1,413 research outputs found
Integrable Boundary Conditions for the O(N) Nonlinear Model
We discuss the new integrable boundary conditions for the O(N) nonlinear
model and related solutions of the boundary Yang-Baxter equation,
which were presented in our previous paper hep-th/0108039.Comment: 9 pages. To appear in the proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research
Workshop on "Statistical Field Theories", Como, Italy, 18-23 June 2001. v2:
typos correcte
In Vitro Acute Exposure to DEHP Affects Oocyte Meiotic Maturation, Energy and Oxidative Stress Parameters in a Large Animal Model
A scalable algorithm to explore the Gibbs energy landscape of genome-scale metabolic networks
The integration of various types of genomic data into predictive models of
biological networks is one of the main challenges currently faced by
computational biology. Constraint-based models in particular play a key role in
the attempt to obtain a quantitative understanding of cellular metabolism at
genome scale. In essence, their goal is to frame the metabolic capabilities of
an organism based on minimal assumptions that describe the steady states of the
underlying reaction network via suitable stoichiometric constraints,
specifically mass balance and energy balance (i.e. thermodynamic feasibility).
The implementation of these requirements to generate viable configurations of
reaction fluxes and/or to test given flux profiles for thermodynamic
feasibility can however prove to be computationally intensive. We propose here
a fast and scalable stoichiometry-based method to explore the Gibbs energy
landscape of a biochemical network at steady state. The method is applied to
the problem of reconstructing the Gibbs energy landscape underlying metabolic
activity in the human red blood cell, and to that of identifying and removing
thermodynamically infeasible reaction cycles in the Escherichia coli metabolic
network (iAF1260). In the former case, we produce consistent predictions for
chemical potentials (or log-concentrations) of intracellular metabolites; in
the latter, we identify a restricted set of loops (23 in total) in the
periplasmic and cytoplasmic core as the origin of thermodynamic infeasibility
in a large sample () of flux configurations generated randomly and
compatibly with the prior information available on reaction reversibility.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 1 table; for associated supporting material see
http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.100256
Pro-oxidant effects of Verbascoside, a bioactive compound from olive oil mill wastewater, on in vitro developmental potential of ovine prepubertal oocytes and bioenergetic/oxidative stress parameters of fresh and vitrified oocytes
Verbascoside (VB) is a bioactive polyphenol from olive oil mill wastewater with known antioxidant activity. Oxidative stress is an emerging problem in assisted reproductive technology (ART). Juvenile ART is a promising topic because, in farm animals, it reduces the generation gap and, in human reproductive medicine, it helps to overcome premature ovarian failure. The aim of this study was to test the effects of VB on the developmental competence of ovine prepubertal oocytes and the bioenergetic/oxidative stress status of fresh and vitrified oocytes. In fresh oocytes, VB exerted prooxidant short-term effects, that is, catalase activity increase and uncoupled increases of mitochondria and reactive oxygen species (ROS) fluorescence signals, and long-term effects, that is, reduced blastocyst formation rate. In vitrified oocytes, VB increased ROS levels. Prooxidant VB effects in ovine prepubertal oocytes could be related to higher VB accumulation, which was found as almost one thousand times higher than that reported in other cell systems in previous studies. Also, long exposure times of oocytes to VB, throughout the duration of in vitro maturation culture, may have contributed to significant increase of oocyte oxidation. Further studies are needed to identify lower concentrations and/or shorter exposure times to figure out VB antioxidant effects in juvenile ARTs
Calcitization of aragonitic bryozoans in Cenozoic tropical carbonates from East Kalimantan, Indonesia
© The Author(s) 2016. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The file attached is the published version of the article
Anti-miR21 oligonucleotide enhances chemosensitivity of T98G cell line to doxorubicin by inducing apoptosis.
Circulating microRNAs Reveal Time Course of Organ Injury in a Porcine Model of Acetaminophen-Induced Acute Liver Failure
Acute liver failure is a rare but catastrophic condition which can progress rapidly to multi-organ failure. Studies investigating the onset of individual organ injury such as the liver, kidneys and brain during the evolution of acute liver failure, are lacking. MicroRNAs are short, non-coding strands of RNA that are released into the circulation following tissue injury. In this study, we have characterised the release of both global microRNA and specific microRNA species into the plasma using a porcine model of acetaminophen-induced acute liver failure. Pigs were induced to acute liver failure with oral acetaminophen over 19h±2h and death occurred 13h±3h thereafter. Global microRNA concentrations increased 4h prior to acute liver failure in plasma (P<0.0001) but not in isolated exosomes, and were associated with increasing plasma levels of the damage-associated molecular pattern molecule, genomic DNA (P<0.0001). MiR122 increased around the time of onset of acute liver failure (P<0.0001) and was associated with increasing international normalised ratio (P<0.0001). MiR192 increased 8h after acute liver failure (P<0.0001) and was associated with increasing creatinine (P<0.0001). The increase in miR124-1 occurred concurrent with the pre-terminal increase in intracranial pressure (P<0.0001) and was associated with decreasing cerebral perfusion pressure (P<0.002)
Head Position in Stroke Trial (HeadPoST)- sitting-up vs lying-flat positioning of patients with acute stroke: study protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial
Background
Positioning a patient lying-flat in the acute phase of ischaemic stroke may improve recovery and reduce disability, but such a possibility has not been formally tested in a randomised trial. We therefore initiated the Head Position in Stroke Trial (HeadPoST) to determine the effects of lying-flat (0°) compared with sitting-up (≥30°) head positioning in the first 24 hours of hospital admission for patients with acute stroke.
Methods/Design
We plan to conduct an international, cluster randomised, crossover, open, blinded outcome-assessed clinical trial involving 140 study hospitals (clusters) with established acute stroke care programs. Each hospital will be randomly assigned to sequential policies of lying-flat (0°) or sitting-up (≥30°) head position as a ‘business as usual’ stroke care policy during the first 24 hours of admittance. Each hospital is required to recruit 60 consecutive patients with acute ischaemic stroke (AIS), and all patients with acute intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH) (an estimated average of 10), in the first randomised head position policy before crossing over to the second head position policy with a similar recruitment target. After collection of in-hospital clinical and management data and 7-day outcomes, central trained blinded assessors will conduct a telephone disability assessment with the modified Rankin Scale at 90 days. The primary outcome for analysis is a shift (defined as improvement) in death or disability on this scale. For a cluster size of 60 patients with AIS per intervention and with various assumptions including an intracluster correlation coefficient of 0.03, a sample size of 16,800 patients at 140 centres will provide 90 % power (α 0.05) to detect at least a 16 % relative improvement (shift) in an ordinal logistic regression analysis of the primary outcome. The treatment effect will also be assessed in all patients with ICH who are recruited during each treatment study period.
Discussion
HeadPoST is a large international clinical trial in which we will rigorously evaluate the effects of different head positioning in patients with acute stroke.
Trial registration
ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02162017 (date of registration: 27 April 2014); ANZCTR identifier: ACTRN12614000483651 (date of registration: 9 May 2014). Protocol version and date: version 2.2, 19 June 2014
- …