Male mastodon landscape use changed with maturation (late Pleistocene, North America)

Under harsh Pleistocene climates, migration and other forms of seasonally patterned landscape use were likely critical for reproductive success of mastodons (Mammut americanum) and other megafauna. However, little is known about how their geographic ranges and mobility fluctuated seasonally or changed with sexual maturity. We used a spatially explicit movement model that coupled strontium and oxygen isotopes from two serially sampled intervals (5+ adolescent years and 3+ adult years) in a male mastodon tusk to test for changes in landscape use associated with maturation and reproductive phenology. The mastodon’s early adolescent home range was geographically restricted, with no evidence of seasonal preferences. Following inferred separation from the matriarchal herd (starting age 12 y), the adolescent male’s mobility increased as landscape use expanded away from his natal home range (likely central Indiana). As an adult, the mastodon’s monthly movements increased further. Landscape use also became seasonally structured, with some areas, including northeast Indiana, used only during the inferred mastodon mating season (spring/summer). The mastodon died in this area (\u3e150 km from his core, nonsummer range) after sustaining a craniofacial injury consistent with a fatal blow from a competing male’s tusk during a battle over access to mates. Northeast Indiana was likely a preferred mating area for this individual and may have been regionally significant for late Pleistocene mastodons. Similarities between mammutids and elephantids in herd structure, tusk dimorphism, tusk function, and the geographic component of male maturation indicate that these traits were likely inherited from a common ancestor

Editorial: A Golden Age for Strontium Isotope Research? Current Advances in Paleoecological and Archaeological Research

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Silver Linings at the Dawn of a ‘Golden Age'

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank the editors at Frontiers for their support and patience, and the careful consideration two reviewers gave to this manuscript. MJW would like to acknowledge that, at Fairbanks, he is working on the ancestral land of Troth Yeddha’, home of the Lower Tanana people. He would also like to acknowledge that the lands on which he does his work are the ancestral lands of the Dené people who stewarded those lands for thousands of years and continue to steward those lands, further he would like to thank them and respect their enduring relationship to their homelands.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Coordinated Transcription of Key Pathways in the Mouse by the Circadian Clock

AbstractIn mammals, circadian control of physiology and behavior is driven by a master pacemaker located in the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) of the hypothalamus. We have used gene expression profiling to identify cycling transcripts in the SCN and in the liver. Our analysis revealed ∼650 cycling transcripts and showed that the majority of these were specific to either the SCN or the liver. Genetic and genomic analysis suggests that a relatively small number of output genes are directly regulated by core oscillator components. Major processes regulated by the SCN and liver were found to be under circadian regulation. Importantly, rate-limiting steps in these various pathways were key sites of circadian control, highlighting the fundamental role that circadian clocks play in cellular and organismal physiology

Multivariate time-series analysis of biomarkers from a dengue cohort offers new approaches for diagnosis and prognosis

Dengue is a major public health problem worldwide with distinct clinical manifestations: an acute presentation (dengue fever, DF) similar to other febrile illnesses (OFI) and a more severe, life-threatening form (severe dengue, SD). Due to nonspecific clinical presentation during the early phase of dengue infection, differentiating DF from OFI has remained a chal-lenge, and current methods to determine severity of dengue remain poor early predictors. We present a prospective clinical cohort study conducted in Caracas, Venezuela from 2001–2005, designed to determine whether clinical and hematological parameters could distinguish DF from OFI, and identify early prognostic biomarkers of SD. From 204 enrolled suspected dengue patients, there were 111 confirmed dengue cases. Piecewise mixed effects regression and nonparametric statistics were used to analyze longitudinal records. Decreased serum albumin and fibrinogen along with increased D-dimer, thrombin-anti-thrombin complex, activated partial thromboplastin time and thrombin time were prognostic of SD on the day of defervescence. In the febrile phase, the day-to-day rates of change in serum albumin and fibrinogen concentration, along with platelet counts, were significantly decreased in dengue patients compared to OFI, while the day-to-day rates of change of lym-phocytes (%) and thrombin time were increased. In dengue patients, the absolute lympho-cytes to neutrophils ratio showed specific temporal increase, enabling classification of dengue patients entering the critical phase with an area under the ROC curve of 0.79. Secondary dengue patients had elongation of Thrombin time compared to primary cases while the D-dimer formation (fibrinolysis marker) remained always lower for secondary compared to primary cases. Based on partial analysis of 31 viral complete genomes, a high frequency of C-to-T transitions located at the third codon position was observed, suggesting deamina-tion events with five major hot spots of amino acid polymorphic sites outside in non-structural proteins. No association of severe outcome was statistically significant for any of the five major polymorphic sites found. This study offers an improved understanding of dengue hemostasis and a novel way of approaching dengue diagnosis and disease prognosis using piecewise mixed effect regression modeling. It also suggests that a better discrimination of the day of disease can improve the diagnostic and prognostic classification power of clinical variables using ROC curve analysis. The piecewise mixed effect regression model corroborated key early clinical determinants of disease, and offers a time-series approach for future vaccine and pathogenesis clinical studies

The effect of the impact of comet Shoemaker Levy‐9 on Jupiter's aurorae

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95050/1/grl8225.pd

Parallel Retention of Pdx2 Genes in Cartilaginous Fish and Coelacanths

The Pdx1 or Ipf1 gene encodes an important homeodomain-containing protein with key roles in pancreas development and function. Mutations in human PDX1 are implicated in developmental defects and disease of the pancreas. Extensive research, including genome sequencing, has indicated that Pdx1 is the only member of its gene family in mammals, birds, amphibians, and ray-finned fish, and with the exception of teleost fish, this gene forms part of the ParaHox gene cluster along with Gsx1 and Cdx2. The ParaHox cluster, however, is a remnant of a 4-fold genome duplication; the three other ParaHox paralogues lack a Pdx-like gene in all vertebrate genomes examined to date. We have used bacterial artificial chromosome cloning and synteny analysis to show that the ancestor of living jawed vertebrates in fact had more ParaHox genes, including two Pdx genes (Pdx1 and Pdx2). Surprisingly, the two Pdx genes have been retained in parallel in two quite distantly related lineages, the cartilaginous fish (sharks, skates, and chimeras) and the Indonesian coelacanth, Latimeria menadoensis. The Pdx2 gene has been lost independently in ray-finned fish and in tetrapods

Dissipative effects on quantum glassy systems

We discuss the behavior of a quantum glassy system coupled to a bath of quantum oscillators. We show that the system localizes in the absence of interactions when coupled to a subOhmic bath. When interactions are switched on localization disappears and the system undergoes a phase transition towards a glassy phase. We show that the position of the critical line separating the disordered and the ordered phases strongly depends on the coupling to the bath. For a given type of bath, the ordered glassy phase is favored by a stronger coupling. Ohmic, subOhmic and superOhmic baths lead to different transition lines. We draw our conclusions from the analysis of the partition function using the replicated imaginary-time formalism and from the study of the real-time dynamics of the coupled system using the Schwinger-Keldysh closed time-path formalism.Comment: 39 pages, 13 figures, RevTe

Abuse‐Related Post‐Traumatic Stress, Coping, and Tobacco Use in Pregnancy

Objective: To examine the relationship between trauma history, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), coping, and smoking in a diverse sample of pregnant women, some of whom are active smokers. Design: Secondary analysis from a prospective study on PTSD and pregnancy outcomes. Setting: Maternity clinics at three health systems in the midwestern United States. Participants: Women age 18 or older (1,547) interviewed at gestational age fewer than 28 weeks. Methods: Participants were classified at nonsmokers, quitters (stopped smoking during pregnancy), and pregnancy smokers. Demographic, trauma, and pregnancy factors, substance use, and use of tobacco to cope were compared across groups. Logistic regression assessed the influence of these factors on being a smoker versus a nonsmoker and a quitter versus a pregnancy smoker. Results: Smokers differed from nonsmokers on all demographic risk factors (being African American, being pregnant as a teen, having lower income and less education, and living in high‐crime areas), had higher rates of current and lifetime PTSD, and were more likely to report abuse as their worst trauma. Pregnancy smokers had lower levels of education, were more likely to classify their worst trauma as “extremely troubling,” and were more likely to exhibit PTSD hyperarousal symptoms. In regression models, smoking “to cope with emotions and problems” doubled the odds of continuing to smoke while pregnant even after accounting for several relevant risk factors. Conclusion: Smoking behavior in pregnancy may be influenced by the need to cope with abuse‐related PTSD symptoms. Clinicians should consider using trauma‐informed interventions when working with tobacco‐using pregnant women.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/86982/1/j.1552-6909.2011.01261.x.pd

Quantum TAP equations

We derive Thouless-Anderson-Palmer (TAP) equations for quantum disordered systems. We apply them to the study of the paramagnetic and glassy phases in the quantum version of the spherical p spin-glass model. We generalize several useful quantities (complexity, threshold level, etc.) and various ideas (configurational entropy crisis, etc), that have been developed within the classical TAP approach, to quantum systems. The analysis of the quantum TAP equations allows us to show that the phase diagram (temperature-quantum parameter) of the p spin-glass model should be generic. In particular, we argue that a crossover from a second order thermodynamic transition close to the classical critical point to a first order thermodynamic transition close to the quantum critical point is to be expected in a large class of systems.Comment: 29 pages, 4 fi