1,422 research outputs found
Developing Priorities for the Great Northern Landscape Conservation Cooperative: State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAP) as One Piece of Information
Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) are public-private partnerships that focus on natural resource challenges which transcend political and jurisdictional boundaries and require a more holistic, collaborative, and adaptive approach to conservation that is firmly grounded in science and strives to ensure the sustainability of land, water, wildlife and cultural resources. The Great Northern LCC, covering Western Montana and parts of several other states and provinces, is nearing completion of a process that synthesizes conservation priorities among the 25 organizations represented on the Steering Committee and their partners. This Strategic Conservation Framework identifies priority species, ecosystems, and ecosystem processes across the landscape represented by the Great Northern LCC based on synthetic summarizations of five state-based Wildlife Action Plans, 40 other regional conservation planning documents, and focused interviews with key personnel across the region. Here we report on the process by which we analyzed data from the State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs) of ID, MT, OR, WA, and WY and from Strategic Habitat Conservation as one piece of information for strategic planning. Thirty-five species of greatest conservation need (as defined in the SWAPs) were identified as having commonality across the five states. The ranges of these species were then overlain and a map of areas with the greatest number of species of conservation need can be visualized across the Great Northern LCC
Implications of the remarkable homogeneity of galaxy groups and clusters
We measure the diversity of galaxy groups and clusters with mass M>1E13/h
Msun, in terms of the star formation history of their galaxy populations, for
the purpose of constraining the mass scale at which environmentally-important
processes play a role in galaxy evolution. We consider three different group
catalogues, selected in different ways, with photometry and spectroscopy from
the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For each system we measure the fraction of
passively-evolving galaxies within R200 and brighter than either Mr=-18 (and
with z<0.05) or Mr=-20 (and z<0.1). We use the (u-g) and (r-i) galaxy colours
to distinguish between star-forming and passively-evolving galaxies. By
considering the binomial distribution expected from the observed number of
members in each cluster, we are able to either recover the intrinsic scatter in
this fraction, or put robust 95% confidence upper-limits on its value. The
intrinsic standard deviation in the fraction of passive galaxies is consistent
with a small value of <0.1 in most mass bins for all three samples. There is no
strong trend with mass; even groups with M=1E13/h Msun are consistent with such
a small, intrinsic distribution. We compare these results with theoretical
models of the accretion history to show that, if environment plays a role in
transforming galaxies, such effects must occur first at mass scales far below
that of rich clusters, at most M=1E13 Msun.Comment: 5 pages, MNRAS Letters, in pres
A prebiotic basis for ATP as the universal energy currency
ATP is universally conserved as the principal energy currency in cells, driving metabolism through phosphorylation and condensation reactions. Such deep conservation suggests that ATP arose at an early stage of biochemical evolution. Yet purine synthesis requires 6 phosphorylation steps linked to ATP hydrolysis. This autocatalytic requirement for ATP to synthesize ATP implies the need for an earlier prebiotic ATP equivalent, which could drive protometabolism before purine synthesis. Why this early phosphorylating agent was replaced, and specifically with ATP rather than other nucleoside triphosphates, remains a mystery. Here, we show that the deep conservation of ATP might reflect its prebiotic chemistry in relation to another universally conserved intermediate, acetyl phosphate (AcP), which bridges between thioester and phosphate metabolism by linking acetyl CoA to the substrate-level phosphorylation of ADP. We confirm earlier results showing that AcP can phosphorylate ADP to ATP at nearly 20% yield in water in the presence of Fe3+ ions. We then show that Fe3+ and AcP are surprisingly favoured. A wide range of prebiotically relevant ions and minerals failed to catalyse ADP phosphorylation. From a panel of prebiotic phosphorylating agents, only AcP, and to a lesser extent carbamoyl phosphate, showed any significant phosphorylating potential. Critically, AcP did not phosphorylate any other nucleoside diphosphate. We use these data, reaction kinetics, and molecular dynamic simulations to infer a possible mechanism. Our findings might suggest that the reason ATP is universally conserved across life is that its formation is chemically favoured in aqueous solution under mild prebiotic conditions
Introducing magnetic resonance imaging into the lung cancer radiotherapy workflow – An assessment of patient experience
Effect of the University on the Social Entrepreneurial Intention of Students
Purpose – The study aims to test the applicability of a variant of the model proposed by Hockerts (2017) for assessing the social entrepreneurial intention (SEI) of male and female students. It extends the model by incorporating the university’s environment and support system (ESS) as an additional more distal construct. The university’s ESS, coupled with the experience with social, cultural and environmental issues can affect SEI by influencing the more proximal precursors of empathy towards others, perceived self-efficacy, perceived community support and social, cultural and environmental responsibility. Design/methodology/approach – A structured non-disguised questionnaire was administered to students at a Canadian university. A sample of 485 usable responses was analysed by means of second-order structural equation modelling. Findings – The results provide confirmation that the proposed model is a multi-group invariant and appropriate for analysing the SEI of male and female students. They also show that the university’s ESS helps predict SEI indirectly through the complete mediation of the more proximal antecedents. Research limitations/implications – The questionnaire is limited to universities with social innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives. Practical implications – Outcomes of the study can help universities assess the efficacy of their social innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives for instilling a social entrepreneurial mind-set in students. Consequently, universities will be better equipped to raise the perceptions of venture feasibility and desirability, thus increasing students’ perceptions of opportunity. Originality/value – The study advances the social entrepreneurial knowledge of the university’s effect on the precursors of SEI
Pharmacological insights into the role of P2X4 receptors in behavioural regulation: lessons from ivermectin
This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8920271&fileId=S1461145712000909Purinergic ionotropic P2X receptors are a family of cation-permeable channels that bind extracellular adenosine 5′-triphosphate. In particular, convergent lines of evidence have recently highlighted P2X4 receptors as a potentially critical target in the regulation of multiple nervous and behavioural functions, including pain, neuroendocrine regulation and hippocampal plasticity. Nevertheless, the role of the P2X4 receptor in behavioural organization remains poorly investigated. To study the effects of P2X4 activation, we tested the acute effects of its potent positive allosteric modulator ivermectin (IVM, 2.5–10 mg/kg i.p.) on a broad set of paradigms capturing complementary aspects of perceptual, emotional and cognitive regulation in mice. In a novel open field, IVM did not induce significant changes in locomotor activity, but increased the time spent in the peripheral zone. In contrast, IVM produced anxiolytic-like effects in the elevated plus maze and marble burying tasks, as well as depression-like behaviours in the tail-suspension and forced swim tests. The agent induced no significant behavioural changes in the conditioned place preference test and in the novel object recognition task. Finally, the drug induced a dose-dependent decrease in sensorimotor gating, as assessed by pre-pulse inhibition (PPI) of the acoustic startle reflex. In P2X4 knockout mice, the effects of IVM in the open field and elevated plus maze were similar to those observed in wild type mice; conversely, the drug significantly increased startle amplitude and failed to reduce PPI. Taken together, these results suggest that P2X4 receptors may play a role in the regulation of sensorimotor gatin
Optimising use of 4D-CT phase information for radiomics analysis in lung cancer patients treated with stereotactic body radiotherapy
From IOP Publishing via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: received 2021-03-17, oa-requested 2021-04-07, accepted 2021-04-21, epub 2021-05-24, open-access 2021-05-24, ppub 2021-06-07Publication status: PublishedFunder: Cancer Research UK; doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000289; Grant(s): C147/A25254Abstract: Purpose. 4D-CT is routine imaging for lung cancer patients treated with stereotactic body radiotherapy. No studies have investigated optimal 4D phase selection for radiomics. We aim to determine how phase data should be used to identify prognostic biomarkers for distant failure, and test whether stability assessment is required. A phase selection approach will be developed to aid studies with different 4D protocols and account for patient differences. Methods. 186 features were extracted from the tumour and peritumour on all phases for 258 patients. Feature values were selected from phase features using four methods: (A) mean across phases, (B) median across phases, (C) 50% phase, and (D) the most stable phase (closest in value to two neighbours), coined personalised selection. Four levels of stability assessment were also analysed, with inclusion of: (1) all features, (2) stable features across all phases, (3) stable features across phase and neighbour phases, and (4) features averaged over neighbour phases. Clinical-radiomics models were built for twelve combinations of feature type and assessment method. Model performance was assessed by concordance index (c-index) and fraction of new information from radiomic features. Results. The most stable phase spanned the whole range but was most often near exhale. All radiomic signatures provided new information for distant failure prediction. The personalised model had the highest c-index (0.77), and 58% of new information was provided by radiomic features when no stability assessment was performed. Conclusion. The most stable phase varies per-patient and selecting this improves model performance compared to standard methods. We advise the single most stable phase should be determined by minimising feature differences to neighbour phases. Stability assessment over all phases decreases performance by excessively removing features. Instead, averaging of neighbour phases should be used when stability is of concern. The models suggest that higher peritumoural intensity predicts distant failure
Open-World Object Manipulation using Pre-trained Vision-Language Models
For robots to follow instructions from people, they must be able to connect
the rich semantic information in human vocabulary, e.g. "can you get me the
pink stuffed whale?" to their sensory observations and actions. This brings up
a notably difficult challenge for robots: while robot learning approaches allow
robots to learn many different behaviors from first-hand experience, it is
impractical for robots to have first-hand experiences that span all of this
semantic information. We would like a robot's policy to be able to perceive and
pick up the pink stuffed whale, even if it has never seen any data interacting
with a stuffed whale before. Fortunately, static data on the internet has vast
semantic information, and this information is captured in pre-trained
vision-language models. In this paper, we study whether we can interface robot
policies with these pre-trained models, with the aim of allowing robots to
complete instructions involving object categories that the robot has never seen
first-hand. We develop a simple approach, which we call Manipulation of
Open-World Objects (MOO), which leverages a pre-trained vision-language model
to extract object-identifying information from the language command and image,
and conditions the robot policy on the current image, the instruction, and the
extracted object information. In a variety of experiments on a real mobile
manipulator, we find that MOO generalizes zero-shot to a wide range of novel
object categories and environments. In addition, we show how MOO generalizes to
other, non-language-based input modalities to specify the object of interest
such as finger pointing, and how it can be further extended to enable
open-world navigation and manipulation. The project's website and evaluation
videos can be found at https://robot-moo.github.io/Comment: Accepted at the 7th Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL 2023
The essential value of long-term experimental data for hydrology and water management
We would like to thank the European Research Council ERC for funding the VeWa project and most of Tetzlaff's time (project GA 335910 VeWa). No data were used in producing this manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Sub-millimeter fMRI reveals multiple topographical digit representations that form action maps in human motor cortex
The human brain coordinates a wide variety of motor activities. On a large scale, the cortical motor system is topographically organized such that neighboring body parts are represented by neighboring brain areas. This homunculus-like somatotopic organization along the central sulcus has been observed using neuroimaging for large body parts such as the face, hands and feet. However, on a finer scale, invasive electrical stimulation studies show deviations from this somatotopic organization that suggest an organizing principle based on motor actions rather than body part moved. It has not been clear how the action-map organization principle of the motor cortex in the mesoscopic (sub-millimeter) regime integrates into a body map organization principle on a macroscopic scale (cm). Here we developed and applied advanced mesoscopic (sub-millimeter) fMRI and analysis methodology to non-invasively investigate the functional organization topography across columnar and laminar structures in humans. Compared to previous methods, in this study, we could capture locally specific blood volume changes across entire brain regions along the cortical curvature. We find that individual fingers have multiple mirrored representations in the primary motor cortex depending on the movements they are involved in. We find that individual digits have cortical representations up to 3 mm apart from each other arranged in a column-like fashion. These representations are differentially engaged depending on whether the digits’ muscles are used for different motor actions such as flexion movements, like grasping a ball or retraction movements like releasing a ball. This research provides a starting point for non-invasive investigation of mesoscale topography across layers and columns of the human cortex and bridges the gap between invasive electrophysiological investigations and large coverage non-invasive neuroimaging
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