Alien Registration- Wandless, Alexandrina (Waterville, Kennebec County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/14622/thumbnail.jp

\u3ci\u3eThe Finest Jest\u3c/i\u3e

*Begin Transmission* The scientist in me could not help but admire the elegance of your plan. It was simple, logical, pitiless. If everything went smoothly, only one of us would die

Effects of Internal and External Factors on Interspecific Competitive Abilities of Phytoplankton Assemblages Influenced by Allelopathy

Phytoplankton allelopathic processes operate on short time scales, and some allelopathic species can alter phytoplankton succession and affect biodiversity. Both internal and external factors have a role in these processes. Succession under allelopathic influence often results in dominance of the allelopathic species, and this research shows that how quickly an assemblage transitions from the effects of interference competition to exploitative competition is influenced by the similarity of life history traits of phytoplankton in an assemblage. Ecologists accept that competition is invoked as resources become limiting; however, when co-occurring species are competitively similar, competition effects may be reduced. Using a mathematical model of phytoplankton competing for limiting resources for three types of assemblages, I found that intransitive assemblages yield the highest relative biodiversity, followed by lumpy assemblages, and neutral assemblages the lowest biodiversity. Testing these modelling results with empirical data from eight freshwater systems supports the idea that assemblages characterized by lumpiness are more resistant to blooms of allelopathic species than assemblages that are not as lumpy. Field experiments manipulating toxicity of the allelopathic phytoplankter Prymnesium parvum using different pH levels demonstrate the significance of biologic controls on the bloom potential of allelopathic species. Treatments with large zooplankton suppressed the population density of this haptophyte in waters from Galveston and Matagorda Bays. These results may aid our understanding of broad themes in harmful algae ecology, including how ecosystems respond to disturbances such as allelopathy

SB 4: Texas charter schools and the politics of competence

The dissertation is a qualitative inquiry into the vexed state of public education reform in the contemporary United States. It focuses on the introduction of charter schools as reform instruments, the emergence of a widely-celebrated chain of college preparatory charters, and internal conflicts within the Texas charter school community that were enacted in 2007 with a proposed piece of charter school reform legislation, Senate Bill 4. Drawing on interviews with administrators, observations of schools and association meetings, analysis of media and policy documents and public testimony from the Texas legislature, it describes contemporary cultural anxieties about the competencies of present and future citizens. The dissertation is structured in the form of four observational essays. The method involved in the writing is to enter into dialogue with the cultural discourses preceding, produced by, or trailing along in the wake of the public debate over SB 4. It works to tease out the implications and interconnections gathered in the field, including representations produced for other, more straightforwardly informative purposes, in order to provoke new ways of thinking about them. The first essay is based on interview-based research I conducted with school administrators in San Antonio. It begins with an assessment of a similar study of public school reform conducted by anthropologists in North Carolina that is more straightforwardly informed by critical theory and an oppositional moral stance to neoliberalism and offers in the place of critique a more humble account of my own fieldwork in San Antonio that was not motivated by clear cut moral certainties. The second is based on media representations of charter schools, educational assessments, and the widely-celebrated and discussed KIPP network of schools and seeks to situate the debate over SB 4 within a broader national context of public debate on the problem of education reform. The third essay continues to probe the sources of KIPP's broad popular appeal through observations of daily activities of one of its middle school campuses. The final essay returns to the public testimony on SB 4 to problematize what appear to be simple solutions to immensely complicated problems

Effects of Internal and External Factors on Interspecific Competitive Abilities of Phytoplankton Assemblages Influenced by Allelopathy

Phytoplankton allelopathic processes operate on short time scales, and some allelopathic species can alter phytoplankton succession and affect biodiversity. Both internal and external factors have a role in these processes. Succession under allelopathic influence often results in dominance of the allelopathic species, and this research shows that how quickly an assemblage transitions from the effects of interference competition to exploitative competition is influenced by the similarity of life history traits of phytoplankton in an assemblage. Ecologists accept that competition is invoked as resources become limiting; however, when co-occurring species are competitively similar, competition effects may be reduced. Using a mathematical model of phytoplankton competing for limiting resources for three types of assemblages, I found that intransitive assemblages yield the highest relative biodiversity, followed by lumpy assemblages, and neutral assemblages the lowest biodiversity. Testing these modelling results with empirical data from eight freshwater systems supports the idea that assemblages characterized by lumpiness are more resistant to blooms of allelopathic species than assemblages that are not as lumpy. Field experiments manipulating toxicity of the allelopathic phytoplankter Prymnesium parvum using different pH levels demonstrate the significance of biologic controls on the bloom potential of allelopathic species. Treatments with large zooplankton suppressed the population density of this haptophyte in waters from Galveston and Matagorda Bays. These results may aid our understanding of broad themes in harmful algae ecology, including how ecosystems respond to disturbances such as allelopathy

A General Chemical Method to Regulate Protein Stability in the Mammalian Central Nervous System

SummaryThe ability to make specific perturbations to biological molecules in a cell or organism is a central experimental strategy in modern research biology. We have developed a general technique in which the stability of a specific protein is regulated by a cell-permeable small molecule. Mutants of the Escherichia coli dihydrofolate reductase (ecDHFR) were engineered to be degraded, and, when this destabilizing domain is fused to a protein of interest, its instability is conferred to the fused protein resulting in rapid degradation of the entire fusion protein. A small-molecule ligand trimethoprim (TMP) stabilizes the destabilizing domain in a rapid, reversible, and dose-dependent manner, and protein levels in the absence of TMP are barely detectable. The ability of TMP to cross the blood-brain barrier enables the tunable regulation of proteins expressed in the mammalian central nervous system

Calcareous nannofossil assemblage changes across the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum: Evidence from a shelf setting

Biotic response of calcareous nannoplankton to abrupt warming across the Paleocene/Eocene boundary reflects a primary response to climatically induced parameters including increased continental runoff of freshwater, global acidification of seawater, high sedimentation rates, and calcareous nannoplankton assemblage turnover. We identify ecophenotypic nannofossil species adapted to low pH conditions (Discoaster anartios, D. araneus, Rhomboaster spp.), excursion taxa adapted to the extremely warm climatic conditions (Bomolithus supremus and Coccolithus bownii), three species of the genus Toweius (T. serotinus, T. callosus, T. occultatus) adapted to warm, rather than cool, water conditions, opportunists adapted to high productivity conditions (Coronocyclus bramlettei, Neochiastozygus junctus), and species adapted to oligotropic and/or cool‐water conditions that went into refugium during the PETM (Zygrablithus bijugatus, Calcidiscus? parvicrucis and Chiasmolithus bidens). Discoaster anartios was adapted to meso- to eutrophic, rather than oligotrophic, conditions. Comparison of these data to previous work on sediments deposited on shelf settings suggests that local conditions such as high precipitation rates and possible increase in major storms such as hurricanes resulted in increased continental runoff and high sedimentation rates that affected assemblage response to the PETM