Historical changes in the phenology of British Odonata are related to climate

Responses of biota to climate change take a number of forms including distributional shifts, behavioural changes and life history changes. This study examined an extensive set of biological records to investigate changes in the timing of life history transitions (specifically emergence) in British Odonata between 1960 and 2004. The results show that there has been a significant, consistent advance in phenology in the taxon as a whole over the period of warming that is mediated by life history traits. British odonates significantly advanced the leading edge (first quartile date) of the flight period by a mean of 1.51 ±0.060 (SEM, n=17) days per decade or 3.08±1.16 (SEM, n=17) days per degree rise in temperature when phylogeny is controlled for. This study represents the first review of changes in odonate phenology in relation to climate change. The results suggest that the damped temperature oscillations experienced by aquatic organisms compared with terrestrial organisms are sufficient to evoke phenological responses similar to those of purely terrestrial taxa

Determination of strontium 90 in environmental materials.

A method for determining strontium 90 in environmental materials is described. It consists of the ion-exchange separation of strontium from calcium at an elevated temperature by careful control of pH and the molar ratio of Ca:EDTA, followed by scavenging, Activity of the Sr-90 is determined by counting the yttrium 90 daughter. Recovery of strontium is determined with Sr-85 tracer. Typical recovery of strontium is 70-90 per cent. Procedures are given for analysis of milk, vegetation, meat and fish, rainwater, and oyster shell and reference is made to analysis of oyster flesh, soil and effluent

Sporormiella as a tool for detecting the presence of large herbivores in the Neotropics

The reliability of using the abundance of Sporormiella spores as a proxy for the presence and abundance of megaherbivores was tested in southern Brazil. Mud-water interface samples from nine lakes, in which cattle-use was categorized as high, medium, or low, were assayed for Sporormiella representation. The sampling design allowed an analysis of both the influence of the number of animals using the shoreline and the distance of the sampling site from the nearest shoreline. Sporormiella was found to be a reliable proxy for the presence of large livestock. The concentration and abundance of spores declined from the edge of the lake toward the center, with the strongest response being in sites with high livestock use. Consistent with prior studies in temperate regions, we find that Sporormiella spores are a useful proxy to study the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna or the arrival of European livestock in Neotropical landscapes

Radio-frequency dressed state potentials for neutral atoms

Potentials for atoms can be created by external fields acting on properties like magnetic moment, charge, polarizability, or by oscillating fields which couple internal states. The most prominent realization of the latter is the optical dipole potential formed by coupling ground and electronically excited states of an atom with light. Here we present an experimental investigation of the remarkable properties of potentials derived from radio-frequency (RF) coupling between electronic ground states. The coupling is magnetic and the vector character allows to design state dependent potential landscapes. On atom chips this enables robust coherent atom manipulation on much smaller spatial scales than possible with static fields alone. We find no additional heating or collisional loss up to densities approaching $10^{15}$ atoms / cm$^3$ compared to static magnetic traps. We demonstrate the creation of Bose-Einstein condensates in RF potentials and investigate the difference in the interference between two independently created and two coherently split condensates in identical traps. All together this makes RF dressing a powerful new tool for micro manipulation of atomic and molecular systems

The Precursors and Products of Justice Climates: Group Leader Antecedents and Employee Attitudinal Consequences

Drawing on the organizational justice, organizational climate, leadership and personality, and social comparison theory literatures, we develop hypotheses about the effects of leader personality on the development of three types of justice climates (e.g., procedural, interpersonal, and informational), and the moderating effects of these climates on individual level justice- attitude relationships. Largely consistent with the theoretically-derived hypotheses, the results showed that leader (a) agreeableness was positively related to procedural, interpersonal and informational justice climates, (b) conscientiousness was positively related to a procedural justice climate, and (c) neuroticism was negatively related to all three types of justice climates. Further, consistent with social comparison theory, multilevel data analyses revealed that the relationship between individual justice perceptions and job attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction, commitment) was moderated by justice climate such that the relationships were stronger when justice climate was high

Taming the zoo of supersymmetric quantum mechanical models

We show that in many cases nontrivial and complicated supersymmetric quantum mechanical (SQM) models can be obtained from the simple model describing free dynamics in flat complex space by two operations: (i) Hamiltonian reduction and (ii) similarity transformation of the complex supercharges. We conjecture that it is true for any SQM model.Comment: final version published in JHE

c- and N-myc Regulate Neural Precursor Cell Fate, Cell Cycle, and Metabolism to Direct Cerebellar Development

Separate murine knockout (KO) of either c- or N-myc genes in neural stem and precursor cells (NSC) driven by nestin-cre causes microcephaly. The cerebellum is particularly affected in the N-myc KO, leading to a strong reduction in cerebellar granule neural progenitors (CGNP) and mature granule neurons. In humans, mutation of N-myc also causes microcephaly in Feingold Syndrome. We created a double KO (DKO) of c- and N-myc using nestin-cre, which strongly impairs brain growth, particularly that of the cerebellum. Granule neurons were almost absent from the Myc DKO cerebellum, and other cell types were relatively overrepresented, including astroglia, oligodendrocytes, and Purkinje neurons. These findings are indicative of a profound disruption of cell fate of cerebellar stem and precursors. DKO Purkinje neurons were strikingly lacking in normal arborization. Inhibitory neurons were ectopic and exhibited very abnormal GAD67 staining patterns. Also consistent with altered cell fate, the adult DKO cerebellum still retained a residual external germinal layer (EGL). CGNP in the DKO EGL were almost uniformly NeuN and p27KIP1 positive as well as negative for Math1 and BrdU at the peak of normal cerebellar proliferation at P6. The presence of some mitotic CGNP in the absence of S phase cells suggests a possible arrest in M phase. CGNP and NSC metabolism also was affected by loss of Myc as DKO cells exhibited weak nucleolin staining. Together these findings indicate that c- and N-Myc direct cerebellar development by maintaining CGNP and NSC populations through inhibiting differentiation as well as directing rapid cell cycling and active cellular metabolism

Comparative Network Analysis of Preterm vs. Full-Term Infant-Mother Interactions

Several studies have reported that interactions of mothers with preterm infants show differential characteristics compared to that of mothers with full-term infants. Interaction of preterm dyads is often reported as less harmonious. However, observations and explanations concerning the underlying mechanisms are inconsistent. In this work 30 preterm and 42 full-term mother-infant dyads were observed at one year of age. Free play interactions were videotaped and coded using a micro-analytic coding system. The video records were coded at one second resolution and studied by a novel approach using network analysis tools. The advantage of our approach is that it reveals the patterns of behavioral transitions in the interactions. We found that the most frequent behavioral transitions are the same in the two groups. However, we have identified several high and lower frequency transitions which occur significantly more often in the preterm or full-term group. Our analysis also suggests that the variability of behavioral transitions is significantly higher in the preterm group. This higher variability is mostly resulted from the diversity of transitions involving non-harmonious behaviors. We have identified a maladaptive pattern in the maternal behavior in the preterm group, involving intrusiveness and disengagement. Application of the approach reported in this paper to longitudinal data could elucidate whether these maladaptive maternal behavioral changes place the infant at risk for later emotional, cognitive and behavioral disturbance

Evolutionary relationships between Rhynchosporium lolii sp. nov. and other Rhynchosporium species on grass.

Copyright: 2013 King et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedThe fungal genus Rhynchosporium (causative agent of leaf blotch) contains several host-specialised species, including R. commune (colonising barley and brome-grass), R. agropyri (couch-grass), R. secalis (rye and triticale) and the more distantly related R. orthosporum (cocksfoot). This study used molecular fingerprinting, multilocus DNA sequence data, conidial morphology, host range tests and scanning electron microscopy to investigate the relationship between Rhynchosporium species on ryegrasses, both economically important forage grasses and common wild grasses in many cereal growing areas, and other plant species. Two different types of Rhynchosporium were found on ryegrasses in the UK. Firstly, there were isolates of R. commune that were pathogenic to both barley and Italian ryegrass. Secondly, there were isolates of a new species, here named R. lolii, that were pathogenic only to ryegrass species. R. lolii was most closely related to R. orthosporum, but exhibited clear molecular, morphological and host range differences. The species was estimated to have diverged from R. orthosporum ca. 5735 years before the present. The colonisation strategy of all of the different Rhynchosporium species involved extensive hyphal growth in the sub-cuticular regions of the leaves. Finally, new species-specific PCR diagnostic tests were developed that could distinguish between these five closely related Rhynchosporium species.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio