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Molecular phylogenetic studies on scleractinian corals have shown that most taxa are not reflective of their evolutionary histories. Based principally on gross morphology, traditional taxonomy suffers from the lack of well-defined and homologous characters that can sufficiently describe scleractinian diversity. One of the most challenging clades recovered by recent analyses is 'Bigmessidae', an informal grouping that comprises four conventional coral families, Faviidae, Merulinidae, Pectiniidae and Trachyphylliidae, interspersed among one another with no apparent systematic pattern. There is an urgent need for taxonomic revisions in this clade, but it is vital to first establish phylogenetic relationships within the group. In this study, we reconstruct the evolutionary history of 'Bigmessidae' based on five DNA sequence markers gathered from 76 of the 132 currently recognized species collected from five reef regions in the central Indo-Pacific and the Atlantic.
We present a robust molecular phylogeny of 'Bigmessidae' based on the combined five-gene data, achieving a higher degree of resolution compared to previous analyses. Two Pacific species presumed to be in 'Bigmessidae' are more closely related to outgroup clades, suggesting that other unsampled taxa have unforeseen affinities. As expected, nested within 'Bigmessidae' are four conventional families as listed above, and relationships among them generally corroborate previous molecular analyses. Our more resolved phylogeny supports a close association of Hydnophora (Merulinidae) with Favites + Montastraea (Faviidae), rather than with the rest of Merulinidae, i.e., Merulina and Scapophyllia. Montastraea annularis, the only Atlantic 'Bigmessidae' is sister to Cyphastrea, a grouping that can be reconciled by their septothecal walls, a microstructural feature of the skeleton determined by recent morphological work. Characters at the subcorallite scale appear to be appropriate synapomorphies for other subclades, which cannot be explained using macromorphology. Indeed, wide geographic sampling here has revealed more instances of possible cryptic taxa confused by evolutionary convergence of gross coral morphology.
Numerous examples of cryptic taxa determined in this study support the assertion that diversity estimates of scleractinian corals are erroneous. Fortunately, the recovery of most 'Bigmessidae' genera with only minor degrees of paraphyly offers some hope for impending taxonomic amendments. Subclades are well defined and supported by subcorallite morphological features, providing a robust framework for further systematic work.
For the last two decades, coral systematists have been untangling the complex evolutionary relationships among scleractinian species using DNA sequence data. Seminal molecular phylogenetic work by Romano and Palumbi [1,2] divided the Scleractinia into two major clades, the robust and complex groups, and indicated many problems with traditional taxonomy based on morphology (see also [3]). For instance, Leptastrea was recovered within a Fungiina clade rather than the suborder Faviina, where morphological studies had placed it (e.g., [4,5]). Gradually, using more genetic loci, further evidence was uncovered to show that non-monophyly of coral taxa is widespread in Scleractinia (e.g., [6-11]). This culminated in a comprehensive survey of the entire taxon by Fukami et al. [12], which showed that while Scleractinia is monophyletic, most taxonomic groups within it are not. In fact, a staggering 11 of 16 conventional families are polyphyletic.
Undoubtedly, one of the most challenging clades that have been recovered by recent analyses is a group of robust corals in clade XVII [12]. The disarray within the clade is epitomized by its informal name 'Bigmessidae' [13,14]. This clade contains species from four traditional coral families, Faviidae, Merulinidae, Pectiniidae and Trachyphylliidae, interspersed among one another in the tree based on mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) and cytochrome b gene sequences [12]. With the exception of the Montastraea annularis complex, all members of this clade are from the Indo-Pacific. Families with all species included within clade XVII are Trachyphylliidae (monospecific) and Merulinidae, the latter being polyphyletic, while Faviidae and Pectiniidae have representatives present within and outside clade XVII. Although the clade has not been examined in detail, Huang et al. [15] showed that representatives from other families (Merulinidae and Mussidae) are also nested within it, and several genera are not monophyletic (i.e., Echinopora, Favia, Favites, Goniastrea and Montastraea). In addition, Fukami et al. [12] found para- or polyphyly in Leptoria, Oulophyllia and Platygyra for at least one marker.
Clearly, there exists an urgent need for taxonomic revisions in this clade, amidst the ongoing disarray in the Scleractinia. But in order to begin any form of revision for clade XVII, it is first necessary to determine which subclades are problematic, using as complete a morphological and genetic coverage as possible. Up to this point, the largest number of markers used for analysis of this group has been derived from Fukami et al. [12], who used the aforementioned mitochondrial genes, as well as the nuclear β-tubulin and 28S rDNA separately. However, only 33 species represented by 38 terminals were analyzed for clade XVII, and several subclades were not resolved due to their short branches. Resolution was improved in Huang et al. [15], which included 85 terminals from 43 species, but that study used only COI and a noncoding intergenic mitochondrial region (IGR).
In this study, we present data for five molecular markers—two mitochondrial and three nuclear loci—from 76 of the 132 currently recognized species in clade XVII [12]. We also included seven species from other robust corals as outgroups. Corals were sequenced from five reef regions—the central and northern Great Barrier Reef in Australia, Wakayama in Japan, Batangas in the Philippines, Singapore and the Caribbean. We reconstruct the evolutionary history of clade XVII and identify subclade placement of species that have not been studied in a molecular phylogenetic context. As some species were sampled from multiple locations, we also test if these corals were as widespread as previously recorded.
Specimen collection and DNA extraction
Specimens were collected from coral reefs in five regions—Singapore, Wakayama (Japan), Queensland (Australia), Batangas (The Philippines), and the Caribbean. To ensure consistency in identifications among localities, each coral was sampled by at least two authors, based on morphological features that can be recognized in the field. The identity was later confirmed in the laboratory after examining skeletal traits [5,16-21]. In total, 124 specimens from 83 species in clades XIV-XXI have been included in the present analysis (Table 1; see Additional file 1). We photographed each colony in the field and collected between 10 and 100 cm2 of coral from each colony using a hammer and chisel, with ~2cm2 of tissue preserved in 100% ethanol.
Table 1. Species and DNA sequences examined in this study.
Additional file 1. 'Bigmessidae' corals. Photographs of most coral specimens sequenced in this study. More photographs are available from the authors.
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For each colony from Singapore, Japan and the Caribbean, DNA was extracted from ~2 cm2 of tissue digested in twice their volume of CHAOS solution (not an acronym; 4 M guanidine thiocyanate, 0.1% N-lauroyl sarcosine sodium, 10 mM Tris pH 8, 0.1 M 2-mercaptoethanol) for at least three days at room temperature before DNA extraction using a phenol-chloroform based method with a phenol extraction buffer (100 mM TrisCl pH 8, 10 mM EDTA, 0.1% SDS) [15,22-24]. For specimens from Australia and the Philippines, genomic DNA was extracted from the tissues preserved in ethanol using the Qiagen DNeasy kit, following the manufacturer's instructions.
The rest of the colony was sprayed with a powerful water jet to remove as much tissue as possible before being bleached in 5-10% sodium hypochlorite solution. The skeletons were rinsed in fresh water, dried, and deposited in the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research (Singapore), Seto Marine Biological Laboratory (Wakayama, Japan), Museum of Tropical Queensland (Australia), and De La Salle University (Manila, The Philippines) (Table 1).
PCR amplification and sequencing
A total of five molecular markers were amplified for a majority of the samples (Tables 1 and 2). They consist of three nuclear and two mitochondrial loci: (1) 28S rDNA D1 and D2 fragments; (2) histone H3; (3) internal transcribed spacers 1 and 2, including 5.8S rDNA (ITS in short); (4) cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI); and (5) noncoding intergenic region situated between COI and the formylmethionine transfer RNA gene (IGR in short) [8,23,25-27].
Table 2. Molecular markers utilized for phylogenetic reconstruction.
The mitochondrial intergenic region (IGR) was too variable to be aligned across the entire clade, so only alignable sequences were included in the analysis. ITS comprises multiple copies in the nuclear genome, but the primers we used have shown high fidelity for a single copy, precluding the need to clone the amplicons [27-33]. Nevertheless, in the unlikely case that paralogs were sequenced, our analyses could be confused by incomplete lineage sorting [7]. We therefore sequenced the ITS locus from at most one representative of each species, unless analyses of the other four markers did not recover its sequences as a clade. In the latter case, sequences may actually belong to separate cryptic species that have been obscured by gross morphological similarities. For COI, not all specimens of each species were necessarily sequenced since intraspecific variation of this gene is limited [15,24].
PCR products were purified with ExoSAP-IT (GE Healthcare, Uppsala, Sweden) and sequencing was performed by Advanced Studies in Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics (ASGPB) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa using the Applied Biosystems BigDye Terminator kit and an ABI 3730XL sequencer. New sequences were deposited in GenBank under accession numbers HQ203246-HQ203689 (Table 1).
Phylogenetic analyses
Sequences were organized into five separate data matrices using Mesquite 2.72 [34], and each aligned with the accurate alignment option (E-INS-i) in MAFFT 6.7 [35-37] under default parameters. Substitution saturation of protein-coding genes was assessed via DAMBE [38,39], where we found histone H3 and COI to be unsaturated at the third codon positions for tree inference. Consequently, we concatenated the five gene matrices into a single partitioned matrix consisting of 4600 characters, 1467 of which were parsimony informative. This was analyzed using maximum parsimony, Bayesian likelihood, and maximum likelihood methods. We also carried out these analyses on a four-gene dataset omitting the ITS partition to determine if the phylogenetic reconstruction was sensitive to the ITS sampling strategy.
Under a maximum parsimony framework, we utilized new search technologies [40,41] in the software TNT 1.1 [42,43]. Tree searches consisted of 50000 random addition sequence replicates under the default sectorial, ratchet, drift and tree fusing parameters. Gaps were treated as missing data and clade stability was inferred using 1000 bootstrap replicates each employing 100 random addition sequences.
For maximum likelihood, neighbor-joining and Bayesian analyses, we determined the most suitable model of molecular evolution for each gene partition and the concatenated matrix using jModelTest 0.1.1 [44,45] to test for a total of 24 models, following the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). The maximum likelihood tree for each partition and the combined dataset was inferred using RAxML 7.2.3 [46,47] at the Cyberinfrastructure for Phylogenetic Research (CIPRES; http://www.phylo.org webcite), employing the GTRGAMMA model. The proportion of invariable sites and gamma distribution shape parameter for variable sites were estimated during the maximum likelihood analysis. Multiparametric bootstrap analysis was carried out using 1000 bootstrap replicates. Maximum likelihood analysis was also carried out with PhyML 3.0 [45] on the combined data, utilizing the AIC-chosen model (GTR+I+Γ), and generating 1000 bootstrap replicates. The neighbor-joining tree of the combined data was calculated in PAUP*4.0b10 [48] with 1000 bootstrap replicates, employing the evolutionary model selected above.
Bayesian inference was carried out in MrBayes 3.1.2 [49,50], using the resources of the Computational Biology Service Unit from Cornell University, with each partition modeled (Table 2) but unlinked for separate parameter estimations. Four Markov chains of 10 million generations were implemented in twelve runs, saving a tree every 100th generation. MCMC convergence among the runs was monitored using Tracer 1.5 [51], where we ascertained that only four of the twelve runs converged on the shortest trees (only two runs converged for the four-gene analysis; see [52-54]), and the first 40001 trees were to be discarded as burn-in.
Additionally, compensatory base changes because of the secondary structure of the ITS rDNA loci may lead to non-independence and increased homoplasy of characters [55-57]. Hence, analysis of the secondary structure of this region may result in a more rigorous phylogeny [58-61]. Using the ITS2 segment of each ITS sequence, secondary structure was predicted by searching the ITS2 database [62] for the best match template and then modeling its structure based on free energy minimization. The ITS2 sequences and their associated structural information were aligned using 4SALE 1.5 [63,64], and then exported for analysis in ProfDistS 0.9.8 [65-68]. The profile neighbor-joining algorithm was executed with 10000 bootstrap replicates on the RNA structural alignment, using the GTR model and rate matrix 'Q_ITS2.txt' for distance correction. ITS2 could not be amplified from Hydnophora microconos, H. pilosa and Merulina scabricula. Consequently these species were excluded from the analysis.
Results and Discussion
In this study, the evolutionary history of the 'Bigmessidae' corals was robustly reconstructed using five genes. Relations among other clade representatives chosen as outgroups were also inferred. The maximum likelihood reconstructions carried out by RAxML 7.2.3 and PhyML 3.0 had log likelihood values of -36224.67 and -36995.48, respectively. As they were identical when considering nodes with bootstrap values ≥50, we present the RAxML tree that garnered a higher likelihood score (Figures 1 and 2). A total of 182 most parsimonious trees (tree length = 6178) were obtained. No conflicts between tree optimization procedures (including Bayesian inference and the neighbor-joining algorithm) were apparent when considering only the supported nodes (bootstrap ≥50 and posterior probability ≥0.9) (see Additional file 2). Analyses excluding the ITS partition also gave congruent results. Several clades were consistent and well supported among maximum likelihood, parsimony and Bayesian inferences. We named some of these groups within clade XVII from A to I, consistent with the classification in Budd and Stolarski [69]. On the other hand, the neighbor-joining method generated a relatively unresolved tree—subclades A, C, F and I did not achieve bootstrap values of ≥50 (see Additional file 2).
Figure 1. Maximum likelihood tree of the combined molecular data. Species have been summarized into genera where possible. One asterisk denotes paraphyletic genus, two asterisks polyphyly, and three represents a genus that is both para- and polyphyletic. All taxa from conventional family Faviidae unless otherwise indicated. Clade designations XIV to XXI shown; clade XVII divided into well-supported subclades. Numbers adjacent to branches/taxa are support values (maximum likelihood bootstrap ≥50, maximum parsimony bootstrap ≥50, followed by Bayesian posterior probability ≥0.9). Filled circles indicate well-supported clades (bootstrap values ≥98 and posterior probability of 1).
Figure 2. Maximum likelihood topologies of each subclade. Numbers above branches are maximum likelihood bootstrap ≥50 and Bayesian posterior probability ≥0.9, while number below denotes maximum parsimony bootstrap ≥50. Family classification follows definitions given for Figure 1. Type species of genera are in bold.
Additional file 2. Maximum likelihood tree topology of the combined molecular data. Numbers above branches are maximum likelihood bootstrap ≥50 and Bayesian posterior probability ≥0.9, while numbers below denote maximum parsimony bootstrap ≥50 and neighbor-joining bootstrap ≥50. Family classification follows definitions given for Figure 1.
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The combined five-gene data yielded the most resolved phylogeny hitherto of clade XVII, with most branches garnering high support values. However, most partitions gave fairly unresolved trees when analyzed individually (see Additional file 3). By examining the support of subclades among trees obtained via different partitions, we found that nuclear markers contributed a greater extent to the final tree topology (Table 3). Histone H3, for instance, supported all higher-level groupings and all subclades except D/E (Figure 1). The 28S and ITS rDNA gene trees had moderate resolution within clade XVII, with only two unresolved subclades each. Surprisingly, the tree based on ITS2 rDNA secondary structure had less resolution than the primary sequence alignment. Indeed, the former has demonstrated potential for resolving intrageneric phylogenies in other anthozoans [70,71], but it is less informative for relationships at higher taxonomic levels [72,73]. Evidently, the COI tree was poorly resolved, with ≥50 bootstrap support for few relationships among major clades and only one subclade. The slow evolution of the mitochondrial COI gene among anthozoans is certainly the reason behind this [24,74,75]. While the intergenic marker (IGR) adjacent to COI on the mitochondrial genome has shown promise for phylogenetic reconstruction among Faviidae and Mussidae [15,23,76], it cannot be unambiguously aligned between the major clades. We urge the development of more nuclear phylogenetic markers that can be reliably applied across diverse scleractinian clades.
Additional file 3. Maximum likelihood tree topology of each partition. Numbers adjacent to branches are bootstrap support values ≥50. Definitions for family classification follow Figure 1.
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Table 3. Clades supported by maximum likelihood analysis for each partition.
Most relationships among clades XV to XXI obtained in this study corroborate results of Fukami et al. [12] (Figure 1). The only difference occurs in the sister grouping of Diploastrea heliopora (XV) and Montastraea cavernosa (XVI) (supported by all analyses except Bayesian likelihood) that form a grade in Fukami et al. [12]. The monophyly of the clade XVII+XIX+XX (Pacific faviids and mussids) is recovered but not well supported. Montastraea multipunctata and Moseleya latistellata are Pacific faviids, and therefore presumably in clade XVII. But as a result of superficial similarities, they have historically been associated with the Pacific mussids Blastomussa merleti (clade XIV) [77] and Acanthastrea hillae (clade XVIII) [5,18], respectively. Here, we find them to be more closely related to clades XIX and XX instead, revealing a taxonomic situation more challenging than anticipated. Pacific faviids other than Diploastrea heliopora can no longer be restricted to clade XVII, and the possibility exists that yet-to-be sampled taxa provisionally placed in clade XVII—particularly the monotypic genera, Australogyra, Erythrastrea, Boninastrea and Paraclavarina—have unexpected affinities.
Nested within clade XVII are four conventional families—Faviidae, Merulinidae, Pectiniidae and Trachyphylliidae (Figure 1). Two Pectiniidae genera, Pectinia and Mycedium (XVII-E) form the sister clade to Oulophyllia. This is a similar relationship to the results of Fukami et al. [12], although here we also show with reasonable support that Oulophyllia is monophyletic, and Caulastraea is an outgroup rather than nested within Oulophyllia (XVII-D). Merulinidae is represented by Hydnophora, Merulina and Scapophyllia. Hydnophora is more closely related to Favites and Pacific Montastraea spp. than Merulina and Scapophyllia, which form a grade within the clade dominated by Goniastrea. The monospecific Trachyphylliidae is nested within the clade consisting primarily of Favia spp., and is sister to Favia lizardensis and F. truncatus (Figure 2). Work is ongoing to redescribe clade XVII by incorporating the above families and applying a new taxon name since the type species of Faviidae, Favia fragum (Esper, 1797), belongs to clade XXI [12].
The genetic affiliation of Hydnophora and Trachyphyllia with Faviidae has previously been proposed by Fukami et al. [8,12]. However, this is not exclusively a molecular hypothesis. Based on a combination of colony, corallite and subcorallite characters (e.g., polyp budding; wall, septal and columellar structures), Vaughan and Wells, 1943 [78], placed the two taxa within Faviidae. But later, Chevalier, 1975 [79], attempted to distinguish Trachyphyllia from Faviidae based on minor differences in wall and septal structures by elevating it to the rank of family. Correspondingly, Veron, 1985 [17], moved Hydnophora into Merulinidae because of Hydnophora species' macromorphological similarities (i.e., colony growth form and polyp structure) with Merulina ampliata and Scapophyllia cylindrica, which are genetically in the same lineage (subclade A) as several Goniastrea spp. and Favia stelligera (Figures 1 and 2; see also [8,12]).
Montastraea annularis and likely other members of the species complex (M. faveolata and M. franksi) are the only Atlantic species in clade XVII (see also [8,12]). Most significantly here, M. annularis is sister to Cyphastrea, forming clade XVII-C (Figure 1). This placement may seem bizarre in the context of traditional macromorphological characters used to classify scleractinians (e.g., [4,78]). However, recent work at the microstructural scale (centers of rapid accretion and thickening deposits) has suggested that their septothecal walls (formed by fusion of outer margins of septa) may unite the two taxa [69] (see also [80]). These subcorallite features appear to be appropriate synapomorphies for other subclades. For instance, clade XVII-A consists of Merulina, Scapophyllia, Goniastrea A and Favia stelligera (Figure 2). At the corallite level, these corals cannot be reconciled within the same taxon, since Favia stelligera corallites have single centers with separate walls (plocoid), Goniastrea spp. have fused walls (cerioid) and may form valleys (meandroid), while Merulina and Scapophyllia are composed predominantly of elongated valleys (see Additional file 1). On the other hand, they share the apomorphy of having septothecal walls with abortive septa (thin bands between normal septa with their own centers of rapid accretion).
The use of macromorphology for identifying 'Bigmessidae' species is known for being problematic as most of these characters are homoplasious [15,80,81]. The ability to distinguish clades based on microstructural features is encouraging for scleractinian systematics. Micromorphology, at the scale of septal teeth and granules, has also exhibited promise as phylogenetic characters [25,80,82-85]. Interestingly, in light of recent molecular hypotheses, other biological traits, in particular, sexuality and to a lesser extent, breeding mode appear highly conserved and could be further developed as phylogenetic markers [86,87].
Prior to the use of molecular data to build evolutionary trees, it was a great challenge to determine which morphological characters could be useful for classification, given their intraspecific variability [32,88] and phenotypic plasticity [89-94]. Indeed, the general anthozoan body plan is relatively simple, and scleractinians in particular have few discrete morphological characters that are known to be phylogenetically informative at the polyp level [4,95-97]. As a result of the recent disarray in coral systematics, morphological taxonomies of scleractinians have been heavily criticized (e.g., [8,12,98,99]). Molecular characters, which are much more numerous and arguably neutrally evolving, can certainly aid our understanding of evolutionary relationships. However, morphological evidence supporting various molecular clades in the present analysis suggests that morphology at novel scales will play an essential role in the taxonomy of 'Bigmessidae' [80].
Widespread sampling in this study has shown that corals thought to belong to the same species across the central Indo-Pacific are actually from distinct lineages. Consider Goniastrea australensis (Milne Edwards and Haime, 1857), which occurs in two clades (Figures 1 and 2; see also Additional file 1). Since this species was first described from Australia, the Australian specimen that clustered with Favites russelli and Montastraea curta should be considered G. australensis, while the two specimens from Singapore (S088 and S098, subclade A) probably represent new species yet to be described. This is certainly not an isolated case. A similar situation is revealed for Montastraea valenciennesi. Specimens from Australia (G61904) and Singapore (S006 and S008) are in subclade B of mostly Favia spp., while the representative from the Philippines (P102) is in subclade F, a distant clade comprising mainly Favites species. Interestingly, two reproductively isolated morphotypes of M. valenciennesi were recently found to co-occur in Wakayama (Japan), distinguished by the degree of wall fusion among corallites [100]. Chevalier, 1971 [101], upon examination of the holotype, placed the species in Favia on the basis of corallites possessing separate walls and budding intratentacularly (see also [102-108]). This suggests that the name Favia valenciennesi (Milne Edwards and Haime, 1848) could be applied to the Australian and Singaporean specimens in subclade B, while P102 (subclade F) is a new species.
Less extensive issues occur among Goniastrea and Favia species. For instance, G. pectinata (subclade A), collected from three locations, is clearly paraphyletic, with G. australensis and G. favulus nested within them (Figure 2). For Favia (subclade B), of six F. favus specimens collected from three localities, only three of these form a supported clade while the rest are dispersed within clade XVII-B with no apparent biogeographical pattern. The nesting of Barabattoia amicorum among Favia spp. has been consistently recovered in recent molecular phylogenies [12,15], but this affinity was in fact the dominant hypothesis [5,107-109] until Veron, 1986 [18], included the species in its current genus. Conversely, Favia rotundata clusters with Favites spp. rather than its congeners, but it was indeed originally described as Favites rotundata Veron, Pichon and Wijsman-Best, 1977 [5] (see also [109,110]).
The polyphyly of most 'Bigmessidae' genera seems to confer a bleak outlook for revisionary work. However, as we have shown in Figure 1, several genera can be clearly grouped as clades with limited name changes. For instance, subclade F is composed of species from Favites Link, 1807, Montastraea de Blainville, 1830, and Favia Ehrenberg, 1834 (Figure 2). While the remaining Favites spp. (i.e., F. pentagona, F. russelli, and F. stylifera) are not included within this subclade, the type species of this genus is Favites abdita (Ellis and Solander, 1786, type locality 'Probablement les mers des Grandes-Indes', Lamarck, 1816 [111]). The representative of the latter we used falls well within subclade F. Since no other type species were recovered and with Favites Link, 1807, being the oldest valid genus in the subclade, Favites should be expanded to include the other species, while F. pentagona, F. russelli and F. stylifera will have to be subsumed within other genera. Several other multi-species genera in fact appear stable: Caulastraea, Cyphastrea, Echinopora, Hydnophora, Leptoria, Merulina and Oulophyllia. Name changes are certainly not necessary for Favites and Platygyra, since they host their respective type species in the subclades shown in Figure 2.
Numerous instances of cryptic taxa determined in this study support the assertion that coral diversity estimates have been fraught with errors [8]. Traits relating to the gross skeletal morphology of corals are unreliable for species description and identification because of their potential for intraspecific variability [32,88] and environment-induced plasticity [89-94]. Yet, these characters have served as the foundation for scleractinian taxonomy (e.g., [4,5]). Fortunately, using molecular data, the recovery of most genera within the 'Bigmessidae' with only minor degrees of paraphyly spells hope for impending taxonomic amendments. Our results show that most genera only require slight revisions, and most major changes are necessary only at the level of the major clades described in Fukami et al. [12]. Certainly, broad taxonomic sampling within Faviidae has revealed more species with unexpected affinities, such as Moseleya latistellata and Montastraea multipunctata. Clade XVII may consequently have to be redefined to exclude them.
Nevertheless, 'Bigmessidae' subclades are well defined and will no doubt provide a robust framework for taxonomic revisions. The fact that microstructural features support 'Bigmessidae' subclades also offers hope for the morphological approach. Evolutionary relationships among subclades are still provisional due to insufficient statistical support, but they can be clarified with further sampling of nuclear sequences. Eventually, a well-resolved tree of a redescribed clade XVII will be available to reconstruct the morphological evolution of 'Bigmessidae' at various scales.
Authors' contributions
DH obtained the DNA sequences in the laboratory, performed the phylogenetic analyses, and had a major role in writing the manuscript. All authors collected the specimens examined, contributed to and approved the final manuscript.
We thank all who helped with the field collections, including Zeehan Jaafar, Ywee Chieh Tay, Katrina Luzon, Norievill Espana, Eznairah-Jeung Narida and Monica Orquieza. Flavia Nunes kindly provided the Atlantic specimens. We acknowledge Ann Budd for critical discussions on coral morphology; Carmen Ablan-Lagman and Glenn Oyong for lab support at De La Salle University; Rudolf Meier, Loke Ming Chou and Peter Todd for lab support at National University of Singapore; Carden Wallace, Paul Muir and Barbara Done for museum support at Museum of Tropical Queensland; and staff of Orpheus Island Research Station for field support at Orpheus Island. Special thanks go to Gregory Rouse and Nancy Knowlton for valuable advice and support. For comments on this manuscript, we thank Liz Borda, Tito Lotufo, Yun Lei Tan, three anonymous reviewers and the Associate Editor. Collections were made in Australia under Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority permit G09/29715.1, and in the Philippines under Department of Agriculture gratuitous permit FBP-0027-09. This study is partly funded by National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration grant 8449-08.
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Friday, February 1, 2013
Hello, I just came across this, and it left me SPEECHLESS!!
Hello, i just came across this and it left me SPEECHLESS!! We might joke about them, despite which nationality you are, this things are actually happening every single day, all over the world. So read, if you think the joke is funny- laugh but make sure you follow the message at the bottom because these might be happening to you at the now. Be like me, Celibate *blushes & hides* :p Credits-From Facebook: "Smarty the rib cracker" A Nigerian man called his mom: Mom, I have AIDS. Mother: Heeeee...chinek ee! Don't come back homeoooo, my sonooo, don't come back home. God forbid! Man: Why mom, why now, watin I do now? Mother: Heeee....you foolish boy! You see my son, if you come back home, then your wife will be infected. From your wife to your broda, from your broda to our maid, from our maid to your DADDY, from your daddy to my sista, from my sista to her hosband, from him to me, from me to the gardener, from the gardener to your sista. And if your sista gets infected, heeeee,then the whole village is in trouble..ewooo ! So in the name of GODoooo...PLEASE SAVE OUR VILLAGEooooo, DON'T COME BACK HOMEooooo!!! #FROM ME: Its simple as A.B.C-Abstain, Be faithful, Condomize~~Please everyone, SAVE the village, city, town- PEACE...
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How much is Vladimir Putin worth? Perhaps as much as $40 billion, according to recent reports. Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, writes in the Washington Post that the Russian president has allegedly amassed great wealth in the "velvet reprivatization" of his nation's larger companies.
The Kremlin has essentially renationalized large industry, which has ended up in the hands of Putin's close associates—and perhaps those of the President himself. "Putin is also a big businessman," said Stanislav Belkovsky, a political observer with ties to the Moscow leadership. Belkovsky alleges that Putin owns a $20 billion stake in Surgutneftegaz, Russia's fourth largest oil producer; 4.5 percent of the country's natural gas monopoly, Gazprom; and half of oil-seller Gunvor, which had $8 billion in profits in 2006.
Do we care that Vlad may have become a one-man energy empire? For starters, if you are a Russian citizen, he has essentially stolen from you (if the allegations are true). Yet the rest of us are also affected by grand thievery on this scale. Putin knows that, like Marcos of the Philippines or Mobutu of Zaire, ill-gotten wealth can be taken from him once he no longer exercises power. So he will, in all likelihood, continue in the Kremlin, and this means Russia will maintain its increasingly hostile policies toward the West.
Last month Belkovsky argued that the Russian President would cede power and accept some minor role that will protect him from critics both at home and abroad. Now, however, we are seeing indications that Putin intends to stay at the pinnacle of power. On Monday, for instance, the autocrat announced his support for Dmitry Medvedev, a loyalist with no independent political base, to succeed him as President. On Tuesday, Medvedev suggested that Putin serve as prime minister in his administration. Moreover, the proposed union of Russia and Belarus, if consummated, could end up causing a change in the Russian constitution, and such change could create a position for Vladimir the Rich as the leader of the merged state.
There is one small consolation for the Russian people from this unfolding tragedy. There's no such thing as tranquil retirement for kleptocrats. They remain in power or suffer at the hands of their enemies. For Putin, there will never be peace.


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Last summer, local business owners Don and Ruth Mougey were invited by KET to have their bed and breakfast, "The Highland House" featured on the KET program "Kentucky Life." A film crew from KET filmed two days in July and 1 day in October and the results will be shown on Feb. 12 at 8 p.m. on KET1 and again on Sunday Feb. 20 on KET1 at 4:30 p.m. and KET2 at 7:30 p.m.
Last week, the General Assembly returned to the Capitol to kick off the main portion of the 2011 Regular Session.
This follows the guidelines established in the state's Constitution for odd-year meetings, which call for a brief recess after legislators meet for four days in early January to elect House and Senate leaders and establish committee membership for the next two years.
When we returned last Tuesday, Gov. Steve Beshear set the stage for the work ahead when he offered the annual State of the Commonwealth address.
The Carroll County Area Technology Center will be holding a college and career day at the school all day Friday from 8:15 a.m. to 2 p.m. About 30 people will be on hand giving presentations throughout the day, and 25 colleges and schools will have booths set up for students to visit.
Wednesday, Feb. 9
Carroll County Fiscal Court meets at 8 a.m. in the second-floor meeting room at the courthouse.
Family Community Pharmacy Program will screen potential clients from 9-11 a.m. at the Northern Ky. Community Action Center, Highland Avenue. Call (502) 732-5253.
Carrollton Rotary Club meets at noon at General Butler State Resort Park.
Carroll County Tobacco Festival Committee meets, 6:30 p.m., at Welch's Riverside Restaurant.
The year has already begun – 2011 has started with a bang. One month has already flown by and life continues to move at a rapid rate. It seems the older you get, the faster life goes by. Do you think about what's left? How many years do I have? What kind of quality of life will they be? What kind of health will I be in? Will my money hold out? And what about this day? Where will I go from here?
Whole grains consist of the entire grain seed, usually called the kernel.
The kernel has three components: bran, germ, and endosperm. All grains are whole grains when they are first harvested and if they keep these three in the final food product, they qualify as a whole grain.
On Feb. 15 there will be a production meeting at the Capstone Produce Auction from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. for those interesting in growing for an auction market. Most of the speakers will be UK Extension Specialists.
The United States Supreme Court has ruled in favor of former North American Stainless employee Eric L. Thompson who appealed to the high court for the right to sue his former employer.
According to court documents, Thompson, a metallurgical engineer, worked at the NAS facility in Ghent, Ky., from February 1997 until March 2003. Miriam Regalado joined the company in 2000. Soon after, she and Thompson began dating and were engaged in 2003 when Stainless fired Thompson. They are now married.
An investigation is continuing into the death of Mitchell D. Vories, 50, of Carrollton, who was found Monday Jan. 31, more than a day after he had called police telling them he had been involved in an accident.
According to a news release issued by Capt. Dean Hayes, Commander of Kentucky State Police Post No. 5 in Campbellsburg, Carroll County Dispatch received a 9-1-1 call on Sunday Jan. 30, at about 2:30 a.m. from a caller reporting that he had been involved in a crash; however, the caller could not provide an accurate location.
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The News-Democrat is your source for local news, sports, events, and information in Carroll County, KY and the surrounding area.


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Weddings: 12.02.07
Danielle Pepper of Odessa and Roy A. Coronado of Corpus Christi were married Nov. 3, 2007, at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Odessa.
The bride is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Steve Pepper of Odessa. The groom is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Rogelio Coronado of Corpus Christi.
Monica D. Garcia of Corpus Christi and Jesse Martinez Jr. of San Antonio were married Nov. 7, 2007.
The bride is the daughter of Robert A. Garcia and Margarita Carreon, both of Corpus Christi. The groom is the son of Jesse Martinez Sr. of Alice and Maria Martinez of San Diego.
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For one of our customers, I've recently reviewed the strategy of migration from single-byte encoding to variable length multi-byte UTF8 (AL32UTF8 encoding in Oracle naming standards). These type of projects are coming up again and again so I think it must be common for many of you. Thus, this bit might be useful. I'm also interested in your experience – perhaps you can run this simple simulation on your platforms and provide the results in the comments?
Back to the project… One area was estimation of the string manipulation overhead. Based on Pythian experience as well as the feedback from my network, I could conclude that nobody has observed any measurable performance degradation or significant CPU usage growth clearly attributed to UTF8 migration.
Thus, I decided to simulate at least some operations and measure them. One of the concerns was sub-string extraction — fixed length encoding sub-string is super easy to implement as the offset and length in bytes are known. Variable length character set would require scanning the whole string from the very beginning because byte offset and byte length are not known until the string is traversed from the beginning character by character.
This is the PL/SQL block I came up with:
declare s1 varchar2(4000 char); s2 varchar2(4000 char); i INTEGER; begin s1 := rpad('a',3999,'a'); for i in 1..10000000 loop null; --s2 := 'a' || 'b' || 'c' || 'd'; --s2 := substr(s1,3000,1) || substr(s1,3001,1) || substr(s1,3002,1) || substr(s1,3003,1); end loop; dbms_output.put_line(s2); end;
There are 3 cases and only one of them needs to be un-commented when running the block.
null; is there to just capture the baseline and measure time required to run an empty loop. Concatenation
s2 := 'a' || 'b' || 'c' || 'd'; is one scenario and, finally, substring extraction
s2 := substr(s1,3000,1) || ... is the second one.
I've run it in the VMs on my laptop as well as customer's own physical servers to confirm the timing. Below is the result from my virtual machines but the percentage was pretty much the same. Platform is Linux. Oracle version 10.2 and 11.1. Note that 11.2 is smarter and optimizes the block with NULL loop so you would need to trick PL/SQL optimizer better.
|Character set
The time in the table is seconds that PL/SQL block was executing. I ran if few times and averaged the result but it was very consistent anyway. Also, skip the very first measurement to avoid the impact of block parsing.
To interpret the results, the string manipulation/concatenation (excluding 0.5s of looping itself) accounts 1.3s vs 1.7s – 30% UTF8 overhead. SUBSTR function overhead (excluding loop and concat itself) accounts for 6.2s vs 7.7s which is only 25% overhead.
I found substring overhead rather small – I expected order of magnitude difference to be honest. However, 30% of concatenation overhead seemed to be little too much and I don't see why it should be that high.
Now, while overhead is rather noticeable, I didn't see databases that were doing mostly string manipulations in SQL and PL/SQL. I think that's why in the big picture, we generally don't see much performance impact moving to variable-length character set.
If you have access to the databases with fixed-length and variable-length character sets on the similar hardware, feel free to post your results below.
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9 Responses to "Oracle UTF8 Encoding and String Manipulation Overhead"
It's possible that any "real-world" problems due to increases in CPU for string manipulation are insignificant compared to other side effect. I'm thinking particularly of (a) increased storage for the the same number of characters and (b) changes in the execution plans because of the way the optimizer calculates stats for character columns.
The optimization problem is particularly nasty since some of the figures are based (essentially) on the first six BYTES of the string representation – which means, in the worst case, the first 1.5 (?!) characters in a multibyte set that can use 4 bytes per character.
You might also examine the impact on parallel queries which do a lot of messaging between layers of slaves – with longer strings being passed around you get fewer rows into a PX message buffer.
P.S. Having commented on the 6 byte thing, I realise I haven't checked 11g to see if it has changed the way it handles a multi-byte set.
It looks strange to me that there is a difference at all in the concat case; shouldn't concatenation a matter of
– summing the length "bytes"
– concatenating the encodings
whatever the charset is ?
Moreover, ASCII characters such as 'a','b','c' and 'd' have the same encoding in both WE8ISO8859P1 and AL32UTF8…
I ran the same tests and also repeated them for Norwegian characters (æ,ø,å); they are single-byte in WE8ISO8859P1 and 2 bytes in UTF8. I found no difference in response time between tests with (a,b,c) and (æ,ø,å) on both databases. The UTF8 database is running 11.1, the other is running 10.2 (both linux, but with different hardware).
Set Test Result (1/100 sec)
8bit null 25
8bit cc-E 146
8bit cc-N 145
8bit ss-E 574
8bit ss-N 576
utf8 null 39
utf8 cc-E 119
utf8 cc-N 117
utf8 ss-E 479
utf8 ss-N 481
My concern with UTF8 is not cpu, but refactoring. Columns containing non-english characters stored in varchar2(4000) require migration to CLOB when the byte-length surpasses 4000 bytes (e.g. when close to 4000 characters on WE8ISO8859P1 contains Nordic characters they are expanded to two-bytes characters in UTF8 and the total length exceeds 4000 byts). The limit is 4000 bytes, not 4000 characters, even if Oracle lets you define (foo varchar2(4000 char)) in UTF8.
As stated somewhere in there they are on different hardware :) I believe the null-loop has not improved much from 10.2 to 11.1, so I imagine the 11.1 with utf8 is running on "slower" hardware and that the string functions used here in 11.1 has improved from 10.2 to 11.1 I ran the tests several times, there were deviations of course, but the average was quite stable. I initially wanted to show that your tests on utf8 in the same database did not change much as one replace characters encoded as single byte in utf8 with characters that are encoded as two or more bytes (as is the case for Norwegian characters); ref comments from that fine Italian :)
We are converting WE8ISO8859P1 oracle db characterset to AL32UTF8. Before conversion, i was asked to check implication on PL/SQL code for byte based SQL functions. What all points to consider while checking implications on PL/SQL code. I could find 3 methods on google surfing, SUBSTRB, LENGTHB, INSTRB. What do I check if these methods are used in PL/SQL code? What all other methods should I check? What do I check in PL/SQL if varchar and char type declarations exist in code? How do i check implication of database characterset change to AL32UTF8 for byte bases SQL function. Suggest me as if I know only CRUD statements in oracle DB.
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Posted at: 04/26/2013 4:51 PM
Updated at: 04/26/2013 10:02 PM
By: Tim Sherno
A new surgical technique may restore more normal function to patients who have lost near-vision due to age.
Dr. Ralph Chu is the Surgical Director of the Chu Vision Institute in Bloomington. Dr. Chu is one of a handful surgeons performing the inpatient operation as part of the third phase of an F.D.A. trial.
Dr. Chu says more than 90-million people suffer from presbyopia and rely on reading glasses, "Surgical options for treating presbyopia are really limited."
The operation is done in two steps.
The first step is similar to LASIK surgery; a slice is made horizontally across the cornea.
In the second step, that slice folded back and a tiny implant is placed on the eye.
The implant is half the width of a human hear, and roughly the size of the head of a pin. Once the implant is in place, the cornea is folded back over the eye, covering the tiny lens. The tiny lens helps reshape the cornea, and restores the ability to focus up close.
Dr. Chu says a patient could see results immediately, "What's amazing is how fast the vision comes back. You could have surgery in a minute or two after you leave the surgical suite, read with 20/20 vision without glasses at a distance of about 2 feet."
The procedure is currently not available in the United States, but Dr. Chu expects that it will become available in the next 3 to 5 years.


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Bayern Munich reportedly met the €40million release clause in the 23-year-old's Bilbao contract.
The Spain international has signed a five-year contract with Bayern Munich.
"I am very happy and pleased to be at a club with such a history," he said. "I have had a very long wait."
"Of course this is a large sum," Bayern CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said. "But the player participates indirectly in it. He has given up large sums in his salary."
Martinez has previously been linked with the likes of Manchester United, Manchester City and Arsenal.


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This evening the Blue Devils aim to get a bit of a winning streak rolling, looking for their second win in as many weeks.
Coming off a 27-19 victory over Cedar Shoals last week, Elbert County Blue Devil Head Coach Sid Fritts says things are finally shaping up on offense.
"I guess that's expected with a new offense, runner backs trying to find soft spots, offensive linemen trying to learn leverages. Again it's a work in progress. I think there in the second half we started to understand the offenses a little better", Fritts said.
The Blue Devils will look to continue that success this evening as they will be taking on the Knights of Evans in the Granite Bowl for the first time this season.
Also taking place this evening are the annual Homecoming festivities, Fritts says it's an additional challenge to keep his team focused on the main objective amidst the distractions.
"We always every year try to remind our guys that our part in homecoming is from to 7:30-10:00 and we can make it a sweet homecoming or a bitter homecoming and the better preparation you have and the more you stay locked in and focused in on your job again those two hours on Friday night the better it is for the community, the better it is for the student body, and the better it is for the alumni" Fritts said.
This evening's game begins at 7:30pm, pregame coverage on 105.3 WSGC begins half an hour prior with the Pinnacle Bank Pregame show.


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Natural Disaster
Atlanta Family Flees Flooded HomeSeptember 22, 2009 - 2:55 PM | by: Brooks Blanton
Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue asked President Obama to declare 17 counties in his state a federal disaster area as flood waters start to recede today. Some locations in the northern and central part of the state, including parts of metro Atlanta, received up to 20 inches of rain in 36 hours causing massive flooding not seen here in at least 16 years. Eight people died in the flood waters, one a two year old boy who was ripped from his mothers arms in West Georgia. Trees weakened from the soaked grounds fell, taking down power lines and leaving up to 50,000 homes in the dark. School districts ordered students to stay home as many roads and freeways remained impassable this morning.
The driving rains on Monday overwhelmed drainage systems and sent rivers and creeks over their banks after the ground, saturated with seven days of steady rains, could absorb no more. The deluge of water overwhelmed the City of Atlanta and brought traffic to a halt on bridges, streets and metro freeways during the heart of the afternoon rush hour. One man had to be rescued from the hood of his car as flood waters turned the busy I-75/85 downtown connector freeway into a massive river, a scene that played out all over the city. Today sections of Interstate 20 west of the city near Six Flags Amusement Park are still closed after the Chattahoochee River overtook the freeway. Aerial shots of the area from helicopters show several massive roller coasters standing in feet of water.
Linda and Joe Mezza evacuated with their three boys Monday afternoon as nearby Peachtree Creek swallowed their Northwest Atlanta home. They have lived here for nine years and have seen flooding from hurricanes and tropical storms that moved inland, but say they have never seen anything like this. It wasn't long before the creek, which is about 100 feet behind their house, was completely surrounding them.
"When we left yesterday afternoon at about two o'clock, the backyard was fully flooded, the basement was flooded," Joe Mazzeo said. "I had about eight to ten inches of water in my lower level and we had to wade out through the front yard just to get out."
They returned to their neighborhood this morning, but could only survey the damage from a neighbors hilltop home across the street while several feet of water and mud engulfed their house. An ominous dark line marked the level of the invading water and mud to the main story of their house. They can only imagine what, if anything, is salvageable today.
"It's going to be a lot of mess and it's one of those things that kept me awake last night because I remembered the things that I hadn't gotten off the main floor," Linda Mazzeo said perched on a hill staring at her flood ravaged house. "You know our wedding album was there and when I remembered that, I was very upset."
The Mazzeo family is staying in a nearby hotel and are realistic that they won't be able to move back for quite some time. Meantime, they are taking inventory, moving what belongings they can and looking for a rental house to call home while insurance adjusters survey the damage.
Meantime, skies are clearing over Atlanta today as water from the Chattahoochee River and Peachtree Creek retreats. Blue skies are a welcome site for rain-weary residents who haven't seen the sun for days. Forecasters are calling for chances of rain this week, but nothing like the deadly rains that threatened this city just one day ago.
"I hope it doesn't, I don't wish the rain on anybody, but it doesn't rain anymore around here," Linda Mazzeo says standing in a yard covered in mud and muck. "Maybe a little rain will knock off some of this mud. I hope the creek will just stay down and keep flowing into the Chattahoochee."


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UBS included in two indexes of the Carbon Disclosure Project
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Tom Schieffer's to-do list for the Dodgers
May 4, 2011, 5:30 PM EDT
Josh Fisher of Dodger Divorce has a guest column up over at ESPN today in which he outlines what the new Dodgers' Lord Protector Tom Schieffer needs to do in order to restore order at Chavez Ravine.
It's a pretty exhaustive list. But , for the purposes of the outside observer who is more interested in the McCourt saga as cautionary tale than anything else, the recitation of the details of the McCourts' mismanagement of the Dodgers Josh provides along the is arguably more important than the next steps. Because, boy howdy, is it easy to forget them when new things keep rolling in day after day. They can kind of all be summed up in this item:
It is clear that the McCourts did not separate their personal finances from club operations, and figuring out how to keep Dodgers revenue inside the organization might be both Schieffer's most important and most difficult task. Potentially complicating his efforts are the numerous debt instruments encumbering various revenue streams, such as ticket sales.
This is why Frank McCourt's public statements — which he has amped up this week — are almost all misleading. He and his wife set the Dodgers up to funnel money out of the team and into either into allied businesses or subsidiaries or into his own coffers. Between the holding companies, LLCs and the complex debt arrangements, he is able to make broadly truthful statements about the state of the team which are nonetheless misleading or, at the very most, less-than-illuminating.
Josh notes a particular one: McCourt has been accused of taking $100 million out of the team for personal use. Frank says that's not true. Josh shows that, yeah, once you figure in the debt guarantees the team has given the McCourts, it really is. In other words: Frank McCourt has zero credibility on this stuff.
Great work by Josh both in breaking this all down and in suggesting how it can be built back up.
- babyjesus69 - May 4, 2011 at 5:33 PM
Go Giants!!!
- Old Gator - May 4, 2011 at 6:12 PM
Rendering down the McCourts for Soylent Green is a time consuming process. If Scheiffer wants to have the biscuits ready in time for the party for the new owners, he ought to get on with it already.
- cur68 - May 4, 2011 at 6:23 PM
Gator; Would you really consider consuming a McCourt on a cracker in Soylent Green form? Aren't you worried about catching some of the stupid?
- Old Gator - May 4, 2011 at 8:54 PM
I thought the stupid was removed during the rendering process, along with the asshole.
- cur68 - May 4, 2011 at 9:13 PM
I have it on good authority that stupid asshole is not heat labile. In fact, once you render out the fat and steam off all the hot air, it really brings on the stupid asshole and strengthens the delusion factor. I offer into evidence the fact that Frank & Co were relatively successful in Boston, where it was cooler. Once they hit the steam of LA; bring on the stupid. You do not want to put any of that into your mouth.
- SmackSaw - May 4, 2011 at 6:32 PM
To help meet their May payroll, the Dodgers played today with only 4 guys.
- rapmusicmademedoit - May 4, 2011 at 6:38 PM
maybe the back office employees of the Dodgers can pool together some money to play the lottery
and when they win they can use the money for payroll.
- Old Gator - May 5, 2011 at 12:27 AM
And all four were named Bugs Bunny.
- rapmusicmademedoit - May 4, 2011 at 6:35 PM
I believe Bud Selig and the commissioners office has the ability to review the finances of every team in
MLB, so why didn't they know the McCourts were up to shenanigans involving team money.
I hope they take away the Pirates too, the owners like filling there pockets with " bonuses", from
Yankees money.
- stankfinger - May 4, 2011 at 7:05 PM
Shut up.
- adeedothatswho - May 4, 2011 at 7:07 PM
They need to go Charles O. Finley style and have a seven person front office, with a 17 year old as your VP. Here comes the Hammer, indeed.
- Roger Moore - May 4, 2011 at 11:42 PM
As long as any of the people in that front office are McCourts, it's not going to help. The problem is not excessive spending on management; it's excessive looting by ownership.
- russgrant - May 4, 2011 at 7:10 PM
The sooner the McCourts are forced out and sent back to Boston or where ever the leeches live in the Spring the better. Frank, the piggy bank is not yours anymore. Go away.
- jwbiii - May 4, 2011 at 9:27 PM
Newport Beach. They sold their home in Cambridge, to John Henry, of all people.
- Robert - May 4, 2011 at 7:48 PM
It's time to bring the Dodgers home to Brooklyn………….
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"...the IEA is the home of good economic analysis applied to public policy." – Allister Heath, The Telegraph
Len Shackleton features in CityAM
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at risk for hyperstimulation. Other risk factors include irregular menstrual periods and low body weight.
It is also makes sense to try different modifications of the hCG part of the treatment, she noted, since hCG acts as the trigger for the hyperstimulation. One approach, for example, is to decrease the hCG dose. A second would be to use recombinant LH in place of the hCG. LH has a similar effect to the hCG but has a shorter half-life, so it does not remain in the system as long and therefore might not be so likely to cause hyperstimulation. There is preliminary evidence to suggest that both of these approaches decrease the occurrence of ovarian hyperstimulation.
In summary, Dr. Cedars said, she thinks oocyte donation for research can occur safely. It is not possible to completely eliminate ovarian hyperstimulation, but it is possible to limit its incidence and severity. A strategy for doing that might include excluding women from donating their eggs who have irregular menstrual cycles, who have ovaries with a polycystic appearance, and perhaps even those with high levels of androgens, as well as modifying the hormone treatment regimen to minimize the factors that are known to make hyperstimulation more likely, such as a higher than normal egg follicle count.
One of the most serious concerns about ovarian stimulation is that it may increase the chances that a woman will suffer certain types of cancer later in her life (see Figure 2-3). In particular, said Roberta Ness, chair of the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, there are three types of cancer that would seem to have a plausible biological link to the hormone regimens used in ovarian stimulation: breast, ovarian, and endometrial cancers.
Breast cancer, she noted, is the most common form of cancer among women and the second most common cause of death for women. Ovarian and endometrial cancers are not as common but are still dreaded among women because of their fatality rates.
There are several reasons to be concerned that the hormones used in assisted reproduction might make these three cancers more likely, Dr. Ness said. First, all three of them seem to be affected by hormones. The cells of these three types of cancer all have estrogen receptors, for example, and women who have had children, women who have breast fed, and


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Title: 300
Series Title / Date:
Call Number: DVD 2010-104
Genre : Action/Adventure
Description: In the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC, an alliance of Greek city-states fought the invading Persian army in the mountain pass of Thermopylae. With the help of a local shephard, Ephialtes, Persian King Xerxes led over 100,000 men to defeat the 300 Spartans after King Leonidas refused to surrender. Cast includes Gerard Butler (King Leonides), Lena Headey (Queen Gorgo), David Wenham (Dilios), et al.
Keywords: Zack Snyder; History; Fantasy; War


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Hold down Control (PC) or Command (Mac) key + mouseclick to select more than one option
|Avg. Dinner Entrée
|Greater than $25
|$18.01 - $25
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|Less than $7
Posted by ileana on 08/09/2014
Front door rug was dirty and ripped; attention span of check in person was short-3 persons doing the same job and still they managed to keep us waiting. Wait staff kept rushing us through the meal and trying to pull the plates from under us. Found the restaurant disorderly and in the bathroom was a makeshift earring concession stand. Tacky
Posted by Josephine Bea on 02/08/2014
Wow, what a restaurant! Or a bar? All in one! Feels like a sophisticated Latin place.. Never saw so many flavors of people, food and the art on the walls! Hands down! Hostess should be more friendly! Will come back.. Can't wait for my birthday song there ( if you know what I mean)!
Posted by Jayden b on 01/25/2014
I went to sofrito with my wife on 12/28/13. Short wait for a table of two, ordered 4 appetizers, 4 drinks , to main course, once we are done with or food, the waiter practically shoves the bill down my throat. We still were not finished with our drinks, and were looking forward to coffee and flan.
Posted by Disappointed on 12/14/2013
Was there on a Friday nite with my coworker..we stood next to the girl that was supposed to have us seated, she totally forgot us for about 20 mins.. Too busy chatting with another hostess, we had to remind them twice.. Only one Exit in and out.... noisy, looks like hang out ..Scary if you bump into anyone, a fight could break out! They had no decor, the place was very very dark.. Could not read the menu..what ashamed because the food was Delicious! But would not go back..from the outside, you didn't even know it was a restaurant
Posted by Angelo Rosario on 07/12/2013
Sofrito was awesome. The food was fantastic. The waitress Amanda was exceptional really provided excellent service! Highly recommend
Posted by Lee V on 05/21/2013
Some of the food was tasty. However, they don't serve coffee on weekends but offer desserts. They want you to eat and not hold the table for too long and that is why they don't serve coffee on weekends. There were a few birthdays and they startled a few of the patrons with blaring music to sing happy birthday, like they do in chain restaurants.
Posted by Dennis on 05/19/2013
Went there with my wife and a few of her work friends. We were sat at our table after maybe 5-10 minutes since we had made a reservation through a party promoter that we use when we go out. The food came out after about 15 minutes and it was great. I dine at many latin restaurants and I was satisfied. Thanks for another Hit Showtime.


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John Iamurri dies: Naples loses its father of the diamond
Carlos Alfonso has been involved in professional baseball — as a player, coach and scout — for more than 47 years. He says he owes it all to John Iamurri Sr.
Alfonso came to Naples, from Miami via Cuba, at age 11. He tried out for the Greater Naples Little League and was drafted by Iamurri to play for the Holland Salley White Sox.
Iamurri became more than a coach to Alfonso. He became the biggest influence in his life besides his parents, Alfonso said.
"He gave me the passion and the belief in myself to pursue a professional career," said Alfonso, 63. "He always talked about dedication and perfection and that inspired me. I don't know what I would be doing if not for Coach Iamurri."
Alfonso's heart broke to hear the loss of his mentor and inspiration. John Iamurri Sr., who started Little League in Naples in 1958, died Sunday night. He was 92.
"I owe him everything," Alfonso said. "He taught me the fundamentals of the game and about doing them right and repeating them right and that is something that I still live by after 47 years in professional baseball."
Iamurri's name is synonymous with Little League. He coached for five decades. His sons, Robert and Rocky, followed in his footsteps. And John Iamurri started the Naples fast-pitch softball league in 1975 that went on to national prominence, winning 18 World Series titles in a 31-year span.
Robert Iamurri said with the implementation of 1972 Title IX his father came up with the idea to form a girls league in 1975, and some of them started playing with the boys in 1974. It didn't take long for softball to take off, and in 1979 Iamurri's Naples program headed to its first Worlds Series, finishing third.
"There was nothing for girls back then," said Juan Romero, who played baseball for Iamurri and went on to be a Major League Baseball scout. "Coach John saw an opportunity to give back, give girls an opportunity that they would appreciate."
Robert Iamurri said he remembers the start of the softball league. He was 12 and coached a team with the younger ones. Robert Iamurri, 55, said he got his love of coaching from his father. Robert has coached 13 high school state championship teams 12 at Naples and one at Lely.
"Dad was a perfectionist and everyone knows, so is Robert," Rocky Iamurri said. "He is a lot like Dad."
Rocky Iamurri said his dad never stopped coaching. Even though his last game in the dugout as a coach came in 2004, Rocky said his father always gave his sons advice.
"He was undefeated on the other side of the fence," Rocky Iamurri joked. "But he'd tell us to move the second baseman over or try a play. He never stopped coaching."
Romero said John Iamurri was extremely detailed in his practices, and made his players work hard.
"He expected perfection," Romero said. "But he had a great heart and a brilliant baseball mind."
With the news of John Iamurri's death, Alfonso reflected back to that Little League draft day and his first impression of his coach.
"He didn't look like a coach, with his rolly-polly short stature," Alfonso said. "But I quickly found out differently."
Alfonso said Iamurri didn't tolerate mistakes.
"I remember the look," Alfonso said. "The look was enough. He didn't have to say a word. His eyes would bulge and you knew you needed to do better."
For Alfonso, and many other kids, John Iamurri was more than a coach.
Alfonso realizes now how lucky he was the day Iamurri drafted him.
Living with an uncle as an 11-year-old, Alfonso often didn't have a way to practice, and one of the Iamurris often gave him a ride. Many nights, Alfonso stayed at Iamurri's home — along with Iamurri's eight children — so he could make it to practice or a game. Alfonso also worked the concession truck, run by the Iamurris, so he could eat.
"It's immeasurable what he did for me and so many others," said Alfonso, who played professionally for the Houston Astros and Cincinnati Reds. "I can't believe a person of his age did so much for so many people."
Alfonso said Naples needs to recognize Iamurri's dedication to youth sports.
"We have to do something for John," Alfonso said. "Something so people will not forget him and what he has done for this community. We need to remember the human part of his life as much as John the coach.
"We need to celebrate his life."
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Motor Racing Network Radio Stations
NASCAR Live on MRN
For more than a quarter century, "NASCAR Live" has been a weekly tradition for NASCAR fans. Eli Gold opens the phone lines to connect NASCAR fans across the...
NASCAR Today
Host Woody Cain features the latest information from NASCAR, including race results, driver interviews, and breaking news stories.
It is MRN Radio's exciting country music and NASCAR racing program. Hosted by veteran MRN announcer and country music radio personality Rob Tanner, this...
MRN Classic Races
Classic NASCAR races from the vualt of the Motor Racing Network
Winged Nation on MRN
Hosts Steve Post and Kendra Jacobs bring you all the news, results, interviews, and stories from the world of winged sprint cars from all over the country!
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Join us every Monday at 12:00 PM EST as MRN takes a look back at the previous weekends NASCAR and Grand Am races with Woody Cain and the spotter for Brad...
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Hosts Kyle Rickey and Buddy Long give you all the news, race results and highlights from NASCAR Modified and K&N Pro Series East and West races from all...


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then its that or nothing
Originally Posted by admiral victorinox
if u got firmware 3.2 or lower yes
sorry not sure what this means? do ihave to hire this game to play it first?can i use a downloaded version if this is the case?
Last edited by Ogilberry; 12-26-2008 at 10:58 PM.
ok i went and hired the game and redid it worked fine..so the answer is yes you must have a copy of the game that you have played then erase the data to do the steps and works..
ok now to downgrade....phew here we go....
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Treece: Seek balanceWritten by Dock David Treece | | email@example.com
Personal finance is more of an art than a science, in spite of all the books, classes, and lectures on the topic — not to mention the money charged by "experts" for "financial planning." Nothing in this industry, be it planning or investing is ever black-and-white. [Note: That's not to say there aren't good or bad investments for given economic conditions.]
Instead, there are options. No one, no planner, lecturer, author, or self-help guru can tell a client what is right for him or her. We each have to make personal decisions about our finances based on what is right for us. The best an adviser can do is to help clients understand their options and make recommendations based on their own beliefs (e.g. "If it were my money…").
Oftentimes we as individuals don't go all the way in one direction or another, but try to straddle some invisible line, to find some gray area.
There is no better example of this than the varying philosophies on saving. Generally among investors there are two schools of thought, each with their own merits.
The first way of thinking is to save and create a nest egg to pass along to kids. The goal here is to make priority No. 1 of saving and investing to improve the stations in life for descendants — an attempt to make a family truly "wealthy."
As a brief side note, it's important to understand financial milestones. For example, a person is considered "financially independent" if they have accumulated in liquid assets enough money to pay their expenses for the next two or three years. They are termed "financial independent" because they can maintain their standards of living, even if they lose their jobs.
The definition of "wealthy" is even less clear, but to date the best definition we have found is this: "A person is truly wealthy when their money earns more than they do," meaning that interest and dividends from investments are greater than a person's salary. Very few people ever reach this level of wealth.
In any case, people who stress saving generally at least want to be able to maintain their lifestyles in retirement, at a minimum to support themselves in later life without burdening their families.
One thing we commonly tell clients is that no one owes it to their kids to leave them a large inheritance. However, people DO at least owe it to their children to be able to support themselves financially late in life without being a burden.
Conversely, the other philosophy on personal finance is extremely simple. It's characterized by a simple phrase we've all heard before: "You can't take it with you." In other words, people should enjoy their money and worry less about the future, much less future generations. Let them worry about themselves.
Obviously this second philosophy isn't simply unsound financially, it's unhealthy!
It is of utmost importance for each of us to find some sort of balance between responsibility and enjoyment, because obviously there is validity to both ways of thinking. And while I'd like to be able to provide some sort of answer — some kind of golden ratio between fun and safe — each of us must answer this question for him- or herself.
Hopefully most readers have already found some kind of balance in their lives and are enjoying their earnings while also preparing for the future — maybe even stockpiling something to leave behind. For those who haven't, the first step is to recognize the need; the second is to understand the options.
Dock David Treece is a partner with Treece Investment Advisory Corp (www.TreeceInvestments.com) and is licensed with FINRA through Treece Financial Services Corp. He provides expert content to numerous media outlets. The above information is the express opinion of Dock David Treece and should not be construed as investment advice or used without outside verification.
Tags: Dock David Treece, inheritance, personal finance, Retirement, saving philosophies