scholarly journals Time lags and the invasion debt in plant naturalisations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard P. Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Richard Duncan

Ecological processes often exhibit time lags. For plant invasions, lags of decades to centuries between species’ introduction and establishment in the wild (naturalisation) are common, leading to the idea of an invasion debt: accelerating rates of introduction result in an expanding pool of introduced species that will naturalise in the future. Here, I show how a concept from survival analysis, the hazard function, provides an intuitive way to understand and forecast time lags. For plant naturalisation, theoretical arguments predict that lags between introduction and naturalisation will have a unimodal distribution, and that increasing horticultural activity will cause the mean and variance of lag times to decline over time. These predictions were supported by data on introduction and naturalisation dates for plant species introduced to Britain. While increasing trade and horticultural activity can generate an invasion debt by accelerating introductions, the same processes could lower that debt by reducing lag times.


1993 ◽  
Vol 163 (4) ◽  
pp. 522-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Adams ◽  
R. E. Kendell ◽  
E. H. Hare ◽  
P. Munk-Jørgensen

The epidemiological evidence that the offspring of women exposed to influenza in pregnancy are at increased risk of schizophrenia is conflicting. In an attempt to clarify the issue we explored the relationship between the monthly incidence of influenza (and measles) in the general population and the distribution of birth dates of three large series of schizophrenic patients - 16 960 Scottish patients born in 1932–60; 22 021 English patients born in 1921–60; and 18 723 Danish patients born in 1911–65. Exposure to the 1957 epidemic of A2 influenza in midpregnancy was associated with an increased incidence of schizophrenia, at least in females, in all three data sets. We also confirmed the previous report of a statistically significant long-term relationship between patients' birth dates and outbreaks of influenza in the English series, with time lags of - 2 and - 3 months (the sixth and seventh months of pregnancy). Despite several other negative studies by ourselves and others we conclude that these relationships are probably both genuine and causal; and that maternal influenza during the middle third of intrauterine development, or something closely associated with it, is implicated in the aetiology of some cases of schizophrenia.


2021 ◽  
Vol 781 ◽  
pp. 146698
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Ascott ◽  
Daren C. Gooddy ◽  
Owen Fenton ◽  
Sara Vero ◽  
Rob S. Ward ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Md Moin Uddin Atique ◽  
Joseph Thachil Francis

AbstractMirror Neurons (MNs) respond similarly when primates make or observe grasping movements. Recent work indicates that reward expectation influences rostral M1 (rM1) during manual, observational, and Brain Machine Interface (BMI) reaching movements. Previous work showed MNs are modulated by subjective value. Here we expand on the above work utilizing two non-human primates (NHPs), one male Macaca Radiata (NHP S) and one female Macaca Mulatta (NHP P), that were trained to perform a cued reward level isometric grip-force task, where the NHPs had to apply visually cued grip-force to move and transport a virtual object. We found a population of (S1 area 1–2, rM1, PMd, PMv) units that significantly represented grip-force during manual and observational trials. We found the neural representation of visually cued force was similar during observational trials and manual trials for the same units; however, the representation was weaker during observational trials. Comparing changes in neural time lags between manual and observational tasks indicated that a subpopulation fit the standard MN definition of observational neural activity lagging the visual information. Neural activity in (S1 areas 1–2, rM1, PMd, PMv) significantly represented force and reward expectation. In summary, we present results indicating that sensorimotor cortices have MNs for visually cued force and value.


2008 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Syed Hussain ◽  
Muhammad Malik ◽  
Lanbo Shi ◽  
Maria Laura Gennaro ◽  
Karl Drlica

ABSTRACT An in vitro model of mycobacterial growth arrest was developed using Mycobacterium bovis BCG. When an exponentially growing culture was transferred to an evacuated tube, growth continued; treatment with a source of nitric oxide (diethylenetriamine-nitric oxide adduct [DETA-NO] at 50 μM) halted growth immediately, and aeration restored growth. When the period of growth arrest exceeded 4 h, a time lag occurred before aeration could restore growth. The lag time was maximal (24 h) after 16 h of growth arrest. These time lags indicated that one transition period was required for cells to achieve full arrest of growth and another for them to recover fully from growth arrest. DETA-NO-induced growth arrest failed to protect from the lethal effects of anaerobic shock, which caused rapid lysis of both growing and growth-arrested cells. While growth arrest had little effect on the lethal action of rifampin, it eliminated isoniazid lethality. Growth arrest reduced but did not eliminate fluoroquinolone lethality. Two fluoroquinolones, moxifloxacin and gatifloxacin, were equally lethal to exponentially growing cells, but moxifloxacin was more active during growth arrest. This difference is attributed to the fluoroquinolone C-7 ring structure, the only difference between the compounds. Collectively these data characterize a new system for halting mycobacterial growth that may be useful for evaluating new antituberculosis agents.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahdi Aminikhah ◽  
Jukka T. Forsman ◽  
Esa Koskela ◽  
Tapio Mappes ◽  
Jussi Sane ◽  
...  

AbstractZoonotic diseases, caused by pathogens transmitted between other vertebrate animals and humans, pose a major risk to human health. Rodents are important reservoir hosts for many zoonotic pathogens, and rodent population dynamics affect the infection dynamics of rodent-borne diseases, such as diseases caused by hantaviruses. However, the role of rodent population dynamics in determining the infection dynamics of rodent-associated tick-borne diseases, such as Lyme borreliosis (LB), caused by Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato bacteria, have gained limited attention in Northern Europe, despite the multiannual abundance fluctuations, the so-called vole cycles, that characterise rodent population dynamics in the region. Here, we quantify the associations between rodent abundance and LB human cases and Puumala Orthohantavirus (PUUV) infections by using two time series (25-year and 9-year) in Finland. Both bank vole (Myodes glareolus) abundance as well as LB and PUUV infection incidence in humans showed approximately 3-year cycles. Without vector transmitted PUUV infections followed the bank vole host abundance fluctuations with two-month time lag, whereas tick-transmitted LB was associated with bank vole abundance ca. 12 and 24 months earlier. However, the strength of association between LB incidence and bank vole abundance ca. 12 months before varied over the study years. This study highlights that the human risk to acquire rodent-borne pathogens, as well as rodent-associated tick-borne pathogens is associated with the vole cycles in Northern Fennoscandia, yet with complex time lags.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Omid T. Qazvini ◽  
Ravichandar Babarao ◽  
Shane G. Telfer

AbstractEfficient and sustainable methods for carbon dioxide capture are highly sought after. Mature technologies involve chemical reactions that absorb CO2, but they have many drawbacks. Energy-efficient alternatives may be realised by porous physisorbents with void spaces that are complementary in size and electrostatic potential to molecular CO2. Here, we present a robust, recyclable and inexpensive adsorbent termed MUF-16. This metal-organic framework captures CO2 with a high affinity in its one-dimensional channels, as determined by adsorption isotherms, X-ray crystallography and density-functional theory calculations. Its low affinity for other competing gases delivers high selectivity for the adsorption of CO2 over methane, acetylene, ethylene, ethane, propylene and propane. For equimolar mixtures of CO2/CH4 and CO2/C2H2, the selectivity is 6690 and 510, respectively. Breakthrough gas separations under dynamic conditions benefit from short time lags in the elution of the weakly-adsorbed component to deliver high-purity hydrocarbon products, including pure methane and acetylene.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (S356) ◽  
pp. 143-143
Author(s):  
Jaya Maithil ◽  
Michael S. Brotherton ◽  
Bin Luo ◽  
Ohad Shemmer ◽  
Sarah C. Gallagher ◽  
...  

AbstractActive Galactic Nuclei (AGN) exhibit multi-wavelength properties that are representative of the underlying physical processes taking place in the vicinity of the accreting supermassive black hole. The black hole mass and the accretion rate are fundamental for understanding the growth of black holes, their evolution, and the impact on the host galaxies. Recent results on reverberation-mapped AGNs show that the highest accretion rate objects have systematic shorter time-lags. These super-Eddington accreting massive black holes (SEAMBHs) show BLR size 3-8 times smaller than predicted by the Radius-Luminosity (R-L) relationship. Hence, the single-epoch virial black hole mass estimates of highly accreting AGNs have an overestimation of a factor of 3-8 times. SEAMBHs likely have a slim accretion disk rather than a thin disk that is diagnostic in X-ray. I will present the extreme X-ray properties of a sample of dozen of SEAMBHs. They indeed have a steep hard X-ray photon index, Γ, and demonstrate a steeper power-law slope, ασx.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document