The incorporation of C₄ resources into hominin diet signifies increased dietary breadth within hominins and divergence from the dietary patterns of other great apes. Morphological evidence indicates ...that hominin diet became increasingly diverse by 4.2 million years ago but may not have included large proportions of C₄ foods until 800 thousand years later, given the available isotopic evidence. Here we use carbon isotope data from early to mid Pliocene hominin and cercopithecid fossils from Woranso-Mille (central Afar, Ethiopia) to constrain the timing of this dietary change and its ecological context. We show that both hominins and some papionins expanded their diets to include C₄ resources as early as 3.76 Ma. Among hominins, this dietary expansion postdates the major dentognathic morphological changes that distinguishAustralopithecusfromArdipithecus, but it occurs amid a continuum of adaptations to diets of tougher, harder foods and to committed terrestrial bipedality. In contrast, carbon isotope data from cercopithecids indicate that C₄-dominated diets of the earliest members of theTheropithecus oswaldilineage preceded the dental specialization for grazing but occurred after they were fully terrestrial. The combined data indicate that the inclusion of C₄ foods in hominin diet occurred as part of broader ecological changes in African primate communities.
This paper examines the process of developing key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring sustainability performance and the way in which sustainability KPIs are used in decision-making, planning ...and performance management. Interviews were conducted with personnel from four British and three Australian companies. The findings indicate that the organisations are integrating environmental indicators, and increasingly also social indicators, into strategic planning, performance measurement and decision-making including risk management. However, the sustainability issues on which our sample focus and the management operations on which they impact vary considerably. This has implications for the development of practice, voluntary guidelines and legislation.
During the development of, and recovery from, negative lens-induced myopia there is regulated remodeling of the scleral extracellular matrix (ECM) that controls the extensibility of the sclera. ...Difference gel electrophoresis (DIGE) was used to identify and categorize proteins whose levels are altered in this process.
Two groups of five tree shrews started monocular lens wear 24 days after eye opening (days of visual experience VE). The lens-induced myopia (LIM) group wore a -5 D lens for 4 days. The recovery (REC) group wore a -5 D lens for 11 days and then recovered for 4 days. Two normal groups (28 and 39 days of VE; n = 5 each) were also examined, age-matched to each of the treatment groups. Refractive and A-scan measures confirmed the effect of the treatments. Scleral proteins were isolated and resolved by DIGE. Proteins that differed in abundance were identified by mass spectrometry. Ingenuity pathway analysis was used to investigate potential biological pathway interactions.
During normal development (28-39 days of VE), eight proteins decreased and one protein increased in relative abundance. LIM-treated eyes were myopic and longer than control eyes; LIM-control eyes were slightly myopic compared with 28N eyes, indicating a yoking effect. In both the LIM-treated and the LIM-control eyes, there was a general downregulation from normal of proteins involved in transcription, cell adhesion, and protein synthesis. Additional proteins involved in cell adhesion, actin cytoskeleton, transcriptional regulation, and ECM structural proteins differed in the LIM-treated eyes versus normal but did not differ in the control eyes versus normal. REC-treated eyes were recovering from the induced myopia. REC-control eye refractions were not significantly different from the 39N eyes, and few proteins differed from age-matched normal eyes. The balance of protein expression in the REC-treated eyes, compared with normal eyes and REC-control eyes, shifted toward upregulation or a return to normal levels of proteins involved in cell adhesion, cell division, cytoskeleton, and ECM structural proteins, including upregulation of several cytoskeleton-related proteins not affected during myopia development.
The DIGE procedure revealed new proteins whose abundance is altered during myopia development and recovery. Many of these are involved in cell-matrix adhesions, cytoskeleton, and transcriptional regulation and extend our understanding of the remodeling that controls the extensibility of the sclera. Reductions in these proteins during minus lens wear may produce the increased scleral viscoelasticity that results in faster axial elongation. Recovery is not a mirror image of lens-induced myopia-many protein levels, decreased during LIM, returned to normal, or slightly above normal, and additional cytoskeleton proteins were upregulated. However, no single protein or pathway appeared to be responsible for the scleral changes during myopia development or recovery.
M and M-like surface proteins from group A Streptococcus (GAS) act as virulence factors and have been used in multiple vaccine candidates. While the M protein has been extensively studied, the two ...genetically and functionally related M-like proteins, Mrp and Enn, although present in most streptococcal strains have been relatively less characterised. We compile the current state of knowledge for these two proteins, from discovery to recent studies on function and immunogenicity, using the M protein for comparison as a prototype of this family of proteins. We focus on the known interactions between M-like proteins and host ligand proteins, and analyse the genetic data supporting these interactions. We discuss known and possible functions of M-like proteins during GAS infections, and highlight knowledge gaps where further investigation is warranted.
Despite considerable progress in unravelling the phylogenetic relationships of microhylid frogs, relationships among subfamilies remain largely unstable and many genera are not demonstrably ...monophyletic. Here, we used five alternative combinations of DNA sequence data (ranging from seven loci for 48 taxa to up to 73 loci for as many as 142 taxa) generated using the anchored phylogenomics sequencing method (66 loci, derived from conserved genome regions, for 48 taxa) and Sanger sequencing (seven loci for up to 142 taxa) to tackle this problem. We assess the effects of character sampling, taxon sampling, analytical methods and assumptions in phylogenetic inference of microhylid frogs. The phylogeny of microhylids shows high susceptibility to different analytical methods and datasets used for the analyses. Clades inferred from maximum‐likelihood are generally more stable across datasets than those inferred from parsimony. Parsimony trees inferred within a tree‐alignment framework are generally better resolved and better supported than those inferred within a similarity‐alignment framework, even under the same cost matrix (equally weighted) and same treatment of gaps (as a fifth nucleotide state). We discuss potential causes for these differences in resolution and clade stability among discovery operations. We also highlight the problem that commonly used algorithms for model‐based analyses do not explicitly model insertion and deletion events (i.e. gaps are treated as missing data). Our results corroborate the monophyly of Microhylidae and most currently recognized subfamilies but fail to provide support for relationships among subfamilies. Several taxonomic updates are provided, including naming of two new subfamilies, both monotypic.
Streptococcus pyogenes causes at least 750 million infections and more than 500,000 deaths each year. No vaccine is currently available for S. pyogenes and the use of human challenge models offer ...unique and exciting opportunities to interrogate the immune response to infectious diseases. Here, we use high-dimensional flow cytometric analysis and multiplex cytokine and chemokine assays to study serial blood and saliva samples collected during the early immune response in human participants following challenge with S. pyogenes. We find an immune signature of experimental human pharyngitis characterised by: 1) elevation of serum IL-1Ra, IL-6, IFN-γ, IP-10 and IL-18; 2) increases in peripheral blood innate dendritic cell and monocyte populations; 3) reduced circulation of B cells and CD4+ T cell subsets (Th1, Th17, Treg, TFH) during the acute phase; and 4) activation of unconventional T cell subsets, γδTCR + Vδ2+ T cells and MAIT cells. These findings demonstrate that S. pyogenes infection generates a robust early immune response, which may be important for host protection. Together, these data will help advance research to establish correlates of immune protection and focus the evaluation of vaccines.
Objective
A meta‐analysis has not been previously performed to evaluate critically the diagnostic accuracy of endoscopic ultrasound‐guided fine needle aspiration (EUS‐FNA) of solely pancreatic ductal ...adenocarcinoma and address factors that have an impact on variability of accuracy. The aim of this study was to determine whether the presence of a cytopathologist, variability of the reference standard and other sources of heterogeneity significantly impacts diagnostic accuracy.
Methods
We conducted a comprehensive search to identify studies, in which the pooled sensitivity, specificity, likelihood ratios for a positive or negative test (LR+, LR−) and summary receiver‐operating curves (SROC) could be determined for EUS‐FNA of the pancreas for ductal adenocarcinoma using clinical follow‐up, and/or surgical biopsy or excision as the reference standard.
Results
We included 34 distinct studies (3644 patients) in which EUS‐FNA for a solid pancreatic mass was evaluated. The pooled sensitivity and specificity for EUS‐FNA for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma was 88.6% 95% confidence interval (CI): 87.2–89.9 and 99.3% (95% CI: 98.7–99.7), respectively. The LR+ and LR– were 33.46 (95% CI: 20.76–53.91) and 0.11 (95% CI: 0.08–0.16), respectively. The meta‐regression model showed rapid on‐site evaluation (ROSE) (P = 0.001) remained a significant determinant of EUS‐FNA accuracy after correcting for study population number and reference standard.
Conclusion
EUS‐FNA is an effective modality for diagnosing pancreatic ductal adencarcinoma in solid pancreatic lesions, with an increased diagnostic accuracy when using on‐site cytopathology evaluation.
A series of sepiolites, palygorskites and “Rocky Mountain Leather” (RML) clay minerals have been analysed by controlled rate thermal analysis and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Eight weight ...loss steps are observed and are structure and composition dependent. Three dehydration steps and five dehydroxylation steps are observed. The mass spectrometric curve mimicked the differential thermogravimetric (DTGA) curve enabling the detailed determination of the dehydration and dehydroxylation steps.
Diagenetic distortion can be a major obstacle to collecting quantitative shape data on paleontological specimens, especially for three-dimensional geometric morphometric analysis. Here we utilize the ...recently-published algorithmic symmetrization method of fossil reconstruction and compare it to the more traditional reflection & averaging approach. In order to have an objective test of this method, five casts of a female cranium of Papio hamadryas kindae were manually deformed while the plaster hardened. These were subsequently "retrodeformed" using both algorithmic symmetrization and reflection & averaging and then compared to the original, undeformed specimen. We found that in all cases, algorithmic retrodeformation improved the shape of the deformed cranium and in four out of five cases, the algorithmically symmetrized crania were more similar in shape to the original crania than the reflected & averaged reconstructions. In three out of five cases, the difference between the algorithmically symmetrized crania and the original cranium could be contained within the magnitude of variation among individuals in a single subspecies of Papio. Instances of asymmetric distortion, such as breakage on one side, or bending in the axis of symmetry, were well handled, whereas symmetrical distortion remained uncorrected. This technique was further tested on a naturally deformed and fossilized cranium of Paradolichopithecus arvernensis. Results, based on a principal components analysis and Procrustes distances, showed that the algorithmically symmetrized Paradolichopithecus cranium was more similar to other, less-deformed crania from the same species than was the original. These results illustrate the efficacy of this method of retrodeformation by algorithmic symmetrization for the correction of asymmetrical distortion in fossils. Symmetrical distortion remains a problem for all currently developed methods of retrodeformation.
Abstract Introduction There has been debate regarding whether Complex PTSD (CPTSD) is conceptually distinct from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Objective To assess whether ICD-11 CPTSD was ...distinguishable from BPD in a sample of sexual assault survivors. Method A subsample of individuals ( n = 956), that selected sexual assault as an index trauma, were selected from a U.S. general population survey dataset. The distribution of PTSD, CPTSD and BPD symptomology was evaluated using latent class analysis (LCA). Multinomial logistic regression analyses were performed to evaluate whether various forms of child maltreatment and cumulative child maltreatment could discriminate between classes. Results CPTSD emerged as a distinct symptom profile within the sample. Conversely, BPD symptomology was evident in two classes but was accompanied by PTSD/CPTSD symptomology in each. Overall, five classes were identified that differed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Cumulative childhood maltreatment and physical neglect predicted CPTSD class membership. Conclusion The findings suggest that CPTSD is distinct from BPD among a sample of individuals who have been shown to be at significant risk for both diagnoses. Further research is required to identify factors that distinguish CPTSD from BPD.
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