Re-Evaluation of Sinocastor (Rodentia: Castoridae) with Implications on the Origin of Modern Beavers

The extant beaver, Castor, has played an important role shaping landscapes and ecosystems in Eurasia and North America, yet the origins and early evolution of this lineage remain poorly understood. Here we use a geometric morphometric approach to help re-evaluate the phylogenetic affinities of a fossil skull from the Late Miocene of China. This specimen was originally considered Sinocastor, and later transferred to Castor. The aim of this study was to determine whether this form is an early member of Castor, or if it represents a lineage outside of Castor. The specimen was compared to 38 specimens of modern Castor (both C. canadensis and C. fiber) as well as fossil specimens of C. fiber (Pleistocene), C. californicus (Pliocene) and the early castorids Steneofiber eseri (early Miocene). The results show that the specimen falls outside the Castor morphospace and that compared to Castor, Sinocastor possesses a: 1) narrower post-orbital constriction, 2) anteroposteriorly shortened basioccipital depression, 3) shortened incisive foramen, 4) more posteriorly located palatine foramen, 5) longer rostrum, and 6) longer braincase. Also the specimen shows a much shallower basiocciptal depression than what is seen in living Castor, as well as prominently rooted molars. We conclude that Sinocastor is a valid genus. Given the prevalence of apparently primitive traits, Sinocastor might be a near relative of the lineage that gave rise to Castor, implying a possible Asiatic origin for Castor

Dissecting the Shared Genetic Architecture of Suicide Attempt, Psychiatric Disorders, and Known Risk Factors

Background Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide, and nonfatal suicide attempts, which occur far more frequently, are a major source of disability and social and economic burden. Both have substantial genetic etiology, which is partially shared and partially distinct from that of related psychiatric disorders. Methods We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 29,782 suicide attempt (SA) cases and 519,961 controls in the International Suicide Genetics Consortium (ISGC). The GWAS of SA was conditioned on psychiatric disorders using GWAS summary statistics via multitrait-based conditional and joint analysis, to remove genetic effects on SA mediated by psychiatric disorders. We investigated the shared and divergent genetic architectures of SA, psychiatric disorders, and other known risk factors. Results Two loci reached genome-wide significance for SA: the major histocompatibility complex and an intergenic locus on chromosome 7, the latter of which remained associated with SA after conditioning on psychiatric disorders and replicated in an independent cohort from the Million Veteran Program. This locus has been implicated in risk-taking behavior, smoking, and insomnia. SA showed strong genetic correlation with psychiatric disorders, particularly major depression, and also with smoking, pain, risk-taking behavior, sleep disturbances, lower educational attainment, reproductive traits, lower socioeconomic status, and poorer general health. After conditioning on psychiatric disorders, the genetic correlations between SA and psychiatric disorders decreased, whereas those with nonpsychiatric traits remained largely unchanged. Conclusions Our results identify a risk locus that contributes more strongly to SA than other phenotypes and suggest a shared underlying biology between SA and known risk factors that is not mediated by psychiatric disorders.Peer reviewe

UMA IMPLEMENTAÇÃO COMPUTACIONAL DE CONSTRUÇÕES VERBAIS PERIFRÁSTICAS EM FRANCÊS

This paper describes the treatment of passive and compound past tense in FrGramm, a computational grammar of French, implemented within Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) using the XLE software. Due to the dual auxiliary system and past participle agreement, the latter periphrasis manifests greater structural complexity and therefore presents a greater challenge to computational implementation in French than in languages such as English and Portuguese. An additional difficulty is modeling the morphological and syntactico- semantic regularities of the passive construction. In FrGramm, this problem is solved by means of a productive lexical rule. FrGramm also implements the constraints governing the building of both verbal periphrases, excepting participle object agreement. The implementation was evaluated by applying a parser to a set of 157 grammatical sentences and a set of 279 ungrammatical sentences. All sentences from the former set were correctly parsed. Only two constructions from the latter set that violate the linear precedence of the compound past auxiliary over the passive auxiliary were analyzed as grammatical. FrGramm is the only LFG grammar of French with similar coverage that is freely available on-line. A future version will handle participle object agreement and also avoid the mentioned overgeneration.Este artigo descreve o tratamento da passiva e do passado composto na FrGramm, uma gramática computacional do francês implementada na Gramática Léxico-Funcional (LFG) usando o software XLE. Devido à dualidade de auxiliares e concordância do particípio passado (PTPST), a segunda perífrase exibe uma maior complexidade estrutural em francês do que em línguas como inglês e português, representando, consequentemente, um maior desafio à implementação computacional. Uma dificuldade adicional é a modelação das regularidades morfológicas e sintático-semânticas da passiva. A FrGramm resolve esse problema por meio de uma regra lexical produtiva. Também implementa as restrições que governam a formação das duas perífrases verbais, exceto a concordância do PTPST com o objeto direto. A implementação foi avaliada pela aplicação de um analisador sintático automático (parser) a 157 sentenças gramaticais e 279 construções agramaticais. Todas as sentenças do primeiro conjunto foram analisadas corretamente. Apenas duas construções do segundo que violam a precedência do auxiliar do passado composto sobre o da passiva foram analisadas como gramaticais. A FrGramm é a única gramática LFG do francês com essa cobertura atualmente disponibilizada livremente. Uma versão futura dará conta da concordância do PTPST com o objeto direto e evitará a hipergeração referida