Florida International University Appoints College of Medicine Founding Dean, Former Chancellor of LSU's Health Sciences Center boasts Impressive Research and Administrative Experience

Press Release from Florida International University 's Office of Media Relations announcing the appointment of Dr. John Rock as founding Dean of Florida International University 's College of Medicine.

Phylogenetic position of the acariform mites: sensitivity to homology assessment under total evidence

Background: Mites (Acari) have traditionally been treated as monophyletic, albeit composed of two major lineages: Acariformes and Parasitiformes. Yet recent studies based on morphology, molecular data, or combinations thereof, have increasingly drawn their monophyly into question. Furthermore, the usually basal (molecular) position of one or both mite lineages among the chelicerates is in conflict to their morphology, and to the widely accepted view that mites are close relatives of Ricinulei. Results: The phylogenetic position of the acariform mites is examined through employing SSU, partial LSU sequences, and morphology from 91 chelicerate extant terminals (forty Acariformes). In a static homology framework, molecular sequences were aligned using their secondary structure as guide, whereby regions of ambiguous alignment were discarded, and pre-aligned sequences analyzed under parsimony and different mixed models in a Bayesian inference. Parsimony and Bayesian analyses led to trees largely congruent concerning infraordinal, well-supported branches, but with low support for inter-ordinal relationships. An exception is Solifugae + Acariformes (P. P = 100%, J. = 0.91). In a dynamic homology framework, two analyses were run: a standard POY analysis and an analysis constrained by secondary structure. Both analyses led to largely congruent trees; supporting a (Palpigradi (Solifugae Acariformes)) clade and Ricinulei as sister group of Tetrapulmonata with the topology (Ricinulei (Amblypygi (Uropygi Araneae))). Combined analysis with two different morphological data matrices were run in order to evaluate the impact of constraining the analysis on the recovered topology when employing secondary structure as a guide for homology establishment. The constrained combined analysis yielded two topologies similar to the exclusively molecular analysis for both morphological matrices, except for the recovery of Pedipalpi instead of the (Uropygi Araneae) clade. The standard (direct optimization) POY analysis, however, led to the recovery of trees differing in the absence of the otherwise well-supported group Solifugae + Acariformes. Conclusions: Previous studies combining ribosomal sequences and morphology often recovered topologies similar to purely morphological analyses of Chelicerata. The apparent stability of certain clades not recovered here, like Haplocnemata and Acari, is regarded as a byproduct of the way the molecular homology was previously established using the instrumentalist approach implemented in POY. Constraining the analysis by a priori homology assessment is defended here as a way of maintaining the severity of the test when adding new data to the analysis. Although the strength of the method advocated here is keeping phylogenetic information from regions usually discarded in an exclusively static homology framework; it still has the inconvenience of being uninformative on the effect of alignment ambiguity on resampling methods of clade support estimation. Finally, putative morphological apomorphies of Solifugae + Acariformes are the reduction of the proximal cheliceral podomere, medial abutting of the leg coxae, loss of sperm nuclear membrane, and presence of differentiated germinative and secretory regions in the testis delivering their products into a common lumen.

Diversity of the Laurencia complex (Ceramiales, Rhodophyta) in Lusitanian Macronesia

10th International Phycological Congress, Orlando, Florida, USA, 4-10 de agosto 2013.

Memórias de uma vida dedicada à Trompa

O objectivo do presente trabalho é o de demonstrar como evoluímos, não só na escola, com os nossos professores, mas também no ambiente onde vivemos, onde trabalhamos, onde fazemos nossas actividades profissionais e não profissionais, aprendendo assim com a vida, com os nossos erros e com os erros dos outros. Desta forma, a presente exposição abordará as seguintes áreas do meu percurso pessoal e profissional: 1. Fase inicial, Escola Básica de Música – Lidová Skola Umení – LSU – Escola Popular Artística. 2. Desenvolvimento na Escola Secundária de Música: Conservatório, Orquestra, Música de Câmara, Início da carreira de professor. 3. Universidade: Nível de Aprendizagem Superior, Concursos de Trompa, Início de actividade em Orquestras Profissionais. 4. Um ano na Orquestra das Forças Armadas em Praga. 5. A Orquestra de Ópera de L.Janacek em Brno e a Orquestra Filarmónica de Brno: Música de Câmara, Quarteto de Trompas e Quinteto de Metais. 6. Portugal: Nova Filarmonia Portuguesa, primeiras influências de outras escolas. 7. Régie Cooperativa Sinfonia, Orquestra Clássica do Porto, Orquestra Nacional do Porto. 8. Ensino nas escolas profissionais em Portugal. 9. Escola Superior de Música, Artes e Espectáculo do Instituto Politécnico do Porto (ESMAE/IPP): Concursos, Seminários e Master Classes. 10. A influência do AIKIDO na performance musical, no ensino e na vida. 11. As minhas formas de ensinar. 12. Passos essenciais da Trompa.

A molecular perspective of the Laurencia complex (Ceramiales, Rhodophyta) in Macaronesia region

IV Congress of Marine Sciences. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, June 11th to 13th 2014.

An overview of the higher level classification of Pucciniomycotina based on combined analyses of nuclear large and small subunit rDNA sequences

Mycologia, Vol. 98, nº6

Dioszegia antarctica sp. nov. and Dioszegia cryoxerica sp. nov., psychrophilic basidiomycetous yeasts from polar desert soils in Antarctica

International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, 60

Usefulness of microsatellite typing in population genetic studies of Trypanosoma cruzi

Through microsatellite analysis of 53 monoclonal populations of Trypanosoma cruzi, we found a remarkable degree of genetic polymorphism with no single multilocus genotype being observed more than once. The microsatellite profile proved to be stable during 70 generations of the CL Brener clone in culture. The microsatellite profiling presented also high diagnostic sensitivity since DNA amplifications could be achieved with less than 100 fg DNA, corresponding to half parasite total DNA content. Based on these technical attributes the microsatellite assay turns out to be an important tool for direct typing T. cruzi in biological samples. By using this approach we were able to type T. cruzi in feces of artificially infected bugs and in single cells sorted by FACS. The microsatellites have shown to be excellent markers for T. cruzi phylogenetic reconstruction. We used maximum parsimony based on the minimum number of mutational steps to build an unrooted Wagner network, which confirms previous conclusions based on the analysis of the D7 domain of the LSU rDNA gene that T. cruzi is composed by two major groups. We also obtained evidence that strains belonging to rRNA group 2 are subdivided into two genetically distant clusters, and that one of these clusters is more related to rRNA group 1/2. These results suggest different origins for these strains.

Identification and antifungal susceptibility of a large collection of yeast strains isolated in Tunisian hospitals.

Abstract In this study, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) was used as a rapid method to identify yeasts isolated from patients in Tunisian hospitals. When identification could not be exstablished with this procedure, sequencing of the internal transcribed spacer with 5.8S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) (ITS1-5.8S-ITS2) and D1/D2 domain of large-subunit (LSU rDNA) were employed as a molecular approach for species differentiation. Candida albicans was the dominant species (43.37% of all cases), followed by C. glabrata (16.55%), C. parapsilosis (13.23%), C. tropicalis (11.34%), C. dubliniensis (4.96%), and other species more rarely encountered in human diseases such as C. krusei, C. metapsilosis, C. lusitaniae, C. kefyr, C. palmioleophila, C. guilliermondii, C. intermedia, C. orthopsilosis, and C. utilis. In addition, other yeast species were obtained including Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Debaryomyces hansenii (anamorph known as C. famata), Hanseniaspora opuntiae, Kodamaea ohmeri, Pichia caribbica (anamorph known as C. fermentati), Trichosporon spp. and finally a novel yeast species, C. tunisiensis. The in vitro antifungal activities of fluconazole and voriconazole were determined by the agar disk diffusion test and Etest, while the susceptibility to additional antifungal agents was determined with the Sensititre YeastOne system. Our results showed low incidence of azole resistance in C. albicans (0.54%), C. tropicalis (2.08%) and C. glabrata (4.28%). In addition, caspofungin was active against most isolates of the collection with the exception of two K. ohmeri isolates. This is the first report to describe caspofungin resistant isolates of this yeast.

Aislamiento, identificación, clonación y análisis filogénico de la microalga Prorocentrum minimum (PAVILLARD) J. Schiller 1933 Aislada de la Bahía del Callao - Perú

Las Floraciones Algales Nocivas (FAN) o Mareas Rojas son decoloraciones del agua visible a simple vista debido a la proliferación de uno o más microorganismos planctónicos como las microalgas, estas pueden alcanzar niveles altos y producir efectos adversos a la salud humana, como también, causar daños a otros organismos marinos cercanos a la costa. Por tal motivo, existió el interés de aislar, identificar y hacer un estudio filogenético de la especie Prorocentrum minimum encontrada en la Bahía del Callao- Perú. Se realizaron varias tomas de muestras de agua de mar para su posterior identificación morfológica, se les efectuó la técnica de purificación de la microalga, y a su vez, se adquirió un estándar de Prorocentrum minimum del Instituto Provasoli- Guillard National Center for Culture of Marine Phytoplankton (CCMP), USA. Se realizó la curva de crecimiento para la concentración de la densidad microalgal, posteriormente se efectuó la extracción de ADN y la filogenia molecular a partir de las secuencias de las subunidades del ribosoma LSU rRNA de la especie Prorocentrum minimum. Se identificó P. minimum y P gracile, que fueron especies epibentónicos cercanas por ser más recientes evolutivamente. Para la confirmación de la presencia ausencia de alguna biotoxina marina en el cultivo de Prorocentrun minimum, se estableció un análisis cuantitativo de la dosis respuesta del animal en el bioensayo en ratón. Se logró obtener la purificación de cultivo de Prorocentrum minimum y estandarizar el protocolo de trabajo, se confirmó la filogenia de la especie de microalgas. No se logró obtener la toxina DSP del cultivo de la microalga.

The representation of conditional expectations of non-Gaussian noise

For Wiener spaces conditional expectations and $L^{2}$-martingales w.r.t. the natural filtration have a natural representation in terms of chaos expansion. In this note an extension to larger classes of processes is discussed. In particular, it is pointed out that orthogonality of the chaos expansion is not required.

PHYLOGENETIC AFFINITIES OF "CHANTRANSIA" STAGES IN MEMBERS OF THE BATRACHOSPERMALES AND THOREALES (RHODOPHYTA)

This study evaluated the phylogenetic relationship among samples of ""Chantransia"" stage of the Batrachospermales and Thoreales from several regions of the world based on sequences of two genes-the plastid-encoded RUBISCO LSU gene (rbcL) and the nuclear SSU ribosomal DNA gene (SSU rDNA). All sequences of ""Chantransia macrospora"" were shown to belong to Batrachospermum macrosporum based on both molecular markers, confirming evidence from previous studies. In contrast, nine species are now associated with ""Chantransia pygmaea,"" including seven species of the Batrachospermales and two of the Thoreales. Therefore, the presence of ""C. macrospora"" in a stream can be considered reliable evidence that it belongs to B. macrosporum, whereas the occurrence of ""C. pygmaea"" does not allow the recognition of any particular species, since it is associated with at least nine species. Affinities of ""Chantransia"" stages to particular taxa were congruent for 70.5% of the samples comparing the rbcL and SSU analyses, which were associated with the same or closely related species for both markers. Sequence divergences have been reported in the ""Chantransia"" stage in comparison to the respective gametophyte, and this matter deserves further attention.

Yeasts isolated from a fungus-growing ant nest, including the description of Trichosporon chiarellii sp nov., an anamorphic basidiomycetous yeast

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

PHYLOGENETIC AFFINITIES of "CHANTRANSIA" STAGES IN MEMBERS of THE BATRACHOSPERMALES and THOREALES (RHODOPHYTA)

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)