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Lay SummaryAnimals often have darker coloration on their top surface than on their underside (“countershading”). In terrestrial prey, this patterning eliminates the body’s shadows to facilitate camouflage. In a freshwater fish that can change color, countershading provides optimal camouflage for different visual backgrounds and viewing angles rather than to reduce shadowing. Countershading camouflage may operate differently in terrestrial and aquatic habitats.

India's rise in Africa has been largely overlooked, despite the important implications of the growing presence of Indian corporations and a rise in New Delhi's political ties with the continent. Not only are Indian actors providing much-needed investment and capital, but Indo-African connections represent a further important diversification of Africa's international relations, something which reflects a major development for the continent. Indian activity in Africa may be said to constitute a middle ground between China's profit-maximizing and largely statist approach and the much-resented intrusive conditionalities associated with western policies. It is evident that India's growing activity in Africa has the potential to help African companies become more efficient by exposing them to competition, new advances in technology and modern labour skills. African governments could potentially use the opportunity of an increased Indian corporate presence in Africa as sources of appropriate technology, skills and advice for economic development. However, if not handled correctly, any goodwill that India possesses in Africa will quickly be squandered and/or India will become just another actor in Africa. It is up to Africans to negotiate with Indian actors to ensure that the benefits accrued from Indo-African ties are evenly shared and that Indian interest in the continent, alongside that of others, may help to serve as a catalyst for economic revitalization. The key issue is how African leaders can seek to leverage newfound Indian investment and interest in Africa so that Africa's place in global trade networks becomes more proactive and beneficial to the continent's citizens.

Background Multiple factors contribute to muscle weakness and reduced muscle mass in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and this impacts patients’ quality of life. One factor implicated in this process is systemic inflammation, an accompaniment of acute exacerbations. Recurrent exacerbations are associated with lower health status. This study examines the relationship between muscle weaknesses, health status and exacerbation frequency in a cohort of patients with COPD. Methods This is an observational study of 188 (95 female) patients with COPD attending two hospital clinics in the northeast of England between 2004 and 2007. We measured spirometry, body mass index, health status (St George’s Respiratory Questionnaire) and grip strength and recorded Medical Research Council dyspnoea scores and the frequency of exacerbations in the previous year. Results Patients were aged 72.568.3 years (data expressed as mean6SD) with Medical Research Council score of 3.660.8, forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) of 49.2621.5 per cent predicted and a total St George’s Respiratory Questionnaire score of 72.2615.5. Grip strength, expressed as per cent predicted, was 72.0621.8 in men and 81.0618.2 in women. Exacerbations ranged from zero to five in the previous year and there were associations of reduced grip strength with exacerbation frequency (c 2 ¼9.634; p¼0.0019) and lower health status (c 2 ¼34.00; p

Many endemic plant species belong to taxonomically complex groups. These endemics have often arisen as a consequence of recent and rapid evolutionary divergence facilitated by processes such as hybridization, polyploidy and/or breeding system transitions. The rapid and dynamic nature of divergence in taxonomically complex groups leads to problems in the implementation of traditional species-based approaches for the conservation of the biodiversity that they contain. Firstly, the taxa of interest can be difficult to define and identify, leading to practical difficulties in implementing conservation measures. Secondly, a species-based approach often fails to capture the complexity of diversity present in the taxonomically complex group. To accommodate these challenges, we have developed a Process-Based Species Action Plan approach. This is designed to conserve the processes leading to the generation of biodiversity, rather than focusing on the preservation of individual named taxa. We illustrate the approach using a group of endemic tree species (Sorbus) on the Scottish island of Arran that have originated via a combination of multiple recent hybridization events and apomixis. The plan focuses on the optimization of habitat management to ensure the reproduction and regeneration of Sorbus in the zone in which these evolutionary processes operate, and to facilitate hybridization that will ensure the continued generation of diversity in this group. © 2011 The Linnean Society of London, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 2012, 168, 194–203.

China’s political and economic activities in Africa are increasing at an exponential rate. Equally, they are attracting criticism, chiefly over Beijing’s no-strings-attached stance on human rights and governance. It is clear that many African states that enjoy Chinese support not only trample on civil and political rights (as per Western ideas of human rights), but also subvert their citizens’ economic and social rights (as per China’s discourse on human rights). If while adhering to the principle of non-interference, Chinese activities actually make things worse for some in Africa, then Beijing’s argument that basic socio-economic rights are more important for the poor than abstract political rights is potentially problematic. This is because there is a danger that Beijing’s engagement in Africa might be exploited by autocrats on the continent for their own, well-understood, reasons. Doing no harm, rather than a studied disinterest, needs to be part of China’s overall African policy, something that Beijing is bound to recognize. The preceding issues are the concern of this chapter.

Within the next five years, Chinese trade with Africa is predicted to reach $100 billion per year. Much of this springs from China's growing expansion into Africa's oil markets. It is argued that Chinese oil diplomacy in Africa has two main goals: in the short-term to secure oil supplies to help feed growing domestic demand back in China; and in the long-term, to position China as a global player in the international oil market. Yet at the same time, this oil safari is being accompanied by an explicit stance that emphasizes state sovereignty and ‘non-interference’ in domestic affairs and is wholly disinterested in transparency or human rights. Consequently, Beijing has increasingly been accused of turning a blind eye to autocracy and corruption. China is also threatening to undercut efforts by the African Union and its western partners to make government and business more accountable. While China is providing investment where little was previously forthcoming, concerns about Beijing's engagement with Africa's oil industries need to be resolved, not least by African leaders themselves.

Chancellor Gordon Brown has declared that 2005 will be a milestone in the United Kingdom's campaign to meet the UN Millennium Goals. Owing to Britain's chairmanship of both the G8 and the European Union in 2005, Brown believes that an opportunity to raise the continent's star in global politics presents itself. This comes after the launch in 2004 of the Blair Commission for Africa and a recent spate of high profile interventions by assorted politicians and famous musicians. It also follows a trend begun at the G8 meetings where Africa is placed on the G8 agenda. Such an interest in the continent is to be welcomed. Yet this article contends that Gordon Brown's assumptions regarding Africa's troubles, and the ingredients found within his proposals, are mistaken and need rethinking. The article argues that Brown's approach to Africa's problems is based on incomplete information or a misreading of the situation, and by default may serve to prolong Africa's crises rather than alleviate them.

This article examines how the British government has responded to Zimbabwe’s ongoing crisis. This case raises several wider issues for British foreign policy, most notably the question of how much leverage London can exercise on the international scene in general, and over relatively small and weak states like Zimbabwe in particular. Zimbabwe’s crisis also raises profound questions about the appropriate balance between bilateral and multilateral policies, and between engaging in public criticism and conducting so–called ‘quiet diplomacy’. While bilateralism clearly has not worked, multilateralism has revealed its own frustrations, especially given the reluctance of many African elites within a number of organizations to criticize President Mugabe’s policies. This reluctance threatens to unravel the British Labour government’s stated objectives in Africa while at the same time raising important doubts over the credibility of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), and whether an ‘Africa moment’ can be discerned in the manner articulated by prime minister Tony Blair.

Controversy surrounding the presidential elections in Zimbabwe, and the manner in which this matter has been handled by African heads of state, has cast serious doubts on the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). THE NEW PARTNERSHIP FOR AFRICA'S DEVELOPMENT (NEPAD) was launched in October 2001 as a blueprint for Africa's regeneration. Its limited approach to interrogating the global political economy has already been commented upon elsewhere.' This commentary, however, rather concentrates on holding NEPAD's commitment to democracy and peace signed by African elites themselves to account. It contrasts the actual concrete action that various African elites have pursued (or not pursued) in the aftermath of the Zimbabwe presidential election with the rhetoric they have been advancing in recent months. The NEPAD document itself asserts that 'African peoples have begun to demonstrate their refusal to accept poor economic and political leadership. These developments are, however, uneven and inadequate and need to be further expedited.'2 There is, so the document claims, 'a new resolve to deal with conflicts and censure deviation from the [democratic] norm'.3 This springs from the view that 'development is impossible in the absence of true democracy, respect for human rights, peace and good governance'.4 The NEPAD shows, the document claims, that 'Africa undertakes to respect the global standards of democracy, which core components include political pluralism, allowing for Ian Taylor teaches international relations at the University of Botswana and is also visiting research fellow at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. 1. Ian Taylor and Philip Nel, "'Getting the rhetoric right", getting the strategy wrong: "New Africa", globalisation and the confines of elite reformism', Third World Quarterly 23, 1 (February 2002), pp. 163-180. For an assessment of the NEPAD initiation see above, pp. 387-402, Kempe Ronald Hope, Sr, 'From crisis to renewal: towards a successful implementation of the new partnership for Africa's development'. 2. The New Economic Partnership for Africa's Development, October 2001, p. 2. 3. Ibid., p. 10. 4. Ibid., p. 17.

When plants encounter compacted soil, stomatal closure occurs and shoot growth slows. These responses occur in the absence of detectable changes in foliar water status. The use of genotypes with a reduced capacity to synthesize either ABA or ethylene has provided convincing evidence that ABA is responsible for providing the signal that regulates stomatal aperture, whereas increased ethylene production leads to an inhibition of shoot growth. Compaction results in an elevated export of ABA from the roots while enhanced ethylene synthesis is associated with increased expression of ACC oxidase in the aerial parts of the plant. Future work will explore the mechanisms responsible for regulating these events and the contribution of anaerobiosis to the stresses experienced by roots growing under compacted conditions.

Background: Adapting a postgraduate public health course which relies on a lot of classroom contact into one with a high proportion of distance learning is complex and there is little published literature available which focuses on this type of course development in public health. This paper examines the experience of converting the Master of Public Health (MPH) degree at the University of Liverpool into one that combines both distance learning and contact time in the classroom. Methods: The methods section is divided into 3 parts. Part 1 (structure) examines the importance of systematic planning prior to course development. Part 2 (process) describes staff training and development, writing, piloting and production of materials, methods of delivery and student support and Part 3 (outcomes) describes the model of evaluation used. Results: This section presents the preliminary results of the evaluation of the new course and implications for future development. The main issues arising from the evaluation include excessive demands in terms of student study time, some inconsistency in materials and teaching, varying levels of experience among students and the importance of ensuring integration of learning objectives where a modular approach is used. Conclusions: The evidence from the educational literature on the value of distance learning is supported by the experience of the Liverpool course. Distance learning based courses offer an Important way forward for academic institutions throughout Europe which are becoming increasingly market driven and resource conscious. They also offer an important medium for the current development of Europe-wide postgraduate education.

The role of ethylene in regulating growth in tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) during compaction stress was examined using wild-type (cv Ailsa Craig) and transgenic (ACO1AS) genotypes; the latter has a reduced capacity to produce ethylene. Ethephon or silver ions were applied to increase ethylene production or block its action. Shoot growth in both genotypes was comparable in uncompacted (1.1 g cm−3) and uniformly compacted soil (1.5 g cm−3). However, a 1.1/1.5-g cm−3 split-pot treatment invoked marked genotypic differences: growth was reduced in cv Ailsa Craig but was comparable to uncompacted control plants in ACO1AS. As xylem sap abscisic acid levels were similar, abscisic acid was not responsible for inhibiting growth in cv Ailsa Craig. These genotypic differences in growth were accompanied by increased ethylene evolution in cv Ailsa Craig, suggesting that the ability of ACO1AS to maintain growth in the split-pot treatment reflected its lower ethylene levels, a view supported by the observation that excising the roots in the compacted compartment reduced ethylene evolution and restored shoot growth in cv Ailsa Craig. Treatment with silver restored shoot growth in cv Ailsa Craig, whereas treatment with ethephon reduced growth in ACO1AS. Thus, ethylene apparently has a key role in determining growth when tomato plants encounter differential soil compaction.

The paper presented here takes the form of a series of essentially personal, interpretative, and analytical reflections on one particular suburb in South Manchester, where the author has been living for the last three years. The organizing motive is to attempt a close and detailed reading—a 'thick description', in Clifford Geertz's words (1983)—of the social character of this local suburb, its landmarks and 'symbolic locations', the topics of conversation that occur among small gatherings of residents (in the Post Office, the supermarket check-outs etc.) and the news stories that dominate the local newspaper press, and then to offer out a ' hermeneutic' account of the dominant themes and topics so uncovered. The paper benefits from conversations with the small number of friendly neighbours and friends made in this area as well as from listening to the talk of two teenage daughters and their friends. The paper is not the result of any systematic, formal survey work as such, although interviews have been carried out with local police, private security companies, local councillors, and crime prevention volunteers.1 Neither is the concern of this particular paper to impose a particular theory, from somewhere in the existing literature, on these materials, or in some way to 'test' the findings of the several studies that have been completed by geographers, urban sociologists, or criminologists on the quality of life in particular localities, on patterns of local crime or local fears (for example, of the differential impact of the mass media in particular localities). We have referenced some connections between our hermeneutic reading of Hale and existing literatures in footnotes, but the organizing concern here is to try to capture and understand the detail of everyday life ( including the significance of the fear of crime ) in a relatively affluent, but undeniably anxious, suburb in a major conurbation in England half way through the 1990s where the author currently resides.

Zeaxanthin epoxidase (ZE) catalyses two early steps in the abscisic acid (ABA) biosynthetic pathway. The sequence of a cDNA clone encoding ZE from Nicotiana plumbaginifolia was reported in 1996 and represented the first DNA sequence data on an ABA biosynthetic enzyme. The N. plumbaginifolia cDNA has been used to provide a heterologous probe to isolate a ZE cDNA from tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.). DNA and amino acid sequence differences are considered in relation to putative functional domains within the enzyme. The results of northern analysis in tomato are discussed in relation to the effects of water stress on ZE mRNA levels.

Linforth, R. S. T., Taylor, I. B. and Hedden, P. 1987. Abscisic acid and C10 dicarboxylic acids in wihy tomato mutants.—J. exp. Bot. 38: 1734-1740. genotypes studied (flacca, sitiens and the double mutant homozygote flacca/sitiens) were found to have higher concentrations of 2,7-dimethyl-2,4-octadienedioic acid (ODA) than the isogenic normal form. In contrast, the other genotypes (notabilis and the double mutant homozygotes notabilis/flacca and notabilis/sitiens) were found to have lower concentrations of ODA than the isogenic normal form. The concentration of ODA in flacca plants was increased by water stress and reduced by exogenously applied abscisic acid (ABA). A second structurally related compound, 2,7-dimethyl-4-octenedioic acid (OEA) was also quantified, but it showed no clear genotype-related pattern. The concentration of ABA in the wilty tomato mutants was also investigated. As expected in the light of previously published results, it was reduced in the single mutants relative to the isogenic control plants. In the double mutant flacca/sitiens ABA levels were similar to those of the single mutant sitiens. However, in the two double mutants notabilis/flacca and notabilis/sitiens ABA was substantially lower than those in any other genotype investigated. Key words—Abscisic acid, 2,7-dimethyl-2,4-octadienedioic acid, 2,7-dimethyl-4-octenedioc acid, tomato, wilty mutants.

RS-[2H,] cis ABA-aldehyde was fed to ABA-deficient mutants of potato (droopy), pea (wilty) and Arabidopsis thaliana (aba1) along with appropriate non-mutant controls. Both the wilty and aba1 mutants readily oxidized the monodeuterated ABA aldehyde to ABA. The incorporation of label into ABA by these two mutants was indistinguishable from that detected in the non-mutant controls. In contrast, the droopy mutants poorly incorporated the labelled precursor into ABA. Instead they reduced and isomerized RS-[2HJ cis ABA-aldehyde to a mixture of 2, cis and 2, trans ABA-alcohols. Thus the droopy mutant affects the last step in ABA biosynthesis, a position it shares with the tomato mutants, flacca and sitiens. Genetic evidence suggesting that droopy and sitiens may be corresponding gene loci is discussed.