Explore the vast range of titles available.

Congratulations to Alan Rusbridger on his time as editor and I wish him well in his new role...

Many students in the United States, particularly those from lower income or racially/ethnically diverse families, are exposed to clusters of risk factors that have a negative impact on school success. This study examined the association between the number of supportive and caring adults in the home, school, and neighborhood and the school engagement of students in early adolescence. Results revealed that students who reported such supportive adults in their lives also reported higher levels of psychological and behavioral engagement with their schooling. Additionally, including measures of environmental risk factors in analytical models of the school engagement of middle school students reduced otherwise statistically significant race/ethnicity differences to nonsignificance. Implications for practice and policy are discussed.

Widespread approaches to the conceptualization and measurement of social capital have been subjected to critical examination in recent years; some argue that its meaning and impact have been diluted. Many authors have subsequently clarified the concept of social capital as fungible resources: social norms, rules, and obligations formed from youths' social networks that provide benefits to youth that further positive development. Using latent profile analysis on social capital data gathered from middle school students, the authors offer a measurement approach that more closely reflects this conceptualization by more effectively accounting for critical information about the varied sources and the aggregate effects of those sources of capital. The authors label the resulting multiple microsystem patterns of social capital \"portfolios,\" making explicit the conceptual connection of social capital to other forms of capital.

Essential oils are formed by aromatic plants as secondary metabolites and are widely used in traditional medicine. In this research, the composition and biological activities of three commercial oils essential oils, Ocotea, Copaiba and Blue Cypress, were evaluated in cultured cells and in mice. GC/MS revealed different components within these oils. Ocotea and Copaiba did not have an antioxidant activity below 5 % (v/v), and Blue Cypress possessed a moderate anti-oxidant activity. Ocotea was the most potent inhibitor against pro-inflammatory mediators. In addition, Ocotea and a higher concentration of Blue Cypress suppressed LPS-induced PGE2 production. Single high-concentration administration of the oils showed acute toxicity in mice. Blood chemistry analysis showed the three essential oils to be quite safe under a lower sub-lethal dosage. Our findings suggested that essential oils can be useful as active medicines to inhibit over-activation of macrophages followed by stimulation by inflammatory mediators.

Aims: Marine soft sediments cover much of the deep ocean and are one of the largest habitats in the world, yet much of our understanding about their diversity is based on sampling in the North Atlantic. The deep-sea benthos provides a simplified environment in which to explore the processes which maintain species richness. Here we investigate the influence of energy and habitat complexity on benthic species richness along an oligotrophic continental margin within the Indian Ocean. Location: The upper continental margin of western Australia (c. 13-35 °S, 100-1000 m depth). Methods: We examined the species richness of selected polychaetes (Annelida) and crustaceans in sediment grab samples. We used generalized linear models and hierarchical partitioning to examine the relationship and relative importance of temperature, productivity (particulate organic carbon flux, net primary productivity and depth) and habitat complexity (sediment particle size diversity and grain size) on species richness at 51 sites. Results: In contrast to benthic studies in the North Atlantic, we found that species richness was higher on the shelf than on the slope. Species richness was positively correlated with net primary productivity; this relationship was influenced by high species richness in two areas where oceanic mixing is known to enhance primary productivity. Habitat heterogeneity and temperature were less influential. Main conclusion: This study represents one of the first extensive quantitative studies of deep-water benthos in the Indo-West Pacific, and provides further evidence that bathymétrie gradients of species richness are variable between regions, probably due to variation in local oceanography and productivity regimes. Our findings provide support for the overriding influence of productivity on species richness, even over relatively small ranges in depth and productivity. As climate change is expected to modify biogeochemical fluxes to the deep seafloor, this is likely to affect the communities of deep-sea fauna.

However derived, predictions of global marine species diversity rely on existing real data. All methods, whether based on past rates of species descriptions, on expert opinion, on the fraction of undescribed species in samples collected, or on ratios between taxa in the taxonomic hierarchy, suffer the same limitation. Here we show that infaunal macrofauna (crustaceans and polychaetes) of the lower bathyal depth range are underrepresented among available data and documented results from Australia. The crustacean and polychaete fauna (only partially identified) of the bathyal continental margin of Western Australia comprised 805 species, representing a largely novel and endemic fauna. Overall, 94.6% of crustacean species were undescribed, while 72% of polychaete species were new to the Australian fauna, including all tanaidaceans, amphipods, and cumaceans, as well as most isopods. Most species were rare, and the species accumulation rate showed no sign of reaching an asymptote with increasing area sampled. Similar data are likely for the largely unexplored bathyal regions. This leads us to conclude that the numbers upon which extrapolations to larger areas are based are too low to provide confidence. The Southern Australian and Indo-West Pacific deep-sea regions contribute significantly to global species diversity. These regions and bathyal and abyssal habitats generally are extensive, but are so-far poorly sampled. They appear to be dominated by taxonomically poorly worked and species-rich taxa with limited distributions. The combination of high species richness among infaunal taxa—compared to better known taxa with larger individuals, higher endemism than presently acknowledged because of the presence of cryptic species, the low proportion of described species in these taxa, and the vast extent of unexplored bathyal and abyssal environments—will lead to further accumulation of new species as more and more deep sea regions are explored. It remains to be tested whether ratios of 10 or more undescribed to described species, found in this study for the dominant taxa and for the deep Southern Ocean and the Indo-West Pacific, are replicable in other areas. Our data and similar figures from other remote regions, and the lack of faunal overlap, suggest that Appeltans et al.’s (Current Biology 22:1–14, 2012) estimate that between one-third and two-thirds of the world’s marine fauna is undescribed is low, and that Mora et al.’s (PLoS Biol 9(8):e1001127. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001127, 2011) of 91% is more probable. We conclude that estimates of global species, however made, are based on limited data.

This study examined the relationship of 979 middle school students’ perceptions of their mathematics classroom environment to their motivation and achievement. Structural equation modeling indicated that motivational variables (utility, personal achievement goals, efficacy) mediated the influence of perceived teacher expectations, teacher support and use of reform practices on mathematics standardised test scores. Our study provides empirical evidence that students’ perceptions that their teachers believe that they are capable of learning and understanding mathematics positively relate to their Mastery and Performance Goal orientations and mathematics Utility. Further, we found an interaction between students’ perceptions of the frequency of reform practice use in their mathematics classroom and mathematics efficacy. For students with lower mathematics efficacy, their perceptions of more frequent use of reform practices in their mathematics class related to higher standardised test performance. For students with higher mathematics efficacy, perceived use of reform practices did not significantly relate to standardised test performance. These data suggest that frequent exposure to reform practices is especially critical for students who judge themselves as being less capable in mathematics and who are lower performers. This finding differs from prior research that has suggested that reform practice use benefits higher achievers but not lower achievers. An important implication of our study is the need for coordinated, ongoing professional development that highlights reform pedagogy and beliefs while also focusing on student motivation theories and strategies.

Background Frankincense ( Boswellia carterii , known as Ru Xiang in Chinese) and sandalwood ( Santalum album , known as Tan Xiang in Chinese) are cancer preventive and therapeutic agents in Chinese medicine. Their biologically active ingredients are usually extracted from frankincense by hydrodistillation and sandalwood by distillation. This study aims to investigate the anti-proliferative and pro-apoptotic activities of frankincense and sandalwood essential oils in cultured human bladder cancer cells. Methods The effects of frankincense (1,400–600 dilutions) (v/v) and sandalwood (16,000–7,000 dilutions) (v/v) essential oils on cell viability were studied in established human bladder cancer J82 cells and immortalized normal human bladder urothelial UROtsa cells using a colorimetric XTT cell viability assay. Genes that responded to essential oil treatments in human bladder cancer J82 cells were identified using the Illumina Expression BeadChip platform and analyzed for enriched functions and pathways. The chemical compositions of the essential oils were determined by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. Results Human bladder cancer J82 cells were more sensitive to the pro-apoptotic effects of frankincense essential oil than the immortalized normal bladder UROtsa cells. In contrast, sandalwood essential oil exhibited a similar potency in suppressing the viability of both J82 and UROtsa cells. Although frankincense and sandalwood essential oils activated common pathways such as inflammatory interleukins (IL-6 signaling), each essential oil had a unique molecular action on the bladder cancer cells. Heat shock proteins and histone core proteins were activated by frankincense essential oil, whereas negative regulation of protein kinase activity and G protein-coupled receptors were activated by sandalwood essential oil treatment. Conclusion The effects of frankincense and sandalwood essential oils on J82 cells and UROtsa cells involved different mechanisms leading to cancer cell death. While frankincense essential oil elicited selective cancer cell death via NRF-2-mediated oxidative stress, sandalwood essential oil induced non-selective cell death via DNA damage and cell cycle arrest.