Explaining the rank order of invasive plants by stakeholder groups

Debates surrounding the use of policies to avoid further spread of invasive species highlight the need to establish priorities in public resource allocations. We explore the consistency or discrepancy among stakeholder groups involved in the risk and control management of invasive species to identify the extent to which different factors influence stakeholder choices of major relevant plant invaders. Based on stakeholder ranking of invasive plants, we explore the reasons behind stakeholders' support for policy management. Data were collected in Galicia, Spain, where a catalogue of prohibited entry and trade of invasive species is currently under debate. We estimate a rank ordered logit model using information from semi-structured interviews conducted with respondents from four stakeholder groups: public administration sector, ornamental sector, research and social groups. The characteristics of plant invaders that provoke stakeholders to rank a species more highly are wide distribution of plant invaders, existence of public control programmes, use and sale of species in the ornamental sector and media coverage. The influence these aspects have in the selection of top-ranked invaders varies across different stakeholder groups and with stakeholders' level of knowledge, awareness and attitudes towards different potential policy measures. A small group of invaders are perceived as top rated by all stakeholder groups

Does public awareness increase support for invasive species management?:Promising evidence across taxa and landscape types

Management of invasive species often raises substantial conflicts of interest. Since such conflicts can hamper proposed management actions, managers, decision makers and researchers increasingly recognize the need to consider the social dimensions of invasive species management. In this exploratory study, we aimed (1) to explore whether species’ taxonomic position (i.e. animals vs. plants) and type of invaded landscape (i.e. urban vs. nonurban) might influence public perception about the management of invasive species, and (2) to assess the potential of public awareness to increase public support for invasive species management. We reviewed the scientific literature on the conflicts of interest around the management of alien species and administered two-phased questionnaires (before and after providing information on the target species and its management) to members of the public in South Africa and the UK (n = 240). Our review suggests that lack of public support for the management of invasive animals in both urban and non-urban areas derives mainly from moralistic value disagreements, while the management of invasive plants in non-urban areas mostly causes conflicts based on utilitarian value disagreements. Despite these general trends, conflicts are context dependent and can originate from a wide variety of different views. Notably, informing the public about the invasive status and negative impacts of the species targeted for management appeared to increase public support for the management actions. Therefore, our results align with the view that increased public awareness might increase the public support for the management of invasive species, independent of taxonomic position and type of landscape

Case Reports1. A Late Presentation of Loeys-Dietz Syndrome: Beware of TGFβ Receptor Mutations in Benign Joint Hypermobility

Background: Thoracic aortic aneurysms (TAA) and dissections are not uncommon causes of sudden death in young adults. Loeys-Dietz syndrome (LDS) is a rare, recently described, autosomal dominant, connective tissue disease characterized by aggressive arterial aneurysms, resulting from mutations in the transforming growth factor beta (TGFβ) receptor genes TGFBR1 and TGFBR2. Mean age at death is 26.1 years, most often due to aortic dissection. We report an unusually late presentation of LDS, diagnosed following elective surgery in a female with a long history of joint hypermobility. Methods: A 51-year-old Caucasian lady complained of chest pain and headache following a dural leak from spinal anaesthesia for an elective ankle arthroscopy. CT scan and echocardiography demonstrated a dilated aortic root and significant aortic regurgitation. MRA demonstrated aortic tortuosity, an infrarenal aortic aneurysm and aneurysms in the left renal and right internal mammary arteries. She underwent aortic root repair and aortic valve replacement. She had a background of long-standing joint pains secondary to hypermobility, easy bruising, unusual fracture susceptibility and mild bronchiectasis. She had one healthy child age 32, after which she suffered a uterine prolapse. Examination revealed mild Marfanoid features. Uvula, skin and ophthalmological examination was normal. Results: Fibrillin-1 testing for Marfan syndrome (MFS) was negative. Detection of a c.1270G > C (p.Gly424Arg) TGFBR2 mutation confirmed the diagnosis of LDS. Losartan was started for vascular protection. Conclusions: LDS is a severe inherited vasculopathy that usually presents in childhood. It is characterized by aortic root dilatation and ascending aneurysms. There is a higher risk of aortic dissection compared with MFS. Clinical features overlap with MFS and Ehlers Danlos syndrome Type IV, but differentiating dysmorphogenic features include ocular hypertelorism, bifid uvula and cleft palate. Echocardiography and MRA or CT scanning from head to pelvis is recommended to establish the extent of vascular involvement. Management involves early surgical intervention, including early valve-sparing aortic root replacement, genetic counselling and close monitoring in pregnancy. Despite being caused by loss of function mutations in either TGFβ receptor, paradoxical activation of TGFβ signalling is seen, suggesting that TGFβ antagonism may confer disease modifying effects similar to those observed in MFS. TGFβ antagonism can be achieved with angiotensin antagonists, such as Losartan, which is able to delay aortic aneurysm development in preclinical models and in patients with MFS. Our case emphasizes the importance of timely recognition of vasculopathy syndromes in patients with hypermobility and the need for early surgical intervention. It also highlights their heterogeneity and the potential for late presentation. Disclosures: The authors have declared no conflicts of interes

TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits - the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants - determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait‐based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits - almost complete coverage for ‘plant growth form’. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait–environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

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

Counteraction of the antiviral factor tetherin by HIV-1 group O

For a long time it was thought that human tetherin is resistant to lentiviral Nef proteins due to a five amino acid deletion in its cytoplasmic tail. Using FACS analysis and virus release assays, I show that Nef proteins of HIV-1 group O decrease surface levels of human tetherin and increase virus release from CD4+ T cells. Thus, Nef proteins of HIV-1 group O have adapted to be effective antagonists of human tetherin and human tetherin is not generally resistant to Nef proteins. Furthermore, I describe one strain of HIV-1 group O that uses both its Nef and Vpu protein to antagonize human tetherin, which demonstrates the importance of tetherin antagonism and the enormous plasticity of lentiviral accessory proteins

National University Cancer Institute Singapore: Pioneering an innovative healthcare model

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