The influence of the atmospheric boundary layer on nocturnal layers of noctuids and other moths migrating over southern Britain

Insects migrating at high altitude over southern Britain have been continuously monitored by automatically-operating, vertical-looking radars over a period of several years. During some occasions in the summer months, the migrants were observed to form well-defined layer concentrations, typically at heights of 200-400 m, in the stable night-time atmosphere. Under these conditions, insects are likely to have control over their vertical movements and are selecting flight heights which are favourable for long-range migration. We therefore investigated the factors influencing the formation of these insect layers by comparing radar measurements of the vertical distribution of insect density with meteorological profiles generated by the UK Met. Office’s Unified Model (UM). Radar-derived measurements of mass and displacement speed, along with data from Rothamsted Insect Survey light traps provided information on the identity of the migrants. We present here three case studies where noctuid and pyralid moths contributed substantially to the observed layers. The major meteorological factors influencing the layer concentrations appeared to be: (a) the altitude of the warmest air, (b) heights corresponding to temperature preferences or thresholds for sustained migration and (c), on nights when air temperatures are relatively high, wind-speed maxima associated with the nocturnal jet. Back-trajectories indicated that layer duration may have been determined by the distance to the coast. Overall, the unique combination of meteorological data from the UM and insect data from entomological radar described here show considerable promise for systematic studies of high-altitude insect layering

Interplay between pleiotropy and secondary selection determines rise and fall of mutators in stress response

Dramatic rise of mutators has been found to accompany adaptation of bacteria in response to many kinds of stress. Two views on the evolutionary origin of this phenomenon emerged: the pleiotropic hypothesis positing that it is a byproduct of environmental stress or other specific stress response mechanisms and the second order selection which states that mutators hitchhike to fixation with unrelated beneficial alleles. Conventional population genetics models could not fully resolve this controversy because they are based on certain assumptions about fitness landscape. Here we address this problem using a microscopic multiscale model, which couples physically realistic molecular descriptions of proteins and their interactions with population genetics of carrier organisms without assuming any a priori fitness landscape. We found that both pleiotropy and second order selection play a crucial role at different stages of adaptation: the supply of mutators is provided through destabilization of error correction complexes or fluctuations of production levels of prototypic mismatch repair proteins (pleiotropic effects), while rise and fixation of mutators occur when there is a sufficient supply of beneficial mutations in replication-controlling genes. This general mechanism assures a robust and reliable adaptation of organisms to unforeseen challenges. This study highlights physical principles underlying physical biological mechanisms of stress response and adaptation

Human H5N1 influenza infections in Cambodia 2005-2011: case series and cost-of-illness.

BACKGROUND: Southeast Asia has been identified as a potential epicentre of emerging diseases with pandemic capacity, including highly pathogenic influenza. Cambodia in particular has the potential for high rates of avoidable deaths from pandemic influenza due to large gaps in health system resources. This study seeks to better understand the course and cost-of-illness for cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza in Cambodia. METHODS: We studied the 18 laboratory-confirmed cases of avian influenza subtype H5N1 identified in Cambodia between January 2005 and August 2011. Medical records for all patients were reviewed to extract information on patient characteristics, travel to hospital, time to admission, diagnostic testing, treatment and disease outcomes. Further data related to costs was collected through interviews with key informants at district and provincial hospitals, the Ministry of Health and non-governmental organisations. An ingredient-based approach was used to estimate the total economic cost for each study patient. Costing was conducted from a societal perspective and included both financial and opportunity costs to the patient or carer. Sensitivity analysis was undertaken to evaluate potential change or variation in the cost-of-illness. RESULTS: Of the 18 patients studied, 11 (61%) were under the age of 18 years. The majority of patients (16, 89%) died, eight (44%) within 24 hours of hospital admission. There was an average delay of seven days between symptom onset and hospitalisation with patients travelling an average of 148 kilometres (8-476 km) to the admitting hospital. Five patients were treated with oseltamivir of whom two received the recommended dose. For the 16 patients who received all their treatment in Cambodia the average per patient cost of H5N1 influenza illness was US$300 of which 85.0$45 per patient (15.0%) of total economic cost. CONCLUSION: Cases of avian influenza in Cambodia were characterised by delays in hospitalisation, deficiencies in some aspects of treatment and a high fatality rate. The costs associated with medical care, particularly diagnostic testing and pharmaceutical therapy, were major contributors to the relatively high cost-of-illness

The FIELDS Instrument Suite for Solar Probe Plus: Measuring the Coronal Plasma and Magnetic Field, Plasma Waves and Turbulence, and Radio Signatures of Solar Transients.

NASA's Solar Probe Plus (SPP) mission will make the first in situ measurements of the solar corona and the birthplace of the solar wind. The FIELDS instrument suite on SPP will make direct measurements of electric and magnetic fields, the properties of in situ plasma waves, electron density and temperature profiles, and interplanetary radio emissions, amongst other things. Here, we describe the scientific objectives targeted by the SPP/FIELDS instrument, the instrument design itself, and the instrument concept of operations and planned data products

The role of kinetic context in apparent biased agonism at GPCRs

Biased agonism describes the ability of ligands to stabilize different conformations of a GPCR linked to distinct functional outcomes and offers the prospect of designing pathway-specific drugs that avoid on-target side effects. This mechanism is usually inferred from pharmacological data with the assumption that the confounding influences of observational (that is, assay dependent) and system (that is, cell background dependent) bias are excluded by experimental design and analysis. Here we reveal that ‘kinetic context’, as determined by ligand-binding kinetics and the temporal pattern of receptor-signalling processes, can have a profound influence on the apparent bias of a series of agonists for the dopamine D2 receptor and can even lead to reversals in the direction of bias. We propose that kinetic context must be acknowledged in the design and interpretation of studies of biased agonism

Radio Emission from Ultra-Cool Dwarfs

The 2001 discovery of radio emission from ultra-cool dwarfs (UCDs), the very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs with spectral types of ~M7 and later, revealed that these objects can generate and dissipate powerful magnetic fields. Radio observations provide unparalleled insight into UCD magnetism: detections extend to brown dwarfs with temperatures <1000 K, where no other observational probes are effective. The data reveal that UCDs can generate strong (kG) fields, sometimes with a stable dipolar structure; that they can produce and retain nonthermal plasmas with electron acceleration extending to MeV energies; and that they can drive auroral current systems resulting in significant atmospheric energy deposition and powerful, coherent radio bursts. Still to be understood are the underlying dynamo processes, the precise means by which particles are accelerated around these objects, the observed diversity of magnetic phenomenologies, and how all of these factors change as the mass of the central object approaches that of Jupiter. The answers to these questions are doubly important because UCDs are both potential exoplanet hosts, as in the TRAPPIST-1 system, and analogues of extrasolar giant planets themselves.Comment: 19 pages; submitted chapter to the Handbook of Exoplanets, eds. Hans J. Deeg and Juan Antonio Belmonte (Springer-Verlag

Avoiding Dangerous Missense: Thermophiles Display Especially Low Mutation Rates

Rates of spontaneous mutation have been estimated under optimal growth conditions for a variety of DNA-based microbes, including viruses, bacteria, and eukaryotes. When expressed as genomic mutation rates, most of the values were in the vicinity of 0.003–0.004 with a range of less than two-fold. Because the genome sizes varied by roughly 104-fold, the mutation rates per average base pair varied inversely by a similar factor. Even though the commonality of the observed genomic rates remains unexplained, it implies that mutation rates in unstressed microbes reach values that can be finely tuned by evolution. An insight originating in the 1920s and maturing in the 1960s proposed that the genomic mutation rate would reflect a balance between the deleterious effect of the average mutation and the cost of further reducing the mutation rate. If this view is correct, then increasing the deleterious impact of the average mutation should be countered by reducing the genomic mutation rate. It is a common observation that many neutral or nearly neutral mutations become strongly deleterious at higher temperatures, in which case they are called temperature-sensitive mutations. Recently, the kinds and rates of spontaneous mutations were described for two microbial thermophiles, a bacterium and an archaeon. Using an updated method to extrapolate from mutation-reporter genes to whole genomes reveals that the rate of base substitutions is substantially lower in these two thermophiles than in mesophiles. This result provides the first experimental support for the concept of an evolved balance between the total genomic impact of mutations and the cost of further reducing the basal mutation rate

Optimal stomatal behaviour around the world

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer Nature via the DOI in this recordStomatal conductance (g s) is a key land-surface attribute as it links transpiration, the dominant component of global land evapotranspiration, and photosynthesis, the driving force of the global carbon cycle. Despite the pivotal role of g s in predictions of global water and carbon cycle changes, a global-scale database and an associated globally applicable model of g s that allow predictions of stomatal behaviour are lacking. Here, we present a database of globally distributed g s obtained in the field for a wide range of plant functional types (PFTs) and biomes. We find that stomatal behaviour differs among PFTs according to their marginal carbon cost of water use, as predicted by the theory underpinning the optimal stomatal model and the leaf and wood economics spectrum. We also demonstrate a global relationship with climate. These findings provide a robust theoretical framework for understanding and predicting the behaviour of g s across biomes and across PFTs that can be applied to regional, continental and global-scale modelling of ecosystem productivity, energy balance and ecohydrological processes in a future changing climate.This research was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC MIA Discovery Project 1433500-2012-14). A.R. was financially supported in part by The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE-Arctic) project, which is supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the Department of Energy, Office of Science, and through the United States Department of Energy contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886 to Brookhaven National Laboratory. M.O.d.B. acknowledges that the Brassica data were obtained within a research project financed by the Belgian Science Policy (OFFQ, contract number SD/AF/02) and coordinated by K. Vandermeiren at the Open-Top Chamber research facilities of CODA-CERVA (Tervuren, Belgium)