The size, concentration, and growth of biodiversity-conservation nonprofits

Nonprofit organizations play a critical role in efforts to conserve biodiversity. Their success in this regard will be determined in part by how effectively individual nonprofits and the sector as a whole are structured. One of the most fundamental questions about an organization’s structure is how large it should be, with the logical counterpart being how concentrated the whole sector should be. We review empirical patterns in the size, concentration, and growth of over 1700 biodiversity-conservation nonprofits registered for tax purposes in the United States within the context of relevant economic theory. Conservation-nonprofit sizes vary by six to seven orders of magnitude and are positively skewed. Larger nonprofits access more revenue streams and hold more of their assets in land and buildings than smaller or midsized nonprofits do. The size of conservation nonprofits varies with the ecological focus of the organization, but the growth rates of nonprofits do not

Reducing inequity of cataract blindness and vision impairment is a global priority, but where is the evidence?

Throughout the world, people who are socially or economically disadvantaged disproportionately experience blindness and vision impairment caused by cataract. Reducing vision loss from cataract and its unequal distribution must be a priority if the WHO's aim of 'universal eye health' is to be realised. To help achieve this, decision-makers and service planners need evidence on which strategies improve access to cataract services among disadvantaged populations, and under what circumstances. Unfortunately, despite many strategies to improve cataract services being implemented in recent decades, evidence of what works, for who and in what circumstances is not readily available. This paper summarises the extent of the evidence on interventions to reduce inequity of vision loss from cataract and makes suggestions for how the evidence base can be strengthened

Hedonic Hunger Is Related to Increased Neural and Perceptual Responses to Cues of Palatable Food and Motivation to Consume: Evidence from 3 Independent Investigations

Background: The Power of Food Scale (PFS) seeks to identify individuals who experience high appetitive drive in response to food cues, which is a construct termed “hedonic hunger.

Super-Maxwellian Helium Evaporation from Pure and Salty Water

Helium atoms evaporate from pure water and salty solutions in super-Maxwellian speed distributions, as observed experimentally and modeled theoretically.The experiments are performed by monitoring the velocities of dissolved He atoms that evaporate from microjets of pure water at 252 K and 4–8.5 molal LiCl and LiBr at 232–252 K. The average He atom energies exceed the flux-weighted Maxwell-Boltzmann average of 2RT by 30% for pure water and 70% for 8.5m LiBr. Classical molecular dynamics simulations closely reproduce the observed speed distributions and provide microscopic insight into the forces that eject the He atoms from solution. Comparisons of the density profile and He kinetic energies across the water-vacuum interface indicate that the He atoms are accelerated by He–water collisions within the top 1-2 layers of the liquid. We also find that the average He atom kinetic energy scales with the free energy of solvation of this sparingly soluble gas. This free-energydifference reflects the steeply decreasing potential of mean force on the He atoms in the interfacial region, whose gradient is the repulsive force that tends to expel the atoms. The accompanying sharp decrease in water density suppresses the He–water collisions that would otherwise maintain a Maxwell-Boltzmanndistribution, allowing the He atom to escape at high energies. Helium is especially affected by this reduction in collisions because its weak interactions make energy transfer inefficient

A longitudinal study of muscle rehabilitation in the lower leg after cast removal using Magnetic Resonance Imaging and strength assessment

Acknowledgements We thank the A&E nurses and plaster technicians for identifying suitable patients, the MRI radiographers for performing the scanning, Dr Scott Semple for invaluable help in some of the pilot studies and Mr E. C. Stevenson for constructing the footrest used in the scanner. We are very grateful to the dedicated patients themselves who gave considerable amounts of time to come in for scanning, exercise and assessment during the course of this study.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

BCL-2 family genetic profiling reveals microenvironment-specific determinants of chemotherapeutic response

The Bcl-2 family encompasses a diverse set of apoptotic regulators that are dynamically activated in response to various cell-intrinsic and -extrinsic stimuli. An extensive variety of cell culture experiments have identified effects of growth factors, cytokines, and drugs on Bcl-2 family functions, but in vivo studies have tended to focus on the role of one or two particular members in development and organ homeostasis. Thus, the ability of physiologically relevant contexts to modulate canonical dependencies that are likely to be more complex has yet to be investigated systematically. In this study, we report findings derived from a pool-based shRNA assay that systematically and comprehensively interrogated the functional dependence of leukemia and lymphoma cells upon various Bcl-2 family members across many diverse in vitro and in vivo settings. This approach permitted us to report the first in vivo loss of function screen for modifiers of the response to a front-line chemotherapeutic agent. Notably, our results reveal an unexpected role for the extrinsic death pathway as a tissue-specific modifier of therapeutic response. In particular, our findings show that particular tissue sites of tumor dissemination play critical roles in demarcating the nature and extent of cancer cell vulnerabilities and mechanisms of chemoresistance. Cancer Res; 71(17); 5850–8. ©2011 AACR.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NIH RO1 CA128803)National Cancer Institute (U.S.) (Integrated Cancer Biology Program grant NCI 1-U54-CA112967)David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT (Ludwig Fellowship)Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Biology (training grant

Elemental Abundances in M31: Iron and Alpha Element Abundances in M31’s Outer Halo

We present [Fe/H] and [α/Fe] abundances, derived using spectral synthesis techniques, for stars in M31's outer stellar halo. The 21 [Fe/H] measurements and 7 [α/Fe] measurements are drawn from fields ranging from 43 to 165 kpc in projected distance from M31. We combine our measurements with existing literature measurements, and compare the resulting sample of 23 stars with [Fe/H] and 9 stars with [α/Fe] measurements in M31's outer halo with [α/Fe] and [Fe/H] measurements, also derived from spectral synthesis, in M31's inner stellar halo (r < 26 kpc) and dSph galaxies. The stars in M31's outer halo have [α/Fe] patterns that are consistent with the largest of M31's dSph satellites (And I and And VII). These abundances provide tentative evidence that the [α/Fe] abundances of stars in M31's outer halo are more similar to the abundances of Milky Way halo stars than to the abundances of stars in M31's inner halo. We also compare the spectral synthesis–based [Fe/H] measurements of stars in M31's halo with previous photometric [Fe/H] estimates, as a function of projected distance from M31. The spectral synthesis–based [Fe/H] measurements are consistent with a large-scale metallicity gradient previously observed in M31's stellar halo to projected distances as large as 100 kpc

Elemental Abundances in M31: The Kinematics and Chemical Evolution of Dwarf Spheroidal Satellite Galaxies

We present deep spectroscopy from Keck/DEIMOS of Andromeda I, III, V, VII, and X, all of which are dwarf spheroidal satellites of M31. The sample includes 256 spectroscopic members across all five dSphs. We confirm previous measurements of the velocity dispersions and dynamical masses, and we provide upper limits on bulk rotation. Our measurements confirm that M31 satellites obey the same relation between stellar mass and stellar metallicity as Milky Way (MW) satellites and other dwarf galaxies in the Local Group. The metallicity distributions show trends with stellar mass that are similar to those of MW satellites, including evidence in massive satellites for external influence, like pre-enrichment or gas accretion. We present the first measurements of individual element ratios, like [Si/Fe], in the M31 system, as well as measurements of the average [α/Fe] ratio. The trends of [α/Fe] with [Fe/H] also follow the same galaxy mass–dependent patterns as MW satellites. Less massive galaxies have more steeply declining slopes of [α/Fe] that begin at lower [Fe/H]. Finally, we compare the chemical evolution of M31 satellites to M31's Giant Stellar Stream and smooth halo. The properties of the M31 system support the theoretical prediction that the inner halo is composed primarily of massive galaxies that were accreted early. As a result, the inner halo exhibits higher [Fe/H] and [α/Fe] than surviving satellite galaxies

Elemental Abundances in M31: Iron and Alpha Element Abundances in M31's Outer Halo

We present [Fe/H] and [$\alpha$/Fe] abundances, derived using spectral synthesis techniques, for stars in M31's outer stellar halo. The 21 [Fe/H] measurements and 7 [$\alpha$/Fe] measurements are drawn from fields ranging from 43 to 165 kpc in projected distance from M31. We combine our measurements with existing literature measurements, and compare the resulting sample of 23 stars with [Fe/H] and 9 stars with [$\alpha$/Fe] measurements in M31's outer halo with [$\alpha$/Fe] and [Fe/H] measurements, also derived from spectral synthesis, in M31's inner stellar halo ($r <$26 kpc) and dSph galaxies. The stars in M31's outer halo have [$\alpha$/Fe] patterns that are consistent with the largest of M31's dSph satellites (And I and And VII). These abundances provide tentative evidence that the [$\alpha$/Fe] abundances of stars in M31's outer halo are more similar to the abundances of Milky Way halo stars than to the abundances of stars in M31's inner halo. We also compare the spectral synthesis-based [Fe/H] measurements of stars in M31's halo with previous photometric [Fe/H] estimates, as a function of projected distance from M31. The spectral synthesis-based [Fe/H] measurements are consistent with a large-scale metallicity gradient previously observed in M31's stellar halo to projected distances as large as 100 kpc.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, 1 table; accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journa