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In this study we characterize the retina of the spotted gar, Lepisosteus oculatus, a ray-finned fish. Gar did not undergo the whole genome duplication event that occurred at the base of the teleost fish lineage, which includes the model species zebrafish and medaka. The divergence of gars from the teleost lineage and the availability of a high quality genome sequence make it a uniquely useful species to understand how genome duplication sculpted features of the teleost visual system, including photoreceptor diversity. We developed reagents to characterize the cellular organization of the spotted gar retina, including representative markers for all major classes of retinal neurons and Müller glia. We report that the gar has a preponderance of predicted short-wavelength (SWS) shifted opsin genes, including a duplicated set of SWS1 (ultraviolet) sensitive opsin encoding genes, a SWS2 (blue) opsin encoding gene, and two rod opsin encoding genes, all of which were expressed in retinal photoreceptors. We also report that gar SWS1 cones lack the geometric organization of photoreceptors observed in teleost fish species, consistent with the crystalline photoreceptor mosaic being a teleost innovation. Of note the spotted gar expresses both exo-rhodopsin (RH1-1) and rhodopsin (RH1-2) in rods. Exo-rhodopsin is an opsin that is not expressed in the retina of zebrafish and other teleosts, but rather is expressed in regions of the brain. This study suggests that exo-rhodopsin is an ancestral actinopterygian (ray finned fish) retinal opsin, and in teleosts its expression has possibly been subfunctionalized to the pineal gland.

Titles from entomology and ecology journals were analysed, testing the effect of Latin and common names, functional groups, geographic location, question marks, humour, and title length on citation rate. Using the Latin names of study organisms in a title decreases a paper's citation rate. There was no effect of the use of common names, question marks, humour, or title length on citation rate. Effects of functional group and geographic location were variable.

Previous research has been conducted showing significant benefits on combustion effi ciency and stability by creating high gravity-loaded combustion environments. Ultracom pact combustor systems decrease the size and weight of the overall engine by integrating the compressor, combustor, and turbine stages. In this system, the core flow is split and a portion is routed into a circumferential direction to be burned at a high equivalence ratio. Fuel and air are brought into the cavity and combusted in a high g-loaded environ ment driven by air injection. Computational research showed that the hole diameter of the air injection jets are directly related to g-loading within the cavity. An experimental rig was built where the air injection rings could be changed to contain one of three differ ent jet hole diameters to verify this result. The smallest air injection diameter achieved the highest g-loading in the cavity, which is consistent with the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) results. However, the flame stability within the cavity was affected by the air injection jet becoming too large or too small for a particular equivalence ratio. Video taken at 8000 Hz was used to capture the flame structure, revealing that the flame was not stable even before lean blow out conditions were achieved. Additionally, the direction that the air jets swirled in the cavity was found to have an impact on the com bustion dynamics. When flow swirled counterclockwise and impacted the suction side of the turbine vane, the cavity had a more uniform fully developed flow field, as opposed to the pressure side impact. Finally, liquid fuel testing was done to test the atomization and mixing o f JP-8 in a g-loaded environment. The results showed that increasing the cavity g-load increased the residence time the fuel stayed in the cavity.

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