The leaf-area shrinkage effect can bias paleoclimate and ecology research.

PREMISE OF THE STUDY: Leaf area is a key trait that links plant form, function, and environment. Measures of leaf area can be biased because leaf area is often estimated from dried or fossilized specimens that have shrunk by an unknown amount. We tested the common assumption that this shrinkage is negligible. METHODS: We measured shrinkage by comparing dry and fresh leaf area in 3401 leaves of 380 temperate and tropical species and used phylogenetic and trait-based approaches to determine predictors of this shrinkage. We also tested the effects of rehydration and simulated fossilization on shrinkage in four species. KEY RESULTS: We found that dried leaves shrink in area by an average of 22% and a maximum of 82%. Shrinkage in dried leaves can be predicted by multiple morphological traits with a standard deviation of 7.8%. We also found that mud burial, a proxy for compression fossilization, caused negligible shrinkage, and that rehydration, a potential treatment of dried herbarium specimens, eliminated shrinkage. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate that the amount of shrinkage is driven by variation in leaf area, leaf thickness, evergreenness, and woodiness and can be reversed by rehydration. The amount of shrinkage may also be a useful trait related to ecologically and physiological differences in drought tolerance and plant life history.

Frontal lobe nonconvulsive status epilepticus: a case of epileptic stuttering, aphemia, and aphasia--not a sign of psychogenic nonepileptic seizures.

Stuttering is a repetitive, iterative disfluency of speech, and is usually seen as a developmental problem in childhood. Acquired causes in adults include strokes and medications. When stuttering occurs with seizure-like events, it is usually attributed to psychogenic nonepileptic seizures. We describe an elderly man who experienced personality change and bouts of stuttering, followed by anarthria with preserved writing and then aphasia affecting written and uttered language, and ending with confusion. EEG recordings showed nonconvulsive status epilepticus (NCSE) with focality in the left frontal region followed by bifrontal NCSE. This case enlarges our understanding of the behavioral correlates of focal frontal seizures to include simple partial seizures with speech and then language output disturbances (aphemia, then aphasia), progressing to complex partial phenomenology in the setting of frontal NCSE.

Modulating Androgen Receptor-Driven Transcription in Prostate Cancer with Selective CDK9 Inhibitors.

Castration-resistant prostate cancers (CRPCs) lose sensitivity to androgen-deprivation therapies but frequently remain dependent on oncogenic transcription driven by the androgen receptor (AR) and its splice variants. To discover modulators of AR-variant activity, we used a lysate-based small-molecule microarray assay and identified KI-ARv-03 as an AR-variant complex binder that reduces AR-driven transcription and proliferation in prostate cancer cells. We deduced KI-ARv-03 to be a potent, selective inhibitor of CDK9, an important cofactor for AR, MYC, and other oncogenic transcription factors. Further optimization resulted in KB-0742, an orally bioavailable, selective CDK9 inhibitor with potent anti-tumor activity in CRPC models. In 22Rv1 cells, KB-0742 rapidly downregulates nascent transcription, preferentially depleting short half-life transcripts and AR-driven oncogenic programs. In vivo, oral administration of KB-0742 significantly reduced tumor growth in CRPC, supporting CDK9 inhibition as a promising therapeutic strategy to target AR dependence in CRPC.

ADHD subtypes and co-occurring anxiety, depression, and oppositional-defiant disorder: differences in Gordon diagnostic system and Wechsler working memory and processing speed index scores.

OBJECTIVE: Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children Freedom-from-Distractibility/Working Memory Index (FDI/WMI), Processing Speed Index (PSI), and Gordon Diagnostic System (GDS) scores in ADHD children were examined as a function of subtype and coexisting anxiety, depression, and oppositional-defiant disorder. METHOD: Participants were 587 children with ADHD combined type (alone, with oppositional-defiant disorder, and with anxiety or depression) and ADHD inattentive type (alone and with anxiety or depression). RESULTS: Attention scores (FDI/WMI and GDS Vigilance and Distractibility) were similar and low for all groups. ADHD combined groups had greater impulsivity (GDS Delay) than ADHD inattentive groups, and ADHD inattentive groups had slower processing speed (PSI) than ADHD combined groups. Comorbidity did not affect test performance. Scores differentiated ADHD subtypes with 72% accuracy. CONCLUSION: Findings support the validity of DSM-IV ADHD combined and inattentive subtypes and the validity of the GDS, FDI/WMI, and PSI in assessing attention, impulsivity, and processing speed in children with ADHD.