Andean Land Use And Biodiversity: Humanized Landscapes In A Time Of Change

Some landscapes Cannot be understood without reference., to the kinds. degrees, kinds, degrees, and history of human-caused modifications to the Earth's surface. The tropical latitudes of the Andes represent one such place, with agricultural land-use systems appearing in the Early Holocene. Current land use includes both intensive and extensive grazing and crop- or tree-based agricultural systems found across virtually the, entire range of possible elevations and humidity regimes. Biodiversity found in or adjacent to such humanized landscapes will have been altered in abundance. composition, and distribution in relation to the resiliency of the native Species to harvest, hold cover modifications, and other deliberate or inadvertent human land uses. In addition, the geometries of land cover, resulting flout difference among the shapes, sizes, connectivities, and physical structures of the patches, corridors, and matrices that compose landscape mosaics, will constrain biodiversity, often in predictable ways. This article proposes a conceptual model that alter ins that the Continued persistence of native species may depend as much oil the shifting Of Andean landscape mosaics as on species characteristics, themselves. Furthermore, mountains such as the Andes display long gradients of environmental Conditions that after in relation to latitude, soil moisture, aspect, and elevation. Global environmental change will shift these, especially temperature and humidity regimes along elevational gradients, causing Changes outside the historical range of variation for some species. Both land-use systems and Conservation efforts will need to respond spatially to these shifts in the future, at both landscape and regional scales.Geography and the Environmen

Menstrual cycle phase does not predict political conservatism

Recent authors have reported a relationship between women's fertility status, as indexed by menstrual cycle phase, and conservatism in moral, social and political values. We conducted a survey to test for the existence of a relationship between menstrual cycle day and conservatism. 2213 women reporting regular menstrual cycles provided data about their political views. Of these women, 2208 provided information about their cycle date, 1260 provided additional evidence of reliability in self-reported cycle date, and of these, 750 also indicated an absence of hormonal disruptors such as recent hormonal contraception use, breastfeeding or pregnancy. Cycle day was used to estimate day-specific fertility rate (probability of conception); political conservatism was measured via direct self-report and via responses to the "Moral Foundations” questionnaire. We also recorded relationship status, which has been reported to interact with menstrual cycle phase in determining political preferences. We found no evidence of a relationship between estimated cyclical fertility changes and conservatism, and no evidence of an interaction between relationship status and cyclical fertility in determining political attitudes. Our findings were robust to multiple inclusion/exclusion criteria and to different methods of estimating fertility and measuring conservatism. In summary, the relationship between cycle-linked reproductive parameters and conservatism may be weaker or less reliable than previously thought

Retrospective unbiased plasma lipidomic of progressive multiple sclerosis patients-identifies lipids discriminating those with faster clinical deterioration.

The disease course of patients with a confirmed diagnosis of primary progressive multiple sclerosis (PPMS) is uncertain. In an attempt to identify potential signaling pathways involved in the evolution of the disease, we conducted an exploratory unbiased lipidomic analysis of plasma from non‑diseased controls (n = 8) and patients with primary progressive MS (PPMS, n = 19) and either a rapid (PPMS‑P, n = 9) or slow (PPMS‑NP, n = 10) disease course based on worsening disability and/or MRI‑visible appearance of new T2 lesions over a one‑year‑assessment. Partial least squares‑discriminant analysis of the MS/MSALL lipidomic dataset, identified lipids driving the clustering of the groups. Among these lipids, sphingomyelin‑d18:1/14:0 and mono‑hexosylceramide‑d18:1/20:0 were differentially abundant in the plasma of ppMS patients compared to controls and their levels correlated with MRI signs of disease progression. Lyso‑phosphatidic acid‑18:2 (LPA‑18:2) was the only lipid with significantly lower abundance in PPMS patients with a rapidly deteriorating disease course, and its levels inversely correlated with the severity of the neurological deficit. Decreased levels of LPA‑18:2 were detected in patients with more rapid disease progression, regardless of therapy and these findings were validated in an independent cohort of secondary progressive (SPMS) patients, but not in a third cohorts of relapsing–remitting (RRMS) patients. Collectively, our analysis suggests that sphingomyelin‑d18:1/14:0, mono‑hexosylceramide‑d18:1/20:0, and LPA‑18:2 may represent important targets for future studies aimed at understanding disease progression in MS

Akimotoite to perovskite phase transition in MgSiO 3

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/94612/1/grl18182.pd

Benefiting From Misfortune: When Harmless Actions Are Judged to Be Morally Blameworthy

Dominant theories of moral blame require an individual to have caused or intended harm. However, the current four studies demonstrate cases where no harm is caused or intended, yet individuals are nonetheless deemed worthy of blame. Specifically, individuals are judged to be blameworthy when they engage in actions that enable them to benefit from another’s misfortune (e.g., betting that a company’s stock will decline or that a natural disaster will occur). Evidence is presented suggesting that perceptions of the actor’s wicked desires are responsible for this phenomenon. It is argued that these results are consistent with a growing literature demonstrating that moral judgments are often the product of evaluations of character in addition to evaluations of acts

Comparison of the Electronic Structures and Energetics of Ferroelectric LiNbO3 and LiTaO3

This paper explains the origin of the ferroelectric instability in LiNbO3 and LiTaO3 and compares the electronic structures and energetics of the two materials.Comment: 31 pages, 11 Postscript figure

The Energetics of Li Off-Centering in K1−x_{1-x}Lix_xTaO3_3; First Principles Calculations

K$_{1-x}$Li$_{x}$TaO$_3$ (KLT) solid solutions exhibit a variety of interesting physical phenomena related to large displacements of Li-ions from ideal perovskite A-site positions. First-principles calculations for KLT supercells were used to investigate these phenomena. Lattice dynamics calculations for KLT exhibit a Li off-centering instability. The energetics of Li-displacements for isolated Li-ions and for Li-Li pairs up to 4th neighbors were calculated. Interactions between nearest neighbor Li-ions, in a Li-Li pair, strongly favor ferroelectric alignment along the pair axis. Such Li-Li pairs can be considered "seeds" for polar nanoclusters in KLT. Electrostriction, local oxygen relaxation, coupling to the KT soft-mode, and interactions with neighboring Li-ions all enhance the polarization from Li off-centering. Calculated hopping barriers for isolated Li-ions and for nearest neighbor Li-Li pairs are in good agreement with Arrhenius fits to experimental dielectric data.Comment: 14 pages including 10 figures. To Physical Review B. Replaced after corrections due to referees' remark

First GIS analysis of modern stone tools used by wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in Bossou, Guinea, West Africa

Stone tool use by wild chimpanzees of West Africa offers a unique opportunity to explore the evolutionary roots of technology during human evolution. However, detailed analyses of chimpanzee stone artifacts are still lacking, thus precluding a comparison with the earliest archaeological record. This paper presents the first systematic study of stone tools used by wild chimpanzees to crack open nuts in Bossou (Guinea-Conakry), and applies pioneering analytical techniques to such artifacts. Automatic morphometric GIS classification enabled to create maps of use wear over the stone tools (anvils, hammers, and hammers/anvils), which were blind tested with GIS spatial analysis of damage patterns identified visually. Our analysis shows that chimpanzee stone tool use wear can be systematized and specific damage patterns discerned, allowing to discriminate between active and passive pounders in lithic assemblages. In summary, our results demonstrate the heuristic potential of combined suites of GIS techniques for the analysis of battered artifacts, and have enabled creating a referential framework of analysis in which wild chimpanzee battered tools can for the first time be directly compared to the early archaeological record.Leverhulme Trust [IN-052]; MEXT [20002001, 24000001]; JSPS-U04-PWS; FCT-Portugal [SFRH/BD/36169/2007]; Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Researc

Hybridization in parasites: consequences for adaptive evolution, pathogenesis and public health in a changing world

[No abstract available

Disgust sensitivity relates to attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women across 31 nations

Previous work has reported a relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and prejudice toward various social groups, including gay men and lesbian women. It is currently unknown whether this association is present across cultures, or specific to North America. Analyses of survey data from adult heterosexuals (N = 11,200) from 31 countries showed a small relation between pathogen disgust sensitivity (an individual-difference measure of pathogen-avoidance motivations) and measures of antigay attitudes. Analyses also showed that pathogen disgust sensitivity relates not only to antipathy toward gay men and lesbians, but also to negativity toward other groups, in particular those associated with violations of traditional sexual norms (e.g., prostitutes). These results suggest that the association between pathogen-avoidance motivations and antigay attitudes is relatively stable across cultures and is a manifestation of a more general relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and prejudice towards groups associated with sexual norm violations