22 research outputs found
Conservation of freshwater bivalves at the global scale: diversity, threats and research needs
Bivalves are ubiquitous members of freshwater ecosystems and responsible for important functions and services. The present paper revises freshwater bivalve diversity, conservation status and threats at the global scale and discusses future research needs and management actions. The diversity patterns are uneven across the globe with hotspots in the interior basin in the United States of America (USA), Central America, Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. Freshwater bivalves are affected by multiple threats that vary across the globe; however, pollution and natural system (habitat) modifications being consistently found as the most impacting. Freshwater bivalves are among the most threatened groups in the world with 40% of the species being near threatened, threatened or extinct, and among them the order Unionida is the most endangered. We suggest that global cooperation between scientists, managers, politicians and general public, and application of new technologies (new generation sequencing and remote sensing, among others) will strengthen the quality of studies on the natural history and conservation of freshwater bivalves. Finally, we introduce the articles published in this special issue of Hydrobiologia under the scope of the Second International Meeting on Biology and Conservation of Freshwater Bivalves held in 2015 in Buffalo, New York, USA.This work was supported by FCT—Foundation for Science and
Technology, Project 3599—Promote the Scientific Production
and Technological Development and Thematic 3599-PPCDT by
FEDER as part of the project FRESHCO: multiple implications
of invasive species on Freshwater Mussel co-extinction
processes (Contract: PTDC/AGRFOR/1627/2014). FCT also
supported MLL under Grant (SFRH/BD/115728/2016)
Observation of electroweak production of two jets in association with an isolated photon and missing transverse momentum, and search for a Higgs boson decaying into invisible particles at 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector
This paper presents the measurement of the electroweak production of two jets
in association with a pair with the boson decaying into two
neutrinos. It also presents the search for invisible or partially invisible
decays of a Higgs boson with a mass of 125 GeV produced through vector-boson
fusion with a photon in the final state. These results use data from LHC
proton-proton collisions at = 13 TeV collected with the ATLAS
detector corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb. The event
signature, shared by all benchmark processes considered for measurements and
searches, is characterized by a significant amount of unbalanced transverse
momentum and a photon in the final state, in addition to a pair of forward
jets. For electroweak production of in association with two jets, the
background-only hypothesis is rejected with an observed (expected) significance
of 5.2 (5.1) standard deviations. The measured fiducial cross-section for this
process is 1.310.29 fb. Observed (expected) upper limit of 0.37 (0.34) at
95% confidence level is set on the branching ratio of a 125 GeV Higgs boson to
invisible particles, assuming the Standard Model production cross-section. The
signature is also interpreted in the context of decays of a Higgs boson to a
photon and a dark photon. An observed (expected) 95% CL upper limit on the
branching ratio for this decay is set at 0.018 (0.017), assuming the 125 GeV
Standard Model Higgs boson production cross-section
Transcriptome profiling of in vitro-matured oocytes from a korean native cow (hanwoo) after cysteamine supplementation
This study elucidated the molecular markers that decrease oocyte quality during in vitro culture, restricting optimal developmental potential. Here, we evaluated the transcriptomic differences between cysteamine-treated and non-treated bovine cumulus oocyte complexes (COCs) after 22 h of co-culture in the maturation media using RNA sequencing. In total, 39,014 transcripts were sequenced between cysteamine-treated and non-treated mature COCs. We evaluated the relative expression of 21,472 genes, with 59 genes showing differential expression between the two COC groups. The cysteamine-treated group had 36 up-regulated gene transcripts and 23 down-regulated gene transcripts. Moreover, gene ontology (GO) enrichment analysis revealed that multiple biological processes were significantly enriched after cysteamine supplementation. Differentially expressed genes appeared to maintain normal oocyte physiology, regulation of apoptosis, differentiation, ossification or bone formation, cardiac and muscle physiology, hormonal secretion, and membrane construction for further embryonic development. In conclusion, cysteamine affects the mRNA level of COCs during oocyte maturation by upregulating potential molecular markers and downregulating genes that affect further embryonic development.N