International Society for Prenatal Diagnosis 2022 DEBATE: There should be formal accreditation and ongoing quality assurance/review for units offering fetal therapy that includes public reporting of outcomes

The field of fetal therapy has so far escaped from formal accreditation and quality control. Despite that, current published evidence shows that outcomes of interventions in younger fetal therapy centers are similar to what is achieved in more experienced centers and outcomes of interventions have improved over time. The question however remains what is not being published and what should be the standard of care, given the lack of level 1 evidence from randomized controlled trials for many interventions. Formal collaborative networks such as NAFTnet and others allow for anonymized benchmarking of center outcomes, without publicly shaming (and financially punishing) underperforming centers. Large registries also allow for tracking of rare complications and may result in improved patient outcomes over time. Core outcome sets, which could serve as a basis for outcome reporting, are available for some conditions, but certainly not for all, resulting in communication difficulties between centers. Formal accreditation, quality control, and outcome reporting are hard to implement, expensive, and may result in decreasing access to care by pushing smaller centers out of the market. Despite the existing difficulties, international societies have committed to quality improvement, and fetal therapy programs are strongly recommended to participate in voluntary outcome tracking.     

De-Europeanising or disengaging? EU environmental policy and Brexit

ABSTRACT

The European Union (EU) has had a profound effect upon its members’ environmental policy. Even in the United Kingdom (UK), the EU’s most recalcitrant member state (historically labeled the ‘Dirty man of Europe’), environmental policy has been Europeanised. As the UK moves to the EU’s exit door it is timely to assess the utility of Europeanisation for understanding policy dynamics in the UK. Drawing upon interviews and extensive engagement with stakeholders, this article analyses the potential impact of Brexit upon environmental policy and politics. The analytical toolkit offered by de-Europeanisation is developed to identify the factors that drive and inhibit de-Europeanisation processes, thereby providing insights that may be applicable in other settings. Disengagement and policy stagnation are presented as more likely environmental outcomes of Brexit, with capacity emerging as a central explanatory variable.     

近海沉积物DlPCBs对斑马鱼胚胎EROD和cyp1a mRNA的影响

为探究湛江近海域海洋沉积物中类二噁英多氯联苯(dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls,Dl PCBs)的生物学毒性效应,选取湛江近海域2个地点(近工业区TS和近生活区JSW)采集沉积物样品,制备近海域沉积物Dl PCBs提取物,将斑马鱼胚胎暴露于不同浓度的Dl PCBs提取物,测定斑马鱼胚胎7-乙氧基异吩恶唑脱乙基酶(ethoxyresorufin-O-deethylase,EROD)活性和cyp1a m RNA相对表达量。结果发现,JSW采样点Dl PCBs提取物染毒组EROD酶活性变化与TS采样点Dl PCBs提取物一致,在各染毒浓度下,斑马鱼仔鱼EROD酶活性为对照组的1.1~1.8倍。TS和JSW采样点不同浓度Dl PCBs提取物暴露斑马鱼胚胎96 h后,使斑马鱼仔鱼cyp1a m RNA相对表达量是对照组的3.36~19.45倍。说明一定浓度的近海沉积物Dl PCBs能诱导斑马鱼仔鱼EROD酶活性和cyp1a m RNA表达量升高,且呈现浓度-效应关系。     

Facial asymmetry is negatively related to condition in female macaque monkeys

The face is an important visual trait in social communication across many species. In evolutionary terms, there are large and obvious selective advantages in detecting healthy partners, both in terms of avoiding individuals with poor health to minimise contagion and in mating with individuals with high health to help ensure healthy offspring. Many models of sexual selection suggest that an individual's phenotype provides cues to their quality. Fluctuating asymmetry is a trait that is proposed to be an honest indicator of quality, and previous studies have demonstrated that rhesus monkeys gaze longer at symmetric faces, suggesting preferences for such faces. The current study examined the relationship between measured facial symmetry and measures of health in a captive population of female rhesus macaque monkeys. We measured asymmetry from landmarks marked on front-on facial photographs and computed measures of health based on veterinary health and condition ratings, number of minor and major wounds sustained and gain in weight over the first 4?years of life. Analysis revealed that facial asymmetry was negatively related to condition-related health measures, with symmetric individuals being healthier than more asymmetric individuals. Facial asymmetry appears to be an honest indicator of health in rhesus macaques, and asymmetry may then be used by conspecifics in mate-choice situations. More broadly, our data support the notion that faces are valuable sources of information in non-human primates and that sexual selection based on facial information is potentially important across the primate lineage.     

Pollinator effectiveness varies with experimental shifts in flowering time

The earlier flowering times exhibited by many plant species are a conspicuous sign of climate change. Altered phenologies have caused concern that species could suffer population declines if they flower at times when effective pollinators are unavailable. For two perennial wildflowers, Tradescantia ohiensis and Asclepias incarnata, we used an experimental approach to explore how changing phenology affects the taxonomic composition of the pollinator assemblage and the effectiveness of individual pollinator taxa. After finding in the previous year that fruit set varied with flowering time, we manipulated flowering onset in greenhouses, placed plants in the field over the span of five weeks, and measured pollinator effectiveness as the number of seeds produced after a single visit to a flower. The average effectiveness of pollinators and the expected rates of pollination success were lower for plants of both species flowering earlier than for plants flowering at historical times, suggesting there could be reproductive costs to earlier flowering. Whereas for A. incarnata, differences in average seed set among weeks were due primarily to changes in the composition of the pollinator assemblage, the differences for T. ohiensis were driven by the combined effects of compositional changes and increases over time in the effectiveness of some pollinator taxa. Both species face the possibility of temporal mismatch between the availability of the most effective pollinators and the onset of flowering, and changes in the effectiveness of individual pollinator taxa through time may add an unexpected element to the reproductive consequences of such mismatches.     

Effects of species diversity on community biomass production change over the course of succession

Over the past decade an increasing number of studies have experimentally manipulated the number of species in a community and examined how this alters the aggregate production of species biomass. Many of these studies have shown that the effects of richness on biomass change through time, but we have limited understanding of the mechanisms that produce these dynamic trends. Here we report the results of an experiment in which we manipulated the richness of freshwater algae in laboratory microcosms. We used two experimental designs (additive and substitutive) that make different assumptions about how patches are initially colonized, and then tracked the development of community biomass from the point of initial colonization through a period of 6-12 generations of the focal species. We found that the effect of initial species richness on biomass production qualitatively shifted twice over the course of the experiment. The first shift occurred as species transitioned from density-independent to dependent phases of population growth. At this time, intraspecific competition caused monocultures to approach their respective carrying capacities more slowly than polycultures. As a consequence, species tended to over-yield for a brief time, generating a positive, but transient effect of diversity on community biomass. The second shift occurred as communities approached carrying capacity. At this time, strong interspecific interactions caused biomass to be dominated by the competitively superior species in polycultures. As this species had the lowest carrying capacity, a negative effect of diversity on biomass resulted in late succession. Although these two shifts produced dynamics that appeared complex, we show that the patterns can be fit to a simple Lotka-Volterra model of competition. Our results suggest that the effects of algal diversity on primary production change in a predictable sequence through successional time.     

Dispersal, density dependence, and population dynamics of a fungal microbe on leaf surfaces

Despite the ubiquity and importance of microbes in nature, little is known about their natural population dynamics, especially for those that occupy terrestrial habitats. Here we investigate the dynamics of the yeast-like fungus Aureobasidium pullulans (Ap) on apple leaves in an orchard. We asked three questions. (1) Is variation in fungal population density among leaves caused by variation in leaf carrying capacities and strong density-dependent population growth that maintains densities near carrying capacity? (2) Do resident populations have competitive advantages over immigrant cells? (3) Do Ap dynamics differ at different times during the growing season? To address these questions, we performed two experiments at different times in the growing season. Both experiments used a 2 x 2 factorial design: treatment 1 removed fungal cells from leaves to reveal density-dependent population growth, and treatment 2 inoculated leaves with an Ap strain engineered to express green fluorescent protein (GFP), which made it possible to track the fate of immigrant cells. The experiments showed that natural populations of Ap vary greatly in density due to sustained differences in carrying capacities among leaves. The maintenance of populations close to carrying capacities indicates strong density-dependent processes. Furthermore, resident populations are strongly competitive against immigrants, while immigrants have little impact on residents. Finally, statistical models showed high population growth rates of resident cells in one experiment but not in the other, suggesting that Ap experiences relatively "good" and "bad" periods for population growth. This picture of Ap dynamics conforms to commonly held, but rarely demonstrated, expectations of microbe dynamics in nature. It also highlights the importance of local processes, as opposed to immigration, in determining the abundance and dynamics of microbes on surfaces in terrestrial systems.     

Effects of photoacclimation on the light niche of corals: a process-based approach

The ecology of photosynthetic organisms is influenced by the need to adjust the photosynthetic apparatus to variable light environments (photoacclimation). In this study, we quantified different components of the photoacclimation process for a reef-building coral (Turbinaria mesenterina, Lamarck, 1816): including, variation in absorption cross-section, size of photosynthetic units, turnover time, chlorophyll content, and colony respiration. We used these calibrations to characterize this species’ light niche, and to determine the sensitivity of the niche boundaries to different processes of photoacclimation. Results showed that the breadth of the light niche was most sensitive to the size of the photosynthetic unit, absorption cross-section, and rates of respiration. Habitats with the highest light availability did not lead to maximal energy acquisition. This was because, although corals acclimated to high light have high rates of photosynthesis per unit chlorophyll, their chlorophyll content was strongly reduced. This suggests that potential energetic benefits that could be achieved through increased light harvesting (i.e., increased chlorophyll content) in high-light habitats are outweighed by costs associated with photoprotection. Such costs appear to place an upper bound on the habitat distributions of coral species. Our approach reveals how the photophysiological processes involved in photoacclimation interact to determine the light niche.