Background: Testing for selection is becoming one of the most important steps in the analysis of multilocus population genetics data sets. Existing applications are difficult to use, leaving many nontrivial, error-prone tasks to the user.

Infectious thoracic aortitis (IA) remains a rare disease, especially after the appearance of antibiotics. However, if left untreated it is always lethal. It usually affects patients with atherosclerotic aortic disease and/or infective endocarditis. Mycotic aneurysm is the most common form of presentation, although a few reports of nonaneurysmal infectious thoracic aortitis have also been described. Various microorganisms have been associated with infectious thoracic aortitis, most commonly Staphylococcal, Enterococcus, Streptococcus, and Salmonella species. It is extremely important to establish an early diagnosis of IA, because this condition is potentially life‐threatening. However, diagnosis is frequently delayed since clinical manifestations are usually nonspecific. Antibiotherapy in combination with complete surgical excision of the infected aorta is the best choice of treatment. Copyright © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The application of DNA metabarcoding to dietary analysis of trophic generalists requires using multiple markers in order to overcome problems of primer specificity and bias. However, limited attention has been given to the integration of information from multiple markers, particularly when they partly overlap in the taxa amplified, and vary in taxonomic resolution and biases. Here, we test the use of a mix of universal and specific markers, provide criteria to integrate multi‐marker metabarcoding data and a python script to implement such criteria and produce a single list of taxa ingested per sample. We then compare the results of dietary analysis based on morphological methods, single markers, and the proposed combination of multiple markers. The study was based on the analysis of 115 faeces from a small passerine, the Black Wheatears (Oenanthe leucura). Morphological analysis detected far fewer plant taxa (12) than either a universal 18S marker (57) or the plant trnL marker (124). This may partly reflect the detection of secondary ingestion by molecular methods. Morphological identification also detected far fewer taxa (23) than when using 18S (91) or the arthropod markers IN16STK (244) and ZBJ (231), though each method missed or underestimated some prey items. Integration of multi‐marker data provided far more detailed dietary information than any single marker and estimated higher frequencies of occurrence of all taxa. Overall, our results show the value of integrating data from multiple, taxonomically overlapping markers in an example dietary data set.

Background: Deficits in social cognition are well-recognized in both schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, it is less clear how social cognition deficits differ between both disorders and what distinct mechanisms may underlie such differences. We aimed at reviewing available evidence from studies directly comparing social cognitive performance between individuals with schizophrenia and ASD.Methods: We performed a systematic review of literature up to May 22, 2018 on Pubmed, Web of Science, and Scopus. Search terms included combinations of the keywords “social cognition,” “theory of mind,” “autism,” “Asperger,” “psychosis,” and “schizophrenia.” Two researchers independently selected and extracted data according to PRISMA guidelines. Random-effects meta-analyses were conducted for performance on social cognitive tasks evaluating: (1) emotion perception; (2) theory of mind (ToM); (3) emotional intelligence (managing emotions score of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test); and (4) social skills.Results: We identified 19 eligible studies for meta-analysis including a total of 1,040 patients (558 with schizophrenia and 482 with ASD). Eight studies provided data on facial emotion perception that evidenced a better performance by participants with schizophrenia compared to those with ASD (Hedges' g = 0.43; p = 0.031). No significant differences were found between groups in the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (8 studies; Hedges' g = 0.22; p = 0.351), other ToM tasks (9 studies; Hedges' g = −0.03; p = 0.903), emotional intelligence (3 studies; Hedges' g = −0.17; p = 0.490), and social skills (3 studies; Hedges' g = 0.86; p = 0.056). Participants' age was a significant moderator of effect size in emotion perception and RMET analyzes, with larger differences favoring patients with schizophrenia being observed in studies with younger participants.Conclusions: The instruments that are currently available to evaluate social cognition poorly differentiate between individuals with schizophrenia and ASD. Combining behavioral tasks with neurophysiologic assessments may better characterize the differences in social cognition between both disorders.

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