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Abstract Killer whales ( Orcinus orca ) are top predators throughout the world’s oceans. In the North Pacific, the species is divided into three ecotypes—resident (fish-eating), transient (mammal-eating), and offshore (largely shark-eating)—that are genetically and acoustically distinct and have unique roles in the marine ecosystem. In this study, we examined the year-round distribution of killer whales in the northern Gulf of Alaska from 2016 to 2020 using passive acoustic monitoring. We further described the daily acoustic residency patterns of three killer whale populations (southern Alaska residents, Gulf of Alaska transients, and AT1 transients) for one year of these data. Highestmore »year-round acoustic presence occurred in Montague Strait, with strong seasonal patterns in Hinchinbrook Entrance and Resurrection Bay. Daily acoustic residency times for the southern Alaska residents paralleled seasonal distribution patterns. The majority of Gulf of Alaska transient detections occurred in Hinchinbrook Entrance in spring. The depleted AT1 transient killer whale population was most often identified in Montague Strait. Passive acoustic monitoring revealed that both resident and transient killer whales used these areas much more extensively than previously known and provided novel insights into high use locations and times for each population. These results may be driven by seasonal foraging opportunities and social factors and have management implications for this species.« less

Articular cartilage is a collagen-rich tissue that provides a smooth, lubricated surface for joints and is also responsible for load bearing during movements. The major components of cartilage are water, collagen, and proteoglycans. Osteoarthritis is a degenerative disease of articular cartilage, in which an early-stage indicator is the loss of proteoglycans from the collagen matrix. In this study, confocal Raman microspectroscopy was applied to study the degradation of articular cartilage, specifically focused on spatially mapping the loss of glycosaminoglycans (GAGs). Trypsin digestion was used as a model for cartilage degradation. Two different scanning geometries for confocal Raman mapping, cross-sectional andmore »depth scans, were applied. The chondroitin sulfate coefficient maps derived from Raman spectra provide spatial distributions similar to histological staining for glycosaminoglycans. The depth scans, during which subsurface data were collected without sectioning the samples, can also generate spectra and GAG distributions consistent with Raman scans of the surface-to-bone cross sections. In native tissue, both scanning geometries demonstrated higher GAG content at the deeper zone beneath the articular surface and negligible GAG content after trypsin degradation. On partially digested samples, both scanning geometries detected an ∼100 μm layer of GAG depletion. Overall, this research provides a technique with high spatial resolution (25 μm pixel size) to measure cartilage degradation without tissue sections using confocal Raman microspectroscopy, laying a foundation for potential in vivo measurements and osteoarthritis diagnosis.« less

Increasing balance confidence in older individuals is important towards improving their quality of life and reducing activity avoidance. Here, we investigated if balance confidence (perceived ability) and balance performance (ability) in older adults were related to one another and would improve after balance training. The relationship of balance confidence in conjunction with balance performance for varied conditions (such as limiting vision, modifying somatosensory cues, and also base of support) was explored. We sought to determine if balance confidence and ability, as well as their relationship, could change after several weeks of training. Twenty-seven healthy participants were trained for several weeksmore »during standing and walking exercises. In addition, seven participants with a higher risk of imbalance leading to falls (survivors of stroke) were also trained. Prior to and after training, balance ability and confidence were assessed via the Balance Error Scoring System (BESS) and Activities Specific Balance Confidence (ABC) Scale, respectively. Both groups showed improvements in balance abilities (i.e., BESS errors significantly decreased after training). Balance confidence was significantly higher in the healthy group than in the stroke group; however, ABC results reflected that balance confidence did not significantly increase after training for each. The correlations between balance ability and balance confidence were explored. Encouragingly, healthy participants displayed a negative correlation between BESS errors and ABC (i.e., enhancements in balance confidence (increases in ABC Scale results) were related to improvements in balance ability (decreases in BESS errors)). For the stroke participants, despite improvements in balance ability, our results showed that there was no relation to balance confidence (i.e., no correlation between BESS errors and ABC) in this group.« less

Animal and human laboratory paradigms offer invaluable approaches to study the complex etiologies and mechanisms of alcohol use disorder (AUD). We contend that human laboratory models provide a “bridge” between preclinical and clinical studies of AUD by allowing for well-controlled experimental manipulations in humans with AUD. As such, examining the consilience between experimental models in animals and humans in the laboratory provides unique opportunities to refine the translational utility of such models. The overall goal of the present review is to provide a systematic description and contrast of commonly used animal paradigms for the study of AUD, as wellmore »as their human laboratory analogs if applicable. While there is a wide breadth of animal species in AUD research, the paradigms discussed in this review rely predominately on rodent research. The overarching goal of this effort is to provide critical analysis of these animal models and to link them to human laboratory models of AUD. By systematically contrasting preclinical and controlled human laboratory models, we seek to identify opportunities to enhance their translational value through forward and reverse translation. We provide future directions to reconcile differences between animal and human work and to improve translational research for AUD.

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Hyperspectral imaging is an area of active research with many applications in remote sensing, mineral exploration, and environmental monitoring. Deep learning and, in particular, convolution-based approaches are the current state-of-the-art classification models. However, in the presence of noisy hyperspectral datasets, these deep convolutional neural networks underperform. In this paper, we proposed a feature augmentation approach to increase noise resistance in imbalanced hyperspectral classification. Our method calculates context-based features, and it uses a deep convolutional neuronet (DCN). We tested our proposed approach on the Pavia datasets and compared three models, DCN, PCA + DCN, and our context-based DCN, using the original datasets andmore »the datasets plus noise. Our experimental results show that DCN and PCA + DCN perform well on the original datasets but not on the noisy datasets. Our robust context-based DCN was able to outperform others in the presence of noise and was able to maintain a comparable classification accuracy on clean hyperspectral images.« less

For the rapidly growing aging demographic worldwide, robotic training methods could be impactful towards improving balance critical for everyday life. Here, we investigated the hypothesis that non-bodyweight supportive (nBWS) overground robotic balance training would lead to improvements in balance performance and balance confidence in older adults. Sixteen healthy older participants (69.7 ± 6.7 years old) were trained while donning a harness from a distinctive NaviGAITor robotic system. A control group of 11 healthy participants (68.7 ± 5.0 years old) underwent the same training but without the robotic system. Training included 6 weeks of standing and walking tasks while modifying: (1)more »sensory information (i.e., with and without vision (eyes-open/closed), with more and fewer support surface cues (hard or foam surfaces)) and (2) base-of-support (wide, tandem and single-leg standing exercises). Prior to and post-training, balance ability and balance confidence were assessed via the balance error scoring system (BESS) and the Activities specific Balance Confidence (ABC) scale, respectively. Encouragingly, results showed that balance ability improved (i.e., BESS errors significantly decreased), particularly in the nBWS group, across nearly all test conditions. This result serves as an indication that robotic training has an impact on improving balance for healthy aging individuals.« less