Cold-Water Mediates Greater Reductions in Limb Blood Flow than Whole Body Cryotherapy.

PURPOSE: Cold-water immersion (CWI) and whole body cryotherapy (WBC) are widely used recovery methods in an attempt to limit exercise-induced muscle damage, soreness and functional deficits after strenuous exercise. The aim of this study was to compare the effects of ecologically-valid CWI and WBC protocols on post-exercise lower limb thermoregulatory, femoral artery and cutaneous blood flow responses. METHODS: Ten males completed a continuous cycle exercise protocol at 70% maximal oxygen uptake until a rectal temperature of 38°C was attained. Participants were then exposed to lower-body CWI (8°C) for 10 min, or WBC (-110°C) for 2 min, in a randomized cross-over design. Rectal and thigh skin, deep and superficial muscle temperatures, thigh and calf skin blood flow (laser Doppler flowmetry), superficial femoral artery blood flow (duplex ultrasound) and arterial blood pressure were measured prior to, and for 40 min post, cooling interventions. RESULTS: Greater reductions in thigh skin (CWI, -5.9±1.8°C; WBC, 0.2±0.5°C; P < 0.001) and superficial (CWI, -4.4±1.3°C; WBC, -1.8±1.1°C; P < 0.001) and deep (CWI, -2.9±0.8°C; WBC, -1.3±0.6°C; P < 0.001) muscle temperatures occurred immediately after CWI. Decreases in femoral artery conductance were greater after CWI (CWI, -84±11%; WBC, -59±21%, P < 0.02) and thigh (CWI, -80±5%; WBC, -59±14%, P < 0.001) and calf (CWI, -73±13%; WBC, -45±17%, P < 0.001) cutaneous vasoconstriction was greater following CWI. Reductions in rectal temperature were similar between conditions after cooling (CWI, -0.6±0.4°C; WBC, -0.6±0.3°C; P = 0.98). CONCLUSION: Greater reductions in blood flow and tissue temperature were observed after CWI in comparison to WBC. These novel findings have practical and clinical implications for the use of cooling in the recovery from exercise and injury

A faster way to the CSIDH

Recently Castryck, Lange, Martindale, Panny, and Renes published CSIDH, a new key exchange scheme using supersingular elliptic curve isogenies. Due to its small key sizes, and the possibility of a non-interactive and a static-static key exchange, CSIDH seems very interesting for practical applications. However, the performance is rather slow. Therefore, we employ some techniques to speed up the algorithms, mainly by restructuring the elliptic curve point multiplications and by using twisted Edwards curves in the isogeny image curve computations, yielding a speed-up factor of 1.33 in comparison to the implementation of Castryck et al. Furthermore, we suggest techniques for constant-time implementations

Predator-Induced Vertical Behavior of a Ctenophore

Although many studies have focused on Mnemiopsis leidyi predation, little is known about the role of this ctenophore as prey when abundant in native and invaded pelagic systems. We examined the response of the ctenophore M. leidyi to the predatory ctenophore Beroe ovata in an experiment in which the two species could potentially sense each other while being physically separated. On average, M. leidyi responded to the predator’s presence by increasing variability in swimming speeds and by lowering their vertical distribution. Such behavior may help explain field records of vertical migration, as well as stratified and near-bottom distributions of M. leidyi

The Challenge of Applying and Undertaking Research in Female Sport.

In recent years there has been an exponential rise in the professionalism and success of female sports. Practitioners (e.g., sport science professionals) aim to apply evidence-informed approaches to optimise athlete performance and well-being. Evidence-informed practices should be derived from research literature. Given the lack of research on elite female athletes, this is challenging at present. This limits the ability to adopt an evidence-informed approach when working in female sports, and as such, we are likely failing to maximize the performance potential of female athletes. This article discusses the challenges of applying an evidence base derived from male athletes to female athletes. A conceptual framework is presented, which depicts the need to question the current (male) evidence base due to the differences of the "female athlete" and the "female sporting environment," which pose a number of challenges for practitioners working in the field. Until a comparable applied sport science research evidence base is established in female athletes, evidence-informed approaches will remain a challenge for those working in female sport

On Lions and Elligators: An efficient constant-time implementation of CSIDH

The recently proposed CSIDH primitive is a promising candidate for post quantum static-static key exchanges with very small keys. However, until now there is only a variable-time proof-of-concept implementation by Castryck, Lange, Martindale, Panny, and Renes, recently optimized by Meyer and Reith, which can leak various information about the private key. Therefore, we present an efficient constant-time implementation that samples key elements only from intervals of nonnegative numbers and uses dummy isogenies, which prevents certain kinds of side-channel attacks. We apply several optimizations, e.g. Elligator and the newly introduced SIMBA, in order to get a more efficient implementation

A simple and compact algorithm for SIDH with arbitrary degree isogenies

We derive a new formula for computing arbitrary odd-degree isogenies between elliptic curves in Montgomery form. The formula lends itself to a simple and compact algorithm that can efficiently compute any low odd-degree isogenies inside the supersingular isogeny Diffie-Hellman (SIDH) key exchange protocol. Our implementation of this algorithm shows that, beyond the commonly used 3-isogenies, there is a moderate degradation in relative performance of $(2d+1)$-isogenies as $d$ grows, but that larger values of $d$ can now be used in practical SIDH implementations. We further show that the proposed algorithm can be used to both compute isogenies of curves and evaluate isogenies at points, unifying the two main types of functions needed for isogeny-based public-key cryptography. Together, these results open the door for practical SIDH on a much wider class of curves, and allow for simplified SIDH implementations that only need to call one general-purpose function inside the fundamental computation of the large degree secret isogenies. As an additional contribution, we also give new explicit formulas for 3- and 4-isogenies, and show that these give immediate speedups when substituted into pre-existing SIDH libraries

Mild folate deficiency induces genetic and epigenetic instability and phenotype changes in prostate cancer cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Folate (vitamin B9) is essential for cellular proliferation as it is involved in the biosynthesis of deoxythymidine monophosphate (dTMP) and s-adenosylmethionine (AdoMet). The link between folate depletion and the genesis and progression of cancers of epithelial origin is of high clinical relevance, but still unclear. We recently demonstrated that sensitivity to low folate availability is affected by the rate of polyamine biosynthesis, which is prominent in prostate cells. We, therefore, hypothesized that prostate cells might be highly susceptible to genetic, epigenetic and phenotypic changes consequent to folate restriction.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We studied the consequences of long-term, mild folate depletion in a model comprised of three syngenic cell lines derived from the transgenic adenoma of the mouse prostate (TRAMP) model, recapitulating different stages of prostate cancer; benign, transformed and metastatic. High-performance liquid chromatography analysis demonstrated that mild folate depletion (100 nM) sufficed to induce imbalance in both the nucleotide and AdoMet pools in all prostate cell lines. Random oligonucleotide-primed synthesis (ROPS) revealed a significant increase in uracil misincorporation and DNA single strand breaks, while spectral karyotype analysis (SKY) identified five novel chromosomal rearrangements in cells grown with mild folate depletion. Using global approaches, we identified an increase in CpG island and histone methylation upon folate depletion despite unchanged levels of total 5-methylcytosine, indicating a broad effect of folate depletion on epigenetic regulation. These genomic changes coincided with phenotype changes in the prostate cells including increased anchorage-independent growth and reduced sensitivity to folate depletion.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study demonstrates that prostate cells are highly susceptible to genetic and epigenetic changes consequent to mild folate depletion as compared to cells grown with supraphysiological amounts of folate (2 μM) routinely used in tissue culture. In addition, we elucidate for the first time the contribution of these aspects to consequent phenotype changes in epithelial cells. These results provide a strong rationale for studying the effects of folate manipulation on the prostate <it>in vivo</it>, where cells might be more sensitive to changes in folate status resulting from folate supplementation or antifolate therapeutic approaches.</p

Control of Mycobacterium bovis infection in two sika deer herds in Ireland

In a number of countries, tuberculosis (due to infection with Mycobacterium bovis) is a significant health problem of captive deer. This paper describes outbreaks of bovine tuberculosis in sika deer (Cervus nippon) on two farms in Ireland and the methods used to control the disease. On Farm A, infection was first detected during 1993. The infection was eradicated using a programme of test and removal, in association with segregation of young animals. A second outbreak (also due to infection with M. bovis, but a different RFLP profile) was detected in 2002. In the latter outbreak, infection was particularly prevalent in two groups of young deer. M. bovis with the same RFLP profile was also isolated in a badger found dead on the farm. Control was achieved by test and removal in association with herd management changes. In Herd B, infection was first detected in 1995, and subsequently eradicated using test and removal alone. In Herd A, re-infection remains an ongoing risk. Control rather than eradication of infection may more realistic in the short-to medium-term

Trends in the Discovery of New Marine Natural Products from Invertebrates over the Last Two Decades – Where and What Are We Bioprospecting?

It is acknowledged that marine invertebrates produce bioactive natural products that may be useful for developing new drugs. By exploring untapped geographical sources and/or novel groups of organisms one can maximize the search for new marine drugs to treat human diseases. The goal of this paper is to analyse the trends associated with the discovery of new marine natural products from invertebrates (NMNPI) over the last two decades. The analysis considers different taxonomical levels and geographical approaches of bioprospected species. Additionally, this research is also directed to provide new insights into less bioprospected taxa and world regions. In order to gather the information available on NMNPI, the yearly-published reviews of Marine Natural Products covering 1990–2009 were surveyed. Information on source organisms, specifically taxonomical information and collection sites, was assembled together with additional geographical information collected from the articles originally describing the new natural product. Almost 10000 NMNPI were discovered since 1990, with a pronounced increase between decades. Porifera and Cnidaria were the two dominant sources of NMNPI worldwide. The exception was polar regions where Echinodermata dominated. The majority of species that yielded the new natural products belong to only one class of each Porifera and Cnidaria phyla (Demospongiae and Anthozoa, respectively). Increased bioprospecting efforts were observed in the Pacific Ocean, particularly in Asian countries that are associated with the Japan Biodiversity Hotspot and the Kuroshio Current. Although results show comparably less NMNPI from polar regions, the number of new natural products per species is similar to that recorded for other regions. The present study provides information to future bioprospecting efforts addressing previously unexplored taxonomic groups and/or regions. We also highlight how marine invertebrates, which in some cases have no commercial value, may become highly valuable in the ongoing search for new drugs from the sea