Protecting Ideas: Ethical and Legal Considerations when a Grant’s Principal Investigator Changes

Ethical issues related the responsible conduct of research involve questions concerning the rights and obligations of investigators to propose, design, implement, and publish research. When a principal investigator (PI) transfers institutions during a grant cycle, financial and recognition issues need to be addressed to preserve all parties’ obligations and best interests in a mutually beneficial way. Although grants often transfer with the PI, sometimes they do not. Maintaining a grant at an institution after the PI leaves does not negate the grantee institution’s obligation to recognize the PI’s original ideas, contributions, and potential rights to some forms of expression and compensation. Issues include maintaining a role for the PI in determining how to take credit for, share and publish results that involve his or her original ideas. Ascribing proper credit can become a thorny issue. This paper provides a framework for addressing situations and disagreements that may occur when a new PI continues the work after the original PI transfers. Included are suggestions for proactively developing institutional mechanisms that address such issues. Considerations include how to develop solutions that comply with the responsible conduct of research, equitably resolve claims regarding reporting of results, and avoid the possibility of plagiarism

Biology and Biological Control of Exotic True Thistles

“Thistle” is an old English name for a large variety of weedy, prickly plants that grow throughout the world. The most notable characteristics of thistles are the prickly stems and leaves and the bracts around the flower head. While many different plants have “thistle” in their common name, only certain plant species fit the taxonomic requirements of being considered “true thistles.” True thistle species fall within the family Asteraceae, the tribe Cardueae, and the subtribe Carduinae. Examples of plants that are not true thistles include yellow starthistle (subtribe Centaureinae), sow thistle (subtribe Sonchinae), and Russian thistle (family Chenopodiaceae). Only true thistles in the subtribe Carduinae are discussed in this manual

Biology and Biological Control of Exotic True Thistles

“Thistle” is an old English name for a large variety of weedy, prickly plants that grow throughout the world. The most notable characteristics of thistles are the prickly stems and leaves and the bracts around the flower head. While many different plants have “thistle” in their common name, only certain plant species fit the taxonomic requirements of being considered “true thistles.” True thistle species fall within the family Asteraceae, the tribe Cardueae, and the subtribe Carduinae. Examples of plants that are not true thistles include yellow starthistle (subtribe Centaureinae), sow thistle (subtribe Sonchinae), and Russian thistle (family Chenopodiaceae). Only true thistles in the subtribe Carduinae are discussed in this manual

Documentary Media Poetics: a handbook for research and practices

Documentary Poetics are the study and practice of documentary arts as a method for building and transforming our world. Documentary Poetics help us to recognize the documentary impulse inherent in all art. The documentary impulse is driven by our experiences of the world. It informs everything that we make, from early cave paintings to virtual reality. Rather than trying to make documentaries more poetic, we instead follow this impulse to enter into documentary through poetry. Documentary Poetics are characterized by what the poet Philip Metres calls double-movement. This is when a work of art invites us into its own constructed world, while simultaneously allowing the outside world in. In this way, documentary both informs and is informed by its historical moment, and helps to create the possibility for new moments by making knowledge. Media are the methods we use to create documentary artworks. They can take the form of any form of communication, including text, painting, performance, sound, moving images, and beyond. To better understand and analyze how Documentary Poetics actually work, we can separate them into two major categories: Objectivism and Lyricism. When taken together, these methods become the basis for what scholar and documentarian John Grierson called the creative treatment of actuality.</p

The zebrafish xenograft platform-A novel tool for modeling KSHV-associated diseases

Kaposi\u27s sarcoma associated-herpesvirus (KSHV, also known as human herpesvirus-8) is a gammaherpesvirus that establishes life-long infection in human B lymphocytes. KSHV infection is typically asymptomatic, but immunosuppression can predispose KSHV-infected individuals to primary effusion lymphoma (PEL); a malignancy driven by aberrant proliferation of latently infected B lymphocytes, and supported by pro-inflammatory cytokines and angiogenic factors produced by cells that succumb to lytic viral replication. Here, we report the development of the firs

Evolving while invading: rapid adaptive evolution in juvenile development time for a biological control organism colonizing a high-elevation environment

We report evidence of adaptive evolution in juvenile development time on a decadal timescale for the cinnabar moth Tyria jacobaeae (Lepidoptera: Arctiidae) colonizing new habitats and hosts from the Willamette Valley to the Coast Range and Cascades Mountains in Oregon. Four lines of evidence reveal shorter egg to pupa juvenile development times evolved in the mountains, where cooler temperatures shorten the growing season: (i) field observations showed that the mountain populations have shorter phenological development; (ii) a common garden experiment revealed genetic determination of phenotypic differences in juvenile development time between Willamette Valley and mountain populations correlated with the growing season; (iii) a laboratory experiment rearing offspring from parental crosses within and between Willamette Valley and Cascades populations demonstrated polygenic inheritance, high heritability, and genetic determination of phenotypic differences in development times; and (iv) statistical tests that exclude random processes (founder effect, genetic drift) in favor of natural selection as explanations for observed differences in phenology. These results support the hypothesis that rapid adaptation to the cooler mountain climate occurred in populations established from populations in the warmer valley climate. Our findings should motivate regulators to require evaluation of evolutionary potential of candidate biological control organisms prior to release.Keywords: phenology, heritability, Tyria jacobaeae, natural selection, quantitative trait, contemporary evolution, development time, Senecio triangulari

Volcanic contribution to emergence of Central Panama in the Early Miocene

Formation of the Panama Isthmus, that had global oceanographic and biotic effects in the Neogene, is generally associated with tectonic uplift during collision of the Panama volcanic arc with South America. However, new field, geochemical and geochronological data from the Culebra Cut of the Panama Canal suggest that volcanism also contributed to the Isthmus emergence in the Early Miocene. This volcanism is recorded in a newly-recognised Central Panama volcanic field that includes several phases of development. Early activity of this field along the Panama Canal was associated with proximal effusive to explosive felsic products during formation of subaerial stratovolcanoes and possible domes ca. 21 Ma. This was followed by a period of marine transgression ca. 21–18 Ma, with more distal volcanism documented by tuffs that deposited in marine to terrestrial environments. Finally, proximal mafic volcanism formed tephra cones in a monogenetic field ca. 18(-?) Ma. This was associated with phreatomagmatic processes in a coastal environment, with remarkable kilometre-wide subvolcanic peperitic intrusions. We propose based on these observations that formation of the Central Panama volcanic field was critical in shaping regional topography, and that this could have actively contributed to obstruction and closure of an interoceanic strait in Central Panama

Range expansion and the origin of USA300 north american epidemic methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus

The USA300 North American epidemic (USA300-NAE) clone of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus has caused a wave of severe skin and soft tissue infections in the United States since it emerged in the early 2000s, but its geographic origin is obscure. Here we use the population genomic signatures expected from the serial founder effects of a geographic range expansion to infer the origin of USA300-NAE and identify polymorphisms associated with its spread. Genome sequences from 357 isolates from 22 U.S. states and territories and seven other countries are compared. We observe two significant signatures of range expansion, including decreases in genetic diversity and increases in derived allele frequency with geographic distance from the Pennsylvania region. These signatures account for approximately half of the core nucleotide variation of this clone, occur genome wide, and are robust to heterogeneity in temporal sampling of isolates, human population density, and recombination detection methods. The potential for positive selection of a gyrA fluoroquinolone resistance allele and several intergenic regions, along with a 2.4 times higher recombination rate in a resistant subclade, is noted. These results are the first to show a pattern of genetic variation that is consistent with a range expansion of an epidemic bacterial clone, and they highlight a rarely considered but potentially common mechanism by which genetic drift may profoundly influence bacterial genetic variation. IMPORTANCE The process of geographic spread of an origin population by a series of smaller populations can result in distinctive patterns of genetic variation. We detect these patterns for the first time with an epidemic bacterial clone and use them to uncover the clone’s geographic origin and variants associated with its spread. We study the USA300 clone of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which was first noticed in the early 2000s and subsequently became the leading cause of skin and soft tissue infections in the United States. The eastern United States is the most likely origin of epidemic USA300. Relatively few variants, which include an antibiotic resistance mutation, have persisted during this clone’s spread. Our study suggests that an early chapter in the genetic history of this epidemic bacterial clone was greatly influenced by random subsampling of isolates during the clone’s geographic spread