Noninvasive options for ‘wearing-off’ in Parkinson's disease: a clinical consensus from a panel of UK Parkinson's disease specialists

In the past 4 years, two adjunctive treatment options to levodopa have been licensed for use in the UK in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and motor fluctuations: opicapone, a third-generation catechol-O-methyl transferase inhibitor, and safinamide, a monoamine oxidase B inhibitor. This clinical consensus outlines the practical considerations relating to motor fluctuations and managing wearing-off in patients with PD, and provides a clinical insight to adjunctive treatment options, including opicapone and safinamide. Practice-based opinion was provided from a multidisciplinary steering Group of eight UK-based movement disorder and PD specialists, including neurologists, geriatricians and a nurse specialist, from England, Scotland and Wales

The AFLOW Fleet for Materials Discovery

The traditional paradigm for materials discovery has been recently expanded to incorporate substantial data driven research. With the intent to accelerate the development and the deployment of new technologies, the AFLOW Fleet for computational materials design automates high-throughput first principles calculations, and provides tools for data verification and dissemination for a broad community of users. AFLOW incorporates different computational modules to robustly determine thermodynamic stability, electronic band structures, vibrational dispersions, thermo-mechanical properties and more. The AFLOW data repository is publicly accessible online at aflow.org, with more than 1.7 million materials entries and a panoply of queryable computed properties. Tools to programmatically search and process the data, as well as to perform online machine learning predictions, are also available.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure

Microfluidics: reframing biological enquiry

The underlying physical properties of microfluidic tools have led to new biological insights through the development of microsystems that can manipulate, mimic and measure biology at a resolution that has not been possible with macroscale tools. Microsystems readily handle sub-microlitre volumes, precisely route predictable laminar fluid flows and match both perturbations and measurements to the length scales and timescales of biological systems. The advent of fabrication techniques that do not require highly specialized engineering facilities is fuelling the broad dissemination of microfluidic systems and their adaptation to specific biological questions. We describe how our understanding of molecular and cell biology is being and will continue to be advanced by precision microfluidic approaches and posit that microfluidic tools - in conjunction with advanced imaging, bioinformatics and molecular biology approaches - will transform biology into a precision science

Effect of zinc nutrition on salinity-induced oxidative damages in wheat genotypes differing in zinc deficiency tolerance

Zinc deficiency and salinity are well-documented soil problems and often occur simultaneously in cultivated soils. Usually, plants respond to environmental stress factors by activating their antioxidative defense mechanisms. The antioxidative response of wheat genotypes to salinity in relation to Zn nutrition is not well understood. So, we investigated the effect of Zn nutrition on the growth, membrane permeability and sulfhydryl group (–SH groups) content of root cells and antioxidative defense mechanisms of wheat plants exposed to salt stress. In a hydroponic experiment, three bread wheat genotypes (Triticum aestivum L. cvs. Rushan, Kavir, and Cross) with different Zn-deficiency tolerance were exposed to adequate (1 μM Zn) and deficient (no Zn) Zn supply and three salinity levels (0, 60, and 120 mM NaCl). The results obtained showed that adequate Zn nutrition counteracted the detrimental effect of 60 mM NaCl level on the growth of all three wheat genotypes while it had no effect on the root and shoot growth of ‘Rushan’ and ‘Kavir’ at the 120 mM NaCl treatment. At the 0 and 60 mM NaCl treatments, Zn application decreased root membrane permeability while increased –SH group content and root activity of catalase (CAT) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) in ‘Rushan’ and ‘Kavir’. In contrast, Zn had no effect on the root membrane permeability and –SH group content of ‘Rushan’ and ‘Kavir’ exposed to the 120 mM NaCl treatment. At all salinity levels, ‘Cross’ plants supplied with Zn had lower root membrane permeability and higher –SH group content compared to those grown under Zn-deficient conditions. At the 0 and 60 salinity levels, Zn-deficient roots of Kavir and Rushan genotype leaked significantly higher amounts of Fe and K than the Zn-sufficient roots. In contrast, at the 120 mM treatment, Zn application had no effect or slightly increased Fe and K concentration in the root ion leakage of these wheat genotypes. For ‘Cross’, at all salinity levels, Zn-deficient roots leaked significantly higher amounts of Fe and K compared with the Zn-sufficient roots. The differential tolerance to salt stress among wheat genotypes examined in this study was related to their tolerance to Zn-deficiency, –SH group content, and root activity of CAT and SOD. Greater tolerance to salinity of Zn-deficiency tolerant genotype ‘Cross’ is probably associated with its greater antioxidative defense capacity