Preface to the Princeton Landmarks in Biology Edition vii Preface xi Symbols Used xiii 1. The Importance of Islands 3 2. Area and Number of Speicies 8 3. Further Explanations of the Area-Diversity Pattern 19 4. The Strategy of Colonization 68 5. Invasibility and the Variable Niche 94 6. Stepping Stones and Biotic Exchange 123 7. Evolutionary Changes Following Colonization 145 8. Prospect 181 Glossary 185 References 193 Index 201

The Theory of Island Biogeography

I have developed "tennis elbow" from lugging this book around the past four weeks, but it is worth the pain, the effort, and the aspirin. It is also worth the (relatively speaking) bargain price. Including appendixes, this book contains 894 pages of text. The entire panorama of the neural sciences is surveyed and examined, and it is comprehensive in its scope, from genomes to social behaviors. The editors explicitly state that the book is designed as "an introductory text for students of biology, behavior, and medicine," but it is hard to imagine any audience, interested in any fragment of neuroscience at any level of sophistication, that would not enjoy this book. The editors have done a masterful job of weaving together the biologic, the behavioral, and the clinical sciences into a single tapestry in which everyone from the molecular biologist to the practicing psychiatrist can find and appreciate his or

Principles of Neural Science

The secretion of glucocorticoids (GCs) is a classic endocrine response to stress. Despite that, it remains controversial as to what purpose GCs serve at such times. One view, stretching back to the time of Hans Selye, posits that GCs help mediate the ongoing or pending stress response, either via basal levels of GCs permitting other facets of the stress response to emerge efficaciously, and/or by stress levels of GCs actively stimulating the stress response. In contrast, a revisionist viewpoint posits that GCs suppress the stress response, preventing it from being pathologically overactivated. In this review, we consider recent findings regarding GC action and, based on them, generate criteria for determining whether a particular GC action permits, stimulates, or suppresses an ongoing stressresponse or, as an additional category, is preparative for a subsequent stressor. We apply these GC actions to the realms of cardiovascular function, fluid volume and hemorrhage, immunity and inflammation, metabolism, neurobiology, and reproductive physiology. We find that GC actions fall into markedly different categories, depending on the physiological endpoint in question, with evidence for mediating effects in some cases, and suppressive or preparative in others. We then attempt to assimilate these heterogeneous GC actions into a physiological whole. (Endocrine Reviews 21: 55‐ 89, 2000)

/pdf/how-do-glucocorticoids-influence-stress-responses-4egr3fa2k0.pdf

How do glucocorticoids influence stress responses? Integrating permissive, suppressive, stimulatory, and preparative actions.

Between the 1960s and 1980s, most life scientists focused their attention on studies of nucleic acids and the translation of the coded information. Protein degradation was a neglected area, conside...

The Ubiquitin-Proteasome Proteolytic Pathway: Destruction for the Sake of Construction

In response to stress, the brain activates several neuropeptide-secreting systems. This eventually leads to the release of adrenal corticosteroid hormones, which subsequently feed back on the brain and bind to two types of nuclear receptor that act as transcriptional regulators. By targeting many genes, corticosteroids function in a binary fashion, and serve as a master switch in the control of neuronal and network responses that underlie behavioural adaptation. In genetically predisposed individuals, an imbalance in this binary control mechanism can introduce a bias towards stress-related brain disease after adverse experiences. New candidate susceptibility genes that serve as markers for the prediction of vulnerable phenotypes are now being identified.

Stress and the brain: from adaptation to disease

IEEE 802.15.4 is the first recognized standard that can replace the large number of proprietary PHY and MAC protocols for Low Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks (LR- WPANs). To balance the conflicting demands of low-delay data delivery and consumed energy, this standard employs CSMA-CA as the multiple-access scheme. However, a critical study of this protocol's operation under different conditions shows room for improvement. In this paper we propose two algorithms to improve the performance of this standard: time-based frame aggregation and selective frames. We evaluate these proposals under different conditions using performance indices including delay, throughput, and collision rate. Our simulation results together with analytical expressions from related work demonstrate the benefits of our proposed ideas.

Improvements to CSMA-CA in IEEE 802.15.4

The International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC) is a global collaborative initiative launched in 2011, aimed at tackling rare diseases through research. Here, we summarize IRDiRC’s vision and goals and highlight achievements and prospects after its first decade. The International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC) is a global collaborative initiative launched in 2011, aimed at tackling rare diseases through research. Here, we summarize IRDiRC’s vision and goals and highlight achievements and prospects after its first decade. 

Research on rare diseases: ten years of progress and challenges at IRDiRC

. Sedimented hydrothermal vents are those in which hydrothermal fluid vents through sediment and are among the least studied deep-sea ecosystems. We present a combination of microbial and biochemical data to assess trophodynamics between and within hydrothermally active and off-vent areas of the Bransfield Strait (1050–1647 m depth). Microbial composition, biomass and fatty acid signatures varied widely between and within vent and non-vent sites and provided evidence of diverse metabolic activity. Several species showed diverse feeding strategies and occupied different trophic positions in vent and non-vent areas and stable isotope values of consumers were generally not consistent with feeding structure morphology. Niche area and the diversity of microbial fatty acids reflected trends in species diversity and was lowest at the most hydrothermally active site. Faunal utilisation of chemosynthetic activity was relatively limited but was detected at both vent and non-vent sites as evidenced by carbon and sulphur isotopic signatures, suggesting that the hydrothermal activity can affect trophodynamics over a much wider area than previously thought.

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Hydrothermal activity lowers trophic diversity in Antarctic sedimented hydrothermal vents

It is surprising how little we really know about the microorganisms that live within the Arctic Ocean and in particular their role in the marine food web. A comprehensive food web study is yet to be conducted, and although many studies talk of an Arctic marine food web, publications normally focus on just one aspect of it. In some way, it mirrors our knowledge of the deep sea. We know it exists, we know the main interactions and pathways, but a great deal of the background information and detail is lacking. The single most important part of our research, therefore, is to understand the role and function of microorganisms in the environment. A fitting analogy is perhaps an iceberg. We know what it looks like, we know roughly what it does and how it behaves, we even know that the majority of the iceberg is hidden from view. However, we know very little about the effects of an iceberg on the general environment around it. Further, if we induce change in the behaviour of that iceberg, we have little idea what effect it might have. This is due to a combination of factors; (1) the complexity of the science, (2) the ambition, cost and logistics of conducting experimental work in these systems, (3) the fact that the existing, relatively simple model is sufficient for most purposes, (4) technological and methodological limitations and (5) research funding tends not to favour supporting ambitious long term ecological studies which can be very expensive. However, as with most questions in science, the harder we look, the more there is to find, and for every question we answer, a number of new questions arise. In this chapter, we attempt to give an overview of what is known about the microbial community in the Arctic marine food web, assess why this knowledge is relatively limited and pose some of the questions that remain to be answered.

Microbes and the Arctic Ocean

With the advent of Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and 2.5/3G communication systems, the mobile device has become a window to the Internet. A natural interface to this mobile device is through speech. To address this need, a new European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) standard front-end has evolved for Distributed Speech Recognition (DSR). The goal of the ETSI DSR front-end is to standardize client-server speech recognition applications with a common feature set and quantization method. Although originally evolved as a speech recognition standard, we propose it is also a method of standardizing distributed speaker recognition authentication. To this end, we perform experiments using the DSR parameterization for a speaker recognition application. Results indicate excellent preservation of speaker identity in the DSR standard. This testing shows that DSR brings the potential for a promising new era of portable authentication for applications in personalization and security.

/pdf/speaker-recognition-and-the-etsi-standard-distributed-speech-fieilaz7wq.pdf

David A. Pearce

Papers

Improvements to CSMA-CA in IEEE 802.15.4

Research on rare diseases: ten years of progress and challenges at IRDiRC

Hydrothermal activity lowers trophic diversity in Antarctic sedimented hydrothermal vents

Microbes and the Arctic Ocean

Speaker recognition and the ETSI Standard Distributed Speech Recognition Front-End.