445 research outputs found
A day in the life of marine sulfonates
Lab-based studies, combined with metatranscriptomic and metabolomic field analyses, reveal important diel-linked roles for sulfonates in the major classes of phytoplankton that produce them, and in the environment in which they feed ubiquitous heterotrophic bacteri
Dyadic adjustment, family coping, body image, quality of life and psychological morbidity in patients with psoriasis and their partners
Background Psoriasis is an incurable and chronic disease
that includes unpredictable periods of remission and relapse
requiring long-term therapy.
Purpose This paper focuses on the relationship among
family coping, psychological morbidity, body image,
dyadic adjustment and quality of life in psoriatic patients
and their partners.
Method One hundred and one patients with psoriasis and
78 partners comprised the sample. They were regular users
of the Dermatology Service of a Central Northern hospital
in Portugal and a private dermatology clinic. Patients with
psoriasis were assessed on anxiety, depression, body image,
quality of life, dyadic adjustment and family coping.
Partners were assessed on the same measures except body
image and quality of life.
Results A positive relationship among dyadic adjustment,
psychological morbidity and family coping in patients and
their partners was found. Also, patients with lower levels of
quality of life had partners with higher levels of depressive
and anxious symptoms. Better dyadic adjustment predicted
family coping in the psoriatic patient. High levels of dyadic
adjustment in patients and low partners’ trait anxiety
predicted better dyadic adjustment in partners.
Conclusion The results highlight the importance of incorporating
family variables in psychological interventions in
psoriasis’ care, particularly family coping and dyadic
adjustment as well as the need for psychological intervention
to focus both on patients and partners
Impact of in utero exposure to EtOH on corpus callosum development and paw preference in rats: protective effects of silymarin
BACKGROUND: Using a rat model we have found that the bioflavonoid silymarin (SY) ameliorates some of the negative consequences of in utero exposure to ethanol (EtOH). In the current study our aim was to determine if laterality preference and corpus callosum development were altered in rat offspring whose mothers were provided with a concomitant administration of SY with EtOH throughout gestation. METHODS: We provided pregnant Fisher/344 rats with liquid diets containing 35% ethanol derived calories (EDC) throughout the gestational period. A silymarin/phospholipid compound containing 29.8% silybin was co administered with EtOH to a separate experimental group. We tested the offspring for laterality preference at age 12 weeks. After testing the rats were sacrificed and their brains perfused for later corpus callosum extraction. RESULTS: We observed incomplete development of the splenium in the EtOH-only offspring. Callosal development was complete in all other treatment groups. Rats from the EtOH-only group displayed a left paw preference; whereas control rats were evenly divided between right and left paw preference. Inexplicably both SY groups were largely right paw preferring. CONCLUSIONS: The addition of SY to the EtOH liquid diet did confer some ameliorative effects upon the developing fetal rat brain
Search for Gravitational Waves from Primordial Black Hole Binary Coalescences in the Galactic Halo
We use data from the second science run of the LIGO gravitational-wave
detectors to search for the gravitational waves from primordial black hole
(PBH) binary coalescence with component masses in the range 0.2--.
The analysis requires a signal to be found in the data from both LIGO
observatories, according to a set of coincidence criteria. No inspiral signals
were found. Assuming a spherical halo with core radius 5 kpc extending to 50
kpc containing non-spinning black holes with masses in the range 0.2--, we place an observational upper limit on the rate of PBH coalescence
of 63 per year per Milky Way halo (MWH) with 90% confidence.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, to be submitted to Phys. Rev.
Comparative analysis of RNA sequencing methods for degraded or low-input samples
available in PMC 2014 January 01RNA-seq is an effective method for studying the transcriptome, but it can be difficult to apply to scarce or degraded RNA from fixed clinical samples, rare cell populations or cadavers. Recent studies have proposed several methods for RNA-seq of low-quality and/or low-quantity samples, but the relative merits of these methods have not been systematically analyzed. Here we compare five such methods using metrics relevant to transcriptome annotation, transcript discovery and gene expression. Using a single human RNA sample, we constructed and sequenced ten libraries with these methods and compared them against two control libraries. We found that the RNase H method performed best for chemically fragmented, low-quality RNA, and we confirmed this through analysis of actual degraded samples. RNase H can even effectively replace oligo(dT)-based methods for standard RNA-seq. SMART and NuGEN had distinct strengths for measuring low-quantity RNA. Our analysis allows biologists to select the most suitable methods and provides a benchmark for future method development.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Pioneer Award DP1-OD003958-01)National Human Genome Research Institute (U.S.) (NHGRI) 1P01HG005062-01)National Human Genome Research Institute (U.S.) (NHGRI Center of Excellence in Genome Science Award 1P50HG006193-01)Howard Hughes Medical Institute (Investigator)Merkin Family Foundation for Stem Cell ResearchBroad Institute of MIT and Harvard (Klarman Cell Observatory)National Human Genome Research Institute (U.S.) (NHGRI grant HG03067)Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek--Vlaandere
Arbuscular mycorrhizal colonisation of roots of grass species differing in invasiveness
Recent research indicates that the soil microbial community, particularly arbuscular mycorrhizal
fungi (AMF), can influence plant invasion in several ways. We tested if 1) invasive species are
colonised by AMF to a lower degree than resident native species, and 2) AMF colonisation of native
plants is lower in a community inhabited by an invasive species than in an uninvaded resident
community. The two tests were run in semiarid temperate grasslands on grass (Poaceae) species,
and the frequency and intensity of mycorrhizal colonisation, and the proportion of arbuscules and
vesicles in plant roots have been measured. In the first test, grasses representing three classes of
invasiveness were included: invasive species, resident species becoming abundant upon
disturbance, and non-invasive native species. Each class contained one C3 and one C4 species. The
AMF colonisation of the invasive Calamagrostis epigejos and Cynodon dactylon was consistently
lower than that of the non-invasive native Chrysopogon gryllus and Bromus inermis, and contained
fewer arbuscules than the post-disturbance dominant resident grasses Bothriochloa ischaemum and
Brachypodium pinnatum. The C3 and C4 grasses behaved alike despite their displaced phenologies
in these habitats. The second test compared AMF colonisation for sand grassland dominant grasses
Festuca vaginata and Stipa borysthenica in stands invaded by either C. epigejos or C. dactylon, and
in the uninvaded natural community. Resident grasses showed lower degree of AMF colonisation in the invaded stand compared to the uninvaded natural community with F. vaginata responding so to
both invaders, while S. borysthenica responding to C. dactylon only. These results indicate that
invasive grasses supposedly less reliant on AMF symbionts have the capacity of altering the soil
mycorrhizal community in such a way that resident native species can establish a considerably
reduced extent of the beneficial AMF associations, hence their growth, reproduction and ultimately
abundance may decline. Accumulating evidence suggests that such indirect influences of invasive
alien plants on resident native species mediated by AMF or other members of the soil biota is probably more the rule than the exception
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