Exotic Policy: An IJC White Paper On Policies for the Prevention of The Invasion of the Great Lakes by Exotic Organisms

About ten years ago, the Great Lakes environmental community initiated the first action to counteract the worldwide spread of exotic organisms in ballast water. In 1988, in response to the discovery of the ruffe and the zebra mussel in the Great Lakes, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission and the International Joint Commission called upon the Canadian and United States Governments to act. In 1989, Canada issued the first voluntary ballast exchange guidelines. In 1990, the United States passed the first major piece of legislation on aquatic nuisance species, mandating consultations and studies on all pathways for aquatic invasions. And in 1993, the US Coast Guard issued the first set of mandatory regulations for controlling ballast water in the Great Lakes. The issue is now on the global agenda. The International Maritime Organization, under pressure from Canada, the United States, and Australia, has issued similar guidelines and begun to consider a mandatory international convention. The United States enacted a second major piece of legislation in 1996, making it a national issue, and Canada enacted legislation authorizing national mandatory regulations to control ballast water in 1998. With support from the Great Lakes environmental community, and with valuable assistance from distant allies in Australia, a Great Lakes regional coalition of binational, federal, state, and provincial agencies seems to have made considerable progress on the problem of exotics in these last ten years. In terms of public education and political rhetoric, the effort has been a great success. We have seen the transformation of what was an arcane and poorly understood issue - an issue which was somewhat exotic in political terms even within the special culture of the environmental community - into an issue accepted as worthy of attention, even if still sometimes poorly understood, by the mainstream public and their political leadership. Moreover, the enactments of the first major pieces of legislation in the US and Canada, even if largely tentative and inchoate, have come relatively quickly in comparison to the history of legislative efforts on other forms of pollution. But there are two reasons to be cautious about this apparent success. First, the nature of the problem is inherently acute. As a matter of biological reality, exotic invasions are irreversible. This is a form of pollution that can never be cleaned up, and new invasions compound the damage already done to a stressed ecosystem. Second, much of the progress in developing legal regimes is illusionary - or worse. Although the Great Lakes mandatory regulations issued in 1993 were an essential first step, they are fundamentally flawed. So is the design of the national regime being developed in the United States, especially because of an alteration in the terms of that legislation obtained by the shipping industry as it was rewritten from a Great Lakes to a United States regime. The international convention being negotiated at the International Maritime Organization in London sounds as though it would be a good thing. But it contains the same flaws - and one more. Under some versions of the convention under negotiation, it would prohibit the enforcement of stronger provisions enacted by national and subordinate governments. These are matters that require close attention. Also, ballast water is not the only pathway for invasion. Although the state and provincial governments in the Great Lakes region have a wide array of legal authorities and programs for the control of exotics, they are far from being uniformly strong or consistent in their terms. There are substantial issues about some major vectors - aquaculture, bait transportation, and the aquarium trade - which beg for attention. There is an obvious need for better coordination of strategies and enforcement policies at the federal, binational, and regional levels. Those are some of the points addressed in this paper. The purpose of this paper is also to provide a common body of facts and ideas to assist in the discussion of exotic policy - the public policy for dealing with the invasion of the Great Lakes by exotic organisms - at an IJC workshop to be held with the 1999 Great Lakes Water Quality Forum.(1) I attempt to sum up the essential biological, technical, legal, economic, and political aspects of this complex, newly emerging environmental issue. I try to do that in an objective and analytical manner. But I also try to be honest about my point of view, which is distinctly biased in favor of environmental conservation and the proposition that our current policies for the prevention of exotic invasions are inadequate. All that might be impossible. But I hope that this will, at least, provide a basis for stimulating discussion

Adoption of Variability Detection and Variable Rate Application Technologies by Cotton Farmers in Southern United States

A nested logit model was used to analyze the 2009 Southern Cotton Precision Farming Survey to study the impact of farmer and farm characteristics on the adoption of Variability Detection Technologies (VDT) and the adoption of Variability Rate application Technology (VRT) conditioned on the type of the VDT chosen. The results showed that the farm size and exposure to extension activities are important factors affecting the choice of VDTs. The farmers adopting both soil and plant based VDTs are more likely to adopt VRT. The probability of adoption of VRTs was lower for Texas cotton farmers irrespective of the type of VDT adopted. In general, younger, more educated farmers who use computers for farming operations are more likely to adopt VRT when they choose soil based or both soil and plant based VDT.Precision Agriculture, Technology Adoption, Cotton, Crop Production/Industries, Farm Management, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, O33, Q16,

Proteomic profiling of glucocorticoid-exposed myogenic cells: Time series assessment of protein translocation and transcription of inactive mRNAs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Prednisone, one of the most highly prescribed drugs, has well characterized effects on gene transcription mediated by the glucocorticoid receptor. These effects are typically occurring on the scale of hours. Prednisone also has a number of non-transcriptional effects (occurring on minutes scale) on protein signaling, yet these are less well studied. We sought to expand the understanding of acute effects of prednisone action on cell signaling using a combination of SILAC strategy and subcellular fractionations from C₂C₁₂myotubes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p><it>De novo </it>translation of proteins was inhibited in both SILAC labeled and unlabeled C₂C₁₂myotubes. Unlabeled cells were exposed to prednisone while SILAC labeled cells remained untreated. After 0, 5, 15, and 30 minutes of prednisone exposure, labeled and unlabeled cells were mixed at 1:1 ratios and fractionated into cytosolic and nuclear fractions. A total of 534 proteins in the cytosol and 626 proteins in the nucleus were identified and quantitated, using 3 or more peptides per protein with peptide based probability ≤ 0.001. We identified significant increases (1.7- to 3.1- fold) in cytoplasmic abundance of 11 ribosomal proteins within 5 minutes of exposure, all of which returned to baseline by 30 min. We hypothesized that these drug-induced acute changes in the subcellular localization of the cell's protein translational machinery could lead to altered translation of quiescent RNAs. To test this, <it>de novo </it>protein synthesis was assayed after 15 minutes of drug exposure. Quantitative fluorography identified 16 2D gel spots showing rapid changes in translation; five of these were identified by MS/MS (pyruvate kinase, annexin A6 isoform A and isoform B, nasopharyngeal epithelium specific protein 1, and isoform 2 of Replication factor C subunit 1), and all showed the 5' terminal oligopyrimidine motifs associated with mRNA sequestration to and from inactive mRNA pools.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We describe novel approaches of subcellular proteomic profiling and assessment of acute changes on a minute-based time scale. These data expand the current knowledge of acute, non-transcriptional activities of glucocorticoids, including changes in protein subcellular localization, altered translation of quiescent RNA pools, and PKC-mediated cytoskeleton remodeling.</p

Video gaming as practical accomplishment: ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and play

Accounts of video game play developed from an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic (EMCA) perspective remain relatively scarce. This study collects together an emerging, if scattered, body of research which focuses on the material, practical "work" of video game players. The study offers an example-driven explication of an EMCA perspective on video game play phenomena. The materials are arranged as a "tactical zoom." We start very much "outside" the game, beginning with a wide view of how massive-multiplayer online games are played within dedicated gaming spaces; here, we find multiple players, machines, and many different sorts of activities going on (besides playing the game). Still remaining somewhat distanced from the play of the game itself, we then take a closer look at the players themselves by examining a notionally simpler setting involving pairs taking part in a football game at a games console. As we draw closer to the technical details of play, we narrow our focus further still to examine a player and spectator situated "at the screen" but jointly analyzing play as the player competes in an online first-person shooter. Finally, we go "inside" the game entirely and look at the conduct of avatars on-screen via screen recordings of a massively multiplayer online game. Having worked through specific examples, we provide an elaboration of a selection of core topics of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis that is used to situate some of the unstated orientations in the presentation of data fragments. In this way, recurrent issues raised in the fragments are shown as coherent, interconnected phenomena. In closing, we suggest caution regarding the way game play phenomena have been analyzed in this study, while remarking on challenges present for the development of further EMCA-oriented research on video game play

Modeling of Supersonic Combustor Flows using Parallel Computing

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has matured rapidly in the past 20 years and is now an important tool for analyzing and understanding complex fluid flows. Since 1985, CFD has played a vital role in the study of hypersonic flight. It has provided the capability for scientists and engineers to model both internal and external hypersonic flow-fields. Such flows are often impractical or impossible to analyze in laboratory conditions. In particular, the recent application of CFD to the modeling of internal reacting supersonic combustor flows has significantly advanced the understanding of such flows and has increased confidence in the predictive ability of codes. The purpose of these efforts has been to provide the hypersonic propulsion community with realistic large-scale applications of CFD and to use these solutions in direct support of engineering analysis and design of hypersonic vehicles. Although these applications have been successful to date, expectations and requirements arc increasing dramatically for both faster turn-around of solutions and for more detailed and accurate solutions (hence requiring greater computational mesh refinement, more complete chemistry and turbulence models, etc.). In order to begin to meet these requirements, a ten-fold or greater increase in computational efficiency is required, relative to current supercomputing capabilities. This increase can be achieved easily by suitably programming existing CFD technology on existing distributed memory parallel computing machines or multicomputers. This paper presents and analyzes the results obtained to date in an investigation aimed at the application of parallel computing to the simulation of scramjet combustor flow-fields