Digital Commons Network^™

Biology Student Goes ‘Fishing’ In Antarctica, Tin Can To The Rescue, Ohio University College Of Arts & Sciences

All Forum Articles

No abstract provided.

Emu Today, July 12, 2016, Eastern Michigan University

EMU Today

No abstract provided.

1893 - History Of Political Conventions In California, 1849-1892, Winfield J. Davis

Miscellaneous Documents and Reports

The manuscript and copyright of this 1893 book written by Winfred J. Davis was purchased by the California State Library with the proviso that the Library publish the book thereby ensuring that it was preserved and made accessible. The document details the history of the California Political Conventions between 1849 and 1892 covering, but not limited to, the conventions held by the Democrats, Whigs, No-Nothing Party, Republicans, settlers and miners, Temperance, Douglas Democrats, and Breckenridge Democrats.

Footprints Reveal Direct Evidence Of Group Behavior And Locomotion In Homo Erectus, K. G. Hatala, N T. Roach, K R. Ostrofsky, R. E. Wunderlich, H. L. Dingwall, Brian Villmoare, D. J. Green, J. W.K. Harris, D. R. Braun, B. G. Richmond

Anthropology Faculty Research

Bipedalism is a defining feature of the human lineage. Despite evidence that walking on two feet dates back 6-7 Ma, reconstructing hominin gait evolution is complicated by a sparse fossil record and challenges in inferring biomechanical patterns from isolated and fragmentary bones. Similarly, patterns of social behavior that distinguish modern humans from other living primates likely played significant roles in our evolution, but it is exceedingly difficult to understand the social behaviors of fossil hominins directly from fossil data. Footprints preserve direct records of gait biomechanics and behavior but they have been rare in the early human fossil record. Here …

Tucker V. State Respondent's Brief 2 Dckt. 43922

Idaho Supreme Court Records & Briefs, All

No abstract provided.

Addressing The Needs Of Classical Biological Control Programs, Invasive Species Advisory Committee

National Invasive Species Council

Conclusions

Classical biological control has been among the most cost- effective and environmentally safe management tools for invasive species for many years, both nationally and internationally. Addressing the political, regulatory, and institutional challenges in the discovery, pre-release phase and post-release monitoring of a classical biological control program would greatly enhance the long-term potential for success. From this white paper, a number of recommendations were developed that we believe will significantly improve prioritization and effectiveness of classical biological control programs, including:

1. Develop transparent criteria to prioritize those invasive species for which classical biological control is the most cost-effective control option. …

How Can Text-­Based Debates Increase Empathy In Upper Elementary Students, Melissa M. Ogden

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this project was, how can text­based debates increase empathy in upper elementary students? It explores research around critical literacy, social­emotional learning, and debates with a specific focus on alternative perspectives and empathy development. The researcher combines research around different forms of debate, argumentation and collaborative reasoning, to create a text­based debate protocol. The action research studies the impact on students’ empathy development for characters found in read aloud texts through participation in weekly text­based debates and written reflections. Students debated two opposing perspectives regarding a character’s personality and wrote reflections in which they explained both …

Scientific Eventuality Or Science Fiction: The Future Of People With Different Abilities, Deedee M. Bennett

Public Administration Faculty Publications

Consider this, we are living in a future [in-part] imagined over 30 years ago- in science fiction film and books. We may envision that 30 years from now we could live in a future with technology developed from the concepts we see in science fiction today. In this paper, the concepts of disability are challenged in the future based on the technologies imagined in the science fiction genre of the present and past. Focused on the sub-genre, Cyberpunk, current mainstream, as well as new emerging technologies inspired by science fiction are reviewed. Future disability is reimagined dependent on continued support …

Research Integrity And Compliance Changes Guard, Edwin Smith

University of Mississippi News

As Tom Lombardo retires, Gene Hines becomes new director

Conserved Expression Of Vertebrate Microvillar Gene Homologs In Choanocytes Of Freshwater Sponges, Jesús F. Peña, Alexandre Alié, Daniel J. Richter, Lingyu Wang, Noriko Funayama, Scott A. Nichols

Biological Sciences: Faculty Scholarship

Background

The microvillus is a versatile organelle that serves important functions in disparate animal cell types. However, from a molecular perspective, the microvillus has been well studied in only a few, predominantly vertebrate, contexts. Little is known about how differences in microvillar structure contribute to differences in function, and how these differences evolved. We sequenced the transcriptome of the freshwater sponge, Ephydatia muelleri, and examined the expression of vertebrate microvillar gene homologs in choanocytes—the only microvilli-bearing cell type present in sponges. Sponges offer a distant phylogenetic comparison with vertebrates, and choanocytes are central to discussions about early animal evolution …

Pheromone Lure And Trap Color Affects Bycatch In Agricultural Landscapes Of Utah, Lori R. Spears, Chris Looney, Harold Ikerd, Jonathan B. Koch, Terry L. Griswold, James P. Strange, Ricardo A. Ramirez

Biology Faculty Publications

Aerial traps, using combinations of color and attractive lures, are a critical tool for detecting and managing insect pest populations. Yet, despite improvements in trap efficacy, collection of nontarget species (“bycatch”) plagues many insect pest surveys. Bycatch can influence survey effectiveness by reducing the available space for target species and increasing trap screening time, especially in areas where thousands of insects are captured as bycatch in a given season. Additionally, bycatch may negatively impact local nontarget insect populations, including beneficial predators and pollinators. Here, we tested the effect of pheromone lures on bycatch rates of Coccinellidae (Coleoptera), Apoidea (Hymenoptera), and …

Sex Chromosome-Wide Transcriptional Suppression And Compensatory Cis-Regulatory Evolution Mediate Gene Expression In The Drosophila Male Germline, Emily L. Landeen, Christina A. Muirhead, Lori Wright, Colin D. Meiklejohn, Daven C. Presgraves

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

The evolution of heteromorphic sex chromosomes has repeatedly resulted in the evolution of sex chromosome-specific forms of regulation, including sex chromosome dosage compensation in the soma and meiotic sex chromosome inactivation in the germline. In the male germline of Drosophila melanogaster, a novel but poorly understood form of sex chromosome-specific transcriptional regulation occurs that is distinct from canonical sex chromosome dosage compensation or meiotic inactivation. Previous work shows that expression of reporter genes driven by testis-specific promoters is considerably lower—approximately 3-fold or more—for transgenes inserted into X chromosome versus autosome locations. Here we characterize this transcriptional suppression of X-linked …

Methods For Culturing Retinal Pigment Epithelial Cells: A Review Of Current Protocols And Future Recommendations, Aaron H. Fronk, Elizabeth Vargis

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

The retinal pigment epithelium is an important part of the vertebrate eye, particularly in studying the causes and possible treatment of age-related macular degeneration. The retinal pigment epithelium is difficult to access in vivo due to its location at the back of the eye, making experimentation with age-related macular degeneration treatments problematic. An alternative to in vivo experimentation is cultivating the retinal pigment epithelium in vitro, a practice that has been going on since the 1970s, providing a wide range of retinal pigment epithelial culture protocols, each producing cells and tissue of varying degrees of similarity to natural retinal pigment …

Tiwwa (This Is Where We Are), Ml Phillips, B Aga

School of Art, Design and Architecture

No abstract provided.

Police Funding Arrangements In Engand And Wales: Report To The Nrcn, Ajs Gibson, S Asthana

Peninsula Medical School

No abstract provided.

Climate Change Impacts And Implications: An Integrated Assessment In A Lowland Environment Of New Zealand, A. G.E. Ausseil, K. Bodmin, A. Daigneault, E. Teixeira, E. D. Keller, M. U. F. Kirschbaum, L. Timar, A. Dunningham, C. Zammit, S. Stephens, M. Cameron, P. Blackett, G. Harmsworth, B. Frame, A. Reisinger, A. Tait, D. Rutledge

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

New Zealand’s mixed economy includes a range of sectors (e.g. primary production, energy, tourism) that depend heavily on the state of natural resource capital. This makes the economy heavily dependent on future global climate change and the global economic situation. In this paper, we present a framework to evaluate socio-economic and environmental impacts of future climate and land-use change, and give results for one scenario in a typical lowland environment in New Zealand. The future scenario was designed as a combination of global climate and socio-economic assumptions, along with New Zealand-specific policy assumptions. We evaluated the impacts and implications of …

An Agent-Based Model For Studying The Effects Of Sustainable Intensification On Food Security In The Nation State, James Reilly, Terry Dawson, Robin Matthews, Gary Polhill, Pete Smith

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Growth in World’s population, the expansion of human activities and the demand for land has and continues to damage the natural environment. Humans depend on the natural environment for essential life-preserving processes, for example food production. Damage to the environment has serious consequences for national (State) and human security and well-being. One concern is food security and, in particular, whether a growing World population will find enough food to eat. The consequences of using more land and resources to grow more food are an important area of research. The expansion of farming will leave less land for other important uses. …

Residual Soil Nitrogen Scenario Analysis Of Canadian Farmland Using A Canadian Agricultural Nitrogen Budget (Canb V4.0) Model, Jingyi Yang, Craig Drury

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A Canadian Agricultural Nitrogen Budget (CANB) model has been developed since 2002 to estimate Residual Soil Nitrogen (RSN) and N leaching loss across Canadian farmland. The current results showed that national RSN averages in Canadian farmland (annual N input minus annual N output) increased from 9.4 kg N ha-1 in 1981 to 23.6 kg N ha-1 in 2011 as mainly affected by the increase in synthetic fertilizer N usage and biological N2 fixation. With annual drainage, about 50 and 80% of residual soil N was lost in Central (Ontario and Quebec) and Atlantic Canada, respectively, through leaching and varying according …

Insects Have The Capacity For Subjective Experience, Colin Klein, Andrew B. Barron

Animal Sentience

To what degree are non-human animals conscious? We propose that the most meaningful way to approach this question is from the perspective of functional neurobiology. Here we focus on subjective experience, which is a basic awareness of the world without further reflection on that awareness. This is considered the most basic form of consciousness. Tellingly, this capacity is supported by the integrated midbrain and basal ganglia structures, which are among the oldest and most highly conserved brain systems in vertebrates. A reasonable inference is that the capacity for subjective experience is both widespread and evolutionarily old within the vertebrate lineage. …

System Dynamics And Bayesian Network Models For Vulnerability And Adaptation Assessment Of A Coastal Water Supply And Demand System, Thuc D. Phan, Oz Sahin, James Cr. Smart

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A coastal water supply and demand system is a highly uncertain and dynamically complex system. The degree of high uncertainty can arise from future climate change, population growth, water consumption trends, land use changes and socio-economic development, resulting in limited availability of empirical data. The effects of temporal and spatial interactions among such driving factors further contribute to the high dynamic complexity of coastal freshwater management. To effectively manage a coastal freshwater system with high levels of uncertainty and complexity, a participatory integrated System dynamics (SD) and Bayesian networks (BNs) modelling framework was suggested to assess the vulnerability and adaptation …

Implementing Urine Patches In A Dynamic Process- Based Simulation Model, V. O. Snow, R. Cichota, N. J. Hutchings, J. Vejlin

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Grazing ruminants harvest N from pasture in the entire paddock and then deposit between 40 and 80% of the ingested N into urine patches that cover only 2-4% of the paddock area during a typical rotational grazing event. While previous work has shown the importance of explicitly modelling these patches of very high N deposition, most process-based simulation models assume uniform return of N to the soil. The very few models that explicitly model urine patches within the paddock do so at significant, perhaps prohibitive, computational cost. We sought a solution that would preserve the most important biophysical effects but …

Scientific Research Documentation - An Information Server For The National Park Hunsrück-Hochwald, Peter Fischer-Stabel, Micheal Mattern

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Within the world network of nature reserves, a national park is a park in use for conservation purposes. Beside it´s high value for nature and biodiversity, national parks are serving as sites for research, environmental monitoring, education and training. In order to ensure a long-lasting, central and efficient access to the literature and data on such a nature reserve for all scientists from the respective institutions, a research information portal was established for the National Park Hunsrück-Hochwald. Based on a user requirements analysis, a client-server architecture using open source components was set up. Core modules are a metadata-management component and …

Proceedings Of The 2016 Asian American/Pacific Islander Nurses Association Conference: Global Health & Nursing: Advancements Through Research, Education, And Practice, Asian American Pacific Islander Nurses Association

Asian/Pacific Island Nursing Journal

No abstract provided.

Supporting Wildlife Conservation By Modelling The Effectiveness Of Community-Led Poacher Mitigation, Marit E. Kragt, Eric J. Hay, Micheal Renton

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Illegal hunting and poaching are severely threatening biodiversity in Southeast Asia, especially those species that are rare or threatened. Management strategies to address this poaching problem include wildlife patrols that collect and remove wire snares. While studies exist that predict the impact of poaching on biodiversity loss, there are few studies that evaluate the effectiveness of policy strategies. We present a model that predicts how community-led poaching mitigation patrols could help wildlife conservation the Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR). The results show that, without intervention, nearly all species will be poached to local extinction over the next 10 years. We …

Livelihoods Of Local Communities In An Amazonian Floodplain Coping With Global Changes: From Role-Playing Games To Hybrid Simulations To Involve Local Stakeholders In Participatory Foresight Study At Territorial Level, Pierre Biommel, Marie-Paule Bonnet, Emilie Coudel, Eva Haentjens, Cleber Nunes Kraus, Gustavo Melo, Stephanie Nasuti, Christophe Le Page

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In the Amazonian floodplains, the local populations living from agricultural activities and fishing, have always coped natural variations, between flood and dry seasons. However, the rhythm and the amplitude of these floods are disturbed nowadays, resulting in great uncertainty for these populations. Biophysics and social scientists have joined hands to help these populations better improve their resilience to such changes. Our initial goal aims to better understand and discuss the impacts of current practices in the long term. To address this, we first turned the perspective around the preoccupations and strategies of local populations and collectively discussed possible future scenarios. …

Explicit Cost Accounting For Adaptation, Mitigation And Ecosystem Service Provision In Agriculture, Franz Sinabell, Karin Heinschink, Christoph Tribl

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Farmers, policy makers and scientists are well aware of this problem: obtaining sound cost information for climate change adaptation and mitigation measures in agriculture or ecosystem service provision by agriculture is burdensome. In most cases, data sets are developed for a specific region with a given set of management variants for a baseline period. Adapting such information to another region or adjusting costs to expected future price scenarios requires additional efforts and frequently done an ad-hoc and case by case. A new tool is presented that can be used to identify and analyze the entangled effects of future climate and …

A Workflow To Model Microbial Loadings In Watersheds, Kurt Wolfe, Rajbir Parmar, Gene Whelan, Gerard F. Laniak, Mike Galvin, Keewook Kim, Marirosa Molina, Richard Zepp, Paul Duda, Dennis D. Keiser

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Many watershed models simulate overland and instream microbial fate and transport, but few actually provide loading rates on land surfaces and point sources to the water body network. This paper describes the underlying general equations for microbial loading rates associated with 1) land- applied manure on undeveloped areas from domestic animals; 2) direct shedding on undeveloped lands by domestic animals and wildlife; 3) urban or engineered areas; and 4) point sources that directly discharge to streams from septic systems and shedding by domestic animals. A microbial source module, which houses these formulations, is linked within a workflow containing eight models …

The Pasture Simulation Model – Evaluation Of Plant Acclimatory Effects On Grassland Systems In France, Serge Zaka, Renáta Sándor, Raphaël Martin, Gaëtan Louarn, Katja Klumpp, David Borras, Gianni Bellocchi

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The temperature responses of plant photosynthesis and respiration observed on single-plant species can be assumed to occur at the scale of a grassland ecosystem (which is a dynamic and competitive associations of plants). Based on the model for a single, fully expanded leaf as derived from experimental evidence and to gain insights into acclimatory and modulatory effects of growth temperature, we have: 1) improved a complex soil-vegetation-management model of grasslands, PaSim (Pasture Simulation model), and 2) evaluated it on multi-year datasets of plant biomass and C-water- energy fluxes in managed grassland systems. Illustrative results are presented for the French grassland …

Agent-Based Modelling: What Matters Is Action, Franҫois Guerrin, Zoubida Afoutni, Rémy Courdier

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Computer-aided management tools or models of production systems in the manufacturing or agricultural domains generally rely implicitly on the theory of planned action. Every action is assumed to be part of an anticipated sequence leading from a current state to a predetermined goal. The main limits of this classical view are due to the difficulty to deal with unexpected changes and disturbances. To overcome these limits, we developed an agent model based on the theory of situated action. Whereas the classical approach puts the emphasis on actor’s decision (action being assumed to straightforwardly follow), situated action is viewed as a …

Documenting Models For Interoperability And Reusability, Rajbir Parmar, Kurt Wolfe, Gene Whelan, Gerard F. Laniak, Mike Galvin, Jonathan L. Goodall

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Many modeling frameworks compartmentalize science via individual models that link sets of small components to create larger modeling workflows. Developing integrated watershed models increasingly requires coupling multidisciplinary, independent models, as well as collaboration between scientific communities, since component-based modeling can integrate models from different disciplines. Integrated Environmental Modeling (IEM) systems focus on transferring information between components by capturing a conceptual site model; establishing local metadata standards for input/output of models and databases; managing data flow between models and throughout the system; facilitating quality control of data exchanges (e.g., checking units, unit conversions, transfers between software languages); warning and error handling; …