Case Report: A Case of Wood-Smoke–Related Pulmonary Disease

CONTEXT: Biomass serves as a major fuel source for > 50% of the world’s population. The global burden of disease attributed to indoor air pollution from biomass combustion accounts for approximately 3% of worldwide disability-adjusted life-years lost. This is due to pneumonia in children and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer in women. CASE PRESENTATION: A 53-year-old man from Mexico was referred to the pulmonary clinic for evaluation of chronic productive cough and pulmonary nodules. In his youth, he worked at a charcoal plant in Mexico, where he burned wood and was exposed to massive amounts of smoke. His evaluation revealed thickened bronchovascular bundles with nodules on thoracic computed tomography, dark black plaques in large airways on bronchoscopy, and carbon-laden macrophages and fibrotic scars on lung biopsy. DISCUSSION: The patient was diagnosed with “hut lung,” a term that refers to the noninfectious, nonmalignant respiratory manifestations of chronic, high-level exposures to biomass smoke. This is the first reported case of hut lung associated with charcoal production. This case highlights that histopathologic abnormalities of the lung parenchyma may be present in patients with only mild symptoms and that clinical progression is likely a function of both the duration and intensity of exposure. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: As residents of lesser developed countries continue to be exposed to high levels of biomass smoke at work or at home and continue to immigrate to developed countries, it is important that health care providers in developed countries be aware of biomass-smoke–related pulmonary disease

Environmental predictability drives adaptive within- and transgenerational plasticity of heat tolerance across life stages and climatic regions

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this recordData availability statement: Data generated in the current study were deposited in Appendix S3 of Supporting InformationAlthough environmental variability and predictability have been proposed as the underlying ecological context in which transgenerational plasticity (TGP) arises, the adaptive significance and interaction with within‐generation plasticity (WGP) in such scenarios is still poorly understood. To investigate these questions, we considered the tolerance to upper thermal limits of larvae and adults of the desert endemic Drosophila mojavensis adapted to different climatic regions (Desert vs. Mediterranean climate). Thermal plasticity was investigated by acclimating parents and offspring at 36°C (vs. at 25°C). We then used historical temperature variation data from both regions to perform individual‐based simulations by modelling expected components of adaptive plasticity in multiple life stages. Our results indicated that thermal response to ramping heat shocks was more pronounced in larvae, where acclimation treatments in parents and offspring increased their heat‐shock performance, while heat knockdown in adults was only increased by offspring acclimation of adults. The relative contribution of WGP and TGP was greater for the population from the more thermally variable Sonoran Desert. Similarly, individual‐based simulations of evolving maternal effects indicated that variation in tolerance to upper thermal limits across life stages and climates is expected from its adaptive significance in response to environmental predictability. Our approach offers a new perspective and interpretation of adaptive plasticity, demonstrating that environmental predictability can drive thermal responses across generations and life stages in a scenario with regional climate variability.University of ArizonaNational Science Foundation (NSF)Leverhulme Trus

(Correcting) misdiagnoses of asthma: A cost effectiveness analysis

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Background: The prevalence of physician-diagnosed-asthma has risen over the past three decades and misdiagnosis of asthma is potentially common. Objective: to determine whether a secondary-screening-program to establish a correct diagnosis of asthma in those who report a physician diagnosis of asthma is cost effective.Method: Randomly selected physician-diagnosed-asthmatic subjects from 8 Canadian cities were studied with an extensive diagnostic algorithm to rule-in, or rule-out, a correct diagnosis of asthma. Subjects in whom the diagnosis of asthma was excluded were followed up for 6-months and data on asthma medications and heath care utilization was obtained. Economic analysis was performed to estimate the incremental lifetime costs associated with secondary screening of previously diagnosed asthmatic subjects. Analysis was from the perspective of the Canadian healthcare system and is reported in Canadian dollars.Results: Of 540 randomly selected patients with physician diagnosed asthma 150 (28%; 95%CI 19-37%) did not have asthma when objectively studied. 71% of these misdiagnosed patients were on some asthma medications. Incorporating the incremental cost of secondary-screening for the diagnosis of asthma, we found that the average cost savings per 100 individuals screened was $35,141 (95$4,588-$69,278).Conclusion: Cost savings primarily resulted from lifetime costs of medication use averted in those who had been misdiagnosed.This work was funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research, Canada and the University Of Ottawa Division Of Respiratory Medicine

Variable order Mittag-Leffler fractional operators on isolated time scales and application to the calculus of variations

We introduce new fractional operators of variable order on isolated time scales with Mittag-Leffler kernels. This allows a general formulation of a class of fractional variational problems involving variable-order difference operators. Main results give fractional integration by parts formulas and necessary optimality conditions of Euler-Lagrange type.Comment: This is a preprint of a paper whose final and definite form is with Springe

OsPIE1, the Rice Ortholog of Arabidopsis PHOTOPERIOD-INDEPENDENT EARLY FLOWERING1, Is Essential for Embryo Development

orthologs in monocots remains unknown., respectively).Taken together, our results suggest that OsPIE1 is the rice ortholog of Arabidopsis PIE1 and plays an essential role in rice embryo development

The Impact of Global Warming and Anoxia on Marine Benthic Community Dynamics: an Example from the Toarcian (Early Jurassic)

The Pliensbachian-Toarcian (Early Jurassic) fossil record is an archive of natural data of benthic community response to global warming and marine long-term hypoxia and anoxia. In the early Toarcian mean temperatures increased by the same order of magnitude as that predicted for the near future; laminated, organic-rich, black shales were deposited in many shallow water epicontinental basins; and a biotic crisis occurred in the marine realm, with the extinction of approximately 5% of families and 26% of genera. High-resolution quantitative abundance data of benthic invertebrates were collected from the Cleveland Basin (North Yorkshire, UK), and analysed with multivariate statistical methods to detect how the fauna responded to environmental changes during the early Toarcian. Twelve biofacies were identified. Their changes through time closely resemble the pattern of faunal degradation and recovery observed in modern habitats affected by anoxia. All four successional stages of community structure recorded in modern studies are recognised in the fossil data (i.e. Stage III: climax; II: transitional; I: pioneer; 0: highly disturbed). Two main faunal turnover events occurred: (i) at the onset of anoxia, with the extinction of most benthic species and the survival of a few adapted to thrive in low-oxygen conditions (Stages I to 0) and (ii) in the recovery, when newly evolved species colonized the re-oxygenated soft sediments and the path of recovery did not retrace of pattern of ecological degradation (Stages I to II). The ordination of samples coupled with sedimentological and palaeotemperature proxy data indicate that the onset of anoxia and the extinction horizon coincide with both a rise in temperature and sea level. Our study of how faunal associations co-vary with long and short term sea level and temperature changes has implications for predicting the long-term effects of “dead zones” in modern oceans

Climate warming, marine protected areas and the ocean-scale integrity of coral reef ecosystems

Coral reefs have emerged as one of the ecosystems most vulnerable to climate variation and change. While the contribution of a warming climate to the loss of live coral cover has been well documented across large spatial and temporal scales, the associated effects on fish have not. Here, we respond to recent and repeated calls to assess the importance of local management in conserving coral reefs in the context of global climate change. Such information is important, as coral reef fish assemblages are the most species dense vertebrate communities on earth, contributing critical ecosystem functions and providing crucial ecosystem services to human societies in tropical countries. Our assessment of the impacts of the 1998 mass bleaching event on coral cover, reef structural complexity, and reef associated fishes spans 7 countries, 66 sites and 26 degrees of latitude in the Indian Ocean. Using Bayesian meta-analysis we show that changes in the size structure, diversity and trophic composition of the reef fish community have followed coral declines. Although the ocean scale integrity of these coral reef ecosystems has been lost, it is positive to see the effects are spatially variable at multiple scales, with impacts and vulnerability affected by geography but not management regime. Existing no-take marine protected areas still support high biomass of fish, however they had no positive affect on the ecosystem response to large-scale disturbance. This suggests a need for future conservation and management efforts to identify and protect regional refugia, which should be integrated into existing management frameworks and combined with policies to improve system-wide resilience to climate variation and change

Brahma Is Required for Proper Expression of the Floral Repressor FLC in Arabidopsis

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.[Background]: BRAHMA (BRM) is a member of a family of ATPases of the SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complexes from Arabidopsis. BRM has been previously shown to be crucial for vegetative and reproductive development. [Methodology/Principal Findings]: Here we carry out a detailed analysis of the flowering phenotype of brm mutant plants which reveals that, in addition to repressing the flowering promoting genes CONSTANS (CO), FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) and SUPPRESSOR OF OVEREXPRESSION OF CO1 (SOC1), BRM also represses expression of the general flowering repressor FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC). Thus, in brm mutant plants FLC expression is elevated, and FLC chromatin exhibits increased levels of histone H3 lysine 4 tri-methylation and decreased levels of H3 lysine 27 tri-methylation, indicating that BRM imposes a repressive chromatin configuration at the FLC locus. However, brm mutants display a normal vernalization response, indicating that BRM is not involved in vernalization-mediated FLC repression. Analysis of double mutants suggests that BRM is partially redundant with the autonomous pathway. Analysis of genetic interactions between BRM and the histone H2A.Z deposition machinery demonstrates that brm mutations overcome a requirement of H2A.Z for FLC activation suggesting that in the absence of BRM, a constitutively open chromatin conformation renders H2A.Z dispensable. [Conclusions/Significance]: BRM is critical for phase transition in Arabidopsis. Thus, BRM represses expression of the flowering promoting genes CO, FT and SOC1 and of the flowering repressor FLC. Our results indicate that BRM controls expression of FLC by creating a repressive chromatin configuration of the locus.This work was supported by Ministerio de Educacin y Ciencia (BFU2008-00238, CSD2006-00049), and by Junta de Andaluca (P06-CVI-01400) to J.C.R. and by the National Institutes of Health (grant no. 1R01GM079525), and the National Science Foundation (grant no. 0446440) to R.A. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewe