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Rationale: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a devastating disease characterized by limited treatment options and high mortality. A better understanding of the molecular drivers of IPF progression is needed. Objectives: To identify and validate molecular determinants of IPF survival. Methods: A staged genome-wide association study was performed using paired genomic and survival data. Stage I cases were drawn from centers across the United States and Europe and stage II cases from Vanderbilt University. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to identify gene variants associated with differential transplantation-free survival (TFS). Stage I variants with nominal significance (P

1. Biodiversity is an important component of natural ecosystems, with higher species richness often correlating with an increase in ecosystem productivity. Yet, this relationship varies substantially across environments, typically becoming less pronounced at high levels of species richness. However, species richness alone cannot reflect all important properties of a community, including community evenness, which may mediate the relationship between biodiversity and productivity. If the evenness of a community correlates negatively with richness across forests globally, then a greater number of species may not always increase overall diversity and productivity of the system. Theoretical work and local empirical studies have shown that the effect of evenness on ecosystem functioning may be especially strong at high richness levels, yet the consistency of this remains untested at a global scale. 2. Here, we used a dataset of forests from across the globe, which includes composition, biomass accumulation and net primary productivity, to explore whether productivity correlates with community evenness and richness in a way that evenness appears to buffer the effect of richness. Specifically, we evaluated whether low levels of evenness in speciose communities correlate with the attenuation of the richness–productivity relationship. 3. We found that tree species richness and evenness are negatively correlated across forests globally, with highly speciose forests typically comprising a few dominant and many rare species. Furthermore, we found that the correlation between diversity and productivity changes with evenness: at low richness, uneven communities are more productive, while at high richness, even communities are more productive. 4. Synthesis. Collectively, these results demonstrate that evenness is an integral component of the relationship between biodiversity and productivity, and that the attenuating effect of richness on forest productivity might be partly explained by low evenness in speciose communities. Productivity generally increases with species richness, until reduced evenness limits the overall increases in community diversity. Our research suggests that evenness is a fundamental component of biodiversity–ecosystem function relationships, and is of critical importance for guiding conservation and sustainable ecosystem management decisions.

The rising cost of textbooks is influencing students' choice of courses, as well as the quality of their learning experience once they are enrolled in a course, according to recent studies. This paper builds on those studies by exploring the possible effects that textbook costs may be having on study behaviours of students at one New Zealand tertiary institution: University of Otago. Perceptions of undergraduate students (n-811) about cost of, and access to, textbooks and possible influences on their study behaviours were gathered through a questionnaire. Results showed that students: are more likely to buy textbooks than access them through libraries; experienced purchasing expensive textbooks that were rarely used; questioned the value of textbooks; described alternative resource-seeking behaviours; and are heavily reliant on alternatives suggested by lecturers. Perceptions about affordability and academic value, access issues and consequential influences on study-related behaviours and attitudes are discussed.

Simple Summary: Lung cancer (LC) is one of the most common and serious types of cancer. Unfortunately, it is not easy to detect in the early stages of the disease due to the absence of symptoms. Many patients have late-stage LC when they are diagnosed, and this is associated with limited treatment options and poor survival rates. To try to improve this, we have assessed which proteins in LC patients are recognised by the immune response and could be used to screen at-risk patients for LC before symptoms appear. We have shown that panels of blood and sputum biomarkers may offer the most effective way to improve early LC detection. Lung cancer (LC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths. Pulmonary nodules are one of the risk factors, and their discovery rate has been increasing due to enhanced performance of chest CT scans, but more than 90% are non-malignant, causing unnecessary stress to patients and costs to healthcare providers. Early diagnosis of LC is associated with a 5-year survival rate of up to 75% following surgical resection, but LC is often diagnosed late due to a lack of symptoms and poor 5-year survival rates as low as 10%. The cost of LC diagnosis is high, with 40% of it associated with benign lesions, which are difficult to differentiate from malignant lesions. Tumour-associated antigens (TAAs) may provide one way in which LC could be diagnosed early using minimally-invasive techniques, under their association with immune responses and specificity for disease. Here we discuss the potential of cancer-testis antigens (CTAs) to act as non-invasive biomarkers for the early detection of non-small cell lung cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lung cancer (LC) causes few symptoms in the earliest stages, leading to one of the highest mortality rates among cancers. Low-dose computerised tomography (LDCT) is used to screen high-risk individuals, reducing the mortality rate by 20%. However, LDCT results in a high number of false positives and is associated with unnecessary follow-up and cost. Biomarkers with high sensitivities and specificities could assist in the early detection of LC, especially in patients with high-risk features. Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), cytokeratin 19 fragments and cancer antigen 125 have been found to be highly expressed during the later stages of LC but have low sensitivity in the earliest stages. We determined the best biomarkers for the early diagnosis of LC, using a systematic review of eight databases. We identified 98 articles that focussed on the identification and assessment of diagnostic biomarkers and achieved a pooled area under curve of 0.85 (95% CI 0.82–0.088), indicating that the diagnostic performance of these biomarkers when combined was excellent. Of the studies, 30 focussed on single/antigen panels, 22 on autoantibodies, 31 on miRNA and RNA panels, and 15 suggested the use of circulating DNA combined with CEA or neuron-specific enolase (NSE) for early LC detection. Verification of blood biomarkers with high sensitivities (Ciz1, exoGCC2, ITGA2B), high specificities (CYFR21-1, antiHE4, OPNV) or both (HSP90α, CEA) along with miR-15b and miR-27b/miR-21 from sputum may improve early LC detection. Further assessment is needed using appropriate sample sizes, control groups that include patients with non-malignant conditions, and standardised cut-off levels for each biomarker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on facilitation has not had the advantage of being explicitly underpinned by mathematical population dynamic theory. This has limited understanding of the role of facilitation on ecological dynamics and the integration of facilitation into general theory.I show that facilitative interactions can be classified into four categories likely to be dynamically similar to interaction types for which population‐dynamic theory does exist. This classification provides a useful population‐dynamic foundation for facilitation studies and reveals several fundamental questions unanswered by existing empirical work.While facilitation has typically been excluded from studies of 'competitive' coexistence, I also describe how coexistence theory does not always default to the assumption that species only compete; recent developments in coexistence theory fully accommodate the potentially important influence of facilitation.Simple models of multispecies population dynamics emphasize the importance of reciprocal interspecific interactions, intraspecific interactions, and density dependence for understanding the outcome of facilitative interactions. I point to approaches for aligning future empirical studies of facilitation with these features.Synthesis: Closely aligning at least some future empirical work on facilitation with existing mathematical population dynamic theory will further improve understanding of the effects of facilitation on ecological dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose To evaluate whether exhaled nitric oxide measurement can facilitate in the assessment of chronic cough patients based on their airway inflammatory phenotype. Methods We have studied consecutive patients attending a specialist cough clinic. 30 patients with high FeNO (> 30 ppb) and 20 patients with low FeNO (< 20 ppb) were recruited. Results There was a significant correlation between FeNO, B-Eos and sputum eosinophil count (p < 0.001). The number of recorded coughs in 24 h and HARQ scores were significantly (p < 0.05) higher in patients with a low FeNO. In contrast to the high FeNO group (48%), the greater proportion of these patients were women (90%). LCQ scores were worse in the low FeNO group but it was not significant. Conclusion A strong relationship between FeNO, blood eosinophils and sputum eosinophils confirming phenotypic identity was observed. Whether the observed gender disparity accounts for the different cough frequency characteristics is unknown., Author(s): Mahboobeh Haji Sadeghi [sup.1] , Caroline E. Wright [sup.1] , Simon Hart [sup.1] , Michael Crooks [sup.1] , Alyn H. Morice [sup.1] [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) Respiratory Medicine, Castle [...]