The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT or WashDOT) is a governmental agency that constructs, maintains, and regulates the use of transportation infrastructure in the U.S. state of Washington. Established in 1905, it is led by a secretary and overseen by the governor. WSDOT is responsible for more than 20,000 lane-miles of roadway, nearly 3,000 vehicular bridges and 524 other structures. This infrastructure includes rail lines, state highways, state ferries (considered part of the highway system) and state airports.S.S.S.
BACKGROUND: The large-scale seasonal migrations undertaken by many species require complex navigational and timing decisions. Animals migrating in groups might benefit from collective decision making, especially if the environment has large local variation rather than smooth gradients in, for example, salinity or temperature, or is unpredictable, or if the migrants cannot rely on individually acquired information. We focus on juvenile salmon whose downstream migration is timed to match suitable conditions for growth and survival at sea. While the environmental and physiological factors that influence the timing of migration have been well studied, the influence of social interactions on migration timing is poorly understood. METHOD: We compiled data on two species of juvenile salmon, collected at traps over 19 years, during their downstream seaward migration in three rivers in Washington state along with relevant environmental data. We developed state space statistical models to estimate the influence of hatchery-produced salmon in stimulating the downstream migration of wild salmon, while also incorporating potential environmental stimuli. RESULTS: Our results are consistent with the “pied-piper” hypothesis that large numbers of migrating hatchery-origin salmon provide a social cue stimulating migration of co-occurring wild salmon. The increase in the number of hatchery salmon counted at the trap was a strong predictor of the increase in wild sub-yearling Chinook salmon in the Dungeness, Puyallup, and Skagit rivers and yearling coho salmon in the Puyallup and Skagit rivers. Migration timing was also associated with abiotic factors related to temperature, river flow, and time of year. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings highlight the potential for social cues to affect migration timing of downstream migrating salmon, in concert with environmental factors. Incorporating social information into timing decisions may allow animals to benefit from collective decision-making strategies and better time their migrations. Moreover, understanding the effects of large-scale hatchery releases on wild salmon migration may provide valuable insights for planning the timing and duration of hatchery releases.
Although peace has an intriguing dual character, with both “inner” forms (e.g., low arousal positive states) and “outer forms (e.g., calm and stable societal conditions), there has been minimal work on the relationship between these forms. Drawing on prior literature across various fields, including research exploring the impact of conflict situations on people’s emotions, we hypothesize there is a positive association between inner and outer peace (e.g., people in situations of low outer peacefulness are liable to have lower levels of inner peace). We explored this using data from the most globally comprehensive study to date on inner peace, featuring 386,654 participants in 144 countries across the 2020, 2021, and 2022 Gallup World Polls, which included three items that asked about inner peace in subtly different ways: “Did you feel at peace most of the day yesterday, or not?” (2020); “In general, how often do you feel you are at peace with your thoughts and feelings?” (2021); and “In general, how often can you find inner peace during difficult times?” (2022). We then explored the association of these items with three variables pertaining to outer peace, namely two items about safety/security in the World Poll, together with country-level peacefulness as assessed by the Global Peace Index. While our hypothesis was mostly supported, there were intriguing nuances (e.g., a small but significant inverse relationship between the 2021 item and country-level peacefulness), shedding new light on this important but relatively neglected question of the connection between inner and outer peace.
Comprehensive phylogenies serve as foundations for taxonomic, comparative, and coevolutionary studies. Avian feather lice comprise the most diverse Parvorder (Ischnocera) of parasitic lice (Phthiraptera). Convergence and reduction of morphological features in this group have made past attempts at understanding the evolutionary relationships of feather lice challenging. Several recent phylogenomic studies have begun shedding light on the broader scale evolutionary tree of this group. However, additional taxonomic sampling is needed for a more complete understanding of the phylogeny and for higher statistical power in comparative studies. Here we investigate the higher-level relationships of feather lice based on the most comprehensive taxon sample to date. We leverage genome sequences of 260 samples of feather lice and 25 outgroup taxa to reconstruct a phylogenomic tree based on 2,395 target nuclear ortholog genes, using both concatenated and coalescent methods. These trees provide high support across nearly all branches of the topology, resolving backbone relationships as well as more detailed relationships within major groups. These phylogenies provide a framework for future comparative studies of feather lice, including comparisons with avian phylogeny and investigating patterns of diversification. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. National Science Foundation, US, DEB-1239788, DEB-13426045, DEB-1926919, DEB-1925487, DEB-2328118
PyEDA is a comprehensive software tool designed for the analysis of protein dynamics through Essential Dynamics (ED) and Normal Mode Analysis (NMA) of NMR and Molecular Dynamics (MD) structures. The software is capable of processing PDB files, superimposing structures, and analyzing eigenvectors to quantify protein motions. In this study, PyEDA’s performance was validated by reproducing key results from Van Aalten et al. (Methods 14:318–28, 2011) on the NMR structure of the Mouse c-Myb R2R3 DNA-binding domain. The software successfully identified hinge-bending motions between R2 and R3 repeats, consistent with the original findings. Additionally, PyEDA was tested with the Envz protein from Escherichia coli and MD data from a hen egg-white lysozyme, demonstrating its versatility across different protein structures and data types. Despite some limitations, including a dependency on multiple Python packages and an unresolved bug with the “END” keyword on macOS, PyEDA proves to be a valuable and user-friendly tool for bioinformaticians. Future developments aim to integrate PyMOL into the GUI for enhanced visualization capabilities.
