Settling Patterns of Chrysaora quinquecirrha Polyps on Common Vinyl Construction Material : Potential Implications for Jellyfish Blooms and Coastal Development in Barnegat Bay New Jersey

Coastal development in estuaries is altering abiotic and biotic factors that encourage the propagation of populations of Chrysaora quinquecirrha. Extensive coastal development results in the proliferation of vinyl bulkheads and plastic floating docks in the Barnegat Bay estuary system. The purpose of this study was to determine if the increase in artificial vinyl substrate can affect density of C. quinquecirrha polyp recruitment. Oyster shell and vinyl settling plates were submerged at ten sites in Barnegat Bay for six, two-week periods during the summer of 2014. Polyps showed a greater affinity for settling on vinyl plates (0.337 polyps/cm2) than oyster shell settling plates (0.179 polyps/cm2, P \u3c 0.0248). Settling density was greater for under hanging surfaces and C. quinquecirrha settled more often on vinyl undersides, (0.515 polyps/cm ) than oyster shell undersides, (0.233 polyps/cm2, P \u3c 0.0001). There was no detectable difference between the settlement on vertical and top surfaces of either substratum. The densities of C. quinquecirrha medusa were also measured to determine if the presence of medusae was linked to the presence of polyps. A regression analysis revealed a significant positive relationship between the density of C. quinquecirrha medusae in the lagoon and the density of polyps on settling plates (r = 0.6660; P \u3c 0.0187). Nudibranchs are potential predators of C. quinquecirrha polyps and were observed feeding on polyps in a laboratory setting. Nudibranch density was measured for each set of plates to determine if nudibranch predation affected the polyp density. A regression analysis did not show a significant relationship between the density of nudibranchs and the density of polyps (r = -0.1263; P \u3c 0.8099], but the negative relationship suggests the potential that they could contribute to polyp reduction in some lagoons. Artificial substratum in the form of vinyl bulkheads and floating docks provides habitat for polyps and this increase in substratum is likely to enhance populations of C. quinquecirrha in Bamegat Bay, New Jersey. My results indicate that there are hotspots of polyp recruitment in Bamegat Bay and are related to the presence of reproducing adults in the area. Since the biphasic life history of this species requires hard, non-toxic substrate to overwinter and proliferate, the increasing use of these materials in coastal communities is bound to lead to greater numbers in the future. Potential solutions for limiting their proliferation include improving water quality, which could lead to greater competition for space or the introduction of polyp predators to interrupt the life history cycle leading to fewer adults being generated

Aquatic Vegetation, Largemouth Bass and Water Quality Responses to Low-Dose Fluridone Two Years Post Treatment

Whole-lake techniques are increasingly being used to selectively remove exotic plants, including Eurasian watermilfoil ( Myriophyllum spicatum L.). Fluridone (1-methyl-3-phenyl- 5-[3-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl]-4(1 H )-pyridinone), a systemic whole-lake herbicide, is selective for Eurasian watermilfoil within a narrow low concentration range. Because fluridone applications have the potential for large effects on plant assemblages and lake food webs, they should be evaluated at the whole-lake scale. We examined effects of low-dose (5 to 8 ppb) fluridone applications by comparing submersed plant assemblages, water quality and largemouth bass ( Micropterus salmoides ) growth rates and diets between three reference lakes and three treatment lakes one- and two-years post treatment. In the treatment lakes, fluridone reduced Eurasian watermilfoil cover without reducing native plant cover, although the duration of Eurasian watermilfoil reduction varied among treatment lakes. (PDF has 11 pages.

Making the Child's World: Fostering Permanence

Making the Child's World: Fostering Permanence, is a redefining, reordering and recalibration of the planning of a centre for children in transition within the child welfare system that would operate alongside foster homes. It is not a prescription for the ideal building design. Instead it is a proposition for a set of standards and qualities necessary of a child-centered environment; one where the child can be comfortable and secure, in the face of his or her family circumstances. This thesis discusses the period between infancy and school age as crucial in the physical and emotional development of children; a time when they first establish concepts of space, relationships, and feelings. Each environment and social interaction experienced plays a large role in a child's development, both socially and physically. The dynamics, scale and intimacy of Play Therapy need to infiltrate the architectural strategy of this type of centre so that the centre itself adopts the values of Play Therapy, enabling the physical environment to act as a rehabilitative tool in the Play Therapy Programme

Teleporters, tunnels & time : Understanding warp devices in videogames

Catchment land uses, particularly agriculture and urban uses, have long been recognized as major drivers of nutrient concentrations in surface waters. However, few simple models have been developed that relate the amount of catchment land use to downstream freshwater nutrients. Nor are existing models applicable to large numbers of freshwaters across broad spatial extents such as regions or continents. This research aims to increase model performance by exploring three factors that affect the relationship between land use and downstream nutrients in freshwater: the spatial extent for measuring land use, hydrologic connectivity, and the regional differences in both the amount of nutrients and effects of land use on them. We quantified the effects of these three factors that relate land use to lake total phosphorus (TP) and total nitrogen (TN) in 346 north temperate lakes in 7 regions in Michigan, USA. We used a linear mixed modeling framework to examine the importance of spatial extent, lake hydrologic class, and region on models with individual lake nutrients as the response variable, and individual land use types as the predictor variables. Our modeling approach was chosen to avoid problems of multi-collinearity among predictor variables and a lack of independence of lakes within regions, both of which are common problems in broad-scale analyses of freshwaters. We found that all three factors influence land use-lake nutrient relationships. The strongest evidence was for the effect of lake hydrologic connectivity, followed by region, and finally, the spatial extent of land use measurements. Incorporating these three factors into relatively simple models of land use effects on lake nutrients should help to improve predictions and understanding of land use-lake nutrient interactions at broad scales

Dynamics of Structural Elements of GB1 β-Hairpin Revealed by Tryptophan-Cysteine Contact Formation Experiments

Quenching of the triplet state of tryptophan by close contact with cysteine provides a tool for measuring the rate of intramolecular contact formation, one of the most elementary events in the folding process, in peptides and proteins using only natural probes. Here we present a study performed on a stabilized mutant of the second \u3b2-hairpin of the GB1 domain, where we combine steady-state fluorescence, laser-induced temperature-jump, and contact formation measurements to unveil the role of elementary structural components on hairpin dynamics and overall stability. In particular, our methodology provides access to the conformational dynamics of both the folded and unfolded state of the hairpin under native conditions, revealing the presence of extremely slow dynamics on the microsecond time scale in the unfolded state and coexistence of structures with partial pairing of the tails in the folded state. Comparing model peptides that mimic the turn sequence, we found that both ion pairing and hydrogen bonding due to the threonine side chain contribute to the propensity of turn formation but not to the much slower dynamics of the hydrophobic core formation. Interestingly, the dynamics of the turn region in isolation are significantly faster than the dynamics measured for the unfolded state of the complete hairpin, suggesting that non-native hydrophobic contacts slow down the reconfiguration dynamics of the unfolded state. Overall, the information extracted from these experiments provides kinetic limits on interconversions among conformational populations, hence enabling a simplified multistate free-energy landscape for the GB1 hairpin to be drawn

Identifying and characterizing extrapolation in multivariate response data

Extrapolation is defined as making predictions beyond the range of the data used to estimate a statistical model. In ecological studies, it is not always obvious when and where extrapolation occurs because of the multivariate nature of the data. Previous work on identifying extrapolation has focused on univariate response data, but these methods are not directly applicable to multivariate response data, which are more and more common in ecological investigations. In this paper, we extend previous work that identified extrapolation by applying the predictive variance from the univariate setting to the multivariate case. We illustrate our approach through an analysis of jointly modeled lake nutrients and indicators of algal biomass and water clarity in over 7000 inland lakes from across the Northeast and Mid-west US. In addition, we illustrate novel exploratory approaches for identifying regions of covariate space where extrapolation is more likely to occur using classification and regression trees.Comment: 28 pages, 2 supplementary files, 6 main figures, 2 supplementary figures, 2 supplementary table