Inclusion of Agriculture and Forestry in a Domestic Emissions Trading Scheme: New Zealand's Experience to Date

No country has previously attempted to include either agriculture or forestry in an emissions trading system. The New Zealand government is planning to include both. This paper describes how they plan to do it, what some of the critical issues have been and some of the outstanding challenges. If New Zealand can resolve these issues and so can create a strong system, this could create a precedent for many others. Policy development is actively progressing as this paper is written. This paper does not definitively cover the issues but records our thinking at a moment in time and provides a framework for more in-depth analysis.Emissions trading, New Zealand, agriculture, public policy

Blocks: The Journey to Becoming An Artist

During this past year at Berklee College of Music Valencia, I have been working on my thesis project, also known as my Culminating Experience. As a producer and DJ, I wanted to tie both of these elements together within the project. Therefore, I chose to do a live performance, as well as compose, produce, and engineer an EP. The third component of my C.E. is a documentary, which highlights the creation process that went on throughout the year as I developed both of these projects.https://remix.berklee.edu/graduate-studies-production-technology/1002/thumbnail.jp

Anomaly detection in brain connectivity structure : an application to epilepsy

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 51-55).In this thesis, we study approaches for detecting anomalous regions in brain connectivity networks estimated from resting state fMRI. We are motivated by the problem of localizing diseased regions to be resected in pre-surgical epilepsy patients. Our goal is to investigate the potential of these non-invasive connectivity approaches to augment and even replace the clinical gold standard for localization, which requires invasive implantation of electrodes onto the surface of the brain. We focus on adapting an existing method that detects anomalies from a small set of large candidate regions in a population of patients. The main contribution of the work is to develop this method for our application, so that it can efficiently identify anomalies from a large set of small candidate regions in a single epilepsy patient. We find that standard statistical approaches identify regions that overlap reasonably well with electrode recordings of abnormal activity, but are sensitive to manual parameter selection. Our method matches this performance, but has the advantage of automatically determining its corresponding parameters. While localization is not generally accurate enough to consider replacement of invasive electrode implantation, the method discovers potentially diseased regions that may better guide electrode placement.by Andrew Sweet.S.M

Designer reefs and coral probiotics: great concepts but are they good practice?

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A molecular phylogenetic analysis of the genera of fruit doves and allies using dense taxonomic sampling

Fruit doves and their allies are a diverse group within the pigeon and dove family (Aves: Columbidae). Progress towards subfamilial classification of Columbidae relies on identifying major groups and the phylogenetic relationships within these groups. One such recently proposed group is the Raphinae based on previous evidence that the extinct dodo is potentially within what was formerly recognized as the Treroninae (fruit doves and allies). Although several studies have explored the phylogenetic relationships within Columbidae, most have focused either on broad-scale, familial level relationships or finer scale, species level relationships. Here we use mitochondrial and nuclear gene sequences from a diverse taxonomic sample to identify relationships among the genera and species of fruit doves and their allies. In particular our goal is to identify which of these genera should be included within Raphinae (the name which has taxonomic priority over Treroninae), focusing on an inclusive, well-supported monophyletic group. We also use dense taxon sampling to explore relationships among genera and species in this group, expanding on previous studies. In addition, we use resulting phylogenetic hypotheses to reconstruct the ancestral evolutionary history of foraging mode and biogeographic patterns of dispersal within the group. We used two data sets for our phylogenetic analysis: the first consisting of novel sequences generated for this project and the second with additional, previously published sequences from the fruit dove genus (Ptilinopus). Our analyses found support for the monophyly of a clade that contains a large fraction of the genera currently classified within Raphinae and also found several well-supported clades within this group of pigeons and doves. Character reconstruction methods based on the resulting phylogeny recover multiple transitions from a terrestrial to an arboreal foraging mode and evidence for multiple dispersal events from Asia to Africa throughout the history of the clade.is peer reviewedOpe

Untangling the coevolutionary history between doves and their parasitic lice

In host-parasite systems, any given host species can be associated with multiple types of parasites, each of which can have a unique ecological relationship with the host. However, it remains unclear how these ecological differences link to evolutionary patterns. What shapes the dynamics of a host-parasite interaction over evolutionary time? An ideal approach for addressing this question is to compare multiple lineages of similar parasites that are associated with the same group of hosts but have distinct ecological differences – or “ecological replicates.” For my dissertation, I applied this strategy by focusing on the wing and body lice of doves. These two “ecomorphs” of lice are not closely related yet exclusively parasitize the same group of hosts. Notably, wing lice have a greater capability for dispersal than body lice. Dispersal is an important ecological component of host-parasite interactions and speciation in general. The first part of my dissertation examined broad cophylogenetic patterns across the dove-louse system. I found that wing and body lice did not have correlated patterns, and body lice showed more cospeciation with their hosts. This pattern agreed with previous studies, the results of which suggested that the increased cospeciation in body lice was due to differences in dispersal ability. In contrast with previous work, I also found that both wing and body louse phylogenies are statistically congruent with the host phylogeny. However, the previous studies had limited taxon sampling compared to my study, indicating that taxon sampling can have a significant impact on the results of cophylogenetic comparisons, and that there can be variable cophylogenetic patterns within a host-parasite system. Cophylogenetic variation in dove lice was further highlighted by my study on lice from phabine doves, a clade native to Australia and Southeast Asia. In this system, wing lice have higher levels of cospeciation with their hosts than did body lice, which is the opposite pattern found in other dove louse systems. The second part of my dissertation focused on the wing and body lice of New World ground-doves. All three groups (wing lice, body lice, and doves) are monophyletic and have relatively few species, which makes the system ideal for obtaining a comprehensive taxonomic sample. As a group that straddles the population-species boundary, ground-dove lice are also useful for gaining insight into host-parasite evolution at phylogenetic and population scales. I used Sanger or whole-genome sequencing data to estimate phylogenetic and/or population patterns of the ground-dove hosts and both groups of lice. For the louse genomes, I developed a novel pipeline to assemble nuclear genes for phylogenetic analysis and call SNPs for population analysis. My results indicate that dispersal is a key factor in shaping the evolution of this host-parasite system. Body lice had higher levels of cospeciation with their hosts, were more host-specific, and had higher rates of divergence than wing lice. At the population level, some body lice also showed host-specific structure, whereas wing lice did not. Body lice also had lower levels of heterozygosity than wing lice, suggesting higher levels of inbreeding. However, dispersal is likely not the only factor that shapes this host-parasite system. Host phylogeny appears to have a significant effect as well. Both wing and body louse phylogenies were statistically congruent with the host phylogeny, and the congruence metrics for individual associations were correlated between the two types of lice. Biogeography may also dictate host-parasite interactions. The wing louse phylogeny was significantly structured according to biogeographic region, and both wing and body lice also showed some biogeographic structure at the population level. Together, these results show that host-parasite interactions can be dictated by many ecological factors over evolutionary time, even in the presence of a primary, dominant factor (e.g., parasite dispersal)

Ewing sarcoma in a child with neurofibromatosis type 1.

We report here on a case of Ewing sarcoma (ES) occurring in a child with neurofibromatosis type 1. The sarcoma had an EWSR1-ERG translocation as well as loss of the remaining wild-type allele of NF1. Loss of the NF1 wild-type allele in the tumor suggests that activation of the Ras pathway contributed to its evolution. Review of available public data suggests that secondary mutations in the Ras pathway are found in ∼3% of ESs. This case suggests that Ras pathway activation may play a role in tumor progression in a subset of ESs

Organisational culture in the volunteer sport sector: A case study of sailing [Abstract]

Organisational culture in the volunteer sport sector: A case study of sailing [Abstract