Search

The Global Land and Marine Observations Database aims to produce a comprehensive land based meteorological data archive and inventory. This requires the compilation of available land-based station meteorological data information from all known available in-situ meteorological data repositories/sources at multiple timescales (e.g. sub-daily, daily and monthly). During this process the service team members have identified that many of the data sources contained stations with incorrect location coordinates. These stations cannot be included in the processing to be served via the Copernicus Climate Change Service until the issues are satisfactorily resolved. Many of these stations are located in regions of the world where a sparsity of climate data currently exists, such as Southeast Asia and South America. As such, resolving these issues would provide important additional climate data, but this is a very labour-intensive task. Therefore, we have developed the Geo-locate project enrolling the help of undergraduate Geography students at Maynooth University, Ireland, to resolve some of the land-based station geolocation issues. We have successfully run two Geo-locate projects, the first in the second semester of the 2017/18 academic year and the second in the 2018/19 academic year. Both iterations to date have been very successful with 1926 out of 2168 total candidate stations ostensibly resolved, which equates to an 88 % success rate. At the same time, students gained critical skills helping to meet the expected pedagogical outcomes of the second-year curriculum, while producing a lasting scientific legacy. We asked the class of 2018/19 to reflect critically upon the outcomes and present the results herein which provide important feedback on what students felt that they gained from their participation and how we may improve the experience and learning outcomes in future. We will be continuing to run Geo-locate projects over the next few years. Due to the success of the Geo-locate project we encourage other organisations to investigate the potential for engaging university students to help resolve similar data issues while enriching the student experience and aiding the delivery of learning outcomes. This paper provides details of the project, and all supporting information such as project guidelines and templates to enable this.

Ovulation has been described as an inflammatory event, characterized by an influx of leukocytes into the ovulatory follicle and changes in the expression profile of immune factors in both the theca and granulosa tissue layers. Since information on this process is limited in cattle, our objective was to elucidate the contribution of the immune system to dominant follicle luteinization, ovulation and corpus luteum (CL) formation in cattle. Beef heifers (n = 50) were oestrous synchronized, slaughtered and ovarian follicular or luteal tissue collected during a 96 h window around ovulation. Follicular fluid cytokine concentration, temporal immune cell infiltration and inflammatory status were determined by Luminex multiplex analysis, immunohistochemistry and quantitative real-time PCR-analysis, respectively, in pre- and peri-ovulatory follicular tissues. The concentrations of IL10 and VEGF-A were highest in pre-ovulatory and the concentration of CXCL10 was highest in peri-ovulatory follicular fluid samples. The pre and peri-ovulatory follicles play host to a broad repertoire of immune cells, including T-cells, granulocytes and monocytes. Dendritic cells were the most abundant cells in ovulatory follicular and luteal-tissue at all times. The mRNA expression of candidate genes associated with inflammation was highest in pre- and peri-ovulatory tissue, whereas tissue growth and modelling factors were highest in the post-ovulatory follicular and early luteal tissue. In conclusion, ovulation in cattle is characterized by the presence of neutrophils, macrophages and dendritic cells in the ovulatory follicle, reflected in compartmentalized cytokine and growth factor expression. These findings indicate a tightly regulated sterile inflammatory response to the LH surge in the ovulatory follicle which is rapidly resolved in advance of CL formation.