Suchergebnisse

Every night, the Government releases statistics to provide updates on the Covid-19 pandemic in Ireland. This data includes the number of newly identified cases, the number of deaths that day, the total number of cases and the total deaths. But what do these numbers actually tell us? And what can we learn from them about the state of the outbreak?

Summary
Recipes found in letters and manuscript receipt books testify to the use of potentially lethal substances in domestic sleep medicine. This article examines the theory behind the use of poisons to induce sleep, contrasting Galenic theory with the radical approach of the Paracelsians. According to Galenic medicine, the coldness of stupefactives such as henbane, deadly nightshade and the opium poppy were useful in counteracting fever and helping a patient to sleep. However, their coldness could also cause death. They were therefore used mainly in external medicine. The exceptions were diacodium made from native poppies that were considered less lethal, and sleeping draughts used in a surgical context. Laudanum, a new drug developed using alchemical methods to separate medicine from poison, broke with traditional safety advice. On account of its novelty, personal experience and recommendation were particularly important in establishing it within the canon of sleeping drugs considered safe for use.

Grassland birds are among the fastest declining avian species in North America, primarily due to habitat loss. In the southeastern United States, much grassland and open savanna habitat has been converted to timber production or agriculture, neither of which typically provides habitat for breeding or wintering grassland birds. Powerline right-of-ways could provide suitable habitat for many grassland species because these areas are maintained to be treeless. We studied the population dynamics of Henslow's Sparrows (Centronyx henslowii) wintering in powerline right-of-ways in southeastern Georgia through an 11-year mark-recapture study. We used a robust design Cormack-Jolly-Seber model to estimate probability of detection and apparent survival. Abundance varied substantially among years at each site, with density varying from 1.7 to 8.5 birds/ha. Within-year detection probability was moderately high at 28% (24-33%, 95% credible interval [CI]), but apparent survival was very low at 13% (9-17%, 95% CI). This low apparent survival was likely due to low return rates (and not necessarily low survival). However, birds that did return to the study sites had extremely high site fidelity, with 82% of across-year recaptures < 200 m apart. This apparent incongruity between low apparent survival rates (likely due to emigration from the study sites) and high site fidelity for returning individuals could be explained by the dependability of the rightof-way habitat, which differs from typically patchy and temporally variable grassland and savanna wintering habitats. Dependable habitat may allow for higher site fidelity than this species would otherwise have, potentially resulting in the high densities we observed. Thousands of miles of right-of-ways in Georgia, and other southeastern states, could be managed to maximize potential habitat for declining grassland bird species. ; Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resources Division through a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service State Wildlife Grant; Georgia Southern University ; Published version ; The authors thank Allison Colter, Chris Coppola, Chris Depkin, Clyde Dixon, Dana Dixon, Tony Dodd, Ann Gilmore, Ashley Harrington, Eddie Hatchet, Ethan Hatchet, Rob Hicks, Robert Horan, Alex Isenberg, John Jensen, Gene Keferl, Tim Keyes, Jason Lee, Kevin Loope, Chuck Martin, Charlie Muise, Kara Nitschke, Jim Ozier, Sean Peacock, Perri Rothemich, Bob Sattelmeyer, Evan Schneider, Christian Scott, Fletcher Smith, Matthew Stoddard, Amanda Tveite, Miranda Wilkinson, and many other volunteers for their help in the field. We thank the Georgia Power Company for granting access to powerline right-of-ways and Tony Dodd and Jim Ozier of Georgia Power as well as Chuck Martin of The Nature Conservancy who assisted with access and logistics. We thank Phil Stouffer and two anonymous reviewers for reviews of this manuscript. This research was funded by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resources Division through a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service State Wildlife Grant and Georgia Southern University. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.