The early evolutionary history of sharks and shark-like fishes

The Middle Ordovician to Late Silurian represents an interval of approximately 50 million years, which has been recognised as the initial, cryptic, period in the evolutionary history of chondrichthyan fish. The fossil remains attributed to early chondrichthyans are dominated by isolated dermal scales that predate the appearance of undisputed chondrichthyan teeth and articulated skeletons in the Lower Devonian. Investigation of the inter-relationships of these scale taxa and their systematic position relative to high- ranked chondrichthyan clades has been hampered by the lack of developed scale-based classification schemes for jawed gnathostomes, coupled with the limited use of scale characters in phylogenetic studies of Palaeozoic Chondrichthyes. Here, all previously documented scale types of alleged Lower Palaeozoic chondrichthyans were examined using a combination of X-ray microtomography, SEM and Nomarski DIC optics. These were found to exhibit a set of characteristics (symmetrical trunk scales, areal crown growth and lack of hard-tissue resorption, cancellous bone and enamel) recognised as specific to the dermal skeleton of chondrichthyans among derived gnathostomes. The collected data permitted the establishment of a hierarchy of scale characters for separate taxonomic ranks, leading to the recognition of three Orders (Mongolepidida, Elegestolepida ordo nov. and Altholepida ordo nov.) of early chondrichthyans, differentiated by distinct types of scale-crown morphogenesis. A scale-based cladistic analysis of jawed gnathostomes corroborated these results by recovering a chondrichthyan clade that incorporates all examined taxa and ‘acanthodians’ with non-superpositional crown growth patterns. It is thus proposed that chondrichthyan dermoskeletal characters carry a phylogenetic signal, allowing to interpret the documented diverse types of scale morphogenesis as evidence for a major radiation of chondrichthyan lineages in the Lower Palaeozoic

Outwitting Enlightenment with Words: Philosophical Style, Critique, and History in Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment

To many of its most authoritative commentators, Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment cannot but entail a reductively negative, pessimistic philosophy of history that ties the historical progress of enlightenment rationality with regression and domination so tightly as to undermine its own critical intentions. My thesis contends that a text as self-reflective of its own form of presentation as the Dialectic obviously is could not be read so literally. To remedy this, I offer an interpretive reappraisal of the Dialectic of Enlightenment , which places a methodological appreciation of the latter’s distinct style and form of presentation at the centre of understanding its philosophical status and more specifically, its philosophical viability as a form of social critique. I argue that the Dialectic pursues, in the first place, the negative, critical aim of undermining the unreflective perceptions of history and progress through which present society constructs its own self-understanding, and does so not only on the level of philosophical content, but also on the level of linguistic form. The text performatively repeats the conventional tropes, narratives and genres in which the historical self-understanding of enlightenment is embodied, and enacts, on the level of linguistic expression itself, the failure of this self-understanding to deliver on its own promise. I argue that this form of critical textual composition simultaneously implicates its own audience and is aimed at their experience of the text. As such, it is concerned not simply with challenging their rational beliefs, but also and especially at undermining their affective investments to socially prevalent notions of history

An early chondrichthyan and the evolutionary assembly of a shark body plan

Although relationships among the major groups of living gnathostomes are well established, the relatedness of early jawed vertebrates to modern clades is intensely debated. Here, we provide a new description of Gladbachus , a Middle Devonian (Givetian approx. 385-million-year-old) stem chondrichthyan from Germany, and one of the very few early chondrichthyans in which substantial portions of the endoskeleton are preserved. Tomographic and histological techniques reveal new details of the gill skeleton, hyoid arch and jaws, neurocranium, cartilage, scales and teeth. Despite many features resembling placoderm or osteichthyan conditions, phylogenetic analysis confirms Gladbachus as a stem chondrichthyan and corroborates hypotheses that all acanthodians are stem chondrichthyans. The unfamiliar character combination displayed by Gladbachus , alongside conditions observed in acanthodians, implies that pre-Devonian stem chondrichthyans are severely under-sampled and strongly supports indications from isolated scales that the gnathostome crown group originated at the latest by the early Silurian (approx. 440 Ma). Moreover, phylogenetic results highlight the likely convergent evolution of conventional chondrichthyan conditions among earliest members of this primary gnathostome division, while skeletal morphology points towards the likely suspension feeding habits of Gladbachus , suggesting a functional origin of the gill slit condition characteristic of the vast majority of living and fossil chondrichthyans. </jats:p

Penilaian Kinerja Keuangan Koperasi di Kabupaten Pelalawan

This paper describe development and financial performance of cooperative in District Pelalawan among 2007 - 2008. Studies on primary and secondary cooperative in 12 sub-districts. Method in this stady use performance measuring of productivity, efficiency, growth, liquidity, and solvability of cooperative. Productivity of cooperative in Pelalawan was highly but efficiency still low. Profit and income were highly, even liquidity of cooperative very high, and solvability was good

Juxtaposing BTE and ATE – on the role of the European insurance industry in funding civil litigation

One of the ways in which legal services are financed, and indeed shaped, is through private insurance arrangement. Two contrasting types of legal expenses insurance contracts (LEI) seem to dominate in Europe: before the event (BTE) and after the event (ATE) legal expenses insurance. Notwithstanding institutional differences between different legal systems, BTE and ATE insurance arrangements may be instrumental if government policy is geared towards strengthening a market-oriented system of financing access to justice for individuals and business. At the same time, emphasizing the role of a private industry as a keeper of the gates to justice raises issues of accountability and transparency, not readily reconcilable with demands of competition. Moreover, multiple actors (clients, lawyers, courts, insurers) are involved, causing behavioural dynamics which are not easily predicted or influenced. Against this background, this paper looks into BTE and ATE arrangements by analysing the particularities of BTE and ATE arrangements currently available in some European jurisdictions and by painting a picture of their respective markets and legal contexts. This allows for some reflection on the performance of BTE and ATE providers as both financiers and keepers. Two issues emerge from the analysis that are worthy of some further reflection. Firstly, there is the problematic long-term sustainability of some ATE products. Secondly, the challenges faced by policymakers that would like to nudge consumers into voluntarily taking out BTE LEI

Search for stop and higgsino production using diphoton Higgs boson decays

Results are presented of a search for a "natural" supersymmetry scenario with gauge mediated symmetry breaking. It is assumed that only the supersymmetric partners of the top-quark (stop) and the Higgs boson (higgsino) are accessible. Events are examined in which there are two photons forming a Higgs boson candidate, and at least two b-quark jets. In 19.7 inverse femtobarns of proton-proton collision data at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV, recorded in the CMS experiment, no evidence of a signal is found and lower limits at the 95% confidence level are set, excluding the stop mass below 360 to 410 GeV, depending on the higgsino mass

Severe early onset preeclampsia: short and long term clinical, psychosocial and biochemical aspects

Preeclampsia is a pregnancy specific disorder commonly defined as de novo hypertension and proteinuria after 20 weeks gestational age. It occurs in approximately 3-5% of pregnancies and it is still a major cause of both foetal and maternal morbidity and mortality worldwide1. As extensive research has not yet elucidated the aetiology of preeclampsia, there are no rational preventive or therapeutic interventions available. The only rational treatment is delivery, which benefits the mother but is not in the interest of the foetus, if remote from term. Early onset preeclampsia (<32 weeks’ gestational age) occurs in less than 1% of pregnancies. It is, however often associated with maternal morbidity as the risk of progression to severe maternal disease is inversely related with gestational age at onset2. Resulting prematurity is therefore the main cause of neonatal mortality and morbidity in patients with severe preeclampsia3. Although the discussion is ongoing, perinatal survival is suggested to be increased in patients with preterm preeclampsia by expectant, non-interventional management. This temporising treatment option to lengthen pregnancy includes the use of antihypertensive medication to control hypertension, magnesium sulphate to prevent eclampsia and corticosteroids to enhance foetal lung maturity4. With optimal maternal haemodynamic status and reassuring foetal condition this results on average in an extension of 2 weeks. Prolongation of these pregnancies is a great challenge for clinicians to balance between potential maternal risks on one the eve hand and possible foetal benefits on the other. Clinical controversies regarding prolongation of preterm preeclamptic pregnancies still exist – also taking into account that preeclampsia is the leading cause of maternal mortality in the Netherlands5 - a debate which is even more pronounced in very preterm pregnancies with questionable foetal viability6-9. Do maternal risks of prolongation of these very early pregnancies outweigh the chances of neonatal survival? Counselling of women with very early onset preeclampsia not only comprises of knowledge of the outcome of those particular pregnancies, but also knowledge of outcomes of future pregnancies of these women is of major clinical importance. This thesis opens with a review of the literature on identifiable risk factors of preeclampsia

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio