Biomarkers of coagulation and inflammation in dogs after randomized administration of 6% Hydroxyethyl Starch 130/0.4 or Hartmann’s Solution

Synthetic colloid fluids containing hydroxyethyl starch (HES) have been associated with impairment of coagulation in dogs. It is unknown if HES causes coagulation impairment in dogs with naturally occurring critical illness. This study used banked plasma samples from a blinded, randomized clinical trial comparing HES and balanced isotonic crystalloid for bolus fluid therapy in 39 critically ill dogs. Blood was collected prior to fluid administration and 6, 12, and 24 h thereafter. Coagulation biomarkers measured at each time point included prothrombin time, activated partial thromboplastin time, thrombin time, fibrinogen concentration, and the activities of coagulation factors V, VII, VIII, IX, and X, von Willebrand factor antigen, antithrombin, and protein C. Given the links between coagulation and inflammation, cytokine concentrations were also measured, including interleukins 6, 8, 10, and 18, keratinocyte-derived chemokine, and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1. Data were analyzed with linear mixed effects models. No significant treatment-by-time interactions were found for any biomarker, indicating that the pattern of change over time was not modified by treatment. Examining the main effect of time showed significant changes in several coagulation biomarkers and keratinocyte-derived chemokines. This study could not detect evidence of coagulation impairment with HES

Studying cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory

Cumulative cultural evolution is the term given to a particular kind of social learning, which allows for the accumulation of modifications over time, involving a ratchet-like effect where successful modifications are maintained until they can be improved upon. There has been great interest in the topic of cumulative cultural evolution from researchers from a wide variety of disciplines, but until recently there were no experimental studies of this phenomenon. Here we describe our motivations for developing experimental methods for studying cumulative cultural evolution, and review results we have obtained using these techniques. The results that we describe have provided insights into understanding the outcomes of cultural processes at the population level. Our experiments show that cumulative cultural evolution can result in adaptive complexity in behaviour, and also can also produce convergence in behaviour. These findings lend support to ideas that some behaviours commonly attributed to natural selection and innate tendencies could in fact be shaped by cultural processes

What young people want from health-related online resources: a focus group study

The growth of the Internet as an information source about health, particularly amongst young people, is well established. The aim of this study was to explore young people's perceptions and experiences of engaging with health-related online content, particularly through social media websites. Between February and July 2011 nine focus groups were facilitated across Scotland with young people aged between 14 and 18 years. Health-related user-generated content seems to be appreciated by young people as a useful, if not always trustworthy, source of accounts of other people's experiences. The reliability and quality of both user-generated content and official factual content about health appear to be concerns for young people, and they employ specialised strategies for negotiating both areas of the online environment. Young people's engagement with health online is a dynamic area for research. Their perceptions and experiences of health-related content seem based on their wider familiarity with the online environment and, as the online environment develops, so too do young people's strategies and conventions for accessing it

Resummations of free energy at high temperature

We discuss resummation strategies for free energy in quantum field theories at nonzero temperatures T. We point out that resummations should be performed for the short- and long-distance parts separately in order to avoid spurious interference effects and double-counting. We then discuss and perform Pade resummations of these two parts for QCD at high T. The resummed results are almost invariant under variation of the renormalization and factorization scales. We perform the analysis also in the case of the massless scalar $\phi^4$ theory.Comment: 16 pages, revtex4, 15 eps-figures; minor typographic errors corrected; the version as it appears in Phys.Rev.

1/N_c- expansion of the quark condensate at finite temperature

Previously the quark and meson properties in a many quark system at finite temperature have been studied within effective QCD approaches in the Hartree approximation. In the present paper we consider the influence of the mesonic correlations on the quark self-energy and on the quark propagator within a systematic $1/N_c$- expansion. Using a general separable ansatz for the nonlocal interaction, we derive a selfconsistent equation for the $1/N_c$ correction to the quark propagator. For a separable model with cut-off formfactor, we obtain a decrease of the condensate of the order of 20\% at zero temperature. A lowering the critical temperature for the onset of the chiral restoration transition due to the inclusion of mesonic correlations is obtained what seems to be closer to the results from lattice calculations.Comment: 19 pages, REVTeX, 5 figure

Transcriptional regulation of the urokinase receptor (u-PAR) - A central molecule of invasion and metastasis

The phenomenon of tumor-associated proteolysis has been acknowledged as a decisive step in the progression of cancer. This short review focuses on the urokinase receptor (u-PAR), a central molecule involved in tumor-associated invasion and metastasis, and summarizes the transcriptional regulation of u-PAR. The urokinase receptor (u-PAR) is a heavily glycosylated cell surface protein and binds the serine protease urokinase specifically and with high affinity. It consists of three similar cysteine-rich repeats and is anchored to the cell membrane via a GPI-anchor. The u-PAR gene comprises 7 exons and is located on chromosome 19q13. Transcriptional activation of the u-PAR promoter region can be induced by binding of transcription factors (Sp1, AP-1, AP-2, NF-kappaB). One current study gives an example for transcriptional downregulation of u-PAR through a PEA3/ets transcriptional silencing element. Knowledge of the molecular regulation of this molecule in tumor cells could be very important for diagnosis and therapy in the near future

Microbial control of diatom bloom dynamics in the open ocean

Diatom blooms play a central role in supporting foodwebs and sequestering biogenic carbon to depth. Oceanic conditions set bloom initiation, whereas both environmental and ecological factors determine bloom magnitude and longevity. Our study reveals another fundamental determinant of bloom dynamics. A diatom spring bloom in offshore New Zealand waters was likely terminated by iron limitation, even though diatoms consumed <1/3 of the mixed-layer dissolved iron inventory. Thus, bloom duration and magnitude were primarily set by competition for dissolved iron between microbes and small phytoplankton versus diatoms. Significantly, such a microbial mode of control probably relies both upon out-competing diatoms for iron (i.e., K-strategy), and having high iron requirements (i.e., r-strategy). Such resource competition for iron has implications for carbon biogeochemistry, as, blooming diatoms fixed three-fold more carbon per unit iron than resident non-blooming microbes. Microbial sequestration of iron has major ramifications for determining the biogeochemical imprint of oceanic diatom blooms. Citation: Boyd, P. W., et al. (2012), Microbial control of diatom bloom dynamics in the open ocean, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L18601

A combined first and second order variational approach for image reconstruction

In this paper we study a variational problem in the space of functions of bounded Hessian. Our model constitutes a straightforward higher-order extension of the well known ROF functional (total variation minimisation) to which we add a non-smooth second order regulariser. It combines convex functions of the total variation and the total variation of the first derivatives. In what follows, we prove existence and uniqueness of minimisers of the combined model and present the numerical solution of the corresponding discretised problem by employing the split Bregman method. The paper is furnished with applications of our model to image denoising, deblurring as well as image inpainting. The obtained numerical results are compared with results obtained from total generalised variation (TGV), infimal convolution and Euler's elastica, three other state of the art higher-order models. The numerical discussion confirms that the proposed higher-order model competes with models of its kind in avoiding the creation of undesirable artifacts and blocky-like structures in the reconstructed images -- a known disadvantage of the ROF model -- while being simple and efficiently numerically solvable.Comment: 34 pages, 89 figure

Glyphosate, Other Herbicides, And Transformation Products In Midwestern Streams, 2002

The use of glyphosate has increased rapidly, and there is limited understanding of its environmental fate. The objective of this study was to document the occurrence of glyphosate and the transformation product aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA) in Midwestern streams and to compare their occurrence with that of more commonly measured herbicides such as acetochlor, atrazine, and metolachlor. Water samples were collected at sites on 51 streams in nine Midwestern states in 2002 during three runoff events: after the application of pre-emergence herbicides, after the application of post-emergence herbicides, and during harvest season. All samples were analyzed for glyphosate and 20 other herbicides using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry or high performance liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry. The frequency of glyphosate and AMPA detection, range of concentrations in runoff samples, and ratios of AMPA to glyphosate concentrations did not vary throughout the growing season as substantially as for other herbicides like atrazine, probably because of different seasonal use patterns. Glyphosate was detected at or above 0.1 μg/l in 35 percent of pre-emergence, 40 percent of post-emergence, and 31 percent of harvest season samples, with a maximum concentration of 8.7 μg/l. AMPA was detected at or above 0.1 μg/l in 53 percent of pre-emergence, 83 percent of post-emergence, and 73 percent of harvest season samples, with a maximum concentration of 3.6 μg/l. Glyphosate was not detected at a concentration at or above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum contamination level (MCL) of 700 μg/l in any sample. Atrazine was detected at or above 0.1 μg/l in 94 percent of pre-emergence, 96 percent of postemergence, and 57 percent of harvest season samples, with a maximum concentration of 55 μg/l. Atrazine was detected at or above its MCL (3 μg/l) in 57 percent of pre-emergence and 33 percent of postemergence samples

Temporal structure of stimulated-Brillouin-scattering reflectivity considering transversal-mode development

The time-resolved reflectivity of optical phase conjugation by stimulated Brillouin scattering ~SBS! is investigated both theoretically and experimentally. A three-dimensional and transient model of SBS is developed to compare the experimental and theoretical results. Noise initiation of the SBS process is included in the model to simulate the shot-to-shot variation in the reflectivity and the Stokes temporal profile.Shahraam Afshaarvahid, Axel Heuer, Ralf Menzel, and Jesper Munc