Mercury content and isotopic composition of teeth, and sex and age of skulls of polar bears collected in Svalbard

We examined the use of mercury (Hg) and nitrogen and carbon stable isotopes in teeth of polar bear (Ursus maritimus) from Svalbard as biotracers of temporal changes in Hg pollution exposure between 1964 and 2003. Teeth were regarded as a good matrix of the Hg exposure, and in total 87 teeth of polar bears were analysed. Dental Hg levels ranged from 0.6 to 72.3 ng/g dry weight and increased with age during the first 10 years of life. A decreasing time trend in Hg concentrations was observed over the recent four decades while no temporal changes were found in the stable isotope ratios of nitrogen (d15N) and carbon (d13C). This suggests that the decrease of Hg concentrations over time was more likely due to a lower environmental Hg exposure in this region rather than a shift in the feeding habits of Svalbard polar bears.

(Table 1) Tagging date, total length and sex of bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) tagged at Point Barrow, Alaska

Working with subsistence whale hunters, we tagged 19 mostly immature bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) with satellite-linked transmitters between May 2006 and September 2008 and documented their movements in the Chukchi Sea from late August through December. From Point Barrow, Alaska, most whales moved west through the Chukchi Sea between 71° and 74° N latitude; nine whales crossed in six to nine days. Three whales returned to Point Barrow for 13 to 33 days, two after traveling 300 km west and one after traveling ~725 km west to Wrangel Island, Russia; two then crossed the Chukchi Sea again while the other was the only whale to travel south along the Alaskan side of the Chukchi Sea. Seven whales spent from one to 21 days near Wrangel Island before moving south to northern Chukotka. Whales spent an average of 59 days following the Chukotka coast southeastward. Kernel density analysis identified Point Barrow, Wrangel Island, and the northern coast of Chukotka as areas of greater use by bowhead whales that might be important for feeding. All whales traveled through a potential petroleum development area at least once. Most whales crossed the development area in less than a week; however, one whale remained there for 30 days.

Re-examining "difference" and "development" : a note on broadening the field of gender and development in Japan

It is the author’s position that the framework for WID/GAD, as academic field and practice concerned primarily with developing countries should be broadened so as to incorporate Japan’s own gender and development issues in its scope. Unlike other developed countries, activists and scholars in Japan rarely connected, as was also the case with the fields of women’s/gender studies and WID/GAD. However, this was not due to any lack of interest among Japanese women regarding the lives of women in developing countries. Rather the points of fissure were the notions of ‘difference’ and ‘development’ held by Japanese women. These analytical concepts were narrowly defined, which resulted in limited interaction between discourse on women’s issues in Japan and WID/GAD related to ‘other’ women. By re-examining these notions and looking more deeply into perceived differences in the local context of ‘development’, not only can we strategize on ‘differences’ in such a way that we draw strength from the very fact of being different, but also prevent ‘differences’ from being used as grounds for discrimination. As a whole, we could gain substantially by broadening the field of Gender and Development and, as such, it is imperative that this field be broadened with urgency as development itself changes in this ever-interconnected world

Speech Signals Feature Extraction Model for a Speaker’s Gender and Age Identification System

Durante el proceso de producción de voz, los factores anatómicos, fisiológicos o psicosociales del individuo modifican los órganos resonadores, imprimiendo en la voz características particulares. Los sistemas ASR tratan de encontrar los matices característicos de una voz y asociarlos a un individuo o grupo. La edad y sexo de un hablante son factores intrínsecos que están presentes en la voz. Este trabajo intenta diferenciar esas características, aislarlas y usarlas para detectar el género y la edad de un hablante. Para dicho fin, se ha realizado el estudio y análisis de las características basadas en el pulso glótico y el tracto vocal, evitando usar técnicas clásicas (como pitch y sus derivados) debido a las restricciones propias de dichas técnicas. Los resultados finales de nuestro estudio alcanzan casi un 100% en reconocimiento de género mientras en la tarea de reconocimiento de edad el reconocimiento se encuentra alrededor del 80%. Parece ser que la voz queda afectada por el género del hablante y las hormonas, aunque no se aprecie en la audición. ABSTRACT Particular elements of the voice are printed during the speech production process and are related to anatomical and physiological factors of the phonatory system or psychosocial factors acquired by the speaker. ASR systems attempt to find those peculiar nuances of a voice and associate them to an individual or a group. Age and gender are inherent factors to the speaker which may be represented in voice. This work attempts to differentiate those characteristics, isolate them and use them to detect speaker’s gender and age. Features based on glottal pulse and vocal tract are studied and analyzed in order to achieve good results in both tasks. Classical methodologies (such as pitch and derivates) are avoided since the requirements of those techniques may be too restrictive. The final scores achieve almost 100% in gender recognition whereas in age recognition those scores are around 80%. Factors related to the gender and hormones seem to affect the voice although they are not audible.

DAEDALUS at PAN 2014: Guessing tweet author's gender and age

This paper describes our participation at PAN 2014 author profiling task. Our idea was to define, develop and evaluate a simple machine learning classifier able to guess the gender and the age of a given user based on his/her texts, which could become part of the solution portfolio of the company. We were interested in finding not the best possible classifier that achieves the highest accuracy, but to find the optimum balance between performance and throughput using the most simple strategy and less dependent of external systems. Results show that our software using Naive Bayes Multinomial with a term vector model representation of the text is ranked quite well among the rest of participants in terms of accuracy.

Characterising social media users by gender and place of residence

Characterising users through demographic attributes is a necessary step before conducting opinion surveys from information published by such users in social media. In this paper, we describe, compare and evaluate different techniques for the identification of the attributes "gender"' and "place of residence" by mining the metadata associated to the users, the content published and shared by themselves, and their friendship networks. The results obtained show that the social network is a valuable source of information for obtaining the sociodemographic attributes of single users.

Mutators and sex in bacteria: Conflict between adaptive strategies

Bacterial mutation rates can increase and produce genetic novelty, as shown by in vitro and in silico experiments. Despite the cost due to a heavy deleterious mutation load, mutator alleles, which increase the mutation rate, can spread in asexual populations during adaptation because they remain associated with the rare favorable mutations they generate. This indirect selection for a genetic system generating diversity (second-order selection) is expected to be highly sensitive to changes in the dynamics of adaptation. Here we show by a simulation approach that even rare genetic exchanges, such as bacterial conjugation or transformation, can dramatically reduce the selection of mutators. Moreover, drift or competition between the processes of mutation and recombination in the course of adaptation reveal how second-order selection is unable to optimize the rate of generation of novelty.

Naturally variant autosomal and sex-linked loci determine the severity of iron overload in β2-microglobulin-deficient mice

Hereditary hemochromatosis (HH) is a common chronic human genetic disorder whose hallmark is systemic iron overload. Homozygosity for a mutation in the MHC class I heavy chain paralogue gene HFE has been found to be a primary cause of HH. However, many individuals homozygous for the defective allele of HFE do not develop iron overload, raising the possibility that genetic variation in modifier loci contributes to the HH phenotype. Mice deficient in the product of the β2-microglobulin (β2M) class I light chain fail to express HFE and other MHC class I family proteins, and they have been found to manifest many characteristics of the HH phenotype. To determine whether natural genetic variation plays a role in controlling iron overload, we performed classical genetic analysis of the iron-loading phenotype in β2M-deficient mice in the context of different genetic backgrounds. Strain background was found to be a major determinant in iron loading. Sex played a role that was less than that of strain background but still significant. Resistance and susceptibility to iron overload segregated as complex genetic traits in F1 and back-cross progeny. These results suggest the existence of naturally variant autosomal and Y chromosome-linked modifier loci that, in the context of mice genetically predisposed by virtue of a β2M deficiency, can profoundly influence the severity of iron loading. These results thus provide a genetic explanation for some of the variability of the HH phenotype.

Older plasma lipoproteins are more susceptible to oxidation: a linking mechanism for the lipid and oxidation theories of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Increases in plasma cholesterol are associated with progressive increases in the risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. In humans plasma cholesterol is contained primarily in apolipoprotein B-based low density lipoprotein (LDL). Cells stop making the high-affinity receptor responsible for LDL removal as they become cholesterol replete; this slows removal of LDL from plasma and elevates plasma LDL. As a result of this delayed uptake, hypercholesterolemic individuals not only have more LDL but have significantly older LDL. Oxidative modification of LDL enhances their atherogenicity. This study sought to determine whether increased time spent in circulation, or aging, by lipoprotein particles altered their susceptibility to oxidative modification. Controlled synchronous production of distinctive apolipoprotein B lipoproteins (yolk-specific very low density lipoproteins; VLDLy) with a single estrogen injection into young turkeys was used to model LDL aging in vivo. VLDLy remained in circulation for at least 10 days. Susceptibility to oxidation in vitro was highly dependent on lipoprotein age in vivo. Oxidation, measured as hexanal release from n-6 fatty acids in VLDLy, increased from 13.3 +/- 5.5 nmol of 2-day-old VLDLy per ml, to 108 +/- 17 nmol of 7-day-old VLDLy per ml. Oxidative instability was not due to tocopherol depletion or conversion to a more unsaturated fatty acid composition. These findings establish mathematically describable linkages between the variables of LDL concentration and LDL oxidation. The proposed mathematical models suggest a unified investigative approach to determine the mechanisms for acceleration of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk as plasma cholesterol rises.

Time Trends in Self-Rated Health and Disability in Older Spanish People: Differences by Gender and Age

Abstract Background: To analyse time trends in self-rated health in older people by gender and age and examine disability in the time trends of self-rated health. Methods: The data used come from the Spanish National Health Surveys conducted in 2001, 2003, 2006 and 2011- 12. Samples of adults aged 16 yr and older were selected. Multivariate logistic regression was used to assess the association between age, gender, socio-economic status, marital status, disability and self-rated health across period study. Results: Women exhibited lower (higher) prevalence of good self-rated health (disability) compared to men. The multivariate analysis for time trends found that good self-rated health increased from 2001 to 2012. Overall, variables associated with a lower likelihood of good self-rated health were: being married or living with a partner, lower educational level, and disability. Conclusion: Trends of good self-rated health differ by gender according to socio-demographic factors and the prevalence of disability.

Galician women translators in the 20th century: rewriting the history of translation from a gender and national approach

This article is the English version of “Traductoras gallegas del siglo XX: Reescribiendo la historia de la traducción desde el género y la nación” by Olga Castro. It was not published on the print version of MonTI for reasons of space. The online version of MonTI does not suffer from these limitations, and this is our way of promoting plurilingualism.

Choroidal Thickness And Volume In Healthy Young Whites And Their Relationship With Axial Length, Ammetropy And Sex

Purpose: To evaluate choroidal thickness in young subjects using Enhanced Depth Imaging Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography (EDI SD-OCT) describing volume differences between all the defined areas of the Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS). Design: Prospective, clinical study. Methods: Seventy-nine eyes of 95 healthy, young (23.8±3.2years), adult volunteers were prospectively enrolled. Manual choroidal segmentation on a 25-raster horizontal scan protocol was performed. The measurements of the nine subfields defined by the ETDRS were evaluated. Results: Mean subfoveal choroidal thickness was 345.67±81.80μm and mean total choroidal volume was 8.99±1.88mm3. Choroidal thickness and volume were higher at the superior and temporal areas compared to inferior and nasal sectors of the same diameter respectively. Strong correlations between subfoveal choroidal thickness and axial length (AL) and myopic refractive error were obtained, r = -0.649, p<0.001 and r = 0.473, p<0.001 respectively. Emmetropic eyes tended to have thicker subfoveal choroidal thickness (381.94±79.88μm versus 307.04±64.91μm) and higher total choroidal volume than myopic eyes (9.80± 1.87mm3 versus 8.14±1.48mm3). The estimation of the variation of the subfoveal choroidal thickness with the AL was-43.84μm/mm. In the myopic group, the variation of the subfoveal choroidal thickness with the myopic refractive error was -10.45μm/D. Conclusions: This study establishes for the first time a normal database for choroidal thickness and volume in young adults. Axial length, and myopic ammetropy are highly associated with choroidal parameters in healthy subjects. EDI SD-OCT exhibited a high degree of intraobserver and interobserver repeatability.