The diet of the Tasmanian Devil, Sarcophilus harrisii, as determined from analysis of scat and stomach contents

Knowledge of the diets of carnivores is an essential precursor to understanding their role as predators in ecosystems. To date, understanding of the diet of Tasmanian Devils, Sarcophilus harrisii, is limited and based upon largely qualitative descriptions. We examined the diets of Tasmanian Devils at six sites by identifying undigested hair, bone and feathers found in their scats. These sites range across different habitat types in coastal and inland Tasmania, and encompass devil populations that are known as both free of the Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) and populations that are infected by the disease. Tasmanian Devil scats at coastal sites (n=27) contained ten species of mammal, as well as birds, fish and insects. Scats collected from inland sites (n= 17) were comprised of six mammalian species, birds and invertebrates. The most common food items were birds, Common Brushtail and Ringtail possums (Trichosurus vulpecula and Pseudocheirus peregrinus respectively), Tasmanian Pademelons (Thylogale billardierii) and Bennett's Wallabies (Macropus ruftgriseus). O fall the scats, 61% contained only one food group, 32% contained two groups, 4% contained three food items and only one scat (2%) contained four food groups. We supplement this information with stomach contents from road-killed devils, and compare our results with those of previous studies, with a view to furthering our understanding ofthe ecology ofthe threatened Tasmanian Devil. Such information will be important for the management of wild and captive devil populations, particularly in light of DFTD

An IDL-based analysis package for COBE and other skycube-formatted astronomical data

UIMAGE is a data analysis package written in IDL for the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) project. COBE has extraordinarily stringent accuracy requirements: 1 percent mid-infrared absolute photometry, 0.01 percent submillimeter absolute spectrometry, and 0.0001 percent submillimeter relative photometry. Thus, many of the transformations and image enhancements common to analysis of large data sets must be done with special care. UIMAGE is unusual in this sense in that it performs as many of its operations as possible on the data in its native format and projection, which in the case of COBE is the quadrilateralized sphereical cube ('skycube'). That is, after reprojecting the data, e.g., onto an Aitoff map, the user who performs an operation such as taking a crosscut or extracting data from a pixel is transparently acting upon the skycube data from which the projection was made, thereby preserving the accuracy of the result. Current plans call for formatting external data bases such as CO maps into the skycube format with a high-accuracy transformation, thereby allowing Guest Investigators to use UIMAGE for direct comparison of the COBE maps with those at other wavelengths from other instruments. It is completely menu-driven so that its use requires no knowledge of IDL. Its functionality includes I/O from the COBE archives, FITS files, and IDL save sets as well as standard analysis operations such as smoothing, reprojection, zooming, statistics of areas, spectral analysis, etc. One of UIMAGE's more advanced and attractive features is its terminal independence. Most of the operations (e.g., menu-item selection or pixel selection) that are driven by the mouse on an X-windows terminal are also available using arrow keys and keyboard entry (e.g., pixel coordinates) on VT200 and Tektronix-class terminals. Even limited grey scales of images are available this way. Obviously, image processing is very limited on this type of terminal, but it is nonetheless surprising how much analysis can be done on that medium. Such flexibility has the virtue of expanding the user community to those who must work remotely on non-image terminals, e.g., via modem

Ground state correlations and structure of odd spherical nuclei

It is well known that the Pauli principle plays a substantial role at low energies because the phonon operators are not ideal boson operators. Calculating the exact commutators between the quasiparticle and phonon operators one can take into account the Pauli principle corrections. Besides the ground state correlations due to the quasiparticle interaction in the ground state influence the single particle fragmentation as well. In this paper, we generalize the basic QPM equations to account for both mentioned effects. As an illustration of our approach, calculations on the structure of the low-lying states in $^{131}$Ba have been performed.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figur

Blind Normalization of Speech From Different Channels

We show how to construct a channel-independent representation of speech that has propagated through a noisy reverberant channel. This is done by blindly rescaling the cepstral time series by a non-linear function, with the form of this scale function being determined by previously encountered cepstra from that channel. The rescaled form of the time series is an invariant property of it in the following sense: it is unaffected if the time series is transformed by any time-independent invertible distortion. Because a linear channel with stationary noise and impulse response transforms cepstra in this way, the new technique can be used to remove the channel dependence of a cepstral time series. In experiments, the method achieved greater channel-independence than cepstral mean normalization, and it was comparable to the combination of cepstral mean normalization and spectral subtraction, despite the fact that no measurements of channel noise or reverberations were required (unlike spectral subtraction).Comment: 25 pages, 7 figure

SENTRY antimicrobial surveillance program report: latin american and brazilian results for 1997 through 2001

The alarming emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance among common bacteria threatens the effectiveness of therapy for many infections. Surveillance of antimicrobial resistance is essential to identify the major problems and guide adequate control measures. Several resistance surveillance programs have been implemented in North America and Europe in the last decade; however, very few programs have assessed antimicrobial resistance in Latin American countries. The SENTRY Antimicrobial Surveillance Program was initiated in 1997 and represents the most comprehensive surveillance program in place at the present time worldwide. The SENTRY Program collects consecutive isolates from clinically documented infections in more than 80 medical centers worldwide (10 in Latin America). The isolates are collected according to the type of infection (objectives) and susceptibility tested in a central microbiology laboratory by reference broth microdilution methods according to NCCLS guidelines. The Program also incorporated molecular typing (ribotyping and PFGE) and resistance mechanism analysis of selected isolates. In this report we present a very broad analysis of the data generated by testing almost 20,000 bacterial isolates against more than 30 antimicrobial agents. The susceptibility results (MIC50, MIC90 and % susceptible) are presented in 11 tables according to the organism and site of infection. The data from Brazil, as well as the data from isolates collected in 2001, are analyzed separately. This report allows the evaluation of the activities numerous antimicrobial agents against clinical isolates collected in Latin American countries.Federal University of São Paulo Division of Infectious Diseases Special Laboratory of Clinical MicrobiologyThe JONES Group JMI LaboratoriesUNIFESP, Division of Infectious Diseases Special Laboratory of Clinical MicrobiologySciEL

Diminished linear growth during intermittent calcitriol therapy in children undergoing CCPD

Diminished linear growth during intermittent calcitriol therapy in children undergoing CCPD. Daily calcitriol therapy has been reported to improve linear growth in children with renal bone disease, and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D is a key regulator of chondrocyte proliferation and differentiation. Whereas large intermittent doses of calcitriol can lower serum parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels and reverse the skeletal changes of secondary hyperparathyroidism, the impact of intermittent calcitriol therapy on linear growth in children is not known. Thus, we studied 16 pre-pubertal patients with bone biopsy-proven secondary hyperparathyroidism who completed a 12-month prospective clinical trial of intermittent calcitriol therapy. Biochemical results and growth data obtained during intermittent calcitriol therapy were compared to values determined during the preceding 12 months of daily calcitriol therapy in each study subject; changes in bone histology were assessed after one year of intermittent calcitriol therapy. Z-scores for height did not change during 12 months of daily calcitriol therapy. Although the skeletal lesions of secondary hyperparathyroidism improved in most patients, Z-scores for height decreased from -1.8 ± 0.32 to -2.0 ± 0.33, P < 0.01, during intermittent calcitriol therapy. The largest reductions were seen in patients who developed adynamic bone lesions after 12 months of treatment. Delta Z-scores for height correlated with serum PTH, r = 0.71, P < 0.01, and alkaline phosphatase levels, r = 0.67, P < 0.01, during intermittent calcitriol therapy but not during daily calcitriol therapy. The data suggest that high dose intermittent calcitriol therapy adversely affects linear growth, particularly in patients with the adynamic lesion. The higher doses of calcitriol or the intermittent schedule of calcitriol administration may directly inhibit chondrocyte activity within growth plate cartilage of children with end-stage renal disease

Low Energy States of 3181Ga50^{81}_{31} Ga_{50} : Elements on the Doubly-Magic Nature of 78^{78}Ni

Excited levels were attributed to $^{81}_{31}$Ga$_{50}$ for the first time which were fed in the $\beta$-decay of its mother nucleus $^{81}$Zn produced in the fission of $^{nat}$U using the ISOL technique. We show that the structure of this nucleus is consistent with that of the less exotic proton-deficient N=50 isotones within the assumption of strong proton Z=28 and neutron N=50 effective shell effects.Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX 4, 5 figures (eps format

Semi-synthesis of small molecules of aminocarbazoles: tumor growth inhibition and potential impact on p53

The tumor suppressor p53 is inactivated by mutation in approximately 50% of human cancers. Small molecules that bind and stabilize those mutants may represent effective anticancer drugs. Herein, we report the tumor cell growth inhibitory activity of carbazole alkaloids and amino derivatives, as well as their potential activation of p53. Twelve aminocarbazole alkaloids were semi-synthesized from heptaphylline (1), 7-methoxy heptaphylline (2), and 7-methoxymukonal (3), isolated from Clausena harmandiana, using a reductive amination protocol. Naturally-occurring carbazoles 1–3 and their amino derivatives were evaluated for their potential effect on wild-type and mutant p53 activity using a yeast screening assay and on human tumor cell lines. Naturally-occurring carbazoles 1–3 showed the most potent growth inhibitory effects on wild-type p53-expressing cells, being heptaphylline (1) the most promising in all the investigated cell lines. However, compound 1 also showed growth inhibition against non-tumor cells. Conversely, semi-synthetic aminocarbazole 1d showed an interesting growth inhibitory activity in tumor cells expressing both wild-type and mutant p53, exhibiting low growth inhibition on non-tumor cells. The yeast assay showed a potential reactivation of mutant p53 by heptaphylline derivatives, including compound 1d. The results obtained indicate that carbazole alkaloids may represent a promising starting point to search for new mutp53-reactivating agents with promising applications in cancer therapy.The authors thank to national funds provided by FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and COMPETE under the Strategic Funding of CIIMAR UIDB/04423/2020 (Natural Products and Medicinal Chemistry) and LAQV/REQUIMTE (UID/QUI/50006/2020), the project PTDC/SAU-PUB/28736/2017 (reference POCI-01–0145-FEDER028736), PTDC/DTP-FTO/1981/2014-POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016581). We also thank FCT for the fellowship SFRH/BD/128673/2017 (J. Loureiro). Ploenthip Puthongking thanks Thailand Research Fund (DBG6080006), Thailand