P17. P3b event-related potentials show changes in varsity football players due to accumulated sub-concussive head impacts

BACKGROUND: Concussion has been a focus in football at all levels of participation. However, there is a growing appreciation that repetitive sub-concussive impacts may have more significant effects on overall neurological health than the isolated diagnosed concussions that have been the focus of recent research. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between the number of head impacts that players experience throughout the season and their P300 evoked potential. METHODS: Canadian university football players (n=45) were separated into three groups based on player mass and position/skill (small-skilled, big-skilled and big-unskilled). Groups were separated into low and high levels of impact exposure based on the total number of head impacts experienced in-season. Players completed baseline, midseason, postseason, and follow-up neurophysiological tests to measure P300 evoked potentials. Statistically significant differences between high versus low impact subgroups for each player group were assessed using independent-samples t-tests. RESULTS: Small-skilled and big-skilled players showed statistically significant decreases in P300 amplitude at midseason and postseason for high impact players compared to low impact players. Follow-up measures revealed that all groups were not significantly different compared to baseline measures. DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION: Players that experience a large number of head impacts in varsity football demonstrate significant decreases in specific EEG measures of cognitive function and information processing. INTERDISCIPLINARY REFLECTION: The combination of biomechanical head impact exposure with neurophysiological outcomes yields insight into the processes behind head impacts and their effects on the human brain

A Magnetic Bead-Based Sensor for the Quantification of Multiple Prostate Cancer Biomarkers.

Novel biomarker assays and upgraded analytical tools are urgently needed to accurately discriminate benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH) from prostate cancer (CaP). To address this unmet clinical need, we report a piezeoelectric/magnetic bead-based assay to quantitate prostate specific antigen (PSA; free and total), prostatic acid phosphatase, carbonic anhydrase 1 (CA1), osteonectin, IL-6 soluble receptor (IL-6sr), and spondin-2. We used the sensor to measure these seven proteins in serum samples from 120 benign prostate hypertrophy patients and 100 Gleason score 6 and 7 CaP using serum samples previously collected and banked. The results were analyzed with receiver operator characteristic curve analysis. There were significant differences between BPH and CaP patients in the PSA, CA1, and spondin-2 assays. The highest AUC discrimination was achieved with a spondin-2 OR free/total PSA operation--the area under the curve was 0.84 with a p value below 10(-6). Some of these data seem to contradict previous reports and highlight the importance of sample selection and proper assay building in the development of biomarker measurement schemes. This bead-based system offers important advantages in assay building including low cost, high throughput, and rapid identification of an optimal matched antibody pair

Discovering the True Chrysoperla carnea (Insecta: Neuroptera: Chrysopidae) Using Song Analysis, Morphology, and Ecology

What was once considered a single Holarctic species of green lacewing, Chrysoperla carnea (Stephens), has recently been shown to be a complex of many cryptic, sibling species, the carnea species group, whose members are reproductively isolated by their substrate-borne vibrational songs. Because species in the complex are diagnosed by their song phenotypes and not by morphology, the current systematic status of the type species has become a problem. Here, we attempt to determine which song species corresponds to Stephens' 1835 concept of C. carnea, originally based on a small series of specimens collected in or near London and currently housed in The Natural History Museum. With six European members of the complex from which to choose, we narrow the field to just three that have been collected in England: C. lucasina (Lacroix), Cc2 ‘slow-motorboat', and Cc4 ‘motorboat'. Ecophysiology eliminates C. lucasina, because that species remains green during adult winter diapause, while Cc2 and Cc4 share with Stephens' type a change to brownish or reddish color in winter. We then describe the songs, ecology, adult morphology, and larval morphology of Cc2 and Cc4, making statistical comparisons between the two species. Results strongly reinforce the conclusion that Cc2 and Cc4 deserve separate species status. In particular, adult morphology displays several subtle but useful differences between the species, including the shape of the basal dilation of the metatarsal claw and the genital ‘lip' and ‘chin' of the male abdomen, color and coarseness of the sternal setae at the tip of the abdomen and on the genital lip, and pigment distribution on the stipes of the maxilla. Furthermore, behavioral choice experiments involving playback of conspecific versus heterospecific songs to individuals of Cc2 and Cc4 demonstrate strong reproductive isolation between the two species. Comparison of the adult morphology of song-determined specimens to that of preserved specimens in the original type series and in other collections in The Natural History Museum, London, indicate that the ‘true' Chrysoperla carnea (Stephens) is Cc4. Cc2 cannot be confidently associated with any previously described species and is therefore assigned a new name, Chrysoperla pallida sp. nov., and formally describe

Hydrocarbon seepage in the deep seabed links subsurface and seafloor biospheres

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Chakraborty, A., Ruff, S. E., Dong, X., Ellefson, E. D., Li, C., Brooks, J. M., McBee, J., Bernard, B. B., & Hubert, C. R. J. Hydrocarbon seepage in the deep seabed links subsurface and seafloor biospheres. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(20), (2020): 11029-11037, doi: 10.1073/pnas.2002289117.Marine cold seeps transmit fluids between the subseafloor and seafloor biospheres through upward migration of hydrocarbons that originate in deep sediment layers. It remains unclear how geofluids influence the composition of the seabed microbiome and if they transport deep subsurface life up to the surface. Here we analyzed 172 marine surficial sediments from the deep-water Eastern Gulf of Mexico to assess whether hydrocarbon fluid migration is a mechanism for upward microbial dispersal. While 132 of these sediments contained migrated liquid hydrocarbons, evidence of continuous advective transport of thermogenic alkane gases was observed in 11 sediments. Gas seeps harbored distinct microbial communities featuring bacteria and archaea that are well-known inhabitants of deep biosphere sediments. Specifically, 25 distinct sequence variants within the uncultivated bacterial phyla Atribacteria and Aminicenantes and the archaeal order Thermoprofundales occurred in significantly greater relative sequence abundance along with well-known seep-colonizing members of the bacterial genus Sulfurovum, in the gas-positive sediments. Metabolic predictions guided by metagenome-assembled genomes suggested these organisms are anaerobic heterotrophs capable of nonrespiratory breakdown of organic matter, likely enabling them to inhabit energy-limited deep subseafloor ecosystems. These results point to petroleum geofluids as a vector for the advection-assisted upward dispersal of deep biosphere microbes from subsurface to surface environments, shaping the microbiome of cold seep sediments and providing a general mechanism for the maintenance of microbial diversity in the deep sea.We wish to thank Jody Sandel as well as the crew of R/V GeoExplorer for collection of piston cores, onboard core processing, sample preservation, and shipment. Cynthia Kwan and Oliver Horanszky are thanked for assistance with amplicon library preparation. We also wish to thank Jayne Rattray, Daniel Gittins, and Marc Strous for valuable discussions and suggestions, and Rhonda Clark for research support. Collaborations with Andy Mort from the Geological Survey of Canada, and Richard Hatton from Geoscience Wales are also gratefully acknowledged. This work was financially supported by a Mitacs Elevate Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded to A.C.; an Alberta Innovates-Technology Futures/Eyes High Postdoctoral Fellowship to S.E.R.; and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Strategic Project Grant, a Genome Canada Genomics Applications Partnership Program grant, a Canada Foundation for Innovation grant (CFI-JELF 33752) for instrumentation, and Campus Alberta Innovates Program Chair funding to C.R.J.H