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Over the last decades, aerial insectivorous birds have been declining in both North America and Europe. Those declines have been hypothetically attributed to a decrease in prey availability caused by agricultural intensification, but empirical evidence remains scarce. Here, we quantify the effect of landscape composition on the abundance and diversity of potential prey of Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor (Vieillot, 1808)) and on nestling diet in southern Quebec, Canada. We collected food boluses from nestlings and compared their composition with spatiotemporally corresponding samples from traps on farms distributed along a gradient of agricultural intensification. The diet of nestlings was mostly composed of Diptera, both in biomass and abundance, but by mid-June, these decreased with increasing proportions of intensively cultivated crops within 500 m of the nests. Trap catches for Diptera and all arthropods combined followed the same trends. Yet, the associations between Diptera subgroups (Nematocera, non-schizophoran Brachycera, Schizophora (Calyptratae), and Schizophora (Acalyptratae)) and landscape composition differed between traps and boluses, suggesting that prey selection was altered by agricultural intensification. Our results suggest that agriculture can alter the availability of preferred prey for aerial insectivores, and further studies should evaluate the impact of prey availability to explain the decline of aerial insectivores. Key words: aerial insectivorous bird, arthropods, agricultural intensification, Diptera, redundancy analysis (RDA), Tree Swallow, Tachycineta bicolor. Depuis quelques decennies, les oiseaux insectivores aeriens sont en declin en Amerique du Nord et en Europe. La diminution de la disponibilite de proies dans l'environnement causee par l'intensification agricole est souvent l'hypothese suggeree pour expliquer ces declins, mais les preuves empiriques le confirmant sont rares. Cette etude quantifie l'effet de la composition du paysage sur l'abondance et la diversite des proies potentielles de l'Hirondelle bicolore (Tachycineta bicolor (Vieillot, 1808)) tout comme sur la diete des oisillons dans le sud du Quebec (Canada). Des becquees alimentaires ont ete prelevees a des oisillons et leur composition a ete comparee a celle d'echantillons recoltes par des pieges a insectes installes le long d'un gradient d'intensification agricole. La diete des oisillons etait majoritairement composee de dipteres tant au niveau de l'abondance que de la biomasse, mais des la mi-juin, ces parametres diminuaient a mesure qu'augmentait la proportion des cultures intensives dans un rayon de 500 m des nids. Les memes relations ont ete trouvees pour les echantillons des pieges a insectes en ce qui a trait aux dipteres analyses seuls, mais aussi pour tous les arthropodes combines. Les associations entre les sous-groupes de dipteres (nematoceres, brachyceres non-schizophores, schizophores (Calyptratae) et schizophores (Acalyptratae)) et les composantes du paysage agricole differaient cependant entre les becquees alimentaires et les pieges a insectes suggerant que la selection des proies est influencee par l'intensification agricole. Nos resultats suggerent donc que l'agriculture peut alterer la disponibilite de proies pour les insectivores aeriens, mais d'autres etudes devraient toutefois etre effectuees afin d'expliquer l'effet de la disponibilite de proies dans le milieu sur le declin des insectivores aeriens. Mots-cles: oiseau insectivore aerien, arthropodes, intensification agricole, dipteres, analyse de redondance, hirondelle bicolore, Tachycineta bicolor., Introduction Anthropogenic environmental changes are affecting a large number of species worldwide and in many cases result in their decline (Fuller et al. 1995; Wittmer et al. 2007; Cahill et [...]

Lower immune response usually translates into lower fitness. Environmental quality can play a key role in shaping immune responses in the wild, as it influences both resource availability and costly maintenance functions. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of habitat quality on proinflammatory response to phytohemagglutinin (PHA) in Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor (Vieillot, 1808)) under contrasting agricultural practices. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that lower quality habitat (intensive agricultural practices and low temperature) negatively impairs immune responses. To do so, we compared the response to PHA of adult female and nestling Tree Swallows nesting in intensive vs. nonintensive agricultural landscapes over 3 years (2008-2010). In accordance with our predictions, we found that habitat quality affected adult female responses to PHA. The response of adult females was significantly higher in nonintensive agricultural areas than in intensive ones. The level of agricultural intensity, however, had no influence on the response to PHA of nestlings. Our results suggest that female adults can buffer the negative impact of a low- quality habitat on their nestlings. Furthermore, our results suggest that under limiting conditions, individuals may have to trade between immunity and other functions such as parental effort. Key words: agriculture, immunity, landscape; temperature, individual condition, Tree Swallow, Tachycineta bicolor. Une reponse immunitaire reduite mene generalement a une survie reduite. La qualite environnementale peut jouer un role cle dans la modulation de la reponse immunitaire dans la nature puisqu'elle influence les ressources disponibles et les fonctions de maintien couteuses. Le but de cette etude est d'evaluer l'effet de la qualite environnementale sur la reponse proinflammatoire suite a une injection de phytohemagglutinine (PHA) chez l'Hirondelle bicolore (Tachycineta bicolor (Vieillot, 1808)) en milieu agricole. Plus precisement, nous avons verifie si un habitat de moindre qualite (agriculture intensive, faible temperature) influence negativement la reponse immunitaire. Pour ce faire, nous avons compare la reponse a la PHA des femelles adultes et des oisillons nichant dans des milieux agricoles intensif et non intensif sur une periode de 3 ans (2008-2010). Comme prevu, nous avons constate que la qualite environnementale influencait la reponse a la PHA des femelles. La reponse des femelles adultes etait significativement plus elevee en milieu non intensif qu'en milieu intensif. Par contre, l'intensite de l'agriculture n'influencait pas la reponse a la PHA des oisillons. Nos resultats suggerent que les femelles adultes pourraient tamponner l'effet negatif d'un environnement de mauvaise qualite sur leurs oisillons. De plus, nos resultats suggerent que, dans des habitats de mauvaise qualite, certains individus pourraient faire un compromis entre l'immunite et d'autres fonctions couteuses telles que les soins parentaux. Mots-cles: agriculture, immunite, environnement, temperature, condition, Hirondelle bicolore, Tachycineta bicolor., Introduction Immunity has wide implications for animal life history, as it represents the main line of defence against pathogens and is thus intimately linked to fitness (Saino et al. 1997a; [...]

The EU and New Zealand are the only legislations where genome-edited plants are considered and regulated as GMOs while many other countries move to exempt genome-edited crops., (© 2020 The Authors. Published under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.)

Purpose: This study evaluated the comparative effectiveness of different pharmacist visit types on reducing readmission rates. Method: A single-center, retrospective cohort study was conducted from January 2015 to July 2017. Patients were 18 years or older with an index heart failure (HF) exacerbation admission. Upon hospital discharge, patients were seen in clinic by a clinical pharmacy specialist (CPS) with collaborative practice agreement (CPA) (High Intensity Bundle), medication therapy management (MTM) pharmacist without CPA (Low Intensity Bundle), or no pharmacist (Standard of Care [SOC]). The primary outcome was 30-day all-cause readmission rate. Secondary outcomes included rate of 30-day HF readmissions and average number of days until readmission in those who were readmitted. Results: Totally, 98 patients were included in the final analysis (35 High Intensity Bundle, 28 Low Intensity Bundle, and 35 SOC). The primary outcome of all-cause readmissions was lower in both the pharmacist groups compared with SOC (CPS 8.6% [3/35] vs SOC 25.7% [9/35], P = 0.046 and MTM 7.1% [2/28] vs SOC 25.7% [9/35], P = 0.057). Incremental differences were seen between visit types for the secondary outcome of 30-day HF readmissions (CPS 2.9% vs MTM 7.1% vs SOC 17.1%, P = 0.039). The average number of days until readmission was longer in the CPS versus the MTM and SOC (26.7 days vs 12.5 days vs 14.1 days, respectively). Conclusion: Post-hospital discharge pharmacist visits were associated with lower 30-day all-cause readmission. In particular, clinic visits with a Higher Intensity Bundle may be more effective in reducing HF readmissions. These exploratory findings warrant further investigation., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2018.)

Help Me Tell My Story (HMTMS) is an assessment tool that uses a holistic approach and an electronic application to measure the oral language development of pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children. It includes access to an online portal that provides meaningful information to caregivers, educators and administrators. This study examines the psychometric properties of one of the five questionnaires included in the HMTMS assessment, which explores the ability of children to talk to family members, friends and teachers. It uses an unrestricted partial credit Rasch version to analyse data from 844. children. Results indicate that, although we obtained a modest reliability index, the scale's psychometric characteristics are within effective ranges, as no response dependency was found and the items constitute a unidimensional scale. There is no differential item functioning (DIF) related to gender, grade levels and ethnicity on this scale. Thus this assessment tools is appropriate for use in early years oral language measurement.

l-Ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is an abundant metabolite in plant cells and tissues. Ascorbate functions as an antioxidant, as an enzyme cofactor, and plays essential roles in multiple physiological processes including photosynthesis, photoprotection, control of cell cycle and cell elongation, and modulation of flowering time, gene regulation, and senescence. The importance of this key molecule in regulating whole plant morphology, cell structure, and plant development has been clearly established via characterization of low vitamin C mutants of Arabidopsis , potato, tobacco, tomato, and rice. However, the consequences of elevating ascorbate content in plant growth and development are poorly understood. Here we demonstrate that Arabidopsis lines over-expressing a myo -inositol oxygenase or an l-gulono-1,4-lactone oxidase, containing elevated ascorbate, display enhanced growth and biomass accumulation of both aerial and root tissues. To our knowledge this is the first study demonstrating such a marked positive effect in plant growth in lines engineered to contain elevated vitamin C content. In addition, we present evidence showing that these lines are tolerant to a wide range of abiotic stresses including salt, cold, and heat. Total ascorbate content of the transgenic lines remained higher than those of controls under the abiotic stresses tested. Interestingly, exposure to pyrene, a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon and known inducer of oxidative stress in plants, leads to stunted growth of the aerial tissue, reduction in the number of root hairs, and inhibition of leaf expansion in wild type plants, while these symptoms are less severe in the over-expressers. Our results indicate the potential of this metabolic engineering strategy to develop crops with enhanced biomass, abiotic stress tolerance, and phytoremediation capabilities.

Microfungi that inhabit floral nectar offer unique opportunities for the study of microbial distribution and the role that dispersal limitation may play in generating distribution patterns. Flowers are well-replicated habitat islands, among which the microbes disperse via pollinators. This metapopulation system allows for investigation of microbial distribution at multiple spatial scales. We examined the distribution of the yeast, Metschnikowia reukaufii, and other fungal species found in the floral nectar of the sticky monkey flower, Mimulus aurantiacus, a hummingbird-pollinated shrub, at a California site. We found that the frequency of nectar-inhabiting microfungi on a given host plant was not significantly correlated with light availability, nectar volume, or the percent cover of M. aurantiacus around the plant, but was significantly correlated with the location of the host plant and loosely correlated with the density of flowers on the plant. These results suggest that dispersal limitation caused by spatially nonrandom foraging by pollinators may be a primary factor driving the observed distribution pattern.

Priority effects, in which the outcome of species interactions depends on the order of their arrival, are a key component of many models of community assembly. Yet, much remains unknown about how priority effects vary in strength among species in a community and what factors explain this variation. We experimented with a model natural community in laboratory microcosms that allowed us to quantify the strength of priority effects for most of the yeast species found in the floral nectar of a hummingbird-pollinated shrub at a biological preserve in northern California. We found that priority effects were widespread, with late-arriving species experiencing strong negative effects from early-arriving species. However, the magnitude of priority effects varied across species pairs. This variation was phylogenetically non-random, with priority effects stronger between closer relatives. Analysis of carbon and amino acid consumption profiles indicated that competition between closer relatives was more intense owing to higher ecological similarity, consistent with Darwin's naturalization hypothesis. These results suggest that phylogenetic relatedness between potential colonists may explain the strength of priority effects and, as a consequence, the degree to which community assembly is historically contingent.

The td intron of bacteriophage T4 encodes a DNA endonuclease that initiates intron homing to cognate intronless alleles by a double-strand-break (DSB) repair process. A genetic assay was developed to analyze the relationship between exon homology and homing efficiency. Because models predict exonucleolytic processing of the cleaved recipient leading to homologous strand invasion of the donor allele, the assay was performed in wild-type and exonuclease-deficient (rnh or dexA) phage. Efficient homing was supported by exon lengths of 50 bp or greater, whereas more limited exon lengths led to a precipitous decline in homing levels. However, extensive homology in one exon still supported elevated homing levels when the other exon was completely absent. Analysis of these "one-sided" events revealed recombination junctions at ectopic sites of microhomology and implicated nucleolytic degradation in illegitimate DSB repair in T4. Interestingly, homing efficiency with extremely limiting exon homology was greatly elevated in phage deficient in the 3'-5' exonuclease, DexA, suggesting that the length of 3' tails is a major determinant of the efficiency of DSB repair. Together, these results suggest that illegitimate DSB repair may provide a means by which introns can invade ectopic sites.

I-TevI, a double-strand DNA endonuclease involved in the mobility of the td intron of phage T4, is highly unusual in that it binds and cleaves intronless td alleles (td homing sites) in a site-specific but sequence-tolerant manner. The endonuclease binds to sequences flanking the intron insertion site and near the remote cleavage site, located 23 and 25 nucleotides away on the top and bottom strands, respectively. Mapping studies indicate that I-TevI has both sequence and distance sensors that function during cut-site selection. Although I-TevI cleavage of many insertion and deletion variants of the homing site is impaired, double-strand breaks are generated at positions that collectively span two turns of the helix, indicating that the interaction is extraordinarily flexible. However, the endonuclease does exhibit spacing preferences between its binding domains, and sequence preferences near the cleavage site, with the G:C pair at -23 implicated as a cleavage determinant. Furthermore, I-TevI appears to function through interactions across the minor groove at the cleavage site, as it does at the intron insertion site, and to be capable of cleaving sequentially, first on the bottom and then on the top strand. These properties of I-TevI are incorporated in a model wherein the endonuclease effects distant cleavage via a flexible hinge.

Twenty-eight outpatients who met DSM-III diagnostic criteria for avoidant personality disorder completed 14 one and a half hour sessions of social skills training in the clinic only or a combination of four sessions in the clinic, four sessions in real-life and six follow-up sessions in the clinic. Subjects were assessed before treatment began, after four sessions, at the end of treatment and at three month follow-up points. Training in real-life did not enhance social skills training; no significant difference between the groups at any assessment points was found. In both groups improvement in time was significant and clinically worthwhile. The treatment effects were maintained up to the three month follow-up, where available. Social skills training appears to be a useful and promising intervention for avoidant personality disorder but its long term impact remains to be investigated.