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Elevated ground-level ozone, a result of human activity, is known to reduce plant productivity, but its influence on tropical forests remains unclear. Here we estimate how increased ozone exposure has affected tropical-forest productivity and the global carbon cycle. We experimentally measure the ozone susceptibility of various tropical tree species, and then incorporate these data into a dynamic global vegetation model. We find that current anthropogenic-derived ozone results in a substantial decline in annual net primary productivity (NPP) across all tropical forests, with some areas being particularly impacted. For example, Asia sees losses of 10.9% (7.2–19.7%) NPP. We calculate that this productivity decline has resulted in a cumulative loss in carbon drawdown of 0.29 PgC per year since 2000, equating to ~17% of the tropical contemporary annual land carbon sink in the twenty-first century. We also find that areas of current and future forest restoration are disproportionately affected by elevated ozone. Future socioeconomic pathways that reduce ozone formation in the tropics will incur benefits to the global carbon budget by relieving the current ozone impacts seen across both intact forest and areas of forest restoration, which are critical terrestrial regions for mitigation of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The globally important carbon sink of intact, old-growth tropical humid forests is declining because of climate change, deforestation and degradation from fire and logging1–3. Recovering tropical secondary and degraded forests now cover about 10% of the tropical forest area4, but how much carbon they accumulate remains uncertain. Here we quantify the aboveground carbon (AGC) sink of recovering forests across three main continuous tropical humid regions: the Amazon, Borneo and Central Africa5,6. On the basis of satellite data products4,7, our analysis encompasses the heterogeneous spatial and temporal patterns of growth in degraded and secondary forests, influenced by key environmental and anthropogenic drivers. In the first 20 years of recovery, regrowth rates in Borneo were up to 45% and 58% higher than in Central Africa and the Amazon, respectively. This is due to variables such as temperature, water deficit and disturbance regimes. We find that regrowing degraded and secondary forests accumulated 107 Tg C year−1(90–130 Tg C year−1) between 1984 and 2018, counterbalancing 26% (21–34%) of carbon emissions from humid tropical forest loss during the same period. Protecting old-growth forests is therefore a priority. Furthermore, we estimate that conserving recovering degraded and secondary forests can have a feasible future carbon sink potential of 53 Tg C year−1(44–62 Tg C year−1) across the main tropical regions studied.

Conflicts in resource use between humans and wildlife populations are increasingly determined through quantitative approaches. To better understand interactions between birds and human activities in the marine environment, telemetry is routinely used to characterize the area use of species, but evaluations are often based on a small number of individuals taken as representative of a local population studied. Furthermore, the relative importance of the number of animals required and for what duration they should be tracked has received little attention. We examined the central‐place foraging movements of 24 lesser black‐backed gulls (Larus fuscus) from a protected population from 1 March to 31 August during 2010–2013. Using bootstrapping and non‐linear modeling, we investigated whether sample sizes were sufficient to characterize offshore area use by considering the cumulative area use for an increasing number of birds and duration of tracking. Box‐and‐whisker analysis suggested a minimum of 13 birds and a precautionary upper maximum of 41 birds were needed to describe 95% of the estimated area use of the population (defined by 100% occupancy). Tracking fewer birds for longer was more important than tracking more birds for less time. A period of 145 days was required to characterize area use for 13–41 birds; however, offshore areas were used primarily after May, meaning that a 97‐day tracking period from May onwards was also representative. Predicted and observed areas were strongly correlated, and the predicted area of 15 birds for 151 days was 91% of the total estimated for the population. These findings suggest that the data were suitable for determining interaction with offshore developments, and were characteristic of the population. This study has revealed the power of a long‐term tracking dataset, and has uncovered further complexities surrounding study design and analysis that may shape conclusions drawn. The method and considerations raised have wider applicability for other datasets where human‐wildlife resource use conflicts need to be assessed. © 2017 The Wildlife Society. Using a bootstrap resampling procedure, we found that a suitable number of individual lesser black‐backed gulls had been tracked from a study colony over a long enough time period to appropriately characterize area use of the population during breeding; therefore, confidence could be placed in further use of the data to assess interactions with offshore wind farms. We uncovered complexities surrounding study design and analysis that may shape conclusions drawn, but the techniques employed are widely applicable to assess the power of other tracking datasets.

ABSTRACTRecent developments in GPS tracking technology allow the movements of bird species to be followed in ever-greater detail. Seabird research is benefiting greatly, due to the challenges of tracking species that often roam widely out at sea. Amongst the gulls, one of the pressing issues is to understand the ecology of the relatively recent urban colonists and how they differ from their counterparts in traditional rural colonies. Here, we present what we believe are the first GPS results from roof-nesting gulls. Four adult Herring Gulls (two males, two females) were fitted with GPS tags in May 2014 in the seaside town of St Ives, Cornwall (breeding colony c250 pairs), and tracked for c100 days during the 2014 breeding season. We estimated the home ranges of the four individuals and how their movement behaviour varied through the 24-h period and across the breeding season. The results highlight how variable movement behaviour was among individuals: whilst one bird roamed widely (90% range estimate = 560 km2), heading >50 km offshore and often active at night or roosting at sea, two birds had small ranges (<10 km2), always attended the colony at night and rarely headed more than a few hundred metres offshore, with the fourth displaying intermediate behaviour. All of the birds regularly utilised a few key sites within the agricultural landscape south of St Ives. Whilst this study was too small to allow general conclusions to be drawn about urban Herring Gulls, it reinforces how variable individual behaviour can be amongst the large gulls and will be particularly interesting when applied to a larger sample of birds, especially in big urban gull colonies further inland.

The series of Mount Merapi eruptions, which involved a big explosion on 26 October 2010, had been made the damages. It caused the residents, especially those having responsible for other people such as mothers, volunteers, teachers and village apparatus, get depressed. They went through so much depression because besides as survivors their beings were important to others. Therefore, the impacts they felt were not only physical but also psychological. In addition to depression, they were attacked by anxiety. The subjects of this research were groups of mothers, volunteers, teachers and village officials of Sirahan Village, Magelang Regency. Intervention of Hope to lessen depression was taken to them in order to help them face the post-disaster situations. Hope Intervention covered session aiming to identify goals, plan strategies and strengthen motivation to reach the goals. The intervention was taken in four-time meeting with duration of more or less two hours per meeting. The research used a design involving untreated control group with dependent pre-test and post-test and waiting list control group. The control group was given the same treatment after the research process ended. The scores gained by both groups were analyzed with Mann-Whitney Test. The data resulted from observation were analyzed qualitatively. Both analyzing methods showed that there was significant difference of the average of depression rate between the experiment group and the control group at the pre-test and post-test with the value of F = 11.589; p=0.001 (p<0.05). This result showed that hope intervention had significant influence on decreasing the depression rate in the experiment group compared with that in the control group. Therefore it can be concluded that Hope Intervention can lessen depression in the survivors of natural disaster.

Tracking devices are useful in studying the movement and behaviour of birds throughout the year. However, the effects of device attachment must be monitored for bird welfare and the scientific veracity of information gathered. We report on a trial of three different harness types (leg-loop, body and wing) for attaching GPS devices to Lesser Black-backed Gulls Larus fuscusand of a leg-loop harness on Great Skuas Stercorarius skua. This trial evaluated the functionality of the device whilst deployed, harness retention and the effects of each harness on the birds. The leg-loop harness prevented the devices from charging, due to feathers overlapping their solar panels, and individuals of both species shed this attachment during the first breeding season. For Lesser Black-backed Gull, devices functioned properly when attached using body and wing harnesses; foraging behaviour and territory attendance of birds were similar to the findings of other studies. Despite small sample sizes, annual adult survival rates for Lesser Black-backed Gull were similar to published estimates, suggesting harnesses had no deleterious effects. The wing harness has a smaller amount of skin contact than the body harness, and a non-constricting fit that better accommodates changes in body size. The wing harness was therefore considered the most appropriate for long-term studies.

Background: Androgen receptor (AR) and the phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase (PI3K) signaling are two of the most important pathways implicated in prostate cancer. Previous work has shown that there is crosstalk between these two pathways; however, there are conflicting findings and the molecular mechanisms are not clear. Here we studied the AR–PI3K pathway crosstalk in prostate cancer cells in vitro as well as in vivo.Methods: Quantitative PCR, Western analysis, reporter assays, and proliferation analyses in vitro and in vivo were used to evaluate the effect of PI3K pathway inhibition on AR signaling and cell growth.Results: Transcriptional activity of AR was increased when the PI3K pathway was inhibited at different levels. In the androgen responsive prostate cancer cell line LNCaP, androgen and the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin synergistically activated androgen target genes. Despite increased androgen signaling, rapamycin treatment reduced LNCaP cell growth; the AR antagonist bicalutamide potentiated this effect. Furthermore, the rapamycin derivative CCI-779 reduced the growth of CWR22 prostate cancer xenografts while increasing AR target gene expression.Conclusion: These findings suggest that inhibition of the PI3K pathway activates AR signaling. Despite the increase in AR signaling which has proliferative effects, the result of PI3K pathway inhibition is antiproliferative. These findings suggest that the PI3K pathway is dominant over AR signaling in prostate cancer cells which should be considered in developing novel therapeutic strategies for prostate cancer.

The L-type Ca2+ channel plays a critical role in cardiac function as the main route for entry of calcium into cardiac myocytes. It is essential to excitability as it shapes the long plateau phase of the cardiac action potential that is unique to cardiac ventricular myocytes. It is necessary for contraction as it triggers the release of calcium from sarcoplasmic reticulum stores for actin-myosin interaction. The L-type Ca2+ channel also regulates cytoplasmic calcium levels. It is well recognized that an increase in intracellular calcium is involved in the activation of growth-promoting signal pathways. Recently, reactive oxygen species have been implicated in the activation of signal pathways and the development of pathological hypertrophy. There is now evidence that implicates activation of the L-type Ca2+ channel with persistent alterations in calcium homeostasis and cellular reactive oxygen species production as a possible trigger of cardiac hypertrophy. A number of different approaches have been used to modify channel function with the view to preventing ischemiareperfusion injury, cardiac hypertrophy or cardiac failure providing good evidence that the L-type Ca2+ channel may be an efficacious target in the prevention of cardiac pathology.

The L-type Ca2 channel plays a critical role in cardiac function as the main route for entry of calcium into cardiac myocytes. It is essential to excitability as it shapes the long plateau phase of the cardiac action potential that is unique to cardiac ventricular myocytes. It is necessary for contraction as it triggers the release of calcium from sarcoplasmic reticulum stores for actin-myosin interaction. The L-type Ca2 channel also regulates cytoplasmic calcium levels. It is well recognized that an increase in intracellular calcium is involved in the activation of growth-promoting signal pathways. Recently, reactive oxygen species have been implicated in the activation of signal pathways and the development of pathological hypertrophy. There is now evidence that implicates activation of the L-type Ca2 channel with persistent alterations in calcium homeostasis and cellular reactive oxygen species production as a possible trigger of cardiac hypertrophy. A number of different approaches have been used to modify channel function with the view to preventing ischemiareperfusion injury, cardiac hypertrophy or cardiac failure providing good evidence that the L-type Ca2 channel may be an efficacious target in the prevention of cardiac pathology.

Long-term habituation to a novel environment is one of the most elementary forms of nonassociative learning. Here we studied the effect of pre- or posttraining intrahippocampal administration of drugs acting on specific molecular targets on the retention of habituation to a 5-min exposure to an open field measured 24 h later. We also determined whether the exposure to a novel environment resulted in the activation of the same intracellular signaling cascades previously shown to be activated during hippocampal-dependent associative learning. The immediate posttraining bilateral infusion of CNQX (1 microg/side), an AMPA/kainate glutamate receptor antagonist, or of muscimol (0.03 microg/side), a GABA(A) receptor agonist, into the CA1 region of the dorsal hippocampus impaired long-term memory of habituation. The NMDA receptor antagonist AP5 (5 microg/side) impaired habituation when infused 15 min before, but not when infused immediately after, the 5-min training session. In addition, KN-62 (3.6 ng/side), an inhibitor of calcium calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII), was amnesic when infused 15 min before or immediately and 3 h after training. In contrast, the cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) inhibitor Rp-cAMPS, the mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase (MAPKK) inhibitor PD098059, and the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin, at doses that fully block memory formation of inhibitory avoidance learning, did not affect habituation to a novel environment. The detection of spatial novelty is associated with a sequential activation of PKA, ERKs (p44 and p42 MAPKs) and CaMKII and the phosphorylation of c-AMP responsive element-binding protein (CREB) in the hippocampus. These findings suggest that memory formation of spatial habituation depends on the functional integrity of NMDA and AMPA/kainate receptors and CaMKII activity in the CA1 region of the hippocampus and that the detection of spatial novelty is accompanied by the activation of at least three different hippocampal protein kinase signaling cascades.

The list of activities of plant flavonoids did not include effects on the central nervous system (CNS) up to 1990, when our laboratory described the existence of natural anxiolytic flavonoids. The first of these was chrysin (5,7‐dihydroxyflavone), followed by apigenin (5,7,4′‐trihydroxyflavone) and flavone itself. Semisynthetic derivatives of flavone obtained by introducing halogens, nitro groups or both in its molecule, give rise to high affinity ligands for the benzodiazepine receptor, active in‐vivo; 6,3′‐dinitroflavone, for example, is an anxiolytic drug 30 times more potent than diazepam.

The list of activities of plant flavonoids did not include effects on the central nervous system (CNS) up to 1990, when our laboratory described the existence of natural anxiolytic flavonoids. The first of these was chrysin (5,7-dihydroxyflavone), followed by apigenin (5,7,4′-trihydroxyflavone) and flavone itself. Semisynthetic derivatives of flavone obtained by introducing halogens, nitro groups or both in its molecule, give rise to high affinity ligands for the benzodiazepine receptor, active in-vivo; 6,3′-dinitroflavone, for example, is an anxiolytic drug 30 times more potent than diazepam.The data collected in this paper make clear that some natural flavonoids are CNS-active molecules and that the chemical modification of the flavone nucleus dramatically increases their anxiolytic potency.

Salvia guaraniticaSt. Hil. is a traditional medicinal plant used in Latin America as sedative. We have recently demonstrated the presence of cirsiliol in its extracts and found that this flavonoid is a competitive low affinity benzodiazepine receptor ligand (Marder et al., 1996). This report describes the pharmacological properties of Salvia guaraniticaextracts and of its active principle, cirsiliol. A partially purified fraction of this plant, administered intraperitoneally in mice (in a dose equivalent to 3 g of the fresh plant), exhibited sedative and hypnotic effects as measured in the hole board and in the pentobarbital-induced sleep tests, respectively. On the other hand, this fraction had no anxiolytic or myorelaxant effects. In the pentobarbital-induced sleep test, cirsiliol (2–10mg/kg, i. p.) exhibited a dose-dependent hypnotic action. In contrast, it did not produce myorelaxant (up to 30mg/kg) or anticonvulsant (up to 10mg/kg) effects. Cirsiliol was found to be more potent in displacing 3H Zolpidem binding (Ki= 20 LiM) than 3H flunitrazepam binding (Ki= 200 μM) to benzodiazepine receptors from rat cerebral cortex.

Flavonoids isolated from plants used as tranquilizers in folkloric medicine have a selective affinity, for central benzodiazepine receptors (BDZ-Rs) and some of them possess a pharmacological profile compatible with a partial agonist action. Synthetic derivatives of the common flavone nucleus, give rise to high affinity ligands when electronegative groups are introduced in carbons 6 and/or 3′. Representative compounds such as 6,3′-dinitroflavone and, 6-bromo-3′-nitroflavone exhibit a high affinity for the BDZ-Rs (Ki = 1.5 to 30 nM) and have anxiolytic effects not associated with myorelaxant, sedative or amnesic actions.

Methylthio substituted 1,2-dithiolylium-4-olates 1 are obtained by thiolation of 1,3-dichlorpro pane-2-one or pyruvic thiomorpholide with sulfur and triethylamine in dimethylformamide and subsequent alklyation. Aminolysis yields the amino substituted derivatives. IR and UV/VIS spectra of the bis(methylthio), methylthio dimethylaminophenyl and bis(dimethylaminophenyl) compounds provide evidence in favour of the cyclic structure 1 whereas the spectra of the bis(amino) and amino methylthio compounds are rather compatible with non-cyclic valence isomeric structures 2. Both 1 and 2 react with acids to form 4-hydroxy-1,2-dithiolylium salts. The colour-structure relationships of 1,2-dithiolylium-4-olates were examined by PPP-type calculations. The lowest excited states and the colour determining transitions are accounted for in terms of the dithiolylium and olate moieties. The negative solvatochromism of the colour bands of 1 is related to the marked amount of oxygen-to dithiolylium charge transfer of the lowest-excited π→π* transition. In larger molecules such as 1h the colour is governed by the lowest electronic transition of polymethine-type subchromophores rather than that of the intramolecular charge transfer chromophores and, therefore are pertinent to cyaninedyes.

Ligands for the central benzodiazepine receptors have been detected in the crude ethanolic extract of Salvia guaranitica. The compounds responsible for the activity were isolated by bioassay-directed fractionation and have been characterised as cirsiliol(5, 3′, 4′-trihydroxy 6,7-dimethoxyflavone) and caffeic acid ethyl ester.

ChemInform is a weekly Abstracting Service, delivering concise information at a glance that was extracted from about 100 leading journals. To access a ChemInform Abstract of an article which was published elsewhere, please select a “Full Text” option. The original article is trackable via the “References” option.

In order to study the relation between the 1,2‐dithiolium‐4‐olates (III) and their valence isomers such as (VI), some of these derivatives are prepared.

ChemInform is a weekly Abstracting Service, delivering concise information at a glance that was extracted from about 100 leading journals. To access a ChemInform Abstract of an article which was published elsewhere, please select a “Full Text” option. The original article is trackable via the “References” option.