Convergence of Macroscopic Tongue Anatomy in Ruminants and Scaling Relationships with Body Mass or Tongue Length

Various morphological measures demonstrate convergent evolution in ruminants with their natural diet, in particular with respect to the browser/grazer dichotomy. Here, we report quantitative macroanatomical measures of the tongue (length and width of specific parts) of 65 ruminant species and relate them to either body mass (BM) or total tongue length, and to the percentage of grass in the natural diet (%grass). Models without and with accounting for the phylogenetic structures of the dataset were used, and models were ranked using Akaike’s Information Criterion. Scaling relationships followed geometric principles, that is, length measures scaled with BM to the power of 0.33. Models that used tongue length rather than BM as a body size proxy were consistently ranked better, indicating that using size proxies that are less susceptible to a wider variety of factors (such as BM that fluctuates with body condition) should be attempted whenever possible. The proportion of the freely mobile tongue tip of the total tongue (and hence also the corpus length) was negatively correlated to %grass, in accordance with concepts that the feeding mechanism of browsers requires more mobile tongues. It should be noted that some nonbrowsers, such as cattle, use a peculiar mechanism for grazing that also requires long, mobile tongues, but they appear to be exceptions. A larger corpus width with increasing %grass corresponds to differences in snout shape with broader snouts in grazers. The Torus linguae is longer with increasing %grass, a finding that still warrants functional interpretation. This study shows that tongue measures covary with diet in ruminants. In contrast, the shape of the tongue (straight or “hourglassshaped” as measured by the ratio of the widest and smallest corpus width) is unrelated to diet and is influenced strongly by phylogeny

Human Dectin-1 Deficiency Impairs Macrophage-Mediated Defense Against Phaeohyphomycosis

Subcutaneous phaeohyphomycosis typically affects immunocompetent individuals following traumatic inoculation. Severe or disseminated infection can occur in CARD9 deficiency or after transplantation, but the mechanisms protecting against phaeohyphomycosis remain unclear. We evaluated a patient with progressive, refractory Corynespora cassiicola phaeohyphomycosis and found that he carried biallelic deleterious mutations in CLEC7A encoding the CARD9-coupled, β-glucan-binding receptor, Dectin-1. The patient\u27s PBMCs failed to produce TNF-α and IL-1β in response to β-glucan and/or C. cassiicola. To confirm the cellular and molecular requirements for immunity against C. cassiicola, we developed a mouse model of this infection. Mouse macrophages required Dectin-1 and CARD9 for IL-1β and TNF-α production, which enhanced fungal killing in an interdependent manner. Deficiency of either Dectin-1 or CARD9 was associated with more severe fungal disease, recapitulating the human observation. Because these data implicated impaired Dectin-1 responses in susceptibility to phaeohyphomycosis, we evaluated 17 additional unrelated patients with severe forms of the infection. We found that 12 out of 17 carried deleterious CLEC7A mutations associated with an altered Dectin-1 extracellular C-terminal domain and impaired Dectin-1-dependent cytokine production. Thus, we show that Dectin-1 and CARD9 promote protective TNF-α- and IL-1β-mediated macrophage defense against C. cassiicola. More broadly, we demonstrate that human Dectin-1 deficiency may contribute to susceptibility to severe phaeohyphomycosis by certain dematiaceous fungi

Are Contemporary Media Images Which Seem to Display Women as Sexually Empowered Actually Harmful to Women?

There has been a shift in the depiction of women in advertising from objectifying representations of women as passive sex objects to agentic sexual representations where the women appear powerful and in control (Gill, 2007a, 2008), and there is substantial evidence that these representations have a negative impact on women’s body image. However, to our knowledge, this study is the first experimental research that aims to compare passively objectifying and more recent sexually agentic representations. British undergraduate women (N ¼ 122) participated in an experiment in which they were randomly assigned to view sexually passive, sexually agentic, or control print advertisements. Exposure to both types of representations of women, compared to viewing control images, was associated with increased weight dissatisfaction. The sexually agentic representations were singularly associated with increased state self-objectification. Media exposure research tends to focus on the models (e.g., their thinness) shown in advertising and pay little attention to the framing of the image. Our results highlight the powerful impact different framings can have on women’s body image concerns as well as suggest that recent shifts in advertising may be particularly problematic because contemporary images increased both weight concern and selfobjectification. Therefore, these images may have a more powerful impact on psychological well-being and disordered eating behaviors than traditional images

Comparison of Automated Analysis of Cirrus HD OCT Spectral-Domain Optical Coherence Tomography with Stereo Photographs of the Optic Disc

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate a new automated analysis of optic disc images obtained by spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT). Areas of the optic disc, cup, and neural rim in SD-OCT images were compared with these areas from stereoscopic photographs, to represent the current traditional optic nerve evaluation. The repeatability of measurements by each method was determined and compared. DESIGN: Evaluation of diagnostic technology. PARTICIPANTS: 119 healthy eyes, 23 eyes with glaucoma, and 7 suspect eyes METHODS: Optic disc and cup margins were traced from stereoscopic photographs by three individuals independently. Optic disc margins and rim widths were determined automatically in SD-OCT. A subset of photographs was examined and traced a second time, and duplicate SD-OCT images were also analyzed. MAIN OUTCOME MEASUREMENTS: Agreement among photograph readers, between duplicate readings, and between SD-OCT and photographs were quantified by the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), by the root mean square (RMS), and the standard deviation (SD) of the differences. RESULTS: Optic disc areas tended to be slightly larger when judged in photographs than by SD-OCT, while cup areas were similar. Cup and optic disc areas showed good correlation (0.8) between average photographic reading and SD-OCT, but only fair correlation of rim areas (0.4). The SD-OCT was highly reproducible (ICC of 0.96 to 0.99). Each reader was also consistent with himself on duplicate readings of 21 photographs (ICC 0.80 to 0.88 for rim area, 0.95 to 0.98 for all other measurements), but reproducibility was not as good as SD-OCT. Measurements derived from SD-OCT did not differ from photographic readings more than the readings of photographs by different readers differed from each other. CONCLUSIONS: Designation of the cup and optic disc boundaries by an automated analysis of SD-OCT was within the range of variable designations by different readers from color stereoscopic photographs, but use of different landmarks typically made the designation of the optic disc size somewhat smaller in the automated analysis. There was better repeatability among measurements from SD-OCT than from among readers of photographs. The repeatability of automated measurement of SD-OCT images is promising for use both in diagnosis and in monitoring of progression