Citation: Roberts SG (2015) Commentary: Large-scale psychological differences within China explained by rice vs. wheat agriculture. Talhelm et al. (2014) test the hypothesis that activities which require more intensive collaboration foster more collectivist cultures. They demonstrate that a measure of collectivism correlates with the proportion of cultivated land devoted to rice paddies, which ...

The fungus-growing ants have long provided a spectacular example of coevolutionary integration. Their ecological success is thought to depend largely on the evolutionary alignment of reproductive interests between ants and fungi after vertical transmission and the ancient suppression of fungal sexuality. In the present study we test these assumptions and provide the first evidence of recombinat...

Voltage-dependent calcium channels represent a major pathway of calcium entry into neurons, where they participate actively to cell excitability and to the molecular processes of synaptic transmission. For that reason, they have been the direct or indirect pharmacological targets of analgesics and this long before their implication in the physiology of nociception had been demonstrated. These l...

Motivated by (Goyal and Murray in PLoS One 9(10):e110143, 2014) we consider a partially age-structured model simulating the dynamic of two infectious diseases vertically transmitted almost independently with horizontal coinfection and a common age-structured vaccination strategy. We study influence of parameters on existence and uniqueness of solutions and epidemiological equilibria. Impact of ...

Vector-borne infections (VBI) are very common around the globe and they account for many devastating diseases. They are not found exclusively in the third world or tropical regions but spread to every corner of the planet. The factors driving these infections are many and interact in very complex ways. This review attempts to put into perspective the external-climate change and demographics, as...

PLoS Biology | http://biology.plosjournals.org Symbiosis, an interdependent relationship between two species, is an important driver of evolutionary novelty and ecological diversity. Microbial symbionts in particular have been major evolutionary catalysts throughout the 4 billion years of life on earth and have largely shaped the evolution of complex organisms. Endosymbiosis is a specifi c type...

Electrophysiology of the Heart (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1960 ), p. 323. 19. K. Frank and M. G. F. Fuortes, J. Physiol. London 130, 625 ( 1955 ); , ibid . 131, 424 (1956); , fbid. 134, 451 (1956); W. H. Freygang, Jr., and K. Frank, J. Ge}t. Physiol. 42, 749 ( 1959 ); I. Tasaki, E. H. Polley, F. Orrego, J. Neuro physiol. 20, 374 ( 1954); P. Fatt, ibid . 23, 61 (1957). 20. J. S. Coombs, J. C. Eccle...

HIV-1 is transmitted from mother-to-child (vertical transmission) at an estimated rate of approximately 30% without any antiretroviral therapy (ART). However, administration of ART during pregnancy considerably diminishes the rate of mother-to-child transmission of HIV-1, which has become a standard of perinatal care in HIV-infected pregnant females in developed countries. Moreover, a majority ...

Results The results showed a majority of cases of non-B subtypes: subtype G 42%, subtype B 24%, subtype C 14%, CRF02_AG 12%, subtypes A, D, CRFO3_BG and CRF01_AE 2%. Comparative study of the different subtypes showed epidemiological differences: •Subtype G: 81,6% of women of Portuguese origin, 14,4% of African origin, with 76% of infection acquired by sexual transmission and 23,8% by intravenou...

Geospatial methods were used to study the associations of the environmental thermal-hydrological regime with leprosy prevalence in the Oromia and Amhara regions of Ethiopia. Prediction models were developed that indicated leprosy prevalence was related to: (i) long-term normal climate grid data on temperature and moisture balance (rain/potential evapo-transpiration); (ii) satellite surveillance...