European Neolithic societies showed early warning signals of population collapse

Ecosystems on the verge of major reorganization-regime shift-may exhibit declining resilience, which can be detected using a collection of generic statistical tests known as early warning signals (EWSs). This study explores whether EWSs anticipated human population collapse during the European Neolithic. It analyzes recent reconstructions of European Neolithic (8-4 kya) population trends that reveal regime shifts from a period of rapid growth following the introduction of agriculture to a period of instability and collapse. We find statistical support for EWSs in advance of population collapse. Seven of nine regional datasets exhibit increasing autocorrelation and variance leading up to collapse, suggesting that these societies began to recover from perturbation more slowly as resilience declined. We derive EWS statistics from a prehistoric population proxy based on summed archaeological radiocarbon date probability densities. We use simulation to validate our methods and show that sampling biases, atmospheric effects, radiocarbon calibration error, and taphonomic processes are unlikely to explain the observed EWS patterns. The implications of these results for understanding the dynamics of Neolithic ecosystems are discussed, and we present a general framework for analyzing societal regime shifts using EWS at large spatial and temporal scales. We suggest that our findings are consistent with an adaptive cycling model that highlights both the vulnerability and resilience of early European populations. We close by discussing the implications of the detection of EWS in human systems for archaeology and sustainability science

Identification of Therapeutic Targets of Inflammatory Monocyte Recruitment to Modulate the Allogeneic Injury to Donor Cornea

Purpose: We sought to test the hypothesis that monocytes contribute to the immunopathogenesis of corneal allograft rejection and identify therapeutic targets to inhibit monocyte recruitment. Methods: Monocytes and proinflammatory mediators within anterior chamber samples during corneal graft rejection were quantified by flow cytometry and multiplex protein assays. Lipopolysaccharide or IFN-γ stimulation of monocyte-derived macrophages (MDMs) was used to generate inflammatory conditioned media (CoM). Corneal endothelial viability was tested by nuclear counting, connexin 43, and propidium iodide staining. Chemokine and chemokine receptor expression in monocytes and MDMs was assessed in microarray transcriptomic data. The role of chemokine pathways in monocyte migration across microvascular endothelium was tested in vitro by chemokine depletion or chemokine receptor inhibitors. Results: Inflammatory monocytes were significantly enriched in anterior chamber samples within 1 week of the onset of symptoms of corneal graft rejection. The MDM inflammatory CoM was cytopathic to transformed human corneal endothelia. This effect was also evident in endothelium of excised human cornea and increased in the presence of monocytes. Gene expression microarrays identified monocyte chemokine receptors and cognate chemokines in MDM inflammatory responses, which were also enriched in anterior chamber samples. Depletion of selected chemokines in MDM inflammatory CoM had no effect on monocyte transmigration across an endothelial blood–eye barrier, but selective chemokine receptor inhibition reduced monocyte recruitment significantly. Conclusions: We propose a role for inflammatory monocytes in endothelial cytotoxicity in corneal graft rejection. Therefore, targeting monocyte recruitment offers a putative novel strategy to reduce donor endothelial cell injury in survival of human corneal allografts

The Chlamydomonas genome project: A decade on

The green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a popular unicellular organism for studying photosynthesis, cilia biogenesis, and micronutrient homeostasis. Ten years since its genome project was initiated an iterative process of improvements to the genome and gene predictions has propelled this organism to the forefront of the omics era. Housed at Phytozome, the plant genomics portal of the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), the most up-to-date genomic data include a genome arranged on chromosomes and high-quality gene models with alternative splice forms supported by an abundance of whole transcriptome sequencing (RNA-Seq) data. We present here the past, present, and future of Chlamydomonas genomics. Specifically, we detail progress on genome assembly and gene model refinement, discuss resources for gene annotations, functional predictions, and locus ID mapping between versions and, importantly, outline a standardized framework for naming genes

Кераміка для техніки

The benthic invertebrates fauna of most of the saline lakes of the Sud Lipez region (Bolivia, Altiplano) has been until now quite unstudied. Samples collected during an extensive survey of 12 lakes and two small inflow rivers allow a first list of the main macroinvertebrates living in the biotopes. The heterogeneous nature of these saline lakes with their freshwater springs and phreatic inflows offers a variety of habitats to macroinvertebrates. The benthic fauna in lakes with salinity > 10 g l-1 is not so low in density but includes few species and is dominated by Orthocladinae and Podonominae larvae. In contrast, the freshwater springs and inflows are colonized by a diverse fauna with a mixture of both freshwater and saline taxa, but dominated by Elmidae and Amphipoda. The lakes are quite isolated and, apart from some cosmopolitan organisms, their fauna can be quite distinctive. (Résumé d'auteur

Disentangling manual muscle testing and Applied Kinesiology: critique and reinterpretation of a literature review

Cuthbert and Goodheart recently published a narrative review on the reliability and validity of manual muscle testing (MMT) in the Journal. The authors should be recognized for their effort to synthesize this vast body of literature. However, the review contains critical errors in the search methods, inclusion criteria, quality assessment, validity definitions, study interpretation, literature synthesis, generalizability of study findings, and conclusion formulation that merit a reconsideration of the authors' findings. Most importantly, a misunderstanding of the review could easily arise because the authors did not distinguish the general use of muscle strength testing from the specific applications that distinguish the Applied Kinesiology (AK) chiropractic technique. The article makes the fundamental error of implying that the reliability and validity of manual muscle testing lends some degree of credibility to the unique diagnostic procedures of AK. The purpose of this commentary is to provide a critical appraisal of the review, suggest conclusions consistent with the literature both reviewed and omitted, and extricate conclusions that can be made about AK in particular from those that can be made about MMT. When AK is disentangled from standard orthopedic muscle testing, the few studies evaluating unique AK procedures either refute or cannot support the validity of AK procedures as diagnostic tests. The evidence to date does not support the use of MMT for the diagnosis of organic disease or pre/subclinical conditions

Lactate Regulates Metabolic and Proinflammatory Circuits in Control of T Cell Migration and Effector Functions

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Effects of whole-body vibration on postural control in elderly: a systematic review and meta-analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This systematic review was performed to summarize the current evidence for whole body vibration (WBV) interventions on postural control in elderly.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>English and German language papers in Medline, PEDro, Cinahl and the Cochrane databases were searched. Two reviewers extracted data on patients' characteristics, type of WBV intervention and outcomes. Two independent reviewers rated the methodological quality of these studies. Data were pooled using random-effects meta-analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Fifteen papers reporting quantitative data were included. Results from 15 papers could be pooled for a meta-analysis. The studies involved 933 participants. In 7 studies the authors investigated the effects of vibration plates generating vertical sinusoidal vibrations (VS-WBV) and 7 papers described the use of side-alternating sinusoidal vibrations (SS-WBV). One study investigated both VS-WBV and SS-WBV.</p> <p>Weak to moderate evidence of an overall effect as a result of VS-WBV and SS-WBV was observed for (a) static balance for post-intervention values with a standardized mean difference (SMD) -0.06, 95% CI -0.31 to 0.18 and for change values SMD -0.26, 95% CI -1.09 to 0.57, and (b) dynamic balance for post-intervention-values SMD -0.34, 95% CI -0.60 to -0.08. For functional balance (c) an overall outcome for post-intervention values with SMD of 0.34, 95% CI -0.19 to 0.87 was found.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The 15 studies reviewed were of moderate methodological quality. In summary, SS-WBV seems to have a beneficial effect on dynamic balance in elderly individuals. However, the current results should be interpreted with caution because of the observed heterogeneity of training parameters and statistical methods. Future studies are warranted to evaluate the effects of WBV on postural control in an elderly population.</p

Petri Nets Validation of Markovian Models of Emergency Department Arrivals

International audienceModeling of hospital’s Emergency Departments (ED) is vital for optimisation of health services offered to patients that shows up at an ED requiring treatments with different level of emergency. In this paper we present a modeling study whose contribution is twofold: first, based on a dataset relative to the ED of an Italian hospital, we derive different kinds of Markovian models capable to reproduce, at different extents, the statistical character of dataset arrivals; second, we validate the derived arrivals model by interfacing it with a Petri net model of the services an ED patient undergoes. The empirical assessment of a few key performance indicators allowed us to validate some of the derived arrival process model, thus confirming that they can be used for predicting the performance of an ED

Concordance of sibling's recall of measures of childhood socioeconomic position

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Studies of socioeconomic determinants of health often rely on recalled information on childhood socioeconomic position, despite limited evidence of the validity of this information. This study examined concordance between siblings of recalled measures of childhood socioeconomic position.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This cross-sectional study examined reports by 1280 adult sibling pairs in the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States of seven measures of childhood socioeconomic position: father's occupation (in 9 categories), father having a professional occupation, father being a supervisor at work, father's education level, mother's education level, receipt of welfare payments, and subjective appraisal of being better or worse off financially than others.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Concordance was high for father's professional occupation (0.97; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.96, 0.98), father's occupation in 9 categories (0.76; 95% CI 0.73, 0.80), and receipt of welfare payments (0.95; 95% CI 0.93, 0.97). Concordance was lower for father's and mother's education level, and lowest for subjective appraisal of socioeconomic position (0.60; 95% CI 0.57, 0.64). Concordance of parental education was lower for sibling pairs with high school educations or less.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Concordance of recalled measures of childhood socioeconomic position by siblings is generally but not uniformly high.</p