First record of Larsonella pumilus (Teleostei: Gobiidae) from Japan, with phylogenetic placement of the genus Larsonella

During a survey of deep-sea fauna, using a Remotely Operated Vehicle, a single specimen (21.6 mm in standard length) of Larsonella pumilus (Larson & Hoese, 1980) was collected at a depth of 214 m off the coast of Okinawa Island, Japan. It represents the first record of this species from Japan. The collection site was far deeper than previous reports for this species. This suggests that the main habitat of L. pumilus is deeper than previously recognized and it may explain the paucity of records of this species. As the previously available morphological description of L. pumilus was based on only a single specimen (holotype), this new specimen is described herein. Its morphology corresponds closely to the original description of the holotype, except that faint melanophores are arranged radially around the eyes and scattered on the trunk and the fins. Mitochondrial genome sequences of L. pumilus and 19 related species demonstrate close relationships between L. pumilus and the genus Priolepis. These data also indicate that the genus Priolepis is not monophyletic.journal articl

Review of Schismatogobius (Gobiidae) from Japan, with the description of a new species

Three species of Schismatogobius de Beaufort 1912, distinguished by their morphology and mitochondrial DNA sequences, were found in freshwater streams in the Ryukyu Archipelago, Japan. Although two species were previously known from Japan (S. roxasi Herre 1936 and S. ampluvinculus Chen, Shao, and Fang 1995), the taxonomy needs to be revised. To identify these species, the holotype morphology of S. marmoratus (Peters 1868), S. bruynisi de Beaufort 1912, and S. roxasi, originally described from the Philippines and Indonesia, were examined and re-described here, because relatively little information about their diagnostic characters was provided in the original descriptions. The three Japanese species were identified as S. ampluvinculus, S. marmoratus, and a new species. They were distinguished from each other and from their congeners by the banding pattern of the body, markings on the pectoral fins, pigment patterns on the ventral surface of the head and pelvic fin, body depth at the pelvic-fin origin, pre-anal length, and pectoral-fin ray counts. Although the new species had been regarded as S. roxasi in previous publications, we show that it is actually not S. roxasi and that it also differs from all other nominal species of Schismatogobius. This is described as a new species, S. ninja. Additionally, this is the first record of S. marmoratus from Japan

Two new species of Rhinogobius (Gobiiformes: Oxudercidae) from Palawan, Philippines, with their phylogenetic placement

Two new species of Rhinogobius found in streams on central part of Palawan Island, Philippines are described. The two new species, Rhinogobius estrellae and Rhinogobius tandikan share unique transverse rows of sensory papillae on the cheek with Rhinogobius similis Gill, 1859, but differ from the latter in fin ray counts, arrangement of the scales, etc. The two new species are distinguished from each other by the pectoral-fin ray count, the longitudinal- and predorsal-scale counts, and colouration of the body. Rhinogobius estrellae new species and R. tandikan new species have been found allopatrically in a stream within Malatgao River system flowing into the Sulu Sea and in the Cayulo River flowing into the South China Sea, respectively. The Malatgao River system is the southernmost habitat of the genus Rhinogobius. Rhinogobius similis had been considered as the only member of the most basal lineage of this genus, but our mitochondrial genome analysis suggested that the two new species are additional members of this lineage. They are considered to be relicts of their common ancestor with R. similis, which probably had a wider distribution.journal articl

BLOOM: A 176B-Parameter Open-Access Multilingual Language Model

Large language models (LLMs) have been shown to be able to perform new tasks based on a few demonstrations or natural language instructions. While these capabilities have led to widespread adoption, most LLMs are developed by resource-rich organizations and are frequently kept from the public. As a step towards democratizing this powerful technology, we present BLOOM, a 176B-parameter open-access language model designed and built thanks to a collaboration of hundreds of researchers. BLOOM is a decoder-only Transformer language model that was trained on the ROOTS corpus, a dataset comprising hundreds of sources in 46 natural and 13 programming languages (59 in total). We find that BLOOM achieves competitive performance on a wide variety of benchmarks, with stronger results after undergoing multitask prompted finetuning. To facilitate future research and applications using LLMs, we publicly release our models and code under the Responsible AI License

A Case of Acute Kidney Injury with Marked Hyperuricemia During Mizoribine Administration

A 52-year-old woman was diagnosed with Blau syndrome and rheumatoid arthritis and was treated with prednisolone and methotrexate. Joint pain and skin ulcers were poorly controlled; therefore, mizoribine (MZ; 150 mg/day) was administered once daily from March 2011. In early July 2011, the patient was hospitalized because of acute kidney injury (AKI) and acute pancreatitis. We reasoned that AKI resulted from hyperuricemia during MZ administration because serum concentrations of uric acid (31.6 mg/dL) and MZ (trough level, 5.14 μg/mL) were markedly elevated on admission. MZ should be administered with caution because of the risk of marked hyperuricemia leading to AKI

Bloodmeal host identification with inferences to feeding habits of a fish-fed mosquito, Aedes baisasi

Abstract The mosquito, Aedes baisasi, which inhabits brackish mangrove swamps, is known to feed on fish. However, its host assemblage has not been investigated at the species level. We amplified and sequenced the cytochrome oxidase subunit I barcoding regions as well as some other regions from blood-fed females to identify host assemblages in the natural populations from four islands in the Ryukyu Archipelago. Hosts were identified from 230 females. We identified 15 host fish species belonging to eight families and four orders. Contrary to expectations from previous observations, mudskippers were detected from only 3% of blood-engorged females. The dominant host was a four-eyed sleeper, Bostrychus sinensis (Butidae, Gobiiformes), in Iriomote-jima Island (61%), while it was a snake eel, Pisodonophis boro (Ophichthidae, Anguilliformes), in Amami-oshima and Okinawa-jima islands (78% and 79%, respectively). Most of the identified hosts were known as air-breathing or amphibious fishes that inhabit mangroves or lagoons. Our results suggest that A. baisasi females locate the bloodmeal hosts within the mangrove forests and sometimes in the adjacent lagoons and land on the surface of available amphibious or other air-breathing fishes exposed in the air to feed on their blood