TY - JOUR A1 - Lehmann, Andreas A1 - Scheffler, Christiane T1 - What does the mean menarcheal age mean?An analysis of temporal pattern in variability in a historical swiss population from the 19th and 20th centuries JF - American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council N2 - ObjectivesAge at menarche is one of the most important factors when observing growth and development. The aim of this study was to assess the temporal pattern in variability of menarcheal age for a historic Swiss population from the 19th and 20th centuries. ResultsMean menarcheal age declined from 17.34 years (n=358) around 1830 to 13.80 years (n=141) around 1950. Within-cohort variance decreased from 7.5 to 2.1 year(2). Skewness was negatively correlated with birth year (r=-0.58). ConclusionThis study provided evidence for a secular trend in various statistical parameters for age at menarche since the 19th century. Furthermore, the results of the analysis of temporal pattern in variability revealed that the secular trend in menarcheal age happened in two phases. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 28:705-713, 2016. (c) 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.22854 SN - 1042-0533 SN - 1520-6300 VL - 28 SP - 705 EP - 713 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kupfer, Alexander A1 - Maxwell, Erin A1 - Reinhard, Sandy A1 - Kuehnel, Susanne T1 - The evolution of parental investment in caecilian amphibians: a comparative approach JF - Biological journal of the Linnean Society : a journal of evolution N2 - Parental care is widespread among vertebrates and the observed patterns of parental care and investment are extremely diverse. Among amphibians, caecilians (Gymnophiona) exhibit considerable variation in reproductive modes, including both oviparity and viviparity, combined with highly unusual investment strategies (e.g. skin-feeding and intrauterine feeding). In the present study, current knowledge on the reproductive modes is integrated into an analysis of the evolutionary scenario of parental investment of caecilians. Phylogenetically basal caecilians possessing a biphasic life cycle that includes an aquatic larval stage invest in macrolecithal eggs directly corresponding to size at hatching. Some phylogenetically derived caecilians (i.e. the Teresomata) have a smaller clutch size and show a reduction to either medium-yolked (mesolecithal) or small-yolked (microlecithal) eggs. Via alternative pathways of parental investment, such as intrauterine feeding in viviparous taxa and maternal dermatotrophy in oviparous taxa, teresomatan caecilians increase both offspring size and quality. However, more data regarding reproductive biology are needed to obtain a fully resolved understanding of the evolution of reproduction in caecilian amphibians. (C) 2016 The Linnean Society of London KW - Amphibia KW - Gymnophiona KW - life history KW - parental care KW - phylogeny KW - reproductive investment Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/bij.12805 SN - 0024-4066 SN - 1095-8312 VL - 119 SP - 4 EP - 14 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Yarman, Aysu A1 - Scheller, Frieder W. T1 - MIP-esterase/Tyrosinase Combinations for Paracetamol and Phenacetin JF - Electroanalysis : an international journal devoted to fundamental and practical aspects of electroanalysis N2 - A new electrochemical MIP sensor for the most frequently used drug paracetamol (PAR) was prepared by electropolymerization of mixtures containing the template molecule and the functional monomers ophenylenediamine, resorcinol and aniline. The imprinting factor of 12 reflects the effective target binding to the MIP as compared with the non-imprinted electropolymer. Combination of the MIP with a nonspecific esterase allows the measurement of phenacetin - another analgesic drug. In the second approach the PAR containing sample solution was pretreated with tyrosinase in order to prevent electrochemical interferences by ascorbic acid and uric acid. Interference-free indication at a very low electrode potential without fouling of the electrode surface was achieved with the o-phenylenediamine: resorcinol-based MIP. KW - Paracetamol KW - Molecularly imprinted polymers KW - Electropolymerization KW - Tyrosinase KW - Esterase KW - Phenacetin Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/elan.201600042 SN - 1040-0397 SN - 1521-4109 VL - 28 SP - 2222 EP - 2227 PB - Wiley-VCH CY - Weinheim ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zaklan, Aleksandar A1 - Abrell, Jan A1 - Neumann, Anne T1 - Stationarity changes in long-run energy commodity prices JF - Energy economics N2 - Situated at the intersection of the literatures on speculative storage and non-renewable commodity scarcity, this paper considers whether changes in persistence have occurred in long-run U.S. prices of the energy commodities crude oil, natural gas and bituminous coal. We allow for a structural break when testing for a break in persistence to avoid a change in the stochastic properties of prices being confounded by an unaccounted-for deterministic shift in the price series. We find that coal prices are trend stationary throughout their evolution and that oil prices change from stationarity to non-stationarity in the decade between the late 1960s to late 1970s. The result on gas prices is ambiguous. Our results demonstrate the importance of accounting for a possible structural shift when testing for breaks in persistence, while being robust to the exact date of the structural break. Based on our analysis we caution against viewing long-run energy commodity prices as being non-stationary and conclude in favor of modeling commodity market fundamentals as stationary, meaning that speculative storage will tend to have a dampening effect on prices. We also cannot reject that long-run prices of coal and, with some hesitation, gas follow a Hotelling-type rule. In contrast, we reject the Hotelling rule for oil prices since the late 1960s/early 1970s. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. KW - Non-renewable commodity prices KW - Competitive storage KW - Resource scarcity KW - Stationarity KW - Structural breaks Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2016.07.022 SN - 0140-9883 SN - 1873-6181 VL - 59 SP - 96 EP - 103 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Negrete, Jose A1 - Pumir, Alain A1 - Hsu, Hsin-Fang A1 - Westendorf, Christian A1 - Tarantola, Marco A1 - Beta, Carsten A1 - Bodenschatz, Eberhard T1 - Noisy Oscillations in the Actin Cytoskeleton of Chemotactic Amoeba JF - Physical review letters N2 - Biological systems with their complex biochemical networks are known to be intrinsically noisy. Here we investigate the dynamics of actin polymerization of amoeboid cells, which are close to the onset of oscillations. We show that the large phenotypic variability in the polymerization dynamics can be accurately captured by a generic nonlinear oscillator model in the presence of noise. We determine the relative role of the noise with a single dimensionless, experimentally accessible parameter, thus providing a quantitative description of the variability in a population of cells. Our approach, which rests on a generic description of a system close to a Hopf bifurcation and includes the effect of noise, can characterize the dynamics of a large class of noisy systems close to an oscillatory instability. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.148102 SN - 0031-9007 SN - 1079-7114 VL - 117 PB - American Physical Society CY - College Park ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kibrik, Andrej A. A1 - Khudyakova, Mariya V. A1 - Dobrov, Grigory B. A1 - Linnik, Anastasia A1 - Zalmanov, Dmitrij A. T1 - Referential Choice: Predictability and Its Limits JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - We report a study of referential choice in discourse production, understood as the choice between various types of referential devices, such as pronouns and full noun phrases. Our goal is to predict referential choice, and to explore to what extent such prediction is possible. Our approach to referential choice includes a cognitively informed theoretical component, corpus analysis, machine learning methods and experimentation with human participants. Machine learning algorithms make use of 25 factors, including referent’s properties (such as animacy and protagonism), the distance between a referential expression and its antecedent, the antecedent’s syntactic role, and so on. Having found the predictions of our algorithm to coincide with the original almost 90% of the time, we hypothesized that fully accurate prediction is not possible because, in many situations, more than one referential option is available. This hypothesis was supported by an experimental study, in which participants answered questions about either the original text in the corpus, or about a text modified in accordance with the algorithm’s prediction. Proportions of correct answers to these questions, as well as participants’ rating of the questions’ difficulty, suggested that divergences between the algorithm’s prediction and the original referential device in the corpus occur overwhelmingly in situations where the referential choice is not categorical. KW - referential choice KW - non-categoricity KW - machine learning KW - cross-methodological approach KW - discourse production Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01429 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 7 SP - 9939 EP - 9947 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Emberson, Robert A1 - Hovius, Niels A1 - Galy, Albert A1 - Marc, Odin T1 - Oxidation of sulfides and rapid weathering in recent landslides JF - Earth surface dynamics N2 - Bedrock landslides, by excavating deep below saprolite-rock interfaces, create conditions for weathering in which all mineral phases in a lithology are initially unweathered within landslide deposits. As a result, the most labile phases dominate the weathering immediately after mobilisation and during a transient period of depletion. This mode of dissolution can strongly alter the overall output of solutes from catchments and their contribution to global chemical cycles if landslide-derived material is retained in catchments for extended periods after mass wasting. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-4-727-2016 SN - 2196-6311 SN - 2196-632X VL - 4 SP - 727 EP - 742 PB - Copernicus CY - Göttingen ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Eisold, Ursula A1 - Behrends, Nicole A1 - Wessig, Pablo A1 - Kumke, Michael Uwe T1 - Rigid Rod-Based FRET Probes for Membrane Sensing Applications JF - The journal of physical chemistry : B, Condensed matter, materials, surfaces, interfaces & biophysical chemistry N2 - Oligospirothioketal (OSTK) rods are presented as an adjustable scaffold for optical membrane probes. The OSTK rods are readily incorporated into lipid bilayers due to their hydrophobic backbones. Because of their high length-over-diameter aspect ratio, only a minimal disturbance of the lipid bilayer is caused. OSTK rods show outstanding rigidity and allow defined labeling with fluorescent dyes, yielding full control of the orientation between the dye and OSTK skeleton. This. allows the construction of novel Forster resonance energy transfer probes with highly defined relative orientations of the transition dipole moments of the donor and acceptor dyes and makes the class of OSTK probes a power-fill, flexible toolbox for optical biosensing applications. Data on steady-state and time-resolved fluorescence experiments investigating the incorporation of coumarin- and [1,3]-dioxolo[4,5-f][1,3]benzo-dioxole-labeled OSTKs in large unilamellar vesicles are presented as a show case. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcb.6b07285 SN - 1520-6106 VL - 120 SP - 9935 EP - 9943 PB - American Chemical Society CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Prokopovic, Vladimir Z. A1 - Vikulina, Anna S. A1 - Sustr, David A1 - Duschl, Claus A1 - Volodkin, Dmitry T1 - Biodegradation-Resistant Multilayers Coated with Gold Nanoparticles. Toward a Tailor-made Artificial Extracellular Matrix JF - Journal of colloid and interface science N2 - Polymer multicomponent coatings such as multilayers mimic an extracellular, matrix (ECM) that attracts significant attention for the use of the multilayers as functional supports for advanced cell culture and tissue engineering. Herein, biodegradation and molecular transport in hyaluronan/polylysine multilayers coated with gold nanoparticles were described. Nanoparticle coating acts as a semipermeable barrier that governs molecular transport into/from the multilayers, and makes them biodegradation-resistant. Model protein lysozyme (mimics of ECM-soluble signals) diffuses into the multilayers as fast- and, slow-diffusing populations existing in an equilibrium,. Such a. composite system may have high potential to be exploited as degradation-resistant drug-delivery platforms suitable for cell-based applications. KW - hyaluronic acid KW - polylysine KW - diffusion KW - semipermeable KW - fluorescence recovery after photobleaching KW - layer-by-layer KW - enzymatic degradation KW - cell adhesion Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.6b10095 SN - 1944-8244 VL - 8 SP - 24345 EP - 24349 PB - American Chemical Society CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ronquillo, Cecinio C. A1 - Hanke-Gogokhia, Christin A1 - Revelo, Monica P. A1 - Frederick, Jeanne M. A1 - Jiang, Li A1 - Baehr, Wolfgang T1 - Ciliopathy-associated IQCB1/NPHP5 protein is required for mouse photoreceptor outer segment formation JF - The FASEB journal : the official journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology N2 - Null mutations in the human IQCB1/NPHP5 (nephrocystin-5) gene that encodes NPHP5 are the most frequent cause of Senior-LOken syndrome, a ciliopathy that is characterized by Leber congenital amaurosis and nephronophthisis. We generated germline Nphp5-knockout mice by placing a -Geo gene trap in intron 4, thereby truncating NPHP5 at Leu87 and removing all known functional domains. At eye opening, Nphp5(-/-) mice exhibited absence of scotopic and photopic electroretinogram responses, a phenotype that resembles Leber congenital amaurosis. Outer segment transmembrane protein accumulation in Nphp5(-/-) endoplasmic reticulum was evident as early as postnatal day (P)6. EGFP-CETN2, a centrosome and transition zone marker, identified basal bodies in Nphp5(-/-) photoreceptors, but without fully developed transition zones. Ultrastructure of P6 and 10 Nphp5(-/-) photoreceptors revealed aberrant transition zones of reduced diameter. Nphp5(-/-) photoreceptor degeneration was complete at 1 mo of age but was delayed significantly in Nphp5(-/-);Nrl(-/-) (cone only) retina. Nphp5(-/-) mouse embryonic fibroblast developed normal cilia, and Nphp5(-/-) kidney histology at 1 yr of age showed no significant pathology. Results establish that nephrocystin-5 is essential for photoreceptor outer segment formation but is dispensable for kidney and mouse embryonic fibroblast ciliary formation. KW - Senior-LOken syndrome KW - nephronophthisis KW - Leber congenital amaurosis KW - nephrocystins Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1096/fj.201600511R SN - 0892-6638 SN - 1530-6860 VL - 30 SP - 3400 EP - 3412 PB - Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology CY - Bethesda ER -