A Comprehensive Phylogenetic Analysis of the Scleractinia (Cnidaria, Anthozoa) Based on Mitochondrial CO1 Sequence Data

Classical morphological taxonomy places the approximately 1400 recognized species of Scleractinia (hard corals) into 27 families, but many aspects of coral evolution remain unclear despite the application of molecular phylogenetic methods. In part, this may be a consequence of such studies focusing on the reef-building (shallow water and zooxanthellate) Scleractinia, and largely ignoring the large number of deep-sea species. To better understand broad patterns of coral evolution, we generated molecular data for a broad and representative range of deep sea scleractinians collected off New Caledonia and Australia during the last decade, and conducted the most comprehensive molecular phylogenetic analysis to date of the order Scleractinia.Partial (595 bp) sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 (CO1) gene were determined for 65 deep-sea (azooxanthellate) scleractinians and 11 shallow-water species. These new data were aligned with 158 published sequences, generating a 234 taxon dataset representing 25 of the 27 currently recognized scleractinian families.There was a striking discrepancy between the taxonomic validity of coral families consisting predominantly of deep-sea or shallow-water species. Most families composed predominantly of deep-sea azooxanthellate species were monophyletic in both maximum likelihood and Bayesian analyses but, by contrast (and consistent with previous studies), most families composed predominantly of shallow-water zooxanthellate taxa were polyphyletic, although Acroporidae, Poritidae, Pocilloporidae, and Fungiidae were exceptions to this general pattern. One factor contributing to this inconsistency may be the greater environmental stability of deep-sea environments, effectively removing taxonomic "noise" contributed by phenotypic plasticity. Our phylogenetic analyses imply that the most basal extant scleractinians are azooxanthellate solitary corals from deep-water, their divergence predating that of the robust and complex corals. Deep-sea corals are likely to be critical to understanding anthozoan evolution and the origins of the Scleractinia

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Historical vanishing of the Blazhko effect of RR Lyr from the GEOS and Kepler surveys

RR Lyr is one of the most studied variable stars. Its light curve has been regularly monitored since the discovery of its periodic variability in 1899. The analysis of all observed maxima allows us to identify two primary pulsation states, defined as pulsation over a long (P0 longer than 0.56684 d) and a short (P0 shorter than 0.56682 d) primary pulsation period. These states alternate with intervals of 13-16 yr, and are well defined after 1943. The 40.8-d periodical modulations of the amplitude and the period (i.e. the Blazhko effect) were noticed in 1916. We provide homogeneous determinations of the Blazhko period in the different primary pulsation states. The Blazhko period does not follow the variations of P0 and suddenly diminished from 40.8 d to around 39.0 d in 1975. The monitoring of these periodicities deserved, and still deserves, a continuous and intensive observational effort. For this purpose, we have built dedicated, transportable and autonomous small instruments, Very Tiny Telescopes (VTTs), to observe the times of maximum brightness of RR Lyr. As immediate results, the VTTs recorded the last change of the P0 state in mid-2009 and extended the time coverage of the Kepler observations, thus recording a maximum O - C amplitude of the Blazhko effect at the end of 2008, followed by the historically smallest O - C amplitude in late 2013. This decrease is still ongoing and the VTTs are ready to monitor the expected increase in the next few years.10 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Contents of appendix B may be requested to first authorstatus: publishe

Reviews of Books

AZAR GAT. War in Human Civilization. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xv, 822. $45.00 (us). Reviewed by William R. Thompson ROBIN WATERFIELD. Xenopkon's Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age. Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. xiii, 248.$27.95 (us). Reviewed by Noreen Humble VICTOR H. MAIR, ed. Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2006. Pp. ix, 310. $57.00 (us). Reviewed by Paul D. Buell SERHII PLOKHY. The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xix, 379.$90.00 (us). Reviewed by Paul Bushkovitch NAOMI STANDEN. Unbounded Loyalty: Frontier Crossing in Liao China. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2007. Pp. xiii, 279. $53.00 (us). Reviewed by Leo K. Shin CHRISTOPHER TYERMAN. God's War: A New History of the Crusades. Cambridge MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. xvi, 1,023.$35.00 (us). Reviewed by John France BJÖRN K. U. WEILER. Henry HI of England and the Staufen Empire, 1216-1272. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press for The Royal Historical Society, 2006. Pp. xi, 247. $80.00 (us). Reviewed by William Chester Jordan SABINE MACCORMACK. On the Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain, and Peru. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. Pp. xix, 320.$35.00 (us). Reviewed by Richard L. Kagan LEO K. SHIN. The Making of the Chinese State: Ethnicity and Expansion on the Ming Borderlands. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xxi, 246. $93.95 (us). Reviewed by Geoff Wade JOHN G. DEMARAY. From Pilgrimage to History: The Renaissance and Global Historicism. New York, NY: AMS Press, 2006. Pp. xv, 250.$82.50 (us). Reviewed by Felipe Fernández-Armesto ANDRE THEVET. Histoire: D'André Thevet Angoumoisin, Cosmographe du Roy, de deux voyages par luyfaits aux Indes Australes, et Occidentals, ed. Jean-Claude La-borie and Frank Lestringant. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2006. Pp. 496. CHF. 153.60. Reviewed by Margaret Sankey JESSICA L. HARLAND-JACOBS. Builders oj Empire: Freemasons and British Imperialism, 1777-1927. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Pp. xiv, 384. $39.95 (us). Reviewed by Andrew S. Thompson RENÉ HANKE. Brühl und das Renversement des alliances: Die antipreuβische Auβenpolitik des Dresdener Hofes, 1744-1756. Münster: Lit Verlag, 2006. Pp. xii, 383. €39.90. Reviewed by Franz A. J. Szabo SIMON BURROWS. Blackmail, Scandal, and Revolution: London's French libellistes, 1758-92. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006; dist. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press. Pp. xiv, 256.$50.00 (us). Reviewed by Jennifer Mori CYNTHIA RADDING. Landscapes of Power and Identity: Comparative Histories in the Sonoran Desert and the Forests of Amazonia from Colony to Republic. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2005. Pp. xxiv, 431. $24.95 (us), paper. Reviewed by Stuart McCook JEAN BARMAN and BRUCE MCINTYRE WATSON. Leaving Paradise: Indigenous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest, 1787-1898. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2006. Pp. xiii, 512.$45.00 (us). Reviewed by James N. Nason JEREMY ADELMAN. Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006. Pp. x, 409. $39.95 (us). Reviewed by Timothy E. Anna VICTOR BULMER-THOMAS, JOHN H. COATSWORTH, and ROBERTO CORTÉS CONDE, eds. The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America: I: The Colonial Era and the Short Nineteenth Century. Pp. viii, 607; II: The Long Twentieth Century. Pp. viii, 755. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006.$300.00 (us), 2 vol. set. Reviewed by Eric Van Young MAN-HOUNG LIN. China Upside Down: Currency, Society, and Ideologies, 1808-1856. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. xxvi, 362. $49-95 (us). Reviewed by Evelyn S. Rawski MATT D. CHILDS. The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle against Atlantic Slavery. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Pp. xi, 300.$21.95 (us), paper. Reviewed by Christopher Schmidt-Nowara ALAIN LE PICHON, ed. China Trade and Empire: Jardine, Matheson & Co. and the Origins of British Rule in Hong Kong, 1827-1843. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xvii, 626. $125.00 (us). Reviewed by Kent G. Deng STEPHEN BROADBERRY. Market Services and the Productivity Race, 1850-2000: British Performance in International Perspective. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xix, 409.$95.00 (us). Reviewed by Alan Booth ERIC T.JENNINGS. Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology, and French Colonial Spas. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2006. Pp. xi, 271. $21.95 (us), paper. Reviewed by Patricia M. E. Lorcin JACOB A. TROPP. Natures of Colonial Change: Environmental Relations in the Making of the Transkei. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv, 268.$24.95 (us), paper. Reviewed by Norman Etherington PING-HUI LIAO and DAVID DER-WEI WANG, eds. Taiwan under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1895-1945: History, Culture, Memory. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2006. Pp. xvi, 416. $45.00 (us). Reviewed by E. Patricia Tsurumi MAGNUS BRECHTKEN. Sckarnierzeit 1895-1907: Persönlichkeitsnetze und international pohtik in den deutsch-britisch-amerikanischen beziehungen vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2006. Pp. xvii, 454. €73.90. Reviewed by Matther Seligmann MÉLANIE MORIN-PELLETIER. Briser les ailes de l'ange: Les infirmières militaires canadiennes (1914-1918). Outrement, QC: Athéna éditions, 2006; dist. Boisbriand, QC: Prologue. Pp. 185.$19.95 (CDN)> paper. 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Montreal, QC and Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005. Pp. xvi, 392. $49.95 (CDN). Reviewed by Hector Mackenzie KENNETH SLEPYAN. Stalin's Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2006. Pp. xi, 409.$34.95 (us). Reviewed by Evan Mawdsley H. JAMES BURGWYN. Empire on the Adriatic: Mussolini's Conquest of Yugoslavia 1941-1943. New York, NY: Enigma, 2005. Pp. xxi,385. $27.50 (CDN), paper. Reviewed by Brian R. Sullivan R. A. RATCLIFF. Delusions of Intelligence: Enigma, Ultra, and the End of Secure Ciphers. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xvii, 314.$30.00 (us). Reviewed by Calder Walton LUMANS, VALDIS O. Latvia in World War II. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2006. Pp. xi, 547. $65.00 (us). Reviewed by David J. Smith NIKOLAI LITVIN. 800 Days on the Eastern Front: A Russian Soldier Remembers World War II, trans, and ed. Stuart Britton. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Pp. xv, 159.$24.95 (us). Reviewed by James F. Gebhart JEFFREY HERF. The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust. Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. ix, 390. $29.95 (us). Reviewed by Susan L. Carruthers HEIDE FEHRENBACH. Race after Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and America. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005. Pp. xiii, 263.$29.95(us). Reviewed by Donna Harsch FRANK CAIN. Economic Statecraft during the Cold War: European Responses to the US Trade Embargo. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2007. Pp. xii, 211. $120.00 (us). Reviewed by Alan P. Dobson BRUNELLO VIGEZZI. The British Committee on the Theory of International Politics (1954-1985): The Rediscovery of History, trans. Ian Harvey. Milan: Edizioni Unicopli, 2005. Pp. xxviii, 440. €30.00, paper. Reviewed by Tim Dunne JAGAT S. MEHTA. Negotiating for India: Resolving Problems through Diplomacy (Seven Case Studies, 1958-1978). New Delhi: Manohar, 2006. Pp. 296. Rs 750. Reviewed by Walter K. Andersen PATRICKJ. HANEY and WALT VANDERBUSH. The Cuban Embargo: The Domestic Politics of an American Foreign Policy. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. Pp. xi, 222.$24.95 (us), paper. Reviewed by Joaquín Roy NICHOLAS TARLING. Regionalism in Southeast Asia: To Foster the Political Will. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2006. Pp. 276. $125.00 (us). Reviewed by Nicholas J. White ROBERT D. SCHULZINGER. A Time for Peace: The Legacy of the Vietnam War. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xix, 252.$30.00 (us). Reviewed by Kenton Clymer MARTHA BRILL OLCOTT. Central Asia's Second Chance. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005. Pp. xiii, 389. $24.95 (us), paper. Reviewed by Shahram Akbarzadeh RYANC HENDRICKSON. Diplomacy and War atNATO: The Secretary Generaland Military Action after the Cold War. Columbia, MO and London: University of Missouri Press, 2006. Pp. viii, 172.$16.95 (us), paper. Reviewed by James Sperling SCOTT STRAUS. The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv, 273. $27.95 (us). Reviewed by Howard Adelman BILL ONG HING. Deporting Our So

European Atlas of Natural Radiation

Natural ionizing radiation is considered as the largest contributor to the collective effective dose received by the world population. The human population is continuously exposed to ionizing radiation from several natural sources that can be classified into two broad categories: high-energy cosmic rays incident on the Earth\u2019s atmosphere and releasing secondary radiation (cosmic contribution); and radioactive nuclides generated during the formation of the Earth and still present in the Earth\u2019s crust (terrestrial contribution). Terrestrial radioactivity is mostly produced by the uranium and thorium radioactive families together with potassium. In most circumstances, radon, a noble gas produced in the radioactive decay of uranium, is the most important contributor to the total dose. This Atlas aims to present the current state of knowledge of natural radioactivity, by giving general background information, and describing its various sources. This reference material is complemented by a collection of maps of Europe displaying the levels of natural radioactivity caused by different sources. It is a compilation of contributions and reviews received from more than 80 experts in their field: they come from universities, research centres, national and European authorities and international organizations. This Atlas provides reference material and makes harmonized datasets available to the scientific community and national competent authorities. In parallel, this Atlas may serve as a tool for the public to: \u2022 familiarize itself with natural radioactivity; \u2022 be informed about the levels of natural radioactivity caused by different sources; \u2022 have a more balanced view of the annual dose received by the world population, to which natural radioactivity is the largest contributor; \u2022 and make direct comparisons between doses from natural sources of ionizing radiation and those from man-made (artificial) ones, hence to better understand the latter

Stress neuropeptide levels in adults with chest pain due to coronary artery disease: potential implications for clinical assessment

: Substance P (SP) and neuropeptide Y (NPY) are neuropeptides involved in nociception. The study of biochemical markers of pain in communicating critically ill coronary patients may provide insight for pain assessment and management in critical care. Purpose of the study was to to explore potential associations between plasma neuropeptide levels and reported pain intensity in coronary critical care adults, in order to test the reliability of SP measurements for objective pain assessment in critical care