Commercially‐Prepared Allograft Material Has Biological Activity In Vitro

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141853/1/jper0478.pd

Resilient food systems – A proposed analytical strategy for empirical applications

The food systems concept has attracted a considerable amount of attention as it provides an opportunity to better understand and represent the array of factors that explain food security in a comprehensive and holistic manner. The value-added proposition of food systems resilience is that the ability to respond to shocks and stressors may be incorporated into such explanations. The qualities that make food system resilience attractive, however, also make it difficult to model in empirical terms. This paper, by drawing on the literature of food systems and on the measurement of resilience, demonstrates how food systems resilience can be measured at a country level. Clustering countries into regions shows that North America and Oceania have the highest levels of food systems resilience, followed by Europe and North Africa and Western Asia. Food systems resilience is lower in Latin America and the Caribbean and South Asia and sub-Saharan countries exhibited the lowest levels of food systems resilience. In low- and middle-income countries, increasing market resilience plays a significant role in increasing overall food systems resilience. This working paper has been developed as a background document for The State of Food and Agriculture 2021 – Making agrifood systems more resilient to shocks and stresses

Analysis of Site Formation and Assemblage Integrity Does Not Support Attribution of the Uluzzian to Modern Humans at Grotta del Cavallo.

Based on the morphology of two deciduous molars and radiocarbon ages from layers D and E of the Grotta del Cavallo (Lecce, Italy), assigned to the Uluzzian, it has been proposed that modern humans were the makers of this Early Upper Paleolithic culture and that this finding considerably weakens the case for an independent emergence of symbolism among western European Neandertals. Reappraisal of the new dating evidence, of the finds curated in the Taranto Antiquities depot, and of coeval publications detailing the site's 1963-66 excavations shows that (a) Protoaurignacian, Aurignacian and Early Epigravettian lithics exist in the assemblages from layers D and E, (b) even though it contains both inherited and intrusive items, the formation of layer D began during Protoaurignacian times, and (c) the composition of the extant Cavallo assemblages is influenced in a non-negligible manner by the post-hoc assignment of items to stratigraphic units distinct from that of original discovery. In addition, a major disturbance feature affected the 1960s excavation trench down to Mousterian layer F, this feature went unrecognized until 1964, the human remains assigned to the Uluzzian were discovered that year and/or the previous year, and there are contradictions between field reports and the primary anthropological description of the remains as to their morphology and level of provenience. Given these major contextual uncertainties, the Cavallo teeth cannot be used to establish the authorship of the Uluzzian. Since this technocomplex's start date is ca. 45,000 calendar years ago, a number of Neandertal fossils are dated to this period, and the oldest diagnostic European modern human fossil is the <41,400 year-old Oase 1 mandible, Neandertal authorship of the Uluzzian remains the parsimonious reading of the evidence

Challenges of human behavior understanding

Recent advances in pattern recognition has allowed computer scientists and psychologists to jointly address automatic analysis of of human behavior via computers. The Workshop on Human Behavior Understanding at the International Conference on Pattern Recognition explores a number of different aspects and open questions in this field, and demonstrates the multi-disciplinary nature of this research area. In this brief summary, we give an overview of the Workshop and discuss the main research challenges

Molecular Pathways Differentiate Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Recurrence from Acute Cellular Rejection in HCV Liver Recipients

Acute cellular rejection (ACR) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) recurrence (HCVrec) are common complications after liver transplantation (LT) in HCV patients, who share common clinical and histological features, making a differential diagnosis difficult. Fifty-three liver allograft samples from unique HCV LT recipients were studied using microarrays, including a training set (n = 32) and a validation set (n = 19). Two no-HCV-ACR samples from LT recipients were also included. Probe set intensity values were obtained using the robust multiarray average method (RMA) method. Analysis of variance identified statistically differentially expressed genes (P ≤ 0.005). The limma package was used to fit the mixed-effects models using a restricted maximum likelihood procedure. The last absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) model was fit with HCVrec versus ACR as the dependent variable predicted. N-fold cross-validation was performed to provide an unbiased estimate of generalization error. A total of 179 probe sets were differentially expressed among groups, with 71 exclusive genes between HCVrec and HCV-ACR. No differences were found within ACR group (HCV-ACR vs. no-HCV-ACR). Supervised clustering analysis displayed two clearly independent groups, and no-HCV-ACR clustered within HCV-ACR. HCVrec-related genes were associated with a cytotoxic T-cell profile, and HCV-ACR–related genes were associated with the inflammatory response. The best-fitting LASSO model classifier accuracy, including 15 genes, has an accuracy of 100% in the training set. N-fold cross-validation accuracy was 78.1%, and sensitivity, specificity and positive and negative predictive values were 50.0%, 90.9%, 71.4% and 80.0%, respectively. Arginase type II (ARG2), ethylmalonic encephalopathy 1 (ETHE1), transmembrane protein 176A (TMEM176A) and TMEM176B genes were significantly confirmed in the validation set. A molecular signature capable of distinguishing HCVrec and ACR in HCV LT recipients was identified and validated