Preliminary Strategic Environmental Assessment of the Great Western Development Strategy: Safeguarding Ecological Security for a New Western China

The Great Western Development Strategy (GWDS) is a long term national campaign aimed at boosting development of the western area of China and narrowing the economic gap between the western and the eastern parts of China. The Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) procedure was employed to assess the environmental challenges brought about by the western development plans. These plans include five key developmental domains (KDDs): water resource exploitation and use, land utilization, energy generation, tourism development, and ecological restoration and conservation. A combination of methods involving matrix assessment, incorporation of expert judgment and trend analysis was employed to analyze and predict the environmental impacts upon eight selected environmental indicators: water resource availability, soil erosion, soil salinization, forest destruction, land desertification, biological diversity, water quality and air quality. Based on the overall results of the assessment, countermeasures for environmental challenges that emerged were raised as key recommendations to ensure ecological security during the implementation of the GWDS. This paper is intended to introduce a consensus-based process for evaluating the complex, long term pressures on the ecological security of large areas, such as western China, that focuses on the use of combined methods applied at the strategic level

Influences of polymorphic variants of DRD2 and SLC6A3 genes, and their combinations on smoking in Polish population

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Polymorphisms in dopaminergic genes may influence cigarette smoking by their potential impact on dopamine reward pathway function. <it>A1 </it>allele of <it>DRD2 </it>gene is associated with a reduced dopamine D2 receptor density, and it has been hypothesised that <it>A1 </it>carriers are more vulnerable to smoking. In turn, the 9-repeat allele of dopamine transporter gene (<it>SLC6A3</it>) has been associated with a substantial reduction in dopamine transporter, what might result in the higher level of dopamine in the synaptic cleft, and thereby protective role of this allele from smoking. In the present study we investigated whether polymorphic variants of <it>DRD2 </it>and <it>SLC6A3 </it>genes and their combinations are associated with the smoking habit in the Polish population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Genotyping for <it>Taq</it>I<it>A </it>polymorphism of <it>DRD2 </it>and <it>SLC6A3 </it>VNTR polymorphism was performed in 150 ever-smokers and 158 never-smokers. The association between the smoking status and smoking phenotypes (related to the number of cigarettes smoked daily and age of starting regular smoking), and genotype/genotype combinations was expressed by ORs together with 95% CI. Alpha level of 0.05, with Bonferroni correction whenever appropriate, was used for statistical significance.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>At the used alpha levels no association between <it>DRD2 </it>and <it>SLC6A</it>3 genotypes and smoking status was found. However, <it>A1 </it>allele carriers reported longer abstinence periods on quitting attempts than non-carriers (p = 0.049). The ORs for heavier smoking were 0.38 (0.17-0.88), p = 0.023, and 0.39 (0.17-0.88), p = 0.021 in carriers compared to non-carriers of <it>A1 </it>or <it>*9 </it>allele, respectively, and the OR for this smoking phenotype was 8.68 (2.47-30.46), p = 0.0005 for the <it>A1</it>-/<it>9</it>- genotype combination, relatively to the <it>A1</it>+/<it>9</it>+. Carriers of <it>*9 </it>allele of <it>SLC6A3 </it>had over twice a lower risk to start smoking before the age of 20 years compared to non-carriers (sex-adjusted OR = 0.44; 95% CI: 0.22-0.89; p = 0.0017), and subjects with <it>A1-/9- </it>genotype combination had a higher risk for staring regular smoking before the age of 20 years in comparison to subjects with <it>A1+/9+ </it>genotype combination (sex-adjusted OR = 3.79; 95% CI:1.03-13.90; p = 0.003).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Polymorphic variants of <it>DRD2 </it>and <it>SLC6A3 </it>genes may influence some aspects of the smoking behavior, including age of starting regular smoking, the level of cigarette consumption, and periods of abstinence. Further large sample studies are needed to verify this hypothesis.</p

A survey of sports drinks consumption amongst adolescents

Background Sports drinks intended to improve performance and hydrate athletes taking part in endurance sport are being marketed to children, for whom these products are not intended. Popularity among children has grown exponentially. Worryingly they consume them socially, as well as during physical activity. Sports drinks are high in sugar and are acidic. Product marketing ignores the potential harmful effects of dental caries and erosion. Objective To investigate the use of sports drinks by children. Method One hundred and eighty-three self-complete questionnaires were distributed to four schools in South Wales. Children in high school years 8 and 9 (aged 12–14) were recruited to take part. Questions focused on use of sports drinks, type consumed, frequency of and reason for consumption and where drinks were purchased. Results One hundred and sixty children responded (87% response rate): 89.4% (143) claimed to drink sports drinks, half drinking them at least twice a week. Lucozade Sport™ was the most popular brand. The main reason for consuming the drinks was attributed to the 'nice taste' (90%, 129/143). Most respondents purchased the drinks from local shops (80.4%, 115) or supermarkets (54.5%, 78). More boys claimed to drink sports drinks during physical activity (77.9% versus 48.6% girls, P <0.001). Whereas more girls claimed to drink them socially (51.4% versus 48.5% boys, NS). Conclusion A high proportion of children consumed sports drinks regularly and outside of sporting activity. Dental health professionals should be aware of the popularity of sports drinks with children when giving health education advice or designing health promotion initiatives

BindN+ for accurate prediction of DNA and RNA-binding residues from protein sequence features

Abstract Background Understanding how biomolecules interact is a major task of systems biology. To model protein-nucleic acid interactions, it is important to identify the DNA or RNA-binding residues in proteins. Protein sequence features, including the biochemical property of amino acids and evolutionary information in terms of position-specific scoring matrix (PSSM), have been used for DNA or RNA-binding site prediction. However, PSSM is rather designed for PSI-BLAST searches, and it may not contain all the evolutionary information for modelling DNA or RNA-binding sites in protein sequences. Results In the present study, several new descriptors of evolutionary information have been developed and evaluated for sequence-based prediction of DNA and RNA-binding residues using support vector machines (SVMs). The new descriptors were shown to improve classifier performance. Interestingly, the best classifiers were obtained by combining the new descriptors and PSSM, suggesting that they captured different aspects of evolutionary information for DNA and RNA-binding site prediction. The SVM classifiers achieved 77.3% sensitivity and 79.3% specificity for prediction of DNA-binding residues, and 71.6% sensitivity and 78.7% specificity for RNA-binding site prediction. Conclusions Predictions at this level of accuracy may provide useful information for modelling protein-nucleic acid interactions in systems biology studies. We have thus developed a web-based tool called BindN+ (http://bioinfo.ggc.org/bindn+/) to make the SVM classifiers accessible to the research community

The emerging structure of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: where does Evo-Devo fit in?

The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) debate is gaining ground in contemporary evolutionary biology. In parallel, a number of philosophical standpoints have emerged in an attempt to clarify what exactly is represented by the EES. For Massimo Pigliucci, we are in the wake of the newest instantiation of a persisting Kuhnian paradigm; in contrast, Telmo Pievani has contended that the transition to an EES could be best represented as a progressive reformation of a prior Lakatosian scientific research program, with the extension of its Neo-Darwinian core and the addition of a brand-new protective belt of assumptions and auxiliary hypotheses. Here, we argue that those philosophical vantage points are not the only ways to interpret what current proposals to ‘extend’ the Modern Synthesis-derived ‘standard evolutionary theory’ (SET) entail in terms of theoretical change in evolutionary biology. We specifically propose the image of the emergent EES as a vast network of models and interweaved representations that, instantiated in diverse practices, are connected and related in multiple ways. Under that assumption, the EES could be articulated around a paraconsistent network of evolutionary theories (including some elements of the SET), as well as models, practices and representation systems of contemporary evolutionary biology, with edges and nodes that change their position and centrality as a consequence of the co-construction and stabilization of facts and historical discussions revolving around the epistemic goals of this area of the life sciences. We then critically examine the purported structure of the EES—published by Laland and collaborators in 2015—in light of our own network-based proposal. Finally, we consider which epistemic units of Evo-Devo are present or still missing from the EES, in preparation for further analyses of the topic of explanatory integration in this conceptual framework

Hsp90 orchestrates transcriptional regulation by Hsf1 and cell wall remodelling by MAPK signalling during thermal adaptation in a pathogenic yeast

Acknowledgments We thank Rebecca Shapiro for creating CaLC1819, CaLC1855 and CaLC1875, Gillian Milne for help with EM, Aaron Mitchell for generously providing the transposon insertion mutant library, Jesus Pla for generously providing the hog1 hst7 mutant, and Cathy Collins for technical assistance.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The feasibility of collecting information from people with Multiple Sclerosis for the UK MS Register via a web portal: characterising a cohort of people with MS.

BACKGROUND: A UK Register of people with Multiple Sclerosis has been developed to address the need for an increased knowledge-base about MS. The Register is being populated via: a web-based portal; NHS neurology clinical systems; and administrative data sources. The data are de-identified and linked at the individual level. At the outset, it was not known whether people with MS would wish to participate in the UK MS Register by personally contributing their data to the Register via a web-based system. Therefore, the research aim of this work was to build an internet-mounted recruitment and consenting technology for people with Multiple Sclerosis, and to assess its feasibility as a questionnaire delivery platform to contribute data to the UK MS Register, by determining whether the information provided could be used to describe a cohort of people with MS. METHODS: The web portal was developed using VB.net and JQuery with a Microsoft SQL 2008 database. UK adults with MS can self-register and enter data about themselves by completing validated questionnaires. Descriptive statistics were used to characterise the respondents. RESULTS: The web portal was launched in May 2011, and in first three months 7,279 individuals registered on the portal. The ratio of men to women was 1:2.4 (n = 5,899), the mean self-reported age at first symptoms was 33.8 (SD 10.5) years, and at diagnosis 39.6 (SD 10.3) years (n = 4,401). The reported types of MS were: 15% primary progressive, 63% relapsing-remitting, 8% secondary progressive, and 14% unknown (n = 5,400). These characteristics are similar to those of the prevalent MS population. Employment rates, sickness/disability rates, ethnicity and educational qualifications were compared with the general UK population. Information about the respondents' experience of early symptoms and the process of diagnosis, plus living arrangements are also reported. CONCLUSIONS: These initial findings from the MS Register portal demonstrate the feasibility of collecting data about people with MS via a web platform, and show that sufficient information can be gathered to characterise a cohort of people with MS. The innovative design of the UK MS register, bringing together three disparate sources of data, is creating a rich resource for research into this condition

Screening non-coding RNAs in transcriptomes from neglected species using PORTRAIT: case study of the pathogenic fungus Paracoccidioides brasiliensis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Transcriptome sequences provide a complement to structural genomic information and provide snapshots of an organism's transcriptional profile. Such sequences also represent an alternative method for characterizing neglected species that are not expected to undergo whole-genome sequencing. One difficulty for transcriptome sequencing of these organisms is the low quality of reads and incomplete coverage of transcripts, both of which compromise further bioinformatics analyses. Another complicating factor is the lack of known protein homologs, which frustrates searches against established protein databases. This lack of homologs may be caused by divergence from well-characterized and over-represented model organisms. Another explanation is that non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) may be caught during sequencing. NcRNAs are RNA sequences that, unlike messenger RNAs, do not code for protein products and instead perform unique functions by folding into higher order structural conformations. There is ncRNA screening software available that is specific for transcriptome sequences, but their analyses are optimized for those transcriptomes that are well represented in protein databases, and also assume that input ESTs are full-length and high quality.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We propose an algorithm called PORTRAIT, which is suitable for ncRNA analysis of transcriptomes from poorly characterized species. Sequences are translated by software that is resistant to sequencing errors, and the predicted putative proteins, along with their source transcripts, are evaluated for coding potential by a support vector machine (SVM). Either of two SVM models may be employed: if a putative protein is found, a protein-dependent SVM model is used; if it is not found, a protein-independent SVM model is used instead. Only <it>ab initio </it>features are extracted, so that no homology information is needed. We illustrate the use of PORTRAIT by predicting ncRNAs from the transcriptome of the pathogenic fungus <it>Paracoccidoides brasiliensis </it>and five other related fungi.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>PORTRAIT can be integrated into pipelines, and provides a low computational cost solution for ncRNA detection in transcriptome sequencing projects.</p

Soft tissue damage after minimally invasive THA: A comparison of 5 approaches

Methods 5 surgeons each performed a total hip arthroplasty on 5 fresh frozen cadaver hips, using either a MIS anterior, MIS anterolateral, MIS 2-incision, MIS posterior, or lateral transgluteal approach. Postoperatively, the hips were dissected and muscle damage color-stained. We measured proportional muscle damage relative to the midsubstance cross-sectional surface area (MCSA) using computerized color detection. The integrity of external rotator muscles, nerves, and ligaments was assessed by direct observation. Results None of the other MIS approaches resulted in less gluteus medius muscle damage than the lateral transgluteal approach. However, the MIS anterior approach completely preserved the gluteus medius muscle in 4 cases while partial damage occurred in 1 case. Furthermore, the superior gluteal nerve was transected in 4 cases after a MIS anterolateral approach and in 1 after the lateral transgluteal approach. The lateral femoral cutaneous nerve was transected once after both the MIS anterior approach and the MIS 2-incision approach. Interpretation The MIS anterior approach may preserve the gluteus medius muscle during total hip arthroplasty, but with a risk of damaging the lateral femoral cutaneous nerv