Criteria for Inclusion of Newer Bariatric and Metabolic Procedures into the Mainstream: a Survey of 396 Bariatric Surgeons

BACKGROUND: There is currently no consensus on the criteria for inclusion of new bariatric procedures into routine clinical practice. This study canvasses bariatric surgeons in an attempt to define these criteria. METHODS: Bariatric Surgeons from around the world were invited to participate in a questionnaire-based survey on SurveyMonkey ®. RESULTS: 396 bariatric surgeons, 337 International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity and Metabolic Disorders (IFSO) members, took the survey. Five clinical studies conducted under the strict monitoring of an Institutional Review Board would satisfy most surgeons (67.7 %, n = 266). When asked regarding the number of patients in these studies, a cumulative number of 500 patients would satisfy 64.5 % (n = 255) of the surgeons. Most respondents regarded endorsement by their national society and IFSO as 'very important' or 'extremely important'. An overwhelming 74.4 % (n = 294) felt that every new procedure should undergo a randomized comparison against one of the established alternatives like Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass or Sleeve Gastrectomy. CONCLUSION: Evaluation of a new bariatric procedure in at least 5 adequately supervised clinical studies (four of which must be randomized comparisons with one of the existing alternatives) reporting at least 5 years results on a minimum of 500 patients would satisfy majority of bariatric surgeons for the inclusion of a new bariatric procedure into clinical practice. The findings of this survey are simply aimed at starting a discussion on this topic and cannot be used to influence the ground reality until an international consensus can be reached amongst experts.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Defining the key wintering habitats in the Sahel for declining African-Eurasian migrants using expert assessment

SummaryThe Sahel in West Africa is a major wintering area for many western Palearctic migrants. The breeding populations of many of these have declined over the past 50 years. However, there have been few intensive field studies on migrant ecology in the Sahel and these were generally within a very restricted area. Consequently our knowledge of the distribution of species within this extensive area and the habitat associations of these species is limited. Understanding these habitat associations is essential for the effective conservation management of populations. We brought together a group of experts and consulted a wider group by email to assess the main Sahelian habitat types used by 68 African-Eurasian migrant bird species. Those species that showed strongest declines during 1970–1990 were associated with more open habitats than those newly declining during 1990–2000, when declining species were associated with habitats with more shrubs and trees. Populations of species that winter in the Sahel are generally stable or increasing now as rainfall has increased and is now near the long-term average for the Sahel. Those which use the Sahel only as a staging area are, in many cases, in rapid decline at present.We would like to thank Andy Clements, Paul Donald, Lincoln Fishpool and Mike Mortimore for contributing to the workshop and Peter Jones, Ian Newton, Volker Salewski, Tim Wacher, Eddy Wymenga and Leo Zwarts for useful comments by email on draft habitat importance scores. This study was funded by the Newton Trust and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative Collaborative Fund, supported by Arcadia. WJS is funded by Arcadia.This is the accepted manuscript of a paper published in Bird Conservation International, Volume 24, Issue 04, December 2014, pp 477-491, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0959270913000531, Published online: 24 February 201

Attention-dependent modulation of cortical taste circuits revealed by granger causality with signal-dependent noise

We show, for the first time, that in cortical areas, for example the insular, orbitofrontal, and lateral prefrontal cortex, there is signal-dependent noise in the fMRI blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) time series, with the variance of the noise increasing approximately linearly with the square of the signal. Classical Granger causal models are based on autoregressive models with time invariant covariance structure, and thus do not take this signal-dependent noise into account. To address this limitation, here we describe a Granger causal model with signal-dependent noise, and a novel, likelihood ratio test for causal inferences. We apply this approach to the data from an fMRI study to investigate the source of the top-down attentional control of taste intensity and taste pleasantness processing. The Granger causality with signal-dependent noise analysis reveals effects not identified by classical Granger causal analysis. In particular, there is a top-down effect from the posterior lateral prefrontal cortex to the insular taste cortex during attention to intensity but not to pleasantness, and there is a top-down effect from the anterior and posterior lateral prefrontal cortex to the orbitofrontal cortex during attention to pleasantness but not to intensity. In addition, there is stronger forward effective connectivity from the insular taste cortex to the orbitofrontal cortex during attention to pleasantness than during attention to intensity. These findings indicate the importance of explicitly modeling signal-dependent noise in functional neuroimaging, and reveal some of the processes involved in a biased activation theory of selective attention

Building Babies - Chapter 16

In contrast to birds, male mammals rarely help to raise the offspring. Of all mammals, only among rodents, carnivores, and primates, males are sometimes intensively engaged in providing infant care (Kleiman and Malcolm 1981). Male caretaking of infants has long been recognized in nonhuman primates (Itani 1959). Given that infant care behavior can have a positive effect on the infant’s development, growth, well-being, or survival, why are male mammals not more frequently involved in “building babies”? We begin the chapter defining a few relevant terms and introducing the theory and hypotheses that have historically addressed the evolution of paternal care. We then review empirical findings on male care among primate taxa, before focusing, in the final section, on our own work on paternal care in South American owl monkeys (Aotus spp.). We conclude the chapter with some suggestions for future studies.Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (HU 1746/2-1) Wenner-Gren Foundation, the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation (BCS-0621020), the University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation, the Zoological Society of San Dieg

Garden and landscape-scale correlates of moths of differing conservation status: significant effects of urbanization and habitat diversity

Moths are abundant and ubiquitous in vegetated terrestrial environments and are pollinators, important herbivores of wild plants, and food for birds, bats and rodents. In recent years, many once abundant and widespread species have shown sharp declines that have been cited by some as indicative of a widespread insect biodiversity crisis. Likely causes of these declines include agricultural intensification, light pollution, climate change, and urbanization; however, the real underlying cause(s) is still open to conjecture. We used data collected from the citizen science Garden Moth Scheme (GMS) to explore the spatial association between the abundance of 195 widespread British species of moth, and garden habitat and landscape features, to see if spatial habitat and landscape associations varied for species of differing conservation status. We found that associations with habitat and landscape composition were species-specific, but that there were consistent trends in species richness and total moth abundance. Gardens with more diverse and extensive microhabitats were associated with higher species richness and moth abundance; gardens near to the coast were associated with higher richness and moth abundance; and gardens in more urbanized locations were associated with lower species richness and moth abundance. The same trends were also found for species classified as increasing, declining and vulnerable under IUCN (World Conservation Union) criteria

Formation of regulatory modules by local sequence duplication

Turnover of regulatory sequence and function is an important part of molecular evolution. But what are the modes of sequence evolution leading to rapid formation and loss of regulatory sites? Here, we show that a large fraction of neighboring transcription factor binding sites in the fly genome have formed from a common sequence origin by local duplications. This mode of evolution is found to produce regulatory information: duplications can seed new sites in the neighborhood of existing sites. Duplicate seeds evolve subsequently by point mutations, often towards binding a different factor than their ancestral neighbor sites. These results are based on a statistical analysis of 346 cis-regulatory modules in the Drosophila melanogaster genome, and a comparison set of intergenic regulatory sequence in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In fly regulatory modules, pairs of binding sites show significantly enhanced sequence similarity up to distances of about 50 bp. We analyze these data in terms of an evolutionary model with two distinct modes of site formation: (i) evolution from independent sequence origin and (ii) divergent evolution following duplication of a common ancestor sequence. Our results suggest that pervasive formation of binding sites by local sequence duplications distinguishes the complex regulatory architecture of higher eukaryotes from the simpler architecture of unicellular organisms

Anesthesia of Epinephelus marginatus with essential oil of Aloysia polystachya: an approach on blood parameters

This study investigated the anesthetic potential of the essential oil (EO) of Aloysia polystachya in juveniles of dusky grouper (Epinephelus marginatus). Fish were exposed to different concentrations of EO of A. polystachya to evaluate time of induction and recovery from anesthesia. In the second experiment, fish were divided into four groups: control, ethanol and 50 or 300 mu L L-1 EO of A. polystachya, and each group was submitted to induction for 3.5 min and recovery for 5 or 10 min. The blood gases and glucose levels showed alterations as a function of the recovery times, but Na+ and K+ levels did not show any alteration. In conclusion, the EO from leaves of A. polystachya is an effective anesthetic for dusky grouper, because anesthesia was reached within the recommended time at EO concentrations of 300 and 400 mu L L-1. However, most evaluated blood parameters showed compensatory responses due to EO exposure.Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul/Programa de Apoio a Nucleos de Excelencia (FAPERGS/PRONEX) [10/0016-8]; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq) [470964/2009-0]; Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior, Brazil (CAPES)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Método automático de clasificación de color en dientes humanos usando aprendizaje de máquina

Trabajo de InvestigaciónActualmente el proceso de identificación del color de los dientes para la fabricación de prótesis dentales es realizado manualmente por un experto que, utilizando un método de identificación visual, determina el color de las piezas dentales en la boca del paciente, usando guías de color como la VITA®. A pesar de que el método visual es el más utilizado para la identificación del color de dientes, este se ve afectado por distintas variables tales como: el cansancio del experto, la luminosidad en el ambiente, salud visual del especialista, entre otras que influyen en la identificación del color en los dientes. Los errores en la clasificación del color de los dientes pueden generar pérdidas de tiempo lo que implicaría en consecuencia sobrecostos que afectarían directamente al fabricante y la satisfacción final del cliente.1. Planteamiento del problema 2. Pregunta de investigación 3. Objetivos 4. Estado del arte 5. Marco de referencia 6. Alcances y limitaciones 7. Metodología 8. Diseño metodológico 9. Discusión y resultados 10. Conclusiones 11. Trabajos futuros 12. Bibliografía 13. ANEXOSPregradoIngeniero de Sistema

Transcriptomic Analyses of Sexual Dimorphism of the Zebrafish Liver and the Effect of Sex Hormones

10.1371/journal.pone.0053562PLoS ONE81