2,035 research outputs found
Multilocus phylogenetic analyses reveal that habitat selection drives the speciation of Didymozoidae (Digenea) parasitizing Pacific and Atlantic bluefin tunas
Parasite communities of wild and reared bluefin tuna display remarkable diversity. Among these, the most prevalent and abundant are the Didymozoidae (Monticelli, 1888) (Trematoda, Digenea), considered one of the most taxonomically complex digenean families. The aim of this study was to evaluate phylogenetic structure of Didymozoidae occurring in Pacific (Thunnus orientalis) and Atlantic bluefin tuna (T. thynnus) in order to increase our knowledge of didymozoid zoogeography and identify species that could successfully be employed as biological tags for stock assessment studies. For the present analyses we used 2 nuclear ribosomal DNA loci, part of the 28S gene and the second internal transcribed spacer (ITS-2) as well as a portion of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 gene (cox1). In most parasitic groups, morphology is the primary factor in the structuring of phylogenetic relationships. In rare examples, however, habitat has been suggested as a primary factor affecting parasite evolution. During their evolution, didymozoids have spread and inhabited a remarkable number of different sites in their hosts, colonizing exterior as well as strictly interior niches. Our data suggest that habitat selection has been the leading force in shaping didymozoid phylogenetic relationships. For 2 didymozoid species (D. wedli and D. palati), cox1 sequences indicate intraspecific differences between Mexican and Adriatic populations
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Nutritional and smoking advice recalled by patients attending a UK age-related macular degeneration clinic
Background: Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is responsible for half of registered visual impairment in the UK. The Royal College of Ophthalmologists recommends providing guidance to people with AMD regarding smoking, diet, and nutritional supplements. The aim of this study was to investigate lifestyle advice recalled by patients with neovascular AMD (nAMD). Methods: The study took place at a UK hospital outpatients' clinic. Eligible patients with unilateral nAMD were presented with a survey about lifestyle advice provision. Results: Of 248 respondents, only 39.9% remembered receiving advice regarding diet at the hospital. Only 24.2% of respondents recalled receiving advice regarding nutritional supplements, and only 19.8% of respondents started taking daily supplements as a result of their AMD. The most prevalent reason for not taking supplements amongst those advised to do so was lack of understanding of how it would help their eyes. Nearly 13% of the sample reported currently smoking, 53.1% of which reported that they were advised to stop smoking when diagnosed with AMD. Conclusion: The findings suggest that it would be beneficial to review the provision of lifestyle advice to patients attending AMD outpatients' clinics, and to consider whether advice is being provided in an optimal format for later recall
A New Symmetry for QED
We demonstrate that QED exhibits a previously unobserved symmetry. Some
consequences are discussed.Comment: 9 pages, MZ-TH/93-02, DIAS-STP-93-0
Romantic Partnerships and the Dispersion of Social Ties: A Network Analysis of Relationship Status on Facebook
A crucial task in the analysis of on-line social-networking systems is to
identify important people --- those linked by strong social ties --- within an
individual's network neighborhood. Here we investigate this question for a
particular category of strong ties, those involving spouses or romantic
partners. We organize our analysis around a basic question: given all the
connections among a person's friends, can you recognize his or her romantic
partner from the network structure alone? Using data from a large sample of
Facebook users, we find that this task can be accomplished with high accuracy,
but doing so requires the development of a new measure of tie strength that we
term `dispersion' --- the extent to which two people's mutual friends are not
themselves well-connected. The results offer methods for identifying types of
structurally significant people in on-line applications, and suggest a
potential expansion of existing theories of tie strength.Comment: Proc. 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and
Social Computing (CSCW), 201
Representations of p-brane topological charge algebras
The known extended algebras associated with p-branes are shown to be
generated as topological charge algebras of the standard p-brane actions. A
representation of the charges in terms of superspace forms is constructed. The
charges are shown to be the same in standard/extended superspace formulations
of the action.Comment: 22 pages. Typos fixed, refs added. Minor additions to comments
sectio
Remarks on Legendrian Self-Linking
The Thurston-Bennequin invariant provides one notion of self-linking for any
homologically-trivial Legendrian curve in a contact three-manifold. Here we
discuss related analytic notions of self-linking for Legendrian knots in
Euclidean space. Our definition is based upon a reformulation of the elementary
Gauss linking integral and is motivated by ideas from supersymmetric gauge
theory. We recover the Thurston-Bennequin invariant as a special case.Comment: 42 pages, many figures; v2: minor revisions, published versio
Pattern equivariant functions and cohomology
The cohomology of a tiling or a point pattern has originally been defined via
the construction of the hull or the groupoid associated with the tiling or the
pattern. Here we present a construction which is more direct and therefore
easier accessible. It is based on generalizing the notion of equivariance from
lattices to point patterns of finite local complexity.Comment: 8 pages including 2 figure
Topological Quantum Phase Transitions in Topological Superconductors
In this paper we show that BF topological superconductors (insulators) exibit
phase transitions between different topologically ordered phases characterized
by different ground state degeneracy on manifold with non-trivial topology.
These phase transitions are induced by the condensation (or lack of) of
topological defects. We concentrate on the (2+1)-dimensional case where the BF
model reduce to a mixed Chern-Simons term and we show that the superconducting
phase has a ground state degeneracy and not . When the symmetry is
, namely when both gauge fields are compact, this model is
not equivalent to the sum of two Chern-Simons term with opposite chirality,
even if naively diagonalizable. This is due to the fact that U(1) symmetry
requires an ultraviolet regularization that make the diagonalization
impossible. This can be clearly seen using a lattice regularization, where the
gauge fields become angular variables. Moreover we will show that the phase in
which both gauge fields are compact is not allowed dynamically.Comment: 5 pages, no figure
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