Patterns of alien plant distribution in a river landscape following an extreme flood

AbstractThe availability of suitable patches and gaps in the landscape is a crucial determinant of invasibility for alien plants. The type and arrangement of patches in the landscape may both facilitate and obstruct alien plant invasions, depending on whether alien species perceive the patches as barriers. In February 2000 tropical weather systems caused an extreme flood with an estimated return interval of 90 to 200 years in the Sabie River, South Africa. The impact of the 2000 flood on the Sabie River landscape provides an array of patches that may provide suitable resources for the establishment of alien plants. This study examines the distribution of alien plants in relation to patchiness of the Sabie River landscape. Our hypothesis was that if certain patches in the river landscape do not represent environmental barriers to alien plant invasion, alien species will occur preferentially in these patch types. The Sabie River within Kruger National Park [KNP] was divided into six patch types (zones, channel types, elevations, geomorphic units, substrates and flood imprint types). We then examined the distribution of native and alien woody and herbaceous density and species richness in patches. The density and species richness of alien plants in the Sabie River in KNP is very low when compared to the density and species richness of native plants. Some patches (bedrock distributary and braid bar geomorphic units) contained higher density and richness of alien plants compared to the other patches examined, indicating that these locations in the river landscape offer the resources necessary for alien plant establishment. Individual alien species are also associated with different parts of the river landscape. Failure of large numbers of alien plants to establish after the 2000 flood is most likely due to a combination of factors—the plant specific barriers imposed by landscape patchiness, the high abundance and richness of native vegetation leading to competition, and for some species certainly, the clearing by the management (Working for Water) programme

Reproductive Isolation in a Threespine Stickleback Hybrid Zone

In many estuarine sites, morphological and genetic differences between anadromous and freshwater threespine sticklebacks are maintained despite breeding in sympatry. Here, we investigate the maintenance of this morphological divergence in a natural hybrid zone in the River Tyne, Scotland. We provide a morphological description of the hybrid zone, and using a Bayesian MCMC approach, identified distinct anadromous and freshwater genetic clusters. Anadromous and freshwater sticklebacks breed in spatial and temporal sympatry in the lower reaches of the River Tyne. The frequency of hybrids within these sites (33%) indicates prezygotic isolation is not complete, and suggests that assortative mating is not strong. However, significant heterozygote deficit and cytonuclear disequilibrium in juveniles collected from sympatric sites confirms that barriers to gene flow exist between the morphs in the wild. In addition, we found no evidence of a directional bias in hybridisation, although hybrids with anadromous mothers were more common because anadromous females outnumbered freshwater females within the hybrid zone. We discuss the potential contribution of temporal, spatial, and sexual prezygotic barriers to the observed reproductive isolation as well as postzygotic selection against hybrid zygotes or fry

Velocity-space sensitivity of the time-of-flight neutron spectrometer at JET

The velocity-space sensitivities of fast-ion diagnostics are often described by so-called weight functions. Recently, we formulated weight functions showing the velocity-space sensitivity of the often dominant beam-target part of neutron energy spectra. These weight functions for neutron emission spectrometry (NES) are independent of the particular NES diagnostic. Here we apply these NES weight functions to the time-of-flight spectrometer TOFOR at JET. By taking the instrumental response function of TOFOR into account, we calculate time-of-flight NES weight functions that enable us to directly determine the velocity-space sensitivity of a given part of a measured time-of-flight spectrum from TOFOR

The performance of the jet trigger for the ATLAS detector during 2011 data taking

The performance of the jet trigger for the ATLAS detector at the LHC during the 2011 data taking period is described. During 2011 the LHC provided proton–proton collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and heavy ion collisions with a 2.76 TeV per nucleon–nucleon collision energy. The ATLAS trigger is a three level system designed to reduce the rate of events from the 40 MHz nominal maximum bunch crossing rate to the approximate 400 Hz which can be written to offline storage. The ATLAS jet trigger is the primary means for the online selection of events containing jets. Events are accepted by the trigger if they contain one or more jets above some transverse energy threshold. During 2011 data taking the jet trigger was fully efficient for jets with transverse energy above 25 GeV for triggers seeded randomly at Level 1. For triggers which require a jet to be identified at each of the three trigger levels, full efficiency is reached for offline jets with transverse energy above 60 GeV. Jets reconstructed in the final trigger level and corresponding to offline jets with transverse energy greater than 60 GeV, are reconstructed with a resolution in transverse energy with respect to offline jets, of better than 4 % in the central region and better than 2.5 % in the forward direction

Relationship of edge localized mode burst times with divertor flux loop signal phase in JET

A phase relationship is identified between sequential edge localized modes (ELMs) occurrence times in a set of H-mode tokamak plasmas to the voltage measured in full flux azimuthal loops in the divertor region. We focus on plasmas in the Joint European Torus where a steady H-mode is sustained over several seconds, during which ELMs are observed in the Be II emission at the divertor. The ELMs analysed arise from intrinsic ELMing, in that there is no deliberate intent to control the ELMing process by external means. We use ELM timings derived from the Be II signal to perform direct time domain analysis of the full flux loop VLD2 and VLD3 signals, which provide a high cadence global measurement proportional to the voltage induced by changes in poloidal magnetic flux. Specifically, we examine how the time interval between pairs of successive ELMs is linked to the time-evolving phase of the full flux loop signals. Each ELM produces a clear early pulse in the full flux loop signals, whose peak time is used to condition our analysis. The arrival time of the following ELM, relative to this pulse, is found to fall into one of two categories: (i) prompt ELMs, which are directly paced by the initial response seen in the flux loop signals; and (ii) all other ELMs, which occur after the initial response of the full flux loop signals has decayed in amplitude. The times at which ELMs in category (ii) occur, relative to the first ELM of the pair, are clustered at times when the instantaneous phase of the full flux loop signal is close to its value at the time of the first ELM

Risk profiles and one-year outcomes of patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation in India: Insights from the GARFIELD-AF Registry.

BACKGROUND: The Global Anticoagulant Registry in the FIELD-Atrial Fibrillation (GARFIELD-AF) is an ongoing prospective noninterventional registry, which is providing important information on the baseline characteristics, treatment patterns, and 1-year outcomes in patients with newly diagnosed non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). This report describes data from Indian patients recruited in this registry. METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 52,014 patients with newly diagnosed AF were enrolled globally; of these, 1388 patients were recruited from 26 sites within India (2012-2016). In India, the mean age was 65.8 years at diagnosis of NVAF. Hypertension was the most prevalent risk factor for AF, present in 68.5% of patients from India and in 76.3% of patients globally (P < 0.001). Diabetes and coronary artery disease (CAD) were prevalent in 36.2% and 28.1% of patients as compared with global prevalence of 22.2% and 21.6%, respectively (P < 0.001 for both). Antiplatelet therapy was the most common antithrombotic treatment in India. With increasing stroke risk, however, patients were more likely to receive oral anticoagulant therapy [mainly vitamin K antagonist (VKA)], but average international normalized ratio (INR) was lower among Indian patients [median INR value 1.6 (interquartile range {IQR}: 1.3-2.3) versus 2.3 (IQR 1.8-2.8) (P < 0.001)]. Compared with other countries, patients from India had markedly higher rates of all-cause mortality [7.68 per 100 person-years (95% confidence interval 6.32-9.35) vs 4.34 (4.16-4.53), P < 0.0001], while rates of stroke/systemic embolism and major bleeding were lower after 1 year of follow-up. CONCLUSION: Compared to previously published registries from India, the GARFIELD-AF registry describes clinical profiles and outcomes in Indian patients with AF of a different etiology. The registry data show that compared to the rest of the world, Indian AF patients are younger in age and have more diabetes and CAD. Patients with a higher stroke risk are more likely to receive anticoagulation therapy with VKA but are underdosed compared with the global average in the GARFIELD-AF. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION-URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT01090362

The association among cytochrome P450 3A, progesterone receptor polymorphisms, plasma 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate concentrations, and spontaneous preterm birth

Background Infants born <37 weeks’ gestation are of public health concern since complications associated with preterm birth are the leading cause of mortality in children <5 years of age and a major cause of morbidity and lifelong disability. The administration of 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate reduces preterm birth by 33% in women with history of spontaneous preterm birth. We demonstrated previously that plasma concentrations of 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate vary widely among pregnant women and that women with 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate plasma concentrations in the lowest quartile had spontaneous preterm birth rates of 40% vs rates of 25% in those women with higher concentrations. Thus, plasma concentrations are an important factor in determining drug efficacy but the reason 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate plasma concentrations vary so much is unclear. Predominantly, 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate is metabolized by CYP3A4 and CYP3A5 enzymes. Objective We sought to: (1) determine the relation between 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate plasma concentrations and single nucleotide polymorphisms in CYP3A4 and CYP3A5; (2) test the association between progesterone receptor single nucleotide polymorphisms and spontaneous preterm birth; and (3) test whether the association between plasma concentrations of 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate and spontaneous preterm birth varied by progesterone receptor single nucleotide polymorphisms. Study Design In this secondary analysis, we evaluated genetic polymorphism in 268 pregnant women treated with 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate, who participated in a placebo-controlled trial to evaluate the benefit of omega-3 supplementation in women with history of spontaneous preterm birth. Trough plasma concentrations of 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate were measured between 25-28 weeks of gestation after a minimum of 5 injections of 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate. We extracted DNA from maternal blood samples and genotyped the samples using TaqMan (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA) single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping assays for the following single nucleotide polymorphisms: CYP3A4*1B, CYP3A4*1G, CYP3A4*22, and CYP3A5*3; and rs578029, rs471767, rs666553, rs503362, and rs500760 for progesterone receptor. We adjusted for prepregnancy body mass index, race, and treatment group in a multivariable analysis. Differences in the plasma concentrations of 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate by genotype were evaluated for each CYP single nucleotide polymorphism using general linear models. The association between progesterone receptor single nucleotide polymorphisms and frequency of spontaneous preterm birth was tested using logistic regression. A logistic model also tested interaction between 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate concentrations with each progesterone receptor single nucleotide polymorphism for the outcome of spontaneous preterm birth. Results The association between CYP single nucleotide polymorphisms *22, *1G, *1B, and *3 and trough plasma concentrations of 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate was not statistically significant (P =.68,.44,.08, and.44, respectively). In an adjusted logistic regression model, progesterone receptor single nucleotide polymorphisms rs578029, rs471767, rs666553, rs503362, and rs500760 were not associated with the frequency of spontaneous preterm birth (P =.29,.10,.76,.09, and.43, respectively). Low trough plasma concentrations of 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate were statistically associated with a higher frequency of spontaneous preterm birth (odds ratio, 0.78; 95% confidence ratio, 0.61–0.99; P =.04 for trend across quartiles), however no significant interaction with the progesterone receptor single nucleotide polymorphisms rs578029, rs471767, rs666553, rs503362, and rs500760 was observed (P =.13,.08,.10,.08, and.13, respectively). Conclusion The frequency of recurrent spontaneous preterm birth appears to be associated with trough 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate plasma concentrations. However, the wide variation in trough 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate plasma concentrations is not attributable to polymorphisms in CYP3A4 and CYP3A5 genes. Progesterone receptor polymorphisms do not predict efficacy of 17-alpha hydroxyprogesterone caproate. The limitations of this secondary analysis include that we had a relative small sample size (n = 268) and race was self-reported by the patients

First sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope results. VI. Testing the black hole metric

Galaxie

Resolving the inner parsec of the blazar J1924-2914 with the event horizon telescope

Galaxie