cannot be manipulated independently of this interrelationship. Land use activities—such as timber management, landfills, grazing, confined animal feeding operations, urbanization, stream channelization, removal of riparian vegetation and gravel, and mineral and metals mining—threaten stream quality. Accordingly, the framework for this aquatic monitoring is directed towards maintaining the ecological integrity of the streams in those parks. Invertebrates are an important tool for understanding and detecting changes in ecosystem integrity, and they can be used to reflect cumulative impacts that cannot otherwise be detected through traditional water quality monitoring. The broad diversity of invertebrate species occurring in aquatic systems similarly demonstrates a broad range of responses to different environmental stressors. Benthic invertebrates are sensitive to the wide variety of impacts that influence Ozark streams. Benthic invertebrate community structure can be quantified to reflect stream integrity in several ways, including the absence of pollution sensitive taxa, dominance by a particular taxon combined with low overall taxa richness, or appreciable shifts in community composition relative to reference condition. Furthermore, changes in the diversity and community structure of benthic invertebrates are relatively simple to communicate to resource managers and the public. To assess the natural and anthropogenic processes influencing invertebrate communities, this protocol has been designed to incorporate the spatial relationship of benthic invertebrates with their local habitat including substrate size and embeddedness, and water quality parameters (temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, specific conductance, and turbidity). Rigid quality control and quality assurance are used to ensure maximum data integrity. Detailed standard operating procedures (SOPs) and supporting information are associated with this protocol

Whole-genome sequencing reveals host factors underlying critical COVID-19

Critical COVID-19 is caused by immune-mediated inflammatory lung injury. Host genetic variation influences the development of illness requiring critical care1 or hospitalization2–4 after infection with SARS-CoV-2. The GenOMICC (Genetics of Mortality in Critical Care) study enables the comparison of genomes from individuals who are critically ill with those of population controls to find underlying disease mechanisms. Here we use whole-genome sequencing in 7,491 critically ill individuals compared with 48,400 controls to discover and replicate 23 independent variants that significantly predispose to critical COVID-19. We identify 16 new independent associations, including variants within genes that are involved in interferon signalling (IL10RB and PLSCR1), leucocyte differentiation (BCL11A) and blood-type antigen secretor status (FUT2). Using transcriptome-wide association and colocalization to infer the effect of gene expression on disease severity, we find evidence that implicates multiple genes—including reduced expression of a membrane flippase (ATP11A), and increased expression of a mucin (MUC1)—in critical disease. Mendelian randomization provides evidence in support of causal roles for myeloid cell adhesion molecules (SELE, ICAM5 and CD209) and the coagulation factor F8, all of which are potentially druggable targets. Our results are broadly consistent with a multi-component model of COVID-19 pathophysiology, in which at least two distinct mechanisms can predispose to life-threatening disease: failure to control viral replication; or an enhanced tendency towards pulmonary inflammation and intravascular coagulation. We show that comparison between cases of critical illness and population controls is highly efficient for the detection of therapeutically relevant mechanisms of disease

Stakeholder Relationships and Social Welfare: A Behavioral Theory of Contributions to Joint Value Creation

Firms play a crucial role in furthering social welfare through their ability to foster stakeholders’ contributions to joint value creation, i.e., value creation that involves a public-good dilemma due to high task and outcome interdependence - leading to what economists have labeled the ‘team production problem’. We build on relational models theory to examine how individual stakeholders’ contributions to joint value creation are shaped by stakeholders’ mental representations of their relationships with the other participants in value creation, and how these mental representations are affected by the perceived behavior of the firm. Stakeholder theory typically contrasts a broadly-defined ‘relational’ approach to stakeholder management with a ‘transactional’ approach based on the price mechanism - and has argued that the former is more likely to contribute to social welfare than the latter. Our theory supports this prediction for joint value creation, but also implies that the dichotomy on which it is based is too coarse-grained: there are three distinct ways to trigger higher contributions to joint value creation than through a ‘transactional’ approach. Our theory also helps explain the tendency for firms and their stakeholders to converge on ‘transactional’ relationships, despite their relative inefficiency in the context of joint value creation

Non-affirmative Theory of Education as a Foundation for Curriculum Studies, Didaktik and Educational Leadership

This chapter presents non-affirmative theory of education as the foundation for a new research program in education, allowing us to bridge educational leadership, curriculum studies and Didaktik. We demonstrate the strengths of this framework by analyzing literature from educational leadership and curriculum theory/didaktik. In contrast to both socialization-oriented explanations locating curriculum and leadership within existing society, and transformation-oriented models viewing education as revolutionary or super-ordinate to society, non-affirmative theory explains the relation between education and politics, economy and culture, respectively, as non-hierarchical. Here critical deliberation and discursive practices mediate between politics, culture, economy and education, driven by individual agency in historically developed cultural and societal institutions. While transformative and socialization models typically result in instrumental notions of leadership and teaching, non-affirmative education theory, previously developed within German and Nordic education, instead views leadership and teaching as relational and hermeneutic, drawing on ontological core concepts of modern education: recognition; summoning to self-activity and Bildsamkeit. Understanding educational leadership, school development and teaching then requires a comparative multi-level approach informed by discursive institutionalism and organization theory, in addition to theorizing leadership and teaching as cultural-historical and critical-hermeneutic activity. Globalisation and contemporary challenges to deliberative democracy also call for rethinking modern nation-state based theorizing of education in a cosmopolitan light. Non-affirmative education theory allows us to understand and promote recognition based democratic citizenship (political, economical and cultural) that respects cultural, ethical and epistemological variations in a globopolitan era. We hope an American-European-Asian comparative dialogue is enhanced by theorizing education with a non-affirmative approach