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Rapid increases in herbicide resistance have highlighted the ability of weeds to undergo genetic change within a short period of time. That change, in turn, has resulted in an increasing emphasis in weed science on the evolutionary ecology and potential adaptation of weeds to herbicide selection. Here we argue that a similar emphasis would also be invaluable for understanding another challenge that will profoundly alter weed biology: the rapid rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and the associated changes in climate. Our review of the literature suggests that elevated CO2 and climate change will impose strong selection pressures on weeds and that weeds will often have the capacity to respond with rapid adaptive evolution. Based on current data, climate change and rising CO2 levels are likely to alter the evolution of agronomic and invasive weeds, with consequences for distribution, community composition, and herbicide efficacy. In addition, we identify four key areas that represent clear knowledge gaps in weed evolution: (1) differential herbicide resistance in response to a rapidly changing CO2/climate confluence; (2) shifts in the efficacy of biological constraints (e.g., pathogens) and resultant selection shifts in affected weed species; (3) climate-induced phenological shifts in weed distribution, demography, and fitness relative to crop systems; and (4) understanding and characterization of epigenetics and the differential expression of phenotypic plasticity versus evolutionary adaptation. These consequences, in turn, should be of fundamental interest to the weed science community.
Despite established clinical associations among major depression (MD), alcohol dependence (AD), and alcohol consumption (AC), the nature of the causal relationship between them is not completely understood. We leveraged genome-wide data from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) and UK Biobank to test for the presence of shared genetic mechanisms and causal relationships among MD, AD, and AC.
Methods
Linkage disequilibrium score regression and Mendelian randomization (MR) were performed using genome-wide data from the PGC (MD: 135 458 cases and 344 901 controls; AD: 10 206 cases and 28 480 controls) and UK Biobank (AC-frequency: 438 308 individuals; AC-quantity: 307 098 individuals).
Results
Positive genetic correlation was observed between MD and AD (rgMD−AD = + 0.47, P = 6.6 × 10−10). AC-quantity showed positive genetic correlation with both AD (rgAD−AC quantity = + 0.75, P = 1.8 × 10−14) and MD (rgMD−AC quantity = + 0.14, P = 2.9 × 10−7), while there was negative correlation of AC-frequency with MD (rgMD−AC frequency = −0.17, P = 1.5 × 10−10) and a non-significant result with AD. MR analyses confirmed the presence of pleiotropy among these four traits. However, the MD-AD results reflect a mediated-pleiotropy mechanism (i.e. causal relationship) with an effect of MD on AD (beta = 0.28, P = 1.29 × 10−6). There was no evidence for reverse causation.
Conclusion
This study supports a causal role for genetic liability of MD on AD based on genetic datasets including thousands of individuals. Understanding mechanisms underlying MD-AD comorbidity addresses important public health concerns and has the potential to facilitate prevention and intervention efforts.
If memory constraints were the only limitation on language processing, the best possible language would be one with only one word. But to explain the rich structure of language, we need to posit a second constraint: the pressure to communicate informatively. Many aspects of linguistic structure can be accounted for by appealing to equilibria that result from these two pressures.
There is little research evidence as to whether general adult psychiatry
or old age psychiatry should look after old people with enduring mental
illness.
Aims
To compare the extent to which general adult and old age psychiatric
services meet the needs of older people with enduring mental illness.
Method
A total of 74 elderly patients with functional psychiatric disorders were
identified by reviewing the notes of patients over the age of 60 living
in a defined inner urban catchment area. Data were collected on the
morbidity and needs of the sample. Needs were assessed using the Elderly
Psychiatric Needs Schedule (EPNS).
Results
The participants in contact with old age psychiatry had significantly
fewer unmet needs compared with those in contact with general adult
psychiatry (2.8 v. 5.6, t = 2.2,
P<0.03). Total needs were not significantly
different between those managed by old age and general adult services
(8.0 v. 6.5 respectively, t = 1.2,
P = 0.2).
Conclusions
This study found that old age psychiatry services were better placed to
meet the needs of elderly people with mental illness. This finding
supports the need for a separate old age psychiatry service.
This chapter assesses the Chinese economic history before the late nineteenth-century development of capitalist firms and markets transforming China's economy. It makes a distinction between economic growth as a general category and industrialization as a more specific species of economic growth. The social organization of agricultural production was based on family farming across varied ecological conditions. Improved technologies of tilling, sowing, fertilizing, weeding, and harvesting spread across the empire after the third century. To understand the institutions that promoted a flourishing commercial economy across and beyond the vast spaces of China's agrarian empire, the chapter looks more closely at how production and exchange were organized. It is difficult to create metrics for early modern era legal practices that are judged by economic effects, but the growth of the porcelain, tea, and silk trades to Europe and colonial America suggest that the Chinese institutional nexus for foreign trade did not stifle exchange in a consequential fashion.
The prevalence of neural tube defects (NTD) in Europe is around 9 per 10,000 births making it one of the most frequent congential anomalies affecting the central nervous system. NTD encompass all anomalies that are secondary to failure of closure of the neural tube. In this review, we will first summarize the embryology and some epidemiologic aspects related to NTDs. The review focuses on myelomeningocele (MMC), which is the most common distal closure defect. We will describe the secondary pathologic changes in the central and peripheral nervous system that appear later on in pregnancy and contribute to the condition's morbidity. The postnatal impact of MMC mainly depends on the upper level of the lesion. In Europe, the vast majority of parents with a fetus with prenatally diagnosed NTDs, including MMC, opt for termination of pregnancy, as they are apparently perceived as very debilitating conditions. Animal experiments have shown that prenatal surgery can reverse this sequence. This paved the way for clinical fetal surgery resulting in an apparent improvement in outcome. The results of a recent randomized trial confirmed better outcomes after fetal repair compared to postnatal repair; with follow up for 30 months. This should prompt fetal medicine specialists to reconsider their position towards this condition as well as its prenatal repair. The fetal surgery centre in Leuven did not have a clinical programme for fetal NTD repair until the publication of the MOMS trial. In order to offer this procedure safely and effectively, we allied to a high volume centre willing to share its expertise and assist us in the first procedures. Given the maternal side effects of current open fetal surgical techniques, we have intensified our research programmes to explore minimally invasive alternatives. Below we will describe how we are implementing this.
Relying mainly on the manuscript records of the Royal African Company, we explore the factors that contributed to the large gap between slave prices in Africa and the Caribbean. Twenty-two voyages from the mid-1680s are analyzed. These were conducted with hired ships and the payments to the shipowners and captains were recorded. In addition to transport costs, mortality and morbidity had a big effect on slave prices; while the earnings from the trade in gold and ivory had a moderating influence. The effect of mortality and transport costs on slave prices during the eighteenth century is also explored.
Stanley Engerman and Kenneth Sokoloff have been leaders in renewing interest in institutions and their impact on economic development. The papers in this volume are concerned with human capital in its many dimensions, and bring to fore the role of political, social, and economic institutions in human capital formation and economic growth. The papers address a broad range of issues, from nutrition in pre-modern societies to twentieth-century advances in medical care, from the institutions that concerned workers in the middle and lower ranges of the wage scale to the factors that affected the performance of those who reached the pinnacle in business and art, and from political systems that stifled the advance of literacy to those that promoted public and higher education. Just as human capital has been a key to economic growth, so has the emergence of appropriate institutions been a key to human capital formation. It is this theme that underlies the papers in this volume.
Along with Stan Engerman, Robert Fogel pioneered the use of anthropometric evidence to study economic growth, and helped expand our view of human capital. Formal schooling, apprenticeship programs, specialized job training in the workplace, and learning-by-doing all raise productivity, but other forms of human capital investment are also important. The notion that health and physical size and strength can affect labor productivity is not new, but Fogel has brought these forms of human capital to center stage.
Human Capital and Institutions is concerned with human capital in its many dimensions and brings to the fore the role of political, social, and economic institutions in human capital formation and economic growth. Written by leading economic historians, including pioneers in historical research on human capital, the chapters in this text offer a broad-based view of human capital in economic development. The issues they address range from nutrition in pre-modern societies to twentieth-century advances in medical care; from the social institutions that provided temporary relief to workers in the middle and lower ranges of the wage scale to the factors that affected the performance of those who reached the pinnacle in business and art; and from political systems that stifled the advance of literacy to those that promoted public and higher education. Just as human capital has been a key to economic growth, so has the emergence of appropriate institutions been a key to the growth of human capital.