Cephalopods represented by beaks in the stomach of a sperm whale stranded at Paekakariki, north island, New Zealand

More than 3 000 cephalopod beaks taken from the stomach of a sperm whale stranded at Paekakariki, North Island, New Zealand, were identified to species and measured; estimates were made of the masses and standard lengths of the cephalopods represented. In all, 24 species of cephalopod in 13 families were represented. The most important species were Histioteuthis atlantica (contributing 78.56% of the number and 41.0% of the wet massestimated from lower rostral lengths), Moroteuthis ingens (11.06% and 15.26%), Taonius pavo (3.69% and 2.32%), Taningia danae (1.50% and 8.56%), Moroteuthis robsoni (1.25% and 5.35%), Architeuthis sp. (0.12% and 23.74%) and Kondakovia longimana (0.31% and 1.28%). Other species each contributed less than 1%. A total of 10 lower beaks was from three Antarctic species and show that the whale had been in the Antarctic but probably had been in the New Zealand region for several days, at least, before stranding. The mean wet mass of individuals represented was 432 g, and they varied from 170 to 2 631 mm in standard length

Cephalopods in the diet of sperm whales caught commercially off Durban, South Africa

A collection from stomach contents of 30 sperm whales Physeter catodon comprised a total of 46 cephalopods belonging to six families. Nine species were identified, including Ommastrephes bartramii, which is recorded for the first time in the diet of sperm whales caught off South Africa, and Todarodes filippovae, which has only previously been identified from whale stomachs to genus. Sexed individuals of all species were female and most were gravid. Comparisons are made with a much larger collection of beaks from the same source and the species identity of some of these can now be established or confirmed

Elm Farm Organic Research Centre Bulletin 83 April 2006

Regular bulleting with technical updates from Organic Advisory Service Issue contains: Testing for Tolerance - a pragmatic view GM Debate Vaccination nation - to jab or not to jab Future shape of OCIS Evolutionary wheat makes the grade? NIAB tracks health of organic cereal seed Stopping erosion of soil quality - the organic way Care needed to halt butterfly collapse Aspects of poultry behaviour: How free range is free range? On choosing an organic wheat A local education challenge New Wakelyns Science Building Organic vegetable market growt

A Late Permian fossil horseshoe crab (Paleolimulus: Xiphosura) from Poatina, Great Western Tiers, Tasmania

The xiphosuran Paleolimulus Dunbar, 1923 is recorded from the Late Permian (Chhidruan) Jackey Shale at Poatina, 41°48'05"S 146°53'06"E. This is the first record of the genus in both Tasmania and the Southern Hemisphere, and extends its distribution to rocks deposited in a high latitude, cold-water environment

Regularity of solutions to higher-order integrals of the calculus of variations

We obtain new regularity conditions for problems of calculus of variations with higher-order derivatives. As a corollary, we get non-occurrence of the Lavrentiev phenomenon. Our main regularity result asserts that autonomous integral functionals with a Lagrangian having coercive partial derivatives with respect to the higher-order derivatives admit only minimizers with essentially bounded derivatives

On the biology of the European flying squid Todarodes Sagittatus (Lamarck, 1798) (cephalopoda, ommastrephidae) in the Central Eastern Atlantic

A total of 206 specimens of the ommastrephid squid Todarodes sagittatus, obtained from three areas of the central eastern Atlantic (Canary Islands/African coast, Madeira, and the Gettysburg Bank area south of Portugal) were examined. New information on size, mass, length-mass relationships, reproductive biology, and diet of the squid from a hitherto not very well studied area is supplied. Females dominated the samples (78%) and attained larger size and mass than males. Dorsal mantle lengths of T. sagittatus in the Canary Islands/African coast samples and in the Madeira region were similar, 167 – 348 mm for females and 175 – 269 mm for males. From the Gettysburg Bank all specimens were immature, females ranging between 71 and 276 mm and males from 98 to 233 mm. Mature females were found mainly during winter and mature males nearly year-round,indicating that they mature earlier than females and at a smaller size. Prey consisted mainly of fish (54.9%), decapods (18.8%) and cephalopods (12.1%). Otoliths and fish bones identified from stomach contents suggestthat myctophids were the most common and diverse prey

Status and subdivision of the Parmeener Super-group

Late Palaeozoic and Early Mesozoic rocks of the Parmeener Super-Group are subdivided on a strict lithostratigraphical basis, and not in the time terms 'Permian' and 'Triassic'

UBE2QL1 is Disrupted by a Constitutional Translocation Associated with Renal Tumor Predisposition and is a Novel Candidate Renal Tumor Suppressor Gene

Investigation of rare familial forms of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) has led to the identification of genes such as VHL and MET that are also implicated in the pathogenesis of sporadic RCC. In order to identify a novel candidate renal tumor suppressor gene, we characterized the breakpoints of a constitutional balanced translocation, t(5;19)(p15.3;q12), associated with familial RCC and found that a previously uncharacterized gene UBE2QL1 was disrupted by the chromosome 5 breakpoint. UBE2QL1 mRNA expression was downregulated in 78.6% of sporadic RCC and, although no intragenic mutations were detected, gene deletions and promoter region hypermethylation were detected in 17.3% and 20.3%, respectively, of sporadic RCC. Reexpression of UBE2QL1 in a deficient RCC cell line suppressed anchorage-independent growth. UBE2QL1 shows homology to the E2 class of ubiquitin conjugating enzymes and we found that (1) UBE2QL1 possesses an active-site cysteine (C88) that is monoubiquitinated in vivo, and (2) UBE2QL1 interacts with FBXW7 (an F box protein providing substrate recognition to the SCF E3 ubiquitin ligase) and facilitates the degradation of the known FBXW7 targets, CCNE1 and mTOR. These findings suggest UBE2QL1 as a novel candidate renal tumor suppressor gen

The impact of contact tracing in clustered populations

The tracing of potentially infectious contacts has become an important part of the control strategy for many infectious diseases, from early cases of novel infections to endemic sexually transmitted infections. Here, we make use of mathematical models to consider the case of partner notification for sexually transmitted infection, however these models are sufficiently simple to allow more general conclusions to be drawn. We show that, when contact network structure is considered in addition to contact tracing, standard “mass action” models are generally inadequate. To consider the impact of mutual contacts (specifically clustering) we develop an improvement to existing pairwise network models, which we use to demonstrate that ceteris paribus, clustering improves the efficacy of contact tracing for a large region of parameter space. This result is sometimes reversed, however, for the case of highly effective contact tracing. We also develop stochastic simulations for comparison, using simple re-wiring methods that allow the generation of appropriate comparator networks. In this way we contribute to the general theory of network-based interventions against infectious disease