Evolution of Tektin and ODF3 family genes and the role of gene duplication in the specialization of motile ciliary structures in the polychaete Platynereis dumerilii

Eukaryotic cilia and flagella are highly conserved cellular structures found in organisms as diverse as algae, worms and humans. While they share a common internal structure in the axoneme, they have evolved to fill a wide variety of roles including cell motility, cell signaling, locomotion and sensory reception. The axoneme itself is a complex structure highlighted by its circular arrangement of nine microtubule doublets and, in the case of motile cilia, two additional microtubules in the center. Despite this common conserved structure, little is known about how different types of motile cilia specialized for different functions evolved. One possibility is that duplication of genes coding for conserved structural proteins allows for specialization in different cilia types or new functions. Such specialization or neofunctionalization is often accompanied by changes in transcriptional regulation. Two families of genes encoding coiled-coil domain proteins involved in ciliary structure are the Tektins and ODF3. The overall aim of this study is to elucidate the evolutionary history of these two protein families and investigate how gene duplications may have led to specialization in specific ciliary structures and divergence in transcriptional regulation during the early development of the polychaete Platynereis dumerilii

The Leadership Styles of Administrators and the Professional Effectiveness of Teachers - Enlighten Innovation and Creative Learning Among Educational Institutions

Purpose: Any organization's leadership effectiveness is a determining factor in whether or not it is successful. Effective leadership is essential in today's society since job switching and/or attrition rates are on the rise due to the increasingly competitive environment. Optimal productivity and effectiveness in achieving of organization’s objectives are ensured by effective good leadership. The purpose of this research is to summarise and analyse administrative leadership styles and teacher effectiveness in educational institutions.   Theoretical Framework: It contains many studies undertaken by various scholars on administrative leadership styles, teacher effectiveness and their performance in educational institutions.   Design / Methodology / Approach: This is the review article. The secondary sources used to develop this study were journals and publications. In order to convey the significance of the research issue, a descriptive research design is used to interpret the data and findings.   Findings: Teachers' effectiveness is totally impacted by the leadership style of educational institutions of the administrators. The effectiveness of teachers was found to be influenced by the leadership styles used by administrators of educational institutions. According to research, school administrators who employ transformational leadership are the most successful to improve teachers' effectiveness, whereas autocratic (dictatorial) and laissez-fair (unchallenged) leadership was proven to have a negative effect on teachers' performance and effectiveness.   Research, Practical and Social implications: Employee morale, productivity, the speed of decision-making, and other important areas are all impacted by a leader's style on the organization. Successful leaders do this by thoroughly analyzing issues, evaluating the competence of their staff, weighing their options, and coming to a well-informed decision.   Originality/ Value: The study's contribution is in assisting administrators and teaches in identifying effective teaching methods and leadership styles and putting them into practice in the workplace

Supporting interoperable interpolation: the INTAMAP approach

In many Environmental Information Systems the actual observations arise from a discrete monitoring network which might be rather heterogeneous in both location and types of measurements made. In this paper we describe the architecture and infrastructure for a system, developed as part of the EU FP6 funded INTAMAP project, to provide a service oriented solution that allows the construction of an interoperable, automatic, interpolation system. This system will be based on the Open Geospatial Consortium’s Web Feature Service (WFS) standard. The essence of our approach is to extend the GML3.1 observation feature to include information about the sensor using SensorML, and to further extend this to incorporate observation error characteristics. Our extended WFS will accept observations, and will store them in a database. The observations will be passed to our R-based interpolation server, which will use a range of methods, including a novel sparse, sequential kriging method (only briefly described here) to produce an internal representation of the interpolated field resulting from the observations currently uploaded to the system. The extended WFS will then accept queries, such as ‘What is the probability distribution of the desired variable at a given point’, ‘What is the mean value over a given region’, or ‘What is the probability of exceeding a certain threshold at a given location’. To support information-rich transfer of complex and uncertain predictions we are developing schema to represent probabilistic results in a GML3.1 (object-property) style. The system will also offer more easily accessible Web Map Service and Web Coverage Service interfaces to allow users to access the system at the level of complexity they require for their specific application. Such a system will offer a very valuable contribution to the next generation of Environmental Information Systems in the context of real time mapping for monitoring and security, particularly for systems that employ a service oriented architecture

On the late northward propagation of the West African monsoon in summer 2006 in the region of Niger/Mali

International audienceThis paper investigates the fine-scale dynamical processes at the origin of the late northward migration of the monsoon flow in summer 2006 in the region of Niger and Mali (onset on 3 July 2006 compared to the climatological onset date, 24 June). Compared to a 28-year climatology, 2006 NCEP-2 reanalyses show evidence of an anomalous pattern during 10 days between 25 June and 3 July 2006, characterized by the African Easterly Jet (AEJ) blowing from the northeast along a narrow northeast/southwest band located over the Hoggar and Air mountains associated with an unusually strong northeasterly harmattan in the lee of the mountains. Using data collected during the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) experiment and mesoscale numerical simulations, this study shows evidence of interaction between the AEJ and the orography supported by the reduced gravity shallow water theory which explains the enhancement of the harmattan downstream of the Hoggar and Air mountains in summer 2006. The enhanced harmattan contributes to move southward the intertropical discontinuity (ITD) defined as the interface between the cool moist southwesterly monsoon flow and the warm dry harmattan. Finally, an interaction between the ITD and African Easterly waves contributes to propagate the ITD southward retreat about 1500 km to the west of the Hoggar and Air mountains

Analysis of two SMC HII Regions Considering Thermal Inhomogeneities: Implications for the Determinations of Extragalactic Chemical Abundances

We present long slit spectrophotometry considering the presence of thermal inhomogeneities (t^2) of two HII regions in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC): NGC 456 and NGC 460. Physical conditions and chemical abundances were determined for three positions in NGC 456 and one position in NGC 460, first under the assumption of uniform temperature and then allowing for the possibility of thermal inhomogeneities. We determined t^2 values based on three different methods: i) by comparing the temperature derived using oxygen forbidden lines with the temperature derived using helium recombination lines, ii) by comparing the abundances derived from oxygen forbidden lines with those derived from oxygen recombination lines, and iii) by comparing the abundances derived from ultraviolet carbon forbidden lines with those derived from optical carbon recombination lines. The first two methods averaged t^2=0.067+-0.013 for NGC 456 and t^2=0.036+-0.027 for NGC 460. These values of t^2 imply that when gaseous abundances are determined with collisionally excited lines they are underestimated by a factor of nearly 2. From these objects and others in the literature, we find that in order to account for thermal inhomogeneities and dust depletion, the O/H ratio in low metallicity HII regions should be corrected by 0.25-0.45 dex depending on the thermal structure of the nebula, or by 0.35 dex if such information is not available.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. 41 pages in pre-print format. 3 figure

Identification of the presence of ischaemic stroke lesions by means of texture analysis on brain magnetic resonance images

Study funding This work was funded by the Row Fogo Charitable Trust (MVH, VGC) grant no. BRO-D.FID3668413, and the Wellcome Trust (patient recruitment, scanning, primary study Ref No. 088134/Z/09). The study was conducted independently of the funders who do not hold the data and did not participate in the study design or analyses. The Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 is funded by Age UK (Disconnected Mind grant) and the Medical Research Council (MRC; MR/M01311/1, G1001245, 82800), and the latter supported BSA. IJD was supported by the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, which is funded by the MRC and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (MR/K026992/1). David Moratal acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) and FEDER funds under Grant BFU2015-64380-C2-2-R, and from the Conselleria d'Educació, Investigació, Cultura i Esport, Generalitat Valenciana (grants AEST/2017/013 and AEST/2018/021). Rafael Ortiz-Ramón was supported by grant ACIF/2015/078 and grant BEFPI/2017/004 from the Conselleria d’Educació, Investigació, Cultura i Esport of the Valencian Community (Spain).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Blood Pressure, Internal Carotid Artery Flow Parameters, and Age-Related White Matter Hyperintensities

White matter hyperintensities (WMH) are associated with hypertension. We examined interactions between blood pressure (BP), internal carotid artery (ICA) flow velocity parameters and WMH. We obtained BP measurements from 694 community-dwelling subjects at mean ages 69.6 (±0.8) and again at 72.6 (±0.7) years, plus brain MRI and ICA ultrasound at age 73±1 years. Diastolic and mean BP decreased and pulse pressure increased but systolic BP did not change between 70 and 73 years. Multiple linear regression, corrected for vascular disease and risk factors, showed that WMH at age 73 were associated with history of hypertension (β=0.13, p<0.001) and with BP at age 70 (systolic β=0.08, mean β=0.09, diastolic β=0.08, all p<0.05); similar but attenuated associations were seen for BP at age 73. Lower diastolic BP and higher pulse pressure were associated with higher ICA pulsatility index at age 73 (diastolic BP: standardized β, age 70=−0.24, p<0.001; pulse pressure age 70 β=0.19, p<0.001). WMH were associated with higher ICA pulsatility index (β=0.13, p=0.002) after adjusting for BP and correction for multiple testing. Therefore falling diastolic BP and increased pulse pressure are associated with increased ICA pulsatility index, which in turn is associated with WMH. This suggests that hypertension and WMH may either associate indirectly because hypertension increases arterial stiffness which leads to WMH over time, or co-associate through advancing age and stiffer vessels, or both. Reducing vascular stiffness may reduce WMH progression and should be tested in randomised trials, in addition to testing antihypertensive therapy

Volumetric and correlational implications of brain parcellation method selection:a 3-way comparison in the frontal lobes.

OBJECTIVE: The aims of this study were to compare distinct brain frontal lobe parcellation methods across 90 brain magnetic resonance imaging scans and examine their associations with cognition in older age. METHODS: Three parcellation methods (Manual, FreeSurfer, and Stereology) were applied to T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging of 90 older men, aged ∼73 years. A measure of general fluid intelligence (g(f)) associated with dorsolateral frontal regions was also derived from a contemporaneous psychological test battery. RESULTS: Despite highly discordant raw volumes for the same nominal regions, Manual and FreeSurfer (but not Stereology) left dorsolateral measures were significantly correlated with g(f) (r > 0.22), whereas orbital and inferior lateral volumes were not, consistent with the hypothesized frontal localization of g(f). CONCLUSIONS: Individual differences in specific frontal lobe brain volumes—variously measured—show consistent associations with cognitive ability in older age. Importantly, differences in parcellation protocol for some regions that may impact the outcome of brain-cognition analyses are discussed