Is Open Access to One Health Equivalent Across Human, Environmental, and Animal Health?

Poste

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Conservation of Madagascar’s granite outcrop orchids: the influence of fire and moisture

Quelle est la réponse aux perturbations, et la limitation de l’humidité, par des taxons similaires basés sur l’hétérogénéité des micro-site de l’habitat? Pour cette étude nous avons examiné comment la disponibilité de feu et de l’humidité influence la répartition des orchidées endémiques malgaches spécifique des affleurements de granit (inselbergs). Trois ans après le passage du feu, nous avons compare les modes de distribution et l’abondance d’orchidées dans un habitat d’une mosaïque complexe de brûlures, en tenant compte de la densité par rapport à l’intensité des dégâts d’incendie et de la disponibilité de l’humidité. Les espèces du sous- tribu Angraecinae ont été sensibles au feu, mais tolérant à une disponibilité limitée de l’humidité. orchidées Angraecinae avait un modèle uniforme de la distribution influencée par la taille du tapis de végétation. Les espèces de la sous-tribu Habenariae étaient tolérants de feu, mais limitée aux pentes rocheuses humides par des écoulements d’eau. Habenariae ont été randomizes regroupés en masses compactes, influencée par des facteurs non encore identifiés. Les résultats suggèrent l’existence de différentes stratégies de survie des espèces. Il serait inexact de penser que les orchidées voisins sur un substrat de granite aurait la même réponse à des facteurs environnementaux ou de perturbation. orchidées Angraecoid sur les inselbergs sont exposés à des menaces spécifiques et doivent être considérées comme des espèces indicatrices de la conservation est prioritaire à l’avenir. Is there a difference in response to disturbance, or resource limitation, by similar taxa based on micro-site habitat heterogeneity? For this study we examined how fire and moisture availability influences the distribution of terrestrial and lithophytic orchids specific to Madagascar’s granite outcrops (inselbergs). We compared orchid density in an area with a complex mosaic of burned and non-burned vegetation patches (three years after the event). Lithophytic species (subtribe Angraecinae) were sensitive to fire, but tolerant of limited moisture availability, and had a uniform distribution pattern associated with vegetation mat size. In contrast, most terrestrial species (subtribe Habenariinae) were not impacted by fire, but were limited to slopes with high water seepage, and had a clumped distribution pattern. The results suggest varying ecological niches between orchid subtribes, and among species, occurring on shared substrate. Within the larger area, we also compared three inselbergs with different fire disturbance history. One site with potential for lightning based fires, but absence of anthropogenic fires, had the greatest diversity (subtribes, genera, and species) of orchids and the highest occurrence of species restricted to a single site. For land management purposes it is inappropriate to assume that inselberg specific orchids will have the same response to environmental stressors. Angraecinae orchids are especially at risk from human associated fire disturbance and should be regarded as indicators for future conservation efforts.

Access to human, animal, and environmental journals is still limited for the One Health community

Objective: ‘‘One Health’’ is an interdisciplinary approach to evaluating and managing the health and well-being of humans, animals, and the environments they share that relies on knowledge from the domains of human health, animal health, and the environmental sciences. The authors’ objective was to evaluate the extent of open access (OA) to journal articles in a sample of literature from these domains. We hypothesized that OA to articles in human health or environmental journals was greater than access to animal health literature. Methods: A One Health seminar series provided fifteen topics. One librarian translated each topic into a search strategy and searched four databases for articles from 2011 to 2012. Two independent investigators assigned each article to human health, the environment, animal health, all, other, or combined categories. Article and journal-level OA were determined. Each journal was also assigned a subject category and its indexing evaluated. Results: Searches retrieved 2,651 unique articles from 1,138 journals; 1,919 (72%) articles came from 406 journals that contributed more than 1 article. Seventy-seven (7%) journals dealt with all 3 One Health domains; the remaining journals represented human health 487 (43%), environment 172 (15%), animal health 141 (12%), and other/combined categories 261 (23%). The proportion of OA journals in animal health (40%) differed significantly from journals categorized as human (28%), environment (28%), and more than 1 category (29%). The proportion of OA for articles by subject categories ranged from 25%–34%; only the difference between human (34%) and environment (25%) was significant. Conclusions: OA to human health literature is more comparable to animal health than hypothesized. Environmental journals had less OA than anticipated

Natural Transformation of Pseudomonas fluorescens and Agrobacterium tumefaciens in Soil

Little information is available concerning the occurrence of natural transformation of bacteria in soil, the frequency of such events, and the actual role of this process on bacterial evolution. This is because few bacteria are known to possess the genes required to develop competence and because the tested bacteria are unable to reach this physiological state in situ. In this study we found that two soil bacteria, Agrobacterium tumefaciens and Pseudomonas fluorescens, can undergo transformation in soil microcosms without any specific physical or chemical treatment. Moreover, P. fluorescens produced transformants in both sterile and nonsterile soil microcosms but failed to do so in the various in vitro conditions we tested. A. tumefaciens could be transformed in vitro and in sterile soil samples. These results indicate that the number of transformable bacteria could be higher than previously thought and that these bacteria could find the conditions necessary for uptake of extracellular DNA in soil

Sociotropic Concerns and Support for Counterterrorism Policies

An individual's personal experiences and perception of the collective experience are often linked to political attitudes, especially those concerning the national economy. In this article, we examine whether personal concern about terrorism and perceptions of public concern about terrorism affect attitudes about counterterrorism policies. In addition, we evaluate which factor is the strongest predictor across several counterterrorism policies. Copyright (c) 2007 Southwestern Social Science Association.