Increased C3 productivity in Midwestern lawns since 1982 revealed by carbon isotopes in Amanita thiersii

How climate and rising carbon dioxide concentrations (pCO2) have influenced competition between C3 and C4 plants over the last 50 years is a critical uncertainty in climate change research. Here we used carbon isotope (δ13C) values of the saprotrophic lawn fungus Amanita thiersii to integrate the signal of C3 and C4 carbon in samples collected between 1982 and 2009 from the Midwestern USA. We then calculated 13C fractionation (Δ) to assess the balance between C3 and C4 photosynthesis as influenced by mean annual temperature (MAT), mean annual precipitation over a 30 year period (MAP‐30), and pCO2. Sporocarp Δ correlated negatively with MAT (−1.74‰ °C−1, 79% of variance) and positively with MAP (9.52‰ m−1, 15% of variance), reflecting the relative productivity of C3 and C4 grasses in lawns. In addition, Δ values correlated positively with pCO2 (0.072‰ ppm−1, 5% of variance). Reduced photorespiration with rising pCO2 accounted for 20% of this increased Δ, but the remaining 80% is consistent with increased assimilation of C3‐derived carbon by Amanita thiersii resulting from increased productivity of C3 grasses with rising pCO2. Between 1982 and 2009, pCO2 rose by 46 ppm and the relative contribution of C3 photosynthesis to Amanita thiersii carbon increased 18.5%. The δ13C value of Amanita thiersii may integrate both lawn maintenance practices and the physiological responses of turf grasses to rising CO2 concentrations

Discordance rates of biopsy techniques among men with prostate cancer that are candidates for active surveillance

Q1Q1e887-e887INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: With the ongoing stage migration in the diagnosis of prostate cancer, there has been increased interest in management with active surveillance. Our study examines the ability of two prostate biopsy techniques to predict appropriate candidates for active surveillance.METHODS500 consecutive patients, between 2005 and 2007, that underwent trans-rectal ultrasound guided biopsy by either an office biopsy with 12 cores or a saturation biopsy with ≥18 cores, and subsequent radical prostatectomy were identified. Using criteria of: Gleason score ≤6, clinical stage T1 or T2a, Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) <10 and ≤33% of cores involved, 220 patients were found to be candidates for active surveillance. Pathology results from the prostatectomy specimens were used determine the discordance rate of each biopsy technique.RESULTSOf the 220 candidates for active surveillance, 124 patients underwent an office biopsy with 12 cores, and 96 patients underwent a saturation biopsy. The median number of cores in the saturation biopsy cohort was 27. There was no statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of median age (p=0.18), pre-operative PSA (p=0.48) and clinical stage (p=0.2). At least one previous negative biopsy had been performed on 20 patients (16%) in the office cohort and 43 patients (45%) in the saturation cohort (p= <0.001). In the 12 core biopsy group, 17 patients (14%) were upgraded to Gleason 7 on pathology from the prostatectomy specimen. In the saturation biopsy group, 14 patients (15%) were upgraded to Gleason 7, and 1 patient (1%) was upgraded to Gleason 8. There was no statistically significant difference in the rate of upgrading between the office and saturation biopsy cohorts (p=0.69). In the office biopsy group, 2 patients (1.6%) were upstaged to pT3 disease, compared to 0 patients (0%) in the saturation biopsy group (p=0.58). No statistically significant difference in the estimated tumor volume of the prostatectomy specimen was seen between the cohorts (p=0.47).CONCLUSIONSCandidates for active surveillance can accurately be predicted with 12 core biopsies. In both cohorts, approximately 1 in 6 patients underwent upgrading based on the pathology of the prostatectomy specimen

Presenting quantitative information about decision outcomes: a risk communication primer for patient decision aid developers

Abstract Background Making evidence-based decisions often requires comparison of two or more options. Research-based evidence may exist which quantifies how likely the outcomes are for each option. Understanding these numeric estimates improves patients’ risk perception and leads to better informed decision making. This paper summarises current “best practices” in communication of evidence-based numeric outcomes for developers of patient decision aids (PtDAs) and other health communication tools. Method An expert consensus group of fourteen researchers from North America, Europe, and Australasia identified eleven main issues in risk communication. Two experts for each issue wrote a “state of the art” summary of best evidence, drawing on the PtDA, health, psychological, and broader scientific literature. In addition, commonly used terms were defined and a set of guiding principles and key messages derived from the results. Results The eleven key components of risk communication were: 1) Presenting the chance an event will occur; 2) Presenting changes in numeric outcomes; 3) Outcome estimates for test and screening decisions; 4) Numeric estimates in context and with evaluative labels; 5) Conveying uncertainty; 6) Visual formats; 7) Tailoring estimates; 8) Formats for understanding outcomes over time; 9) Narrative methods for conveying the chance of an event; 10) Important skills for understanding numerical estimates; and 11) Interactive web-based formats. Guiding principles from the evidence summaries advise that risk communication formats should reflect the task required of the user, should always define a relevant reference class (i.e., denominator) over time, should aim to use a consistent format throughout documents, should avoid “1 in x” formats and variable denominators, consider the magnitude of numbers used and the possibility of format bias, and should take into account the numeracy and graph literacy of the audience. Conclusion A substantial and rapidly expanding evidence base exists for risk communication. Developers of tools to facilitate evidence-based decision making should apply these principles to improve the quality of risk communication in practice.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116070/1/12911_2013_Article_751.pd

Breaking the Cycle of Incarceration: Strategies for Successful Reentry Final Report for Labyrinth Outreach Services for Women

Working with a local reentry organization, Labyrinth Outreach Services to Women, the purpose of this study was to gather information about opportunities and barriers related to two aspects of their program: employment services and establishment of a microbusiness. Information was obtained through a 22-item questionnaire given to a sample of local businesses, key informant interviews, and secondary data analysis. Thirty-nine businesses in the Bloomington-Normal area responded to the questionnaire via on-line and paper survey methods, nine face-to-face interviews were conducted, along with three case studies of similar reentry microbusiness programs and a review of current literature. Stigmas of formerly incarcerated women, such as being unmotivated, irresponsible, disobedient, and violent were found to be major barriers to hiring. Significant facilitators identified for increased consideration for employment were: having support of a job coach, professionalism, expressing passion for the job, and seeking jobs with low customer contact. Successful microbusinesses within similar reentry organizations involved realistic expectations, client control over business operations, local community involvement, practice of a holistic approach, insurance of high product quality, and a focus on multiple products. Major barriers identified were obtaining start-up capital and revenue not meeting expenses. The most appropriate structure was found to be a social enterprise, which focuses more on non-monetary benefits for the employees rather than a profit focus of a traditional microbusiness. Recommendations based on the findings were made to the client

Consistent phenological shifts in the making of a biodiversity hotspot: the Cape flora

Background The best documented survival responses of organisms to past climate change on short (glacial-interglacial) timescales are distributional shifts. Despite ample evidence on such timescales for local adaptations of populations at specific sites, the long-term impacts of such changes on evolutionary significant units in response to past climatic change have been little documented. Here we use phylogenies to reconstruct changes in distribution and flowering ecology of the Cape flora - South Africa's biodiversity hotspot - through a period of past (Neogene and Quaternary) changes in the seasonality of rainfall over a timescale of several million years. Results Forty-three distributional and phenological shifts consistent with past climatic change occur across the flora, and a comparable number of clades underwent adaptive changes in their flowering phenology (9 clades; half of the clades investigated) as underwent distributional shifts (12 clades; two thirds of the clades investigated). Of extant Cape angiosperm species, 14-41% have been contributed by lineages that show distributional shifts consistent with past climate change, yet a similar proportion (14-55%) arose from lineages that shifted flowering phenology. Conclusions Adaptive changes in ecology at the scale we uncover in the Cape and consistent with past climatic change have not been documented for other floras. Shifts in climate tolerance appear to have been more important in this flora than is currently appreciated, and lineages that underwent such shifts went on to contribute a high proportion of the flora's extant species diversity. That shifts in phenology, on an evolutionary timescale and on such a scale, have not yet been detected for other floras is likely a result of the method used; shifts in flowering phenology cannot be detected in the fossil record

Genotype-by-Environment Interactions and Adaptation to Local Temperature Affect Immunity and Fecundity in Drosophila melanogaster

Natural populations of most organisms harbor substantial genetic variation for resistance to infection. The continued existence of such variation is unexpected under simple evolutionary models that either posit direct and continuous natural selection on the immune system or an evolved life history “balance” between immunity and other fitness traits in a constant environment. However, both local adaptation to heterogeneous environments and genotype-by-environment interactions can maintain genetic variation in a species. In this study, we test Drosophila melanogaster genotypes sampled from tropical Africa, temperate northeastern North America, and semi-tropical southeastern North America for resistance to bacterial infection and fecundity at three different environmental temperatures. Environmental temperature had absolute effects on all traits, but there were also marked genotype-by-environment interactions that may limit the global efficiency of natural selection on both traits. African flies performed more poorly than North American flies in both immunity and fecundity at the lowest temperature, but not at the higher temperatures, suggesting that the African population is maladapted to low temperature. In contrast, there was no evidence for clinal variation driven by thermal adaptation within North America for either trait. Resistance to infection and reproductive success were generally uncorrelated across genotypes, so this study finds no evidence for a fitness tradeoff between immunity and fecundity under the conditions tested. Both local adaptation to geographically heterogeneous environments and genotype-by-environment interactions may explain the persistence of genetic variation for resistance to infection in natural populations

m^6A RNA methylation promotes XIST-mediated transcriptional repression

The long non-coding RNA X-inactive specific transcript (XIST) mediates the transcriptional silencing of genes on the X chromosome. Here we show that, in human cells, XIST is highly methylated with at least 78 N^6-methyladenosine (m^6A) residues—a reversible base modification of unknown function in long non-coding RNAs. We show that m^6A formation in XIST, as well as in cellular mRNAs, is mediated by RNA-binding motif protein 15 (RBM15) and its paralogue RBM15B, which bind the m^6A-methylation complex and recruit it to specific sites in RNA. This results in the methylation of adenosine nucleotides in adjacent m^6A consensus motifs. Furthermore, we show that knockdown of RBM15 and RBM15B, or knockdown of methyltransferase like 3 (METTL3), an m^6A methyltransferase, impairs XIST-mediated gene silencing. A systematic comparison of m^6A-binding proteins shows that YTH domain containing 1 (YTHDC1) preferentially recognizes m^6A residues on XIST and is required for XIST function. Additionally, artificial tethering of YTHDC1 to XIST rescues XIST-mediated silencing upon loss of m^6A. These data reveal a pathway of m^6A formation and recognition required for XIST-mediated transcriptional repression

Marine Biodiversity in South Africa: An Evaluation of Current States of Knowledge

Continental South Africa has a coastline of some 3,650 km and an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of just over 1 million km2. Waters in the EEZ extend to a depth of 5,700 m, with more than 65% deeper than 2,000 m. Despite its status as a developing nation, South Africa has a relatively strong history of marine taxonomic research and maintains comprehensive and well-curated museum collections totaling over 291,000 records. Over 3 million locality records from more than 23,000 species have been lodged in the regional AfrOBIS (African Ocean Biogeographic Information System) data center (which stores data from a wider African region). A large number of regional guides to the marine fauna and flora are also available and are listed

Making maps of cosmic microwave background polarization for B-mode studies: The POLARBEAR example

Analysis of cosmic microwave background (CMB) datasets typically requires some filtering of the raw time-ordered data. For instance, in the context of ground-based observations, filtering is frequently used to minimize the impact of low frequency noise, atmospheric contributions and/or scan synchronous signals on the resulting maps. In this work we have explicitly constructed a general filtering operator, which can unambiguously remove any set of unwanted modes in the data, and then amend the map-making procedure in order to incorporate and correct for it. We show that such an approach is mathematically equivalent to the solution of a problem in which the sky signal and unwanted modes are estimated simultaneously and the latter are marginalized over. We investigated the conditions under which this amended map-making procedure can render an unbiased estimate of the sky signal in realistic circumstances. We then discuss the potential implications of these observations on the choice of map-making and power spectrum estimation approaches in the context of B-mode polarization studies. Specifically, we have studied the effects of time-domain filtering on the noise correlation structure in the map domain, as well as impact it may haveon the performance of the popular pseudo-spectrum estimators. We conclude that although maps produced by the proposed estimators arguably provide the most faithful representation of the sky possible given the data, they may not straightforwardly lead to the best constraints on the power spectra of the underlying sky signal and special care may need to be taken to ensure this is the case. By contrast, simplified map-makers which do not explicitly correct for time-domain filtering, but leave it to subsequent steps in the data analysis, may perform equally well and be easier and faster to implement. We focused on polarization-sensitive measurements targeting the B-mode component of the CMB signal and apply the proposed methods to realistic simulations based on characteristics of an actual CMB polarization experiment, POLARBEAR. Our analysis and conclusions are however more generally applicable. \ua9 ESO, 2017