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Sponges play a key role in Antarctic marine benthic community structure and dynamics and are often a dominant component of many Southern Ocean benthic communities. Understanding the drivers of sponge distribution in Antarctica enables us to understand many of general benthic biodiversity patterns in the region. The sponges of the Antarctic and neighbouring oceanographic regions were assessed for species richness and biogeographic patterns using over 8,800 distribution records. Species-rich regions include the Antarctic Peninsula, South Shetland Islands, South Georgia, Eastern Weddell Sea, Kerguelen Plateau, Falkland Islands and north New Zealand. Sampling intensity varied greatly within the study area, with sampling hotspots found at the Antarctic Peninsula, South Georgia, north New Zealand and Tierra del Fuego, with limited sampling in the Bellingshausen and Amundsen seas in the Southern Ocean. In contrast to previous studies we found that eurybathy and circumpolar distributions are important but not dominant characteristics in Antarctic sponges. Overall Antarctic sponge species endemism is ~43%, with a higher level for the class Hexactinellida (68%). Endemism levels are lower than previous estimates, but still indicate the importance of the Polar Front in isolating the Southern Ocean fauna. Nineteen distinct sponge distribution patterns were found, ranging from regional endemics to cosmopolitan species. A single, distinct Antarctic demosponge fauna is found to encompass all areas within the Polar Front, and the sub-Antarctic regions of the Kerguelen Plateau and Macquarie Island. Biogeographical analyses indicate stronger faunal links between Antarctica and South America, with little evidence of links between Antarctica and South Africa, Southern Australia or New Zealand. We conclude that the biogeographic and species distribution patterns observed are largely driven by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the timing of past continent connectivity.
Background: Dabigatran etexilate (DE) is a new oral direct thrombin inhibitor. Clinical trials point towards a favourable risk-to-benefit profile of DE compared to warfarin. In this study, we evaluated whether hemorrhagic transformation (HT) occurs after experimental stroke under DE treatment as we have shown for warfarin.
Methods: 44 male C57BL/6 mice were pretreated orally with 37.5 mg/kg DE, 75 mg/kg DE or saline and diluted thrombin time (dTT) and DE plasma concentrations were monitored. Ischemic stroke was induced by transient middle cerebral artery occlusion (tMCAO) for 1 h or 3 h. We assessed functional outcome and HT blood volume 24 h and 72 h after tMCAO.
Results: After 1 h tMCAO, HT blood volume did not differ significantly between mice pretreated with DE 37.5 mg/kg and controls (1.5±0.5 µl vs. 1.8±0.5 µl, p>0.05). After 3 h tMCAO, DE-anticoagulated mice did also not show an increase in HT, neither at the dose of 37.5 mg/kg equivalent to anticoagulant treatment in the therapeutic range (1.3±0.9 µl vs. control 2.3±0.5 µl, p>0.05) nor at 75 mg/kg, clearly representing supratherapeutic anticoagulation (1.8±0.8 µl, p>0.05). Furthermore, no significant increase in HT under continued anticoagulation with DE 75 mg/kg could be found at 72 h after tMCAO for 1 h (1.7±0.9 µl vs. control 1.6±0.4 µl, p>0.05).
Conclusion: Our experimental data suggest that DE does not significantly increase hemorrhagic transformation after transient focal cerebral ischemia in mice. From a translational viewpoint, this indicates that a continuation of DE anticoagulation in case of an ischemic stroke might be safe, but clearly, clinical data on this question are warranted.
Temporal variation in the detectability of a species can bias estimates of relative abundance if not handled correctly. For example, when effort varies in space and/or time it becomes necessary to take variation in detectability into account when data are analyzed. We demonstrate the importance of incorporating seasonality into the analysis of data with unequal sample sizes due to lost traps at a particular density of a species. A case study of count data was simulated using a spring-active carabid beetle. Traps were ‘lost’ randomly during high beetle activity in high abundance sites and during low beetle activity in low abundance sites. Five different models were fitted to datasets with different levels of loss. If sample sizes were unequal and a seasonality variable was not included in models that assumed the number of individuals was log-normally distributed, the models severely under- or overestimated the true effect size. Results did not improve when seasonality and number of trapping days were included in these models as offset terms, but only performed well when the response variable was specified as following a negative binomial distribution. Finally, if seasonal variation of a species is unknown, which is often the case, seasonality can be added as a free factor, resulting in well-performing negative binomial models. Based on these results we recommend (a) add sampling effort (number of trapping days in our example) to the models as an offset term, (b) if precise information is available on seasonal variation in detectability of a study object, add seasonality to the models as an offset term; (c) if information on seasonal variation in detectability is inadequate, add seasonality as a free factor; and (d) specify the response variable of count data as following a negative binomial or over-dispersed Poisson distribution.
Although their applications have not yet extended widely due to their incipient state, nano-technologies and nano-medicines may be presumed to be at the origin of the next great technological revolution, foreseeably contributing to a new stage with respect to evolutions in mankind’s progress. Their possibilities are truly immense in enormously varied spheres, but the risks and uncertainties they engender are enormous too. Because access and use of the unceasingly increasing mega-quantity of information they generate will place further strain on the protection of personal life, privacy, the exercise of freedom, as well as the safeguarding of other fundamental principles and rights.
Background: Adaptation to low oxygen by changing gene expression is vitally important for cell survival and tissue development. The sprouting of new blood vessels, initiated from endothelial cells, restores the oxygen supply of ischemic tissues. In contrast to the transcriptional response induced by hypoxia, which is mainly mediated by members of the HIF family, there are only few studies investigating alternative splicing events. Therefore, we performed an exon array for the genome-wide analysis of hypoxia-related changes of alternative splicing in endothelial cells.
Methodology/Principal findings: Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were incubated under hypoxic conditions (1% O(2)) for 48 h. Genome-wide transcript and exon expression levels were assessed using the Affymetrix GeneChip Human Exon 1.0 ST Array. We found altered expression of 294 genes after hypoxia treatment. Upregulated genes are highly enriched in glucose metabolism and angiogenesis related processes, whereas downregulated genes are mainly connected to cell cycle and DNA repair. Thus, gene expression patterns recapitulate known adaptations to low oxygen supply. Alternative splicing events, until now not related to hypoxia, are shown for nine genes: six which are implicated in angiogenesis-mediated cytoskeleton remodeling (cask, itsn1, larp6, sptan1, tpm1 and robo1); one, which is involved in the synthesis of membrane-anchors (pign) and two universal regulators of gene expression (cugbp1 and max).
Conclusions/Significance: For the first time, this study investigates changes in splicing in the physiological response to hypoxia on a genome-wide scale. Nine alternative splicing events, until now not related to hypoxia, are reported, considerably expanding the information on splicing changes due to low oxygen supply. Therefore, this study provides further knowledge on hypoxia induced gene expression changes and presents new starting points to study the hypoxia adaptation of endothelial cells.
The requalification of Habermas’ discussions on political philosophy and legal theory after the publication of Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion (2005), and his most recent texts and debates on religion and the public sphere, suggest a revision of the Habermasian theory of rationalization as it was firstly presented in Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns (1982), especially on what concerns the processes of dessacralization and the linguistification of religious authority. In search of contributing to this revision, this paper intends to focus on the problem of a supposedly “lost” aesthetic-expressive understanding of religious authority in Habermas’s theory of rationalization, which may have contributed to a theory of law in Faktizität und Geltung (1992) that does not give satisfactory account to the aesthetical-expressive character of the modern understanding of legal authority. A better understanding of this special character, however, may contribute not only to the avoidance of fundamentalisms and new attempts of “aesthetization of politics”, but also to a rational strengthening of the solidarity of the citizens of democratic constitutional states.
This paper aims to discuss in which sense public hearings in supreme courts of democratic rules of law can be seen as proceduralization of popular sovereignty policies. These policies constitute expressions of a normative claim for a wider “publicization of law” by democratic states’ institutional powers and organs; a claim that becomes evident when one undertakes an intersubjective interpretation of law. This theoretical argument will be presented in the first section of the paper through a new articulation of Jürgen Habermas’ discursive theory of law and his most recent studies on the concept of political public sphere. The theoretical section gives normative and procedural criteria for the second section of the paper, which consists on a critical analysis of the procedures and practical cases of public hearings held at the Brazilian Supreme Court, constituting the first scientific study to date on the Court’s use of this legal instrument.
Since the XIX century, a pleiad of philosophers and historians support the idea that Greek philosophy, usually reported to have started with the presocratics, lays its basis in a previous moment: the Greek myths – systematized by Homer and Hesiod – and the Greek arts, in particular the lyric and tragedy literature. According to this, it is important to retrieve philosophical elements even before the pre-Socratics to understand the genesis of specific concepts in Philosophy of Law. Besides, assuming that the Western’s core values are inherited from Ancient Greece, it is essential to recuperate the basis of our own justice idea, through the Greek myths and tragedy literature. As a case study, this paper aims on the comparison of two key-works, each one representing a phase of the Greek tragedy: The Orestea, by Aeschylus, and Orestes, by Euripides. Both contain the same story, telling how the Greeks understood the necessity of solving their conflicts not by blood revenge, but through a political way, and also the political drama. Although, in Aeschylus’s one, men still leashed by their fate, while the gods play a major role, in order to punish human pride (hybris). In a different way, on Euripides’s work men face their own loneliness, in a world fulfilled with gods, each one demanding divergent actions. That represents a necessary moment to the flourishing freedom and human subjectivity, and, once the exterior divinity is unable to resolve human problems, men will need to discover their interior divinity: that is how the Philosophy emerges.
Dworkin`s political theory is characterized by the interpretative integrity of morality, law, and politics, the so-called “hedgehog’s approach”. The interpretative integrity approach functions on multiple levels. Firstly, philosophical foundations of his theory of justice are linked to his conception of just liberal society and state. Secondly, from the perspective of political morality, interpretative concepts of law and morality are internally connected, in addition to interpretative concepts of equality, liberty, and democracy. Thirdly, from the perspective of philosophical foundations, individual ethics, personal morality and political morality are mutually connected. The aforementioned ethical and moral foundations are also related – in a wider sense of philosophical foundations - with his gnoseological conception regarding value concepts in law, politics and morality, and with his episthemological conception regarding an objective truth in the field of values, in a sense that the value concepts are interpretative and can be objectively true when articulated in accordance with methodological rules and standards of a »reflexive equilibrium« and an interpretative integrity, and in accordance with the so-called internal scepticism in the context of value pluralism.
The term “ethics” in a “narrower” sense refers to individual ethics, the study of how to live well, while the “ethics” in a “broader” sense refers to personal morality, the study of how we must treat other people. The term “morality” however, is used primarily to denote a political morality, the issue of how a sovereign power should treat its citizens.
Philosophical foundations of Dworkin`s political theory of justice, his conception of two cardinal values of humanity, his concievement of individual ethics, personal morality and political morality will be in the focus of consideration.
Agamben has claimed to work inside the tradition inaugurated by the archaeological method of Michel Foucault but not to fully coincide with it. “My method is archaeological and paradigmatic in a sense which is very close to that of Foucault, but not completely coincident with it. The question is, facing the dichotomies that structuralize our culture, to go beyond the exceptions that have been producing the former, however, not to find a chronologically originary state, but to be able to understand the situation in which we are. Archaeology is, in this sense, the only way to access present” (interview to Flavia Costa, trad. Susana Scramim, in Revista do Departamento de Psicologia – Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói, v. 18 - n. 1, 131-136, Jan./Jun. 2006, 132, translated by the author). However, the aspects in which Agamben follows Foucault's method and the ones he does not were never very clear. This situation seems to change with the edition of Agamben's most extensive and explicit texts on method, Signatura Rerum. Sul Metodo (2008, italian edition). The goal of this article is to identify the points of intersection between their methods and some points in which they differ.