Premise of the study: Seed cone morphology and anatomy reflect some of the most important changes in the phylogeny and evolutionary biology of conifers. Reexamination of the enigmatic Jurassic seed cone Pararaucaria patagonica reveals previously unknown systematically informative characters that demonstrate affinities with the Cheirolepidiaceae. This paper documents, for the...
Objective: To examine the pricing trajectories in the United States of disease-modifying therapies (DMT) for multiple sclerosis (MS) over the last 20 years and assess the influences on rising prices.
Methods: We estimated the trend in annual drug costs for 9 DMTs using published drug pricing data from 1993 to...
Internal tide generation, propagation, and dissipation are investigated in Luzon Strait, a system of two quasi-parallel ridges situated between Taiwan and the Philippines. Two profiling moorings deployed for about 20 days and a set of nineteen 36-h lowered ADCP-CTD time series stations allowed separate measurement of diurnal and semidiurnal internal...
Internal tide generation, propagation, and dissipation are investigated in Luzon Strait, a system of two quasi-parallel ridges situated between Taiwan and the Philippines. Two profiling moorings deployed for about 20 days and a set of nineteen 36-h lowered ADCP–CTD time series stations allowed separate measurement of diurnal and semidiurnal internal...
A spectrum-matching and look-up-table (LUT) methodology has been developed and evaluated to extract environmental information from remotely sensed hyperspectral imagery. The LUT methodology works as follows. First, a database of remote-sensing reflectance (R[subscript]rs) spectra corresponding to various water depths, bottom reflectance spectra, and water-column inherent optical properties (IOPs) is constructed...
A fossil seed cone with characters that have been hypothesized as transitional to the origin of crown group gnetophytes has been discovered in Lower Cretaceous deposits on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. This cone, described as Protoephedrites eamesii gen. et sp. nov., provides the first anatomically preserved fossil evidence for...
Forest-fire policy of U.S. federal agencies has evolved from the use of small
patrols in newly created National Parks to diverse policy initiatives and institutional arrangements
that affect millions of hectares of forests. Even with large expenditures and
substantial infrastructure dedicated to fire suppression, the annual area burned by wildfire...
Premise of study: Sequence analyses for Pinaceae have suggested that extant genera diverged in the late Mesozoic. While the fossil record indicates that Pinaceae was highly diverse during the Cretaceous, there are few records of living genera. This description of an anatomically preserved seed cone extends the fossil record for...
A cylindrical permineralized conifer seed cone has been identified from the Officer Member of the Trowbridge Formation, near Izee, in east-central Oregon. The cone is preserved in a Middle Jurassic (Callovian) marine calcium carbonate concretion, associated with araucarian seed cones, conifer twigs and wood, cycad seeds, fern rachides, and lycopodialean...
When characterizing the processes that shape ecosystems, ecologists increasingly use the unique perspective offered by repeat observations of remotely sensed imagery. However, the concept of change embodied in much of the traditional remote-sensing literature was primarily limited to capturing large or extreme changes occurring in natural systems, omitting many more...
Background: Human milk immunoglobulins (Ig) are an important support for the naive infant immune system; yet the extent to which these proteins survive within the infant digestive tract, particularly for preterm infants, is poorly studied. Objectives: Our objective was to evaluate the survival of human milk Igs in the preterm...
The goal of this study was to describe the duration and magnitude of the physiological stress response in lingcod Ophiodon elongatus after exposure to brief handling and sublethal air stressors. The response to these stressors was determined during a 24‐h recovery period by measuring concentrations of plasma cortisol, lactate, glucose,...
Premise of research: A distinctive new species of osmundaceous fern, based on a permineralized trunk from
Lower Cretaceous deposits of Haida Gwaii (formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands) off the west coast of mainland
Canada, provides additional data for addressing the Mesozoic diversity and the overall pattern of phylogeny
for osmundaceous...
Seeds provide food, feed, fiber and fuel. They are also an important delivery system of genetic information, which is essential for the survival of wild species in ecosystems and the production of agricultural crops. In this review, seed traits and genes that are potentially important for agricultural applications are discussed....
PREMISE OF RESEARCH. The occurrence of six ovulate cones and six leafy branching systems, two of which
show attachment of the ovulate cone, reveals a new cunninghamioid fossil conifer from the Cretaceous Apple
Bay locality of Vancouver Island, Canada. This anatomically preserved plant expands our understanding of
basal Cupressaceae in...
Premise of research. A new, morphologically distinct, anatomically preserved conifer assignable to the basal Cupressaceae, which was subject to arthropod infestation during life, has been discovered within a marine carbonate concretion from the Coniacian (Late Cretaceous) Eden Main locality of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Methods. Specimens were studied from anatomical...
A mutational analysis was conducted to investigate the functions of the tobacco etch potyvirus VPgproteinase
(NIa) protein in vivo. The NIa N-terminal domain contains the VPg attachment site, whereas the
C-terminal domain contains a picornavirus 3C-like proteinase. Cleavage at an internal site separating the two
domains occurs in a subset...
• Premise of the study: Colonists of even the most inhospitable environments, lichens are present in all terrestrial ecosystems.
Because of their ecological versatility and ubiquity, they have been considered excellent candidates for early colonizers of terrestrial
environments. Despite such predictions, good preservation potential, and the extant diversity of lichenized...
Introduced vector-borne diseases, particularly avian malaria (Plasmodium relictum) and avian pox
virus (Avipoxvirus spp.), continue to play significant roles in the decline and extinction of native forest birds in
the Hawaiian Islands. Hawaiian honeycreepers are particularly susceptible to avian malaria and have survived
into this century largely because of persistence...
Premise of the study: Pinaceae and nonpinoid species are sister groups within the conifer clade as inferred from molecular systematic comparisons of living species and therefore should have comparable geological ages. However, the fossil record for the nonpinoid lineage of extant conifer families is Triassic, nearly 100 million years older...