J Heart Lung Transplant 2011;30:691-7 (C) 2011 International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation. All rights reserved.”
“High

or inelastic demand for drugs is central to many laboratory and theoretical models of drug abuse, but it has not been widely measured with human substance abusers. The authors used a simulated cigarette purchase task to generate a demand curve measure of nicotine reinforcement in a sample of 138 adolescent smokers. Participants reported the number of cigarettes they would purchase and smoke in a hypothetical day across a range of prices, and their responses were well-described by a regression equation that has been used to construct demand curves in drug self-administration studies. Several demand curve measures were generated, including breakpoint, intensity, elasticity. P(max), and O(max). Although simulated cigarette smoking was price sensitive, BEZ235 solubility dmso 4EGI-1 ic50 smoking levels were high (8+ cigarettes/day) at prices up to 50(sic) per

cigarette, and the majority of the sample reported that they would purchase at least 1 cigarette at prices as high as $2.50 per cigarette. Higher scores on the demand indices O(max), (maximum cigarette purchase expenditure), intensity (reported smoking level when cigarettes were free), and breakpoint (the first price to completely suppress consumption), and lower elasticity (sensitivity of cigarette consumption to increases in cost), were associated with greater levels of naturalistic smoking and nicotine dependence. Greater demand

intensity was associated with lower motivation to change smoking. These results provide initial support for the validity of a self-report cigarette GSK1904529A purchase purchase task as a measure of economic demand for nicotine with adolescent smokers. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Genetic analysis of museum specimens offers a direct window into a past that can predate the loss of extinct forms. We genotyped 18 Galapagos finches collected by Charles Darwin and companions during the voyage of the Beagle in 1835, and 22 specimens collected in 1901. Our goals were to determine if significant genetic diversity has been lost since the Beagle voyage and to determine the genetic source of specimens for which the collection locale was not recorded. Using ‘ancient’ DNA techniques, we quantified variation at 14 autosomal microsatellite loci. Assignment tests showed several museum specimens genetically matched recently field-sampled birds from their island of origin. Some were misclassified or were difficult to classify. Darwin’s exceptionally large ground finches (Geospiza magnirostris) from Floreana and San Cristobal were genetically distinct from several other currently existing populations. Sharp-beaked ground finches (Geospiza difficilis) from Floreana and Isabela were also genetically distinct. These four populations are currently extinct, yet they were more genetically distinct from congeners than many other species of Darwin’s finches are from each other.