Effects of Exposure to Naphthenic Acids in Tree Swallows (<i>Tachycineta bicolor</i>) on the Athabasca Oil Sands, Alberta, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Naphthenic acids (NAs) are a group of carboxylic acids that are of particular concern to the steadily growing oil sands mining industry of Alberta, Canada, because they become highly concentrated in the water used for oil sands extraction and are toxic to aquatic biota and mammals. Upon mine closure, vast amounts of process-affected water will need to be reclaimed and proven safe for wildlife colonizing reclaimed areas. The effects of exposure to NAs have not been investigated in avian species. To address this void, tree swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) nestlings were dosed with NAs while being reared normally by their free-ranging parents on a site in the vicinity of the oil sands. Nestlings received 1.5 mg NAs/day (approximately 0.075 g/kg body mass) from d 7 to d 13 of age, which represented a 10-fold "worst exposure" scenario. Nestling growth, hematocrit, blood biochemistry, organ weights, and ethoxyresorufin O-deethylase (EROD) activity were unaffected by NAs. The only change detected on histopathological evaluation of major organs was an increase in extramedullary erythropoiesis in the liver. These findings indicate that nestling tree swallows can successfully tolerate short-term exposures to environmentally realistic concentrations of NAs. However, this study did not investigate the chronic or reproductive toxicity of NAs. More research needs to be conducted to complete this initial assessment, to determine environmental risks on reclaimed areas where birds will be breeding and where their exposure to NAs could extend for several weeks.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".