Benchmarking NetBASILISK: a Network Security Project for Science

Infrastructures supporting distributed scientific collaborations must address competing goals in both providing high performance access to resources while simultaneously securing the infrastructure against security threats. The NetBASILISK project is attempting to improve the security of such infrastructures while not adversely impacting their performance. This paper will present our work to create a benchmark and monitoring infrastructure that allows us to test for any degradation in transferring data into a NetBASILISK protected site.

Monumental Suspension

More than 25 years after it was unveiled, Eduardo Chillida’s Monument to Tolerance has been neither built nor abandoned—it is, rather, suspended. From the outset, the project, which consists in digging a vast cubic cave inside the mountain of Tindaya (Fuerteventura, Canary Islands), has faced the opposition of environmental activists, who argue that it is incompatible with the mountain’s status as a protected site. Drawing from anthropological approaches to infrastructure and art, this article unpacks the Monument’s actual existence as an unrealized project that has been partly actualized through anticipatory practices such as exhibitions and economic aspirations. The article contributes to the theorization of suspension by combining a focus on the temporal multiplicity of anticipation with an attention to the materiality of unbuilt entities.

Cutaneous horn in a sun-protected site harbouring unusual malignancy

Cutaneous horns are conical, circumscribed projections formed by desquamation and layering of keratin. Although they can appear on the skin anywhere on the body, they are most commonly seen on the sun-exposed surfaces, and are often associated with solar keratosis. Cutaneous horns are most often benign, however they are a potential site of malignancy and may harbor premalignant or malignant lesions, the most common being squamous cell carcinoma, the causal relationship being straightforward and both squamous cell carcinoma and cutaneous horns can be equated with the common epithelial maker keratin. Other histological types of malignancies are not usually noted in conjunction with cutaneous horns. Here we describe a patient with a cutaneous horn over the volar aspect of the right forearm, a sun-protected site, harboring basal cell carcinoma, an infrequent finding.

Plasticity of thermal tolerance and its relationship with growth rate in juvenile mussels ( Mytilus californianus )

Complex life cycles characterized by uncertainty at transitions between larval/juvenile and adult environments could favour irreversible physiological plasticity at such transitions. To assess whether thermal tolerance of intertidal mussels ( Mytilus californianus ) adjusts to post-settlement environmental conditions, we collected juveniles from their thermally buffered microhabitat from high- and low-shore locations at cool (wave-exposed) and warm (wave-protected) sites. Juveniles were transplanted to unsheltered cages at the two low sites or placed in a common garden. Juveniles transplanted to the warm site for one month in summer had higher thermal tolerance, regardless of origin site. By contrast, common-garden juveniles from all sites had lower tolerance indistinguishable from exposed site transplants. After six months in the field plus a common garden period, there was a trend for higher thermal tolerance at the protected site, while reduced thermal tolerance at both sites indicated seasonal acclimatization. Thermal tolerance and growth rate were inversely related after one but not six months; protected-site transplants were more tolerant but grew more slowly. In contrast to juveniles, adults from low-shore exposed and protected sites retained differences in thermal tolerance after common garden treatment in summer. Both irreversible and reversible forms of plasticity must be considered in organismal responses to changing environments.

ESTIMATION OF ABOVE GROUND BIOMASS OF THE THREE SITES (GRAZED SITE, PROTECTED SITE AND SEED SOWN SITE) FOR COMPARING THEIR PRODUCTIVITY IN KASHMIR VALLEY

The plant biomass for protected areas was maximum in summer (1221.56 g/m2) and minimum in winter (290.62 g/m2) as against grazed areas having maximum value 590.81 g/m2 in autumn and minimum 183.75 g/m2 in winter. Study revealed that at Protected site (Kanidajan) the above ground biomass ranged was from a minimum (1.11 t ha-1) in the spring season to a maximum (4.58 t ha-1) in the summer season while at Grazed site (Yousmarag), the aboveground biomass varied from a minimum (0.54 t ha-1) in the spring season to a maximum of 1.48 t ha-1 in summer seasonandat Seed sown site (Badipora), the lowest value of aboveground biomass obtained was 4.46 t ha-1 in spring while as the highest (7.98 t ha-1) was obtained in summer.

Amazon Rainforest Ant-Fauna of Parque Estadual do Cristalino: Understory and Ground-Dwelling Ants

Ants are ecologically dominant and have been used as valuable bio-indicators of environmental change or disturbance being used in monitoring inventories. However, the majority of inventories has concentrated in ground-dwelling ant fauna disregarding the arboreal fauna. This paper aimed to list the ant species collected both on the ground and in the vegetation of the Parque Estadual do Cristalino, an important protected site in the center of the southern Amazon. Moreover, we compared the composition of the ground dwelling and vegetation foraging ants. Was sampled 203 species distributed among 23 genera and eight subfamilies, wherein 35 species had not yet been reported in the literature for Mato Grosso State. As expected, the abundance and richness of ants was higher on the ground than in the understory. Also, the ant assemblages composition was different between these habitats (with only 20% occurring in both). It indicate that complementary methods which include arboreal and terrestrial ants are indicated for efficient inventory. This study provides an inventory of the arboreal and ground ant fauna contributing to the knowledge and conservation of ant fauna of the Amazonian.

Micro-scale environmental variation amplifies physiological variation among individual mussels

The contributions of temporal and spatial environmental variation to physiological variation remain poorly resolved. Rocky intertidal zone populations are subjected to thermal variation over the tidal cycle, superimposed with micro-scale variation in individuals' body temperatures. Using the sea mussel ( Mytilus californianus ), we assessed the consequences of this micro-scale environmental variation for physiological variation among individuals, first by examining the latter in field-acclimatized animals, second by abolishing micro-scale environmental variation via common garden acclimation, and third by restoring this variation using a reciprocal outplant approach. Common garden acclimation reduced the magnitude of variation in tissue-level antioxidant capacities by approximately 30% among mussels from a wave-protected (warm) site, but it had no effect on antioxidant variation among mussels from a wave-exposed (cool) site. The field-acclimatized level of antioxidant variation was restored only when protected-site mussels were outplanted to a high, thermally stressful site. Variation in organismal oxygen consumption rates reflected antioxidant patterns, decreasing dramatically among protected-site mussels after common gardening. These results suggest a highly plastic relationship between individuals' genotypes and their physiological phenotypes that depends on recent environmental experience. Corresponding context-dependent changes in the physiological mean–variance relationships within populations complicate prediction of responses to shifts in environmental variability that are anticipated with global change.