Politics of pesticides

In regard to pesticides, today we have lost the benefit perspective. We no longer have a balance in the mind’s eye of the media, nor in the mind’s eye of the public as a whole. We talk, instead, about the risk to man, the risk to the environment, and the risk to wildlife that is wrought by the very use of the modern tools that have brought up production and health protection miracles. And, until that perspective is re-asserted in a balance, we’re going to lose the very tools that we depend on today to produce quality food, economical fiber, and to protect the good health of this nation. It’s amazing to me that we can ban the use of ethylene dibromide (EDB) and restrict its contamination in ready-to-eat products to 30 ppb, when at the same time we allow aflatoxin, which is a mold in peanut butter, to be present at 15 ppb knowing full well that it has 1,000 times the carcinogenic potential of EDB. That is the consistency and logic of our federal government. We need to re-align perception with fact, because unless we do and until we do, the politics of pesticides are going to win

The beginning of time? Evidence for catastrophic drought in Baringo in the early nineteenth century

New developments in the collection of palaeo-data over the past two decades have transformed our understanding of climate and environmental history in eastern Africa. This article utilises instrumental and proxy evidence of historical lake-level fluctuations from Baringo and Bogoria, along with other Rift Valley lakes, to document the timing and magnitude of hydroclimate variability at decadal to century time scales since 1750. These data allow us to construct a record of past climate variation not only for the Baringo basin proper, but also across a sizable portion of central and northern Kenya. This record is then set alongside historical evidence, from oral histories gathered amongst the peoples of northern Kenya and the Rift Valley and from contemporary observations recorded by travellers through the region, to offer a reinterpretation of human activity and its relationship to environmental history in the nineteenth century. The results reveal strong evidence of a catastrophic drought in the early nineteenth century, the effects of which radically alters our historical understanding of the character of settlement, mobility and identity within the Baringo–Bogoria basin

Dnmt3a regulates emotional behavior and spine plasticity in the nucleus accumbens.

Despite abundant expression of DNA methyltransferases (Dnmts) in brain, the regulation and behavioral role of DNA methylation remain poorly understood. We found that Dnmt3a expression was regulated in mouse nucleus accumbens (NAc) by chronic cocaine use and chronic social defeat stress. Moreover, NAc-specific manipulations that block DNA methylation potentiated cocaine reward and exerted antidepressant-like effects, whereas NAc-specific Dnmt3a overexpression attenuated cocaine reward and was pro-depressant. On a cellular level, we found that chronic cocaine use selectively increased thin dendritic spines on NAc neurons and that DNA methylation was both necessary and sufficient to mediate these effects. These data establish the importance of Dnmt3a in the NAc in regulating cellular and behavioral plasticity to emotional stimuli

8th Annual Seminar on Legal Issues for Financial Institutions

Outline of speakers\u27 presentations from the 8th Annual Seminar on Legal Issues for Financial Institutions held by UK/CLE on March 11-12, 1988

Towards an Observational Appraisal of String Cosmology

We review the current observational status of string cosmology when confronted with experimental datasets. We begin by defining common observational parameters and discuss how they are determined for a given model. Then we review the observable footprints of several string theoretic models, discussing the significance of various potential signals. Throughout we comment on present and future prospects of finding evidence for string theory in cosmology, and on significant issues for the future.Comment: Review accepted for publication in the CQG focus issue on string cosmology. Minor clarifications and references adde

Search of scaling solutions in scalar-tensor gravity

We write new functional renormalization group equations for a scalar nonminimally coupled to gravity. Thanks to the choice of the parametrization and of the gauge fixing they are simpler than older equations and avoid some of the difficulties that were previously present. In three dimensions these equations admit, at least for sufficiently small fields, a solution that may be interpreted as a gravitationally dressed Wilson-Fisher fixed point. We also find for any dimension d>2 two analytic scaling solutions which we study for d=3 and d=4. One of them corresponds to the fixed point of the Einstein-Hilbert truncation, the others involve a nonvanishing minimal coupling

The Energy Landscape, Folding Pathways and the Kinetics of a Knotted Protein

The folding pathway and rate coefficients of the folding of a knotted protein are calculated for a potential energy function with minimal energetic frustration. A kinetic transition network is constructed using the discrete path sampling approach, and the resulting potential energy surface is visualized by constructing disconnectivity graphs. Owing to topological constraints, the low-lying portion of the landscape consists of three distinct regions, corresponding to the native knotted state and to configurations where either the N- or C-terminus is not yet folded into the knot. The fastest folding pathways from denatured states exhibit early formation of the N-terminus portion of the knot and a rate-determining step where the C-terminus is incorporated. The low-lying minima with the N-terminus knotted and the C-terminus free therefore constitute an off-pathway intermediate for this model. The insertion of both the N- and C-termini into the knot occur late in the folding process, creating large energy barriers that are the rate limiting steps in the folding process. When compared to other protein folding proteins of a similar length, this system folds over six orders of magnitude more slowly.Comment: 19 page

Does a SLAP lesion affect shoulder muscle recruitment as measured by EMG activity during a rugby tackle?

Background: The study objective was to assess the influence of a SLAP lesion on onset of EMG activity in shoulder muscles during a front on rugby football tackle within professional rugby players. Methods: Mixed cross-sectional study evaluating between and within group differences in EMG onset times. Testing was carried out within the physiotherapy department of a university sports medicine clinic. The test group consisted of 7 players with clinically diagnosed SLAP lesions, later verified on arthroscopy. The reference group consisted of 15 uninjured and full time professional rugby players from within the same playing squad. Controlled tackles were performed against a tackle dummy. Onset of EMG activity was assessed from surface EMG of Pectorialis Major, Biceps Brachii, Latissimus Dorsi, Serratus Anterior and Infraspinatus muscles relative to time of impact. Analysis of differences in activation timing between muscles and limbs (injured versus non-injured side and non injured side versus matched reference group). Results: Serratus Anterior was activated prior to all other muscles in all (P = 0.001-0.03) subjects. In the SLAP injured shoulder Biceps was activated later than in the non-injured side. Onset times of all muscles of the noninjured shoulder in the injured player were consistently earlier compared with the reference group. Whereas, within the injured shoulder, all muscle activation timings were later than in the reference group. Conclusions: This study shows that in shoulders with a SLAP lesion there is a trend towards delay in activation time of Biceps and other muscles with the exception of an associated earlier onset of activation of Serratus anterior, possibly due to a coping strategy to protect glenohumeral stability and thoraco-scapular stability. This trend was not statistically significant in all cases

The Evolution of Bat Vestibular Systems in the Face of Potential Antagonistic Selection Pressures for Flight and Echolocation

PMCID: PMC3634842This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited