Utilizing the Public on Public Lands: The Application of Community Science to Monitor and Model Erosion in National Forests

Unpaved forest roads are adversely affecting coldwater streams through excessive erosion and the subsequent sedimentation of adjacent waterways. To help identify areas of concern, Trout Unlimited (TU) in the Southern Appalachian region developed a Community Science initiative to gather data on sediment sources and stream-road crossings. Volunteers were recruited and trained to monitor road and trail conditions and collect and submit data using a Survey123 application on their cell phones. Analysis of the contributed data reveals statistical connections between drainage type and both erosion level and stream sedimentation. The contributed data were also included as a calibration for the lite version of the Geomorphic Road Analysis and Inventory Package (GRAIP-Lite), a GIS-based road sediment contribution model. The analysis found statistically significant differences between Basic and Calibrated models at one of two sites, and substantial increases in sediment delivery from the Alternate model at both sites

The retinoblastoma protein:multitasking to suppress tumorigenesis

Tumor suppressor activity of the retinoblastoma protein pRB is preserved despite loss of interaction with E2F transcription factors (E2F) or proteins harboring a leucine-x-cysteine-x-glutamic acid motif (LxCxE, where x is any amino acid). This indicates that pRB uses several parallel pathways to suppress tumorigenesis, which may also include E2F- and LxCxE-independent interactions

Is the Effect of Forest Structure on Bird Diversity Modified by Forest Productivity?

Currently, the most common strategy when managing forests for biodiversity at the landscape scale is to maintain structural complexity within stands and provide a variety of seral stages across landscapes. Advances in ecological theory reveal that biodiversity at continental scales is strongly influenced by available energy (i.e., climate factors relating to heat and light and primary productivity). This paper explores how available energy and forest structural complexity may interact to drive biodiversity at a regional scale. We hypothesized that bird species richness exhibits a hump-shaped relationship with energy at the regional scale of the northwestern United States. As a result, we hypothesized that the relationship between energy and richness within a landscape is positive in energy-limited landscapes and flat or decreasing in energy-rich landscapes. Additionally, we hypothesized that structural complexity explains less of the variation in species richness in energy-limited environments and more in energy-rich environments and that the slope of the relationship between structural complexity and richness is greatest in energy-rich environments. We sampled bird communities and vegetation across seral stages and biophysical settings at each of five landscapes arrayed across a productivity gradient from the Pacific Coast to the Rocky Mountains within the five northwestern states of the contiguous United States. We analyzed the response of richness to structural complexity and energy covariates at each landscape. We found that (1) richness had a hump-shaped relationship with available energy across the northwestern United States, (2) the landscape-scale relationships between energy and richness were positive or hump shaped in energy-limited locations and were flat or negative in energy-rich locations, (3) forest structural complexity explained more of the variation in bird species richness in energy-rich landscapes, and (4) the slope of the relationship between forest structural complexity and richness was steepest in energy-limited locations. In energy-rich locations, forest managers will likely increase landscape-scale bird diversity by providing a range of forest structural complexity across all seral stages. In low-energy environments, bird diversity will likely be maximized by managing local high-energy hotspots judiciously and adjusting harvest intensities in other locations to compensate for slower regeneration rates

Risky Action Recognition in Lane Change Video Clips using Deep Spatiotemporal Networks with Segmentation Mask Transfer

Advanced driver assistance and automated driving systems rely on risk estimation modules to predict and avoid dangerous situations. Current methods use expensive sensor setups and complex processing pipeline, limiting their availability and robustness. To address these issues, we introduce a novel deep learning based action recognition framework for classifying dangerous lane change behavior in short video clips captured by a monocular camera. We designed a deep spatiotemporal classification network that uses pre-trained state-of-the-art instance segmentation network Mask R-CNN as its spatial feature extractor for this task. The Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) and shallower final classification layers of the proposed method were trained on a semi-naturalistic lane change dataset with annotated risk labels. A comprehensive comparison of state-of-the-art feature extractors was carried out to find the best network layout and training strategy. The best result, with a 0.937 AUC score, was obtained with the proposed network. Our code and trained models are available open-source.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. The code is open-sourc

THE POTENTIAL EFFECT OF MINI-TRAMPOLINE STIFFNESS ON TAKE-OFF BEHAVIOUR OF GYMNASTS – A METHODOLOGICAL STUDY

The purpose of this study was to compare two mini-trampolines with different spring constant in regard to their effect on take-off mechanics. It was expected that the softer (36 springs) trampoline would lead to a longer contact time and a higher take-off impulse. To assess reaction forces during jumps a flexible force insole was used simultaneously with the measurement of run-in velocity by timing gates. Results showed no significant differences in contact mechanics or contact time indicating that the difference between these two trampolines is only marginal. Therefore, this study provides mainly a novel measurement approach to assess the effect of equipment changes in trampolining. Future studies are warranted to assess the athlete-equipment interaction in greater detail