Eliminating Malaria Vectors.

Malaria vectors which predominantly feed indoors upon humans have been locally eliminated from several settings with insecticide treated nets (ITNs), indoor residual spraying or larval source management. Recent dramatic declines of An. gambiae in east Africa with imperfect ITN coverage suggest mosquito populations can rapidly collapse when forced below realistically achievable, non-zero thresholds of density and supporting resource availability. Here we explain why insecticide-based mosquito elimination strategies are feasible, desirable and can be extended to a wider variety of species by expanding the vector control arsenal to cover a broader spectrum of the resources they need to survive. The greatest advantage of eliminating mosquitoes, rather than merely controlling them, is that this precludes local selection for behavioural or physiological resistance traits. The greatest challenges are therefore to achieve high biological coverage of targeted resources rapidly enough to prevent local emergence of resistance and to then continually exclude, monitor for and respond to re-invasion from external populations

Edaphic, structural and physiological contrasts across Amazon Basin forest-savanna ecotones suggest a role for potassium as a key modulator of tropical woody vegetation structure and function

Sampling along a precipitation gradient in tropical South America extending from ca. 0.8 to 2.0 m ag-1, savanna soils had consistently lower exchangeable cation concentrations and higher C/N ratios than nearby forest plots. These soil differences were also reflected in canopy averaged leaf traits with savanna trees typically having higher leaf mass per unit area but lower mass-based nitrogen (Nm) and potassium (Km). Both Nm and Km also increased with declining mean annual precipitation (PA), but most area-based leaf traits such as leaf photosynthetic capacity showed no systematic variation with PA or vegetation type. Despite this invariance, when taken in conjunction with other measures such as mean canopy height, area-based soil exchangeable potassium content, [K]sa , proved to be an excellent predictor of several photosynthetic properties (including 13C isotope discrimination). Moreover, when considered in a multivariate context with PA and soil plant available water storage capacity (θP) as covariates, [K]sa also proved to be an excellent predictor of stand-level canopy area, providing drastically improved fits as compared to models considering just PA and/or θP. Neither calcium, nor magnesium, nor soil pH could substitute for potassium when tested as alternative model predictors (ΔAIC > 10). Nor for any model could simple soil texture metrics such as sand or clay content substitute for either [K]sa or θP. Taken in conjunction with recent work in Africa and the forests of the Amazon Basin, this suggests-in combination with some newly conceptualised interacting effects of PA and θP also presented here-a critical role for potassium as a modulator of tropical vegetation structure and function.Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) TROBIT Consortium projectCNPqRoyal Society of London - Wolfson Research Merit Awar

Macro-Climatic Distribution Limits Show Both Niche Expansion and Niche Specialization among C4 Panicoids

Grasses are ancestrally tropical understory species whose current dominance in warm open habitats is linked to the evolution of C4 photosynthesis. C4 grasses maintain high rates of photosynthesis in warm and water stressed environments, and the syndrome is considered to induce niche shifts into these habitats while adaptation to cold ones may be compromised. Global biogeographic analyses of C4 grasses have, however, concentrated on diversity patterns, while paying little attention to distributional limits. Using phylogenetic contrast analyses, we compared macro-climatic distribution limits among ~1300 grasses from the subfamily Panicoideae, which includes 4/5 of the known photosynthetic transitions in grasses. We explored whether evolution of C4 photosynthesis correlates with niche expansions, niche changes, or stasis at subfamily level and within the two tribes Paniceae and Paspaleae. We compared the climatic extremes of growing season temperatures, aridity, and mean temperatures of the coldest months. We found support for all the known biogeographic distribution patterns of C4 species, these patterns were, however, formed both by niche expansion and niche changes. The only ubiquitous response to a change in the photosynthetic pathway within Panicoideae was a niche expansion of the C4 species into regions with higher growing season temperatures, but without a withdrawal from the inherited climate niche. Other patterns varied among the tribes, as macro-climatic niche evolution in the American tribe Paspaleae differed from the pattern supported in the globally distributed tribe Paniceae and at family level.Fil: Aagesen, Lone. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Botánica Darwinion. Academia Nacional de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Instituto de Botánica Darwinion; ArgentinaFil: Biganzoli, Fernando. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Departamento de Métodos Cuantitativos y Sistemas de Información; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Bena, María Julia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Botánica Darwinion. Academia Nacional de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Instituto de Botánica Darwinion; ArgentinaFil: Godoy Bürki, Ana Carolina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Botánica Darwinion. Academia Nacional de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Instituto de Botánica Darwinion; ArgentinaFil: Reinheimer, Renata. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Agrobiotecnología del Litoral. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Agrobiotecnología del Litoral; ArgentinaFil: Zuloaga, Fernando Omar. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Botánica Darwinion. Academia Nacional de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Instituto de Botánica Darwinion; Argentin

Methods to estimate aboveground wood productivity from long-term forest inventory plots

Forest inventory plots are widely used to estimate biomass carbon storage and its change over time. While there has been much debate and exploration of the analytical methods for calculating biomass, the methods used to determine rates of wood production have not been evaluated to the same degree. This affects assessment of ecosystem fluxes and may have wider implications if inventory data are used to parameterise biospheric models, or scaled to large areas in assessments of carbon sequestration. Here we use a dataset of 35 long-term Amazonian forest inventory plots to test different methods of calculating wood production rates. These address potential biases associated with three issues that routinely impact the interpretation of tree measurement data: (1) changes in the point of measurement (POM) of stem diameter as trees grow over time; (2) unequal length of time between censuses; and (3) the treatment of trees that pass the minimum diameter threshold (“recruits”). We derive corrections that control for changing POM height, that account for the unobserved growth of trees that die within census intervals, and that explore different assumptions regarding the growth of recruits during the previous census interval. For our dataset we find that annual aboveground coarse wood production (AGWP; in Mg ha−1 year−1 of dry matter) is underestimated on average by 9.2% if corrections are not made to control for changes in POM height. Failure to control for the length of sampling intervals results in a mean underestimation of 2.7% in annual AGWP in our plots for a mean interval length of 3.6 years. Different methods for treating recruits result in mean differences of up to 8.1% in AGWP. In general, the greater the length of time a plot is sampled for and the greater the time elapsed between censuses, the greater the tendency to underestimate wood production. We recommend that POM changes, census interval length, and the contribution of recruits should all be accounted for when estimating productivity rates, and suggest methods for doing this.European UnionUK Natural Environment Research CouncilGordon and Betty Moore FoundationCASE sponsorship from UNEP-WCMCRoyal Society University Research FellowshipERC Advanced Grant “Tropical Forests in the Changing Earth System”Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Awar

Discrepancies between survey and administrative data on the use of mental health services in the general population: findings from a study conducted in Québec

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Population surveys and health services registers are the main source of data for the management of public health. Yet, the validity of survey data on the use of mental health services has been questioned repeatedly due to the sensitive nature of mental illness and to the risk of recall bias. The main objectives of this study were to compare data on the use of mental health services from a large scale population survey and a national health services register and to identify the factors associated with the discrepancies observed between these two sources of data.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This study was based on the individual linkage of data from the cycle 1.2 of the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS-1.2) and from the health services register of the Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ). The RAMQ is the governmental agency managing the Quebec national health insurance program. The analyses mostly focused on the 637 Quebecer respondents who were recorded as users of mental health services in the RAMQ and who were self-reported users or non users of these services in the CCHS-1.2.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Roughly 75%, of those recorded as users of mental health services users in the RAMQ's register did not report using mental health services in the CCHS-1.2. The odds of disagreement between survey and administrative data were higher in seniors, individuals with a lower level of education, legal or de facto spouses and mothers of young children. They were lower in individuals with a psychiatric disorder and in frequent and more recent users of mental health services according to the RAMQ's register.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These findings support the hypotheses that social desirability and recall bias are likely to affect the self-reported use of mental health services in a population survey. They stress the need to refine the investigation of mental health services in population surveys and to combine survey and administrative data, whenever possible, to obtain an optimal estimation of the population need for mental health care.</p

向精神薬服用患者の突然死症例におけるカリウムイオンチャネルに関する分子生物学的解析：QT延長症候群関連遺伝子の多型が危険因子となり得るか？

Psychotropic drugs can pose the risk of acquired long QT syndrome (LQTS). Unexpected autopsy-negative sudden death in patients taking psychotropic drugs may be associated with prolonged QT intervals and life-threatening arrhythmias. We analyzed genes that encode for cardiac ion channels and potentially associated with LQTS, examining specifically the potassium channel genes KCNQ1 and KCNH2 in 10 cases of sudden death involving patients administered psychotropic medication in which autopsy findings identified no clear cause of death. We amplified and sequenced all exons of KCNQ1 and KCNH2, identifying G643S, missense polymorphism in KCNQ1, in 6 of the 10 cases. A study analysis indicated that only 11% of 381 healthy Japanese individuals carry this polymorphism. Reports of previous functional analyses indicate that the G643S polymorphism in the KCNQ1 potassium channel protein causes mild IKs channel dysfunction. Our present study suggests that administering psychotropic drug therapy to individuals carrying the G643S polymorphism may heighten the risk of prolonged QT intervals and life-threatening arrhythmias. Thus, screening for the G643S polymorphism before prescribing psychotropic drugs may help reduce the risk of unexpected sudden death2013博士（歯学）松本歯科大

Anopheles larval abundance and diversity in three rice agro-village complexes Mwea irrigation scheme, central Kenya

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The diversity and abundance of <it>Anopheles </it>larvae has significant influence on the resulting adult mosquito population and hence the dynamics of malaria transmission. Studies were conducted to examine larval habitat dynamics and ecological factors affecting survivorship of aquatic stages of malaria vectors in three agro-ecological settings in Mwea, Kenya.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Three villages were selected based on rice husbandry and water management practices. Aquatic habitats in the 3 villages representing planned rice cultivation (Mbui Njeru), unplanned rice cultivation (Kiamachiri) and non-irrigated (Murinduko) agro-ecosystems were sampled every 2 weeks to generate stage-specific estimates of mosquito larval densities, relative abundance and diversity. Records of distance to the nearest homestead, vegetation coverage, surface debris, turbidity, habitat stability, habitat type, rice growth stage, number of rice tillers and percent <it>Azolla </it>cover were taken for each habitat.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Captures of early, late instars and pupae accounted for 78.2%, 10.9% and 10.8% of the total <it>Anopheles </it>immatures sampled (n = 29,252), respectively. There were significant differences in larval abundance between 3 agro-ecosystems. The village with 'planned' rice cultivation had relatively lower <it>Anopheles </it>larval densities compared to the villages where 'unplanned' or non-irrigated. Similarly, species composition and richness was higher in the two villages with either 'unplanned' or limited rice cultivation, an indication of the importance of land use patterns on diversity of larval habitat types. Rice fields and associated canals were the most productive habitat types while water pools and puddles were important for short periods during the rainy season. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that presence of other invertebrates, percentage <it>Azolla </it>cover, distance to nearest homestead, depth and water turbidity were the best predictors for <it>Anopheles </it>mosquito larval abundance.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results suggest that agricultural practices have significant influence on mosquito species diversity and abundance and that certain habitat characteristics favor production of malaria vectors. These factors should be considered when implementing larval control strategies which should be targeted based on habitat productivity and water management.</p

Missed injuries in trauma patients: A literature review

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Overlooked injuries and delayed diagnoses are still common problems in the treatment of polytrauma patients. Therefore, ongoing documentation describing the incidence rates of missed injuries, clinically significant missed injuries, contributing factors and outcome is necessary to improve the quality of trauma care. This review summarizes the available literature on missed injuries, focusing on overlooked muscoloskeletal injuries.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Manuscripts dealing with missed injuries after trauma were reviewed. The following search modules were selected in PubMed: Missed injuries, Delayed diagnoses, Trauma, Musculoskeletal injuires. Three time periods were differentiated: (n = 2, 1980–1990), (n = 6, 1990–2000), and (n = 9, 2000-Present).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found a wide spread distribution of missed injuries and delayed diagnoses incidence rates (1.3% to 39%). Approximately 15 to 22.3% of patients with missed injuries had clinically significant missed injuries. Furthermore, we observed a decrease of missed pelvic and hip injuries within the last decade.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The lack of standardized studies using comparable definitions for missed injuries and clinically significant missed injuries call for further investigations, which are necessary to produce more reliable data. Furthermore, improvements in diagnostic techniques (e.g. the use of multi-slice CT) may lead to a decreased incidence of missed pelvic injuries. Finally, the standardized tertiary trauma survey is vitally important in the detection of clinically significant missed injuries and should be included in trauma care.</p

Gold Mining in the Peruvian Amazon: Global Prices, Deforestation, and Mercury Imports

Many factors such as poverty, ineffective institutions and environmental regulations may prevent developing countries from managing how natural resources are extracted to meet a strong market demand. Extraction for some resources has reached such proportions that evidence is measurable from space. We present recent evidence of the global demand for a single commodity and the ecosystem destruction resulting from commodity extraction, recorded by satellites for one of the most biodiverse areas of the world. We find that since 2003, recent mining deforestation in Madre de Dios, Peru is increasing nonlinearly alongside a constant annual rate of increase in international gold price (∼18%/yr). We detect that the new pattern of mining deforestation (1915 ha/year, 2006–2009) is outpacing that of nearby settlement deforestation. We show that gold price is linked with exponential increases in Peruvian national mercury imports over time (R2 = 0.93, p = 0.04, 2003–2009). Given the past rates of increase we predict that mercury imports may more than double for 2011 (∼500 t/year). Virtually all of Peru's mercury imports are used in artisanal gold mining. Much of the mining increase is unregulated/artisanal in nature, lacking environmental impact analysis or miner education. As a result, large quantities of mercury are being released into the atmosphere, sediments and waterways. Other developing countries endowed with gold deposits are likely experiencing similar environmental destruction in response to recent record high gold prices. The increasing availability of satellite imagery ought to evoke further studies linking economic variables with land use and cover changes on the ground