Percentage levels of wind speed differences computed by using rawinsonde wind profile data from Cape Kennedy, Florida

Percentage levels of wind speed differences computed by using rawinsonde upper atmospheric wind profile dat

ANESTESIA INALATÓRIA COM O USO DE MÁSCARA LARÍNGEA EM UM CHIMPANZÉ (Pan troglodytes)

Um exemplar de chimpanzé (Pan troglodytes) do sexo masculino, com idade de 5 dias e peso de 1,72 kg, foi submetido à anestesia inalatória através de uma máscara laríngea, para realização de amputação do antebraço esquerdo mutilado em função de agressão intraespecífica. A máscara laríngea auxilia na manutenção da permeabilidade das vias aéreas do paciente anestesiado, permitindo um controle seguro e eficaz da ventilação em situações distintas. O paciente sofreu indução anestésica com halotano e oxigênio, através da máscara facial classicamente empregada em pacientes humanos, sem medicação pré-anestésica. Após três minutos de administração do anestésico em concentrações crescentes até 1,5%, observou-se excelente miorrelaxamento, inclusive da musculatura da região temporo-mandibular. Foi inserida então uma máscara laríngea nº 1,5 não insuflada, que foi conectada a um circuito semi-aberto de anestesia inalatória, através do sistema de Baraka. A anestesia foi mantida com oxigênio e halotano em concentrações variáveis entre 0,3 e 0,5%. Para possibilitar redução da concentração alveolar mínima do anestésico inalatório e permitir analgesia pós-operatória, foi realizado por via supra-clavicular um bloqueio do plexo braquial, empregando-se cloridrato de bupivacaína a 0,25%, sem vasoconstritor, na dose total de 2,1 mg. Os dados vitais do paciente foram periodicamente monitorizados pela mensuração das freqüências respiratória e cardíaca através de oximetria de pulso. A anestesia prolongou-se por 120 minutos, observando-se excelente analgesia e miorrelaxamento plenamente adequado. A SpO2 se manteve constante em 100% durante todo o procedimento, e a freqüência cardíaca variou entre 94 e 100 bpm. O despertar ocorreu dois minutos após cessada a administração do anestésico inalatório, e os reflexos mostraram-se plenamente presentes em cinco minutos. A inserção da máscara laríngea ocorreu na primeira tentativa, e seu uso apresentou-se como uma excelente alternativa para adequada ventilação do paciente. Inhalatory anesthesia with laryngeal mask in a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) Abstract A five-day old male chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) weighing 1,72 Kg was submitted to inhalatory anesthesia using a laryngeal mask, under the indication of amputation of the left forearm mutilated because of an intraespecific aggression. The laryngeal mask helps to maintain the air tract patency in anesthetic patients, allowing a safe and effective ventilation control in distinct situations. The patient was submitted to anesthetic induction with halothane and oxygen through the facial mask commonly used in human patients, without pre-anesthetic drugs. After three minutes of anesthetic administration in crescent concentrations until 1.5%, an excellent myorelaxation was observed, including in the temporo-mandibular muscles. A not inflated # 1.5 laryngeal mask was inserted and connected to a semi-open circuit of inhalatory anesthesia, by using the Baraka´s system. It was maintained with oxygen and halothane in variable concentrations between 0.3% and 0.5%. In order to allow a reduction in the inhalatory anesthestic´s minimum alveolar concentration and permit post-surgical analgesia there was performed a block of the brachial plexus by supra-clavicular route, using 0.25% bupivacaine hydrochloride without vasoconstritor, in a total dose of 2.1 mg. Patients vital sings were periodically monitored by measuring respiratory and heart rates by pulse-oximetry. The anesthesia extended by 120 minutes, providing excellent analgesia and adequate myorelaxation. The SpO2 was maintained constant in 100% during the whole procedure, and the heart rate oscillated between 94 and 100 bpm. The waken-up occurred two minutes after ceasing the administration of the inhalatory anesthetic, and all the reflexes were present within five minutes. The laryngeal mask was correctly inserted in the first trial, and its use was an excellent alternative for the patients adequate ventilation

Informational Gene Phylogenies Do Not Support a Fourth Domain of Life for Nucleocytoplasmic Large DNA Viruses

Mimivirus is a nucleocytoplasmic large DNA virus (NCLDV) with a genome size (1.2 Mb) and coding capacity ( 1000 genes) comparable to that of some cellular organisms. Unlike other viruses, Mimivirus and its NCLDV relatives encode homologs of broadly conserved informational genes found in Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryotes, raising the possibility that they could be placed on the tree of life. A recent phylogenetic analysis of these genes showed the NCLDVs emerging as a monophyletic group branching between Eukaryotes and Archaea. These trees were interpreted as evidence for an independent “fourth domain” of life that may have contributed DNA processing genes to the ancestral eukaryote. However, the analysis of ancient evolutionary events is challenging, and tree reconstruction is susceptible to bias resulting from non-phylogenetic signals in the data. These include compositional heterogeneity and homoplasy, which can lead to the spurious grouping of compositionally-similar or fast-evolving sequences. Here, we show that these informational gene alignments contain both significant compositional heterogeneity and homoplasy, which were not adequately modelled in the original analysis. When we use more realistic evolutionary models that better fit the data, the resulting trees are unable to reject a simple null hypothesis in which these informational genes, like many other NCLDV genes, were acquired by horizontal transfer from eukaryotic hosts. Our results suggest that a fourth domain is not required to explain the available sequence data

Largest recent impact craters on Mars: Orbital imaging and surface seismic co-investigation.

Two >130-meter-diameter impact craters formed on Mars during the later half of 2021. These are the two largest fresh impact craters discovered by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter since operations started 16 years ago. The impacts created two of the largest seismic events (magnitudes greater than 4) recorded by InSight during its 3-year mission. The combination of orbital imagery and seismic ground motion enables the investigation of subsurface and atmospheric energy partitioning of the impact process on a planet with a thin atmosphere and the first direct test of martian deep-interior seismic models with known event distances. The impact at 35°N excavated blocks of water ice, which is the lowest latitude at which ice has been directly observed on Mars

Magnitude and Timing of Leaf Damage Affect Seed Production in a Natural Population of Arabidopsis thaliana (Brassicaceae)

Background: The effect of herbivory on plant fitness varies widely. Understanding the causes of this variation is of considerable interest because of its implications for plant population dynamics and trait evolution. We experimentally defoliated the annual herb Arabidopsis thaliana in a natural population in Sweden to test the hypotheses that (a) plant fitness decreases with increasing damage, (b) tolerance to defoliation is lower before flowering than during flowering, and (c) defoliation before flowering reduces number of seeds more strongly than defoliation during flowering, but the opposite is true for effects on seed size. Methodology/Principal Findings: In a first experiment, between 0 and 75% of the leaf area was removed in May from plants that flowered or were about to start flowering. In a second experiment, 0, 25%, or 50% of the leaf area was removed from plants on one of two occasions, in mid April when plants were either in the vegetative rosette or bolting stage, or in mid May when plants were flowering. In the first experiment, seed production was negatively related to leaf area removed, and at the highest damage level, also mean seed size was reduced. In the second experiment, removal of 50% of the leaf area reduced seed production by 60% among plants defoliated early in the season at the vegetative rosettes, and by 22% among plants defoliated early in the season at the bolting stage, but did not reduce seed output of plants defoliated one month later. No seasonal shift in the effect of defoliation on seed size was detected. Conclusions/Significance: The results show that leaf damage may reduce the fitness of A. thaliana, and suggest that in this population leaf herbivores feeding on plants before flowering should exert stronger selection on defence traits than those feeding on plants during flowering, given similar damage levels

Long-Branch Attraction Bias and Inconsistency in Bayesian Phylogenetics

Bayesian inference (BI) of phylogenetic relationships uses the same probabilistic models of evolution as its precursor maximum likelihood (ML), so BI has generally been assumed to share ML's desirable statistical properties, such as largely unbiased inference of topology given an accurate model and increasingly reliable inferences as the amount of data increases. Here we show that BI, unlike ML, is biased in favor of topologies that group long branches together, even when the true model and prior distributions of evolutionary parameters over a group of phylogenies are known. Using experimental simulation studies and numerical and mathematical analyses, we show that this bias becomes more severe as more data are analyzed, causing BI to infer an incorrect tree as the maximum a posteriori phylogeny with asymptotically high support as sequence length approaches infinity. BI's long branch attraction bias is relatively weak when the true model is simple but becomes pronounced when sequence sites evolve heterogeneously, even when this complexity is incorporated in the model. This bias—which is apparent under both controlled simulation conditions and in analyses of empirical sequence data—also makes BI less efficient and less robust to the use of an incorrect evolutionary model than ML. Surprisingly, BI's bias is caused by one of the method's stated advantages—that it incorporates uncertainty about branch lengths by integrating over a distribution of possible values instead of estimating them from the data, as ML does. Our findings suggest that trees inferred using BI should be interpreted with caution and that ML may be a more reliable framework for modern phylogenetic analysis

Experimental design and statistical rigor in phylogenomics of horizontal and endosymbiotic gene transfer

A growing number of phylogenomic investigations from diverse eukaryotes are examining conflicts among gene trees as evidence of horizontal gene transfer. If multiple foreign genes from the same eukaryotic lineage are found in a given genome, it is increasingly interpreted as concerted gene transfers during a cryptic endosymbiosis in the organism's evolutionary past, also known as "endosymbiotic gene transfer" or EGT. A number of provocative hypotheses of lost or serially replaced endosymbionts have been advanced; to date, however, these inferences largely have been post-hoc interpretations of genomic-wide conflicts among gene trees. With data sets as large and complex as eukaryotic genome sequences, it is critical to examine alternative explanations for intra-genome phylogenetic conflicts, particularly how much conflicting signal is expected from directional biases and statistical noise. The availability of genome-level data both permits and necessitates phylogenomics that test explicit, a priori predictions of horizontal gene transfer, using rigorous statistical methods and clearly defined experimental controls

Heritability of seed weight in Maritime pine, a relevant trait in the transmission of environmental maternal effects

Quantitative seed provisioning is an important life-history trait with strong effects on offspring phenotype and fitness. As for any other trait, heritability estimates are vital for understanding its evolutionary dynamics. However, being a trait in between two generations, estimating additive genetic variation of seed provisioning requires complex quantitative genetic approaches for distinguishing between true genetic and environmental maternal effects. Here, using Maritime pine as a long-lived plant model, we quantified additive genetic variation of cone and seed weight (SW) mean and SW within-individual variation. We used a powerful approach combining both half-sib analysis and parent-offspring regression using several common garden tests established in contrasting environments to separate G, E and G x E effects. Both cone weight and SW mean showed significant genetic variation but were also influenced by the maternal environment. Most of the large variation in SW mean was attributable to additive genetic effects (h(2) = 0.55-0.74). SW showed no apparent G x E interaction, particularly when accounting for cone weight covariation, suggesting that the maternal genotypes actively control the SW mean irrespective of the amount of resources allocated to cones. Within-individual variation in SW was low (12%) relative to between-individual variation (88%), and showed no genetic variation but was largely affected by the maternal environment, with greater variation in the less favourable sites for pine growth. In summary, results were very consistent between the parental and the offspring common garden tests, and clearly indicated heritable genetic variation for SW mean but not for within-individual variation in SW.This study was financed by the Spanish National Research Grants RTA2007-100 and AGL2012-40151 (FENOPIN), both co-financed by EU-FEDER. The progeny trials and the clonal seed orchards are part of the experimental set up of the Maritime pine breeding programme developed by the Centro de Investigacion Forestal de Lourizan, Xunta de Galicia.Spanish National Research Grant RTA2007-100Spanish National Research Grant AGL2012-40151 (FENOPIN)EU-FEDERPeer reviewe

Comparative Analysis of Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) Libraries in the Seagrass Zostera marina Subjected to Temperature Stress

Global warming is associated with increasing stress and mortality on temperate seagrass beds, in particular during periods of high sea surface temperatures during summer months, adding to existing anthropogenic impacts, such as eutrophication and habitat destruction. We compare several expressed sequence tag (EST) in the ecologically important seagrass Zostera marina (eelgrass) to elucidate the molecular genetic basis of adaptation to environmental extremes. We compared the tentative unigene (TUG) frequencies of libraries derived from leaf and meristematic tissue from a control situation with two experimentally imposed temperature stress conditions and found that TUG composition is markedly different among these conditions (all P < 0.0001). Under heat stress, we find that 63 TUGs are differentially expressed (d.e.) at 25°C compared with lower, no-stress condition temperatures (4°C and 17°C). Approximately one-third of d.e. eelgrass genes were characteristic for the stress response of the terrestrial plant model Arabidopsis thaliana. The changes in gene expression suggest complex photosynthetic adjustments among light-harvesting complexes, reaction center subunits of photosystem I and II, and components of the dark reaction. Heat shock encoding proteins and reactive oxygen scavengers also were identified, but their overall frequency was too low to perform statistical tests. In all conditions, the most abundant transcript (3–15%) was a putative metallothionein gene with unknown function. We also find evidence that heat stress may translate to enhanced infection by protists. A total of 210 TUGs contain one or more microsatellites as potential candidates for gene-linked genetic markers. Data are publicly available in a user-friendly database at http://www.uni-muenster.de/Evolution/ebb/Services/zostera