Neoadjuvant endocrine therapy in primary breast cancer: indications and use as a research tool

Neoadjuvant endocrine therapy has been increasingly employed in clinical practice to improve surgical options for postmenopausal women with bulky hormone receptor-positive breast cancer. Recent studies indicate that tumour response in this setting may predict long-term outcome of patients on adjuvant endocrine therapy, which argues for its broader application in treating hormone receptor-positive disease. From the research perspective, neoadjuvant endocrine therapy provides a unique opportunity for studies of endocrine responsiveness and the development of novel therapeutic agents

β-Adrenoreceptor Stimulation Mediates Reconsolidation of Social Reward-Related Memories

In recent years, the notion that consolidated memories become transiently unstable after retrieval and require reconsolidation to persist for later use has received strong experimental support. To date, the majority of studies on reconsolidation have focused on memories of negative emotions, while the dynamics of positive memories have been less well studied. Social play, the most characteristic social behavior displayed by young mammals, is important for social and cognitive development. It has strong rewarding properties, illustrated by the fact that it can induce conditioned place preference (CPP). In order to understand the dynamics of positive social memories, we evaluated the effect of propranolol, a β-adrenoreceptor antagonist known to influence a variety of memory processes, on acquisition, consolidation, retrieval and reconsolidation of social play-induced CPP in adolescent rats.Systemic treatment with propranolol, immediately before or after a CPP test (i.e. retrieval session), attenuated CPP 24 h later. Following extinction, CPP could be reinstated in saline--but not in propranolol-treated rats, indicating that propranolol treatment had persistently disrupted the CPP memory trace. Propranolol did not affect social play-induced CPP in the absence of memory retrieval or when administered 1 h or 6 h after retrieval. Furthermore, propranolol did not affect acquisition, consolidation or retrieval of social play-induced CPP.We conclude that β-adrenergic neurotransmission selectively mediates the reconsolidation, but not other processes involved in the storage and stability of social reward-related memories in adolescent rats. These data support the notion that consolidation and reconsolidation of social reward-related memories in adolescent rats rely on distinct neural mechanisms

Climate Change, Coral Reef Ecosystems, and Management Options for Marine Protected Areas

Marine protected areas (MPAs) provide place-based management of marine ecosystems through various degrees and types of protective actions. Habitats such as coral reefs are especially susceptible to degradation resulting from climate change, as evidenced by mass bleaching events over the past two decades. Marine ecosystems are being altered by direct effects of climate change including ocean warming, ocean acidification, rising sea level, changing circulation patterns, increasing severity of storms, and changing freshwater influxes. As impacts of climate change strengthen they may exacerbate effects of existing stressors and require new or modified management approaches; MPA networks are generally accepted as an improvement over individual MPAs to address multiple threats to the marine environment. While MPA networks are considered a potentially effective management approach for conserving marine biodiversity, they should be established in conjunction with other management strategies, such as fisheries regulations and reductions of nutrients and other forms of land-based pollution. Information about interactions between climate change and more “traditional” stressors is limited. MPA managers are faced with high levels of uncertainty about likely outcomes of management actions because climate change impacts have strong interactions with existing stressors, such as land-based sources of pollution, overfishing and destructive fishing practices, invasive species, and diseases. Management options include ameliorating existing stressors, protecting potentially resilient areas, developing networks of MPAs, and integrating climate change into MPA planning, management, and evaluation

Defining patch contribution in source-sink metapopulations the importance of including dispersal and its relevance to marine systems

In metapopulations, individual patch contribution (source or sink) is typically calculated as a patch growth rate (the intrinsic lambda, lambda(I)) dependent only upon local demographics. We demonstrate that when dispersal is explicitly included in the

Complex habitats may not always benefit prey: linking visual field with reef fish behavior and distribution

Habitat structural complexity is often considered beneficial for prey species because it reduces the foraging efficiency of predators. However, for site-attached, territorial prey, such as many damselfishes, structural complexity at specific scales may

Small-scale demographic variability of the biocolor damselfish, Stegastes partitus, in the Florida Keys USA

The demographic responses of reef fish to their environment can be complex and in many cases, quite strong. Growth, mortality, longevity, and even reproductive effort have been demonstrated to vary for the same species of reef fish over scales of 100s to 1,000s of kilometers due to physiological and ecological interactions. Though few studies have explicitly documented it, this sort of habitat-mediated demography can also exist at very local scales. Here we present the results of a 2-year study of the bicolor damselfish, Stegastes partitus, in the Florida Keys, USA. We measured density and distribution, calculated key demographic rates (growth, survival, and fecundity), and characterized the environment (resident fish assemblage, substrate type and complexity, and food availability) of populations living in two adjacent but different habitats, the continuous fore reef and patchy back reef. Fish on the fore reef had an elevated growth rate and asymptotic size, increased mortality, and higher fecundity than fish on the back reef. We identified four potential causative mechanisms for these differences: food availability; competition; intraspecific density-dependent effects; and predation risk. Our data did not support an effect of either food availability or intraspecific density-dependence, but rather suggested that demographic responses are affected by both competition and predation risk

The impact of United States recreational fisheries on marine fish populations.

We evaluated the commercial and recreational fishery landings over the past 22 years, first at the national level, then for populations of concern (those that are overfished or experiencing overfishing), and finally by region. Recreational landings in 2002 account for 4% of total marine fish landed in the United States. With large industrial fisheries excluded (e.g., menhaden and pollock), the recreational component rises to 10%. Among populations of concern, recreational landings in 2002 account for 23% of the total nationwide, rising to 38% in the South Atlantic and 64% in the Gulf of Mexico. Moreover, it affects many of the most-valued overfished species-including red drum, bocaccio, and red snapper-all of which are taken primarily in the recreational fishery