Are Open Science instructions targeted to ecologists and evolutionary biologists sufficient? A literature review of guidelines and journal data policies.

Open science (OS) awareness and skills are increasingly becoming an essential part of everyday scientific work as e.g., many journals require authors to share data.

Hydrogeological Characterization of Crystalline Bedrock Using Borehole Magnetic Resonance.

We aimed to test borehole magnetic resonance (BMR) method for determining hydraulic parameters (porosity, permeability, and hydraulic conductivity) required for hydrogeological modeling in two distinct crystalline rock environments. These sites comprise Proterozoic basement rocks of different compositions: mafic rocks at the Sakatti mining development site in northern Finland and felsic rocks at the Olkiluoto Island nuclear repository site in southwest Finland. Although BMR is widely used for determining storage and hydraulic properties in sedimentary environments, there have been few studies in crystalline bedrocks.

A curated DNA barcode reference library for parasitoids of northern European cyclically outbreaking geometrid moths.

Large areas of forests are annually damaged or destroyed by outbreaking insect pests. Understanding the factors that trigger and terminate such population eruptions has become crucially important, as plants, plant-feeding insects, and their natural enemies may respond differentially to the ongoing changes in the global climate. In northernmost Europe, climate-driven range expansions of the geometrid moths and have resulted in overlapping and increasingly severe outbreaks.

Energy Use of Flux Salt Recovery Using Bipolar Membrane Electrodialysis for a CO Mineralisation Process.

Mineral carbonation routes have been extensively studied for almost two decades at Åbo Akademi University, focusing on the extraction of magnesium from magnesium silicates using ammonium sulfate (AS) and/or ammonium bisulfate (ABS) flux salt followed by carbonation. There is, however, a need for proper recovery and recirculation of chemicals involved. This study focused on the separation of AS, ABS and aqueous ammonia using different setups of bipolar membrane electrodialysis using both synthetic and rock-derived solutions.

Altered monocyte phenotypes but not impaired peripheral T cell immunity may explain susceptibility of the elderly to develop tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading killer due to a single infectious disease worldwide. With the aging of the global population, the case rate and deaths due to TB are highest in the elderly population. While general immunosenescence associated with old age is thought to contribute to the susceptibility of the elderly to develop active TB disease, very few studies of immune function in elderly individuals with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.

The prevalence and correlates of anticoagulant rodenticide exposure in non-target predators and scavengers in Finland.

The most common rodent control method worldwide is anticoagulant rodenticides (ARs), which cause death by internal bleeding. ARs can transfer to non-target predators via secondary exposure, i.e.

Guardian or threat: does golden eagle predation risk have cascading effects on forest grouse?

Previous studies on intraguild predation have mainly focused on within-class assemblages, even though avian top predators may also influence mammalian mesopredator prey. By using nation-wide long-term data from Finland, northern Europe, we examined the impacts of golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) together with red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) and pine martens (Martes martes) on forest-dwelling herbivores, black grouse (Tetrao tetrix) and hazel grouse (Tetrastes bonasia). We hypothesized that eagles may alleviate the overall predation pressure on grouse by imposing intraguild predation risk on mesopredators.

TSC-22 up-regulates collagen 3a1 gene expression in the rat heart.

Background: The transforming growth factor (TGF)-β is one of the key mediators in cardiac remodelling occurring after myocardial infarction (MI) and in hypertensive heart disease. The TGF-β-stimulated clone 22 (TSC-22) is a leucine zipper protein expressed in many tissues and possessing various transcription-modulating activities. However, its function in the heart remains unknown.

The Early-Onset Myocardial Infarction Associated PHACTR1 Gene Regulates Skeletal and Cardiac Alpha-Actin Gene Expression.

The phosphatase and actin regulator 1 (PHACTR1) locus is a very commonly identified hit in genome-wide association studies investigating coronary artery disease and myocardial infarction (MI). However, the function of PHACTR1 in the heart is still unknown. We characterized the mechanisms regulating Phactr1 expression in the heart, used adenoviral gene delivery to investigate the effects of Phactr1 on cardiac function, and analyzed the relationship between MI associated PHACTR1 allele and cardiac function in human subjects.

Avian top predator and the landscape of fear: responses of mammalian mesopredators to risk imposed by the golden eagle.

Top predators may induce extensive cascading effects on lower trophic levels, for example, through intraguild predation (IGP). The impacts of both mammalian and avian top predators on species of the same class have been extensively studied, but the effects of the latter upon mammalian mesopredators are not yet as well known. We examined the impact of the predation risk imposed by a large avian predator, the golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos, L.

Reproductive responses of birds to experimental food supplementation: a meta-analysis.

Introduction: Food availability is an important environmental cue for animals for deciding how much to invest in reproduction, and it ultimately affects population size. The importance of food limitation has been extensively studied in terrestrial vertebrate populations, especially in birds, by experimentally manipulating food supply. However, the factors explaining variation in reproductive decisions in response to food supplementation remain unclear.

Characterization of the regulatory mechanisms of activating transcription factor 3 by hypertrophic stimuli in rat cardiomyocytes.

Aims: Activating transcription factor 3 (ATF3) is a stress-activated immediate early gene suggested to have both detrimental and cardioprotective role in the heart. Here we studied the mechanisms of ATF3 activation by hypertrophic stimuli and ATF3 downstream targets in rat cardiomyocytes.

Methods And Results: When neonatal rat cardiomyocytes were exposed to endothelin-1 (ET-1, 100 nM) and mechanical stretching in vitro, maximal increase in ATF3 expression occurred at 1 hour.

p38α regulates SERCA2a function.

cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) regulates the L-type calcium channel, the ryanodine receptor, and phospholamban (PLB) thereby increasing inotropy. Cardiac contractility is also regulated by p38 MAPK, which is a negative regulator of cardiac contractile function. The aim of this study was to identify the mechanism mediating the positive inotropic effect of p38 inhibition.

Varying impacts of cervid, hare and vole browsing on growth and survival of boreal tree seedlings.

The negative impacts of mammalian herbivores on plants have been studied quite extensively, but typically with only a single herbivore species at a time. We conducted a novel comparison of the browsing effects of voles, hares and cervids upon the growth and survival of boreal tree seedlings. This was done by excluding varying assemblages of these key mammalian herbivores from silver birch, Scots pine and Norway spruce seedlings for 3 years.

Regulation of cardiac melusin gene expression by hypertrophic stimuli in the rat.

Aim: Melusin is an integrin β1-interacting protein proposed to act as a biomechanical sensor in the heart. We characterized mechanisms and signalling pathways regulating cardiac melusin expression.

Methods: Infusion of arginine(8) -vasopressin (AVP) in Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats, spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and double transgenic rats (dTGR) harbouring both human angiotensinogen and renin genes as well as infusion of angiotensin II (Ang II) in SD rats were used.

M-CAT element mediates mechanical stretch-activated transcription of B-type natriuretic peptide via ERK activation.

The muscle-CAT (M-CAT) promoter element is found on promoters of most muscle-specific cardiac genes, but its role in cardiac pathology is poorly understood. Here we studied whether the M-CAT element is involved in hypertrophic process activated by mechanical stretch, and identified the intracellular pathways mediating the response. When an in vitro stretch model of cultured neonatal rat cardiomyocytes and luciferase reporter construct driven by rat B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) promoter were used, mutation of M-CAT element inhibited not only the basal reporter activity (88%), but also the stretch-activated BNP transcription (58%, p < 0.

Distinct regulation of B-type natriuretic peptide transcription by p38 MAPK isoforms.

Persistent controversy underlies the functional roles of specific p38 MAPK isoforms in cardiac biology and regulation of hypertrophy-associated genes. Here we show that adenoviral gene transfer of p38β but not p38α increased B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) mRNA levels in vitro as well as atrial natriuretic peptide mRNA levels both in vitro and in vivo. Overexpression of p38α, in turn, augmented the expression fibrosis-related genes connective tissue growth factor, basic fibroblast growth factor and matrix metalloproteinase-9 both in vitro and in vivo.

Psychiatric disorders leading to hospitalization before and after infertility treatments.

Background: This study aimed at determining the psychiatric morbidity of women undergoing infertility treatments, before and after treatment as compared with control women.

Methods: The number of women hospitalized because of psychiatric disorders was obtained from the Hospital Discharge Register (1969-2006) in a cohort of women who purchased drugs for in vitro fertilization, intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection or frozen embryo transfer treatments (n = 9175) in 1996-1998 in Finland and their controls (n = 9175). The age- and residence-matched controls were further adjusted in the analysis for socio-economic position and marital status.

Surfactant effects on skin absorption of model organic chemicals: implications for dermal risk assessment studies.

Occupational and environmental exposures to chemicals are major potential routes of exposure for direct skin toxicity and for systemic absorption. The majority of these exposures are to complex mixtures, yet most experimental studies to assess topical chemical absorption are conducted neat or in simple aqueous vehicles. A component of many industrial mixtures is surfactants that solubilize ingredients and stabilize mixtures of oily components when present in aqueous vehicles.

Patient characteristics and diagnostic discrepancy in first-episode psychosis.

Despite the operational criteria in diagnostic systems there is still marked diversity between clinical and research diagnoses in populations with psychotic disorders. The objective of the current study was to explore the association of patient-related factors with diagnostic agreement between clinical diagnoses and Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry (SCAN-2) diagnoses in first-episode psychosis. The sample included 80 consecutive patients.

Variation in predation risk and vole feeding behaviour: a field test of the risk allocation hypothesis.

Many prey animals experience temporal variation in the risk of predation and therefore face the problem of allocating their time between antipredator efforts and other activities like feeding and breeding. We investigated time allocation of prey animals that balanced predation risk and feeding opportunities. The predation risk allocation hypothesis predicts that animals should forage more in low- than in high-risk situations and that this difference should increase with an increasing attack ratio (i.

Estimation of the total number of cholinergic neurons containing estrogen receptor-alpha in the rat basal forebrain.

This study was undertaken to estimate the total number of cholinergic cells and the percentage of cholinergic cells that contain estrogen receptor-alpha (ER alpha) in the rat basal forebrain. Double immunostaining for choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) and ER alpha was carried out on 50-microm-thick free-floating sections. Because routine mounting method causes considerable flattening of the sections, we embedded immunostained sections in Durcupan, an epoxy resin known to cause virtually no shrinkage.

Indicators of medication compliance in first-episode psychosis.

Compliance behaviour is a multi-factorial phenomenon. In psychotic patients, it includes patient-related, medication-related, and environmental components. Compliance is a crucial factor in relation to outcome.

A morphometric MRI study of the hippocampus in first-episode, neuroleptic-naïve schizophrenia.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have frequently, although not unambiguously, reported hippocampal volume deficit in schizophrenia. Data on the hippocampal volumes in first-episode schizophrenia, however, are sparse. In addition, a recent topographic MRI study proposed a regionally specific volume loss in the hippocampus of chronic schizophrenics, but to date no reports have replicated this finding.

Carbohydrate depletion has profound effects on the muscle amino acid and glucose metabolism during hyperinsulinaemia.

Aim: We investigated the effect of carbohydrate availability and euglycaemic hyperinsulinaemia on intramuscular and plasma amino acids in 14 healthy men (age 26.5 +/- 0.9 years, b.