Niko Tinbergen: A Message in the Archives

Just as biologists have their favored places for doing research, so do historians. As someone who likes working in archives, the most surprising thing the present author ever found was a particular letter that had been written to him by the ethologist Niko Tinbergen—but that Tinbergen had never sent. The letter included a detailed critique of the intellectual style and conceptual shortcomings of Tinbergen’s career-long friend and colleague Konrad Lorenz. The present author first saw the letter 3 years after Tinbergen’s death and 10 years after the letter was composed. Here we discuss the contents and historical context of that letter.     

Tribute to Tinbergen: Putting Niko Tinbergen's ‘Four Questions’ in Historical Context

Niko Tinbergen's (Zeit. Tier. 20, 1963, 410) paper ‘On aims and methods of ethology’ is appropriately remembered as the paper in which Tinbergen characterized ethology as ‘the biological study of behavior’ and went on to explain that to study behavior biologically is to ask four distinct questions about it: (1) How is it caused physiologically? (2) What is its survival value? (3) How has it evolved? and (4) How does it develop in the individual? Here, we consider Tinbergen's paper in its historical context by looking at it from three different perspectives: (1) a comparison of Tinbergen's formulation of ‘ethology's four questions’ with similar, but different formulations of biology's basic problems offered by Julian Huxley, Konrad Lorenz, and Ernst Mayr; (2) a survey of the roles that the four questions played in Tinbergen's own work over the course of his career; and (3) a consideration of the two explicit goals of Tinbergen's (Zeit. Tier., 20, 1963, 410) paper, namely (a.) to honor Tinbergen's friend and colleague Konrad Lorenz (as part of a Festschrift for Lorenz on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday) and (b.) to provide a sketch of ethology's scope and an evaluation of the ways the field needed to develop in the future. We suggest that just as the work of Tinbergen's Oxford research team revealed how the behavior of gulls reflected compromises worked out in the face of the diverse selective pressures of particular environments, we can identify certain conflicts that arose for Tinbergen in trying to write something that his friend Lorenz would like while also assessing ethology's current state and future prospects. That said, however, Tinbergen's enduring concern was to do all he could to ensure that ethology thrive as a field and develop a scientific understanding of animal (and human) behavior. For this to happen, he insisted, the four questions of ethology needed to be pursued in a balanced, comprehensive, and integrated fashion.     

Differential Regulation of HLA-DR Expression and Antigen Presentation in Toxoplasma gondii-Infected Melanoma Cells by Interleukin 6 and Interferon γ

CD4⁺ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) clones, YT-4 and YT-9, specific for Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii)-infected melanoma SK-MEL 28 (P36), were generated from the peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) of a patient with chronic toxoplasmosis. These CTL clones were shown to secrete significant amounts of interleukin 6 (IL-6) and interferon γ (IFN-γ) upon antigen (Ag)-specific stimulation. Downregulation of human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-DR surface expression and HLA-DR mRNA levels in P36 cells were observed when P36 cells were infected with T. gondii. Such downregulated HLA-DR expressions of 71 gondii-infected P36 cells were upregulated by treatment with both recombinant IL-6 (rIL-6) and recombinant IFN-γ (rIFN-γ). The antigen-presenting ability of T. gondii-infected P36 cells to T. gondii-infected cell-specific CTL was enhanced by rIFN-γ but not by rIL-6. The present study reveals the existence of differential regulation of HLA-DR expression and Ag presentation in T. gondii-infected melanoma cells by IL-6 and IFN-γ.     

Some notes on the vértesszöllös occipital

An examination of the Vértessz?ll?s occipital bone indicates the need for takings its condition and preservation as well as certain aspects of its morphology into account prior to a metric assessment of its features. This analysis confirms the presence of extrasutural bones on the lambdoidal suture as well as some distortion in the sagittal curvature of this region. The advisability of using the endocranial sutures as well as other data for defining lambda in cases such as this is discussed, and a procedure for determining the position of opisthion is indicated. A metric and morphological analysis is used to support the claim that the specimen can be considered a large late representative of Homo erectus in Europe.     

Genitourinary Presentation of Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis (TB) is less common in developed countries; however, the incidence of TB—especially resistant strains—is on the rise worldwide. Cases of TB manifesting as urologic complications are rare in the United States. Urologists should be aware of this potential manifestation, especially in patients who have recently immigrated to the United States or have traveled abroad for prolonged periods. Two cases are presented here to illustrate this entity.Key words: Tuberculosis, Genitourinary complications, Mycobacterium tuberculosisTuberculosis (TB) is a disease dating back to antiquity and has continued to thrive to the present time. Signs of TB have been found in Egyptian mummies dating back to 3000 to 2400 BCE,¹ and scholars have postulated that TB may have led to the deaths of Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaton (1353-1336 BCE) and his wife Nefertiti. TB, then known as “the consumption,” reached epidemic proportion in Europe in the 1700s, and was responsible for one in four deaths in England. The causative bacillus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and the mode of transmission were described by Robert Koch on March 24, 1882, which is now designated annually as World Tuberculosis Day.²In 2013, the World Health Organization estimated an annual rate of 9 million new TB cases, and it is second only to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and AIDS as a single infectious agent killer. TB is also a major cause of death in HIV-related mortalities. Globally, the incidence is declining, albeit slowly.³In the United States, the incidence of TB showed a resurgent increase, peaking in 1992 after decades of steady decline due to the emergence of HIV/AIDS; subsequently, the incidence of TB has continuously declined at the rate of 3% to 4% per year, with 9588 new cases reported in 2013. The majority of cases represent reactivation of latent TB acquired previously in foreign-born individuals, and reflects TB incidence in their countries of origin.⁴Extrapulmonary sites account for 10% of all TB cases; genitourinary TB accounts for 30% to 40% of all extrapulmonary cases, second to lymph nodal affection. Peak occurrence for urogenital TB is between the ages of 20 and 40 years, with a 2:1 ratio of men to women; it is more prevalent in developing countries.⁵Urogenital TB arises from hematogenous dissemination from the lungs; the kidney, epididymis, and prostate are the primary landing sites. The bacillus then gains access to other organs via direct or lymphatic means. Affected individuals are often free of any pulmonary symptoms or involvement.Signs and symptoms for urogenital TB are typically nonspecific and usually mimic a wide range of more commonly occurring urologic conditions. Lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), pyuria, hematuria, and pain are among the usual presenting symptoms; they are usually refractory to standard treatment regimens and are easily missed unless a high index of suspicion is exercised.