Maternal short stature does not predict their children's fatness indicators in a nutritional dual-burden sample of urban Mexican Maya.

The co-existence of very short stature due to poor chronic environment in early life and obesity is becoming a public health concern in rapidly transitioning populations with high levels of poverty. Individuals who have very short stature seem to be at an increased risk of obesity in times of relative caloric abundance. Increasing evidence shows that an individual is influenced by exposures in previous generations. This study assesses whether maternal poor early life environment predicts her child's adiposity using cross sectional design on Maya schoolchildren aged 7-9 and their mothers (n = 57 pairs). We compared maternal chronic early life environment (stature) with her child's adiposity (body mass index [BMI] z-score, waist circumference z-score, and percentage body fat) using multiple linear regression, controlling for the child's own environmental exposures (household sanitation and maternal parity). The research was performed in the south of Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, a low socioeconomic urban area in an upper middle income country. The Maya mothers were very short, with a mean stature of 147 cm. The children had fairly high adiposity levels, with BMI and waist circumference z-scores above the reference median. Maternal stature did not significantly predict any child adiposity indicator. There does not appear to be an intergenerational component of maternal early life chronic under-nutrition on her child's obesity risk within this free living population living in poverty. These results suggest that the co-existence of very short stature and obesity appears to be primarily due to exposures and experiences within a generation rather than across generations

Species Profiles: Life Histories and Environmental Requirements of Coastal Fishes and Invertebrates (Mid-Atlantic): Bay anchovy

The bay anchovy occurs along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts, from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to Yucatan, Mexico (Hildebrand 1963), except for the Florida Keys where it is apparently absent (Daly 1970). (PDF contains 22 pages

Microsatellite markers in Spanish lime (Melicoccus bijugatus Jacq., Sapindaceae), a neglected Neotropical fruit crop

Spanish lime (Melicoccus bijugatus Jacq.) is aNeotropical fruit tree cultivated, mainly, in orchards for self-consumption or local sale. The genus Melicoccus includes other nine species with edible fruits, some of these species are at risk of extinction. Like for the vast majority of tropical fruit trees, there is no information on the genetic diversity of Spanish lime and its related species, and this is mostly due to the lack of molecular markers. The objectives of this study were to present the first microsatellite markers developed for Spanish lime, testing its usefulness on a sample of cultivated accessions, as well as its transferability to Huaya India (M. oliviformis). To do this, we performed high-throughput sequencing of microsatellite-enriched libraries of Spanish lime using Roche 454, assembled 9567 DNA contig sequences and identified 10,117 microsatellites. After screening 384 of those microsatellites on four DNA samples, 31 polymorphic markers were used to screen 25 accessions of Spanish lime and five of Huaya India collected in Yucatan, Mexico. Genetic diversity was low in Spanish lime (A = 20.61, HE = 0.38) and similar for both sexes of this species. Neighbor-Joining and PCoA analyses clearly discriminated between the two Melicoccus species studied. Nine of the markers showed unique alleles for Huaya India. The set of microsatellite markers developed has a great potential to generate information in relation to conservation genetics, improvement of elite cultivars and breeding programs for Spanish lime and related species

A short course in effective Lagrangians

These lectures provide an introduction to effective theories concentrating on the basic ideas and providing some simple applicationsComment: Lectures delivered at the VII Mexican Workshop on Particles and Fields, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, 10-17 November, 1999. 29 pages, 8 figure

Morphometric differentiation in small juveniles of the pink spotted shrimp (Farfantepenaeus brasiliensis) and the southern pink shrimp (F. notialis) in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

The morphometric and morphological characters of the rostrum have been widely used to identify penaeid shrimp species (Heales et al., 1985; Dall et al., 1990; Pendrey et al., 1999). In this setting, one of the constraints in studies of penaeid shrimp populations has been the uncertainty in the identification of early life history stages, especially in coastal nursery habitats, where recruits and juveniles dominate the population (Dall et al., 1990; Pérez-Castañeda and Defeo, 2001). In the western Atlantic Ocean, Pérez-Farfante (1969, 1970, 1971a) described diagnostic characters of the genus Farfantepenaeus that allowed identification of individuals in the range of 8−20 mm CL (carapace length) on the basis of the following morphological features: 1) changes in the structure of the petasma and thelycum; 2) absence or presence of distomarginal spines in the ventral costa of the petasma; 3) the ratio between the keel height and the sulcus width of the sixth abdominal somite; 4) the shape and position of the rostrum with respect to the segments and flagellum of the antennule; and 5) the ratio between rostrum length (RL) and carapace length (RL/CL). In addition, she classified Farfantepenaeus into two groups according to the shape and position of the rostrum with respect to the segments and flagellum of the antennule and the ratio RL/CL: 1) F. duorarum and F. notialis: short rostrum, straight distally, and the proximodorsal margin convex, usually extending anteriorly to the end of distal antennular segment, sometimes reaching to proximal one-fourth of broadened portion of lateral antennular flagellum, with RL/CL 0.80. Pérez-Farfante stressed that, for the recognition to species level of juveniles <10 mm CL, all the characters listed above should be considered because occasionally one alone may not prove to be diagnostic. However, the only characters that could be distinguished for small juveniles in the range 4−8 mm CL are those defined on the rostrum. Therefore, it has been almost impossible to identify and separate small specimens of Farfantepenaeus (Pérez-Farfante, 1970, 1971a; Pérez-Farfante and Kensley, 1997)

Evolution of trace gases and particles emitted by a chaparral fire in California

Biomass burning (BB) is a major global source of trace gases and particles. Accurately representing the production and evolution of these emissions is an important goal for atmospheric chemical transport models. We measured a suite of gases and aerosols emitted from an 81 hectare prescribed fire in chaparral fuels on the central coast of California, US on 17 November 2009. We also measured physical and chemical changes that occurred in the isolated downwind plume in the first ~4 h after emission. The measurements were carried out onboard a Twin Otter aircraft outfitted with an airborne Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (AFTIR), aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS), single particle soot photometer (SP2), nephelometer, LiCor CO_2 analyzer, a chemiluminescence ozone instrument, and a wing-mounted meteorological probe. Our measurements included: CO_2; CO; NO_x; NH_3; non-methane organic compounds; organic aerosol (OA); inorganic aerosol (nitrate, ammonium, sulfate, and chloride); aerosol light scattering; refractory black carbon (rBC); and ambient temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, and three-dimensional wind velocity. The molar ratio of excess O_3 to excess CO in the plume (ΔO_3/ΔCO) increased from −5.13 (±1.13) × 10^(−3) to 10.2 (±2.16) × 10^(−2) in ~4.5 h following smoke emission. Excess acetic and formic acid (normalized to excess CO) increased by factors of 1.73 ± 0.43 and 7.34 ± 3.03 (respectively) over the same time since emission. Based on the rapid decay of C_2H_4 we infer an in-plume average OH concentration of 5.27 (±0.97) × 10^6 molec cm^(−3), consistent with previous studies showing elevated OH concentrations in biomass burning plumes. Ammonium, nitrate, and sulfate all increased over the course of 4 h. The observed ammonium increase was a factor of 3.90 ± 2.93 in about 4 h, but accounted for just ~36% of the gaseous ammonia lost on a molar basis. Some of the gas phase NH_3 loss may have been due to condensation on, or formation of, particles below the AMS detection range. NO_x was converted to PAN and particle nitrate with PAN production being about two times greater than production of observable nitrate in the first ~4 h following emission. The excess aerosol light scattering in the plume (normalized to excess CO_2) increased by a factor of 2.50 ± 0.74 over 4 h. The increase in light scattering was similar to that observed in an earlier study of a biomass burning plume in Mexico where significant secondary formation of OA closely tracked the increase in scattering. In the California plume, however, ΔOA/ΔCO_2 decreased sharply for the first hour and then increased slowly with a net decrease of ~20% over 4 h. The fraction of thickly coated rBC particles increased up to ~85% over the 4 h aging period. Decreasing OA accompanied by increased scattering/particle coating in initial aging may be due to a combination of particle coagulation and evaporation processes. Recondensation of species initially evaporated from the particles may have contributed to the subsequent slow rise in OA. We compare our results to observations from other plume aging studies and suggest that differences in environmental factors such as smoke concentration, oxidant concentration, actinic flux, and RH contribute significantly to the variation in plume evolution observations

Diets containing sea cucumber (Isostichopus badionotus) meals are hypocholesterolemic in young rats

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Hemidactylus turcicus

Number of Pages: 2Integrative BiologyGeological Science