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Executive function and mental health in adopted children with a history of recreational drug exposures
Get PDFAdoptive children are at increased risk for problematic behaviors but the origin of these individual differences in neurobehavioral function is unclear. This investigation examined whether adopted children with prenatal exposure to a wide variety of recreational drugs exhibited higher scores (i.e. more problems) with executive function and psychiatric symptomology. Caregivers of children ages 5 to 18 completed an online survey with items about use of alcohol, nicotine, or methamphetamine during pregnancy followed by the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF, N = 437 including 59 adoptive parents) or the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL, N = 549 including 54 adoptive parents). Relative to a comparison group of children raised by their biological parents, adoptive children that were polysubstance exposed during prenatal development exhibited higher rates of academic difficulties and were behind their classmates in math and reading. Adoptive children had statistically and clinically significant higher BRIEF ratings and this pattern was similar for boys and girls. CBCL ratings were significantly increased in adoptive children, particularly for Externalizing and Attention problems. Adoptive children with a history of polysubstance exposures including alcohol, nicotine, and methamphetamine are at heightened risk for difficulties with executive function as well as various psychopathologies. These findings suggest that increased monitoring to identify and implement remediation strategies may be warranted for adopted children with a history of in utero drug exposures
Genomic standards consortium projects
Get PDFThe Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) is an open-membership community that was founded in 2005 to work towards the development, implementation and harmonization of standards in the field of genomics. Starting with the defined task of establishing a minimal set of descriptions the GSC has evolved into an active standards-setting body that currently has 18 ongoing projects, with additional projects regularly proposed from within and outside the GSC. Here we describe our recently enacted policy for proposing new activities that are intended to be taken on by the GSC, along with the template for proposing such new activities
Rapid assessment report: Upper Rocky Arroyo restoration project
Get PDFThe Upper Rocky Arroyo Restoration Project (URAR) is located on the Lakeside Ranger District, Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest (ASNF). The URAR project area covers a landscape of approximately 30,860 acres and is one of the ASNF's "Bridge the Gap" Projects identified in 2013 to help accelerate restoration treatments, to: continue to provide restoration treatments on large, "at risk" landscapes, provide wood fiber from tree thinning activities for wood-products industries in the White Mountain area, help "bridge the gap" of treating large landscapes to reduce the threat of unwanted wildfire or other disturbances, while the larger 4FRI analysis is being completed, and ensure watershed function and integrity is not adversely affected. The project area is dominated primarily by ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), with Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii), alligator juniper (Juniperus deppeana), Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma), one-seed juniper (Juniperus monosperma), pinon pine (Pinus edulis), white fir (Abies concolor), Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), and aspen (Populus tremuloides) present as lesser species. The landscape is predominately relatively flat terrain interrupted by distinctive ephemeral drainages generally flowing northward in the Silver Creek Watershed with several volcanic cinder cones across the area. Generally, three Potential Natural Vegetation Types (PNV) are represented on the URA area, which include ponderosa pine, Madrean pine-oak, and pinon-juniper. The Ecological Restoration Institute (ERI) was invited by the ASNF to collect site-specific historical ecological data for the URAR Project area to establish site-specific reference conditions (forest conditions that were in place 130-140 years ago when frequent fire was still a dominant component of the ecological system). These reference conditions would be used by the interdisciplinary team (IDT) as a point of reference for forest restoration project planning. To meet this need, ERI worked with the Lakeside Ranger District Ranger and staff to identify priority areas where data would be collected to establish reference conditions. ERI placed 49 individual study plots within the project area (Figure 1). The entire plot data collection was completed through a Rapid Assessment process and is documented in Appendix C of this report (Plot Data Summary Appendix C). Data on other ecological conditions were not collected as part of this effort; however, some of these data, such as fire history, are available from other sources (see Historical Context, Appendix A) and included in this report
Callisto basic and callisto pro
Get PDFThe article offers brief information on the Callisto Basic and Callisto Pro location-aware information service for electronic information resources troubleshooting and management from Sharp Moon Inc
Fact sheet: The impacts of the woody biomass utilization program in Eastern Arizona
Get PDFUtilizing woody biomass - small-diameter material and low-valued trees removed from forest restoration activities - on public lands may help reduce agency costs, enhance community wildfire protection, and create employment and economic activity. Yet small businesses adjacent to public land often lack the capacity to harvest and utilize biomass. Businesses face challenges such as limited access to capital and markets, technical assistance, and inconsistent material supply. From 2005-2010, the USDA Forest Service's Woody Biomass Utilization Grant (Woody BUG) program provided resources to address these barriers. We evaluated and compared the impacts of this program in eastern Oregon and in eastern Arizona. Here we summarize the findings from eastern Arizona
Working paper 29: Post-wildfire restoration of structure, composition, and function in southwestern ponderosa pine and warm/dry mixed-conifer forests.
Get PDFDuring the last several decades, uncharacteristically large wildfires have occurred at an increasing rate in the frequent-fire forests of the western United States (Westerling et al. 2006). These extensive and severely burned forests represent a serious conservation concern and restoration need. Indeed, Fule et al. (2013, p.4) remarked that "large uncharacteristic wildfires pose one of the greatest risks to ecosystem integrity in the 21st century." Such fires may be pushing forests in the western United States toward a "tipping point" that may lead to permanent changes in structure and composition, loss of carbon into the atmosphere and loss of carbon stocks (Hurteau and North 2009, North and Hurteau 2011, Hurteau et al. 2011), and changes in hydrological function (Dore et al. 2012, Adams 2013). Forests degraded by extensive high-severity fire often also exhibit accelerated soil erosion and subsequent loss of soil productivity, expansions or invasions of non-native plant populations, loss of wildlife habitat; damaged watersheds and degraded water quality to connected streams, and/or vegetation type conversions (Figure 1). Federal land management agencies have formally separated post-fire rehabilitation into short-term stabilization and long-term restoration measures. The U.S. Forest Service Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) program includes well-researched emergency treatments "to stabilize the burned area, protect public health and safety, and reduce the risk of additional damage to valued resources, such as water supply systems, aquatic habitat and roads" (Robichaud 2009). An immediate goal of BAER is to have protection in place prior to the first damage-producing rain event following the fire. Rehabilitation activities are implemented and can be monitored for up to three years after wildfire, and include the repair of facilities and mitigation of land and resources that are unlikely to recover on their own (Robichaud 2009). Longer-term post- fire restoration efforts have generally received much less attention, although the increasing occurrence of very large wildfires has prompted more attempts to articulate and evaluate long-term strategies (Long et al. in press). As opposed to emergency rehabilitation, ecological restoration focuses on assisting the recovery of characteristic ecological structure, process, and function. This requires an understanding of natural ranges of variability for these key attributes as well as development of reference conditions to guide management activities (Egan and Howell 2001, Margolis et al. 2013). In addition, restoration activities demand long-term commitment and evaluation. However, given the altered conditions that sometimes follow high-severity fires in previously degraded forests, successful restoration to a desired state may be difficult and costly (Scheffer et al. 2001). This working paper describes the goals of post-wildfire forest restoration, identifies the unique challenges and opportunities for management of severely burned large patches, and develops principles for restoring forests that have been burned by high-severity wildfires
Working Paper 30: Impact of Forest Restoration Treatments on Southwestern Ponderosa Pine Tree Resistance to Bark Beetles
Get PDFInsects can have a wide-range of both positive and negative effects on forest ecosystems. Positive impacts include serving as pollinators, creating snags for cavity nesting birds and bats, helping to increase forest heterogeneity, and aiding in decomposition and nutrient cycling. Negative impacts can range from relatively minor impacts at the individual tree level, such as reductions in growth or form defects, to landscape-level tree mortality (Coulson and Witter 1984, Raffa et al. 2008). In the ponderosa pine forests of the southwestern United States, the bark beetle has been the insect most often associated with widespread tree mortality. Restoration efforts in ponderosa pine ecosystems have the overarching goal of making these forests more healthy and resilient by reducing fuel loads and restoring ecosystem functions. Stand restoration in these ecosystems usually involves varying intensities of thinning or prescribed burning treatments or, more often, some combination of both. These same treatments may also alter tree susceptibility to disturbance events, such as insect attacks and wildfire. This working paper will highlight current research about the effects of restoration treatments on ponderosa pine tree resistance/susceptibility to bark beetles
Wood density-climate relationships are mediated by dominance class in black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) BSP)
Get PDFThe relationships between climate and wood density components, i.e., minimum ring density, maximum ring density and mean ring density have been studied mainly in dominant trees. However, the applicability of the findings to trees of other dominance classes is unclear. The aim of this study was to address whether climate differentially influences wood density components among dominance classes. X-ray densitometry data was obtained from 72 black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) B.S.P.) trees harvested in Northwestern Ontario, Canada. Dominant, co-dominant and intermediate trees were sampled and the data analysed using mixed-effect modelling techniques. For each density component, models were first fitted to the pooled data using ring width and cambial age as predictors, before monthly climatic variables were integrated into the models. Then, separate models were fitted to the data from each dominance class. In general, the addition of climatic factors led to a small but significant improvement in model performance. The predicted historical trends were well synchronized with the observed data. Our results indicate that trees from all dominance classes in a stand should be sampled in order to fully characterize wood density-climate relationships
The long-run component of foreign exchange volatility and stock returns: Working paper series--14-02
Get PDFThe present paper explores the cross-sectional pricing power of foreign exchange volatility in the US stock market by decomposing it into short- and long-run components. Our approach is motivated by Bartov, Bodnar, and Kaul (1996). Empirically, we find supporting evidence that the long-run component of foreign exchange volatility is priced in the US stock market. Our findings have important implications for international finance and empirical asset pricing
Subsampled open-reference clustering creates consistent, comprehensive OTU definitions and scales to billions of sequences
Get PDFWe present a performance-optimized algorithm, subsampled open-reference OTU picking, for assigning marker gene (e.g., 16S rRNA) sequences generated on next-generation sequencing platforms to operational taxonomic units (OTUs) for microbial community analysis. This algorithm provides benefits over de novo OTU picking (clustering can be performed largely in parallel, reducing runtime) and closed-reference OTU picking (all reads are clustered, not only those that match a reference database sequence with high similarity). Because more of our algorithm can be run in parallel relative to "classic" open-reference OTU picking, it makes open-reference OTU picking tractable on massive amplicon sequence data sets (though on smaller data sets, "classic" open-reference OTU clustering is often faster). We illustrate that here by applying it to the first 15,000 samples sequenced for the Earth Microbiome Project (1.3 billion V4 16S rRNA amplicons). To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest OTU picking run ever performed, and we estimate that our new algorithm runs in less than 1/5 the time than would be required of "classic" open reference OTU picking. We show that subsampled open-reference OTU picking yields results that are highly correlated with those generated by "classic" open-reference OTU picking through comparisons on three well-studied datasets. An implementation of this algorithm is provided in the popular QIIME software package, which uses uclust for read clustering. All analyses were performed using QIIME's uclust wrappers, though we provide details (aided by the open-source code in our GitHub repository) that will allow implementation of subsampled open-reference OTU picking independently of QIIME (e.g., in a compiled programming language, where runtimes should be further reduced). Our analyses should generalize to other implementations of these OTU picking algorithms. Finally, we present a comparison of parameter settings in QIIME's OTU picking workflows and make recommendations on settings for these free parameters to optimize runtime without reducing the quality of the results. These optimized parameters can vastly decrease the runtime of uclust-based OTU picking in QIIME