Stings of some species of Lordomyrma and Mayriella (Formicidae: Myrmicinae)

The sting apparatus and pygidium are described for eight of 20 Lordomyrma species and one of five Mayriella species. The apparatus of L. epinotaiis is distinctly different from that of other Lordomyrma species. Comparisons with other genera suggest affinities of species of Lordomyrma to species of Cyphoidris and Lachnomyrmex, while Mayriella abstinens Forel shares unusual features with those of Proatta butteli

Stings of Ants of the Tribe Ectatommini (Formicidae: Ponerinae)

The sting apparatus anatomy is described and compared for 24 species in six of the 9 extant genera of Ectatommini: Paraponera, Acanthoponera, Gnamptogenys, Ectatomma, Proceratium, and Discothyrea. Phylogenetic analysis sorts 15 species of Gnamptogenys into four species groups. Phylogenetic analyses on the six ectatommine genera suggest that: 1) Gnamptogenys and Ectatomma are sister genera, 2) Proceratium and Discothyrea are sister genera, 3) Acanthoponera may be more related to Gnamptogenys and Ectatomma than to the others, and 4) Paraponera may not belong with the other five genera

Archaeological Monitoring Of The Atmos Energy Corporation Hudgins Street Pipeline Replacement Project #080.53481, City Of Grapevine, Tarrant County, Texas

This report presents the results of archaeological monitoring performed by Raba Kistner Environmental, Inc., on behalf of Atmos Energy Corporation for the Atmos Hudgins Street Replacement Project. The project consists of the replacement of aging pipelines with installation of new 2-inch diameter natural gas pipeline within the city of Grapevine, Tarrant County, Texas. The area of pipeline replacement extends along the north side of Hudgins Street within the city of Grapevine right of way for a length of approximate 1,410 feet. Raba Kistner Environmental, Inc., performed archaeological monitoring of mechanical and hand excavations involving trenching, bore pits, tie-in pits, and utility locate pits during project construction. These excavations were performed to place pipe, provide pits for bore machinery, connect to existing pipelines, located buried utilities, or connect to local commercial and residential users. The archaeological monitoring investigations were conducted in accordance with the Antiquities Code of Texas under Texas Antiquities Permit #7861. All fieldwork for this project was conducted over a period of five days from 21 February to 7 March 2017. No in situ prehistoric or historic artifacts or cultural features were observed during the monitoring activities. Raba Kistner Environmental, Inc., recommends that construction proceed as planned with no further cultural resources investigations for the Atmos Hudgins Street Replacement Project. All field records generated by this project will be curated in accordance with Texas Archaeology Research Laboratory guidelines

Stings of ants of the Tribe Ectatommini (Formicidae: Ponerinae)

The sting apparatus anatomy is described and compared for 24 species in six of the 9 extant genera of Ectatommini: Paraponera, Acanthoponera, Gnamptogenys, Ectatomma, Proceratium, and Discothyrea. Phylogenetic analysis sorts 15 species of Gnamptogenys into four species groups. Phylogenetic analyses on the six ectatommine genera suggest that: 1) Gnamptogenys and Ectatomma are sister genera, 2) Proceratium and Discothyrea are sister genera, 3) Acanthoponera may be more related to Gnamptogenys and Ectatomma than to the others, and 4) Paraponera may not belong with the other five genera

Stings of ants of the tribe Pheidologetini (Myrmicinae)

The definition of the Tribe Pheidologetini in the ant subfamily Myrmicinae has always been problematic. Emery (1922) erected the tribe to contain the genera Pheidologeton, Oligomyrmex, Aneleus, Lophomyrmex, Trigonogaster, Ekebomyrma, Carebara and Paedalgus, but Wheeler (1922) put all these genera in the Solenopsidini. Neither Emery nor Wheeler satisfactorily defined either tribe. More recently, Ettershank (1966) proposed the "Pheidologeton genus group" composed of Pheidologeton, Oligomyrmex (including most Aneleus), Lophomyrmex, Carebara, Paedalgus and Anisopheidole, but still uncertainty remains as to relationships of these genera and even the definitions of the genera themselves. New characters and new means of analysis are needed to help resolve this problem

Archaeological Monitoring Of The Atmos Natural Gas Grapevine Franklin Optiman Replacement Project 080.52287, Task 01202, City Of Grapevine, Tarrant County, Texas

This report presents the results of archaeological monitoring performed by Raba Kistner Environmental, Inc., on behalf of Atmos Energy Corporation, for the Atmos Grapevine Franklin Optimain Replacement Project. The project consists of the installation of a 2-, 4-, and 6-inch diameter Polyethylene pipe in Tarrant County, Texas. The proposed pipeline will extend for a length of approximate 4,420 feet, within a 25- to 50-foot-wide easement, located on City of Grapevine road right of way within the Grapevine Commercial Historic District and the Original Town Residential Historic District and immediately adjacent areas of downtown Grapevine. Raba Kistner Environmental, Inc., performed archaeological monitoring of trenching, bore pits, tie-in pits, and service connection mechanical excavations during project construction. These excavations were performed to place pipe, provide pits for bore machinery, connect to existing pipelines, located buried utilities, or connect to local commercial and residential users and are referred to herein as Monitored Locations. The archaeological monitoring investigations were conducted in accordance with the Antiquities Code of Texas under Texas Antiquities Permit #7771. All fieldwork for this project was conducted from 31 January through 16 March 2017 and 28 March 2017. No in situ prehistoric or historic artifacts or cultural or non-cultural features were observed during the monitoring activities. Therefore, Raba Kistner Environmental, Inc., recommends that construction proceed as planned with no further cultural resources investigations for the Atmos Grapevine Franklin Optimain Replacement Project. All field records generated by this project will be curated in accordance with the Texas Archaeology Research Laboratory guidelines

Genetic Dissection of Acute Ethanol Responsive Gene Networks in Prefrontal Cortex: Functional and Mechanistic Implications

Background Individual differences in initial sensitivity to ethanol are strongly related to the heritable risk of alcoholism in humans. To elucidate key molecular networks that modulate ethanol sensitivity we performed the first systems genetics analysis of ethanol-responsive gene expression in brain regions of the mesocorticolimbic reward circuit (prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, and ventral midbrain) across a highly diverse family of 27 isogenic mouse strains (BXD panel) before and after treatment with ethanol. Results Acute ethanol altered the expression of ~2,750 genes in one or more regions and 400 transcripts were jointly modulated in all three. Ethanol-responsive gene networks were extracted with a powerful graph theoretical method that efficiently summarized ethanol\u27s effects. These networks correlated with acute behavioral responses to ethanol and other drugs of abuse. As predicted, networks were heavily populated by genes controlling synaptic transmission and neuroplasticity. Several of the most densely interconnected network hubs, including Kcnma1 and Gsk3β, are known to influence behavioral or physiological responses to ethanol, validating our overall approach. Other major hub genes like Grm3, Pten and Nrg3 represent novel targets of ethanol effects. Networks were under strong genetic control by variants that we mapped to a small number of chromosomal loci. Using a novel combination of genetic, bioinformatic and network-based approaches, we identified high priority cis-regulatory candidate genes, including Scn1b,Gria1, Sncb and Nell2. Conclusions The ethanol-responsive gene networks identified here represent a previously uncharacterized intermediate phenotype between DNA variation and ethanol sensitivity in mice. Networks involved in synaptic transmission were strongly regulated by ethanol and could contribute to behavioral plasticity seen with chronic ethanol. Our novel finding that hub genes and a small number of loci exert major influence over the ethanol response of gene networks could have important implications for future studies regarding the mechanisms and treatment of alcohol use disorders

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