Abnormalities in the Ozark Hellbender, (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis bishopi) in Arkansas: A Comparison Between Two Rivers with a Historical Perspective

We documented abnormalities of Ozark hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis bishopi) populations in the Eleven Point River (Randolph County, Arkansas) and the Spring River (Fulton County, Arkansas) as part of ongoing monitoring efforts in this species. We found abnormalities in 90% (9 of 10) and 40% (36 of 97) of hellbenders in the Spring River and Eleven Point River, respectively, during the 2003-2004 field seasons. Most abnormalities found in Eleven Point hellbenders were generally less invasive and seemed to be more intrinsic to the species\u27 natural history (i.e., vicissitudes of living), whereas those found in Spring River hellbenders were gross morphological aberrations. We compared the type and rate of observed abnormalities with those found in museum vouchers collected from the Spring River between 1970 and 1975. Abnormalities were found in 12.5% of the museum specimens from our Spring River localities. This rate is much higher than previously reported for hellbenders. The increase in the abnormality rate appears to be concurrent with the documented population decline observed in the Spring River. Our study illustrates an increasing trend of hellbenders exhibiting unusual morphological problems (e.g., epidermal papillomas, extreme abrasions/lacerations, fungal infections, etc.) and also stresses the need for inclusion of abnormalities observed in field data. The causes of hellbender abnormalities remain speculative; however, plausible explanations may be related to intraspecific interactions, anthropogenic interactions with the microhabitat, viral infections, non-point/point source pollution, and the preponderance of older individuals. These findings emphasize the need for a proactive conservation effort within this species

Influence of corruption on economic growth rate and foreign investments

In order to investigate whether government regulations against corruption can affect the economic growth of a country, we analyze the dependence between Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita growth rates and changes in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). For the period 1999-2004 on average for all countries in the world, we find that an increase of CPI by one unit leads to an increase of the annual GDP per capita by 1.7 %. By regressing only European transition countries, we find that $\Delta$CPI = 1 generates increase of the annual GDP per capita by 2.4 %. We also analyze the relation between foreign direct investments received by different countries and CPI, and we find a statistically significant power-law functional dependence between foreign direct investment per capita and the country corruption level measured by the CPI. We introduce a new measure to quantify the relative corruption between countries based on their respective wealth as measured by GDP per capita.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, elsart styl

Lessons from the Field: Teaching a Completely Online Global Business Course to African Refugees in Northern Kenya and Malawi

The six authors of this paper taught a completely online “Global Business” course to African refugees in the Kakuma refugee camp in Northern Kenya and the Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi. The paper summarizes twelve lessons learned by the instructors while teaching the course and offers suggestions for adaptations in future courses delivered in the “Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins” diploma program

Gauge your phage: benchmarking of bacteriophage identification tools in metagenomic sequencing data

BackgroundThe prediction of bacteriophage sequences in metagenomic datasets has become a topic of considerable interest, leading to the development of many novel bioinformatic tools. A comparative analysis of ten state-of-the-art phage identification tools was performed to inform their usage in microbiome research.MethodsArtificial contigs generated from complete RefSeq genomes representing phages, plasmids, and chromosomes, and a previously sequenced mock community containing four phage species, were used to evaluate the precision, recall, and F1 scores of the tools. We also generated a dataset of randomly shuffled sequences to quantify false-positive calls. In addition, a set of previously simulated viromes was used to assess diversity bias in each tool’s output.ResultsVIBRANT and VirSorter2 achieved the highest F1 scores (0.93) in the RefSeq artificial contigs dataset, with several other tools also performing well. Kraken2 had the highest F1 score (0.86) in the mock community benchmark by a large margin (0.3 higher than DeepVirFinder in second place), mainly due to its high precision (0.96). Generally, k-mer-based tools performed better than reference similarity tools and gene-based methods. Several tools, most notably PPR-Meta, called a high number of false positives in the randomly shuffled sequences. When analysing the diversity of the genomes that each tool predicted from a virome set, most tools produced a viral genome set that had similar alpha- and beta-diversity patterns to the original population, with Seeker being a notable exception.ConclusionsThis study provides key metrics used to assess performance of phage detection tools, offers a framework for further comparison of additional viral discovery tools, and discusses optimal strategies for using these tools. We highlight that the choice of tool for identification of phages in metagenomic datasets, as well as their parameters, can bias the results and provide pointers for different use case scenarios. We have also made our benchmarking dataset available for download in order to facilitate future comparisons of phage identification tools

Understanding light quanta: First quantization of the free electromagnetic field

The quantization of the electromagnetic field in vacuum is presented without reference to lagrangean quantum field theory. The equal time commutators of the fields are calculated from basic principles. A physical discussion of the commutators suggest that the electromagnetic fields are macroscopic emergent properties of more fundamental physical system: the photons

Quantitative relations between corruption and economic factors

We report quantitative relations between corruption level and economic factors, such as country wealth and foreign investment per capita, which are characterized by a power law spanning multiple scales of wealth and investments per capita. These relations hold for diverse countries, and also remain stable over different time periods. We also observe a negative correlation between level of corruption and long-term economic growth. We find similar results for two independent indices of corruption, suggesting that the relation between corruption and wealth does not depend on the specific measure of corruption. The functional relations we report have implications when assessing the relative level of corruption for two countries with comparable wealth, and for quantifying the impact of corruption on economic growth and foreign investments.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

Leeches (Annelida: Hirudinida) of Northern Arkansas

Twenty-one lotic and lentic environments throughout central and northern Arkansas were surveyed for the presence of leeches during June 2004 and April, July - October 2005. Fourteen species of leeches {Helobdella elongata, Helobdella papillata, Helobdella stagnalis, Placobdella cryptobranchii, Placobdella multilineata, Placobdella ornata, Placobdella papillifera, Placobdella parasitica, Placobdella phaler a, Placobdella picta, Haemopis marmorata, Erpobdella fervida, Erpobdella microstoma, and Erpobdella punctata) representing 3 families were collected. Five species (H. elongata, P. cryptobranchii, P. multilineata, H. marmorata, and E. fervida) are reported from Arkansas for the first time. The natural history of the 22 species of leeches now known from Arkansas is reviewed

Mitochondrial phylogeography and demographic history of the Vicuña: implications for conservation

The vicuña (Vicugna vicugna; Miller, 1924) is a conservation success story, having recovered from near extinction in the 1960s to current population levels estimated at 275 000. However, lack of information about its demographic history and genetic diversity has limited both our understanding of its recovery and the development of science-based conservation measures. To examine the evolution and recent demographic history of the vicuña across its current range and to assess its genetic variation and population structure, we sequenced mitochondrial DNA from the control region (CR) for 261 individuals from 29 populations across Peru, Chile and Argentina. Our results suggest that populations currently designated as Vicugna vicugna vicugna and Vicugna vicugna mensalis comprise separate mitochondrial lineages. The current population distribution appears to be the result of a recent demographic expansion associated with the last major glacial event of the Pleistocene in the northern (18 to 22°S) dry Andes 14–12 000 years ago and the establishment of an extremely arid belt known as the 'Dry Diagonal' to 29°S. Within the Dry Diagonal, small populations of V. v. vicugna appear to have survived showing the genetic signature of demographic isolation, whereas to the north V. v. mensalis populations underwent a rapid demographic expansion before recent anthropogenic impacts

Proteomic Approach to Evaluate Mechanisms That Contribute to Food Allergenicity: Comparative 2D-DIGE Analysis of Radioallergosorbent Test Positive and Negative Patients

Proteomic profiles of RAST+ subjects with severe food allergies and RAST− subjects were compared using 2D-DIGE analysis to obtain candidate biomarkers specific to food allergies. Our analysis highlighted 52 proteins that were differentially expressed between the RAST+ and RAST− groups of which 37 were successfully identified that include chondroitin sulfates, zinc finger proteins, C-type lectins, retinoic acid binding proteins, heat shock proteins, myosin, cytokines, mast cell expressed proteins, and MAP kinases. Biological network analysis tool Metacore revealed that most of these regulated proteins play a role in immune tolerance, hypersensitivity and modulate cytokine patterns inducing a Th2 response that typically results in IgE-mediated allergic response which has a direct or indirect biological link to food allergy. Identifying unique biomarkers associated with certain allergic phenotypes and potentially cross-reactive proteins through bioinformatics analyses will provide enormous insight into the mechanisms that underlie allergic response in patients with food allergies