Incipient sex chromosomes have been found in New Zealand’s eponymous export, the kiwifruit. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Genomics have mapped the kiwifruit genome and pin-pointed the sex-determining locus.

It has previously been suggested that, among the kiwifruit plant’s small (<1um) chromosomes, lie a pair of X/Y-like chromosomes that result in its dioecism. Now a team led by Lena Fraser and colleagues at the New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research has confirmed this suggestion by mapping the genome of the golden kiwifruit.

The genome has been mapped with 644 microsatellite markers from three genetic libraries (two from the New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research and one from the University of Udine, Italy). These showed 29 linkage groups, represented expression of 587 genes, and revealed that sex-linked sequence characterised amplified region (SCAR) markers and the flower sex phenotype were mapping to a subtelomeric region that bears the hallmarks of an early sex-determining locus.

The mapping of this sex-determining locus to a subtelomeric region fits with previous published work on chromosome pairing and also the authors own observations. Whilst studying kiwifruit karyotypes, the research team observed that in the pollen mother cells undergoing meiosis one of the 29 pairs of chromosomes did not pair tightly in a region close to one end. An absence of pairing means that the male-specific region on the Y is inherited as a unit, maintaining sexual dimorphism.

Based on the genetic structure they have now defined for this non-recombining sex-determining region, the authors suggest that at least two linked genes on the putative Y chromosome are responsible for dioecy: one suppressing pistil formation and one for pollen development.

Of more than 60 species of Actinidia (kiwifruit), only two have been widely cultivated so far, and there is potential for breeding new varieties. All Actinida species are dioecious, and the authors say they are likely to have similar sex-determining regions. The authors work in producing female, male and consensus genetic linkage maps for the golden kiwifruit, A. chinensis and identifying the sex-determining region may provide the key to fully exploiting this relatively recent cultivar.

According to Fraser, ‘The gene-rich map we have constructed will be a valuable resource for quantitative trait loci analysis to identify markers related to traits of importance in breeding new and novel kiwifruit for the markets of the world.’

Source: BioMed Central.

Study of poison frogs the first to show that the Andes Mountains have been a major source of diversity for the Amazon basin.

AUSTIN, Texas—Colorful poison frogs in the Amazon owe their great diversity to ancestors that leapt into the region from the Andes Mountains several times during the last 10 million years, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin suggests.

This is the first study to show that the Andes have been a major source of diversity for the Amazon basin, one of the largest reservoirs of biological diversity on Earth. The finding runs counter to the idea that Amazonian diversity is the result of evolution only within the tropical forest itself.

“Basically, the Amazon basin is a ‘melting pot’ for South American frogs,” says graduate student Juan Santos, lead author of the study. “Poison frogs there have come from multiple places of origin, notably the Andes Mountains, over many millions of years. We have shown that you cannot understand Amazonian biodiversity by looking only in the basin. Adjacent regions have played a major role.”

Santos and Dr. David Cannatella, professor of integrative biology, published their findings this month in the journal PLoS Biology.

It has been assumed that much of the evolution of biodiversity in the Amazon basin occurred over the last one to two million years, a mere snapshot in time.

Santos and Cannatella peered about 45 million years into the past using novel biogeographical techniques to create a deep evolutionary history of poison frogs in space and time. Because of the lack of an extensive fossil record for the tropical forest, their work used DNA sequences to discover the frogs’ evolutionary history.

The poison frogs, or dendrobatids, are diverse and widely distributed across the Neotropics, an area that includes Central and South America. The scientists created an evolutionary tree, or phylogeny, using 223 of the 353 species of poison frogs known from throughout this region.

In analyzing the evolutionary relationships among the poison frogs, they discovered that Amazonian diversity is the result of at least 14 dispersals of ancestral frogs into the region beginning about 23 million years ago.

All living Amazonian poison frogs evolved from these ancestors, most of which (11 dispersals) came from the Andes Mountains.

The Amazon basin has changed dramatically over that long time. A large inland system of water has come and gone, the Andes Mountains started their uplift (about 15 million years ago) and the Amazon River was formed (about nine million years ago).

Most of the frog dispersals from the Andes occurred between one and seven million years ago, when the modern tropical rainforest of the Amazon River basin was forming.

“There was a repeated dispersal of frogs from the foothills of the Andes after the extensive inland wetlands retreated from the Amazon,” says Santos.

These frogs then evolved into about 70 species found today in the Amazon basin.

The scientists also discovered that frogs have historically immigrated out of the Amazon basin to adjacent areas, and to and from other regions within the Neotropics.

Evolution and diversification of the poison frogs is ongoing, especially in the Amazon rainforest, the Chocó (a narrow region of tropical forest along the northwest Pacific Coast of South America) and in adjacent Central America.

Cannatella says many other tropical plants and animals in the Amazon may share this more complex geographical and temporal history with the poison frogs.

“The Amazon rainforest is not just gradually accumulating diversity over time,” says Cannatella. “Ancestral frog species moved into and out of the area, and we can predict that other organisms restricted to these wet tropical forests may show a similar pattern of dispersal, evolution and diversification.”

Source: University of Texas at Austin.

Animals have an astonishing ability to develop reliably, in spite of variable conditions during embryogenesis. New research, published in parallel this week in PLoS Biology and PLoS Computational Biology, addresses how living things can develop into precise, adult forms when there is so much variation present during their development stages. A team led by John Reinitz at Stony Brook University, and funded by the National Institutes of Health, shows how fruit fly embryos can “forget” initial incorrect versions of their body plan and develop into recognizable adult flies.

“Our results show that groups of genes can act on one another to reduce variation and highlights the importance of genetic networks in generating robust development,” said Dr. John Reinitz.

Canalization, a principle of developmental biology described more than 60 years ago by C.H. Waddington, is the property of embryonic development whereby genetic interactions can adjust biochemical reactions to bring about reliable developmental outcomes, despite variable conditions.

A great deal of progress has been made in understanding the buffering of genotypic and environmental variation, and individual mutations that reveal variation have been identified. However, the mechanisms by which genetic interactions produce canalization are not yet well understood, because this requires molecular data on multiple developmental determinants and models that correctly predict complex interactions.

“We make use of gene expression data at both high spatial and temporal resolution for the gap genes involved in the segmentation of the fruit fly Drosophila embryo,” said Dr. Reinitz. “We also apply a mathematical model to show that cross regulation among the gap genes is responsible for canalization in this system.” The model predicted specific interactions that cause canalization, and the prediction was validated in experiments.

“With canalization, if there is too much of one protein in the embryo, a network of genes could theoretically change the amount of that protein present, so that the outcome for the embryo was normal,” said Dr. Reinitz. “Since this principle was suggested, a great deal of progress has been made in understanding the buffering of variation, but the specific mechanisms by which genetic interactions contribute to canalization have remained unclear – until now.”

The authors started by measuring the concentrations of certain proteins in normal and mutant Drosophila embryos, at an early stage of development when the embryo looks like a hollow rugby ball. Each protein is synthesized from a gene, and each of the proteins measured has a regulatory role; they can turn their own gene – and others – on and off. The authors created a series of equations that could describe the diffusion of proteins and their action on their own gene and on other genes in the network. These equations show that a wide range of initial conditions (in terms of protein concentrations) lead to several possible final conditions. These final conditions, called fixed points, govern or describe the final state of the segmentation process for the fruit fly embryo. They do not allow for variability in the embryo, and they ‘forget’ the initial information. This mathematical property combined with their accuracy in describing the biological processes can be used towards the theoretical explanation for Waddington’s canalization model.

“This study is an example of how biology is becoming a precise and quantitative field, like physics,” says Reinitz.

Source: Public Library of Science.

For over twenty years, scientists have known that a normal protein in the brain, PrP, or prion protein, can turn harmful and cause deadly illnesses like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle. What they could not explain is why large amounts of this normal protein are produced by our bodies in the first place. In a new study published in this week’s PLoS Biology, researchers from the University of Konstanz in Germany reveal that PrP indeed plays a beneficial role for the organism – PrP helps cells communicate with one another during embryonic development.

In prion diseases, what transforms the normal PrP protein into a life-threatening substance is the abnormal alteration of its chemical structure. Moreover, prions have the treacherous ability to replicate by imprinting their abnormal structure into healthy PrPs, thereby generating new pathogenic particles. While this “conversion” process explains how prions are disseminated, “An abnormal function of the prion protein is considered to be one of the reasons for neuronal degeneration,” explains Dr. Edward Málaga-Trillo, leader of the study in Konstanz. However, the normal function of PrP has remained an unsolved mystery for many years. Until now, all previous experiments in genetically modified mice had failed to provide conclusive evidence, as these animals lacking PrP seemed perfectly healthy. A dead end?

By no means. The scientists from Konstanz were able to show that the lack of PrP can cause clear physiological abnormalities in a living animal and the trick was to use the tiny zebrafish as a model.

When the researchers from Konstanz microinjected zebrafish eggs with morpholinos, DNA-like molecules that prevent the normal production of PrP, the treated zebrafish embryos were unable to develop normally and eventually died. The proteins in the fish embryos normally found at cell-to-cell contact sites disappeared, rendering these cells unable to communicate and carry out the differentiation program that shapes the major structures of the body, including the nervous system.

“We were then able to prove that PrP serves as a glue element, bringing cells together and keeping them in contact,” explains co-author Dr. Gonzalo Solis, member of the team at the laboratory of Prof. Claudia Stürmer. “When two neighboring cells make contact, they become able to exchange important signals that affect the function of a tissue in the body.”

Although the work by Málaga-Trillo, Solis, and colleagues does not offer an immediate cure for CJD or BSE, the team from Konstanz has fit together the first pieces of a complex puzzle, which may widen our understanding of prion diseases and provide hope for their effective treatment.

Source: Public Library of Science.

Growing older is a fact of life, but people’s hopes, fears, pre-conceptions and experiences surrounding the ageing process are richly diverse. As part of the Festival of Social Science organised by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to highlight how social science impacts on our daily lives, researchers from Swansea University are organising a unique exhibition of thoughts and reflections of younger and older people on what it means to grow old.

The event, entitled ‘Narratives of Ageing’, will show a succession of two-minute video clips – ‘digital stories’ – of a group of students and a group of older people reflecting on life and growing older.

“Often we think of ‘the elderly’ as simply a demographic section of the population,” says Dr Katharine Daneski, one of the event’s organisers. “But when you see people speaking about what it means to get old and reminiscing about their own lives, you realise that these are individuals whose own stories often challenge stereotypes about both youth and old age.”

By presenting the views of both young and older people, an interesting contrast is achieved, says Dr Daneski, with sometimes surprising experiences emerging. “For example while older people tend to agree that they had less freedom than the youths of today, they found ways around the restrictions imposed on them. By contrast, today’s youngsters realise they have a lot of freedom, but often choose to reign themselves in – they do not always fully exploit their freedom.”

The event will also allow members of the public to record their own digital stories on ageing. In addition there will be an exhibition of posters describing the research that is being done at Swansea University into ageing.

“We want to encourage people to think about ageing and reflect on some of the themes that will be presented,” says Dr Daneski. “We also hope they will get a better idea of how social sciences are active in this field, and how researchers are addressing subjects that arise within the area of ageing.”

Digital video recordings are widely used in fields such as community arts, and the Swansea research team is investigating whether this type of technology and approach could have a role in the social sciences. “It is a potentially interesting research tool, because participants have total freedom to explore the topic thus reducing any bias from being led by a researcher’s questions,” Dr Daneski says.

Source: Economic & Social Research Council

Interest in personal health records as an electronic tool to manage health information is increasing dramatically. A group led by a UCSF researcher has identified cost, privacy concerns, design shortcomings and difficulties sharing information across different organizations as critical barriers hindering broad implementation of electronic personal health records.

The barriers are discussed in a paper appearing in the March-April 2009 issue of the journal “Health Affairs.”

“It is imperative that these barriers hampering adoption of personal health records be addressed. We do not have the ‘best of breed’ yet, but I do believe that if we encourage nimble innovative solutions, we can achieve the ideal personal health record,” said James S. Kahn, MD, professor of clinical medicine at UCSF’s Positive Health Program at San Francisco General Hospital.

The paper notes that costs may be offset by improvement in health activities and reduced administrative costs. The difficulty of making personal health record data portable for patients as they change health organizations is a key factor limiting wider and more rapid adoption.

“Personal health records controlled by patients that are interoperable with other systems so that they can take their records with them are also essential for empowering patients and ensuring their control over their own health care. Exploring other technologies such as mobile phones as an easier entry point for consumers to access their records could play an important role as well,” said Kahn.

The authors posit a dynamic relationship as patients’ behavior influences personal health record acceptance and personal health record adoption influences consumers’ behavior.

“For instance, a personal health record could interact with patients through automated mechanisms such as alerts or reminders and improve medication adherence. Consumer-to-consumer interactions through social networking sites could provide group support for healthy behavior changes such as tobacco abatement,” said Kahn.

Kahn has directed the development of the Health Care Evaluation Record Organizer (HERO) at Ward 86, UCSF’s outpatient HIV/AIDS clinic at San Francisco General Hospital, a public hospital where many patients are in a safety net situation.

“In addition, we need to recognize that some established personal health record vendors may not respond to all patient needs. We are actively trying to understand how personal health records can be used in a safety net setting in a public hospital,” added Kahn.

Source: University of California – San Francisco

SALT LAKE CITY – More than 150 years after a small Eurasian tree named tamarisk or saltcedar started taking over river banks throughout the U.S. Southwest, saltcedar leaf beetles were unleashed to defoliate the exotic invader.

Now, University of Utah scientists say their new study shows it is feasible to use satellite data to monitor the extent of the beetle’s attack on tamarisk, and whether use of the beetles may backfire with unintended environmental consequences.

“We don’t have any idea of the long-term impacts of using the beetles; their release may have unexpected repercussions,” says Philip Dennison, an assistant professor of geography and first author of the study scheduled for online publication later this month in the journal Remote Sensing of Environment.

“The impact of this defoliation is largely unknown,” says study co-author Kevin Hultine, a research assistant professor of biology at the University of Utah. “The net impact of controlling tamarisk could be positive or negative.”

“We would like on-the-ground scientists and managers to understand and think about the long-term impact – what are these riparian [riverbank] areas going to look like 15 years from now, and how can we can maintain ecosystems” as well as water flows for farms, cities and river recreation, Hultine says.

Dennison and Hultine conducted the study with Jim Ehleringer, a distinguished professor of biology at the University of Utah; physical scientist Pamela Nagler, of the U.S. Geological Survey in Tucson, Ariz.; and Edward Glenn, a University of Arizona environmental scientist.

A Shady Invader from Eurasia

Anyone who has rafted Southwestern rivers like the Green and Colorado knows about the shady thickets of tamarisk that line the riverbanks. The trees can grow up to 30 feet tall. There are about 10 species of tamarisk.

This 2007 infrared image from the ASTER instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite shows the effects of saltcedar leaf beetles that were released to defoliate tamarisk. An alfalfa field along the Colorado River remains vegetated and thus is bright red. But the wet “bottom” area along the Dolores River (lower right) appears much darker than in the 2006 image because the beetles have eaten tamarisk leaves. Remaining areas of bright red within the “bottom” area are due to willow and cottonwood trees. University of Utah researchers propose using satellites to monitor tamarisk defoliation by beetles in remote areas of the Southwest.

Credit: Phil Dennison, University of Utah, from NASA data.

The U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) says saltcedar or tamarisk is “a highly invasive, exotic weed” in the form of “a large shrub or small tree that was introduced to North America from Asia in the early 1800s. The plant has been used for windbreaks, ornamentals, and erosion control. By 1850, saltcedar had infested river systems and drainages in the Southwest, often displacing native vegetation.”

“By 1938, infestations were found from Florida to California and as far north as Idaho,” according to APHIS. “Saltcedar continues to spread rapidly and currently infests water drainages and areas throughout the United States.”

Tamarisk dominates riverbank habitats, limiting camping areas for river runners, reducing diversity and providing poor habitat for some species of wildlife. Tamarisk also raises the risk of fires that destroy cottonwoods and other native plants but not tamarisk, which re-sprouts from roots. And tamarisk forms a dense canopy, also helping wipe out competing plants. Finally, tamarisk has a bad rap as a water-sucking wastrel that dries springs, lowers water tables and reduces stream flows, even impairing boating.

Dennison and Hultine say recent research indicates tamarisk’s thirst is overstated.

“Some of the earliest research on tamarisk water use suggested tamarisk uses dramatically more water than other tree species,” Hultine says. “So a lot of estimates on water loss over entire river reaches are based on information that now has been discredited in the scientific literature.”

Hultine believes that unless aggressive programs to restore defoliated areas are implemented, tamarisk will be replaced by other invaders – Russian knapweed, Russian olive and pepperweed – that may use more water than tamarisk. Eradicating tamarisk with beetles also may reduce bird habitat, he adds.

Monitoring the Attack of the Tamarisk-Munching Beetles

The saltcedar leaf beetle, Diorhabda elongata, was brought to the U.S. from Kazakhstan. After an environmental assessment, APHIS approved them for tamarisk control.

Dennison says thousands of the beetles first were released in Utah during summer 2004, then again in summer 2005 and 2006 at locations along the Colorado River near Moab. Widespread defoliation of tamarisk in the area was noted during summer 2007.

Because long stretches of rivers in the Colorado River Basin are remote, Dennison and colleagues decided to test the feasibility of using satellite images to detect tamarisk leaf loss due to the spread of the saltcedar leaf beetles.

This 2006 infrared image of the confluence of the Colorado and Dolores rivers in Utah was taken by the ASTER instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite. The Colorado flows from north to south and the Dolores enters the image from the east. Vegetation appears bright red, including an alfalfa field along the Colorado and a wet “bottom” area along the Dolores that has extensive tamarisk, an invasive tree from Eurasia.

Credit: Phil Dennison, University of Utah, from NASA data.

They mapped 56 accessible areas already defoliated by tamarisk, and studied if the defoliation could be detected using two instruments on Terra, one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Earth-observing satellites.

Both instruments make images using red and near-infrared light. Plant pigments absorb red from sunlight and reflect near-infrared. In near-infrared images, tamarisk-covered areas appear red. Defoliated areas appear brown or black because there are no leaves to absorb red light and reflect near-infrared light. The two instruments are:

• ASTER, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, obtains relatively high-resolution images, with each pixel covering an area about 50 feet long by 50 feet wide. It can detect big changes like tamarisk defoliation on an even smaller scale. It only obtains one to three images of a given area every summer.
• MODIS, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, which can detect less detail – a pixel measures about 820 feet by 820 feet. But it can see where large swaths of tamarisk have been defoliated, Dennison says. MODIS makes daily images.

Dennison says the infrequent, higher-resolution ASTER images allow researchers to map defoliated areas, while the frequent, lower-resolution MODIS images help them detect changes in vegetation over time.

The area studied included four sites along the Colorado River northeast of Moab, and a fifth site along the tributary Dolores River at the Entrada Field Station operated by the University of Utah for education and research. The five sites covered 589 acres, and within them, researchers mapped 56 polygon-shaped areas totaling 57 acres where tamarisk had been defoliated by the beetles.

ASTER measured what is known as NVDI – the normalized difference vegetation index, which is the difference between red light absorbed by plants and near-infrared light reflected by them. The index is high when plants are present, low when they are absent.

Those satellite measurements showed minor changes in vegetation at the test sites from 2005 to 2006, but a large change between 2006 and 2007 – indicating extensive defoliation of tamarisk, even though the defoliated plants regrow within about six weeks.

The satellite’s MODIS instrument used another vegetation index that also revealed widespread tamarisk defoliation at the five sites in July 2007.

While some tamarisk has died in Nevada where the beetles first were established, “we don’t understand whether repeated defoliation eventually will kill most of the trees, or will they reach some point where they’ll just have less leaf area over the entire year,” Hultine says.

The researchers also used the satellite to estimate “evapotranspiration” – the evaporation of water from soil and the transpiration or use of water by plants – to learn more about how defoliation of tamarisk affects water use. For comparison, Hultine measured sap flow through trees, which reflects how much water is used by the trees.

Satellite estimates of tamarisk water use declined modestly as the plants were defoliated, Dennison says. The findings also were consistent with earlier research indicating tamarisk is less of a water hog than previously thought.

Dennison says he and his colleagues did the study to test the feasibility of using satellites to monitor tamarisk defoliation on an ongoing basis. That, he says, could be done by federal agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Geological Survey.

Source: University of Utah

A large group of California physicians given financial incentives to improve the quality of medical care have begun to embrace an array of changes important to advancing quality, according to a RAND Corporation study issued today.

Measures adopted by medical groups include speeding up adoption of information technology such as electronic medical records, more closely tracking the improvement of physician performance and sharpening institutional focus on quality, according to findings published in the March/April edition of the journal Health Affairs. The project was supported by a grant from the California HealthCare Foundation.

“Physician groups are responding to pay-for-performance programs by making practice changes and altering how they compensate physicians to reward quality, but health plans and purchasers say that those investments are not yet translating into substantial gains in quality,” said Cheryl Damberg, the study’s lead author and a senior policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.

“The true benefits of these programs may take more time to be realized and it is likely that investments in other quality efforts will be needed in addition to performance-based pay,” Damberg said.

The RAND Health study found that medical groups are providing some payments to individual physicians based on quality measures and physicians in the program are receiving more feedback about whether they are attaining quality goals.

Pay-for-performance programs in health care have grown rapidly in recent years as a way to improve the quality of care delivered by doctors, hospitals and other health care providers. Despite the rapid adoption of these programs, there is little research about how well they work and what types of strategies work best.

RAND researchers are evaluating a statewide pay-for-performance program launched by the California Integrated Healthcare Association in 2003. The initiative includes seven major California health plans and 225 physician groups. The groups employ 35,000 physicians who care for 6.2 million people enrolled in commercial health maintenance organizations and point-of-service plans.

Under the program, physician groups receive financial bonuses if they meet certain performance guidelines such as increasing the number of patients with diabetes who receive recommended blood tests. Other performance measures include improving patient experience with getting care and adopting health information technology capabilities. Between 2003 and 2007, the participating health plans paid $203 million in incentives to participating physician groups.

The RAND study reports findings gathered from surveys of 35 medical groups, the seven health plans and representatives from two employers that are involved in the pay-for-performance experiment.

Most of the medical groups surveyed suggested that the program’s financial incentives — generally about $1,500 to $2,000 annually per physician — were too small to stimulate significant change among most doctors. They suggested the incentives needed to be two to five times higher in order to achieve quality improvements.

Health plans thought increasing the incentives was a low priority because of the relatively small quality improvements attained thus far and questions about whether other types of investments might produce greater quality gains, according to the study.

Although there is some concern that pay-for-performance might cause physicians to drop patients who decline to follow recommendations, few reports of such events were received. More than two-thirds of the medical groups reported that the pay-for-performance program resulted in more positives than negatives.

Most physician organizations said they collected more bonus payments than they had spent to comply with the program, although six said it was barely enough to cover their costs. Twenty of the medical groups surveyed said the program had affected the behavior of their individual physicians, prompting them to embrace quality efforts such as performing more-intensive outreach to patients.

Source: RAND Corporation

New England lobstermen have gone high tech by adding low-cost instruments to their lobster pots that record bottom temperature and provide data that could help improve ocean circulation models in the Gulf of Maine.

Environmental Monitors on Lobster Traps, or eMOLT, is a partnership involving NOAA, the Maine, Massachusetts, Downeast and Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Associations, the Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation, and the Marine Science Department at Southern Maine Community College (SMCC) in Portland, Maine.

The data collected from temperature sensors on the lobster pots and from GPS surface drifters deployed as part of the eMOLT program help ocean circulation modelers better understand processes in the Gulf of Maine, such as how lobster larvae and other planktonic animals and plants, including those that cause harmful algal blooms, drift and settle. This information may also help determine how ocean currents disperse, condense and transport pollutants, invasive species, and food for whales in portions of the Gulf of Maine.

“Local fishermen already spend their days at sea, have the biggest stake in preserving our coastal marine resources, and are the most knowledgeable of the local waters,” said Jim Manning, an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Laboratory of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC), part of NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “They are interested, curious and enthusiastic to learn more about lobster science and the environment. It seemed like a natural fit, a win-win situation.”

Manning got the idea for eMOLT while conducting research on Georges Bank in the 1990s and seeing many lobster boats in the area. In 1995, he deployed some large moorings to collect oceanographic data, but soon recognized that this was a very expensive effort in terms of time and money. He realized lobstermen had many moorings of their own in the area at fixed locations and depths which could provide needed time-series data at more sites and at far less cost.

With the help of NEFSC port agent John Mahoney, Manning approached some local lobstermen in Sandwich and Hyannis, Mass. to see if they were interested in helping collect bottom environmental data, whenever their lobster pots were out. They agreed. The pilot project started with three lobstermen who each took the temperature-measuring devices and attached them via a plastic tie-wrap to one or two of their pots.

The devices, which cost about $150 each, internally record temperature every hour around the clock while the pots are in the water. At the end of the season when the pots are hauled out, the instruments are removed and shipped back to Manning in an envelope he provides. He downloads and processes the data and then puts the temperature information on the eMOLT web site. Each lobsterman has his/her own personal web page to see the data from their own pots, while everyone including the general public can see the overall data collected each year.

By 2000, results from the pilot study were encouraging enough for Manning to apply for funding from the Northeast Consortium to formally establish eMOLT. The Consortium has funded the project since. Each year, more lobstermen participate in the program and new instruments are tried, some with success and others that need further development.

One of the program’s successes has been low-cost surface drifters equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) chips, developed by Manning and since 2004 built by students in the marine science program at Southern Maine Community College (SMCC). The students build about 50 drifters a year, each costing about one third that of commercially-made instruments.

“About half of the cost goes to pay the students to build the drifters, so it gives them practical working experience plus the knowledge they are participating in marine research, and the other half is used for parts and other related expenses,” Manning said. The drifters have been deployed by students and researchers in studies by a number of colleges and universities, including Bowdoin College, the University of Southern Maine, University of New Hampshire, University of New England, Endicott College, and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has deployed some of the drifters for NOAA-funded studies on harmful algal blooms, commonly called red tides, in the Gulf of Maine. Other researchers have used the drifters for oceanographic studies ranging from where coastal currents in the Gulf of Maine could spread pollutants and invasive species to the distribution of plankton and zooplankton that serve as a major food for whales and other marine life.

Manning and colleagues published drifter observations in the journal Continental Shelf Research in January 2009. The temperature observations will be published in the March 2009 issue of the Journal of Operational Oceanography.

Close to 100 lobstermen have provided sensor data since the program started, and about 60 lobstermen have been long-term active participants. Manning says he is a bit surprised but very pleased so many lobstermen are interested in the project. The eMOLT partners have contributed to a database with more than three million hourly temperature records, 80,000 salinity records, and 260,000 satellite drifter fixes (locations).

Lobsterman Jason Day of Vinalhaven, Maine heard about eMOLT from his father, Walter Day, also a lobsterman and program participant. A year-round lobsterman, Jason Day puts his traps in the water in late April or early May and hauls them out in December. He became involved with eMOLT three years ago and has one trap equipped with a temperature sensor in shallow water near Vinalhaven.

“I’m interested in what is happening on the bottom, and eMOLT helps me keep up,” Day said. “The program covers a large area and provides a lot of data at a reasonable cost.” Day says he looks at the program’s web site, and although the data has been pretty much what he expected, he occasionally sees a change that he can relate to his catch.

What’s next? Manning says the partners are working on a real-time bottom temperature sensor attached to the traps that would wirelessly transmit data via satellite once the trap is hauled on deck. They are also working on a combined tilt meter-bottom current meter with digital compass to measure both bottom currents and the angle at which the trap rests on the seafloor. The information collected should provide insight in whether bottom currents affect how lobsters move, and whether currents influence lobsters to enter a trap. In the near future, Manning would like to add sensors to measure oxygen, nutrients, and pH to determine ocean acidification levels in the region.

“There used to be a debate on the docks about whether it was cold or warm on the bottom,” Manning said of the lobstermen, whom he meets regularly at their annual meetings and who send in updates. “Now there is no debate. The lobstermen see the data for themselves over time, and can take note of trends or changes that might affect their catches. It is a baseline that helps both lobster science and the scientists and ocean circulation modelers in the Gulf of Maine who, in partnership with the eMOLT lobstermen, constitute part of our nation’s integrated ocean observing systems.”

Source: NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service

An analysis of the engineering and economics for a solar water-heating system shows it to have a payback period of just two years, according to researchers in India. They report, in the International Journal of Global Energy Issues, on the success of the 1000-liter system operating at a university hostel.

The current focus in the developed world is on advanced technological approaches to alternative energy sources, such as photovoltaic cells for solar power and harnessing wind and wave with elaborate systems to generate electricity. However, the cost of such systems may be prohibitive for some applications in the developing world. They also often ignore the fact that a mundane process such as heating water might best be carried out using direct heat from the sun rather than including a waste energy-conversion step.

Vivek Khambalkar, Sharashchandra Gadge, and Dhiraj S. Karale at the Dr Panjabrao Deshmukh Agricultural University, in Maharashtra, India, explain how they have evaluated the various costs and benefits involved in solar hot-water production. They have compared solar hot-water production per liter with electrical energy approaches and found that solar heating is 57 percent of the internal rate of return.

“Solar energy is the only renewable energy source that has wide range of uses with commercial viability. Solar energy provide water heating, air heating and electricity through various modes of applications. The use of solar energy for thermal purposes is the most cost-effective way of utilizing the resource. A solar water heating system satisfies the need of warm water,” the researchers explain.

Importantly, the payback time for the initial investment in equipment and installation is just two years. This compares very well to a photovoltaic system used for electricity generation if it were only being used to heat water. Photovoltaics have a payback period of several at least a decade and sometimes double that.

The solar hot water system used in the study is installed at the Jijau hostel, part of the Dr Panjabrao Deshmukh Agricultural University campus, in Akola, Maharashtra state, India. The team estimates that the system will effectively pay for itself five times over, given an estimated working life of about twenty years.

Source: Inderscience Publishers