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The precise pattern and timing of speciation events that gave rise to all living placental mammals remain controversial. We provide a comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of genetic variation across an alignment of 241 placental mammal genome assemblies, addressing prior concerns regarding limited genomic sampling across species. We compared neutral genome-wide phylogenomic signal using concatenation and coalescent-based approaches, interrogated phylogenetic variation across chromosomes and analyzed extensive catalogs of structural variants. Interordinal relationships exhibit relatively low rates of phylogenomic conflict across diverse datasets and analytical methods. Conversely, X-chromosome versus autosome conflicts characterize multiple independent clades that radiated during the Cenozoic. Genomic timetrees reveal an accumulation of cladogenic events before and immediately following the KPg boundary implying important roles for Cretaceous continental vicariance and the KPg extinction in the placental radiation.One-Sentence SummaryA comprehensive whole genome phylogeny of extant placental mammals reveals timing and patterns of ordinal diversification.

Heart failure (HF) affects ∼600,000 Canadians and is a chronic, life-limiting illness marked by exacerbations of distressing symptoms requiring acute medical management, typically sought in Canada's emergency departments. HF often has an unpredictable illness trajectory and is a chronic terminal illness with a poor prognosis. Patients living with advanced HF have difficulty in accessing palliative care (PC) supports, which can result in unnecessary suffering as their HF progresses and they near end of life (EOL). This is, in part, due to a lack of research, helping clinicians to identify patients who are approaching EOL. In addition, the unpredictable nature of illness progression often precludes access to most EOL resources in our current prognosis-dependent healthcare system. PC teams focus on optimizing quality of life through symptom management and ensure that care plans are congruent with patient and family preferences. A PC team was embedded into our institution's existing HF team. Findings show that integration of an embedded model of PC delivery for patients living with advanced HF led to overwhelming positive patient and family feedback while providing timely advance care planning discussions that may be associated with beneficial patient, family, and system outcomes. These outcomes can be used to inform public policy and speak to a cost-effective patient and family-centered approach for providing care to individuals and families living with advanced HF.

Patients living with a diagnosis of an advanced life-limiting malignancy often have concerns regarding symptom burden, physical and psychosocial impact on life, and questions surrounding end-of-life processes. Due to the complex care needs of patients with advanced life-limiting illness it is our experience that both a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to care can optimize the patient and family illness experience for this vulnerable population. Progressive metastatic illness often necessitates care in multiple settings including an ambulatory clinic, inpatient hospital ward, at home, and at an in-patient hospice or palliative care unit. Palliative care teams are typically composed of clinicians from various disciplines who work in multiple settings and can act as a link between community, ambulatory and in-patient care-settings. The team often includes physicians, advance practice nurses [nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists (CNSs)], nurses, social workers, chaplains, and other allied health clinicians. The result of this team approach, in collaboration with oncology providers, makes palliative care an ideal model for providing care through the many transitions that are inherent to patients living with advanced malignancy.

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The objectives were to continue collection of semen for the US dairy bull DNA repository, to conduct a systematic search of the Holstein genome for economically significant economic trait loci (ETL), to develop and refine statistical techniques for the analysis of the data generated, and to confirm significant effects by genotyping daughters i Israel and additional US sons. One-thousand-seventy-six sons of eight US grandsires were genotyped for 174 microsatellites located on all 29 autosomes. ETL were detected for milk production traits on seven chromosomes. ETL for milk and fat yield and fat and protein percentage on BTA3 was mapped to between the markers BL41 and TGLA263. The 95% confidence interval for the ETL affecting fat percentage on BTA14 localized this ETL between the contromere and chromosome position 11 cM. This ETL was verified in the Israeli cattle population by genotyping an independent sample of cows from seven families. The radiation hybrid data for the centromeric region of BTA14 is defined by a single linkage group. Order of Type I genes within this region, CYC-FADK-TG-SQLE, is conserved between human and cattle. Thus, HSA8, the human homologue of BTA14, can be used to identify candidate genes for the ETL.

Forty-seven poly-TG microsatellites were developed at the U of IL, and 11 genetic markers were developed at ARO, nine of which were poly-AGC microsatellites. Markers were typed on the reference families of CSIRO, Australia; GRANADA, Texas; and IRRF, Illinois, for chromosome assignment and linkage mapping. Nine North American al organizations contributed semen to the Dairy Bull DNA Repository (DBDR), which currently has 65,743 units from 3366 bulls. Semen was obtained for 31 out of 35 grandsires. Semen of 28 and 23 sons of two Israeli bulls was also collected. Eighteen grandsires were genotyped for 75 microsatellites. One thousand, three hundred and sixty-two sons with evaluation from 17 families were genotyped for 24 markers. Eleven thousand, six hundred and twenty sons genotypes were determined, of which 8,802 were informative. The genotype data was matched to the bulls' daughter yield deviations (DYD) for seven traits; milk, fat, and protein production; fat and protein percent; somatic cell concentration (SCS); and productive herd life. Seven loci had significant effects at p