Evolutionary Trends in the Physciaceae

The current delimitation of the family Physciaceae has been generally accepted since detailed descriptions of ascus characters allowed for a more natural circumscription of lichenized ascomycetes. The generic relations within the family are, however, still controversial and depend on the importance different authors attribute to specific morphological or chemical characteristics. The aim of this paper is to describe ascospore ontogeny and to test the present taxonomic structure of the family against a parsimony-based cladistic analysis, which includes three different scenarios of a priori character weighting. A study of ascospore ontogeny revealed two distinct developmental lines. One line revealed a delayed septum formation, which clearly showed transitions from spores with apical and median thickenings to spores without apical, but still well developed median thickenings, and to spores without any thickenings. In the second developmental line with an early septum formation again taxa with no thickenings, median thickenings, and both median and apical thickenings were found. Although these characters were constant at a species level, median wall thickenings especially varied among otherwise closely related taxa. In the cladistic analyses the current taxonomic structure of the Physciaceae was only obtained after the five character groups, namely morphology and anatomy of the vegetative thallus, conidiomata and conidia, morphology and anatomy of the apothecia, ontogeny of the ascospores, and secondary metabolites of the thallus, were given equal importance, and after a subjective a priori weighting further increased the weight of the three characters ‘conidial shape', ‘presence of apical thickenings', and ‘spore septation delayed'. This structure was not supported by a cladistic analysis with equally weighted characters but reflected the biased character weighting of the present day Physdaceae taxonomy. The taxonomic importance of conidial characters and of anatomical and ontogenetical spore characteristics need, therefore, a careful reconsideration in futur

A precise determination of chlorinity of sea water using the Ag-AgCl indicator electrode

A knowledge of the relative currents of the oceans depends to a large extent upon a knowledge of the distribution of mass. Measurements of temperature and cblorinity are made to furnish the necessary data for the computations of the density

ranacapa: An R package and Shiny web app to explore environmental DNA data with exploratory statistics and interactive visualizations.

Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is becoming a core tool in ecology and conservation biology, and is being used in a growing number of education, biodiversity monitoring, and public outreach programs in which professional research scientists engage community partners in primary research. Results from eDNA analyses can engage and educate natural resource managers, students, community scientists, and naturalists, but without significant training in bioinformatics, it can be difficult for this diverse audience to interact with eDNA results. Here we present the R package ranacapa, at the core of which is a Shiny web app that helps perform exploratory biodiversity analyses and visualizations of eDNA results. The app requires a taxonomy-by-sample matrix and a simple metadata file with descriptive information about each sample. The app enables users to explore the data with interactive figures and presents results from simple community ecology analyses. We demonstrate the value of ranacapa to two groups of community partners engaging with eDNA metabarcoding results

Oxytocin levels and self-reported anxiety during interactions between humans and cows

Introduction: Positive social interactions with farm animals may have therapeutic benefits on humans by increasing brain oxytocin secretion, as inferred from circulating oxytocin levels. The aim of this observational study was to investigate acute changes in human plasma oxytocin levels and state anxiety associated with interactions with dairy cows. Methods: Data were collected from 18 healthy female nursing students who performed stroking and brushing of an unfamiliar cow for 15 min. Blood samples were drawn before entering the cowshed (T1, baseline), and after 5 (T2) and 15 (T3) min of interaction with a cow. At T1 and T3, the students filled out the Norwegian version of the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-State Subscale (STAI-SS). Results: Across participants, no significant changes in average plasma oxytocin concentration were detected between time points (p>0.05). There was, however, a modest decline in the STAI-SS scores between T1 and T3 (p=0.015) and a positive correlation between the change in individual level of state anxiety between T1 and T3 and the change in OT concentration of the same individual between T2 and T3 (p = 0.045). Discussion: The results suggest that friendly social interactions with cows are beneficial in lowering state anxiety, but any relationship with release of OT into the circulation was complex and variable across individuals. The acute reduction in state anxiety lends support to the value of interacting with farm animals in the context of Green Care for people with mental health challenges

New kid on the ID block: Neural functions of the Nab2/ZC3H14 class of Cys3His tandem zinc-finger polyadenosine RNA binding proteins

Polyadenosine RNA binding proteins (Pabs) play critical roles in regulating the polyadenylation, nuclear export, stability, and translation of cellular RNAs. Although most Pabs are ubiquitously expressed and are thought to play general roles in post-transcriptional regulation, mutations in genes encoding these factors have been linked to tissue-specific diseases including muscular dystrophy and now intellectual disability (ID). Our recent work defined this connection to ID, as we showed that mutations in the gene encoding the ubiquitously expressed Cys3His tandem zinc-finger (ZnF) Pab, ZC3H14 (Zinc finger protein, CCCH-type, number 14) are associated with non-syndromic autosomal recessive intellectual disability (NS-ARID). This study provided a first link between defects in Pab function and a brain disorder, suggesting that ZC3H14 plays a required role in regulating RNAs in nervous system cells. Here we highlight key questions raised by our study of ZC3H14 and its ortholog in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, dNab2, and comment on future approaches that could provide insights into the cellular and molecular roles of this class of zinc finger-containing Pabs. We propose a summary model depicting how ZC3H14-type Pabs might play particularly important roles in neuronal RNA metabolism

Long-term changes in extreme temperatures and precipitation in Spain

La creació de les bases de dades de temperatura i precipitació diàries anomenades, respectivament, Spanish Daily Adjusted Temperature Series (SDATS) i Spanish Daily Adjusted Precipitation Series (SDAPS), en el marc del projecte finançat per la Comissió Europea EMULATE (European and North Atlantic daily to MULtidecadal climATE variability), ha permès als autors analitzar el canvi a llarg termini que s'ha produït en el comportament anual dels extrems climàtics a l'Espanya peninsular durant el període 1901-2005. El conjunt de procediments desenvolupats pels autors per tal de crear registres homogenis de la temperatura i de la precipitació diàries són descrits de manera breu abans d'analitzar els canvis observats en l'ocurrència d'extrems climàtics. S'han utilitzat els indicadors se - güents per a dur a terme aquest estudi: excedències dels percentils inferiors i superiors de les temperatures màximes (Tmax) i mínimes (Tmin) diàries, excedències de la precipitació diària per sobre dels percentils 95è i 99è, l'índex simple d'intensitat diària (SDII) i els indicadors d'1 i 5 dies amb la precipitació més alta de l'any. Tant l'anàlisi dels percentils superiors de les temperatures com la dels inferiors mostren que s'ha produït un escalfament important sobre l'Espanya peninsular al llarg del segle XX, i que aquest ha estat més important en les temperatures màximes que en les temperatures mínimes. No obstant això, aquest patró presenta un lleuger canvi en el període més recent d'escalfament, en el qual la tendència d'ambdues variables presenta valors similars. Els canvis en els indicadors pluviomètrics no són tan clars com els estimats per la temperatura, però s'ha detectat una tendència cap a l'ocurrència de pluges més intenses.The development of the Spanish daily adjusted temperature series (SDATS) and the Spanish daily adjusted precipitation series (SDAPS) datasets in the framework of the European Community (EC)-funded project EMULATE (European and North Atlantic daily to MULtidecadal climATE variability) enabled the assessment of long-term annual changes of extreme temperature and precipitation indices over peninsular Spain for the period 1901–2005. Within this framework, a set of procedures was developed to generate long-term (1850–2005) daily adjusted temperature and precipitation series and to use them to assess changes in climatic extremes. The present report describes details of the data employed to analyze the behavior of Spanish climate extremes and discusses the results of investigations into the annual changes in selected indices that occurred during the 20th century: exceedances of upper and lower percentiles of daily maximum (Tmax) and minimum (Tmin) temperatures, cold-spell duration index (CSDI), warm-spell duration index (WSDI), daily rainfall (R) exceeding the 95th and 99th percentiles, simple daily intensity index (SDII), and greatest 1- and 5-day total precipitation. Upper and lower temperature percentiles increased during the 20th century over mainland Spain, but changes in daytime extreme temperatures were larger than changes in night-time extreme temperatures. This pattern, however, shifted slightly in the recent period of strong warming, with more similar rates of change among daytime and night-time extreme temperatures. Changes in extreme precipitation indices were not as evident as those in extremetemperature indices, but there was a tendency towards heavier precipitation

Memory-delineated subtypes of schizophrenia: Relationship to clinical, neuroanatomical, and neurophysiological measures.

Memory performance was examined in patients with schizophrenia to determine whether subgroups conforming to cortical and subcortical dementias could be identified and, if so, whether subgroups differed on clinical, neuroanatomical, and neurophysiological measures. A cluster analysis of California Verbal Learning Test performance classified patients into 3 subgroups. Two groups exhibited memory deficits consistent with the cortical–subcortical distinction, whereas 1 group was unimpaired. Cortical patients tended to be male, and they had earlier illness onset, reduced temporal lobe gray matter, and hypometabolism. Subcortical patients had ventricular enlargement and more negative symptoms. Unimpaired patients had fewer negative symptoms and dorsal medial prefrontal hypermetabolism. The authors con-clude that categorizing patients on the basis of memory deficits may yield neurobiologically meaningful disease subtypes. There is increasing consensus that Kraepelin’s conceptu-alization of schizophrenia as a disorder characterized by disturbed cognition rather than psychotic symptomatology was fundamentally correct (see Sharma & Harvey, 2000, fo

Sound archaeology: terminology, Palaeolithic cave art and the soundscape

This article is focused on the ways that terminology describing the study of music and sound within archaeology has changed over time, and how this reflects developing methodologies, exploring the expectations and issues raised by the use of differing kinds of language to define and describe such work. It begins with a discussion of music archaeology, addressing the problems of using the term ‘music’ in an archaeological context. It continues with an examination of archaeoacoustics and acoustics, and an emphasis on sound rather than music. This leads on to a study of sound archaeology and soundscapes, pointing out that it is important to consider the complete acoustic ecology of an archaeological site, in order to identify its affordances, those possibilities offered by invariant acoustic properties. Using a case study from northern Spain, the paper suggests that all of these methodological approaches have merit, and that a project benefits from their integration

Survey of the needs of patients with spinal cord injury: impact and priority for improvement in hand function in tetraplegics\ud

Objective: To investigate the impact of upper extremity deficit in subjects with tetraplegia.\ud \ud Setting: The United Kingdom and The Netherlands.\ud \ud Study design: Survey among the members of the Dutch and UK Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Associations.\ud \ud Main outcome parameter: Indication of expected improvement in quality of life (QOL) on a 5-point scale in relation to improvement in hand function and seven other SCI-related impairments.\ud \ud Results: In all, 565 subjects with tetraplegia returned the questionnaire (overall response of 42%). Results in the Dutch and the UK group were comparable. A total of 77% of the tetraplegics expected an important or very important improvement in QOL if their hand function improved. This is comparable to their expectations with regard to improvement in bladder and bowel function. All other items were scored lower.\ud \ud Conclusion: This is the first study in which the impact of upper extremity impairment has been assessed in a large sample of tetraplegic subjects and compared to other SCI-related impairments that have a major impact on the life of subjects with SCI. The present study indicates a high impact as well as a high priority for improvement in hand function in tetraplegics.\ud \u

Bovine oocyte exposure to perfluorohexane sulfonate (PFHxS) induces phenotypic, transcriptomic, and DNA methylation changes in resulting embryos in vitro

Knowledge on the effects of perfluorohexane sulfonate (PFHxS) on ovarian function is limited. In the current study, we investigated the sensitivity of oocytes to PFHxS during in vitro maturation (IVM), including conse-quences on embryo development at the morphological, transcriptomic, and epigenomic levels. Bovine cumulus-oocyte complexes (COCs) were exposed to PFHxS during 22 h IVM. Following fertilisation, developmental competence was recorded until day 8 of culture. Two experiments were conducted: 1) exposure of COCs to 0.01 mu g mL(-1) -100 mu g mL(-1) PFHxS followed by confocal imaging to detect neutral lipids and nuclei, and 2) exposure of COCs to 0.1 mu g mL(-1) PFHxS followed by analysis of transcriptomic and DNA methylation changes in blastocysts. Decreased oocyte developmental competence was observed upon exposure to & nbsp;>= 40 mu g mL(-1) PFHxS and altered lipid distribution was observed in the blastocysts upon exposure to 1-10 mu g mL(-1) PFHxS (not observed at lower or higher concentrations). Transcriptomic data showed that genes affected by 0.1 mu g mL(-1) PFHxS were enriched for pathways related to increased synthesis and production of reactive oxygen species. Enrichment for peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma and oestrogen pathways was also observed. Genes linked to DNA methylation changes were enriched for similar pathways. In conclusion, exposure of the bovine oocyte to PFHxS during the narrow window of IVM affected subsequent embryonic development, as reflected by morphological and mo- lecular changes. This suggests that PFHxS interferes with the final nuclear and cytoplasmic maturation of the oocyte leading to decreased developmental competence to blastocyst stage