Aquatic insects as target organisms for the study of effects of projected climate change in the British Isles

One of the objectives of the Terrestrial Initiative in Global Environmental Research is to assess the sensitivity of British plant and animal species to climate change. The first phase of the program involved the identification of criteria for selecting species suitable for the study of effects of projected climate change in the British Isles. Apart from shallow ponds, annual temperature ranges of 0 to 25 C in temperate freshwater habitats are narrower than those in most temperate terrestrial habitats. Although freshwater organisms have to exist within a narrower range than their terrestrial equivalents, few species can survive throughout their life cycle over the whole temperature range. Field studies on the effects of natural and artificial thermal discharges into streams and rivers have shown that increases in water temperature affect aquatic insects at both the species and community level. Although field data provide valuable information, a more productive approach is to determine experimentally the requirements of different species. Although there are just over 1850 species of aquatic insects in the British Isles, detailed quantitative information on the relationship between temperature and development of eggs, larvae and pupa is available for relatively few species. One exception is the egg stage of stoneflies (Plecoptera). The range for egg hatching in stoneflies clearly show that some species could be threatened while others could benefit from a defined increase in water temperature as a result of climate change. A critical review of the available data on this group would produce a set of equations that could be used to predict the ecological effects of climate change on this group of indicator species.

Switch Region for Pathogenic Structural Change in Conformational Disease and Its Prediction

Many diseases are believed to be related to abnormal protein folding. In the first step of such pathogenic structural changes, misfolding occurs in regions important for the stability of the native structure. This destabilizes the normal protein conformation, while exposing the previously hidden aggregation-prone regions, leading to subsequent errors in the folding pathway. Sites involved in this first stage can be deemed switch regions of the protein, and can represent perfect binding targets for drugs to block the abnormal folding pathway and prevent pathogenic conformational changes. In this study, a prediction algorithm for the switch regions responsible for the start of pathogenic structural changes is introduced. With an accuracy of 94%, this algorithm can successfully find short segments covering sites significant in triggering conformational diseases (CDs) and is the first that can predict switch regions for various CDs. To illustrate its effectiveness in dealing with urgent public health problems, the reason of the increased pathogenicity of H5N1 influenza virus is analyzed; the mechanisms of the pandemic swine-origin 2009 A(H1N1) influenza virus in overcoming species barriers and in infecting large number of potential patients are also suggested. It is shown that the algorithm is a potential tool useful in the study of the pathology of CDs because: (1) it can identify the origin of pathogenic structural conversion with high sensitivity and specificity, and (2) it provides an ideal target for clinical treatment.

Workshop on climate change and salmon production, Vancouver, March 26-27, 1998: technical report

The Workshop on Climate Change and Salmon Production was held in Vancouver, Canada, 26-27 March 1998. The Workshop was organized and sponsored by the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission (NPAFC). Each Party to the Commission designated one scientist to the Workshop Steering Committee. Each member of the Steering Committee chaired one half-day session of the Workshop. All necessary arrangements were made by the NPAFC Secretariat in cooperation with the Steering Committee and the Canadian Party to the Commission. (PDF contains 60 pages) Over 70 scientists, industry representatives and fisheries officials attended the Workshop. There were 20 presentations of scientific papers followed by the discussion sessions. Extended abstracts are included in this Technical Report, which also contains opening address by the Chairman of the Steering Committee and short review of the Workshop by the Coordinator. The material presented in the Technical Report has not been peer reviewed and does not necessarily reflect the views of either the NPAFC or the Parties. The material has been edited by the technical editor for clarity and publication purposes only. Items in this Report should not be cited except as personal communication and with the author's permission.

Splitting the fast and slow motions in molecular dynamics simulations based on the change of cold potential well bottom

Abstract. The atomic motion is coupled by the fast and slow components due to the high frequency vibration of atoms and the low frequency deformation of atomic lattice, respectively. A two-step approximate method was presented to determine the atomic slow motion. The first step is based on the change of the location of the cold potential well bottom and the second step is based on the average of the appropriate slow velocities of the surrounding atoms. The simple tensions of one-dimensional atoms and two-dimensional atoms were performed with the full molecular dynamics simulations. The conjugate gradient method was employed to determine the corresponding location of cold potential well bottom. Results show that our two-step approximate method is appropriate to determine the atomic slow motion under the low strain rate loading. This splitting method may be helpful to develop more efficient molecular modeling methods and simulations pertinent to realistic loading conditions of materials.