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"Wilson, Amy"
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A little bit of soul food
Easy-to-read rhyming text introduces a variety of \"soul food\" dishes, including grits, fried chicken, collard greens, yams, and sweet tea.
Book
The role of species ecology in predicting Toxoplasma gondii prevalence in wild and domesticated mammals globally
Macroecological approaches can provide valuable insight into the epidemiology of globally distributed, multi-host pathogens. Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan that infects any warm-blooded animal, including humans, in almost every habitat worldwide. Toxoplasma gondii infects its hosts through oocysts in the environment, carnivory of tissue cysts within intermediate host prey and vertical transmission. These routes of infection enable specific predictions regarding the ecological and life history traits that should predispose specific taxa to higher exposure and, thus infection rates of T . gondii . Using T . gondii prevalence data compiled from 485 studies representing 533 free-ranging wild mammalian species, we examined how ecological (habitat type, trophic level) and life history (longevity, vagility, gestation duration and torpor) traits influence T . gondii infection globally. We also compared T . gondii prevalence between wild and domesticated species from the same taxonomic families using data compiled from 540 studies of domestic cattle, sheep, and pigs. Across free-ranging wildlife, we found the average T . gondii prevalence was 22%, which is comparable to the global human estimate. Among ecological guilds, terrestrial species had lower T . gondii prevalence than aquatic species, with freshwater aquatic taxa having an increased prevalence compared to marine aquatic species. Dietary niches were also influential, with carnivores having an increased risk compared to other trophic feeding groups that have reduced tissue cyst exposure in their diet. With respect to influential life history traits, we found that more vagile wildlife species had higher T . gondii infection rates, perhaps because of the higher cumulative risk of infection during movement through areas with varying T . gondii environmental loads. Domestic farmed species had a higher T . gondii prevalence compared to free-ranging confamilial wildlife species. Through a macroecological approach, we determined the relative significance of transmission routes of a generalist pathogen, demonstrating an increased infection risk for aquatic and carnivorous species and highlighting the importance of preventing pathogen pollution into aquatic environments. Toxoplasma gondii is increasingly understood to be primarily an anthropogenically-associated pathogen whose dissemination is enhanced by ecosystem degradation and human subsidisation of free-roaming domestic cats. Adopting an ecosystem restoration approach to reduce one of the world’s most common parasites would synergistically contribute to other initiatives in conservation, feline and wildlife welfare, climate change, food security and public health.
Journal Article
Chaat and sweets
\"Introduces toddlers to Indian snack foods known as chaat. Scrumptious treats like bhel puri (rice puff salad), tandoori chicken, and sweet coconut cham-cham, look good enough to eat in Wilson Sanger's gorgeous collage art, while her trademark bouncy text will please little ears\"--Amazon.com.
Book
Citizen Science Reveals an Extensive Shift in the Winter Distribution of Migratory Western Grebes
Marine waterbirds have shown variable trends in abundance over the past four decades with some species displaying steep declines along the Pacific coast from British Columbia through California. One of the most dramatic changes has been that of western grebes (Aechmophorus occidentalis) in the Salish Sea. This region was a former core of the species wintering distribution but they have become increasingly rare prompting calls for conservation action. A more thorough understanding of this situation requires the analysis of trends at broader geographic scales as well as a consideration of mechanisms that might have led to a change in abundance. We used hierarchical modeling with a Bayesian framework applied to 36 years of Audubon Christmas Bird Count data to assess continent-wide and regional population trends in western and Clark's grebes (A. clarkii) from 1975 to 2010. Our results show that the North American wintering population of Aechmophorus grebes decreased by ∼52% after 1975, but also that western grebes displayed strongly opposing regional patterns. Abundance decreased by about 95% over 36 years in the Salish Sea but increased by over 300% along coastal California. As a result, the mean centre of the species distribution shifted south by an estimated 895 km between 1980 and 2010. Mechanisms underlying this shift require further study but we hypothesize that it may be related to a change in the abundance and availability of their forage fish prey base. Since the mid-1980s, the Pacific sardine stock off the California coast increased from a few thousand metric tonnes to over two million. At the same time both the abundance and availability of Pacific herring declined in the Salish Sea. Studies are needed to examine this hypothesis further and additional consideration should be directed at other changes in the marine environment that may have contributed to a range shift.
Journal Article
Hola! jalapeنno
Illustrations and rhyming text, sprinkled with some Spanish words, introduce a variety of Mexican foods.
Book
Uncertainty Quantification for Multi‐Input Fluvial Flood Inundation Using GPR‐ and PCE‐Based Surrogates
With increasing computational capabilities, the implementation of statistical approaches to quantify and propagate input uncertainties through hydrodynamic models has become increasingly feasible and crucial to capture the full range of output scenarios. However, full robust uncertainty quantification remains computationally expensive and out of reach for general purposes. In this study, we demonstrate that by utilizing advanced response surface surrogate modeling techniques, specifically Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) and Polynomial Chaos Expansion (PCE), we have developed efficient and high‐fidelity emulators for capturing the uncertainty in flood extents of realistic fluvial flood scenarios. With proper tuning, both emulators requiring only 9 model evaluations, provide near‐perfect estimates where we have two uncertain flow magnitudes being modeled. In the more complex three‐inputs scenario, where a time lag between river flow peaks is introduced, accurate flood extent emulation becomes more challenging. The computational cost required to build one surrogate for acceptable estimation accuracy increases to 27 full model runs for GPR and PCE‐Regression methods. The largest R2 ${R}^{2}$ of 0.66 was obtained by the PCE‐Regression method with a Halton quasi‐sampling experimental design. GPR outperforms PCE in capturing lower extreme flood extents due to its ability to model uncertainty and fine‐tune variance across the input space. Our findings highlight the effectiveness of both GPR and PCE in capturing broad trends and extremes within response surfaces, offering substantial computational savings compared to the exponentially more expensive FMC simulations. However, when the hydrodynamic response becomes more complex, we have identified significant challenges in constructing high‐fidelity emulators.
Journal Article
Yum yum dim sum
Easy-to-read rhyming text introduces children to the varied Chinese foods called \"dim sum,\" which means a little bit of heart.
Book
Noninvasive, microbiome-based diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease
Despite recent progress in our understanding of the association between the gut microbiome and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the role of microbiome biomarkers in IBD diagnosis remains underexplored. Here we developed a microbiome-based diagnostic test for IBD. By utilization of metagenomic data from 5,979 fecal samples with and without IBD from different geographies and ethnicities, we identified microbiota alterations in IBD and selected ten and nine bacterial species for construction of diagnostic models for ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, respectively. These diagnostic models achieved areas under the curve >0.90 for distinguishing IBD from controls in the discovery cohort, and maintained satisfactory performance in transethnic validation cohorts from eight populations. We further developed a multiplex droplet digital polymerase chain reaction test targeting selected IBD-associated bacterial species, and models based on this test showed numerically higher performance than fecal calprotectin in discriminating ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease from controls. Here we discovered universal IBD-associated bacteria and show the potential applicability of a multibacteria biomarker panel as a noninvasive tool for IBD diagnosis.
Using ethnically and geographically diverse metagenomic data, the authors identify microbiota alterations associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). They discover universal IBD-associated bacteria, which serve as the basis for a multibacteria biomarker panel that could support a noninvasive tool for IBD diagnosis.
Journal Article