Yullae

16/04/2022

Abstract
Grassland birds in North America face many problems as a result of habitat loss and fragmentation; understanding their habitat requirements is critical for their conservation and management. The sharp-tailed grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus) can be found throughout North American grasslands and is a species of economic and cultural importance, but it has experienced population declines over the last few decades. A large part of sharp-tailed grouse life history is focused on and around lekking grounds, which makes leks an essential feature for sharp-tailed grouse management. We used information from 596 leks and landcover predictors within 1-km and 5-km squares to perform Habitat Suitability Index modeling for sharp-tailed grouse on the Northern Great Plains in Saskatchewan, Canada. The proportion of grasslands at the 5-km scale and the 1-km scale were the two most important factors affecting lek occurrence (permutation importance = 34.8% and 26.9%, respectively). In every case, the 5-km scale predictors were ranked as having a more significant influence on lek occurrence than the 1-km scale. Other factors of importance included topographic roughness (9.7% permutation importance), and the proportion of human disturbance at the 5-km scale (5% permutation importance). Our study highlights the importance of large patches of grassland to support the occurrence of sharp-tailed grouse leks, and that a diverse set of habitat features are needed for sharp-tailed grouse management.
Introduction
Temperate grasslands are considered one of the most endangered biomes on earth [1], with land conversion for agricultural use as the primary driver of grassland loss [2]. In Canada, only 25–30% of original grasslands still exist [3]. The quality of remaining grasslands is also affected by a variety of land uses that can decrease their habitat quality without necessarily destroying them. These land uses include unsustainable grazing, and energy extraction and distribution infrastructure needed to distribute energy from extraction sites, which can add additional anthropogenic features to the landscape including fencing, wells, turbines, transmission lines, and roads [3]. The presence, operation, and maintenance of these features and practices can create additional challenges for grassland species, including sensory disturbances and increased mortality [4–6]. Unfortunately, how these additional anthropogenic features and practices affect many grassland species is not fully understood.

Habitat specialists seem to be particularly at risk due to anthropogenic habitat changes, and the consequences of habitat loss and degradation are easier to predict for specialists compared to generalists [7]. The sharp-tailed grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus) can be found in grasslands and in open areas within the boreal forest across North America [8]; however, due to its lack of preference for specific vegetation species communities within these open habitats, it has typically been classified as a habitat generalist [8]. Despite being classified as a habitat generalist, sharp-tailed grouse have experienced population declines in certain regions over the last few decades, particularly at the southern and western edges of their range [9, 10]. Habitat loss and fragmentation are likely principal factors causing the declines of these sharp-tailed grouse populations [9, 10]. However, part of the challenge associated with managing habitat of generalist species is that habitat use plasticity by these species may require region-specific research to inform conservation and management [8].

A typical unit used when managing sharp-tailed grouse and their habitat is known as the “breeding complex”, which is focused on their mating grounds (hereafter, leks) and typically a 2-km radius around the leks [8, 11]. Leks are communal display arenas where males compete for females; males show high site fidelity to the same lek area over the years [12]. Sharp-tailed grouse home ranges change throughout the year, but males spend the majority of the year in close proximity to the lek site [8, 9, 13]. Once a female has mated she will typically travel 1–2 kms away from the lek to nest [14, 15]. Due to the central role of leks in the breeding complex and the high detectability of male displays, leks are excellent units for the study of sharp-tailed grouse habitat use and subsequently, management [11]. Understanding what features sharp-tailed grouse select at and around lek sites can help delineate important habitat. However, due to the variability of habitats and landscapes used by the seven sharp-tailed grouse subspecies [8], the consistency of features selected for lekking may differ within each subspecies range.

Here we examined habitat features influencing lek occurrence for the plains sharp-tailed grouse (T.p. jamesi) in southern Saskatchewan, Canada. The plains sharp-tailed grouse inhabits primarily shrubby grasslands across the Great Plains of North America, and their leks are usually found in areas with short grasses, often associated with shrubs, on natural rises [10, 16, 17]. Female grouse require the presence of tall vegetation or woody shrubs for nesting and brood-rearing, though these features are typically found within larger open grassland complexes [18]. Nesting habitat contrasts with lek sites, whereby leks may be abandoned if too much woody vegetation is accumulated [19]. Fine-scale models that include features such as vegetation height exist for predicting suitable plains sharp-tailed grouse habitat, but these models focus primarily on nesting and brood-rearing habitat [20]. Areas with tall residual grasses are considered optimal for sharp-tailed grouse nesting and brood rearing, whereas approximately 5–10% shrub cover is considered optimal for wintering habitat [20]. However, the outcomes of these fine-scale modeling efforts are often difficult or impossible to extrapolate over a large area to predict sharp-tailed grouse habitat and manage it appropriately.

Our study used a combination of field surveys and remotely sensed landcover and topographic data to examine multiple habitat factors that are predicted to influence sharp-tailed grouse lek occurrence. We acquired lek information using contemporary (2018–2019) and historical field surveys (1990–2004), government pre-development surveys (1995–2016), and citizen science data (2017–2019) in the prairie ecoregion of Saskatchewan. As a generalist species, sharp-tailed grouse are less likely to be reliant on particular vegetation species, so we focused on using coarser land cover-based habitat assessments. These landscape variables are easy to monitor and acquire at large scales, making this type of analysis easier to apply for decision making over large landscapes. We modelled of the suitability of habitat for leks across the grasslands of southern Saskatchewan, Canada using a Habitat Suitability Index (HSI). Based on the HSI, we determined the relative rankings and importance of different habitat features for predicting the suitability of a site for leks. Lek sites are only one part of the breeding complex, so we predicted that leks would be influenced more by their surrounding habitat features than those directly at the lek location.

Methods
Study area
Our study area encompassed the prairie ecozone in southern Saskatchewan, Canada (latitude range 49 to 52° and longitude range -101 to -110°) and included an area of approximately 240,967 km2. Southern Saskatchewan receives an average of 395 mm of precipitation per year, with most falling in the month of June, and the average maximum temperature in the summer is approximately 25.5°C [21]. The study area consists of two major land-uses, annual crop production and grazing by domestic cattle, with an extensive road network and other smaller land-uses including oil and gas extraction, urban and rural habitations, and mining. Our study area is in the northeastern range of the plains subspecies of sharp-tailed grouse [8].

Historical surveys
The Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment (ENV) conducted sharp-tailed grouse lek surveys across the prairie and parkland ecoregions of Saskatchewan from 1958 to 2004. These surveys were used to develop the framework for our survey protocols and locations. These historic surveys were conducted within typically township-sized (approximately 41.4 km2) predefined survey blocks that included a mix of grazed grassland and annual cropland (two of the dominant land uses in Saskatchewan). Driving surveys were conducted in April and May from one hour before sunrise until two hours after sunrise on days without rain and wind speeds below 25 km/h. Stops were conducted every 1.6 km (1 mile) for a minimum of two minutes to listen and visually survey for leks. Once a lek was discovered, surveyors recorded the location as either a quarter-section (a 800m x 800m unit of land division) or a GPS location once this technology became widely available. Counts of both male and female grouse in attendance were conducted, and if possible a flush count, in which birds were made to fly away from the lek, was also done. Each block was surveyed twice within a season when possible. Not all blocks were surveyed consistently throughout the program, and new blocks were added as the program matured.

16/04/2022

I've seen many professional services companies that were early adopters of hybrid work due to the knowledge-based nature of their practices. However, as we all know, the pandemic dramatically accelerated the shift, proving that hybrid work could scale.

12/04/2022

Long et al. [47] suggested that depletion of cellular and mitochondrial NAD+ contents induced mitochondrial abnormalities, activation of NAD glycohydrolases and bioenergetic failure as well as cell death. NMN supplementation decreased mitochondrial fragmentation and mutant amyloid precursor protein levels (38%) in mice without observing any detrimental side effects, while it enhanced mitochondrial bioenergetic functions.

Wang et al. [48] indicated that intraperitoneal administration of NMN restored learning and cognition in AD model Wistar rats, while enhancing energy metabolism and neuron survival and preventing ROS accumulation and the central biomarker (amyloid beta) induced neuronal death. Yao et al. [49] has also reported improvements of behavioural measures of cognitive impairments and reduction of multiple AD-linked pathological characteristics such as inflammatory responses, synaptic loss, amyloid plaque burden and β-amyloid production by inhibition of JNK activation in mice after subcutaneous administration of NMN.

According to Klimova et al. [50], in vivo NMN administration enhanced mitochondrial bioenergetics, overturned physiological decline and restrained postischemic NAD+ depletion and cellular death. Furthermore, increasing NAD+ levels in mitochondria (from 3.12 to 5.51 nmol/mg) by NMN supplementation caused many metabolic changes such as SIRT3-mediated decline in mitochondrial protein acetylation, which defended mitochondria by detrimental effects of ROS and excessive and impetuous fragmentation. In addition, according to Lu et al. [51], NMN could cause considerable beneficial effects, attenuate apoptosis and enhance mitochondrial inhibitor‑induced declining of energy metabolism in PD-like neuropathological and behavioural changes as resulted in cellular model of PD, utilising rotenone-treated PC12 cells. They investigated increased ATP1 and NAD+ levels (30%) in PC12 cells, necrotic and apoptotic cell death and cell survival with NMN supplementation.

Fang et al. [52] investigated that approximately two folds repletion of NAD+ through NMN unusually delayed accelerated aging and extended lifespan of Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster models of Werner syndrome. A short-term treatment of NAD+ precursor, nicotinamide riboside (NR) improved cochlear health, restored outer hair cell loss and prevented hearing loss in CSBm/m mice [53]. It showed that, as a precursor of NAD+, NMN may have the same potential to prevent the age-related and Cockayne syndrome-related hearing loss. Fang et al. [54] demonstrated that boosting NAD+ through NMN supplementation evidently extended in vivo lifespan, normalized neuromuscular functions, stimulated neuronal DNA repair and ameliorated neuropathological defects.

Safety concerns and challenges
The ultimate goal of geroscience is to discover approaches to boost natural defence mechanisms and prolong healthy lifespan through better management of the risks posed to cells and tissues of humans. Due to the continuous enhancement of the living standards of people, the desire of healthy longevity has become progressively stronger. Conversely, there is a possibility to achieve the maximum life span specified by the nature through decelerating the rate of aging. Using tiny molecules to slow down the aging process and enhancing aging-associated outcomes is a flourishing research area at the present [55]. Furthermore, at the present, the number of anti-aging medicines and health products are commercially available and popular among elderly consumers [56]. Along with the current concerns on aging as a natural biological process, many researches on longevity are being conducted to understand and manage the aging process through anti-aging interventions, while complying with gerontological and biogerontological aspects.

Fu and Zhang [44] have applied for a patent application for using β-NMN in the preparation of healthcare products or anti-aging drugs as a single dose of 1–500 mg/kg body weight/day of β-NMN. The healthcare products or anti-aging drugs was in the forms of injections, enteric-coated preparations, aqueous solutions, granules, capsules or tablets. A number of NMN anti-aging health products have been produced and launched by various pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, biotechnology and health food companies. The quantity of NMN in available commercial products vary from 50 to 150 mg/capsule, whereas some consumers take two 150 mg capsules per day [57]. Nowadays, there are NMN products, marketed as supplements for anti-aging and longevity in the form of capsules, which are very high in dose such as ≥500 mg. The safety of these doses cannot be assessed since required clinical and toxicological studies have not been completed yet to establish the recommended safe levels for long term administration. Nevertheless, their safety and efficacy are uncertain and unreliable since most of them have not been backed up by rigorous scientific preclinical and clinical testing. This issue has been arisen as manufacturers are hesitant to pay for research and clinical trials due to potential lower profit margin, and there is no authorising agency to regulate NMN products because it is often sold as functional food product rather than heavily regulated therapeutic drug. Therefore, more strict approval process has been demanded by consumer advocacy groups requesting regulatory agencies to set standard and restrictions for marketing anti-aging health products, considering safety, health and wellbeing of consumers [58]. NMN should not be considered as a panacea for the elderly, because boosting NAD levels when not required may yield some detrimental effects. Therefore, the dose and frequency of NMN supplementation should be carefully prescribed depending on the type of age-related deficiency and all other confronting health conditions of the people [59]. Other NAD precursors have been studied to discover the efficacy for diverse age-related deficiencies and they are used for particular deficiencies, only after they are proven for effectiveness and safe to use. Therefore, the same principle should be applied to NMN as well [60], [61].

11/04/2022

Dana Vollmer did not have an easy road to the Olympics.

Vollmer is an olympic swimmer, but it wasn’t just the grueling practice schedule that made her journey to the top difficult. At the age of 15, Vollmer discovered that she had a heart disorder known as long QT syndrome. She had heart surgery later that year, but the operation didn’t eliminate the risk of heart failure. (Even today, her mother watches swim meets from the stands with a defibrillator between her feet.)

When Vollmer finally qualified for the Women’s 100m butterfly at the 2012 Olympics in London, it was her heart that got all of the attention. Little did she know that her head was about to be the problem.
Avoiding Drag
As soon as Vollmer entered the pool in the 100m Final, her swim cap came off.

Professional swimmers wear latex swim caps that tightly cover their head to reduce drag in the water. Nearly every swimmer wears them, but swim caps are especially important for female swimmers. If a female swimmer loses her swim cap and her hair flows out into the water, then it can significantly increase the drag that she must swim against during the race. In a highly competitive race like an olympic final, this additional drag force can be the difference between winning and losing.

This is why nearly all professional swimmers wear not just one, but two swim caps. That’s exactly what Vollmer did. Although her top swim cap flipped off, her second cap stayed in place allowing her to not only avoid disaster, but also win the gold medal and set a new world record in the process.

dana vollmer swim cap from "Never Check Email Before Noon (And Other Thoughts on Doing Your Best Creative Work)"
In the top image, taken just before the race began, you can see that Vollmer’s top swim cap is covering the strap of her goggles. In the bottom image, taken immediately after the race is over, the strap of her goggles is now on top of her bottom swim cap.
Now, let’s get to the real fun. What does wearing swim caps have to do with living a better life?

Physical Drag vs. Mental Drag
Imagine that your brain is a computer. At the beginning of the day, your brain powers up and you have 100 percent of your computer memory available to use on your life. The only problem is that every time you add a task to your to-do list, a little bit of your computer memory goes toward that task.

If you open your email in the morning and see three messages that you need to respond to later on, there goes three percent of your computer memory. If you have to remember to take your child to practice after school or pick up the dry cleaning or go to the grocery store, there goes a little bit more memory. The more tasks that are left unfinished, the more memory gets used up remembering, thinking, worrying, and planning for those tasks.

Here’s the punchline: If your brain is constantly filled with all of these secondary tasks, how much memory do you have left over to do meaningful, creative work? 70 percent? 50 percent? Even less?

Trying to do your best work with a distracted brain is like trying to swim for a gold medal without a swim cap. Divided attention is like a thick head of hair creating a constant drag in your mental waters. Split your attention in too many directions and you'll be paralyzed.

Swimmers realize that if they want to perform at their best, they need to get out of their own way. They need to cover the object that creates drag—their hair—for the race. Does this mean that their hair is bad? No, of course not. Similarly, there is nothing “bad” about your daily to-do list, handling your family responsibilities, or taking care of the emergencies that pop up throughout life. It’s just that when you want to perform at your best, you have to make a deliberate choice to tuck those things away for a few moments.

How can we expect to do our best creative work if we are constantly fighting mental drag?

11/04/2022

From Rimowa’s new tie-up with Porsche to Mercedes teaming up with Palace, a new wave of fashion-carmaker partnerships is targeting a younger generation of aspirational consumers.

08/04/2022

Nathan Englander: “Turn off your cell phone.”
Englander is an award–winning short story writer, and in this interview he talks about his quest to eliminate all distractions from his writing routine…

Turn off your cell phone. Honestly, if you want to get work done, you’ve got to learn to unplug. No texting, no email, no Facebook, no Instagram. Whatever it is you’re doing, it needs to stop while you write. A lot of the time (and this is fully goofy to admit), I’ll write with earplugs in — even if it’s dead silent at home.

Karen Russell: “Enjoy writing badly.”
Russell has only written one book … and it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In an interview with The Daily Beast, she talks about her daily struggle to overcome distraction and write…

I know many writers who try to hit a set word count every day, but for me, time spent inside a fictional world tends to be a better measure of a productive writing day. I think I’m fairly generative as a writer, I can produce a lot of words, but volume is not the best metric for me. It’s more a question of, did I write for four or five hours of focused time, when I did not leave my desk, didn’t find some distraction to take me out of the world of the story? Was I able to stay put and commit to putting words down on the page, without deciding mid-sentence that it’s more important to check my email, or “research” some question online, or clean out the science fair projects in the back for my freezer?

I’ve decided that the trick is just to keep after it for several hours, regardless of your own vacillating assessment of how the writing is going. Showing up and staying present is a good writing day.

I think it’s bad so much of the time. The periods where writing feels effortless and intuitive are, for me, as I keep lamenting, rare. But I think that’s probably the common ratio of joy to despair for most writers, and I definitely think that if you can make peace with the fact that you will likely have to throw out 90 percent of your first draft, then you can relax and even almost enjoy “writing badly.”

A.J. Jacobs: “Force yourself to generate dozens of ideas.”
In an interview for the series, How I Write, Jacobs talks about his daily writing routines and dishes out some advice for young writers…

My kids wake me up. I have coffee. I make my kids breakfast, take them to school, then come home and try to write. I fail at that until I force myself to turn off my Internet access so I can get a little shelter from the information storm.

I am a big fan of outlining. I write an outline. Then a slightly more detailed outline. Then another with even more detail. Sentences form, punctuation is added, and eventually it all turns into a book.

I write while walking on a treadmill. I started this practice when I was working on Drop Dead Healthy, and read all these studies about the dangers of the sedentary life. Sitting is alarmingly bad for you. One doctor told me that “sitting is the new smoking.” So I bought a treadmill and put my computer on top of it. It took me about 1,200 miles to write my book. I kind of love it — it keeps me awake, for one thing.

Jacobs has advice for young writers, too…

Force yourself to generate dozens of ideas. A lot of those ideas will be terrible. Most of them, in fact. But there will be some sparkling gems in there too. Try to set aside 20 minutes a day just for brainstorming.

Khaled Hosseini: “You have to write whether you feel like it or not.”
In an interview with Noah Charney, Hosseini talks about his daily writing habits and the essential things that all writers have to do…

I don’t outline at all, I don’t find it useful, and I don’t like the way it boxes me in. I like the element of surprise and spontaneity, of letting the story find its own way. For this reason, I find that writing a first draft is very difficult and laborious. It is also often quite disappointing. It hardly ever turns out to be what I thought it was, and it usually falls quite short of the ideal I held in my mind when I began writing it. I love to rewrite, however. A first draft is really just a sketch on which I add layer and dimension and shade and nuance and color. Writing for me is largely about rewriting. It is during this process that I discover hidden meanings, connections, and possibilities that I missed the first time around. In rewriting, I hope to see the story getting closer to what my original hopes for it were.

I have met so many people who say they've got a book in them, but they've never written a word. To be a writer — this may seem trite, I realize — you have to actually write. You have to write every day, and you have to write whether you feel like it or not. Perhaps most importantly, write for an audience of one — yourself. Write the story you need to tell and want to read. It’s impossible to know what others want so don’t waste time trying to guess. Just write about the things that get under your skin and keep you up at night.

How to Apply This to Your Life
These daily routines work well for writing, but their lessons can be applied to almost any goal you hope to achieve.

For example…

1. Pushing yourself physically prepares you to work hard mentally. Vonnegut did pushups as a break from writing. Murakami runs 10 kilometers each day. A.J. Jacobs types while walking on a treadmill. You can decide what works for you, but make sure you get out and move.

2. Do the most important thing first. Notice how many excellent writers start writing in the morning? That's no coincidence. They work on their goals before the rest of the day gets out of control. They aren’t wondering when they’re going to write and they aren’t battling to “fit it in” amongst their daily activities because they are doing the most important thing first.

3. Embrace the struggle and do hard work. Did you see how many writers mentioned their struggle to write? Housseni said that his first drafts are “difficult” and “laborious” and “disappointing.” Russell called her writing “bad.” Kingsolver throws out a hundred pages before she gets to the first page of a book.

What looks like failure in the beginning is often the foundation of success. You have to grind out the hard work before you can enjoy your best work.

If you want more practical ideas for how to build new habits (and break bad ones), check out my book Atomic Habits, which will show you how small changes in habits can lead to remarkable results.

08/04/2022

07/04/2022

Habit Substitution
In many cases, it can be more effective to replace your bad habit than to merely try to eliminate it.

The beautiful thing about habit substitution is that you can build a good habit and break a bad one at the same time. One reader told me, “At home I would go out to my backyard to smoke, so I put a weight bench out there and every time I wanted to smoke I'd go out and do some reps instead. After that, my craving was reduced.”

I thought the following idea was interesting. One reader replaced biting their nails with cutting their nails. “I stopped biting my fingernails mostly by making sure clippers were always close at hand – especially at work.”

Many readers have substituted a new habit in a “stair step” fashion. They gradually shift from the old habit to something healthier.

Mark, for example, shared the following strategy. “I significantly cut back on beer consumption. I used flavored sparkling water to replace the beer and I asked my wife to stop having beer in the fridge for a while. Once I replaced the habit (it was mostly stress drinking after work), I was able to add beer back into my life.”

And another reader, also named Marc, curtailed his drinking in a similar way. “I replaced drinking beer every day in a succession of replacements, going through fruit juice, then iced tea, then seltzer water. I did it over about nine months by having one less drink a week. Once I finally quit, I got past the cravings in only two weeks. I haven’t had a drink in over a year now.”

Shawn used this approach to stop smoking. “I decided to quit smoking and used a fun-sized Snickers candy bar as a substitute until the major cravings went away. I'm still smoke-free years later.”

Substitution can even be useful in a broader sense. Suraj wrote, “I was addicted to drugs and alcohol. To beat my addiction, I started working out. Now I am planning to compete in powerlifting meets.”

To a certain degree, habit substitution allows you to look for a healthier obsession. Some people are hooked on alcohol. Others are hooked on exercise. Either one can be unhealthy if taken too far, but generally speaking it's a lot better to spend a few hours exercising each day than to spend a few hours drinking each day.

Mindset Tricks
Sometimes I like to employ clever little mental tricks to stick with a good habit.

One reader named Caelan wrote, “I quit smoking by assigning my cheat days progressively farther in the future. I never quit “for good,” I only quit until my next cheat day. This helped with cravings, because the choice wasn’t between “right now” or “never,” it was “right now” or “later.”

Ken applied a similar strategy to his habit of eating fast food. “I started small when I quit bad habits like eating McDonalds all the time and drinking soda. I told myself I’d take a week off, then said two weeks. That continued. This month, I made it four years without McDonalds and 15 months without soda.”

Another person used the Pointing-and-Calling strategy I discussed in Chapter 4. They wrote, “I quit smoking by saying a mantra out loud every time I wanted a cigarette (“your brain tricks you”) which I think changed my thinking from the subconscious part of my brain to the logical part.”

Qiana used a little math and a clever visual trick. “I stopped drinking soda,” she wrote. “I added up all the sodas I drank for the week and counted how many tablespoons of sugar were in those soda cans and bottles. I began to scoop the amount of sugar into an enormous bowl The visual did it for me. I had to break that habit.”