Clavaptera ornata n.gen. et sp., a new genus and species of Carventinae (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Aradidae) from Northland,New Zealand

Abstract

Clavaptera ornata gen. et sp. n. from leaf-litter from North Cape, Northland, New Zealand, is described and figured. This new genus falls within Group 1 of the Carventinae as proposed by Usinger & Matsuda (1959), and shares some characteristics of Carventaptera and Neocarventus, but it is readily distinguished from these genera by the medial fusion of the mesothorax and metathorax and the presence of a large hexagonal median prominence in the region of fusion. The holotype male was collected in leaf-litter near Serpentine access road, 4 miles from Spirits Bay road and the allotype from the Tapotupotu Stream area, at the base of Cape Reinga.     

Diet of young-of-the-year bluefin tuna, Thunnus thynnus (Linnaeus, 1758), in the southern Tyrrhenian (Mediterranean) Sea

The diet of juvenile bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) caught 2 to 8 miles off NE Sicily was investigated in order to improve knowledge of the species’ early life history. From 1998 to 2000, 107 specimens ranging from 63 to 495 mm (total length) were fished between July and November. Fishes were caught by trolling line or purse seine in a Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) area 2 to 8 miles offshore and as by‐catch of the purse‐seine sardine fishery 2 to 4 miles offshore. Most frequently found items in the T. thynnus stomachs were fishes (84.5%), crustaceans (54.6%) and cephalopods (50.5%). The largest contribution in weight was provided by cephalopods (47.3%) and fishes (46.5%), while the most abundant items were fishes (51%), cephalopods (27.2%) and crustaceans (21.1%). These results suggest that young‐of‐the‐year tuna have an essentially piscivorous diet, although invertebrate prey provide a substantial contribution to the food array. Prey show little relationship with FADs, although one prey species (blue runner, Caranx crysos) is associated with FADs in the Mediterranean.     

A view from the other side: the place of spirits in the Tongan social field

Spirits are part of everyday life in the Kingdom of Tonga. This study explores beliefs about the supernatural by analyzing discourse on spirits and death and by examining two examples of contemporary cultural practice related to spirits and death. The anthropological concepts of the body and its cultural construction and of thirdspace as a landscape of the Tongan islands that emerges out of the physical and the perceived provide the framework for this investigation. Research findings suggest that spirits participate in the natural order of Tongan society and thus serve to help maintain cultural identity in the face of uncertain social change and a popular but contested prodemocracy movement. Spirits also function as a system of representation, mirroring an image of an ideal self, something that is continually under negotiation. Encounters between spirits of ancestors and their living descendants suggest an uneasy acceptance of death and a sense of irony about its inevitability.     

Birth seasonality,photoperiod, and social change in the Central Canadian Arctic

Birth seasonally at high latitudes is a complex phenomenon which is undoubtedly affected by a subtle interaction between environmental rhythmicity (most notably in photoperiod and temperature) and cultural adaption. There is intriguing evidence that human gonadotrophic activity (and hence fertility) may be affected by seasonal fluctuations in light intensity and duration. Nevertheless, cultural factors are important insofar as they mediate between environmental rhythmicity and human fertility/birth patterns. This article examines the distribution of births over several decades in an Inuit community located 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Several shifts in birth seasonality are noted, the most significant of which is a dramatic shift from pronounced seasonality in the 1970s to non-seasonality in the 1980s. Longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork has allowed an examination of social and economic changes accounting for the rather sudden disappearance of birth seasonality. These include increasing reliance upon wage employment and social assistance, decreased dependence upon subsistence hunting and trapping, changing attitudes on the part of young people entering their prime reproductive years, and the introduction of television, radio, and southern-style recreational activities.     

Negotiating A Path To Efficacy At A Clinic Of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Chinese medicine emphasizes the underlying connection of the bodily, emotional, social, and environmental dimensions in illness experience and healing. The therapeutic process, characterized as tiao (attuning, balancing), targets the patient’s overall illness condition and experience including both physical and nonphysical aspects of suffering. This study, incorporating techniques of microanalysis as an ethnographic tool and using an actual recorded clinical interaction as data, analyzes how the path to effective healing is negotiated among multiple clinical realities at a clinic of Chinese medicine in Beijing. A close examination of interactive features of actual face-to-face communication between a doctor and a patient in a specific case of “stagnation of emotions” reveals that, for an illness recognized in Chinese medicine as originating from disordered emotions, adjustment of the patient’s perceptions of reality and social relations is particularly salient in the “attuning” process. Efficacy then should be understood as more than physiological changes produced by herbs, but also as emergent through an interactive event of clinical encounters. This study demonstrates empirically how the clinical process of Chinese medicine works to define and transform the patient’s emotions and experience.     

Mechanisms of Gradient Sensing and Chemotaxis: Conserved Pathways,Diverse Regulation

Directed cell migration is critical for normal development, immune responses, and wound healing and plays a prominent role in tumor metastasis. In eukaryotes, cell orientation is biased by an external chemoattractant gradient through a spatial contrast in chemoattractant receptor-mediated signal transduction processes that differentially affect cytoskeletal dynamics at the cell front and rear. Mechanisms of spatial gradient sensing and chemotaxis have been studied extensively in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum and mammalian leukocytes (neutrophils), which are similar in their remarkable sensitivity to shallow gradients and robustness of response over a broad range of chemoattractant concentration. Recently, we have quantitatively characterized a different gradient sensing system, that of platelet-derived growth factor-stimulated fibroblasts, an important component of dermal wound healing. The marked differences between this system and the others have led us to speculate on the diversity of gradient sensing mechanisms and their biological implications.     

Rendering the absent visible: victimhood and the irreconcilability of violence

Contemporary justice-making processes often focus on reconciliation or legal retribution, but not on the complexity of victimhood beyond individual subjectivity or refusals of state propositions for social repair. In Colombia, where drug cartels and state-sponsored violence had terrorized the population for over fifty years, it was not forgiveness and acceptance that punctuated the turn of the twenty-first century, but the refusal to reconcile with the state's duplicity regarding the disappearance and death of thousands. This essay illustrates how irreconciliation as an affective sentiment is taking shape in Colombia through forms of reattribution that take the form of victim visibilizations. In analysing the strategic use of victim visibilizations as a refusal of state accountability, their expansion of the notion of victimhood, and their politics of irreconciliation, I show how even with the state's remorse-driven discourses, the public's understanding that political, judicial, and social accountability was not possible and pushed them to chart new strategies for disclosure and healing.     

Therapeutic Processes and Perceived Helpfulness of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Dang-Ki</Emphasis> (Chinese Shamanism) from the Symbolic Healing Perspective

This study focuses on the therapeutic process and perceived helpfulness of dang-ki, a form of Chinese shamanistic healing, in Singapore. It aims to understand the healing symbols employed in dang-ki, whether or not patients find them helpful and whether their perceived helpfulness can be explained by the symbolic healing model (Dow, Am Anthropol 88(1):56–69, 1986; Levi-Strauss, Structural anthropology. Basic Books, New York, 1963). Although many researchers have applied this model to explain the efficacy of shamanistic healings, they did not directly provide empirical support. Furthermore, the therapeutic process of a shared clinical reality as proposed by the model may be achievable in small-scale traditional societies that are culturally more homogeneous than in contemporary societies that are culturally more diversified due to globalization and immigration. Patients may hold multidimensional health belief systems, as biomedicine and alternative healing systems coexist. Thus, it would be interesting to see the relevance and applicability of the symbolic healing model to shamanistic healing in contemporary societies. In this study, ethnographic interviews were conducted with 21 patients over three stages: immediately before and after the healing and approximately 1 month later. The dang-ki healing symbols were identified by observing the healing sessions with video recording. Results show that dang-kis normally applied more than one method to treat a given problem. These methods included words, talismans and physical manipulations. Overall, 11 patients perceived their consultations as helpful, 4 perceived their consultations as helpful but were unable to follow all recommendations, 5 were not sure of the outcome because they had yet to see any concrete results and only 1 patient considered his consultation unhelpful. Although the symbolic healing model provides a useful framework to understand perceived helpfulness, processes such as enactment of a common meaning system and symbolic transformation are complex and dynamic, and may be carried over several healing sessions.     

Effectiveness of Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields on Bone Healing: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

The effect of pulsed electromagnetic field (PEMF) on bone healing is still uncertain and it has not been established as a standardized treatment. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to evaluate the effect of PEMF on bone healing in patients with fracture. We searched CNKI, Wan Fang, VIP, EMbase, PubMed, CENTRAL, Web of Science, Physiotherapy Evidence Database, and Open Grey websites for randomized controlled trials (published before July 2019 in English or Chinese) comparing any form of PEMF to sham. Reference lists were also searched. Related data were extracted by two investigators independently. The bias risk of the articles and the evidence strength of the outcomes were evaluated. Twenty-two studies were eligible and included in our analysis (n = 1,468 participants). The pooled results of 14 studies (n = 1,131 participants) demonstrated that healing rate in PEMF group was 79.7% (443/556), and that in the control group was 64.3% (370/575). PEMF increased healing rate (RR = 1.22; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.10–1.35; I² = 48%) by the Mantel–Haenszel analysis, relieved pain (standardized mean difference (SMD) = −0.49; 95% CI = −0.88 to −0.10; I² = 60%) by the inverse variance analysis, and accelerated healing time (SMD = −1.01; 95% CI = −2.01 to −0.00; I² = 90%) by the inverse variance analysis. Moderate quality evidence suggested that PEMF increased healing rate and relieved pain of fracture, and very low-quality evidence showed that PEMF accelerated healing time. Larger and higher quality randomized controlled trials and pre-clinical studies of optimal frequency, amplitude, and duration parameters are needed. © 2020 Bioelectromagnetics Society.     

A directed miniscreen for genes involved in the Drosophila anti-parasitoid immune response

Drosophila larvae react against eggs from the endoparasitoid wasp Leptopilina boulardi by surrounding them in a multilayered cellular capsule. Once a wasp egg is recognized as foreign, circulating macrophage-like cells, known as plasmatocytes, adhere to the invader. After spreading around the wasp egg, plasmatocytes form cellular junctions between the cells, effectively separating the egg from the hemocoel. Next, a second sub-type of circulating immunosurveillance cell (hemocyte), known as lamellocytes, adhere to either the wasp egg or more likely the plasmatocytes surrounding the egg. From these events, it is obvious that adhesion and cell shape change are an essential part of Drosophila's cellular immune response against parasitoid wasp eggs. To date, very few genes have been described as being necessary for a proper anti-parasitization response in Drosophila. With this in mind, we performed a directed genetic miniscreen to discover new genes required for this response. Many of the genes with an encapsulation defect have mammalian homologues involved in cellular adhesion, wound healing, and thrombosis, including extracellular matrix proteins, cellular adhesion molecules, and small GTPases.     

Future social rank: forecasting status in the green anole (Anolis carolinensis)

Predicting the future social standing of an individual without aggressive social interaction may seem contradictory, as formation of social rank depends on agonistic interactions. In the lizard Anolis carolinensis, predicting social rank is possible using latency to eyespot formation (sympathetic darkening of postorbital skin from green to black during stressful agonistic interactions), because they form more rapidly in male lizards that become dominant. Darkened eyespots also inhibit aggressive behavior. As the timing of eyespot formation appears to be an important component of stress responsiveness and future social status, we hypothesized that a proactive disposition toward non-aggressive behavior, such as feeding and courtship, would be associated with aggressiveness. We assessed the relationship between rank and the temporal dynamics of eyespot formation, latencies to aggressive display, feeding, and reproductive behavior. Male lizards that became dominant were faster to respond to all types of stimuli tested (aggression, feeding, and courtship). The temporal dynamics of the neuroendocrine stress response appear to influence the motivation for behavioral response. Animals that recover from stress more quickly also eat, court, and fight more readily. In summary, this work suggests that latencies to aggressive, reproductive, and feeding behavior, as well as eyespot signals, are reliable predictors of future social status of individual male A. carolinensis.     

Wound healing effects of methanol extract of Laurocerasus officinalis roem

Laurocerasus officinalis Roem. (syn: Prunus laurocerasus L.) is a member of Rosaceae family. We investigated the antimicrobial and antioxidant activity of L. officinalis Roem in wound healing both in vivo and in vitro using an excisional wound model model in mice. We used four groups of eight mice as follows: untreated (control), empty gel, extract + gel (L. officinalis + gel), and Madecassol® groups. All treatments were applied topically once daily. The scar area, percentage wound closure and epithelization time were measured. L. officinalis promoted wound healing and increased granulation tissue, epidermal regeneration and angiogenesis. L. officinalis extract, which is known for its antioxidant and antimicrobial activities, may be useful for promoting wound healing.     

Abnormality in the fissioning control of a strain of asexual Dugesia dorotocephala found near Fort Collins,Colorado

Asexual Dugesia dorotocephala, collected from a new site several miles northwest of Fort Collins, Colorado, appeared similar, at the time of collection, to ones collected from other sites in the same general locale. However, these exhibited marked differences in the more crowded conditions of laboratory culture: abnormally long, 30–50 mm specimens, seemingly unable to fission, developed. Since previous studies of asexual D. dorotocephala had revealed an inhibitory effect of cohorts on fissioning (Best et al., 1969, 1974, 1975; Pigon et al., 1974), experiments were conducted with this new strain to ascertain the effect of population density (group size) on fissioning incidence. Results are described which show that this inhibitory effect of cohorts on fissioning is exaggerated in this new strain.     

Outline of a mathematical approach to the cancer problem

The fact that the growth of every organism, as it develops through cell multiplication from the ovum, eventually ceases, makes plausible the hypothesis that each cell of an organism exerts some kind of inhibitory influence upon the growth and multiplication of every other cell through the medium of some factorj. Each cell, however, is considered to possess an amount of a “growth factor”g, the activity of which is inhibited byj. In the course of development, most cells differentiate. A number of them remains relatively undifferentiated, and those are used for repairs of natural tear and wear as well as for healing of wounds. With age either the number of those cells or their “potency” decreases, which accounts for a general decrease in the speed of wound healing. Due to statistical fluctuations, the amount of theg is not uniformly distributed amongst the cells. Some of them have accidentally a greater amount than others. As the number or potency of the undifferentiated cells decreases with age, so does their inhibitory influence upon other cells. Therefore, those cells which do have an accidental dental excess ofg-factor will begin to grow and multiply, producing neoplasms. Putting the above assumptions into mathematical form, it is possible to derive a relation which gives theprobability of cancer incidence as a function of age. The theoretical relation is compared to the rather inadequate empirical data and found in agreement with them. A relation for the speed of wound healing as a function of age is also derived, and also found in general agreement with the rather scant data. Several other conclusions are discussed and possibilities of their practical applications pointed out.     

Predicting the external formation of a bone fracture callus: an optimisation approach

The formation of a fracture callus in vivo tends to form in a structurally efficient manner distributing tissues where mechanical stimulus persists. Therefore, it is proposed that the formation of a fracture callus can be modelled in silico by way of an optimisation algorithm. This was tested by generating a finite element model of a transversal bone fracture embedded in a large tissue domain which was subjected to axial, bending and torsional loads. It was found that the relative fragment motion induced a compressive strain field in the early callus tissue which could be utilised to simulate the formation of external callus structures through an iterative optimisation process of tissue maintenance and removal. The phenomenological results showed a high level of congruence with in vivo healing patterns found in the literature. Consequently, the proposed strategy shows potential as a means of predicting spatial bone healing phenomena for pre-clinical testing.     

Population genetics of the socially polymorphic ant <Emphasis Type="Italic">Formica podzolica</Emphasis>

Summary. We used microsatellite markers to analyze the hierarchical genetic structure of the North American mound building ant, Formica podzolica. About one-third of all colonies were headed by a single queen (monogynous) whose effective mating frequency was close to one (nestmate worker relatedness r = 0.70), while the remaining colonies were polygynous, with low average nestmate relatedness (r = 0.16). The low worker relatedness found in most polygynous colonies furthermore suggested that the numbers of queens in polygynous colonies of this ant are usually high. Contrary to what has been described from other ants with a queen number dichotomy, we did not find an effect of social form variation on the partitioning of genetic variation above the level of the colony. We found no significant differentiation between the sympatric social forms of F. podzolica, nor did differentiation among populations appear to be affected by colony social organization. These unexpected patterns of genetic structure may have resulted from differences either in the spatial distribution of the social forms or in their social flexibility.Received 12 January 2004; revised 23 February 2004; accepted 10 March 2004.     

Dieldrin-resistant cabbage root fly in England

The existence of dieldrin resistance in Erioischia brassicae has been investigated in the main areas in England and Wales where brassicas are grown for human consumption. Dieldrin-susceptible and dieldrin-resistant flies were collected and bred as separate strains in the laboratory. In toxicity tests adult flies were treated with topically applied doses of insecticide in microdrops of cellosolve, and larvae were dipped in solutions of insecticide in 70% acetone and 30% water. Adults of the laboratory resistant strain showed a high level of resistance to dieldrin and aldrin and a lower level of resistance to γ-BHC. There was no cross-resistance with chlorfenvinphos or diazinon. Larvae of the resistant strain were shown to be resistant to dieldrin. Dieldrin resistance has been found in four areas in southern England, but not in a fifth major area, and resistant flies did not increase as rapidly in some areas as others. Sufficient migration of flies appeared to take place to produce similar percentages of resistant flies over areas of several square miles, but considerable differences were found in fly populations about 10 miles apart. It is suggested that the speed of development of insecticide resistance is affected by the proportion of brassica crops which are treated in an area, the amounts of insecticide applied to individual crops, and hence the insecticidal pressure applied to the E. brassicae population.     

An ecological study of amebas from a small stream in Northern Florida

Summary An ecological study of amebas in the Hogtown Creek, which serves as a water-shed for the northwest quadrant of the city of Gainesville, Florida, indicates that the species which inhabit the creek are those typical of slow-flowing, moderate to warm freshwater streams of slightly alkaline nature. The Creek is essentially an unpolluted rural stream at its source; but receives both industrial and civil pollution in its course through the city. In the course of its flow some seven miles beyond the major entry of pollution, it recovers, and becomes again a rural stream with little significant pollution. Amebas disappear from the creek at the point where industrial pollution enters, and are found again in small numbers at two to four miles downstream. Thereafter, in the course of another three miles, amebas appear in greater numbers. Active amebas were not found whenever the pH of the stream became acid, at whatever station. None of the species known to be acidophilous were seen, with the exception of Difflugia oblonga, which may be ubiquitous. Some indication is noted that certain amebas prefer waters of certain temperature range, particularly within the genus Difflugia. In that genus D. lobostoma, D. tuberculata, D. urceolata, D. amphora, D. oviformis and D. acuminata were present more often in waters above 21° C.; whereas D. oblonga, D. globulosa, D. corona, D. gramen, and D. elegans were more often present in waters at temperatures below 21° C. Both naked and testate rhizopods were more numerous at or near pH 7.6; and in general both naked and testate amebas were more numerous at temperatures slightly below 21° C. It is suggested that any species of ameba may have a more or less restricted range of tolerance to any particular physical factor in the environment, with a presumed optimum for each factor, resulting in the appearance and disappearance of various species as the factors vary.Supported by Research Grant NIH-E-1158.