Oil palm cultivation critically affects sociality in a threatened Malaysian primate

Human-induced habitat alterations globally threaten animal populations, often evoking complex behavioural responses in wildlife. This may be particularly dramatic when negatively affecting social behaviour, which fundamentally determines individual fitness and offspring survival in group-living animals. Here, we provide first evidence for significant behavioural modifications in sociality of southern pig-tailed macaques visiting Malaysian oil palm plantations in search of food despite elevated predation risk. Specifically, we found critical reductions of key positive social interactions but higher rates of aggression in the plantation interior compared to the plantation edge (i.e. plantation areas bordering the forest) and the forest. At the plantation edge, affiliation even increased compared to the forest, while central positions in the macaques' social network structure shifted from high-ranking adult females and immatures to low-ranking individuals. Further, plantations also affected mother-infant relationships, with macaque mothers being more protective in the open plantation environment. We suggest that although primates can temporarily persist in human-altered habitats, their ability to permanently adapt requires the presence of close-by forest and comes with a trade-off in sociality, potentially hampering individual fitness and infant survival. Studies like ours remain critical for understanding species’ adaptability to anthropogenic landscapes, which may ultimately contribute to facilitating their coexistence with humans and preserving biodiversity

Radiative and Collisional Jet Energy Loss in the Quark-Gluon Plasma at RHIC

We calculate and compare bremsstrahlung and collisional energy loss of hard partons traversing a quark-gluon plasma. Our treatment of both processes is complete at leading order in the coupling and accounts for the probabilistic nature of the jet energy loss. We find that the nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}$ for neutral $\pi^0$ production in heavy ion collisions is sensitive to the inclusion of collisional and radiative energy loss contributions while the averaged energy loss only slightly increases if collisional energy loss is included for parent parton energies $E\gg T$. These results are important for the understanding of jet quenching in Au+Au collisions at $200 {\rm AGeV}$ at RHIC. Comparison with data is performed applying the energy loss calculation to a relativistic ideal (3+1)-dimensional hydrodynamic description of the thermalized medium formed at RHIC.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Does tacrolimus offer virtual freedom from chronic rejection after primary liver transplantation? Risk and prognostic factors in 1,048 liver transplantations with a mean follow-up of 6 years

Tacrolimus has proven to be a potent immunosuppressive agent in liver transplantation (LT). Its introduction has led to significantly less frequent and severe acute rejection. Little is known about the rate of chronic rejection (CR) in primary LT using tacrolimus therapy. The aim of the present study is to examine the long-term incidence of CR, risk factors, prognostic factors, and outcome after CR. The present study evaluated the development of CR in 1,048 consecutive adult primary liver allograft recipients initiated and mostly maintained on tacrolimus-based immunosuppressive therapy. They were evaluated with a mean follow-up of 77.3 ± 14.7 months (range, 50.7 to 100.1 months). To assess the impact of primary diagnosis on the rate and outcome of CR, the population was divided into 3 groups. Group I included patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV)- or hepatitis B virus (HBV)-induced cirrhosis (n = 312); group II included patients diagnosed with primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC), primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), or autoimmune hepatitis (AIH; n = 217); and group III included patients with all other diagnoses (n = 519). Overall, 32 of 1,048 patients (3.1%) developed CR. This represented 13 (4.1%), 12 (5.5%), and 7 patients (1.3%) in groups I, II, and III, respectively. The relative risk for developing CR was 3.2 times greater for group I and 4.3 times greater for group II compared with group III. This difference was statistically significant (P = .004). The incidence of acute rejection and total number of acute rejection episodes were significantly greater in patients who developed CR compared with those who did not (P < .0001). Similarly, the mean donor age for CR was significantly older than for patients without CR (43.0 v 36.2 years; P = .02). Thirteen of the 32 patients (40.6%) who developed CR retained their original grafts for a mean period of 54 ± 25 months after diagnosis. Seven patients (21.9%) underwent re-LT, and 12 patients (38.3%) died. Serum bilirubin levels and the presence of arteriopathy, arterial loss, and duct loss on liver biopsy at the time of diagnosis of CR were significantly greater among the 3 groups of patients. In addition, patient and graft survival for group I were significantly worse compared with groups II and III. We conclude that CR occurred rarely among patients maintained long term on tacrolimus-based immunosuppressive therapy. When steroid use is controlled, the incidence of acute rejection, mean donor age, HBV- and/or HCV-induced cirrhosis, or a diagnosis of PBC, PSC, or AIH were found to be predictors of CR. Greater values for serum bilirubin level, duct loss, arteriopathy, arteriolar loss, and presence of HCV or HBV were found to be poor prognostic factors for the 3 groups; greater total serum bilirubin value (P = .05) was the only factor found to be significant between patients who had graft loss versus those who recovered

Hard and soft probe - medium interactions in a 3D hydro+micro approach at RHIC

We utilize a 3D hybrid hydro+micro model for a comprehensive and consistent description of soft and hard particle production in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC. In the soft sector we focus on the dynamics of (multi-)strange baryons, where a clear strangeness dependence of their collision rates and freeze-out is observed. In the hard sector we study the radiative energy loss of hard partons in a soft medium in the multiple soft scattering approximation. While the nuclear suppression factor $R_{AA}$ does not reflect the high quality of the medium description (except in a reduced systematic uncertainty in extracting the quenching power of the medium), the hydrodynamical model also allows to study different centralities and in particular the angular variation of $R_{AA}$ with respect to the reaction plane, allowing for a controlled variation of the in-medium path-length.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, Quark Matter 2006 proceedings, to appear in Journal of Physics

Chronic liver allograft rejection in a population treated primarily with tacrolimus as baseline immunosuppression: Long-term follow-up and evaluation of features for histopathological staging

Background: Predisposing factors, long-term occurrence, and histopathological changes associated with recovery or progression to allograft failure from chronic rejection (CR) were studied in adult patients treated primarily with tacrolimus. Methods: CR cases were identified using stringent criteria applied to a retrospective review of computerized clinicopathological data and slides. Results: After 1973 days median follow- up, 35 (3.3%) of 1049 primary liver allograft recipients first developed CR between 16 and 2532 (median 242) days. The most significant risk factors for CR were the number (P40 years (P<0.03). Other demographic and matching parameters were not associated with CR in this cohort. Ten patients died with, but not of, CR. Eight required retransplantation because of CR at a median of 268 days. Ten resolved either histologically or by normalization of liver injury tests over a median of 548 days. CR persisted for 340 to 2116 days in the remaining seven patients. More extensive bile duct loss (P<0.01), small arterial loss (p<0.03), foam cell clusters (P<0.01) and higher total bilirubin (p<0.02) and aspartate aminotransferase (p<0.03) were associated with allograft failure from CR. Conclusions: Early chronic liver allograft rejection is potentially reversible and a combination of histological, clinical and laboratory data can be use to stage CR. Unique immunological and generative properties of liver allografts, which lead to low incidence and reversibility of early CR, can provide insights into transplantation biology

Angular hadron correlations probing the early medium evolution

Hard processes are a well calibrated probe to study heavy-ion collisions. However, the information to be gained from the nuclear suppression factor R_AA is limited, hene one has to study more differential observables to do medium tomography. The angular correlations of hadrons associated with a hard trigger appear suitable as they show a rich pattern when going from low p_T to high p_T. Of prime interest is the fate of away side partons with an in-medium pathlength O(several fm). At high p_T the correlations become dominated by the punchtrough of the away side parton with subsequent fragmentation. We discuss what information about the medium density can be gained from the data.Comment: Talk given at the 19th International Conference on Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions: Quark Matter 2006 (QM 2006), Shanghai, China, 14-20 Nov 200

Developmental subtypes assessed by DNA methylation-iPLEX forecast the natural history of chronic lymphocytic leukemia

© 2019 by The American Society of Hematology Alterations in global DNA methylation patterns are a major hallmark of cancer and represent attractive biomarkers for personalized risk stratification. Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) risk stratification studies typically focus on time to first treatment (TTFT), time to progression (TTP) after treatment, and overall survival (OS). Whereas TTFT risk stratification remains similar over time, TTP and OS have changed dramatically with the introduction of targeted therapies, such as the Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor ibrutinib. We have shown that genome-wide DNA methylation patterns in CLL are strongly associated with phenotypic differentiation and patient outcomes. Here, we developed a novel assay, termed methylation-iPLEX (Me-iPLEX), for high-throughput quantification of targeted panels of single cytosine guanine dinucleotides from multiple independent loci. Me-iPLEX was used to classify CLL samples into 1 of 3 known epigenetic subtypes (epitypes). We examined the impact of epitype in 1286 CLL patients from 4 independent cohorts representing a comprehensive view of CLL disease course and therapies. We found that epitype significantly predicted TTFT and OS among newly diagnosed CLL patients. Additionally, epitype predicted TTP and OS with 2 common CLL therapies: chemoimmunotherapy and ibrutinib. Epitype retained significance after stratifying by biologically related biomarkers, immunoglobulin heavy chain mutational status, and ZAP70 expression, as well as other common prognostic markers. Furthermore, among several biological traits enriched between epitypes, we found highly biased immunogenetic features, including IGLV3-21 usage in the poorly characterized intermediate-programmed CLL epitype. In summary, Me-iPLEX is an elegant method to assess epigenetic signatures, including robust classification of CLL epitypes that independently stratify patient risk at diagnosis and time of treatment

The Quark-Gluon Plasma in a Finite Volume

The statistical mechanics of quarks and gluons are investigated within the context of the canonical ensemble. Recursive techniques are developed which enforce the exact conservation of baryon number, total isospin, electric charge, strangeness, and color. Bose and Fermi-Dirac statistics are also accounted for to all orders. The energy, entropy and particle number densities are shown to be significantly reduced for volumes less than 5 cubic fm.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Hepatocellular carcinomas in native livers from patients treated with orthotopic liver transplantation: Biologic and therapeutic implications

The gross and histopathologic characteristics of 212 nonfibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinomas (HCCs) discovered in native livers removed at the time of liver transplantation were correlated with features of invasive growth and tumor-free survival. The results show that most HCCs begin as small well-differentiated tumors that have an increased proliferation rate and induce neovascularization, compared with the surrounding liver. But at this stage, they maintain a near-normal apoptosis/mitosis ratio and uncommonly show vascular invasion. As tumors enlarge, foci of dedifferentiation appear within the neoplastic nodules, which have a higher proliferation rate and show more pleomorphism than surrounding better-differentiated areas. Vascular invasion, which is the strongest predictor of disease recurrence, correlates significantly with tumor number and size, tumor giant cells and necrosis, the predominant and worst degree of differentiation, and the apoptosis/mitosis ratio. In the absence of macroscopic or large vessel invasion, largest tumor size (P <.006), apoptosis/mitosis ratio (P <.03), and number of tumors (P <.04) were independent predictors of tumor-free survival and none of 24 patients with tumors having an apoptosis/mitosis ratio greater than 7.2 had recurrence. A minority of HCCs (< 15%) quickly develop aggressive features (moderate or poor differentiation, low apoptosis/mitosis ratio, and vascular invasion) while still small, similar to flat carcinomas of the bladder and colon. In conclusion, hepatic carcinogenesis in humans is a multistep and multifocal process. As in experimental animal studies, aggressive biologic behavior (vascular invasion and recurrence) correlates significantly with profound alterations in the apoptosis/mitosis ratio and with architectural and cytologic alterations that suggest a progressive accumulation of multiple genetic abnormalities

Validation of ZAP-70 methylation and its relative significance in predicting outcome in chronic lymphocytic leukemia

ZAP-70 methylation 223 nucleotides downstream of transcription start (CpG+223) predicts outcome in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), but its impact relative to CD38 and ZAP-70 expression or immunoglobulin heavy chain variable region (IGHV) status is uncertain. Additionally, standardizing ZAP-70 expression analysis has been unsuccessful. CpG+223 methylation was quantitatively determined in 295 untreated CLL cases using MassARRAY. Impact on clinical outcome vs CD38 and ZAP-70 expression and IGHV status was evaluated. Cases with low methylation (0.90). Thus, ZAP-70 CpG+223 methylation represents a superior biomarker for TT and OS that can be feasibly measured, supporting its use in risk-stratifying CLL