In utero sonographic diagnosis of diaphragmatic hernia with hepatic protrusion into the pericardium mimicking an intrapericardial tumour

A case of right-sided congenital diaphragmatic hernia was detected at 33 weeks of gestation. Fetal echocardiography revealed the presence of an intrapericardial mass (3.5 × 3 cm) localized at the right of the heart and surrounded by a massive pericardial effusion. This mass had the same echogenicity as the liver, with which it shared vascular channels. The diagnosis of right diaphragmatic hernia with protrusion of hepatic tissue into the pericardial sac and secondary pericardial effusion was made and confirmed after birth. In utero diagnosis of this anomaly enabled correct assessment of perinatal risk, and optimal fetal and infant management.     

An ecdysteroid (22-acetyl-20-hydroxyecdysone) from the defense gland secretion of an insect: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Chrysolina carnifex</Emphasis> (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae)

Summary. 22-Acetyl-20-hydroxyecdysone was identified as a major component in the secretion of elytral and pronotal glands of Chrysolina carnifex, at an estimated concentration of 1.5 x 10^-1 M. This unexpected high concentration of an ecdysteroid in an exocrine secretion of an insect is discussed in terms of its potential defensive function, and in the light of steroid production in similar glands of closely related leaf beetles.     

The derivation of species response curves with Gaussian logistic regression is sensitive to sampling intensity and curve characteristics

We investigated quantitatively the sensitivity of plant species response curves to sampling characteristics (number of plots, occurrence and frequency of species), along a simulated pH gradient. We defined 54 theoretical unimodal response curves, issued from combinations of six values for optimum (opt = 3, 4, …, 8), three values for tolerance (tol = 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5, sensu ter Braak and Looman [ter Braak, C.J.F., Looman, C.W.N., 1986. Weighted averaging, logistic regression and the Gaussian response model. Vegetatio 65, 3–11]), and three values for maximum probability of presence (p_max = 0.05, 0.20, and 0.50). For each of these 54 theoretical response curves, we built artificial binary data sets (presence/absence) to test the influence of species occurrence, frequency, or number of available plots. With real data extracted from EcoPlant, a phytoecological database for French forests [Gégout, J.-C., Coudun, Ch., Bailly, G., Jabiol, B., 2005. EcoPlant: a forest sites database linking floristic data with soil characteristics and climatic conditions. J. Veg. Sci. 16, 257–260], we compared the ecological response of 50 plant species to soil pH, based first on a small data set (100 randomly sampled plots), and then based on the whole data set available (3810 plots).