Geriatric Program for the Small Animal Clinic

Geriatric medicine is becoming increasingly important in small animal practice. Although this area of practice is a relatively new focus, the benefits of such programs are becoming apparent to the veterinarian and clients. Pets are living longer and geriatric pets occupy a significant portion of small animal practice. Over 40% of dogs and 30% of cats in U.S. households are over the age of six years. The increasingly aged pet population necessitates more geriatric care. Clients understand their older pet may have many of the same problems as older humans and are often willing to pay for extra geriatric care because of the strong bond with their older pet. A geriatric program can be rewarding to the veterinarian professionally and financially. Patients also benefit because they receive better care that can detect and may help to prevent treatable diseases earlier

Generating a Lexicon Without a Language Model: Do Words for Number Count?

Homesigns are communication systems created by deaf individuals without access to conventional linguistic input. To investigate how homesign gestures for number function in short-term memory compared to homesign gestures for objects, actions, or attributes, we conducted memory span tasks with adult homesigners in Nicaragua, and with comparison groups of unschooled hearing Spanish speakers and deaf Nicaraguan Sign Language signers. There was no difference between groups in recall of gestures or words for objects, actions or attributes; homesign gestures therefore can function as word units in short-term memory. However, homesigners showed poorer recall of numbers than the other groups. Unlike the other groups, increasing the numerical value of the to-be-remembered quantities negatively affected recall in homesigners, but not controls. When developed without linguistic input, gestures for number do not seem to function as summaries of the cardinal values of the sets (four), but rather as indexes of items within a set (one–one–one–one).Psycholog

Intra- and Inter-Tumor Heterogeneity of BRAFV600EMutations in Primary and Metastatic Melanoma

The rationale for using small molecule inhibitors of oncogenic proteins as cancer therapies depends, at least in part, on the assumption that metastatic tumors are primarily clonal with respect to mutant oncogene. With the emergence of BRAFV600E as a therapeutic target, we investigated intra- and inter-tumor heterogeneity in melanoma using detection of the BRAFV600E mutation as a marker of clonality. BRAF mutant-specific PCR (MS-PCR) and conventional sequencing were performed on 112 tumors from 73 patients, including patients with matched primary and metastatic specimens (n = 18). Nineteen patients had tissues available from multiple metastatic sites. Mutations were detected in 36/112 (32%) melanomas using conventional sequencing, and 85/112 (76%) using MS-PCR. The better sensitivity of the MS-PCR to detect the mutant BRAFV600E allele was not due to the presence of contaminating normal tissue, suggesting that the tumor was comprised of subclones of differing BRAF genotypes. To determine if tumor subclones were present in individual primary melanomas, we performed laser microdissection and mutation detection via sequencing and BRAFV600E-specific SNaPshot analysis in 9 cases. Six of these cases demonstrated differing proportions of BRAFV600Eand BRAFwild-type cells in distinct microdissected regions within individual tumors. Additional analyses of multiple metastatic samples from individual patients using the highly sensitive MS-PCR without microdissection revealed that 5/19 (26%) patients had metastases that were discordant for the BRAFV600E mutation. In conclusion, we used highly sensitive BRAF mutation detection methods and observed substantial evidence for heterogeneity of the BRAFV600E mutation within individual melanoma tumor specimens, and among multiple specimens from individual patients. Given the varied clinical responses of patients to BRAF inhibitor therapy, these data suggest that additional studies to determine possible associations between clinical outcomes and intra- and inter-tumor heterogeneity could prove fruitful

The Eleventh and Twelfth Data Releases of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Final Data from SDSS-III

The third generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) took data from 2008 to 2014 using the original SDSS wide-field imager, the original and an upgraded multi-object fiber-fed optical spectrograph, a new near-infrared high-resolution spectrograph, and a novel optical interferometer. All of the data from SDSS-III are now made public. In particular, this paper describes Data Release 11 (DR11) including all data acquired through 2013 July, and Data Release 12 (DR12) adding data acquired through 2014 July (including all data included in previous data releases), marking the end of SDSS-III observing. Relative to our previous public release (DR10), DR12 adds one million new spectra of galaxies and quasars from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) over an additional 3000 deg2 of sky, more than triples the number of H-band spectra of stars as part of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), and includes repeated accurate radial velocity measurements of 5500 stars from the Multi-object APO Radial Velocity Exoplanet Large-area Survey (MARVELS). The APOGEE outputs now include the measured abundances of 15 different elements for each star. In total, SDSS-III added 5200 deg2 of ugriz imaging; 155,520 spectra of 138,099 stars as part of the Sloan Exploration of Galactic Understanding and Evolution 2 (SEGUE-2) survey; 2,497,484 BOSS spectra of 1,372,737 galaxies, 294,512 quasars, and 247,216 stars over 9376 deg2; 618,080 APOGEE spectra of 156,593 stars; and 197,040 MARVELS spectra of 5513 stars. Since its first light in 1998, SDSS has imaged over 1/3 of the Celestial sphere in five bands and obtained over five million astronomical spectra. \ua9 2015. The American Astronomical Society

Global urban environmental change drives adaptation in white clover

Urbanization transforms environments in ways that alter biological evolution. We examined whether urban environmental change drives parallel evolution by sampling 110,019 white clover plants from 6169 populations in 160 cities globally. Plants were assayed for a Mendelian antiherbivore defense that also affects tolerance to abiotic stressors. Urban-rural gradients were associated with the evolution of clines in defense in 47% of cities throughout the world. Variation in the strength of clines was explained by environmental changes in drought stress and vegetation cover that varied among cities. Sequencing 2074 genomes from 26 cities revealed that the evolution of urban-rural clines was best explained by adaptive evolution, but the degree of parallel adaptation varied among cities. Our results demonstrate that urbanization leads to adaptation at a global scale

Geriatric Program for the Small Animal Clinic

Geriatric medicine is becoming increasingly important in small animal practice. Although this area of practice is a relatively new focus, the benefits of such programs are becoming apparent to the veterinarian and clients. Pets are living longer and geriatric pets occupy a significant portion of small animal practice. Over 40% of dogs and 30% of cats in U.S. households are over the age of six years. The increasingly aged pet population necessitates more geriatric care. Clients understand their older pet may have many of the same problems as older humans and are often willing to pay for extra geriatric care because of the strong bond with their older pet. A geriatric program can be rewarding to the veterinarian professionally and financially. Patients also benefit because they receive better care that can detect and may help to prevent treatable diseases earlier.</p