Substantial evidence exists that members of the US Congress vary in their lawmaking effectiveness. Less known, however, is whether constituents are sufficiently informed and inclined to hold their representatives accountable, based on their effectiveness. We conduct two separate survey experiments, informing some constituents about lawmakers' effectiveness and comparing their responses to those with the baseline level of information. We find that voters demonstrate little knowledge of their elected officials' lawmaking effectiveness. When presented with objective and credible information about lawmaking effectiveness, however, respondents express greater approval of more effective lawmakers. Effects are strongest among ideological moderates, but are even pronounced among partisans, who approve of effective representatives of the opposing party, and disapprove of ineffective representatives from their own party.

The success of engineering product development depends on the effective communication of design descriptions in formats that suit the needs and capabilities of all stakeholders involved in the delivery to market and through-life support of products. Configuration management is a core design process to ensure the consistency of the technical data package, i.e., the collection of design descriptions needed to support the development, manufacture and operation of a given product. Bills of Materials (BoMs) are critical parts of the technical data package because they act as integrators: adapting detailed design descriptions to suit the needs of particular downstream processes. The ability to reconfigure BoMs while maintaining internal consistency of the technical data package (where all BoM configurations are complete and compatible with each other) is a major challenge. In this paper, we introduce research exploring computational tools that could support engineers in manipulating BoMs while also maintaining the internal consistency of the technical data package.

Gut microbiota data obtained by DNA sequencing are not only complex because of the number of taxa that may be detected within human cohorts, but also compositional because characteristics of the microbiota are described in relative terms (e.g., “relative abundance” of particular bacterial taxa expressed as a proportion of the total abundance of taxa). Nutrition researchers often use standard principal component analysis (PCA) to derive dietary patterns from complex food data, enabling each participant's diet to be described in terms of the extent to which it fits their cohort's dietary patterns. However, compositional PCA methods are not commonly used to describe patterns of microbiota in the way that dietary patterns are used to describe diets. This approach would be useful for identifying microbiota patterns that are associated with diet and body composition. The aim of this study is to use compositional PCA to describe gut microbiota profiles in 5 year old children and explore associations between microbiota profiles, diet, body mass index (BMI) z-score, and fat mass index (FMI) z-score. This study uses a cross-sectional data for 319 children who provided a faecal sample at 5 year of age. Their primary caregiver completed a 123-item quantitative food frequency questionnaire validated for foods of relevance to the gut microbiota. Body composition was determined using dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry, and BMI and FMI z-scores calculated. Compositional PCA identified and described gut microbiota profiles at the genus level, and profiles were examined in relation to diet and body size. Three gut microbiota profiles were found. Profile 1 (positive loadings on Blautia and Bifidobacterium; negative loadings on Bacteroides) was not related to diet or body size. Profile 2 (positive loadings on Bacteroides; negative loadings on uncultured Christensenellaceae and Ruminococcaceae) was associated with a lower BMI z-score (r = -0.16, P = 0.003). Profile 3 (positive loadings on Faecalibacterium, Eubacterium and Roseburia) was associated with higher intakes of fibre (r = 0.15, P = 0.007); total (r = 0.15, P = 0.009), and insoluble (r = 0.13, P = 0.021) non-starch polysaccharides; protein (r = 0.12, P = 0.036); meat (r = 0.15, P = 0.010); and nuts, seeds and legumes (r = 0.11, P = 0.047). Further regression analyses found that profile 2 and profile 3 were independently associated with BMI z-score and diet respectively. We encourage fellow researchers to use compositional PCA as a method for identifying further links between the gut, diet and obesity, and for developing the next generation of research in which the impact on body composition of dietary interventions that modify the gut microbiota is determined.

Introduction: Lewis–Sumner syndrome (LSS) is a demyelinating peripheral neuropathy described in 1982. Methods: We reviewed the charts of nine LSS patients in neurological care for their symptoms, response to different treatment regimens, and pattern of nerve involvement. Results: One patient had an Adie’s pupil. Every patient studied had median nerve involvement. Seven of nine patients required intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) therapy and all showed improvement with IVIg. Four of nine patients received oral steroid therapy and had some improvement. Two of nine patients received azathioprine to little effect. Two of nine patients experienced significant trauma while receiving neurological follow-up and their symptoms worsened to a clinically significant degree afterward. Discussion: We noticed a possible association between trauma and symptom severity in cases of LSS with preexisting neurological follow-up. We hypothesize that physical trauma exacerbates LSS. To our knowledge, this is an unreported phenomenon.

The final effort of the CLIMAP project was a study of the last interglaciation, a time of minimum ice volume some 122,000 yr ago coincident with the Substage 5e oxygen isotopic minimum. Based on detailed oxygen isotope analyses and biotic census counts in 52 cores across the world ocean, last interglacial sea-surface temperatures (SST) were compared with those today. There are small SST departures in the mid-latitude North Atlantic (warmer) and the Gulf of Mexico (cooler). The eastern boundary currents of the South Atlantic and Pacific oceans are marked by large SST anomalies in individual cores, but their interpretations are precluded by no-analog problems and by discordancies among estimates from different biotic groups. In general, the last interglacial ocean was not significantly different from the modern ocean. The relative sequencing of ice decay versus oceanic warming on the Stage 6/5 oxygen isotopic transition and of ice growth versus oceanic cooling on the Stage 5e/5d transition was also studied. In most of the Southern Hemisphere, the oceanic response marked by the biotic census counts preceded (led) the global ice-volume response marked by the oxygen-isotope signal by several thousand years. The reverse pattern is evident in the North Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, where the oceanic response lagged that of global ice volume by several thousand years. As a result, the very warm temperatures associated with the last interglaciation were regionally diachronous by several thousand years. These regional lead-lag relationships agree with those observed on other transitions and in long-term phase relationships; they cannot be explained simply as artifacts of bioturbational translations of the original signals.

The Craniofacial Biology Research Group in the School of Dentistry at The University of Adelaide is entering an exciting new phase of its studies of dental development and oral health in twins and their families. Studies of the teeth and faces of Australian twins have been continuing for nearly 30 years, with three major cohorts of twins recruited over that time, and currently we are working with twins aged 2 years old to adults. Cross-sectional data and records relating to teeth and faces of twins are available for around 300 pairs of teenage twins, as well as longitudinal data for 300 pairs of twins examined at three different stages of development, once with primary teeth, once at the mixed dentition stage, and then again when the permanent teeth had emerged. The third cohort of twins comprises over 600 pairs of twins recruited at around birth, together with other family members. The emphasis in this third group of twins has been to record the timing of emergence of the primary teeth and also to sample saliva and dental plaque to establish the timing of colonization of decay-forming bacteria in the mouth. Analyses have confirmed that genetic factors strongly influence variation in timing of primary tooth emergence. The research team is now beginning to carry out clinical examinations of the twins to see whether those who become colonized earlier with decay-forming bacteria develop dental decay at an earlier age. By making comparisons within and between monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs and applying modern molecular approaches, we are now teasing out how genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors interact to influence dental development and also oral health.

Several host–parasitoid models were examined to assess the feasibility of parasitoid inundation as a means of pest control or eradication. The approach is comparative, to assess independently the effects of various ecological factors on the ease of control by this means. For most of the models, there exists a critical inundation rate, I*, above which the host population is eradicated, provided inundative releases continue beyond the time of eradication. The existence of density-dependent mortality in the hosts reduces the time to eradication but does not affect I*. Density dependence in the parasitoids, however, usually increases I*. The existence of hyperparasitoids appears to have no effect on the ease of host eradication.