Phylogeny (United States)

ABSTRACT We redescribe here the holotype of ‘Palaeoniscum delessei’ Sauvage, 1878, a lost specimen from the early Permian of Buxières-les-Mines locality (Buxières Formation, Bourbon-l’Archambault Basin, France). This specimen has been lost and the species ‘P. delessei’ has been mentioned only a few times since its original description, and has never been redescribed. Despite this, the original illustration of the holotype is accurate enough to identify several diagnostic cranial and postcranial characters. These characters allow us to state that the holotype of ‘P. delessei’ could be related to Aeduella blainvillei, but the study of the illustration alone suggests an attribution to A. blainvillei. The status of the genera Amblypterus and Palaeoniscum, to which ‘P. delessei’ has historically been related, is discussed with confirmation that they are limited to their sole type species.

Abstract Interspecific competition, environmental filtering, or spatial variation in productivity can contribute to positive or negative spatial covariance in the abundances of species across ensembles (i.e., groups of interacting species defined by geography, resource use, and taxonomy). In contrast, density compensation should give rise to a negative relationship between ecomorphological similarity and abundance of species within ensembles. We evaluated (1) whether positive or negative covariances characterized the pairwise relationships of 21 species of Congolese shrew, and (2) whether density compensation characterized the structure of each of 36 Congolese shrew ensembles, and did so based on the abundances or biomasses of species. In general, positive covariance is more common than negative covariance based on considerations of abundance or biomass, suggesting dominant roles for environmental filtering and productivity. Nonetheless, negative covariance is more common for ecomorphologically similar species, suggesting a dominant role for competition within functional groups. Effects of abundance or biomass compensation, via pairwise or diffuse competitive interactions, were detected less often than expected by chance, suggesting that interspecific competition is not the dominant mechanism structuring these ensembles. Effects of competition may be balanced by responses to variation in resource abundance among sites in a landscape or among niche spaces within sites. Future studies of compensatory effects should incorporate considerations of heterogeneity in the abundance and distribution of resources in ecological space to better isolate the effects of competition and resource abundance, which can have opposing effects on community structure.

Koshkin, Evgeny S., Ivanov, Sergei N., Drumont, Alain (2023): Aegosoma vladzubovi sp. n., a new remarkable species from Central Vietnam (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae, Prioninae). Zootaxa 5319 (3): 435-442, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5319.3.10, URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5319.3.10

В статье дан культурологический анализ состояния системы формирования гражданской позиции молодежи в постсоветский период. Автор рассматривает работу по воспитанию гражданской культуры и гражданской позиции молодежи как важный компонент обыденных практик, складывающихся вне официальных, формализованных государственных структур. Гражданская субкультура оформляется на протяжении жизни человека. Система взаимодействия гражданина и государства рождалась в нашей стране в условиях западно-восточного культурного пограничья. Этот фактор послужил выработке самобытного культурного типа человека, который был воспринят народами, вошедшими в поле российской культуры. В условиях постоянной готовности к защите складывались цели и принципы жизни, направленные не на достижение устойчивого благополучия, прибыли, построения домакрепости, что свойственно культуре западного типа, а на сохранение духовных оснований. Их содержание оформлялось в суперсмыслах, выраженных в таких метафорах, как Мать Сырая Земля , Святая Русь или Русский Мир . В советской России эти принципы раскрылись в деятельности культучреждений, где традиционное основание дополнялось идеологией советского государства. В девяностые годы прошлого века система формирования гражданской культуры, выработанная в советский период, была подвергнута разрушению. Были уничтожены практически все культурные учреждения советского типа, а оставшиеся коммерциализированы. Подготовленные в вузах культуры специалисты культпросветработы переориентировались на коммерческую деятельность. Сегодня цифры отчетов министерств и ведомств культуры и образовательных систем демонстрируют рост участников творческих коллективов и объединений, но в них не отражена социокультурная природа статистики постоянство и непрерывность занятий в свободных, общедоступных творческих кружках и объединениях подменены разовыми и точечными посещениями коммерческих форм. Эксклюзивность отдельных объединений и коллективов, работающих на основе народной традиции и сохраненной в её недрах гражданственности, не соотносима с системой воспитания гражданственности советского типа. Можно сделать вывод, что идеи и принципы организации гражданского воспитания молодежи сегодня находятся в стадии формирования, и это требует внимания государства и серьезной работы специалистов по сохранению традиционной основы народной культуры русского типа (основы российской государственной культуры).The article presents a cultural review of the status of the system that forms civic attitudes in young people in the postsoviet period. The author regards civic attitudes as a part of Russian culture based on the peasanttype Russian culture and the basic part of activities on building civic culture and attitudes in young people as an important element of regular practices developed beyond official formalized state structures. The civic subculture develops during the course of a lifetime. Its code is preserved in the mentality, life ways, behavior stereotypes. The system of citizenstate interactions emerged in the conditions of the westandeast culture frontiers. This feature facilitated the development of an original cultural personality type. The peoples, part of Russian culture, adopted this type. The necessity to be always ready for defense urged to develop objectives and principles of life that aimed to preserve spiritual bases rather than to achieve stable wellbeing, profit, to build a homefortress, which is inherent in the western type of culture. The content of the spiritual bases was outlined in supersenses expressed in metaphors Mother Earth, Holy Russia or Russian World. In Soviet Russia, these principles were developed in activities of organizations of culture with traditional bases supplemented by the ideology of the Soviet state. In the 1990s, the system of forming the civic culture developed in the soviet period was subjected to destruction: all soviettype organizations of culture were mostly eliminated, those remaining were commercialized while professionals who graduated from universities of culture were retrained for commercial activities. Nowadays, numbers in the reports of culture ministries and departments and of education systems demonstrate the growth of participants in artistic groups and teams, but they do not show the sociocultural nature of statistic numbers, that is, the constancy and continuity of activities in free, availableforall artistic groups and teams is substituted by onetime and random visits of commercial organizations. The exclusivity of individual groups and teams that work based on the folk tradition and the civic attitudes it preserves cannot replace the education system that forms civic attitudes of the Soviet type. The conclusion is the following: the ideas and principles of the development of civic attitudes in young people are now being formed, which requires attention from the state and serious work of experts in the preservation of the traditional basis of the Russian-type folk culture (which is the basis of Russia's state culture).

Cotton is one of the major crops in the Mid-South growing region of the U.S. and producers there often farm numerous fields spread across a large area. Although sufficient groundwater is available for surface irrigation in many areas, the supply and cost of labor is always a concern. Producers commonly employ patterns such as every-other-furrow irrigation to allow them to irrigate fields in one set and thereby avoid the time and labor required to change sets. In many years there is sufficient rainfall that no obvious deleterious effect is observed from the non-irrigated furrows, however producers are concerned that yield could be reduced. A study was conducted at the University of Missouri Fisher Delta Research Center near Portageville during the 2014 through 2016 growing seasons to investigate the impact of different furrow irrigation patterns on cotton yield and canopy properties. Although yield loss due to waterlogging is a constant concern in the region, in 2014, with four irrigations followed by ≥ 25 mm of rain within the subsequent three days, all irrigated plots yielded significantly more seed cotton than the rainfed treatment. Canopy temperature, plant height, and normalized difference vegetation index were all effective in differentiating between the rainfed and irrigated treatments including differences among some of the irrigation pattern treatments.

The cause for the neurofibrillary tangles and plaques in Alzheimer disease likely relates to an abnormal accumulation of their key components, which include β-amyloid and hyperphosphorylated tau protein. We segregated Alzheimer brain sections from people with end-stage disease into those with abundant hyperphosphorylated tau protein and those without and compared each to normal brains for global microRNA patterns. A significant reduced expression of several microRNAs, including miR-512, was evident in the Alzheimer brain sections with abundant hyperphosphorylated tau. Immunohistochemistry documented that 2 known targets of microRNA-512, cFLIP and MCL1, were significantly over expressed and each colocalized to neurons with the abnormal tau protein. Analysis for apoptosis including activated caspase-3, increased caspase-4 and caspase-8, apoptosis initiating factor, APAF-1 activity, and the TUNEL assay was negative in the areas where neurons showed hyperphosphorylated tau. MCM2 expression, a marker of neuroprogenitor cells, was significantly reduced in the Alzheimer sections that contained the hyperphosphorylated tau. These results suggest that a basic defect in Alzheimer disease may be the reduced microRNA-driven increased expression of proteins that may alter the apoptotic/antiapoptotic balance of neurons. This, in turn, could lead to the accumulation of key Alzheimer proteins such as hyperphosphorylated tau that ultimately prevent normal neuronal function and lead to disease symptomatology.

Abstract An oncolytic virus, due to its ability to replicate and lyse cancer cells while leaving normal cells intact, is an example of targeted cancer therapy. Reovirus is intrinsically oncolytic without the need for any genetic manipulation. While reovirus can be detected inside hematopoietic cancer cells after exposure, the key question is whether a reoviral infection is productive or latent?. We show that productive infection is associated with tumor cell killing by both direct apoptosis and increased T cell and NK cell response to the tumor. We analyzed several human multiple myeloma cell lines either resistant or sensitive to reovirus infection and a metastatic melanoma model in mice after reoviral infection. Latent reoviral infection was defined by reoviral RNA proliferation with no detectable reoviral capsid protein; productive infection was defined by ample reoviral RNA proliferation and capsid production. C57BL/6 mice were injected subcutaneously with B16 or B16-VEGF cells. Immune cell depletions involved intraperitoneal injections of anti-CD8, anti-CD4 and immunoglobulin G control. For NK depletion, anti-asialo-GM1 or rabbit IgG isotype control was injected intraperitoneally. Fluorescence-activated cell sorting of spleens and/or lymph nodes confirmed subset-specific depletions. Paclitaxel was injected intraperitoneally at 10 mg/kg per injection. Myeloma cell lines resistant to reoviral infection showed that the majority of the cancer cells had latent reoviral infection with very weak productive infection (productive/latent reoviral infection 6%). Myeloma cells sensitive to reoviral infection showed many cells with a productive viral infection (productive/latent reoviral infection was 50%. P38 expression was identical in the resistant and sensitive myeloma cell lines; two molecular markers that marked the reoviral sensitive myeloma cell lines were high CUG2 expression and low ammonia production. In the metastatic melanoma model, latent infection was dominant in mice treated with reovirus alone; productive infection was dominant in mice treated with reovirus and chemotherapy. In both the cell lines and metastatic melanoma model, productive infection was associated with elevated caspase-3 expression. In the metastatic melanoma model, productive infection was associated with increased T cell and NK cell infiltration of the tumor. Immune cell infiltrates in the tumor were investigated using a combination of multimarker IHC and multispectral imaging. Most cancers (resistant and sensitive) show ample reoviral RNA proliferation. Cancers sensitive to reoviral oncolysis allow reoviral productive infection that may reflect high CUG2 expression or low NH3 production. Productive reoviral infection kills cancer cells both by direct caspase-3-induced apoptosis and by enhancing the T cell and NK cell response against the cancer. Citation Format: James Mansfield, Andrew Stuff, Matt Coffey, Gerard Nuovo, Flavia Picchiori, Craig C. Hofmeister. Molecular and immunological correlates of latent versus productive reoviral infection in cancers. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 2559. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-2559

Drug Prescribing for Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease in General Practice: a Cross-Sectional Study