bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A phylogeographic investigation of the hybrid origin of a species of swordtail fish from Mexico
Authors: JONES JULIA C. , PEREZ‐SATO JUAN‐ANTONIO , MEYER AXEL 
Published: April 2012

AbstractHybrid speciation may contribute significantly to generating biodiversity, but only a few well‐documented examples for it exist so far that do not involve polyploidization as a mechanism. The swordtail fish,Xiphophorus clemenciae, shows common hallmarks of a hybrid origin and still overlaps in its current geographic distribution with its putative ancestral species (Xiphophorus helleriiandXiphophorus maculatus).Xiphophorus clemenciaeprovides an ideal system for investigating the possible continued genetic interactions between a hybrid and its parental species. Here, we use microsatellite and mitochondrial markers to investigate the population structure of these species of swordtails and search for signs of recent hybridization. Individuals were sampled from 21 localities across the known range ofX. clemenciae– the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (IT) Mexico, and several environmental parameters that might represent barriers to dispersal were recorded. The hybridization event that gave rise toX. clemenciaeappears to be rather ancient, and a single origin is likely. We find negligible evidence for ongoing hybridization and introgression between the putative ancestral species, because they now occupy distinct ecological niches, and a common haplotype is shared by most populations ofX. clemenciae. The population structure within these species shows an isolation‐by‐distance (IBD) pattern and genetic differentiation between most populations is significant and high. We infer that tectonic evolution in the Isthmus has greatly restricted gene flow between the southern and central IT populations ofX. clemenciaeandX. helleriiiand provide preliminary information to aid in conservation management of this geographically restricted hybrid species,X. clemenciae.
Molecular phylogenies reveal host‐specific divergence of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis sensu lato following its host ants
Authors: KOBMOO N. , MONGKOLSAMRIT S. , TASANATHAI K. , THANAKITPIPATTANA D. , LUANGSA‐ARD J. J. 
Published: April 2012

AbstractOphiocordyceps unilateralis (Hypocreales, Ascomycetes) is an entomopathogenic fungus specific to formicine ants (Formicinae, Hymenoptera). Previous works have shown that the carpenter ant Camponotus leonardi acts as the principal host with occasional infections of ants from the genus Polyrhachis (sister genus of Camponotus). Observations were made on the permanent plots of Mo Singto, Khao Yai National Park of Thailand according to which O. unilateralis was found to occur predominantly on three host species: C. leonardi, C. saundersi and P. furcata. Molecular phylogenies of the elongation factor 1‐α and β‐Tubulin genes indicate a separation of O. unilateralis samples into three clades, reflecting specificity to each of the three different ant species. Samples collected from P. furcata and from C. leonardi were found to form sister groups with samples from C. saundersi forming an outgroup to the latter. Additional samples collected from unidentified ant species of Camponotus and Polyrhachis were positioned as outgroups to those samples on identified species. These results demonstrate that O. unilateralis is clearly not a single phylogenetic species and comprises at least three species that are specific to different host ant species. These cryptic species may arise through recent events of speciation driven by their specificity to host ant species.
Purification and biochemical characterization of functional complement factor H from human plasma fractions
Authors: Brandstätter H. , Schulz P. , Polunic I. , Kannicht C. , Kohla G. , Römisch J. 
Published: April 2012

Background and Objectives  Complement factor H (CFH) acts as major regulator of the alternative pathway of complement and its mutations and polymorphisms predispose to various human diseases. We aimed to develop a scalable purification process of CFH from human plasma fractions to supply a pathogen‐safe and functional CFH concentrate.Materials and Methods  Starting with intermediates of cold ethanol fractionation of plasma, CFH purification was performed with three chromatographic steps including solvent detergent treatment and nanofiltration. CFH functionality was tested by a haemolysis assay using sheep erythrocytes, by determining decay acceleration activity on C3 convertases and cofactor activity of C3b cleavage. CFH identity was confirmed by Western blot and mass spectrometry.Results  Three scalable chromatographic steps highly purified full‐length and native CFH from human plasma fractions. The purification process enabled the removal of truncated and dysfunctional CFH species, yielding a native CFH concentrate as demonstrated in sensitive functional in vitro assays.Conclusion  This novel process provides a pathogen‐safe and functional CFH concentrate that can be produced on an industrial scale and is suitable for pre‐/clinical studies.
Display Behavior and Habitat Use in Single and Mixed Populations of Anolis carolinensis and Anolis sagrei Lizards
Authors: Edwards Jessica R. , Lailvaux Simon P. 
Published: April 2012

AbstractIntroduced species can have a variety of effects on the behavior and ecology of native species. We compared display behavior and habitat use of introduced Anolis sagrei and native Anolis carolinensis lizards across three sites in Southern Louisiana. The chosen sites were similar in that they were all located in urban settings with clumped vegetation. The first site contained only A. sagrei, the second supported sympatric A. sagrei and A. carolinensis populations, and the third site harbored only A. carolinensis. We found that (1) A. carolinensis perched significantly higher when A. sagrei was present, consistent with previous studies, whereas perch height of A. sagrei was not altered by the presence of A. carolinensis; (2) A. carolinensis in single and mixed sites exhibited different proportions of display types, with individuals at the mixed Tulane site performing significantly more C displays than those at the single site; and (3) Anolis sagrei at the Tulane mixed site exhibited less push‐ups than those in the site with A. sagrei alone. These data suggest that the arrival of congeners can affect display behavior of anoles, although such effects are different for the natives and the invaders.
Next‐generation sequencing for mitochondrial diseases: A wide diagnostic spectrum
Authors: Vasta Valeria , Merritt II J Lawrence , Saneto Russell P. , Hahn Si Houn 
Published: April 2012

AbstractBackground:  The current diagnostic approach for mitochondrial disorders requires invasive procedures such as muscle biopsy and multiple biochemical testing but the results are often inconclusive. Clinical sequencing tests are available only for a limited number of genes. Recently, massively parallel sequencing has become a powerful tool for testing genetically heterogeneous conditions such as mitochondrial disorders.Methods:  Targeted next‐generation sequencing was performed on 26 patients with known or suspected mitochondrial disorders using in‐solution capture for the exons of 908 known and candidate nuclear genes and an Illumina genome analyzer.Results:  None of the 18 patients with various abnormal respiratory chain complex (RCC) activities had molecular defects in either subunits or assembly factors of mitochondrial RCC enzymes except a reference control sample with known mutations in SURF1. Instead, several variants in known pathogenic genes including CPT2, POLG, PDSS1, UBE3A, SDHD, and a few potentially pathogenic variants in candidate genes such as MTO1 or SCL7A13 were identified.Conclusions:  Sequencing only nuclear genes for RCC subunits and assembly factors may not provide the diagnostic answers for suspected patients with mitochondrial disorders. The present findings indicate that the diagnostic spectrum of mitochondrial disorders is much broader than previously thought, which could potentially lead to misdiagnosis and/or inappropriate treatment. Overall analytic sensitivity and precision appear acceptable for clinical testing. Despite the limitations in finding mutations in all patients, the present findings underscore the considerable clinical benefits of targeted next‐generation sequencing and serve as a prototype for extending the clinical evaluation in this clinically heterogeneous patient group.
Temporal coincidence of environmental stress events modulates predation rates
Authors: Pincebourde Sylvain , Sanford Eric , Casas Jérôme , Helmuth Brian 
Published: April 2012

Ecology Letters (2012) 15: 680–688AbstractClimate warming experiments generally test the ecological effects of constant treatments while neglecting the influence of more realistic patterns of environmental fluctuations. Thus, little is known regarding how the temporal interaction between multiple episodes of thermal stress influences biotic interactions. We measured the sensitivity of predation rate in an intertidal sea star to changing levels of temporal coincidence of underwater and aerial thermal stress events. In laboratory trials, we controlled for intensity, variance and temporal patterning of both underwater and aerial body temperature. Predation rate decreased as underwater and aerial thermal stress episodes became temporally non‐coincident, despite a similar intensity and variance among treatments. Experiments under constant conditions were a poor predictor of more complex environmental scenarios because of these strong temporal interactions. Such temporal interactions may be widespread in various ecosystems, suggesting a strong need for empirical studies and models that link environmental complexity, physiology, behaviour and species interactions.
Using global catch data for inferences on the world’s marine fisheries
Authors: Kleisner K , Zeller D , Froese R , Pauly D 
Published: April 2012

AbstractDetailed stock assessments, including the estimation of the absolute biomass of the ‘stocks’ exploited by fisheries, are often viewed as the gold standard for indicators of their status. However, such stock assessments are not available for the overwhelming majority of exploited stocks and fisheries globally. This requires the development, testing and dissemination of other, less data‐demanding indicators for use throughout the world, for example, for comparing the status of fisheries between different maritime countries or large marine ecosystems. Stock status plots, initially developed by staff of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to assess global fisheries, are reviewed here, and their most recent incarnation, which accounts for stock rebuilding, is found to provide a robust overview of fisheries and of the major trends besetting them.
‘Down with Big Brother!’ The End of ‘Corporate Culturalism’?
Authors: Fleming Peter 
Published: April 2012

abstractHugh Willmott's classic 1993JMSarticle, ‘Strength is Ignorance; Freedom is Slavery’, has greatly influenced how we understand culture management. It draws parallel's with George Orwell'sNineteen Eighty‐Fourto reveal the totalitarian aspirations of ‘corporate culturalism’. While it is sometimes said that employee resistance is missing in Willmott's account, I argue that it is implicitly pervasive, prefiguring subsequent investigations of ‘micro‐emancipation’ in management studies. The recent waning of scholarly interest in this type of resistance, however, also points to the contemporary relevance of Willmott's analysis. Emergent forms of corporate regulation utilize ‘biopower’ rather than just cultural conformity, rendering micro‐emancipation inadequate, but inspiring other types of dissent.
Definite Article Reduction and The Obligatory Contour Principle in York English1
Authors: Roeder Rebecca V. 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThis paper provides a phonological explanation for an observed pattern of Definite Article Reduction (DAR) in the city of York, northeast Yorkshire, England. Following a pattern common among very high frequency function words in English, the vowel‐less reduced definite article variably attaches leftward as s clitic. The cliticised definite article is subsequently affaected by the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP). The phonetic realisations accommodated by this explanation include a non‐glottalised variant that is perceptually a zero realisation. Sociolinguistic observations indicate that older speakers and more locally‐oriented young, working‐class men are most likely to have acquired the phonological subtleties of this pattern.
Correlation Pursuit: Forward Stepwise Variable Selection for Index Models
Authors: Zhong Wenxuan , Zhang Tingting , Zhu Yu , Liu Jun S. 
Published: April 2012

SummaryA stepwise procedure, correlation pursuit (COP), is developed for variable selection under the sufficient dimension reduction framework, in which the response variable Y is influenced by the predictors X1,X2,…,Xp through an unknown function of a few linear combinations of them. Unlike linear stepwise regression, COP does not impose a special form of relationship (such as linear) between the response variable and the predictor variables. The COP procedure selects variables that attain the maximum correlation between the transformed response and the linear combination of the variables. Various asymptotic properties of the COP procedure are established and, in particular, its variable selection performance under a diverging number of predictors and sample size is investigated. The excellent empirical performance of the COP procedure in comparison with existing methods is demonstrated by both extensive simulation studies and a real example in functional genomics.
A Road to Classification in High Dimensional Space: The Regularized Optimal Affine Discriminant
Authors: Fan Jianqing , Feng Yang , Tong Xin 
Published: April 2012

SummaryFor high dimensional classification, it is well known that naively performing the Fisher discriminant rule leads to poor results due to diverging spectra and accumulation of noise. Therefore, researchers proposed independence rules to circumvent the diverging spectra, and sparse independence rules to mitigate the issue of accumulation of noise. However, in biological applications, often a group of correlated genes are responsible for clinical outcomes, and the use of the covariance information can significantly reduce misclassification rates. In theory the extent of such error rate reductions is unveiled by comparing the misclassification rates of the Fisher discriminant rule and the independence rule. To materialize the gain on the basis of finite samples, a regularized optimal affine discriminant (ROAD) is proposed. The ROAD selects an increasing number of features as the regularization relaxes. Further benefits can be achieved when a screening method is employed to narrow the feature pool before applying the ROAD method. An efficient constrained co-ordinate descent algorithm is also developed to solve the associated optimization problems. Sampling properties of oracle type are established. Simulation studies and real data analysis support our theoretical results and demonstrate the advantages of the new classification procedure under a variety of correlation structures. A delicate result on continuous piecewise linear solution paths for the ROAD optimization problem at the population level justifies the linear interpolation of the constrained co-ordinate descent algorithm.
Accountability for Delegated and Implementing Acts after the Treaty of Lisbon
Authors: Peers Steve , Costa Marios 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThe comitology regime, the committee‐based system developed as a mechanism for controlling the Commission's exercise of its powers to implement EU measures, has been subject to severe criticism on grounds of lack of accountability and transparency. The system has recently been fundamentally reformed by means of the new Implementing Acts Regulation, which came into force on 1 March 2011. This paper investigates whether the new rules are sufficient to remedy accountability deficits as regards implementing acts and concludes that as far as accountability to the Member States is concerned, their control powers have remained static. In addition, the new‐delegated acts procedure introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon grants the European Parliament (EP) more control powers, although the EP's gains are more modest than they might appear. This change has come at the cost of reduced control powers for Member States as well as lowered standards of transparency for the public.
Characterization of glucose homeostasis and lipid profile in adult, seizure‐free, epileptic patients in Asian population
Authors: Phabphal K. , Limapichat K. , Sathirapanya P. , Setthawatcharawanich S. , Geater A. 
Published: April 2012

Background and purpose:  The most common prescribed antiepileptic drugs (AEDs), phenytoin and valproate, are potent enzyme inducers and inhibitors of the cytochrome P450 system, which interfere with lipid profile and glucose homeostasis. Studies on this topic have suffered from inadequate assessment of confounders and have rarely included glucose homeostasis and lipid profile as well as both enzyme inducers and inhibitors in the same study. We sought to determine whether these drugs had an effect on lipid profile and glucose homeostasis in Thai epileptic patients.Methods:  We recruited 98 patients with epilepsy (45 taking phenytoin, 27 taking valproate, and 26 not taking any AED). Fasting blood samples were obtained to measure serum lipid, and glucose homeostasis was evaluated via the oral glucose tolerance test. We calculated the homeostasis model assessment index for each patient.Results:  Our study revealed that CYP450 was induced by AEDs, and that patients on phenytoin had an increased mean value of serum total cholesterol, serum total triglycerides, and serum LDL cholesterol when compared with patients with epilepsy taking valproate and those taking no AEDs. No statistical significant difference was observed between patients taking valproate and patients taking no AEDs. In addition, patients with epilepsy taking phenytoin had higher fasting plasma glucose levels at fasting state than both those taking valproate and those taking no AEDs. Thirty percent of the patients taking phenytoin exhibited insulin resistance. We have found a negative correlation between log insulin sensitivity and log TG, but not high‐density lipoprotein (HDL).Conclusion:  CYP450‐induced phenytoin produces significant amelioration in several serologic markers of atherosclerosis. These findings suggest that phenytoin may substantially increase the risk of vascular events.
Fools, Facilitators and Flexians: Academic Identities in Marketised Environments
Authors: Smith Katherine 
Published: April 2012

AbstractEmploying the interdisciplinary field of health inequalities as a case study, this paper draws on interviews to explore subjective accounts of academic identities. It finds widespread acceptance that academia is a market place in which research‐active careers require academics to function as entrepreneurs marketing ideas to funders. Beyond this, two contrasting aspirational identities emerged: academics seeking to work collaboratively with policy makers (‘policy facilitators’) and academics seeking to challenge dominant discourses (‘Shakespearean fools’). Most interviewees identified strongly with one or the other of these identities and few believed academia sufficiently supported their preference, although there was some consensus that recent changes were aiding ‘policy facilitator’ roles. In interviewees' accounts of trying to pursue ‘Shakespearean fool’ type roles in marketised environments, a further, chameleon‐like identity emerged (‘flexians’): academics producing malleable ideas that can be adapted for different audiences. In exploring these identities, the paper challenges the popular distinction between mode‐1 and mode‐2 research.
Academic Work in Canada: the Perceptions of Early‐Career Academics
Authors: Jones Glen , Weinrib Julian , Metcalfe Amy Scott , Fisher Don , Rubenson Kjell , Snee Iain 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThis paper analyses junior academic staff's (assistant professors) perceptions of academic work in a highly decentralised Canadian ‘system’. Drawing on recent work by the authors on Canadian university tenure processes and remuneration, the paper compares the perceptions of assistant professor respondents with senior (associate full professor) peers to the Canadian component of the Changing Academic Professions (CAP) survey. The analysis suggests that junior academic staff perceive the academic workplace as reasonably positive and supportive. In addition to relatively high levels of satisfaction, institutional support and remuneration, the findings suggest that there are minimal substantive differences in levels of work and work patterns between junior and more senior academic staff, a finding at odds with the general literature and common sentiment, which suggests junior staff work longer hours. The differences that do emerge appear to be more modest and nuanced than is popularly characterised.
Negotiating Academic Values, Professorial Responsibilities and Expectations for Accountability in Today's University
Authors: Meyer Luanna H. 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThis paper argues that it is reasonable to expect the professoriate, including full professors, to balance traditional academic values with external demands for accountability. Today's universities are characterised by increasing diversity, wider access to higher education, decreasing funding and greater oversight through quality assurance: professors have a particular responsibility to respond to these modern realities and expectations. The essay explores how the role of professors in supporting knowledge development and dissemination through research and teaching can be elaborated and enhanced to ensure that universities contribute to the social good. How well the professoriate responds to contemporary challenges within and beyond traditional academic interests will determine the future of universities, just as previous responses have contributed to their endurance as institutions for more than 900 years. The essay concludes with emphasis on how full professors in particular can promote their special role and responsibilities for supporting the ideal and idea of the university in today's world.
Nation, Separation and Threat: An Analysis of British Media Discourses on the European Union Treaty Reform Process*
Authors: HAWKINS BENJAMIN 
Published: April 2012

AbstractThis article examines the framing of the European Union in British media debates surrounding the negotiation of the Lisbon Treaty. As such, it analyzes the discursive context in which both citizens' attitudes and government policies towards the EU are formed. It identifies a predominant, Eurosceptic discourse that dictates the terrain on which wider debates about the EU are conducted. This discourse views the EU through the lens of the nation‐state and frames the relationship between the United Kingdom and the EU in terms of separation and threat. The United Kingdom is excluded from the EU mainstream, which works to undermine its interests.