Rodent competition and fire alter patterns of mound and disk formation of western harvester ants.

Consumers exert top-down controls on dryland ecosystem function, but recent increases in fire activity may alter consumer communities in post-fire environments. Native consumers, including ants and rodents, likely have critical roles in defining post-fire plant community assembly and resilience to biological invasions. This study aimed to understand how western harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex occidentalis) that form mounds and large vegetation-free disks that significantly influence plant community structure in the Great Basin Desert respond to fire and rodent community abundance.

Genome size and chromosome number are critical metrics for accurate genome assembly assessment in Eukaryota.

The number of genome assemblies has rapidly increased in recent history, with NCBI databases reaching over 41,000 eukaryotic genome assemblies across about 2,300 species. Increases in read length and improvements in assembly algorithms have led to increased contiguity and larger genome assemblies. While this number of assemblies is impressive, only about a third of these assemblies have corresponding genome size estimations for their respective species on publicly available databases.

Wallace's line structures seagrass microbiota and is a potential barrier to the dispersal of marine bacteria.

Background: The processes that shape microbial biogeography are not well understood, and concepts that apply to macroorganisms, like dispersal barriers, may not affect microorganisms in the same predictable ways. To better understand how known macro-scale biogeographic processes can be applied at micro-scales, we examined seagrass associated microbiota on either side of Wallace's line to determine the influence of this cryptic dispersal boundary on the community structure of microorganisms. Communities were examined from twelve locations throughout Indonesia on either side of this theoretical line.

Detection of in , , , and in Utah.

Historically, beet curly top virus (BCTV; , ) is known for destroying the sugar beet industry in Utah and has been a persistent problem in the state since then (Ball, 1917). Starting in June of 2022, we began identifying plants in San Juan County, Utah with chlorosis and leaf curling. Of note, , the Four Corners potato, , big sagebrush, and , common sunflower, were found with general chlorosis, severe leaf curling and in the case of the sage brush, completely lacking in smell whereas nearby sage plants without the yellowing were intensely fragrant.

"Sometimes I just forget them": capturing experiences of women about free menstrual products in a U.S. based public university campus.

Background: Studies have proven that lack of access to menstruation products negatively affects school attendance, academic performance, and individual health. Implementing "period policies," or programs offering free menstruation products, are becoming popular in schools, businesses, and communities in high-income countries. U.

Self-regulation, motivation, and outcomes in HyFlex classrooms.

At a public, 4-year, open access university, students were given the choice of how they would attend class: face-to-face, online, or livestream (synchronous session in Microsoft Teams®). The 876 students in this study registered in course sections designated as face-to-face delivery yet were provided attendance flexibility due to the pandemic. This unique situation provided a research opportunity to explore the self-regulatory, motivational, and contextual factors that affected students' attendance choices as well as their academic outcomes (pass/withdrawal) and perceptions of satisfaction.

Teaching argument writing in math class: challenges and solutions to improve the performance of 4th and 5th graders with disabilities.

Incorporating argument writing as a learning activity has been found to increase students' mathematics performance. However, teachers report receiving little to no preservice or inservice preparation to use writing to support students' learning. This is especially concerning for special education teachers who provide highly specialized mathematics instruction (i.

The core mangrove microbiome reveals shared taxa potentially involved in nutrient cycling and promoting host survival.

Background: Microbes have fundamental roles underpinning the functioning of our planet, they are involved in global carbon and nutrient cycling, and support the existence of multicellular life. The mangrove ecosystem is nutrient limited and if not for microbial cycling of nutrients, life in this harsh environment would likely not exist. The mangroves of Southeast Asia are the oldest and most biodiverse on the planet, and serve vital roles helping to prevent shoreline erosion, act as nursery grounds for many marine species and sequester carbon.

Inclusion of database outgroups reduces false positives in fungal metabarcoding taxonomic assignments.

Metabarcoding studies of fungal communities rely on curated databases for assigning taxonomy. Any host or other nonfungal environmental sequences that are amplified during polymerase chain reaction (PCR) are inherently assigned taxonomy by these same databases, possibly leading to ambiguous nonfungal amplicons being assigned to fungal taxa. Here, we investigated the effects of including nonfungal outgroups in a fungal taxonomic database to aid in detecting and removing these nontarget amplicons.

Oxygen impact and reactivity trials: A new perspective on emergency response precautions.

The objective of this research was to verify and qualify what has been traditionally taught as fact during first responder's hazardous materials training regarding response precautions to and the likely behaviors of liquid oxygen (LOx) during a release. Subject matter experts disagreed that these precautions were well-founded in precedent or science. Findings showed that impact pressure causes a reaction in LOx and asphalt under specific conditions.

A Validity Measure for the Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics.

The Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics (ANAM) is one of the most widely used and validated neuropsychological instruments for assessing cognition. The ANAM Test System includes a reporting tool, the ANAM Validity Indicator Report that generates scores for the embedded effort measure, the ANAM Performance Validity Index (APVI). The current study seeks to develop a proxy for the APVI, using raw subtest summary test scores.

Early Preventive Dental Visits: Do They Reduce Future Operative Treatments?

This study assessed the longitudinal impact of early preventive dental visits on the number of dental operative procedures in a prevention-oriented pediatric dental practice. Inclusion criteria consisted of patients zero to four years of age with at least two years of preventive services provided by the practice. Early preventive visits were the intervention and dental operative procedures were the assessed outcome.

Experimental Measurements of Relative Mobility Shifts Resulting from Isotopic Substitutions with High-Resolution Cyclic Ion Mobility Separations.

Herein, we report on the experimental measurements for estimated relative mobility shifts caused by changes in mass distribution from isotopic substitutions in isotopologues and isotopomers with high-resolution cyclic ion mobility separations. By utilizing unlabeled and fully labeled isotopologues with the same isotopic substitutions (i.e.

"I have no idea:" Uncertainty in high school seniors' marital expectations.

Despite changes in marriage's role in young adulthood, youth in the United States report similar or higher expectations to marry than those from decades before, and very few report explicit expectations to not marry. Marital expectations may be one way to understand if the U.S.

Host age is not a consistent predictor of microbial diversity in the coral Porites lutea.

Corals harbour diverse microbial communities that can change in composition as the host grows in age and size. Larger and older colonies have been shown to host a higher diversity of microbial taxa and this has been suggested to be a consequence of their more numerous, complex and varied micro-niches available. However, the effects of host age on community structure and diversity of microbial associates remain equivocal in the few studies performed to date.

"Best-Laid Plans": Barriers to Meeting Marital Timing Desires Over the Life Course.

Most youth desire to marry, and often around a certain age, but many individuals marry earlier or later than originally desired. Off-time marriage could have consequences for subsequent relationship stability and mental health. Whereas barriers to marriage goals in the short term have been studied extensively, predictors of meeting marital timing expectations over the life course are less well understood.

Pods as sails but not as boats: dispersal ecology of a habitat-restricted desert milkvetch.

Premise: Adaptive seed dispersal mechanisms are fundamental to plant fitness, but dispersal advantage is scale-dependent. We tested the hypothesis that informed dispersal in response to an environmental cue enables dispersal by wind on a local scale for Astragalus holmgreniorum, a desert species restricted to swales and wash skirts with overland flow, but prevents longer-distance dispersal by water into unfavorable wash habitats.

Methods: Pod biomechanics in A.

Mendel and Darwin: untangling a persistent enigma.

Mendel and Darwin were contemporaries, with much overlap in their scientifically productive years. Available evidence shows that Mendel knew much about Darwin, whereas Darwin knew nothing of Mendel. Because of the fragmentary nature of this evidence, published inferences regarding Mendel's views on Darwinian evolution are contradictory and enigmatic, with claims ranging from enthusiastic acceptance to outright rejection.

Where the plasmids roam: large-scale sequence analysis reveals plasmids with large host ranges.

Describing the role of plasmids and their contribution to the exchange of genetic material among bacteria is essential for understanding the fields of plasmid epidemiology, microbial ecology, and commercial and synthetic microbiology. Broad-host-range (BHR) plasmids are those that are found not only in a single bacterial species, but in members of different taxonomic groups and are of significant interest to researchers in many fields. We applied a novel approach to computationally identify new BHR plasmids, in which we searched for highly similar cognate plasmids within a comprehensive plasmid database.

Extension of emission expectation maximization lookalike algorithms to Bayesian algorithms.

We recently developed a family of image reconstruction algorithms that look like the emission maximum-likelihood expectation-maximization (ML-EM) algorithm. In this study, we extend these algorithms to Bayesian algorithms. The family of emission-EM-lookalike algorithms utilizes a multiplicative update scheme.

A mixed method approach to understanding the factors surrounding delayed diagnosis of type one diabetes.

Aims: This study examined delayed type one diabetes (T1D) diagnosis, along with the associated severity markers, in the United States. Qualitative reflection was explored to add depth of understanding.

Methods: 975 parents of a minor child with T1D were recruited through snowball, social media requests to complete a 55-question online survey on the experience of diagnosis.

Possible economic benefits of full-grade acceleration.

Full-grade acceleration is an intervention in which students finish the K-12 curriculum at least one year early, usually due to early entrance to kindergarten, grade skipping, or early graduation from high school. Many studies have shown benefits during childhood for accelerated individuals, but few studies have examined outcomes of acceleration in adulthood. In this study data from five longitudinal datasets were combined to compare adult incomes of accelerated and non-accelerated subjects after controlling for five important childhood covariates.

Quantifying variant differences in DNA melting curves: Effects of length, melting rate, and curve overlay.

High resolution DNA melting of PCR products is a simple technique for sequence variant detection and analysis. However, sensitivity and specificity vary and depend on many factors that continue to be defined. We introduce the area between normalized melting curves as a metric to quantify genotype discrimination.

A graphical approach to optimizing variable-kernel smoothing parameters for improved deformable registration of CT and cone beam CT images.

A systematic method is presented for determining optimal parameters in variable-kernel deformable image registration of cone beam CT and CT images, in order to improve accuracy and convergence for potential use in online adaptive radiotherapy. Assessed conditions included the noise constant (symmetric force demons), the kernel reduction rate, the kernel reduction percentage, and the kernel adjustment criteria. Four such parameters were tested in conjunction with reductions of 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, and 40%.

Novel "omics" approach for study of low-abundance, low-molecular-weight components of a complex biological tissue: regional differences between chorionic and basal plates of the human placenta.

Tissue proteomics has relied heavily on two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, for protein separation and quantification, then single protein isolation, trypsin digestion, and mass spectrometric protein identification. Such methods are predominantly used for study of high-abundance, full-length proteins. Tissue peptidomics has recently been developed but is still used to study the most highly abundant species, often resulting in observation and identification of dozens of peptides only.