Molecular data from the holotype of the enigmatic Bornean Black Shrew, Suncus ater Medway, 1965 (Soricidae, Crocidurinae), place it in the genus Palawanosorex

Although Borneo has received more attention from biologists than most other islands in the Malay Archipelago, many questions regarding the systematic relationships of Bornean mammals remain. Using next-generation sequencing technology, we obtained mitochondrial DNA sequences from the holotype of Suncus ater, the only known specimen of this shrew. Several shrews collected recently in Sarawak are closely aligned, both morphologically and mitochondrially, with the holotype of S. ater. Phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial sequences indicate that the S. ater holotype and new Sarawak specimens do not belong to the genus Suncus, but instead are most closely related to Palawanosorex muscorum. Until now Palawanosorex has been known only from the neighboring Philippine island of Palawan. Additional sequences from nuclear ultra-conserved elements from the new Sarawak specimens strongly support a sister relationship to P. muscorum. We therefore transfer ater to Palawanosorex. The new specimens demonstrate that P. ater is more widespread in northern Borneo than previously recorded. Continued sampling of Bornean mammal diversity and reexamination of type material are critical in understanding the evolutionary history of the biologically rich Malay Archipelago

NON-VOLANT SMALL MAMMALS

Borneo is home to at least 87 species of non-volant small mammals, and is represented by at least seven families: Muridae, Soricidae, Erinacidae, Tupaiidae, Sciuridae, Hystricidae and Ptiloceridae. The primary forests of Bako National Park has a rich non-volant small mammal fauna. However, as past studies on mammals were focused on bats, flying lemurs and primates, a substantial gap exists in our knowledge of the small terrestrial mammals of the Park

Survey on the small mammals in Sg. Kangkawat research station Imbak canyon conservation areas

Sg. Kangkawat Research Station is a newly established research station in the Imbak Canyon Conservation Area, Sabah which encompasses both primary and secondary forest areas. Limited data is available on the small mammal diversity for this particular area. Therefore, a survey-based study on small mammal diversity was carried out between the 29th September – 8th October 2018 along the established trails within the vicinity areas of this research station. Small mammal trapping was done using traps (mist nets, harp traps, cage traps and pitfall traps) employed randomly along the Nepenthes trail, the Kawang trail, the South Rim trail and the Pelajau trail. This study documented a total of 32 small mammal species i.e. represented by 26 species (15 spp. of new records for ICCA ) of volant small mammals (Chiroptera) and 6 species of non-volant small mammals (Rodentia, Scadentia, Insectivora, Carnivora). The total number of specimens recorded was 108. A new distribution record on the Free-tailed Bat, Chaerephon cf. johorensis, was documented for Sabah and Borneo during this study

Impact of COVID-19 on cardiovascular testing in the United States versus the rest of the world

Objectives: This study sought to quantify and compare the decline in volumes of cardiovascular procedures between the United States and non-US institutions during the early phase of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the care of many non-COVID-19 illnesses. Reductions in diagnostic cardiovascular testing around the world have led to concerns over the implications of reduced testing for cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality. Methods: Data were submitted to the INCAPS-COVID (International Atomic Energy Agency Non-Invasive Cardiology Protocols Study of COVID-19), a multinational registry comprising 909 institutions in 108 countries (including 155 facilities in 40 U.S. states), assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on volumes of diagnostic cardiovascular procedures. Data were obtained for April 2020 and compared with volumes of baseline procedures from March 2019. We compared laboratory characteristics, practices, and procedure volumes between U.S. and non-U.S. facilities and between U.S. geographic regions and identified factors associated with volume reduction in the United States. Results: Reductions in the volumes of procedures in the United States were similar to those in non-U.S. facilities (68% vs. 63%, respectively; p = 0.237), although U.S. facilities reported greater reductions in invasive coronary angiography (69% vs. 53%, respectively; p < 0.001). Significantly more U.S. facilities reported increased use of telehealth and patient screening measures than non-U.S. facilities, such as temperature checks, symptom screenings, and COVID-19 testing. Reductions in volumes of procedures differed between U.S. regions, with larger declines observed in the Northeast (76%) and Midwest (74%) than in the South (62%) and West (44%). Prevalence of COVID-19, staff redeployments, outpatient centers, and urban centers were associated with greater reductions in volume in U.S. facilities in a multivariable analysis. Conclusions: We observed marked reductions in U.S. cardiovascular testing in the early phase of the pandemic and significant variability between U.S. regions. The association between reductions of volumes and COVID-19 prevalence in the United States highlighted the need for proactive efforts to maintain access to cardiovascular testing in areas most affected by outbreaks of COVID-19 infection

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blocker initiation on organ support-free days in patients hospitalized with COVID-19

IMPORTANCE Overactivation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) may contribute to poor clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Objective To determine whether angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) initiation improves outcomes in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In an ongoing, adaptive platform randomized clinical trial, 721 critically ill and 58 non–critically ill hospitalized adults were randomized to receive an RAS inhibitor or control between March 16, 2021, and February 25, 2022, at 69 sites in 7 countries (final follow-up on June 1, 2022). INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomized to receive open-label initiation of an ACE inhibitor (n = 257), ARB (n = 248), ARB in combination with DMX-200 (a chemokine receptor-2 inhibitor; n = 10), or no RAS inhibitor (control; n = 264) for up to 10 days. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was organ support–free days, a composite of hospital survival and days alive without cardiovascular or respiratory organ support through 21 days. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model. Odds ratios (ORs) greater than 1 represent improved outcomes. RESULTS On February 25, 2022, enrollment was discontinued due to safety concerns. Among 679 critically ill patients with available primary outcome data, the median age was 56 years and 239 participants (35.2%) were women. Median (IQR) organ support–free days among critically ill patients was 10 (–1 to 16) in the ACE inhibitor group (n = 231), 8 (–1 to 17) in the ARB group (n = 217), and 12 (0 to 17) in the control group (n = 231) (median adjusted odds ratios of 0.77 [95% bayesian credible interval, 0.58-1.06] for improvement for ACE inhibitor and 0.76 [95% credible interval, 0.56-1.05] for ARB compared with control). The posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitors and ARBs worsened organ support–free days compared with control were 94.9% and 95.4%, respectively. Hospital survival occurred in 166 of 231 critically ill participants (71.9%) in the ACE inhibitor group, 152 of 217 (70.0%) in the ARB group, and 182 of 231 (78.8%) in the control group (posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitor and ARB worsened hospital survival compared with control were 95.3% and 98.1%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this trial, among critically ill adults with COVID-19, initiation of an ACE inhibitor or ARB did not improve, and likely worsened, clinical outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0273570

Bats Assemblage In Wind Cave Nature Reserve

A species diversity study of chiropteran was conducted at the limestone cave of Wind Cave Nature Reserve (WCNR) using harp traps, mist nets and hand-net. A total of 296 individuals from 22 species and six families were recorded in this study. The most abundance species recorded was Penthetor lucasi, with 138 individuals followed by Hipposideros cervinus (49 individuals). P. lucasi and H. cervinus comprised 46% and 16% of the total individuals caught respectively. Megaderma spasma was caught using hand-net while roosting in the cave. New record for WCNR, namely Kerivoula papillosa, Myotis montivagus, M. ater, Nycteris tragata, M. spasma, H. ater, and H. bicolor making it 26 species known inhabited WCNR

Phylogeography of Bornean Shrew (Family Soricidae: Crocidura foetida) inferred from Cytochrome b Gene and Species Distribution Modeling of Three Shrews from Malaysia Using Maximum Entropy Approach

Malaysia is known as one of the biodiversity hotspot for small mammals including shrews given the complex geological and climatic settings. Lack of studies on genus Crocidura from Southeast Asia has led to the constraint of its taxonomic assessment. The distribution of three shrew species in Malaysia has been poorly known due to limited data. This thesis aims to determine the relationship between Crocidura foetida and other Crocidura species in Southeast Asia and also to predict the distribution of species from genus Crocidura using Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) modelling. The sampling for shrew was conducted in 25 sites across Malaysia using 100 pitfall traps per site between 2014 and 2017. Thirty-two individuals of shrew from genus Crocidura were captured from 13 out of 25 sites. Crocidura foetida recorded the highest number of species captured with 28 individuals and four other individuals recorded are C. malayana. Partial cytochrome b gene sequences were analysed and reveal noticeable intra-specific divergences among C. foetida (2.2-2.8%), which were collected in Sarawak. Principal component analysis conducted on the cranio-dental measurements of 15 samples revealed no distinct grouping between localities. The phylogeny with estimation time of divergence is produced in which species in genus Crocidura are grouped into several clades. The S-Diva analysis highlights six major dispersal events among genus Crocidura. We are able to compare the phylogeography relationship of the Bornean shrew, C. foetida using mtDNA cytochrome b. Three predicted distribution models of three shrew species from Malaysia were presented. Crocidura foetida and C. monticola prefers climate with low temperature in the dense montane forest while C. malayana is distributed abundantly across Peninsular Malaysia

Molecular data from the holotype of the enigmatic Bornean Black Shrew, Suncus ater Medway, 1965 (Soricidae, Crocidurinae), place it in the genus Palawanosorex

Although Borneo has received more attention from biologists than most other islands in the Malay Archipelago, many questions regarding the systematic relationships of Bornean mammals remain. Using next-generation sequencing technology, we obtained mitochondrial DNA sequences from the holotype of Suncus ater, the only known specimen of this shrew. Several shrews collected recently in Sarawak are closely aligned, both morphologically and mitochondrially, with the holotype of S. ater. Phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial sequences indicate that the S. ater holotype and new Sarawak specimens do not belong to the genus Suncus, but instead are most closely related to Palawanosorex muscorum. Until now Palawanosorex has been known only from the neighboring Philippine island of Palawan. Additional sequences from nuclear ultra-conserved elements from the new Sarawak specimens strongly support a sister relationship to P. muscorum. We therefore transfer ater to Palawanosorex. The new specimens demonstrate that P. ater is more widespread in northern Borneo than previously recorded. Continued sampling of Bornean mammal diversity and reexamination of type material are critical in understanding the evolutionary history of the biologically rich Malay Archipelago