A pygmy right whale Caperea marginata (Grey, 1846) stranded at Stanley, Tasmania

A pregnant female pygmy right whale, Caperea marginata (Gray, 1846) which stranded at West Beach, Stanley was examined within 24 hours of stranding. No significant pathological condition was detected in the carcase thus eliminating disease as the likely cause of stranding. However, the area is a notorious "whale trap", and it is therefore assumed that geographical and hydrological conditions accounted for the stranding. A number of interesting anatomical features are noted

Testing the boundaries of closely related daisy taxa using metabolomic profiling

Advances in high-throughput, comprehensive small molecule analytical techniques have seen the development of the field of metabolomics. The coupling of mass spectrometry with high-resolution chromatography provides extensive chemical profiles from complex biological extracts. These profiles include thousands of compounds linked to gene expression, and can be used as taxonomic characters. Studies have shown metabolite profiles to be taxon specific in a range of organisms, but few have investigated taxonomically problematic plant taxa. This study used a phenetic analysis of metabolite profiles to test taxonomic boundaries in the Olearia phlogopappa (Asteraceae) complex as delimited by morphological data. Metabolite profiles were generated from both field- and shade house-grown material, using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). Aligned profiles of 51 samples from 12 taxa gave a final dataset of over 10,000 features. Multivariate analyses of field and shade house material gave congruent results, both confirming the distinctiveness of the morphologically defined species and subspecies in this complex. Metabolomics has great potential in alpha taxonomy, especially for testing the boundaries of closely related taxa where DNA sequence data has been uninformative

Developing a model to estimate the potential impact of municipal investment on city health

This article summarizes a process which exemplifies the potential impact of municipal investment on the burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in city populations. We report on Developing an evidence-based approach to city public health planning and investment in Europe (DECiPHEr), a project part funded by the European Union. It had twin objectives: first, to develop and validate a vocational educational training package for policy makers and political decision takers; second, to use this opportunity to iterate a robust and user-friendly investment tool for maximizing the public health impact of 'mainstream' municipal policies, programs and investments. There were seven stages in the development process shared by an academic team from Sheffield Hallam University and partners from four cities drawn from the WHO European Healthy Cities Network. There were five iterations of the model resulting from this process. The initial focus was CVD as the biggest cause of death and disability in Europe. Our original prototype 'cost offset' model was confined to proximal determinants of CVD, utilizing modified 'Framingham' equations to estimate the impact of population level cardiovascular risk factor reduction on future demand for acute hospital admissions. The DECiPHEr iterations first extended the scope of the model to distal determinants and then focused progressively on practical interventions. Six key domains of local influence on population health were introduced into the model by the development process: education, housing, environment, public health, economy and security. Deploying a realist synthesis methodology, the model then connected distal with proximal determinants of CVD. Existing scientific evidence and cities' experiential knowledge were 'plugged-in' or 'triangulated' to elaborate the causal pathways from domain interventions to public health impacts. A key product is an enhanced version of the cost offset model, named Sheffield Health Effectiveness Framework Tool, incorporating both proximal and distal determinants in estimating the cost benefits of domain interventions. A key message is that the insights of the policy community are essential in developing and then utilising such a predictive tool

Rhythmic expression of Nocturnin mRNA in multiple tissues of the mouse

BACKGROUND: Nocturnin was originally identified by differential display as a circadian clock regulated gene with high expression at night in photoreceptors of the African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis. Although encoding a novel protein, the nocturnin cDNA had strong sequence similarity with a C-terminal domain of the yeast transcription factor CCR4, and with mouse and human ESTs. Since its original identification others have cloned mouse and human homologues of nocturnin/CCR4, and we have cloned a full-length cDNA from mouse retina, along with partial cDNAs from human, cow and chicken. The goal of this study was to determine the temporal pattern of nocturnin mRNA expression in multiple tissues of the mouse. RESULTS: cDNA sequence analysis revealed a high degree of conservation among vertebrate nocturnin/CCR4 homologues along with a possible homologue in Drosophila. Northern analysis of mRNA in C3H/He and C57/Bl6 mice revealed that the mNoc gene is expressed in a broad range of tissues, with greatest abundance in liver, kidney and testis. mNoc is also expressed in multiple brain regions including suprachiasmatic nucleus and pineal gland. Furthermore, mNoc exhibits circadian rhythmicity of mRNA abundance with peak levels at the time of light offset in the retina, spleen, heart, kidney and liver. CONCLUSION: The widespread expression and rhythmicity of mNoc mRNA parallels the widespread expression of other circadian clock genes in mammalian tissues, and suggests that nocturnin plays an important role in clock function or as a circadian clock effector

A functional dissociation of the left frontal regions that contribute to single word production tasks

Controversy surrounds the interpretation of higher activation for pseudoword compared to word reading in the left precentral gyrus and pars opercularis. Specifically, does activation in these regions reflect: (1) the demands on sublexical assembly of articulatory codes, or (2) retrieval effort because the combinations of articulatory codes are unfamiliar? Using fMRI, in 84 neurologically intact participants, we addressed this issue by comparing reading and repetition of words (W) and pseudowords (P) to naming objects (O) from pictures or sounds. As objects do not provide sublexical articulatory cues, we hypothesis that retrieval effort will be greater for object naming than word repetition/reading (which benefits from both lexical and sublexical cues); while the demands on sublexical assembly will be higher for pseudoword production than object naming. We found that activation was: (i) highest for pseudoword reading [P>O&W in the visual modality] in the anterior part of the ventral precentral gyrus bordering the precentral sulcus (vPCg/vPCs), consistent with the sublexical assembly of articulatory codes; but (ii) as high for object naming as pseudoword production [P&O>W] in dorsal precentral gyrus (dPCg) and the left inferior frontal junction (IFJ), consistent with retrieval demands and cognitive control. In addition, we dissociate the response properties of vPCg/vPCs, dPCg and IFJ from other left frontal lobe regions that are activated during single word speech production. Specifically, in both auditory and visual modalities: a central part of vPCg (head and face area) was more activated for verbal than nonverbal stimuli [P&W>O]; and the pars orbitalis and inferior frontal sulcus were most activated during object naming [O>W&P]. Our findings help to resolve a previous discrepancy in the literature, dissociate three functionally distinct parts of the precentral gyrus, and refine our knowledge of the functional anatomy of speech production in the left frontal lobe

Brain regions that support accurate speech production after damage to Broca’s area

Broca’s area in the posterior half of the left inferior frontal gyrus has traditionally been considered an important node in the speech production network. Nevertheless, recovery of speech production has been reported, to different degrees, within a few months of damage to Broca’s area. Importantly, contemporary evidence suggests that, within Broca’s area, its posterior part (i.e. pars opercularis) plays a more prominent role in speech production than its anterior part (i.e. pars triangularis). In this study, we therefore investigated the brain activation patterns that underlie accurate speech production following stroke damage to the opercular part of Broca’s area. By combining functional MRI and 13 tasks that place varying demands on speech production, brain activation was compared in (i) seven patients of interest with damage to the opercular part of Broca’s area; (ii) 55 neurologically intact controls; and (iii) 28 patient controls with left-hemisphere damage that spared Broca’s area. When producing accurate overt speech responses, the patients with damage to the left pars opercularis activated a substantial portion of the normal bilaterally distributed system. Within this system, there was a lesion-site-dependent effect in a specific part of the right cerebellar Crus I where activation was significantly higher in the patients with damage to the left pars opercularis compared to both neurologically intact and patient controls. In addition, activation in the right pars opercularis was significantly higher in the patients with damage to the left pars opercularis relative to neurologically intact controls but not patient controls (after adjusting for differences in lesion size). By further examining how right Crus I and right pars opercularis responded across a range of conditions in the neurologically intact controls, we suggest that these regions play distinct roles in domain-general cognitive control. Finally, we show that enhanced activation in the right pars opercularis cannot be explained by release from an inhibitory relationship with the left pars opercularis (i.e. dis-inhibition) because right pars opercularis activation was positively related to left pars opercularis activation in neurologically intact controls. Our findings motivate and guide future studies to investigate (i) how exactly right Crus I and right pars opercularis support accurate speech production after damage to the opercular part of Broca’s area and (ii) whether non-invasive neurostimulation to one or both of these regions boosts speech production recovery after damage to the opercular part of Broca’s area