Circulating insulin-like growth factor I modulates mood and is a biomarker of vulnerability to stress:from mouse to man

Individual susceptibility to anxiety disorders after maladaptive responses to stress is not well understood. We now report that while exploring stress responses in mice after traumatic brain injury (TBI), a condition associated to stress susceptibility, we observed that the anxiogenic effects of either TBI or exposure to life-threatening experiences (predator) were blocked when both stressors were combined. Because TBI increases the entrance into the brain of serum insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I), a known modulator of anxiety with a wide range of concentrations in the human population, we then determined whether circulating IGF-I is related to anxiety measures. In mice, anxiety-like responses to predator were inversely related to circulating IGF-I levels. Other indicators of mood regulation such as sensitivity to dexamethasone suppression and expression levels of blood and brain FK506 binding protein 5 (FKBP5), a co-chaperone of the glucocorticoid receptor that regulates its activity, were also associated to circulating IGF-I. Indeed, brain FKBP5 expression in mice was stimulated by IGF-I. In addition, we observed in a large human cohort (n = 2686) a significant relationship between plasma IGF-I and exposure to recent stressful life events, while FKBP5 expression in blood cells was significantly associated to plasma IGF-I levels. Collectively, these data indicate that circulating IGF-I appears to be involved in mood homeostasis across different species. Furthermore, the data in mice allow us to indicate that IGF-I may be acting at least in part by modulating FKBP5 expression

Electroencephalogram of Healthy Horses During Inhaled Anesthesia.

BackgroundPrevious study of the diagnostic validity of electroencephalography (EEG) to detect abnormalities in equine cerebral cortical function relied on the administration of various drugs for sedation, induction, and maintenance of general anesthesia but used identical criteria to interpret recordings.ObjectivesTo determine the effects of 2 inhalation anesthetics on the EEG of healthy horses.AnimalsSix healthy horses.MethodsProspective study. After the sole administration of one of either isoflurane or halothane at 1.2, 1.4, and 1.6 times the minimum alveolar concentration, EEG was recorded during controlled ventilation, spontaneous ventilation, and nerve stimulation.ResultsBurst suppression was observed with isoflurane, along with EEG events that resembled epileptiform discharges. Halothane results were variable between horses, with epileptiform-like discharges and bursts of theta, alpha, and beta recorded intermittently. One horse died and 2 were euthanized as the result of anesthesia-related complications.Conclusions and clinical importanceThe results of this study indicate that the effects of halothane and isoflurane on EEG activity in the normal horse can be quite variable, even when used in the absence of other drugs. It is recommended that equine EEG be performed without the use of these inhalation anesthetics and that general anesthesia be induced and maintained by other contemporary means

Qualitative and Quantitative Characteristics of the Electroencephalogram in Normal Horses during Administration of Inhaled Anesthesia.

BackgroundThe effects of anesthesia on the equine electroencephalogram (EEG) after administration of various drugs for sedation, induction, and maintenance are known, but not that the effect of inhaled anesthetics alone for EEG recording.ObjectiveTo determine the effects of isoflurane and halothane, administered as single agents at multiple levels, on the EEG and quantitative EEG (qEEG) of normal horses.AnimalsSix healthy horses.MethodsProspective study. Digital EEG with video and quantitative EEG (qEEG) were recorded after the administration of one of the 2 anesthetics, isoflurane or halothane, at 3 alveolar doses (1.2, 1.4 and 1.6 MAC). Segments of EEG during controlled ventilation (CV), spontaneous ventilation (SV), and with peroneal nerve stimulation (ST) at each MAC multiple for each anesthetic were selected, analyzed, and compared. Multiple non-EEG measurements were also recorded.ResultsSpecific raw EEG findings were indicative of changes in the depth of anesthesia. However, there was considerable variability in EEG between horses at identical MAC multiples/conditions and within individual horses over segments of a given epoch. Statistical significance for qEEG variables differed between anesthetics with bispectral index (BIS) CV MAC and 95% spectral edge frequency (SEF95) SV MAC differences in isoflurane only and median frequency (MED) differences in SV MAC with halothane only.Conclusions and clinical importanceUnprocessed EEG features (background and transients) appear to be beneficial for monitoring the depth of a particular anesthetic, but offer little advantage over the use of changes in mean arterial pressure for this purpose

XSHOOTER spectroscopy of the enigmatic planetary nebula Lin49 in the Small Magellanic Cloud

We performed a detailed spectroscopic analysis of the fullerene C60-containing planetary nebula (PN) Lin49 in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) using XSHOOTER at the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope and the Spitzer/Infrared Spectrograph instruments. We derived nebular abundances for nine elements. We used TLUSTY to derive photospheric parameters for the central star. Lin49 is C-rich and metal-deficient PN (Z ∼ 0.0006). The nebular abundances are in good agreement with asymptotic giant branch nucleosynthesis models for stars with initial mass 1.25 M⊙ and metallicity Z = 0.001. Using the TLUSTY synthetic spectrum of the central star to define the heating and ionizing source, we constructed the photoionization model with CLOUDY that matches the observed spectral energy distribution (SED) and the line fluxes in the UV to far-IR wavelength ranges simultaneously. We could not fit the ∼1–5 μm SED using a model with 0.005–0.1-μm-sized graphite grains and a constant hydrogen density shell owing to the prominent near-IR excess, while at other wavelengths the model fits the observed values reasonably well. We argue that the near-IR excess might indicate either (1) the presence of very small particles in the form of small carbon clusters, small graphite sheets, or fullerene precursors, or (2) the presence of a high-density structure surrounding the central star. We found that SMC C60 PNe show a near-IR excess component to lesser or greater degree. This suggests that these C60 PNe might maintain a structure nearby their central star

Effect of heuristics on serendipity in path-based storytelling with linked data

Path-based storytelling with Linked Data on the Web provides users the ability to discover concepts in an entertaining and educational way. Given a query context, many state-of-the-art pathfinding approaches aim at telling a story that coincides with the user's expectations by investigating paths over Linked Data on the Web. By taking into account serendipity in storytelling, we aim at improving and tailoring existing approaches towards better fitting user expectations so that users are able to discover interesting knowledge without feeling unsure or even lost in the story facts. To this end, we propose to optimize the link estimation between - and the selection of facts in a story by increasing the consistency and relevancy of links between facts through additional domain delineation and refinement steps. In order to address multiple aspects of serendipity, we propose and investigate combinations of weights and heuristics in paths forming the essential building blocks for each story. Our experimental findings with stories based on DBpedia indicate the improvements when applying the optimized algorithm

The Cesàro operator on Korenblum type spaces of analytic functions

[EN] The spectrum of the CesA ro operator , which is always continuous (but never compact) when acting on the classical Korenblum space and other related weighted Fr,chet or (LB) spaces of analytic functions on the open unit disc, is completely determined. It turns out that such spaces are always Schwartz but, with the exception of the Korenblum space, never nuclear. Some consequences concerning the mean ergodicity of are deduced.The research of the first two authors was partially supported by the projects MTM2013-43540-P and MTM2016-76647-P. The second author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.Albanese, A.; Bonet Solves, JA.; Ricker, WJ. (2018). The Cesàro operator on Korenblum type spaces of analytic functions. Collectanea mathematica. 69(2):263-281. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13348-017-0205-7S263281692Albanese, A.A., Bonet, J., Ricker, W.J.: Mean ergodic operators in Fréchet spaces. Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn. 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Analysis of Neighbourhoods in Multi-layered Dynamic Social Networks

Social networks existing among employees, customers or users of various IT systems have become one of the research areas of growing importance. A social network consists of nodes - social entities and edges linking pairs of nodes. In regular, one-layered social networks, two nodes - i.e. people are connected with a single edge whereas in the multi-layered social networks, there may be many links of different types for a pair of nodes. Nowadays data about people and their interactions, which exists in all social media, provides information about many different types of relationships within one network. Analysing this data one can obtain knowledge not only about the structure and characteristics of the network but also gain understanding about semantic of human relations. Are they direct or not? Do people tend to sustain single or multiple relations with a given person? What types of communication is the most important for them? Answers to these and more questions enable us to draw conclusions about semantic of human interactions. Unfortunately, most of the methods used for social network analysis (SNA) may be applied only to one-layered social networks. Thus, some new structural measures for multi-layered social networks are proposed in the paper, in particular: cross-layer clustering coefficient, cross-layer degree centrality and various versions of multi-layered degree centralities. Authors also investigated the dynamics of multi-layered neighbourhood for five different layers within the social network. The evaluation of the presented concepts on the real-world dataset is presented. The measures proposed in the paper may directly be used to various methods for collective classification, in which nodes are assigned to labels according to their structural input features.Comment: 16 pages, International Journal of Computational Intelligence System

Differences in transcription between free-living and CO_2-activated third-stage larvae of Haemonchus contortus

Background: The disease caused by Haemonchus contortus, a blood-feeding nematode of small ruminants, is of major economic importance worldwide. The infective third-stage larva (L3) of this gastric nematode is enclosed in a cuticle (sheath) and, once ingested with herbage by the host, undergoes an exsheathment process that marks the transition from the free-living (L3) to the parasitic (xL3) stage. This study explored changes in gene transcription associated with this transition and predicted, based on comparative analysis, functional roles for key transcripts in the metabolic pathways linked to larval development. Results: Totals of 101,305 (L3) and 105,553 (xL3) expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were determined using 454 sequencing technology, and then assembled and annotated; the most abundant transcripts encoded transthyretin-like, calcium-binding EF-hand, NAD(P)-binding and nucleotide-binding proteins as well as homologues of Ancylostoma-secreted proteins (ASPs). Using an in silico-subtractive analysis, 560 and 685 sequences were shown to be uniquely represented in the L3 and xL3 stages, respectively; the transcripts encoded ribosomal proteins, collagens and elongation factors (in L3), and mainly peptidases and other enzymes of amino acid catabolism (in xL3). Caenorhabditis elegans orthologues of transcripts that were uniquely transcribed in each L3 and xL3 were predicted to interact with a total of 535 other genes, all of which were involved in embryonic development. Conclusion: The present study indicated that some key transcriptional alterations taking place during the transition from the L3 to the xL3 stage of H. contortus involve genes predicted to be linked to the development of neuronal tissue (L3 and xL3), formation of the cuticle (L3) and digestion of host haemoglobin (xL3). Future efforts using next-generation sequencing and bioinformatic technologies should provide the efficiency and depth of coverage required for the determination of the complete transcriptomes of different developmental stages and/or tissues of H. contortus as well as the genome of this important parasitic nematode. Such advances should lead to a significantly improved understanding of the molecular biology of H. contortus and, from an applied perspective, to novel methods of intervention