An integrated assessment of the vascular plant species of the Americas.

The cataloging of the vascular plants of the Americas has a centuries-long history, but it is only in recent decades that an overview of the entire flora has become possible. We present an integrated assessment of all known native species of vascular plants in the Americas. Twelve regional and national checklists, prepared over the past 25 years and including two large ongoing flora projects, were merged into a single list. Our publicly searchable checklist includes 124,993 species, 6227 genera, and 355 families, which correspond to 33% of the 383,671 vascular plant species known worldwide. In the past 25 years, the rate at which new species descriptions are added has averaged 744 annually for the Americas, and we can expect the total to reach about 150,000.

CTSA Institution Responses to Proposed Common Rule Changes: Did They Get What They Wanted?

In 2015, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and 15 other federal departments and agencies proposed revisions to the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects. In this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), the departments sought to strengthen, modernize, and make more effective human subjects regulations while reducing administrative burden, delay, and ambiguity. We reviewed public comments from National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) institutions on key provisions of the NPRM to understand how the proposed changed were received at research-intensive institutions. CTSA institutions responding to the proposed rule were predominantly opposed to the major proposals, including proposed changes to the treatment of de-identified biospecimens, demonstrating a lack of support from academic medical centers. In January 2017, a Final Rule was issued. We compare the Final Rule to what was proposed.

Preliminary notes on the macrolichens of Serra do Cachimbo, northcentral Brazil

This paper reports on the April-May 1983 Projeto Flora expedition to Serra do cachimbo in northcentral Brazil, a phytogeographically poorly known area near the transition between the Amazon forest and the central Brazilian planalto. The objective of this expedition was to collect botanical specimens with special emphasis on lichens. Rock outcrops are common in this area and several soil types combined with varied topography give rise to a diversity of vegetation types including Amazon caatinga, campo rupestre, gallery forest and Amazon forest. A preliminary checklist of 91 macrolichens is provided with a discussion of ecological distribution of lichens in each habitat.

Nos meses de abril e maio de 1983 o Projeto Flora Amazônica fez uma expedição científica de botânica, especialmente para coleta de criptógamas, à Serra do Cachimbo e ao longo da estrada Cuiabá-Santarém (BR-163). No percurso da BR-163 para Serra do Cachimbo existem vários tipos de vegetações como caatinga amazônica, mata ciliar, mata alta e capoeira. Nesta expedição foram coletadas cerca de 1900 exsicatas de líquens. Dentre os macrolíquens encontrados aproximadamente 10% podem ser espécies ainda não descritas. Neste trabalho estão sendo apresentados uma lista preliminar de 91 macrolíquens e a discussão da distribuição ecológica dos líquens em cada ambiente.