Using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy to Develop Physiological Profiles for Bighorn Sheep (Poster)

This study employs new techniques using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to assess the relative health, physiological condition, and reproductive function of wild bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) in Montana and Wyoming. Ongoing bighorn studies in Montana and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are focused on herd attributes and the population dynamics which are affected by disease, climate, habitat and physiology. Indices of herd health and physiological status are typically obtained through expensive and time consuming lab assays and field measurements. Recently, NMR spectroscopy has been used to revolutionize the assessment of human metabolic health, and we expect that there is similar potential for studies of wildlife populations. Using NMR spectroscopy to assess metabolites associated with disease, nutrition and stress may eliminate the need for many traditional assays and techniques used today. NMR can be used to evaluate a large suite of metabolites associated with a variety of physiological functions from as little as 500 uL of serum or plasma. Blood samples from 242 sheep from 13 different herds were collected during the winters of 2013-14 and 2014-15 to develop a comprehensive metabolite panel for bighorn sheep. We have used a recently developed statistical program known as MetaboAnalyst™ to begin to analyze and evaluate differences in NMR metabolic profiles among herds and across the fall-winter season when nutritional and physiological stress is expected to be acute. We will be presenting the results of this preliminary study and discussing the potential for application in wildlife management

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Metabolic Profiles to Distinguish Geographically Isolated Populations of Mountain Goats

Basic physiological studies on mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) are conspicuously lacking in the literature, and the physiology of this species is perhaps the least known of the high mountain ungulates. The objective of this study was to evaluate metabolic profiles of female mountain goats from five geographically distinct populations using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Serum samples were collected from nannies located in Alaska in September (AK) from Glacier in August (GMT), from the Grand Tetons in November-December (GT), from NE Yellowstone in December (NEY) and from Absaroka in March (AB). Serum was extracted with acetone, dried and re-suspended in a standard NMR buffer. NMR spectra were analyzed with Chenomix™ software. Metabolites were identified and concentrations determined using the Chenomix™ database and the Human Metabolome Database. We identified 55 metabolites in the serum of mountain goats using this emerging technology. Of these 42 metabolites differed among the herds (P < 0.05). Of these 42 metabolites; creatinine, lactate and pyruvate distinguished (P < 0.05) each herd from another. Furthermore, using Principal Component Analyses of these metabolites allowed us to clearly differentiate metabolic profiles in carbohydrate, protein and lipid metabolism in nannies from these five populations. This study has the potential to enhance our understanding of how changes in nutrition, reproduction, susceptibility to disease, and survival rates drive population dynamics

You\u27re Suing Me? Best Fair Use & Copyright Practices

Do you teach? Do you publish? Do you know how to exercise your fair use rights? This panel discussion focuses on fair use and copyright practices. Panels include: The Basics – Get a general overview of fair use and methods for making fair use decisions, including the four factors and best practices. Blackboard Behavior! - Learn about best practices when building course content and assignments in Blackboard. Find out about the TEACH Act and how it impacts teaching online. Good Intentions: Fair Use, Images, and ETDs – Learn about the fair use guidelines pertaining to the use of images in research can be used to help determine if the use of the images would be appropriate. Fair Use for Digitized Materials - Learn how to identify how fair use may apply to digitized materials and the way to utilize them in your work

Scaling in Plasticity-Induced Cell-Boundary Microstructure: Fragmentation and Rotational Diffusion

We develop a simple computational model for cell boundary evolution in plastic deformation. We study the cell boundary size distribution and cell boundary misorientation distribution that experimentally have been found to have scaling forms that are largely material independent. The cell division acts as a source term in the misorientation distribution which significantly alters the scaling form, giving it a linear slope at small misorientation angles as observed in the experiments. We compare the results of our simulation to two closely related exactly solvable models which exhibit scaling behavior at late times: (i) fragmentation theory and (ii) a random walk in rotation space with a source term. We find that the scaling exponents in our simulation agree with those of the theories, and that the scaling collapses obey the same equations, but that the shape of the scaling functions depend upon the methods used to measure sizes and to weight averages and histograms

Effect of sieving on ex-situ soil respiration of soils from three land use types

This study aims to investigate the effect of sieving on ex situ soil respiration (CO2 flux) measurements from different land use types. We collected soils (0–10 cm) from arable, grassland and woodland sites, allocated them to either sieved (4-mm mesh, freshly sieved) or intact core treatments and incubated them in gas-tight jars for 40 days at 10 °C. Headspace gas was collected on days 1, 3, 17, 24, 31 and 38 and CO2 analysed. Our results showed that sieving (4 mm) did not significantly influence soil respiration measurements, probably because micro aggregates (< 0.25 mm) remain intact after sieving. However, soils collected from grassland soil released more CO2 compared with those collected from woodland and arable soils, irrespective of sieving treatments. The higher CO2 from grassland soil compared with woodland and arable soils was attributed to the differences in the water holding capacity and the quantity and stoichiometry of the organic matter between the three soils. We conclude that soils sieved prior to ex situ respiration experiments provide realistic respiration measurements. This finding lends support to soil scientists planning a sampling strategy that better represents the inhomogeneity of field conditions by pooling, homogenising and sieving samples, without fear of obtaining unrepresentative CO2 flux measurements caused by the disruption of soil architecture

Hugs and behaviour points: alternative education and the regulation of 'excluded' youth

In England, alternative education (AE) is offered to young people formally excluded from school, close to formal exclusion or who have been informally pushed to the educational edges of their local school. Their behaviour is seen as needing to change. In this paper, we examine the behavioural regimes at work in 11 AE programmes. Contrary to previous studies and the extensive ‘best practice’ literature, we found a return to highly behaviourist routines, with talking therapeutic approaches largely operating within this Skinnerian frame. We also saw young people offered a curriculum largely devoid of languages, humanities and social sciences. What was crucial to AE providers, we argue, was that they could demonstrate 'progress' in both learning and behaviour to inspectors and systems. Mobilising insights from Foucault, we note the congruence between the external regimes of reward and punishment used in AE and the kinds of insecure work and carceral futures that might be on offer to this group of young people

Causal assessment of income inequality on self-rated health and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Context: Whether income inequality has a direct effect on health or is only associated because of the effect of individual income has long been debated. We aimed to understand the association between income inequality and self-rated health (SRH) and all-cause mortality (mortality) and assess if these relationships are likely to be causal. Methods: We searched Medline, ISI Web of Science, Embase, and EconLit (PROSPERO: CRD42021252791) for studies considering income inequality and SRH or mortality using multilevel data and adjusting for individual-level socioeconomic position. We calculated pooled odds ratios (ORs) for poor SRH and relative risk ratios (RRs) for mortality from random-effects meta-analyses. We critically appraised included studies using the Risk of Bias in Nonrandomized Studies – of Interventions tool. We assessed certainty of evidence using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation framework and causality using Bradford Hill (BH) viewpoints. Findings: The primary meta-analyses included 2,916,576 participants in 38 cross-sectional studies assessing SRH and 10,727,470 participants in 14 cohort studies of mortality. Per 0.05-unit increase in the Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, the ORs and RRs (95% confidence intervals) for SRH and mortality were 1.06 (1.03-1.08) and 1.02 (1.00-1.04), respectively. A total of 63.2% of SRH and 50.0% of mortality studies were at serious risk of bias (RoB), resulting in very low and low certainty ratings, respectively. For SRH and mortality, we did not identify relevant evidence to assess the specificity or, for SRH only, the experiment BH viewpoints; evidence for strength of association and dose–response gradient was inconclusive because of the high RoB; we found evidence in support of temporality and plausibility. Conclusions: Increased income inequality is only marginally associated with SRH and mortality, but the current evidence base is too methodologically limited to support a causal relationship. To address the gaps we identified, future research should focus on income inequality measured at the national level and addressing confounding with natural experiment approaches

How relevant is the role of values in child protection practice? A national survey of statutory child protection staff 2009: Preliminary findings

A survey of those working in Australian statutory child protection authorities was undertaken by the Australian Catholic University as part of a larger project at the Australian National University: Community Capacity Building in Child Protection (http://ccb.anu.edu.au). The purpose of the project is to explore new ways for supporting families and young people so that they can develop the skills, confidence and resources they need to flourish without continuing intervention from the state. Child protection authorities are expected and do intervene when they have reason to believe children are unsafe or neglected. Too often, however, the outcome is that these families stay in the system instead of developing capacity to move on with their lives free of state intervention. The survey described in this paper represents one part of the project: the views of those who work at the heart of the system in statutory child protection agencies. The survey was funded through an Australian Research Council Linkage grant (LP0669230). This report is based on survey responses from 859 public service employees working in a statutory child protection context in eight offices in Australia’s states and territories. Child protection staff in each of these offices were invited to log on to a web survey set up by the Australian Catholic University. The invitation was sent to a senior official in each state and territory and was circulated to staff by a designated officer. The survey comprised 100 questions about the values that child protection workers held and practiced, the beliefs that guided their practice, the supportiveness of their work environment, their overall satisfaction with their jobs and their intention to remain in their jobs in the immediate future. Participants were introduced to the idea of values in the following way. Values relate to the principles, goals and ways of doing things that people use to make judgments about what is happening in their world. Values are part of the professional code of conduct of individuals. They are also part of the policies and procedures of organizations, reflected in organizational mission and vision statements. We know little about how well the expression of values that are embedded in professional codes of conduct mesh with the expression of organizational values through rules and procedures. This survey explores this issue through asking those employed in statutory child protection agencies what they think of their organization’s values, how they describe their own values, professionally and personally, and how they practice their values in their day to day work

Developing Physiological Profiles using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy to Inform Bighorn Sheep Management

This study employs new techniques using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to assess the relative health, physiological condition, and reproductive function of wild bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis)  in Montana and Wyoming. Ongoing bighorn studies in Montana and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are focused on herd attributes and the population dynamics which are affected by disease, climate, habitat and physiology. Indices of herd health and physiological status are typically obtained through expensive and time consuming lab assays and field measurements. Recently, NMR spectroscopy has been used to revolutionize the assessment of human metabolic health, and we expect that there is similar potential for studies of wildlife populations. Using NMR spectroscopy to assess metabolites associated with disease, nutrition and stress may eliminate the need for many traditional assays and techniques used today. NMR can be used to evaluate a large suite of metabolites associated with a variety of physiological functions from as little as 500 ?L of serum or plasma. Blood samples from 242 sheep from 13 different herds were collected during the winters of 2013-14 and 2014-15 to develop a comprehensive metabolite panel for bighorn sheep. We have used a recently developed statistical program known as MetaboAnalyst™ to begin to analyze and evaluate differences in NMR metabolic profiles among herds and across the fall-winter season when nutritional and physiological stress is expected to be acute. We will be presenting the results of this preliminary study and discussing the potential for application in wildlife management