Epigenetic responses of trees to environmental stress in the context of climate change.

In long-lived tree populations, when environmental change outpaces rates of evolutionary adaptation, plasticity in traits related to stress tolerance, dormancy, and dispersal may be vital for preventing extinction. While a population's genetic background partly determines its ability to adapt to a changing environment, so too do the many types of epigenetic modifications that occur within and among populations, which vary on timescales orders of magnitude faster than the emergence of new beneficial alleles. Consequently, phenotypic plasticity driven by epigenetic modification may be especially critical for sessile, long-lived organisms such as trees that must rely on this plasticity to keep pace with rapid anthropogenic environmental change.

Divergent ecological responses to typhoon disturbance revealed via landscape-scale acoustic monitoring.

Climate change is increasing the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme weather events across the globe. Understanding the capacity for ecological communities to withstand and recover from such events is critical. Typhoons are extreme weather events that are expected to broadly homogenize ecological dynamics through structural damage to vegetation and longer-term effects of salinization.

Coexistence barriers confine the poleward range of a globally distributed plant.

In the study of factors shaping species' poleward range boundaries, climatic constraints are often assigned greater importance than biotic interactions such as competition. However, theory suggests competition can truncate a species' fundamental niche in harsh environments. We test this by challenging a mechanistic niche model - containing explicit competition terms - to predict the poleward range boundaries of two globally distributed, ecologically similar aquatic plant species.

Invasive plants exert disproportionately negative allelopathic effects on the growth and physiology of the earthworm Eisenia fetida.

Exotic invasive plants possess the capacity to disrupt and extirpate populations of native species. Native plants' increased sensitivity to invaders' allelochemicals is a mechanism by which this can occur. However, it is not clear whether and how the allelopathic effects of invasive plants affect members of the soil faunal community - particularly the important functional guild of earthworms.

How sample heterogeneity can obscure the signal of microbial interactions.

Microbial community data are commonly subjected to computational tools such as correlation networks, null models, and dynamic models, with the goal of identifying the ecological processes structuring microbial communities. A major assumption of these methods is that the signs and magnitudes of species interactions and vital rates can be reliably parsed from observational data on species' (relative) abundances. However, we contend that this assumption is violated when sample units contain any underlying spatial structure.

Negative frequency-dependent growth underlies the stable coexistence of two cosmopolitan aquatic plants.

Identifying and quantifying the mechanisms influencing species coexistence remains a major challenge for the study of community ecology. These mechanisms, which stem from species' differential responses to competition and their environments, promote coexistence if they give each species a growth advantage when rare. Yet despite the widespread assumption that co-occurring species stably coexist, there have been few empirical demonstrations in support of this claim.

Linking the development and functioning of a carnivorous pitcher plant's microbial digestive community.

Ecosystem development theory predicts that successional turnover in community composition can influence ecosystem functioning. However, tests of this theory in natural systems are made difficult by a lack of replicable and tractable model systems. Using the microbial digestive associates of a carnivorous pitcher plant, I tested hypotheses linking host age-driven microbial community development to host functioning.

Development and characterisation of cellulose based electrospun mats for buccal delivery of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID).

In this study conventional electrospinning (ESp) was used to prepare a series of buccal films containing indomethacin (INDO, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug), Ethocel (10), hydroxypropylmethylcellulose (HPMC) and Tween 80 at various concentrations. The films were characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Raman spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Drug release behaviour was assessed in vitro (buffer pH6.

Bacteria facilitate prey retention by the pitcher plant Darlingtonia californica.

Bacteria are hypothesized to provide a variety of beneficial functions to plants. Many carnivorous pitcher plants, for example, rely on bacteria for digestion of captured prey. This bacterial community may also be responsible for the low surface tensions commonly observed in pitcher plant digestive fluids, which might facilitate prey capture.

Development of aqueous ternary nanomatrix films: A novel 'green' strategy for the delivery of poorly soluble drugs.

Aqueous polymeric films have potentially great values in drug development, particularly in controlled drug release and taste masking strategies. However the progressive polymer-particle coalescence that occurs randomly during film formation, curing and storage may render the film less permeable leading to erratic and unpredictable drug release profile. The focus of this study was to investigate the impacts of the in situ formation of polymer-drug nanoconjugate, at the interfacial nano-domains of two oppositely charged polymers, on the mechanism of film formation and to prepare aqueous ternary polymer-drug-polymer nanomatrix films as a novel green strategy for the delivery of ibuprofen, a model poorly soluble drug.

Time-variant species pools shape competitive dynamics and biodiversity-ecosystem function relationships.

Biodiversity-ecosystem function (BEF) experiments routinely employ common garden designs, drawing samples from a local biota. The communities from which taxa are sampled may not, however, be at equilibrium. To test for temporal changes in BEF relationships, I assembled the pools of aquatic bacterial strains isolated at different time points from leaves on the pitcher plant Darlingtonia californica in order to evaluate the strength, direction and drivers of the BEF relationship across a natural host-associated successional gradient.

Longing for the Longue Durée.

The authors of The History Manifesto respond to the Viewpoint commentary and extend the dialogue between the book's arguments and the recent historiography of science, technology, and medicine.

The cobra's tongue: Rethinking the function of the "fishtail appendage" on the pitcher plant Darlingtonia californica.

Premise Of Study: Carnivorous pitcher plants employ a variety of putative adaptations for prey attraction and capture. One example is the peculiar forked "fishtail appendage", a foliar structure widely presumed to function as a prey attractant on adult leaves of Darlingtonia californica (Sarraceniaceae). This study tests the prediction that the presence of the appendage facilitates prey capture and can be considered an example of an adaptation to the carnivorous syndrome.

Experimental evidence for a time-integrated effect of productivity on diversity.

The time-area-productivity hypothesis is a proposed explanation for global biodiversity gradients. It predicts that a bioregion's modern diversity is the product of its area and productivity, integrated over evolutionary time. I performed the first experimental test of the time-area-productivity hypothesis using a model system for adaptive radiation - the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25.

Electrospun PVP-indomethacin constituents for transdermal dressings and drug delivery devices.

A method in layering dressings with a superficial active layer of sub-micrometer scaled fibrous structures is demonstrated. For this, polyvinylpyrolidone (PVP)-indomethacin (INDO) fibres (5% w/v PVP, 5% w/w indomethacin, using a 50:50 ethanol-methanol solvent system) were produced at different flow rates (50 μL/min and 100 μL/min) via a modified electrospinning device head (applied voltage varied between 15 ± 2 kV). We further assessed these structures for their morphological, physical and chemical properties using SEM, AFM, DSC, XRD, FTIR and HPLC-UV.

Utilizing novel diversity estimators to quantify multiple dimensions of microbial biodiversity across domains.

Background: Microbial ecologists often employ methods from classical community ecology to analyze microbial community diversity. However, these methods have limitations because microbial communities differ from macro-organismal communities in key ways. This study sought to quantify microbial diversity using methods that are better suited for data spanning multiple domains of life and dimensions of diversity.

Millimeter-scale patterns of phylogenetic and trait diversity in a salt marsh microbial mat.

Intertidal microbial mats are comprised of distinctly colored millimeter-thick layers whose communities organize in response to environmental gradients such as light availability, oxygen/sulfur concentrations, and redox potential. Here, slight changes in depth correspond to sharp niche boundaries. We explore the patterns of biodiversity along this depth gradient as it relates to functional groups of bacteria, as well as trait-encoding genes.

Nanoscale DNA tetrahedra improve biomolecular recognition on patterned surfaces.

The bottom-up approach of DNA nano-biotechnology can create biomaterials with defined properties relevant for a wide range of applications. This report describes nanoscale DNA tetrahedra that are beneficial to the field of biosensing and the targeted immobilization of biochemical receptors on substrate surfaces. The DNA nanostructures act as immobilization agents that are able to present individual molecules at a defined nanoscale distance to the solvent thereby improving biomolecular recognition of analytes.

Impaired bacterial attachment to light activated Ni-Ti alloy.

Ni-Ti alloy due to its unique mechanical properties, is used for many types of implants. Failure of these implants can be attributed to many different factors; however infections are a common problem. In this paper, the attachment of the bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus, to the Ni-Ti surface modified by a range of processes with and without of light activation (used to elicit antimicrobial properties of materials) was assessed and related to different surface characteristics.

In vitro studies on the influence of surface modification of Ni-Ti alloy on human bone cells.

The in vitro cell behavior on Nitinol after different surface treatments was investigated. As references samples, commercially pure titanium (cpTi) and bioactive titanium were used. The surface treatments influenced the topography, surface energy, crystallographic structure, ion release, chemistry, and ability to form apatite layer from simulated body fluids.

A method to solve the forward problem in magnetic induction tomography based on the weakly coupled field approximation.

Magnetic induction tomography (MIT) is a noninvasive modality for imaging the complex conductivity (kappa = sigma + jomegaepsilon) or the magnetic permeability (mu) of a target under investigation. Because MIT employs noncontact coils for excitation and detection, MIT may be suitable for imaging biological tissues. In medical applications where high resolutions are sought, image reconstruction is a time and memory consuming task because the associated inverse problem is nonlinear and ill-posed.