How Communities of Marine Stramenopiles Varied with Environmental and Biological Variables in the Subtropical Northwestern Pacific Ocean

MArine STramenopiles (MASTs) have been recognized as parts of heterotrophic protists and contribute substantially to protist abundances in the ocean. However, little is known about their spatiotemporal variations with respect to environmental and biological factors. The objectives of this study are to use canonical correspondence analysis to investigate how MASTs communities are shaped by environmental variables, and co-occurrence networks to examine their potential interactions with prokaryotic communities. Our dataset came from the southern East China Sea (sECS) in the subtropical northwestern Pacific, and involved 14 cruises along a coastal-oceanic transect, each of which sampled surface water from 4 to 7 stations. MASTs communities were revealed by metabarcoding of 18S rDNA V4 region. Most notably, MAST-9 had a high representation in warm waters in terms of read number and diversity. Subclades of MAST-9C and -9D showed slightly different niches, with MAST-9D dominating in more coastal waters where concentrations of nitrite and Synechococcus were higher. MAST-1C was a common component of colder water during spring. Overall, canonical correspondence analysis showed that MASTs communities were significantly influenced by temperature, nitrite and Synechococcus concentrations. The co-occurrence networks showed that certain other minor prokaryotic taxa can influence MAST communities. This study provides insight into how MASTs communities varied with environmental and biological variables.

Describing macroecological patterns in microbes: Approaches for comparative analyses of operational taxonomic unit read number distribution with a case study of global oceanic bacteria

Describing the variation in commonness and rarity in a community is a fundamental method of evaluating biodiversity. Such patterns have been studied in the context of species abundance distributions (SADs) among macroscopic organisms in numerous communities. Recently, models for analyzing variation in local SAD shapes along environmental gradients have been constructed. The recent development of high-throughput sequencing enables evaluation of commonness and rarity in local communities of microbes using operational taxonomic unit (OTU) read number distributions (ORDs), which are conceptually similar to SADs. However, few studies have explored the variation in local microbial ORD shapes along environmental gradients. Therefore, the similarities and differences between SADs and ORDs are unclear, clouding any universal rules of global biodiversity patterns. We investigated the similarities and differences in ORD shapes vs. SADs, and how well environmental variables explain the variation in ORDs along latitudinal and depth gradients. Herein, we integrate ORDS into recent comparative analysis methods for SAD shape using datasets generated on the Tara Oceans expedition. About 56% of the variance in skewness of ORDs among global oceanic bacterial communities was explained with this method. Moreover, we confirmed that the parameter combination constraints of Weibull distributions were shared by ORDs of bacterial communities and SADs of tree communities, suggesting common long-term limitation processes such as adaptation and community persistence acting on current abundance variation. On the other hand, skewness was significantly greater for bacterial communities than tree communities, and many ecological predictions did not apply to bacterial communities, suggesting differences in the community assembly rules for microbes and macroscopic organisms. Approaches based on ORDs provide opportunities to quantify macroecological patterns of microbes under the same framework as macroscopic organisms.

An Acoustic Analysis of Excellent Female Esophageal, Tracheoesophageal, and Laryngeal Speakers

Acoustic data for female esophageal speakers is sparse, particularly with regard to characteristics of female tracheoesophageal speakers. This study quantified and compared six acoustic characteristics of excellent female tracheoesophageal (TE), standard esophageal (SE), and laryngeal (LA) speakers. Results indicated there were no significant differences between TE and SE speakers with regard to mean F 0 of sustained /α/, mean F 0 (reading), signal-to-noise ratio, total duration of passage read, number of pauses, or syllables per minute. Significant differences were found between LA speakers and both alaryngeal groups for all variables, with the exception of mean F 0 (reading).

Science education: too much of too little.

By all measures attempted, scientific literacy of the American public is sadly wanting. The vast majority of our secondary school children and adults have no knowledge of most of the basic terms or concepts of science. The reasons for this shortcoming are many but prominent among them are sadly deficient texts, teachers untrained in the subject matter they teach, and college and university scientists who divorce themselves from the problem, although probably deploring it. Our institutions are no aid. They reward scientific productivity (read: number of papers published per year and research dollars), not teaching. Some suggested cures are production of better texts, training of science teachers in the field in which they teach, and, most importantly, involvement of scientists in the process. We must be willing to spend some of our time with secondary school pupils and their teachers. All will gain from the experience.

Writing in Aphasia Rehabilitation: Cursive vs Manuscript

Reading and writing performance was observed in 30 adult aphasic patients to determine whether there was a significant difference when stimuli and manual responses were varied in the written form: cursive versus manuscript. Patients were asked to read aloud 10 words written cursively and 10 words written in manuscript form. They were then asked to write on dictation 10 word responses using cursive writing and 10 words using manuscript writing. Number of words correctly read, number of words correctly written, and number of letters correctly written in the proper sequence were tallied for both cursive and manuscript writing tasks for each patient. Results indicated no significant difference in correct response between cursive and manuscript writing style for these aphasic patients as a group; however, it was noted that individual patients varied widely in their success using one writing form over the other. It appeared that since neither writing form showed better facilitation of performance, the writing style used should be determined according to the individual patient’s own preference and best performance.