Fostering Continuous Innovation with Engaging IT-Assisted Transparent Information Sharing : A Case Study

The paper received the Honorary Mention – Best Paper Award Nominee.Peer reviewe

Modelling ranging behaviour of female orang-utans: a case study in Tuanan, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

Quantification of the spatial needs of individuals and populations is vitally important for management and conservation. Geographic information systems (GIS) have recently become important analytical tools in wildlife biology, improving our ability to understand animal movement patterns, especially when very large data sets are collected. This study aims at combining the field of GIS with primatology to model and analyse space-use patterns of wild orang-utans. Home ranges of female orang-utans in the Tuanan Mawas forest reserve in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia were modelled with kernel density estimation methods. Kernel results were compared with minimum convex polygon estimates, and were found to perform better, because they were less sensitive to sample size and produced more reliable estimates. Furthermore, daily travel paths were calculated from 970 complete follow days. Annual ranges for the resident females were approximately 200 ha and remained stable over several years; total home range size was estimated to be 275 ha. On average, each female shared a third of her home range with each neighbouring female. Orang-utan females in Tuanan built their night nest on average 414 m away from the morning nest, whereas average daily travel path length was 777 m. A significant effect of fruit availability on day path length was found. Sexually active females covered longer distances per day and may also temporarily expand their ranges

Molecular and electronic structure of terminal and alkali metal-capped uranium(V) nitride complexes

Determining the electronic structure of actinide complexes is intrinsically challenging because inter-electronic repulsion, crystal field, and spin–orbit coupling effects can be of similar magnitude. Moreover, such efforts have been hampered by the lack of structurally analogous families of complexes to study. Here we report an improved method to U≡N triple bonds, and assemble a family of uranium(V) nitrides. Along with an isoelectronic oxo, we quantify the electronic structure of this 5f1 family by magnetometry, optical and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopies and modelling. Thus, we define the relative importance of the spin–orbit and crystal field interactions, and explain the experimentally observed different ground states. We find optical absorption linewidths give a potential tool to identify spin–orbit coupled states, and show measurement of UV···UV super-exchange coupling in dimers by EPR. We show that observed slow magnetic relaxation occurs via two-phonon processes, with no obvious correlation to the crystal field

Genome-Wide Crossover Distribution in Arabidopsis thaliana Meiosis Reveals Sex-Specific Patterns along Chromosomes

In most species, crossovers (COs) are essential for the accurate segregation of homologous chromosomes at the first meiotic division. Their number and location are tightly regulated. Here, we report a detailed, genome-wide characterization of the rate and localization of COs in Arabidopsis thaliana, in male and female meiosis. We observed dramatic differences between male and female meiosis which included: (i) genetic map length; 575 cM versus 332 cM respectively; (ii) CO distribution patterns: male CO rates were very high at both ends of each chromosome, whereas female CO rates were very low; (iii) correlations between CO rates and various chromosome features: female CO rates correlated strongly and negatively with GC content and gene density but positively with transposable elements (TEs) density, whereas male CO rates correlated positively with the CpG ratio. However, except for CpG, the correlations could be explained by the unequal repartition of these sequences along the Arabidopsis chromosome. For both male and female meiosis, the number of COs per chromosome correlates with chromosome size expressed either in base pairs or as synaptonemal complex length. Finally, we show that interference modulates the CO distribution both in male and female meiosis

A high-resolution linkage map for comparative genome analysis and QTL fine mapping in Asian seabass, Lates calcarifer

10.1186/1471-2164-12-174BMC Genomics12-BGME

Organizational Heterogeneity of Vertebrate Genomes

Genomes of higher eukaryotes are mosaics of segments with various structural, functional, and evolutionary properties. The availability of whole-genome sequences allows the investigation of their structure as “texts” using different statistical and computational methods. One such method, referred to as Compositional Spectra (CS) analysis, is based on scoring the occurrences of fixed-length oligonucleotides (k-mers) in the target DNA sequence. CS analysis allows generating species- or region-specific characteristics of the genome, regardless of their length and the presence of coding DNA. In this study, we consider the heterogeneity of vertebrate genomes as a joint effect of regional variation in sequence organization superimposed on the differences in nucleotide composition. We estimated compositional and organizational heterogeneity of genome and chromosome sequences separately and found that both heterogeneity types vary widely among genomes as well as among chromosomes in all investigated taxonomic groups. The high correspondence of heterogeneity scores obtained on three genome fractions, coding, repetitive, and the remaining part of the noncoding DNA (the genome dark matter - GDM) allows the assumption that CS-heterogeneity may have functional relevance to genome regulation. Of special interest for such interpretation is the fact that natural GDM sequences display the highest deviation from the corresponding reshuffled sequences

Antiangiogenic drugs in ovarian cancer

Ovarian cancer continues to be a major cause of morbidity and mortality in women. Antiangiogenic treatments have emerged as a promising strategy to treat ovarian cancer. This article reviews the rationale supporting the use of antiangiogenic treatments in ovarian cancer, the clinical development of this group of drugs and the toxicities specific to this modality of treatment

Complexities of Assessing the Disease Burden Attributable to Leishmaniasis

Among parasitic diseases, morbidity and mortality caused by leishmaniasis are surpassed only by malaria and lymphatic filariasis. However, estimation of the leishmaniasis disease burden is challenging, due to clinical and epidemiological diversity, marked geographic clustering, and lack of reliable data on incidence, duration, and impact of the various disease syndromes. Non-health effects such as impoverishment, disfigurement, and stigma add to the burden, and introduce further complexities. Leishmaniasis occurs globally, but has disproportionate impact in the Horn of Africa, South Asia and Brazil (for visceral leishmaniasis), and Latin America, Central Asia, and southwestern Asia (for cutaneous leishmaniasis). Disease characteristics and challenges for control are reviewed for each of these foci. We recommend review of reliable secondary data sources and collection of baseline active survey data to improve current disease burden estimates, plus the improvement or establishment of effective surveillance systems to monitor the impact of control efforts

Consensus guidelines for the use and interpretation of angiogenesis assays

The formation of new blood vessels, or angiogenesis, is a complex process that plays important roles in growth and development, tissue and organ regeneration, as well as numerous pathological conditions. Angiogenesis undergoes multiple discrete steps that can be individually evaluated and quantified by a large number of bioassays. These independent assessments hold advantages but also have limitations. This article describes in vivo, ex vivo, and in vitro bioassays that are available for the evaluation of angiogenesis and highlights critical aspects that are relevant for their execution and proper interpretation. As such, this collaborative work is the first edition of consensus guidelines on angiogenesis bioassays to serve for current and future reference