Group Decisions in Biodiversity Conservation: Implications from Game Theory

. This paper shows how game theory may be used to inform group decisions in biodiversity conservation scenarios by modeling conflicts between stakeholders to identify Pareto–inefficient Nash equilibria. These are cases in which each agent pursuing individual self–interest leads to a worse outcome for all, relative to other feasible outcomes. Three case studies from biodiversity conservation contexts showing this feature are modeled to demonstrate how game–theoretical representation can inform group decision-making.–agent fish and coral conservation scenario from the Philippines. In each case there is reason to believe that traditional mechanism–design solutions that appeal to material incentives may be inadequate, and the game–theoretical analysis recommends a resumption of further deliberation between agents and the initiation of trust—and confidence—building measures. that formal mechanism–design solutions may backfire in certain cases. Such scenarios demand a return to group deliberation and the creation of reciprocal relationships of trust

An integrated computational-experimental approach reveals Yersinia pestis genes essential across a narrow or a broad range of environmental conditions

This is the final version. Available from BMC via the DOI in this recordAvailability of data and materials: The datasets supporting the conclusions of this article are available at the NCBI GEO website https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE100226.BACKGROUND: The World Health Organization has categorized plague as a re-emerging disease and the potential for Yersinia pestis to also be used as a bioweapon makes the identification of new drug targets against this pathogen a priority. Environmental temperature is a key signal which regulates virulence of the bacterium. The bacterium normally grows outside the human host at 28 °C. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms that the bacterium used to adapt to a mammalian host at 37 °C is central to the development of vaccines or drugs for the prevention or treatment of human disease. RESULTS: Using a library of over 1 million Y. pestis CO92 random mutants and transposon-directed insertion site sequencing, we identified 530 essential genes when the bacteria were cultured at 28 °C. When the library of mutants was subsequently cultured at 37 °C we identified 19 genes that were essential at 37 °C but not at 28 °C, including genes which encode proteins that play a role in enabling functioning of the type III secretion and in DNA replication and maintenance. Using genome-scale metabolic network reconstruction we showed that growth conditions profoundly influence the physiology of the bacterium, and by combining computational and experimental approaches we were able to identify 54 genes that are essential under a broad range of conditions. CONCLUSIONS: Using an integrated computational-experimental approach we identify genes which are required for growth at 37 °C and under a broad range of environments may be the best targets for the development of new interventions to prevent or treat plague in humans.This work was funded by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, award DSTLX-1000060221 (WP1)

Nonlinear pharmacokinetics of therapeutic proteins resulting from receptor mediated endocytosis

Receptor mediated endocytosis (RME) plays a major role in the disposition of therapeutic protein drugs in the body. It is suspected to be a major source of nonlinear pharmacokinetic behavior observed in clinical pharmacokinetic data. So far, mostly empirical or semi-mechanistic approaches have been used to represent RME. A thorough understanding of the impact of the properties of the drug and of the receptor system on the resulting nonlinear disposition is still missing, as is how to best represent RME in pharmacokinetic models. In this article, we present a detailed mechanistic model of RME that explicitly takes into account receptor binding and trafficking inside the cell and that is used to derive reduced models of RME which retain a mechanistic interpretation. We find that RME can be described by an extended Michaelis–Menten model that accounts for both the distribution and the elimination aspect of RME. If the amount of drug in the receptor system is negligible a standard Michaelis–Menten model is capable of describing the elimination by RME. Notably, a receptor system can efficiently eliminate drug from the extracellular space even if the total number of receptors is small. We find that drug elimination by RME can result in substantial nonlinear pharmacokinetics. The extent of nonlinearity is higher for drug/receptor systems with higher receptor availability at the membrane, or faster internalization and degradation of extracellular drug. Our approach is exemplified for the epidermal growth factor receptor system

Proteomic Analysis of Rat Hypothalamus Revealed the Role of Ubiquitin–Proteasome System in the Genesis of DR or DIO

Obesity has become a global epidemic, contributing to the increasing burdens of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. However, the precise molecular mechanisms of obesity remain poorly elucidated. The hypothalamus plays a major part in regulating energy homeostasis by integrating all kinds of nutritional signals. This study investigated the hypothalamus protein profile in diet-induced obese (DIO) and diet-resistant (DR) rats using two dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) combined with MALDI-TOF/TOF–MS analysis. Twenty-two proteins were identified in the hypothalamus of DIO or DR rats. These include metabolic enzymes, antioxidant proteins, proteasome related proteins, and signaling proteins, some of which are related to AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) signaling or mitochondrial respiration. Among these proteins, in comparison with the normal-diet group, Ubiquitin was significantly decreased in DR rats but not changed in DIO rats, while Ubiquitin carboxyl-terminal esterase L1 (UCHL-1) was decreased in DIO rats but not changed in DR rats. The expression level of Ubiquitin and UCHL-1 were further validated using Western blot analysis. Our study reveals that Ubiquitin and UCHL-1 are obesity-related factors in the hypothalamus that may play an important role in the genesis of DR or DIO by interfering with the integrated signaling network that control energy balance and feeding

The search for transient astrophysical neutrino emission with IceCube-DeepCore

We present the results of a search for astrophysical sources of brief transient neutrino emission using IceCube and DeepCore data acquired between 2012 May 15 and 2013 April 30. While the search methods employed in this analysis are similar to those used in previous IceCube point source searches, the data set being examined consists of a sample of predominantly sub-TeV muon-neutrinos from the Northern Sky (-5 degrees < delta < 90 degrees) obtained through a novel event selection method. This search represents a first attempt by IceCube to identify astrophysical neutrino sources in this relatively unexplored energy range. The reconstructed direction and time of arrival of neutrino events are used to search for any significant self-correlation in the data set. The data revealed no significant source of transient neutrino emission. This result has been used to construct limits at timescales ranging from roughly 1 s to 10 days for generic soft-spectra transients. We also present limits on a specific model of neutrino emission from soft jets in core-collapse supernovae

Effectiveness of Biodiversity Surrogates for Conservation Planning: Different Measures of Effectiveness Generate a Kaleidoscope of Variation

Conservation planners represent many aspects of biodiversity by using surrogates with spatial distributions readily observed or quantified, but tests of their effectiveness have produced varied and conflicting results. We identified four factors likely to have a strong influence on the apparent effectiveness of surrogates: (1) the choice of surrogate; (2) differences among study regions, which might be large and unquantified (3) the test method, that is, how effectiveness is quantified, and (4) the test features that the surrogates are intended to represent. Analysis of an unusually rich dataset enabled us, for the first time, to disentangle these factors and to compare their individual and interacting influences. Using two data-rich regions, we estimated effectiveness using five alternative methods: two forms of incidental representation, two forms of species accumulation index and irreplaceability correlation, to assess the performance of ‘forest ecosystems’ and ‘environmental units’ as surrogates for six groups of threatened species—the test features—mammals, birds, reptiles, frogs, plants and all of these combined. Four methods tested the effectiveness of the surrogates by selecting areas for conservation of the surrogates then estimating how effective those areas were at representing test features. One method measured the spatial match between conservation priorities for surrogates and test features. For methods that selected conservation areas, we measured effectiveness using two analytical approaches: (1) when representation targets for the surrogates were achieved (incidental representation), or (2) progressively as areas were selected (species accumulation index). We estimated the spatial correlation of conservation priorities using an index known as summed irreplaceability. In general, the effectiveness of surrogates for our taxa (mostly threatened species) was low, although environmental units tended to be more effective than forest ecosystems. The surrogates were most effective for plants and mammals and least effective for frogs and reptiles. The five testing methods differed in their rankings of effectiveness of the two surrogates in relation to different groups of test features. There were differences between study areas in terms of the effectiveness of surrogates for different test feature groups. Overall, the effectiveness of the surrogates was sensitive to all four factors. This indicates the need for caution in generalizing surrogacy tests

Prebiotic and Probiotic Fortified Milk in Prevention of Morbidities among Children: Community-Based, Randomized, Double-Blind, Controlled Trial

HN019 to milk, in preventing diarrhea, respiratory infections and severe illnesses, in children aged 1–4 years as part of a four group study design, running two studies simultaneously. HN019 (PP; n = 312). Children were followed up for 1 year providing data for 1–4 years. Biweekly household surveillance was conducted to gather information on compliance and morbidity. Both study groups were comparable at baseline; compliance to intervention was similar. Overall, there was no effect of prebiotic and probiotic on diarrhea (6% reduction, 95% Confidence Interval [CI]: −1 to 12%; p = 0.08). Incidence of dysentery episodes was reduced by 21% (95% CI: 0 to 38%; p = 0.05). Incidence of pneumonia was reduced by 24% (95% CI: 0 to 42%; p = 0.05) and severe acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) by 35% (95% CI: 0 to 58%; p = 0.05). Compared to children in Co group, children in PP group had 16% (95% CI: 5 to 26%, p = 0.004) and 5% (95% CI: 0 to 10%; p = 0.05) reduction in days with severe illness and high fever respectively.Milk can be a good medium for delivery of prebiotic and probiotic and resulted in significant reduction of dysentery, respiratory morbidity and febrile illness. Overall, impact of diarrhea was not significant. These findings need confirmation in other settings

Precision measurement of the top quark mass from dilepton events at CDF II

We report a measurement of the top quark mass, M_t, in the dilepton decay channel of $t\bar{t}\to b\ell'^{+}\nu_{\ell'}\bar{b}\ell^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\ell}$ using an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb^{-1} of p\bar{p} collisions collected with the CDF II detector. We apply a method that convolutes a leading-order matrix element with detector resolution functions to form event-by-event likelihoods; we have enhanced the leading-order description to describe the effects of initial-state radiation. The joint likelihood is the product of the likelihoods from 78 candidate events in this sample, which yields a measurement of M_{t} = 164.5 \pm 3.9(\textrm{stat.}) \pm 3.9(\textrm{syst.}) \mathrm{GeV}/c^2, the most precise measurement of M_t in the dilepton channel.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, version includes changes made prior to publication by journa

Measurement of the Ratios of Branching Fractions B(Bs -> Ds pi pi pi) / B(Bd -> Dd pi pi pi) and B(Bs -> Ds pi) / B(Bd -> Dd pi)

Using 355 pb^-1 of data collected by the CDF II detector in \ppbar collisions at sqrt{s} = 1.96 TeV at the Fermilab Tevatron, we study the fully reconstructed hadronic decays B -> D pi and B -> D pi pi pi. We present the first measurement of the ratio of branching fractions B(Bs -> Ds pi pi pi) / B(Bd -> Dd pi pi pi) = 1.05 pm 0.10 (stat) pm 0.22 (syst). We also update our measurement of B(Bs -> Ds pi) / B(Bd -> Dd pi) to 1.13 pm 0.08 (stat) pm 0.23 (syst) improving the statistical uncertainty by more than a factor of two. We find B(Bs -> Ds pi) = [3.8 pm 0.3 (stat) pm 1.3 (syst)] \times 10^{-3} and B(Bs -> Ds pi pi pi) = [8.4 pm 0.8 (stat) pm 3.2 (syst)] \times 10^{-3}.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure