Anaplastic large cell lymphoma presenting as a cerebellar mass

Anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) is a T cell lymphoma occurring commonly in childhood and rarely in adults. Central nervous system involvement in ALCL is very rare and cerebellar involvement at presentation has never been described. We examine the case of a young adult who presented with a cerebellar mass.A 19-year-old boy presented with signs of raised intracranial tension, which, on imaging, revealed a right cerebellar mass. He underwent suboccipital craniotomy and partial excision of the tumor. However, the histopathology was inconclusive. He subsequently presented with cerebellar signs and repeat imaging showed recurrence of the cerebellar lesion. He underwent decompression and ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunting. Histopathology was suggestive of ALK (anaplastic lymphoma kinase) positive anaplastic large cell lymphoma. The patient was started on chemotherapy. However, his neurological status deteriorated, his condition worsened, and he expired a month later. Keywords: ALCL, Cerebellum, Brain, NH

Bovine tuberculosis in cattle: reduced risk on wildlife-friendly farms

The associations between habitat and other factors that lead to the risk of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in diary cattle were examined in an unmatched case–control study. Data from 60 herds with recent history of bTB and 60 controls were analysed using logistic regression. The predictors included farmland habitat, topography, indices of badger density and herd size. Information-theoretic approaches were used to identify those predictor variables explaining the greatest variation in cattle herd bTB breakdowns. Reduced risk of bTB was associated with the management of farmland in ways favourable to wildlife conservation, as encouraged by recent (2005) European Common Agricultural Policy reforms

A long-term habitat fragmentation experiment leads to morphological change in a species of carabid beetle

1. Habitat fragmentation and transformation are key drivers of species declines in landscapes. Most of the current understanding of species’ responses to environmental change originates from studies of populations and communities. However, phenotypic variation offers another key aspect of species responses and could provide additional insights into the functional drivers of population change. 2. The goal of this study was to address this gap by exploring the morphological changes of a species of carabid beetle (Notonomus resplendens)with a known population response to theWogWog Habitat Fragmentation Experiment in Australia. We measured morphological traits associated with body size, head width, and dispersal ability. We quantified patterns of morphological variation over time and between native Eucalyptus forest fragments and the surrounding pine plantation matrix and the continuous intact native Eucalyptus forest controls. 3. We found sexually dimorphic morphological changes in response to the experimental treatments. Males increased in size, had larger legs and had smaller interocular widths in the matrix in both the short and long terms. Conversely, females became comparatively smaller and had increased interocular widths in the same treatments. Effects in the fragments were similar to those in the matrix, but exhibited more uncertainty. 4. Our results demonstrate that species can show morphological change in response to environmental change over very short time periods. We demonstrate that using both population and morphological data allows stronger inferences about the mechanisms behind species responses to environmental change.Funding to collect samples between 2009 and 2013 was provided by NSF DEB 0841892 to KFD. KFD was also supported by NSF DEB 1350872. MJE was funded by an Australian National University PhD Scholarshi

Estimation in Ricker's two-release method: a Bayesian approach

The Ricker’s two-release method is a simplified version of the Jolly-Seber method, from Seber’s Estimation of Animal Abundance (1982), used to estimate survival rate and abundance in animal populations. This method assumes there is only a single recapture sample and no immigration, emigration or recruitment. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian analysis for this method to estimate the survival rate and the capture probability, employing Markov chain Monte Carlo methods and a latent variable analysis. The performance of the proposed method is illustrated with a simulation study as well as a real data set. The results show that the proposed method provides favourable inference for the survival rate when compared with the modified maximum likelihood method