Development of a Specific Anti-capsid Antibody- and Magnetic Bead-Based Immunoassay to Detect Human Norovirus Particles in Stool Samples and Spiked Mussels via Flow Cytometry

Food and Environmental Virology - Human noroviruses impose a considerable health burden globally. Here, a flow cytometry approach designed for their detection in biological waste and food samples...     

Dance precision of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Apis florea</Emphasis>—clues to the evolution of the honeybee dance language?

All honeybee species make use of the waggle dance to communicate the direction and distance to both food sources and potential new nest sites. When foraging, all species face an identical problem: conveying information about profitable floral patches. However, profound differences in nesting biology (some nest in cavities while others nest in the open, often on a branch or a cliff face) may mean that species have different requirements when dancing to advertise new nest sites. In cavity nesting species, nest sites are a precise location in the landscape: usually a small opening leading to a cavity in a hollow tree. Dances for cavities therefore need to be as precise as possible. In contrast, when the potential nest site comprises a tree or perhaps seven a patch of trees, precision is less necessary. Similarly, when a food patch is advertised, dances need not be very precise, as floral patches are often large, unless they are so far away that recruits need more precise information to be able to locate them. In this paper, we study the dance precision of the open-nesting red dwarf bee Apis florea. By comparing the precision of dances for food sources and nest sites, we show that A. florea workers dance with the same imprecision irrespective of context. This is in sharp contrast with the cavity-nesting Apis mellifera that increases the precision of its dance when advertising a potential new home. We suggest that our results are in accordance with the hypothesis that the honeybees’ dance communication initially evolved to convey information about new nest sites and was only later adapted for the context of foraging.     

Enduring Extremes? Polar Vortex,Drought, and Climate Change Beliefs

Some extreme weather events may be more likely to affect climate change beliefs than others, in part because schema individuals possess for different events could vary in encouraging such links. Using a representative sample of U.S. adults and geocoded National Weather Service data, we examine how a range of extreme weather event categories relate to climate change beliefs, and the degree to which individuals’ self-reported experiences are shaped by their political views across event types. For tornado, hurricane, and flood events, we find no link with beliefs. For polar vortex and drought events, we find that although self-reported experience is linked with climate beliefs, reporting of these experiences is influenced by political identity and partisan news exposure. These findings underscore a limited role for extreme weather experiences in climate beliefs, and show that events more open to interpretation, such as droughts and polar vortex disturbances, are most likely to be seen through a partisan lens.     

How do trade and economic growth impact environmental degradation? New evidence and policy implications from the ARDL approach

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Due to various environmental degradation and natural resource depletion around the world, researchers’ and policymakers’ attention has...     

Environment,development and sustainability of local practices in the sacred groves and shrines in Bongo District: a bio-cultural study for environmental management in Ghana

The eminent crisis threatening biological and resource diversity is a global adversity. Global resource diversities are constantly disappearing and deteriorating at quite an alarming proportion, provoking renewed thinking regarding the effectiveness of existing environmental management approaches and practices. For the past four decades, several epochs of environmental management policies and practices disregarded the cultural imperative for safeguarding efficient environmental management outcomes, particularly at the community level. Even in the rouse of this reality, issues of spirituality and how it binds local community people to their natural environment appear to be given only a window dressing attention through the recognition of sacred natural sites. Eight sacred groves and shrines in the Bongo District were investigated based on an endogenous development framework. The data were collected using focus group discussions with stakeholders at the local and district levels and individual interviews with key local natural resource managers from four selected communities. The study revealed that the way indigenous people construct the worldviews and interactions with nature using ancestors and other spirit mediums can safeguard the environment against long periods of human interference and destruction. It also demonstrates that in certain places traditional institutions are becoming malleable and open to the use of external knowledge and resources in order to sustain places of sacred significance. It concludes that cultural imperative and the issues of spirituality are critical for the sustainable management of environmental resources. The study recommends revisiting local practice and cultural values that promote good environmental management practices within the local communities.     

Contamination levels of selected organochlorine and organophosphate pesticides in the Selangor River, Malaysia between 2002 and 2003

In Malaysia, rivers are the main source of public water supplies. This study was conducted from 2002 to 2003 to determine the levels of selected organochlorine and organophosphate pesticides in the Selangor River in Malaysia. Surface water samples have been collected seasonally from nine sites along the river. A liquid-liquid extraction followed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry technique was used to determine the trace levels of these pesticide residues. The organochlorine pesticides detected were lindane, heptachlor, endosulfan, dieldrin, endosulfan sulfate, o,p'-DDT, p,p'-DDT, o,p'-DDE and p,p'-DDE whereas for organophosphate pesticides, they were chlorpyrifos and diazinon. At the river upstream where a dam is located for public water supply, incidents of pesticide levels exceeding the European Economic Community Directive of water quality standards have occurred. Furthermore, the wetland ecosystems located at the downstream of the river which houses the fireflies community is being threatened by occasional pesticide levels above EPA limits for freshwater aquatic organisms. The occurrence of these residual pesticides in the Selangor River can be attributed to the intense agriculture and urban activity.     

Signaltransduktion in Sehzellen

2+   concentration. This review describes our present knowledge about the signal transduction and its fine tuning by a complex network of Ca²⁺-mediated processes in vertebrate photoreceptors.