Liturgy and Ecumenism: What Next?

(Excerpt) This year, 1998, marks the twentieth anniversary of the Lutheran Book of Worship (LBW) that we celebrate together with the fiftieth anniversary of the Institute of Liturgical Studies here at Valparaiso University. My personal debt to the institute goes back to 1956 when I persuaded my internship supervisor to allow me to attend the institute in Michigan. That meeting introduced me to some of the giants of the previous generation-Arthur Carl Piepkorn, Berthold von Schenk, AR. Kretzmann and M. Alfred Bichsel-and gave me a vision of what worship among Lutherans might be. Then, following my return from doctoral studies at the University of Heidelberg, I was invited to present a paper at the 1961 institute. It was on the concept of anamnesis, prescient of this year\u27s eschatological theme. And now, after fifteen years as an ex-patriot, you have invited me back. I am grateful

Toward the Renewal of Christian Initiation in the Parish

(Excerpt) The brochure for this year\u27s Institute contained the arresting sentence: To discuss the question of Christian initiation is, finally, to inquire after the very nature of the church: the issue is of vast ecclesiological significance. The renewed and growing interest in Christian initiation is prompted by a new vision of the church

Probing protein sequences as sources for encrypted antimicrobial peptides

Starting from the premise that a wealth of potentially biologically active peptides may lurk within proteins, we describe here a methodology to identify putative antimicrobial peptides encrypted in protein sequences. Candidate peptides were identified using a new screening procedure based on physicochemical criteria to reveal matching peptides within protein databases. Fifteen such peptides, along with a range of natural antimicrobial peptides, were examined using DSC and CD to characterize their interaction with phospholipid membranes. Principal component analysis of DSC data shows that the investigated peptides group according to their effects on the main phase transition of phospholipid vesicles, and that these effects correlate both to antimicrobial activity and to the changes in peptide secondary structure. Consequently, we have been able to identify novel antimicrobial peptides from larger proteins not hitherto associated with such activity, mimicking endogenous and/or exogenous microorganism enzymatic processing of parent proteins to smaller bioactive molecules. A biotechnological application for this methodology is explored. Soybean (Glycine max) plants, transformed to include a putative antimicrobial protein fragment encoded in its own genome were tested for tolerance against Phakopsora pachyrhizi, the causative agent of the Asian soybean rust. This procedure may represent an inventive alternative to the transgenic technology, since the genetic material to be used belongs to the host organism and not to exogenous sources

The Drosophila melanogaster host model

The deleterious and sometimes fatal outcomes of bacterial infectious diseases are the net result of the interactions between the pathogen and the host, and the genetically tractable fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has emerged as a valuable tool for modeling the pathogen–host interactions of a wide variety of bacteria. These studies have revealed that there is a remarkable conservation of bacterial pathogenesis and host defence mechanisms between higher host organisms and Drosophila. This review presents an in-depth discussion of the Drosophila immune response, the Drosophila killing model, and the use of the model to examine bacterial–host interactions. The recent introduction of the Drosophila model into the oral microbiology field is discussed, specifically the use of the model to examine Porphyromonas gingivalis–host interactions, and finally the potential uses of this powerful model system to further elucidate oral bacterial-host interactions are addressed

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

A meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for serum total IgE in diverse study populations

BACKGROUND: Immunoglobulin E (IgE) is both a marker and mediator of allergic inflammation. Despite reported differences in serum total IgE levels by race-ethnicity, African American and Latino individuals have not been well represented in genetic studies of total IgE. OBJECTIVE: To identify the genetic predictors of serum total IgE levels. METHODS: We used genome wide association (GWA) data from 4,292 individuals (2,469 African Americans, 1,564 European Americans, and 259 Latinos) in the EVE Asthma Genetics Consortium. Tests for association were performed within each cohort by race-ethnic group (i.e., African American, Latino, and European American) and asthma status. The resulting p-values were meta-analyzed accounting for sample size and direction of effect. Top single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) associations from the meta-analysis were reassessed in six additional cohorts comprising 5,767 individuals. RESULTS: We identified 10 unique regions where the combined association statistic was associated with total serum IgE levels (P-value <5.0×10(−6)) and the minor allele frequency was ≥5% in two or more population groups. Variant rs9469220, corresponding to HLA-DQB1, was the most significantly associated SNP with serum total IgE levels when assessed in both the replication cohorts and the discovery and replication sets combined (P-value = 0.007 and 2.45×10(−7), respectively). In addition, findings from earlier GWA studies were also validated in the current meta-analysis. CONCLUSION: This meta-analysis independently identified a variant near HLA-DQB1 as a predictor of total serum IgE in multiple race-ethnic groups. This study also extends and confirms the findings of earlier GWA analyses in African American and Latino individuals

Factors Associated with Revision Surgery after Internal Fixation of Hip Fractures

Background: Femoral neck fractures are associated with high rates of revision surgery after management with internal fixation. Using data from the Fixation using Alternative Implants for the Treatment of Hip fractures (FAITH) trial evaluating methods of internal fixation in patients with femoral neck fractures, we investigated associations between baseline and surgical factors and the need for revision surgery to promote healing, relieve pain, treat infection or improve function over 24 months postsurgery. Additionally, we investigated factors associated with (1) hardware removal and (2) implant exchange from cancellous screws (CS) or sliding hip screw (SHS) to total hip arthroplasty, hemiarthroplasty, or another internal fixation device. Methods: We identified 15 potential factors a priori that may be associated with revision surgery, 7 with hardware removal, and 14 with implant exchange. We used multivariable Cox proportional hazards analyses in our investigation. Results: Factors associated with increased risk of revision surgery included: female sex, [hazard ratio (HR) 1.79, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.25-2.50; P = 0.001], higher body mass index (fo