Karyotype of Rhodnius montenegrensis (Hemiptera, Triatominae)

The Triatominae subfamily comprises 6 tribes. The tribe Rhodniini comprises 2 genera and 22 nominal species. Rhodnius montenegrensis (Hemiptera, Triatominae) was recently described as evolutionarily related to R. robustus. Therefore, in order to contribute to karyosystematic study of the tribe Rhodniini, this report describes the number of chromosomes and compares the karyotype of R. montenegrensis to that of all other species in the tribe, in order to determine the karyotypic evolution of the tribe Rhodniini. The seminiferous tubules of adult males, after being removed and fixated on a cover slip, were processed with lacto-aceto-orcein for cytogenetic analysis. R. montenegrensis, as well as all other species of the tribe Rhodniini showed 22 chromosomes (20 autosomes + XY). Thus, we hereby describe the karyotype of the species R. montenegrensis and mainly highlight that the tribe Rhodniini displays karyotypic homogeneity, demonstrating itself as a derived group to a lesser extent when compared to the number of chromosomes of the common ancestors of the subfamily Triatominae.Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq

A GIS Tool to Estimate Flow at Ungaged Basins Using the Map Correlation Method

Water resources management has been a critical component of sustainable resources planning. One of the most commonly used data in water resources management is streamflow measurements. Daily streamflow time series collected at a stream gage provide information on the temporal variation in water quantity where the gage is located. However, streamflow information is often needed at ungaged catchments especially when the stream gage network is not dense. One conventional approach to estimate streamflow at an ungaged catchment is to transfer streamflow measurements from the spatially closest stream gage, commonly referred to as the donor or reference gage using the drainage-area ratio method. Recently, the correlation between daily streamflow time series is proposed as an alternative to distance for reference stream gage selection. The Map Correlation Method (MCM) enables development of a map that demonstrates the spatial distribution of correlation coefficients between daily streamflow time series at a selected stream gage and all other locations within a selected study area. Although utility of the map correlation method has been demonstrated in various studies, due to its geostatistical analysis procedure it is time-consuming and hard to implement for practical purposes such as installed capacity selection of run-of-river hydropower plants during their feasibility studies. In this study, an easy-to-use GIS-based tool, called MCM_GIS is developed to apply the MCM in estimating daily time series of streamflow. MCM_GIS provides a user-friendly working environment and flexibility in choosing between two types of interpolation models, kriging and inverse distance weighting. The main motivation of this study is to increase practical application of the MCM by integrating it to the GIS environment. MCM_GIS can also carry out the leave-one-out cross-validation scheme to monitor the overall performance of the estimation. The tool is demonstrated on a case study carried out in Western Black Sea Region, Turkey. ESRI's ArcGIS for Desktop product along with a Python script is utilized. The outcomes of inverse distance weighting and ordinary kriging are compared. Results of GIS-based MCM are in good agreement with the observed hydrographs

Influência da estrutura do catalisador a base de Zirconoceno na estereorregularidade e propriedades do polipropileno formado Influence of Zirconocene structure on polypropylene stereorregularity and properties

RESUMO: Catalisadores de metalocenos com diferentes simetrias, cocatalisados por metilaluminoxanas (MAO), foram avaliados em diferentes temperaturas de polimerização do propileno. Os metalocenos com ponte interanelar, ou seja, o dicloreto de rac-etileno bis(h5-1-indenil) zircônio, com simetria C2, e o dicloreto de isopropilideno(h5-ciclopentadienil)(h5-9-fluorenil) zircônio, com simetria Cs, produziram, respectivamente, polipropileno isotático e sindiotático. O grau de taticidade desses polímeros diminui com o aumento da temperatura de polimerização. Os metalocenos sem ponte, dicloreto de bis(h5-ciclopentadienil)zircônio e bis(h5-indenil)zircônio, em qualquer uma das temperaturas investigadas, produziram, somente, polipropileno atático. A estereorregularidade dos polímeros foram determinadas por Ressonância Magnética Nuclear de 13C.<br>ABSTRACT: Metallocenes with different symmetries in combination with methylaluminoxane (MAO), have been investigated at different propylene polymerization temperatures. The metallocenes rac-ethylene bis(h5-1-indenyl) zirconium dichloride, with C2 symmetry and isopropylidene (h5cyclopentadienyl)(h5-9-fluorenyl) zirconium dichloride, with Cs symmetry, produce isotactic and syndiotactic polypropylene respectively. The degree of tacticity of these polymers decreases with the increase of polymerization temperature. Only atactic polypropylene was formed with the unbridged zirconocenes bis(h5-cyclopentadienyl) zirconium dichloride and bis(h5-indenyl) zirconium dichloride at any temperature investigated. The polymer microtacticity was analysed by 13C NMR

A homozygous PDE6D mutation in Joubert syndrome impairs targeting of farnesylated INPP5E protein to the primary cilium.

Joubert syndrome (JS) is characterized by a distinctive cerebellar structural defect, namely the « molar tooth sign ». JS is genetically heterogeneous, involving 18 genes identified to date, which are all required for cilia biogenesis and/or function. In a consanguineous family with JS associated with optic nerve coloboma, kidney hypoplasia and polydactyly, combined exome sequencing and mapping identified a homozygous splice site mutation in PDE6D, encoding a prenyl-binding protein. We found that pde6d depletion in zebrafish leads to renal and retinal developmental anomalies and wild-type but not mutant PDE6D is able to rescue this phenotype. Proteomic analysis identified INPP5E, whose mutations also lead to JS or MORM syndromes, as novel prenyl-dependent cargo of PDE6D. Mutant PDE6D shows reduced binding to INPP5E, which fails to localize to primary cilia in patient fibroblasts and tissues. Furthermore, mutant PDE6D is unable to bind to GTP-bound ARL3, which acts as a cargo-release factor for PDE6D-bound INPP5E. Altogether, these results indicate that PDE6D is required for INPP5E ciliary targeting and suggest a broader role for PDE6D in targeting other prenylated proteins to the cilia. This study identifies PDE6D as a novel JS disease gene and provides the first evidence of prenyl-binding dependent trafficking in ciliopathies. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Geographical relational poverty studies

Relationality is a persistent concern of socio-spatial theory, increasingly invoked in geographical scholarship. We bring geographical scholarship on relationality to bear on relational poverty studies, an emergent body of work that challenges mainstream approaches to conceptualizing, explaining, researching and acting upon poverty. We argue that relationality scholarship provides ontological, theoretical, and epistemological interventions that extend prior relational poverty work. We synthesize these three elements to develop an explicitly geographical relationality and show how this framework offers a politics of possibility for knowing and acting on poverty in new ways