Challenging the 2013 Rule Implementing Regulations on Oversnow Vehicle Use in Yellowstone National Park

In 2013, the National Park Service (“NPS”) promulgated a new rule to regulate the use of snowmobiles and snowcoaches in Yellowstone National Park during the winter months. The innovation and development of such “oversnow” vehicles increased park visitors’ access to Yellowstone’s majestic wonders throughout winter. Unfortunately, because such vehicles emitted noise and air pollution and created safety hazards, their unfettered use throughout the winter season posed an ever-increasing threat to the natural integrity of Yellowstone and to visitors. To mitigate the negative effects of oversnow vehicles on Yellowstone, the NPS began restricting their use by placing fixed limitations on the number of oversnow vehicles permitted to operate within the park. These early regulations were met with various legal challenges, advanced by oversnow vehicle proponents and opponents alike. In response, the NPS created a new framework for limiting use in the 2013 rule structured around the “transportation event,” as opposed to setting fixed limitations. This Note engages in an analysis of this novel framework and argues that utilization of the transportation event scheme strikes the appropriate balance between conservation interests and allowing access to the park’s resources. Nevertheless, the rule remains vulnerable to potential legal attack

Understanding Gilia tenuiflora ssp. arenaria population fluctuations and community relationships

Around the world, species are being lost to development and invasive species. An endangered species, Gilia tenuiflora ssp. arenaria, exists within the East Campus Housing area of California State University, Monterey Bay on the former Fort Ord military base. As part of the Fort Ord Habitat Conservation Plan, the Gilia must be monitored as part of the Federal Endangered Species Act and for population management. Little is known about this Gilia species, and the goal of this study is to establish baseline data on population fluctuations and community structure in the East Campus Housing area in order to better manage the species. Species composition was compared in areas immediately adjacent to Gilia plants as well as in nearby areas without Gilia plants to determine if there were patterns in species associated with Gilia tenuiflora ssp. arenaria. Also, population densities were compared to precipitation data from corresponding years to determine if there was an association between the two. There was a higher percent cover of Eriastrum virgatum in quadrats with Gilia than without. Abundance was higher in 2005, the year with more winter precipitation. These results suggest there may be an association between Gilia and Eriastrum and higher winter precipitation totals may result in larger Gilia populations

A “Green” Lining: Closing the Door on Environmental Litigants in \u3cem\u3eBellon\u3c/em\u3e Could Lead to More Successful Environmental Challenges in the Future

In Washington Environmental Council v. Bellon, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit addressed the issue of Article III standing with respect to environmental organizations filing suit under the Clean Air Act. The organizations alleged that Washington state agencies were required to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions of five oil refineries, and that the agencies’ failure to do so caused particularized injuries to plaintiffs’ health and recreational enjoyment because of the impacts of those greenhouse gas emissions on climate change. Applying a three-pronged test requiring plaintiffs to establish injury in fact, causality, and redressability, the court determined that the plaintiffs failed to satisfy the latter two requirements, and therefore lacked the Article III standing necessary to pursue their claims in federal court. This Comment argues that the Ninth Circuit was correct in its standing analysis, and further that it might lead to new research into tracking the localized effects of greenhouse gas emissions, and thus open the door to successful environmental challenges in the future

Desmin forms toxic, seeding-competent amyloid aggregates that persist in muscle fibers

Desmin-associated myofibrillar myopathy (MFM) has pathologic similarities to neurodegeneration-associated protein aggregate diseases. Desmin is an abundant muscle-specific intermediate filament, and disease mutations lead to its aggregation in cells, animals, and patients. We reasoned that similar to neurodegeneration-associated proteins, desmin itself may form amyloid. Desmin peptides corresponding to putative amyloidogenic regions formed seeding-competent amyloid fibrils. Amyloid formation was increased when disease-associated mutations were made within the peptide, and this conversion was inhibited by the anti-amyloid compound epigallocatechin-gallate. Moreover, a purified desmin fragment (aa 117 to 348) containing both amyloidogenic regions formed amyloid fibrils under physiologic conditions. Desmin fragment-derived amyloid coaggregated with full-length desmin and was able to template its conversion into fibrils in vitro. Desmin amyloids were cytotoxic to myotubes and disrupted their myofibril organization compared with desmin monomer or other nondesmin amyloids. Finally, desmin fragment amyloid persisted when introduced into mouse skeletal muscle. These data suggest that desmin forms seeding-competent amyloid that is toxic to myofibers. Moreover, small molecules known to interfere with amyloid formation and propagation may have therapeutic potential in MFM

Essential Components of Synthetic Infectious Prion Formation De Novo

Prion diseases are a class of neurodegenerative diseases that are uniquely infectious. Whilst their general replication mechanism is well understood, the components required for the formation and propagation of highly infectious prions are poorly characterized. The protein-only hypothesis posits that the prion protein (PrP) is the only component of the prion; however, additional co-factors are required for its assembly into infectious prions. These can be provided by brain homogenate, but synthetic lipids and non-coding RNA have also been used in vitro. Here, we review a range of experimental approaches, which generate PrP amyloid assemblies de novo. These synthetic PrP assemblies share some, but not necessarily all, properties of genuine infectious prions. We will discuss the different experimental approaches, how a prion is defined, the non-protein requirements of a prion, and provide an overview of the current state of prion amplification and generation in vitro

Counting unstained, confluent cells by modified bright-field microscopy

We present a very simple procedure yielding high-contrast images of adherent, confluent cells such as human neuroblastoma (SH-EP) cells by ordinary bright-field microscopy. Cells are illuminated through a color filter and a pinhole aperture placed between the condenser and the cell culture surface. Refraction by each cell body generates a sharp, bright spot when the image is defocused. The technique allows robust, automatic cell counting from a single bright-field image in a wide range of focal positions using free, readily available image-analysis tools. Contrast may be enhanced by swelling cell bodies with a brief incubation in PBS. The procedure was benchmarked against manual and automated counting of fluorescently labeled cell nuclei. Counts from day-old and freshly seeded plates were compared in a range of densities, from sparse to densely overgrown. On average, bright-field images produced the same counts as fluorescence images, with less than 5% error. This method will allow routine cell counting using a plain bright-field microscope without cell-line modification or cell staining

Counting unstained, confluent cells by modified bright-field microscopy

We present a very simple procedure yielding high-contrast images of adherent, confluent cells such as human neuroblastoma (SH-EP) cells by ordinary bright-field microscopy. Cells are illuminated through a color filter and a pinhole aperture placed between the condenser and the cell culture surface. Refraction by each cell body generates a sharp, bright spot when the image is defocused. The technique allows robust, automatic cell counting from a single bright-field image in a wide range of focal positions using free, readily available image-analysis tools. Contrast may be enhanced by swelling cell bodies with a brief incubation in PBS. The procedure was benchmarked against manual and automated counting of fluorescently labeled cell nuclei. Counts from day-old and freshly seeded plates were compared in a range of densities, from sparse to densely overgrown. On average, bright-field images produced the same counts as fluorescence images, with less than 5% error. This method will allow routine cell counting using a plain bright-field microscope without cell-line modification or cell staining

Tight Integrated End-to-End Training for Cascaded Speech Translation

A cascaded speech translation model relies on discrete and non-differentiable transcription, which provides a supervision signal from the source side and helps the transformation between source speech and target text. Such modeling suffers from error propagation between ASR and MT models. Direct speech translation is an alternative method to avoid error propagation; however, its performance is often behind the cascade system. To use an intermediate representation and preserve the end-to-end trainability, previous studies have proposed using two-stage models by passing the hidden vectors of the recognizer into the decoder of the MT model and ignoring the MT encoder. This work explores the feasibility of collapsing the entire cascade components into a single end-to-end trainable model by optimizing all parameters of ASR and MT models jointly without ignoring any learned parameters. It is a tightly integrated method that passes renormalized source word posterior distributions as a soft decision instead of one-hot vectors and enables backpropagation. Therefore, it provides both transcriptions and translations and achieves strong consistency between them. Our experiments on four tasks with different data scenarios show that the model outperforms cascade models up to 1.8% in BLEU and 2.0% in TER and is superior compared to direct models.Comment: 8 pages, accepted at SLT202

Long-term, super-resolution imaging of amyloid structures using transient amyloid binding microscopy

Amyloid fibrils and tangles are signatures of Alzheimer disease, but nanometer-sized aggregation intermediates are hypothesized to be the structures most toxic to neurons. The structures of these oligomers are too small to be resolved by conventional light microscopy. We have developed a simple and versatile method, called transient amyloid binding (TAB), to image amyloid structures with nanoscale resolution using amyloidophilic dyes, such as Thioflavin T, without the need for covalent labeling or immunostaining of the amyloid protein. Transient binding of ThT molecules to amyloid structures over time generates photon bursts that are used to localize single fluorophores with nanometer precision. Continuous replenishment of fluorophores from the surrounding solution minimizes photobleaching, allowing us to visualize a single amyloid structure for hours to days. We show that TAB microscopy can image both the oligomeric and fibrillar stages of amyloid-β aggregation. We also demonstrate that TAB microscopy can image the structural remodeling of amyloid fibrils by epi-gallocatechin gallate. Finally, we utilize TAB imaging to observe the non-linear growth of amyloid fibrils