ALBERT

Description: Insects with complex life-cycles should optimize age and size at maturity during larval development. When inhabiting seasonal environments, organisms have limited reproductive periods and face fundamental decisions: individuals that reach maturity late in season have to either reproduce at a small size or increase their growth rates. Increasing growth rates is costly in insects because of higher juvenile mortality, decreased adult survival or increased susceptibility to parasitism by bacteria and viruses via compromised immune function. Environmental changes such as seasonality can also alter the quantitative genetic architecture. Here, we explore the quantitative genetics of life history and immunity traits under two experimentally induced seasonal environments in the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus. Seasonality affected the life history but not the immune phenotypes. Individuals under decreasing day length developed slower and grew to a bigger size. We found ample additive genetic variance and heritability for components of immunity (haemocyte densities, proPhenoloxidase activity, resistance against Serratia marcescens), and for the life history traits, age and size at maturity. Despite genetic covariance among traits, the structure of G was inconsistent with genetically based trade-off between life history and immune traits (for example, a strong positive genetic correlation between growth rate and haemocyte density was estimated). However, conditional evolvabilities support the idea that genetic covariance structure limits the capacity of individual traits to evolve independently. We found no evidence for G × E interactions arising from the experimentally induced seasonality.

Description: Drop size spectra were measured by using an optical disdrometer of type ODM 470 at 2 different locations. They were subdivided in four data sets: measurements over land, in 3 coastal areas, over semi-enclosed seas, and over the open sea. Based on 1 minute 4 measurement intervals no differences were found in drop size spectra between continental and 5 maritime areas. An exponential model with a rain rate depending interception number and 6 pre-factor in the exponent fits well the spectra, maximum drop sizes depend strongly on 7 estimated rain rates. In contrast to other investigations there are no significant differences 8 between spectra of convective and stratiform rain based on 1 minute measurement intervals. 9 However, spectra integrated over 10 minutes show the expected differences.

Description: Cell-based therapies, such as adoptive immunotherapy and stem-cell therapy, have received considerable attention as novel therapeutics in oncological research and clinical practice. The development of effective therapeutic strategies using tumor-targeted cells requires the ability to determine in vivo the location, distribution, and long-term viability of the therapeutic cell populations as well as their biological fate with respect to cell activation and differentiation. In conjunction with various noninvasive imaging modalities, cell-labeling methods, such as exogenous labeling or transfection with a reporter gene, allow visualization of labeled cells in vivo in real time, as well as monitoring and quantifying cell accumulation and function. Such cell-tracking methods also have an important role in basic cancer research, where they serve to elucidate novel biological mechanisms. In this Review, we describe the basic principles of cell-tracking methods, explain various approaches to cell tracking, and highlight recent examples for the application of such methods in animals and humans.

Description: A threat of irreversible damage should prompt action to mitigate climate change, according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which serves as a basis for international climate policy. CO2-induced climate change is known to be largely irreversible on timescales of many centuries1, as simulated global mean temperature remains approximately constant for such periods following a complete cessation of carbon dioxide emissions while thermosteric sea level continues to rise1,2,3,4,5,6. Here we use simulations with the Canadian Earth System Model to show that ongoing regional changes in temperature and precipitation are significant, following a complete cessation of carbon dioxide emissions in 2100, despite almost constant global mean temperatures. Moreover, our projections show warming at intermediate depths in the Southern Ocean that is many times larger by the year 3000 than that realized in 2100. We suggest that a warming of the intermediate-depth ocean around Antarctica at the scale simulated for the year 3000 could lead to the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which would be associated with a rise in sea level of several metres2,7,8.