bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Multiple dimensions of dietary diversity in large mammalian herbivores
Authors: Kartzinel Tyler R. , Pringle Robert M. 
Published: March 2020

Abstract

Theory predicts that trophic specialization (i.e. low dietary diversity) should make consumer populations sensitive to environmental disturbances. Yet diagnosing specialization is complicated both by the difficulty of precisely quantifying diet composition and by definitional ambiguity: what makes a diet ‘diverse’?

We sought to characterize the relationship between taxonomic dietary diversity (TDD) and phylogenetic dietary diversity (PDD) in a species‐rich community of large mammalian herbivores in a semi‐arid East African savanna. We hypothesized that TDD and PDD would be positively correlated within and among species, because taxonomically diverse diets are likely to include plants from many lineages.

By using DNA metabarcoding to analyse 1,281 faecal samples collected across multiple seasons, we compiled high‐resolution diet profiles for 25 sympatric large‐herbivore species. For each of these populations, we calculated TDD and PDD with reference to a DNA reference library for local plants.

Contrary to our hypothesis, measures of TDD and PDD were either uncorrelated or negatively correlated with each other. Thus, these metrics reflect distinct dimensions of dietary specialization both within and among species. In general, grazers and ruminants exhibited greater TDD, but lower PDD, than did browsers and non‐ruminants. We found significant seasonal variation in TDD and/or PDD for all but four species (Grevy's zebra, buffalo, elephant, Grant's gazelle); however, the relationship between TDD and PDD was consistent across seasons for all but one of the 12 best‐sampled species (plains zebra).

Our results show that taxonomic generalists can be phylogenetic specialists, and vice versa. These two dimensions of dietary diversity suggest contrasting implications for efforts to predict how consumers will respond to climate change and other environmental perturbations. For example, populations with low TDD may be sensitive to phylogenetically ‘random’ losses of food species, whereas populations with low PDD may be comparatively more sensitive to environmental changes that disadvantage entire plant lineages—and populations with low dietary diversity in both taxonomic and phylogenetic dimensions may be most vulnerable of all.
Idea paper: Predicting culturability of microbes from population dynamics under field conditions
Authors: Ushio Masayuki 
Published: March 2020

AbstractIsolation and cultivation of microbes from environmental samples have been fundamental and important for species identification and investigating functions and ecology of target microbes. Although cultivation and isolation of microbes are not easy, the natural environment can “culture” any endemic microbes, and thus key information for culturing and isolating microbes may be encoded in the natural population dynamics of microbes. In this article, I present the idea that culturability of microbes may be inferred by quantifying the dynamic properties of microbes using nonlinear time series analysis and empirical dynamic modeling (EDM). To briefly demonstrate the idea, I analyzed high‐frequency, quantitative microbial time series obtained for experimental rice plots. I selected bacterial phyla that included sufficient numbers of microbial taxa and analyzed 398 microbial taxa using EDM. The nine phyla analyzed generally followed a similar pattern: many microbial taxa fell into the “Simple” dynamics category, and a small proportion of taxa were categorized in “Simple but nonlinear” or “Nearly random” dynamics categories. The present analysis suggested that many microbes in the study system might be cultivated by modifying a relatively small number of conditions. However, the present idea as well as the result is preliminary, and more precise taxonomic information (i.e., species‐level identification) and a culturability data set will help to validate the idea. If the present idea was found to be valid, a priori evaluation of the culturability of microbes would become possible, which would avoid unnecessary costs (labor, time and money) of attempts to cultivate microbes.
Lessons from International Multi‐Option Referendum Experiences
Authors: Wagenaar Charlotte C. L. 
Published: March 2020

AbstractReferendums are regularly criticised for reducing complex policy decisions to two maximally opposed options. This reduces opportunities for voter expression and can polarise debates. Alternative referendum designs which present more than two ballot options can offer innovative opportunities, but also raise new challenges. We can benefit by learning from previous experiences with multi‐option referendum voting. Discussions of such experiences are rare and have often focussed on a limited number of cases. This article provides an overview of over 100 multi‐option referendum experiences around the world. It discusses the topics on which they were held and the ballot options that were offered. It then analyses the variety in ballot design in terms of questions posed and voting methods applied. Drawing on the experiences of multi‐option referendums, the article concludes with lessons that can be learned in relation to initiating and designing these referendums.
The optics of noncommunicable diseases: from lifestyle to environmental toxicity
Authors: Herrick Clare 
Published: March 2020

AbstractUntil recently, the noncommunicable disease (NCD) category was composed of four chronic diseases (cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and chronic respiratory disease) and four shared, ‘modifiable’ behavioural risk factors (smoking, diet, physical activity and alcohol). In late 2018, the NCD category was expanded to include mental health as an additional disease outcome and air pollution as an explicit environmental risk factor. The newly‐expanded NCD category connects behavioural and environmental readings of risk and shifts attention from individual acts of consumption to unequal and inescapable conditions of environmental exposure. It thus renders the increasing ‘toxicity’ of everyday life amid ubiquitous environmental contamination a new conceptual and empirical concern for NCD research. It also, as this paper explores, signals a new ‘optics’ of a much‐maligned disease category. This is particularly significant as chronic disease research has long been siloed between public and environmental health, with each discipline operationalising the notion of the ‘environment’ as a source of disease causation in contrasting ways. Given this, this paper is positioned as a significant contribution to both research on NCDs and environmental risk, bringing these interdisciplinary domains into a new critical conversation around the concept of toxicity.
Appealing broadly while appearing unified: Resolving an electoral dilemma
Authors: TROMBORG MATHIAS WESSEL 
Published: March 2020

AbstractPolitical parties have an electoral incentive to appear ideologically unified, but also to appeal broadly to different groups of voters with diverse preferences. This paper suggests that parties respond to both incentives through the distribution of candidate issue positions. Members of Parliament (MPs) are responsible for their party's national reputation and thus rarely take positions that diverge from those of their party. Non‐incumbent candidates, on the other hand, are mostly visible within their electoral district and thus more likely to diverge from party positions that are unpopular among their constituents. These possibilities are tested with candidate position taking data from nine voting advice applications in Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Switzerland. The results are consistent with the theoretical expectations and have important implications for the way representation works in parliamentary democracies as well as for the broader literature on the topic.
Jurisdiction size and local government effectiveness: Assessing the effects of municipal amalgamations on performance
Authors: BLOM‐HANSEN JENS , HOULBERG KURT , SERRITZLEW SØREN 
Published: March 2020

AbstractThe optimal jurisdiction size has been debated since Plato and Aristotle. A large literature has studied economic and democratic scale effects, but we have almost no knowledge of the effects of jurisdiction size on the effectiveness of local services. This is due to two methodological problems. First, selection bias and reverse causality often render change in jurisdiction size an endogenous variable. Second, there is a lack of empirical indicators of effectiveness, and most studies therefore focus on spending measures. Extant research thus studies economies of scale, leaving effectiveness of scale unexamined. We address both problems in a quasi‐experimental study of public schools. Our findings from the school area indicate that jurisdiction size does not have systematic effects on effectiveness. Our analysis therefore supports recent studies of economic and democratic scale effects that indicate that the search for the optimal jurisdiction size is futile.
RNA interference targeting ecdysone receptor blocks the larval–pupal transition in Henosepilachna vigintioctopunctata
Authors: Wu Jian‐Jian , Mu Li‐Li , Kang Wei‐Nan , Ze Long‐Ji , Shen Chen‐Hui , Jin Lin , Anjum Ahmad Ali , Li Guo‐Qing 
Published: March 2020

AbstractHenosepilachna vigintioctopunctata is a serious insect pest which attacks a large number of nightshades and cucurbits in Asian countries, Brazil and Australia. Prolonged application of traditional pesticides has caused environmental pollution and exerted deleterious effects on human health. Finding new approaches with high target specificity and low environmental contamination has become an urgent task. RNA interference (RNAi) induced by double‐stranded RNA (dsRNA) is expected to be applicable to managing this pest. Here we evaluated the effects of Escherichia coli‐expressed dsRNAs targeting ecdysone receptor (EcR) gene via dietary delivery in laboratory and foliar spraying in a greenhouse. The target transcript was successfully knocked down when the 4th‐instar larvae had fed on potato foliage dipped with dsEcR in a laboratory bioassay. Around 85% of the HvEcR RNAi larvae remained as prepupae or became abnormal pupae, and failed to emerge into adults. Ingestion of dsEcR‐immersed foliage by the 3rd‐instar larvae effectuated a comparable RNAi response and brought about more severe defects: all the resultant larvae arrested development, remained as prepupae and finally died. For assay in the greenhouse, a dsEcR‐contained E. coli suspension was directly sprayed to the foliage of greenhouse‐growing potato plants and the 3rd‐ and 4th‐instar larvae were transferred to the leaves. High RNAi efficacy was obtained and identical RNAi phenotypes were observed in treated larvae. In addition, spraying dsEcR reduced leaf damage. Our results indicate a possibility of practical application of dsEcR as an environmentally friendly RNA pesticide to control H. vigintioctopunctata larvae.
Does sociality drive diversity and composition of airway microbiota in cetaceans?
Authors: Vendl Catharina , Slavich Eve , Nelson Tiffanie , Acevedo‐Whitehouse Karina , Montgomery Kate , Ferrari Belinda , Thomas Torsten , Rogers Tracey 
Published: March 2020

SummaryThe number of social contacts of mammals is positively correlated with the diversity of their gut microbes. There is some evidence that sociality also affects microbes in the respiratory tract. We tested whether the airway microbiota of cetacean species differ depending on the whales' level of sociality. We sampled the blow of blue (Balaenoptera musculus), grey (Eschrichtius robustus), humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae) and long‐finned pilot whales (PWs) (Globicephala melas) and analysed the blow microbiota by barcode tag sequencing targeting the V4 region of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene. Humpback whales (HWs) show higher levels of sociality than blue (BW) and grey (GW), while PWs are the most gregarious among the four species. The blow samples of the HWs showed the highest richness and diversity. HWs were also the only species with a species‐specific clustering of their microbial community composition and a relatively large number of core taxa. Therefore, we conclude that it cannot be sociality alone shaping the diversity and composition of airway microbiota. We suggest the whale species' lung volume and size of the plume of exhaled air as an additional factor impacting the transmission potential of blow microbiota from one individual whale to another.
Molecular mechanism of acquired drug resistance in the EGFR‐TKI resistant cell line HCC827‐TR
Authors: Yu Tao , Xia Qian , Gong Ting , Wang Jing , Zhong DianSheng 
Published: March 2020

AbstractBackgroundThe first‐line standard treatment of non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with EGFR mutation is EGFR‐tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). However, most patients will develop acquired resistance after 9–13 months. This study investigated novel molecular mechanisms of acquired resistance to EGFR‐TKIs to identify a potential new treatment for EGFR‐TKI resistant NSCLC patients.MethodsWe established an EGFR‐TKI resistant cell line (HCC827‐TR) by culturing the HCC827‐P cell line through continuous erlotinib culture. We used Sanger sequencing, RT‐PCR, and western blot to rule out known resistance mechanisms in HCC827‐TR cells, including EGFR‐T790M and MET, PTEN, or EGFR expression changes. Next‐generation sequencing was performed and identified differentially expressed genes between two cell lines and examined the genes with GO and KEGG pathway database analyses. We also examined the molecular alterations in COSMIC and GDSC databases and performed hazard predictions using SIFT, PolyPhen‐2, Mutation Taster, and CADD.ResultsOur results identified FGF2 as a differentially expressed gene with a G101T point mutation in HCC827‐TR cells that showed high mutation frequency and hazard score. HCC827‐TR cells showed elevated FGF2 compared to parental cells. It is noteworthy that treatment with the FGFR inhibitor AZD4547 could restore the sensitivity of HCC872‐TR cells to erlotinib.ConclusionsAn erlotinib‐resistant cell line HCC827‐TR was successfully constructed and we identified the EGFR‐TKI resistance mechanism involving the FGF2 gene mutation. Targeted inhibition of the FGF2/FGFR signaling pathway may effectively restore the sensitivity of the resistant cells to erlotinib. These results suggest a novel treatment strategy for EGFR‐TKI resistant NSCLC patients.Key points

Significant findings of the study: Identifies a novel molecular mechanism for EGFR‐TKI acquired resistance.

What this study adds: A potential novel strategy for the treatment of EGFR‐TKI resistant NSCLC patients.
Retrospective analysis of the effectiveness and tolerability of nab‐paclitaxel in Chinese elderly patients with advanced non‐small‐cell lung carcinoma
Authors: Wang Shuhang , Liang Qiuping , Chi Yujia , Zhuo Minglei , An Tongtong , Duan Jianchun , Wang Zhijie , Wang Yuyan , Zhong Jia , Yang Xue , Chen Hanxiao , Wang Jie , Zhao Jun 
Published: March 2020

AbstractBackgroundPrevious trials have suggested that elderly patients with non‐small‐cell lung cancer (NSCLC) could benefit from nanoparticle albumin‐bound paclitaxel (nab‐paclitaxel). Real‐world data on the elderly Chinese population are lacking. This study aimed to analyze the effectiveness and tolerability of nab‐paclitaxel in Chinese elderly patients (≥65 years) with advanced NSCLC.MethodsThis study included 76 patients with a primary diagnosis of IIIB‐IV NSCLC from January 2010 to December 2017 at Peking University Cancer Hospital, who received nab‐paclitaxel (125 or 130 mg/m2 i.v.) every three weeks. The overall survival (OS), progression‐free survival (PFS), objective response rate (ORR), disease control rate (DCR), and adverse events (AEs) were analyzed.ResultsThere were 12 patients who received nab‐paclitaxel as the first‐line treatment (seven also received carboplatin), and 64 received nab‐paclitaxel as the latter‐line treatment. The overall ORR, DCR, median PFS, and median OS were 14.5%, 69.7%, 5.2 months, and 12.2 months, respectively. The Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status of one and the age of 70–74 years were independently associated with longer OS, while early treatment line of nab‐paclitaxel and age of 70–74 years were independently associated with longer PFS. The most common AEs were anemia, leukopenia, gastrointestinal reaction, fatigue, and peripheral neuropathy, which were all manageable. Dose adjustment or treatment discontinuation was encountered in 10 patients because of AEs. The incidence of AEs was not different among age subgroups.ConclusionsNab‐paclitaxel has a good clinical response profile in Chinese elderly patients with stage IIIB–IV NSCLC. Prospective clinical trials are needed to confirm these results.Key pointsSignificant findings of the studyNanoparticle albumin‐bound paclitaxel (nab‐paclitaxel) has a good clinical response profile in Chinese elderly (≥65 years) patients with stage IIIB‐IV non‐small‐cell lung cancer (NSCLC), with acceptable and manageable adverse events.What this study addsPreliminary evidence shows a good clinical response from treatment with nab‐paclitaxel in Chinese elderly patients with advanced NSCLC.
A quick, easy and non‐invasive method to quantify coral growth rates using photogrammetry and 3D model comparisons
Authors: Lange Ines D. , Perry Chris T. 
Published: March 2020

Abstract

Coral growth rates vary significantly with environmental conditions and are thus important indicators of coral health and reef carbonate production. Despite the importance of this metric, data are sparse for most coral genera and species globally, including for many key reef‐building species. Traditional methods to obtain growth rates, such as coral coring or staining with Alizarin are destructive and only work for a limited number of species and morphological growth forms.

Emerging approaches, using underwater photogrammetry to create digital models of coral colonies, are providing novel and non‐invasive ways to explore colony‐scale growth patterns and to address existing knowledge gaps. We developed an easy‐to‐follow workflow to construct three‐dimensional (3D) models from overlapping photographs and to measure linear, radial and vertical extension rates of branching, massive and encrusting corals after aligning colony models from subsequent years.

The method presented here was applied to measure extension rates for 46 colonies of nine coral species in the remote Chagos Archipelago, Indian Ocean. Proposed image acquisition and software settings produced 3D models of consistently high resolution and detail (precision ≤ 0.2 mm) and variability in growth measurements was small despite manual alignment, clipping and ruler placement (SD ≤ 0.9 mm). Measured extension rates for the Chagos Archipelago are similar to published rates in the Indo‐Pacific where comparable data are available, and provide the first published rates for several species. For encrusting corals, the results emphasize the importance of differentiating between radial and vertical growth.

Photogrammetry and 3D model comparisons provide a fast, easy, inexpensive and non‐invasive method to quantify coral growth rates for a range of species and morphological growth forms. The simplicity of the presented workflow encourages its repeatability and permits non‐specialists to learn photogrammetry with the goal of obtaining linear coral growth rates. Coral growth rates are essential metrics to quantify functional consequences of ongoing community changes on coral reefs and expanded datasets for key coral taxa will aid predictions of geographic variations in coral reef response to increasing global stressors.
Biology, ecology and management of Diuraphis noxia (Hemiptera: Aphididae) in Australia
Authors: Ward Samantha , van Helden Maarten , Heddle Thomas , Ridland Peter M , Pirtle Elia , Umina Paul A 
Published: March 2020

AbstractThe Russian wheat aphid, Diuraphis noxia (Mordvilko ex Kurdjumov), is one of the world's most economically important pests of grain crops and has been recorded from at least 140 grass species within Poaceae. It has rapidly dispersed from its native origin of Central Asia into most major grain‐producing regions of the world including Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North America and South America. Diuraphis noxia was first found in Australia in a wheat crop in the mid‐north of South Australia in May 2016. Since then, D. noxia has been recorded throughout grain‐growing regions of South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania. The distribution will continue to expand, with climatic suitability modelling suggesting D. noxia can persist in all key grain regions, including large parts of Western Australia and Queensland. Australian populations of D. noxia appear to be anholocyclic, with no sexual stages being observed. The aphids can reproduce year round as long as host plants are available. Australian farmers have generally adopted prophylactic insecticide seed treatments and/or foliar sprays to manage D. noxia. Research is required to fully understand yield impacts, host preferences and host plant resistance associated with D. noxia. Cultural control through managing alternate host plants over summer, agronomic crop management, biological control and developments in host plant resistance should provide considerable future benefits.
Clinical and molecular aspects of PTEN mutations in 10 pediatric patients
Authors: Isik Esra , Simsir Ozguc Semih , Solmaz Asli Ece , Onay Huseyin , Atik Tahir , Aykut Ayca , Durmaz Asude , Cogulu Ozgur , Ozkinay Ferda 
Published: March 2020

AbstractIntroductionPTEN gene mutations are responsible for the PTEN hamartoma tumor syndrome (PHTS). In this study, clinical and molecular findings of patients carrying PTEN mutations are presented. Our aim is to contribute to genotype–phenotype correlation and define the most common findings of the syndrome in pediatric patients.Methods and MaterialsTen molecularly confirmed PHTS patients from seven families were included in the study. All patients were examined by a clinical geneticist. Laboratory test results were obtained from hospital records. Sequencing of PTEN gene was performed. Variant interpretation was done in accordance with 2015 recommendations from the American College of Medical Genetics.ResultsMacrocephaly was the most common clinical finding, involving all patients. This was followed by skin lesions, neurodevelopmental delay, and pathologic cranial magnetic resonance imaging findings. Seven different heterozygous PTEN gene variants were found in seven families. Four of these were located in exon 5, which has been described as a hot spot area for the PTEN gene. Four mutations were novel. A wide range of phenotypic and genotypic spectra was found in our study group.ConclusionScreening of PTEN mutations in patients with macrocephaly is recommended due to an increased risk of cancer. Further cases are needed to make a phenotype–genotype correlation in PHTS.