Peat profile database from peatlands in Canada.

Peatlands cover approximately 12% of the Canadian landscape and play an important role in the carbon cycle through their centennial- to millennial-scale storage of carbon under waterlogged and anoxic conditions. In recognizing the potential of these ecosystems as natural climate solutions and therefore the need to include them in national greenhouse gas inventories, the Canadian Model for Peatlands module (CaMP v. 2.0) was developed by the Canadian Forest Service. Model parameterization included compiling peat profiles across Canada to calibrate peat decomposition rates from different peatland types, to define typical bulk density profiles, and to describe the hydrological (i.e., water table) response of peatlands to climatic changes. A total of 1217 sites were included in the dataset from published and unpublished sources. The CORESITES table contains site location and summary data for each profile, as well as an estimate of total carbon mass per unit area (in megagrams of C per hectare). Total carbon mass per unit area at each location was calculated using bulk density and carbon content through each profile. The PROFILES table contains data for depth (in centimeters), bulk density (in grams per cubic meter), ash and carbon content (in percentage), and material descriptions for contiguous samples through each peat profile. Data gaps for bulk density and C content were filled using interpolation, regression trees, and assigned values based on material description and/or soil classification to allow for the estimation of total carbon mass per unit area. A subset of the sites (N = 374) also have pH and pore water trace-elemental geochemistry data and are found in the WATER table. The REFERENCES table contains the full citation of each source of the data and is linked to each core location through the SOURCEDATA table. The LOOKUP table defines codes in the database that required more space that what was sufficient in the metadata tables. The data can be accessed on Open Government Canada and will be useful for future work on carbon stock mapping and ecosystem modeling. All metadata and data are provided © Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, 2023 and information contained in this publication may be reproduced for personal or public noncommercial purposes with attribution, whereas commercial reproduction and distribution are prohibited except with written permission from NRCan; complete details are noted in the Supporting Information file Metadata S1 (see Class III.B.3: Copyright restrictions).

Trapped between food, heat, and insects: Movement of moose (Alces alces) and exposure to flies in the boreal forest of Alaska.

Moose (Alces alces) in the boreal forest habitats of Alaska are unlike other northern ungulates because they tolerate high densities of flies (Diptera) even though flies cause wounds and infections during the warm summer months. Moose move to find food and to find relief from overheating (hyperthermia) but do they avoid flies? We used GPS collars to measure the rate of movement (m⋅h-1) and the time spent (min⋅day-1) by enclosed moose in four habitats: wetlands, black spruce, early seral boreal forest, and late seral boreal forest. Fly traps were used in each habitat to quantify spatio-temporal abundance. Average daily air temperatures increased into July when peak biomass of forage for moose was greatest in early seral boreal forest habitats (424.46 vs. 25.15 kg⋅ha-1 on average in the other habitats). Average daily air temperatures were 1.7°C cooler in black spruce than other habitats, but fly abundance was greatest in black spruce (approximately 4-fold greater on average than the other habitats). Moose increased their movement rate with counts of biting flies (mosquitoes, black flies, horse and deer flies), but not non-biting flies (coprophagous flies). However, as air temperature increased (above 14.7°C) moose spent more time in fly-abundant black spruce, than early seral boreal forest, showing great tolerance for mosquitoes. Warm summer temperatures appear to cause moose to trade-off foraging in fly-sparse habitats for resting and dissipating heat in shady, wet habitats with abundant flies that adversely affect the fitness of moose.

Did private election administration funding advantage Democrats in 2020?

Private donors contributed more than $350 million to local election officials to support the administration of the 2020 election. Supporters argue these grants were neutral and necessary to maintain normal election operations during the pandemic, while critics worry these grants mostly went to Democratic strongholds and tilted election outcomes. How much did these grants shape the 2020 presidential election? To answer this question, we collect administrative data on private election administration grants and election outcomes. We then use advances in synthetic control methods to compare presidential election results and turnout in counties that received grants to counties with similar election results and turnout before 2020. While Democratic counties were more likely to apply for a grant, we find that the grants did not have a noticeable effect on the presidential election. Our estimates of the average effect on Democratic vote share range from 0.03 to 0.36 percentage points. Our estimates of the average effect of receiving a grant on turnout range from 0.03 to 0.14 percentage points. Across specifications, our 95% CIs typically include negative effects and all fail to include effects on Democratic vote share larger than 0.58 percentage points and effects on turnout larger than 0.40 percentage points. We characterize the magnitude of our effects by asking how large they are compared to the margin by which Biden won the 2020 election. In simple bench-marking exercises, we find that the effects of the grants were likely too small to have changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Doxycycline-Mediated Inhibition of Snake Venom Phospholipase and Metalloproteinase.

INTRODUCTION: Warfighters are exposed to life-threatening injuries daily and according to the Joint Trauma System Military Clinical Practice Guideline-Global Snake Envenomation Management snakebites are a concerning threat in all theaters of operation. Snake venom is a complex mixture of toxins including phospholipases A2 (PLA2) and snake venom metalloproteinases (SVMP) that produce myotoxic, hemotoxic, and cytotoxic injuries. Antibody-based antivenom is the standard of care but new approaches including small-molecule inhibitors have gained attention in recent years. Doxycycline is an effective inhibitor of human metalloproteinases and PLA2. The enzymatic activities of 3 phylogenetically distinct snakes: Agkistrodon piscivorus, Naja kaouthia, and Daboia russelii were tested under inhibitory conditions using doxycycline. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Enzymatic activity of PLA2 and SVMP was measured in N. kaouthia, D. russelii, and A. piscivorus venom alone and with doxycycline using EnzChek Phospholipase A2 and Gelatinase Assay Kits. A 1-way ANOVA with Tukey's post-hoc test was used to conduct comparative analysis. The median lethal dose of the venoms, the effective dose of doxycycline, and creatine kinase (CK) inhibition levels were measured in a murine model with adult Bagg Albino (BALB/c) mice using intramuscular injections. Median lethal and effective doses were determined using Spearman-Karber's method and a 1-way ANOVA with Tukey's post-hoc test was used to compare CK inhibition levels. RESULTS: Phospholipases A2 activity was reduced to 1.5% to 44.0% in all 3 venoms in a dose-dependent manner using 0.32, 0.16, and 0.08 mg/mL doxycycline when compared to venom-only controls (P < .0001) (Fig. 1A). Snake venom metalloproteinases activity was reduced to 4% to 62% in all 3 venoms in a dose-dependent manner using 0.32, 0.16, and 0.08 mg/mL doxycycline (P < .0001) (Fig. 1B). The lethal dose (LD50) values of the venoms in the murine model were calculated as follows: A. piscivorus = 20.29 mg/kg (Fig. 2A), N. kaouthia = 0.38 mg/kg (Fig. 2B), and D. russelii = 7.92 mg/kg (Fig. 2C). The effective dose (ED50) of doxycycline in A. piscivorus was calculated to be 20.82 mg/kg and 72.07 mg/kg when treating D. russelii venom. No ED50 could be calculated when treating N. kaouthia venom (Fig. 3). Creatine kinase activity was significantly decreased in all 3 venoms treated with doxycycline (P < .0001) (Fig. 4). CONCLUSION: Doxycycline reduced PLA2- and SVMP-related lethality, particularly in A. piscivorus envenomings and in a limited capacity with D. russelii revealing its promise as a treatment for snakebites. In addition, CK activity, a common indicator of muscle damage was inhibited in mice that received doxycycline-treated venom. The doxycycline concentrations identified in the ED50 studies correspond to 1,456 to 5,061 mg dosages for a 70 kg human. Factors including venom yield and snake species would affect the actual dosage needed. Studies into high-dose doxycycline safety and its effectiveness against several snake species is needed to fully translate its use into humans. Based on this work, doxycycline could be used as a treatment en route to higher echelons of care, providing protection from muscle damage and reducing lethality in different snake species.

Robust Responses of Female Caribou to Changes in Food Supply.

AbstractUngulates can respond to changes in food supply by altering foraging behavior, digestive function, and metabolism. A multifaceted response to an environmental change is considered robust. Short seasons of plant growth make herbivores sensitive to changes in food supply because maintenance and production must be accomplished in less time with fewer options in a more fragile response. Caribou live at high latitudes where short summers constrain their response to changes in food supply. We measured the ability of female caribou to resist and tolerate changes in the quality and quantity of their food supply during winter and summer. Caribou resisted changes in food abundance and quality by changing food intake and physical activity with changes in daily temperature within each season. Peak food intake rose by 134% from winter pregnancy to summer lactation (98 vs. 229 g kg-0.75 d-1), as digestible requirements to maintain the body increased by 85% for energy (1,164 vs. 2,155 kJ kg-0.75 d-1) and by 266% for N (0.79 vs. 2.89 g N kg-0.75 d-1). Caribou required a diet with a digestible content of 12 kJ g-1 and 0.8% N in pregnancy, 18 kJ g-1 and 1.9% N in early lactation, and 11 kJ g-1 and 1.2% N in late lactation, which corresponds with the phenology of the wild diet. Female caribou tolerated restriction of ad lib. food intake to 58% of their energy requirement (680 vs. 1,164 kJ kg-0.75 d-1) during winter pregnancy and to 84% of their energy requirement (1,814 vs. 2,155 kJ kg-0.75 d-1) during summer lactation without a change in stress level, as indicated by fecal corticosterone concentration. Conversely, caribou can respond to increased availability of food with a spare capacity to process digestible energy and N at 123% (2,642 vs. 2,155 kJ kg-0.75 d-1) and 145% (4.20 vs. 2.89 g N kg-0.75 d-1) of those respective requirements during lactation. Robust responses to changes in food supply allow caribou to sustain reproduction, which would buffer demographic response. However, herds may decline when thresholds of behavioral resistance and physiological tolerance are frequently exceeded. Therefore, the challenge for managing declining populations of caribou and other robust species is to identify declines in robustness before their response becomes fragile.

Surgical recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic in English adult neurosurgical centres.

OBJECTIVES: The COVID-19 pandemic required a change in resource priority from Neurosurgical care in order to treat medically unwell patients suffering from the complications of COVID-19 infections. We demonstrate the impact of COVID-19 on total bed days in 24 Neurosurgical centres in England offering adult Neurosurgery as well as the total spells (single inpatient episodes) for operative Neurosurgical patients between 2020 and 2022 when compared with 2019. METHODS: We used Capse Healthcare Knowledge System software iCompare in order to show the change in total spells for patients undergoing a primary or secondary Neurosurgical procedure as defined using the National Neurosurgical Audit Programme (NNAP) OPCS-4 coding framework between 2019 and 2022. RESULTS: The overall mortality rate of COVID-19 patients was 12.3% and the percentage of total bed days taken up by COVID-19 patients in hospitals at large was on average 7.7%. The total number of spells for all procedures over the 24 centres in 2022 was 39,019 compared with 45,742 in 2019. There was a cumulative deficit of 24,904 spells. The loss of spells was not equally distributed across regions and hospital Trusts. The average number of referral to treatment pathways completed within 18 weeks has declined from 76% to 57% over the study period and the referral to treatment clearance time has risen from 17 to 24 weeks. CONCLUSIONS: The mean elective cranial output in 2022 compared with 2019 is at 88% with spinal output lagging at 69%. If the rate of change year on year were to remain at current levels then we would reach pre-pandemic levels of output by 2026.

Complete genome sequences of five Ackermannviridae that infect Enterobacteriaceae hosts.

This announcement contains the whole genome sequences of five Ackermannviridae that infect members of the Enterobacteriaceae family of bacteria. Four of the five phages were isolated using Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium as a bacterial host: AR2819, Sajous1, SilasIsHot, and FrontPhageNews. ChubbyThor was isolated using Shigella boydii.

The use of Enhanced Vegetation Index for assessing access to different types of green space in epidemiological studies.

BACKGROUND: Exposure to green space can protect against poor health through a variety of mechanisms. However, there is heterogeneity in methodological approaches to exposure assessments which makes creating effective policy recommendations challenging. OBJECTIVE: Critically evaluate the use of a satellite-derived exposure metric, the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), for assessing access to different types of green space in epidemiological studies. METHODS: We used Landsat 5-8 (30 m resolution) to calculate average EVI for a 300 m radius surrounding 1.4 million households in Wales, UK for 2018. We calculated two additional measures using topographic vector data to represent access to green spaces within 300 m of household locations. The two topographic vector-based measures were total green space area stratified by type and average private garden size. We used linear regression models to test whether EVI could discriminate between publicly accessible and private green space and Pearson correlation to test associations between EVI and green space types. RESULTS: Mean EVI for a 300 m radius surrounding households in Wales was 0.28 (IQR = 0.12). Total green space area and average private garden size were significantly positively associated with corresponding EVI measures (ß = < 0.0001, 95% CI: 0.0000, 0.0000; ß = 0.0001, 95% CI: 0.0001, 0.0001 respectively). In urban areas, as average garden size increases by 1 m2, EVI increases by 0.0002. Therefore, in urban areas, to see a 0.1 unit increase in EVI index score, garden size would need to increase by 500 m2. The very small ß values represent no 'measurable real-world' associations. When stratified by type, we observed no strong associations between greenspace and EVI. IMPACT: It is a widely implemented assumption in epidiological studies that an increase in EVI is equivalent to an increase in greenness and/or green space. We used linear regression models to test associations between EVI and potential sources of green reflectance at a neighbourhood level using satellite imagery from 2018. We compared EVI measures with a 'gold standard' vector-based dataset that defines publicly accessible and private green spaces. We found that EVI should be interpreted with care as a greater EVI score does not necessarily mean greater access to publicly available green spaces in the hyperlocal environment.

Tracking reproductive events: Hoof growth and steroid hormone concentrations in hair and hoof tissues in moose (Alces alces).

Measurements of reproductive and stress-related hormones in keratinous tissues (e.g. hair, claws, hooves, baleen) can provide a record of stress and reproductive response in wildlife. We evaluated a method to collect keratin tissue from hooves of immobilized moose (Alces alces) and validated enzyme immunoassays for measuring cortisol and progesterone in hooves and hair. We also measured the annual growth and wear rates of moose hooves. Progesterone (range: 1.0-43.7 pg/mg) and cortisol (range: 0.05-2.9 pg/mg) were measurable and showed variation among hoof samples and moose. Pregnant females had twice as high progesterone concentrations (18.00 ± 3.73 pg/mg) from hoof sample locations post breeding compared to non-pregnant moose (9.40 ± 0.25 pg/mg). Annual hoof growth differed between the front (5.58 ± 0.12 cm) and rear (4.73 ± 0.13 cm) hooves and varied by season with higher growth rates during summer which decreased into autumn and winter. Adult female hooves represented between 1.6 and 2.1 years of growth and included up to two reproductive cycles. We established a method to estimate hoof growth rate and applied this to postmortem samples and were able to detect previous pregnancies. Shoulder guard hairs grew between August and March including during late gestation; however, hair progesterone concentrations (range: 2-107.1 pg/mg) were not related to reproductive state. Hair cortisol concentrations in our study (range: 0.2-15.9 pg/mg) were within the range of values previously reported for cervids. Our study supports the use of hooves for longitudinal sampling and measuring reproductive and stress-related hormones, providing a new tool for tracking reproductive events and understanding what variables may contribute to population level changes in reproduction.

Sharing Lived Experiences of HIV Stigmatization: Process of Disseminating a Traveling Photovoice Exhibit.

A Memphis-based, community-academic partnership created Snap Out Stigma, a photovoice project, to understand lived experiences of HIV stigma among people with HIV. This report describes traveling photovoice exhibit dissemination strategies, lessons learned, and goals for the future of photovoice dissemination activities and community engagement in Memphis.