Book Review: The Tallgrass Restoration Handbook: For Prairies, Savannas, and Woodlands

The Tallgrass Restoration Handbook: For Prairies, Savannas, and Woodlands. Stephen Packard and Cornelia F. Mutel, eds. 1997. Society for Ecological Restoration. 463 pages. ISBN 1-55963-319-0 hdbd. The publication of the Tallgrass Restoration Handbook is an enormous step in the right direction for people who have already learned to appreciate and admire the beauty and utility of prairies and who now want to roll up their sleeves and begin the restoration of their own bit of tallgrass prairie. All of this volume excluding the first two introductory chapters (Part I) is dedicated to the practical aspects of prairie restoration

Vaccine message framing and parents' intent to immunize their infants for MMR

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Emphasizing societal benefits of vaccines has been linked to increased vaccination intentions in adults. It is unclear if this pattern holds for parents deciding whether to vaccinate their children. The objective was to determine whether emphasizing the benefits of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination directly to the vaccine recipient or to society differentially impacts parents' vaccine intentions for their infants. METHODS: In a national online survey, parents (N = 802) of infants <12 months old were randomly assigned to receive 1 of 4 MMR vaccine messages: (1) the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Vaccine Information Statement (VIS), (2) VIS and information emphasizing the MMR vaccine's benefits to the child, (3) VIS and information emphasizing societal benefits, or (4) VIS and information emphasizing benefits both to the child and society. Parents reported their likelihood of vaccinating their infants for MMR on a response scale of 0 (extremely unlikely) to 100 (extremely likely). RESULTS: Compared with the VIS-only group (mean intention = 86.3), parents reported increased vaccine intentions for their infants when receiving additional information emphasizing the MMR vaccine's benefits either directly to the child (mean intention = 91.6, P = .01) or to both the child and society (mean intention = 90.8, P = .03). Emphasizing the MMR vaccine's benefits only to society did not increase intentions (mean intention = 86.4, P = .97). CONCLUSIONS: We did not see increases in parents' MMR vaccine intentions for their infants when societal benefits were emphasized without mention of benefits directly to the child. This finding suggests that providers should emphasize benefits directly to the child. Mentioning societal benefits seems to neither add value to, nor interfere with, information highlighting benefits directly to the child

Different paths to the modern state in Europe: the interaction between domestic political economy and interstate competition

Theoretical work on state formation and capacity has focused mostly on early modern Europe and on the experience of western European states during this period. While a number of European states monopolized domestic tax collection and achieved gains in state capacity during the early modern era, for others revenues stagnated or even declined, and these variations motivated alternative hypotheses for determinants of fiscal and state capacity. In this study we test the basic hypotheses in the existing literature making use of the large date set we have compiled for all of the leading states across the continent. We find strong empirical support for two prevailing threads in the literature, arguing respectively that interstate wars and changes in economic structure towards an urbanized economy had positive fiscal impact. Regarding the main point of contention in the theoretical literature, whether it was representative or authoritarian political regimes that facilitated the gains in fiscal capacity, we do not find conclusive evidence that one performed better than the other. Instead, the empirical evidence we have gathered lends supports to the hypothesis that when under pressure of war, the fiscal performance of representative regimes was better in the more urbanized-commercial economies and the fiscal performance of authoritarian regimes was better in rural-agrarian economie

Role of Sox-9, ER81 and VE-Cadherin in Retinoic Acid-Mediated Trans-Differentiation of Breast Cancer Cells

Many aspects of development, tumor growth and metastasis depend upon the provision of an adequate vasculature. This can be a result of regulated angiogenesis, recruitment of circulating endothelial progenitors and/or vascular trans-differentiation. The present study demonstrates that treatment of SKBR-3 breast cancer cells with retinoic acid (RA), an important regulator of embryogenesis, cancer and other diseases, stimulates the formation of networks in Matrigel. RA-treatment of SKBR-3 cells co-cultured with human umbilical vein endothelial cells resulted in the formation of mixed structures. RA induces expression of many endothelial genes including vascular endothelial (VE) cadherin. VE-cadherin was also induced by RA in a number of other breast cancer cells. We show that RA-induced VE-cadherin is responsible for the RA-induced morphological changes. RA rapidly induced the expression of Sox-9 and ER81, which in turn form a complex on the VE-cadherin promoter and are required to mediate the transcriptional regulation of VE-cadherin by RA. These data indicate that RA may promote the expression of endothelial genes resulting in endothelial-like differentiation, or provide a mechanism whereby circulating endothelial progenitor cells could be incorporated into a growing organ or tumor

DNA methylation changes in ovarian cancer are cumulative with disease progression and identify tumor stage

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Hypermethylation of promoter CpG islands with associated loss of gene expression, and hypomethylation of CpG-rich repetitive elements that may destabilize the genome are common events in most, if not all, epithelial cancers.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The methylation of 6,502 CpG-rich sequences spanning the genome was analyzed in 137 ovarian samples (ten normal, 23 low malignant potential, 18 stage I, 16 stage II, 54 stage III, and 16 stage IV) ranging from normal tissue through to stage IV cancer using a sequence-validated human CpG island microarray. The microarray contained 5' promoter-associated CpG islands as well as CpG-rich satellite and Alu repetitive elements.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Results showed a progressive de-evolution of normal CpG methylation patterns with disease progression; 659 CpG islands showed significant loss or gain of methylation. Satellite and Alu sequences were primarily associated with loss of methylation, while promoter CpG islands composed the majority of sequences with gains in methylation. Since the majority of ovarian tumors are late stage when diagnosed, we tested whether DNA methylation profiles could differentiate between normal and low malignant potential (LMP) compared to stage III ovarian samples. We developed a class predictor consisting of three CpG-rich sequences that was 100% sensitive and 89% specific when used to predict an independent set of normal and LMP samples versus stage III samples. Bisulfite sequencing confirmed the NKX-2-3 promoter CpG island was hypermethylated with disease progression. In addition, 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine treatment of the ES2 and OVCAR ovarian cancer cell lines re-expressed NKX-2-3. Finally, we merged our CpG methylation results with previously published ovarian expression microarray data and identified correlated expression changes.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our results show that changes in CpG methylation are cumulative with ovarian cancer progression in a sequence-type dependent manner, and that CpG island microarrays can rapidly discover novel genes affected by CpG methylation in clinical samples of ovarian cancer.</p

Predicting bee community responses to land-use changes: Effects of geographic and taxonomic biases

Land-use change and intensification threaten bee populations worldwide, imperilling pollination services. Global models are needed to better characterise, project, and mitigate bees' responses to these human impacts. The available data are, however, geographically and taxonomically unrepresentative; most data are from North America and Western Europe, overrepresenting bumblebees and raising concerns that model results may not be generalizable to other regions and taxa. To assess whether the geographic and taxonomic biases of data could undermine effectiveness of models for conservation policy, we have collated from the published literature a global dataset of bee diversity at sites facing land-use change and intensification, and assess whether bee responses to these pressures vary across 11 regions (Western, Northern, Eastern and Southern Europe; North, Central and South America; Australia and New Zealand; South East Asia; Middle and Southern Africa) and between bumblebees and other bees. Our analyses highlight strong regionally-based responses of total abundance, species richness and Simpson's diversity to land use, caused by variation in the sensitivity of species and potentially in the nature of threats. These results suggest that global extrapolation of models based on geographically and taxonomically restricted data may underestimate the true uncertainty, increasing the risk of ecological surprises