16 research outputs found
From bits to bites: Advancement of the Germinate platform to support prebreeding informatics for crop wild relatives
Management and distribution of experimental data from prebreeding projects
is important to ensure uptake of germplasm into breeding and research programs.
Being able to access and share this data in standard formats is essential.
The adoption of a common informatics platform for crops that may have limited
resources brings economies of scale, allowing common informatics components
to be used across multiple species. The close integration of such a platform with
commonly used breeding software, visualization, and analysis tools reduces the
barrier for entry to researchers and provides a common framework to facilitate
collaborations and data sharing. This work presents significant updates to the
Germinate platform and highlights its value in distributing prebreeding data for
14 crops as part of the project ‘Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Collecting,
Protecting and Preparing Crop Wild Relatives’ (hereafter Crop Trust Crop
Wild Relatives project) led by the Crop Trust (https://www.cwrdiversity.org). The
addition of data on these species compliments data already publicly available in
Germinate. We present a suite of updated Germinate features using examples
from these crop species and their wild relatives. The use of Germinate within the
Crop TrustCropWildRelatives project demonstrates the usefulness of the system
and the benefits a shared informatics platform provides. These data resources
provide a foundation on which breeding and research communities can develop
additional online resources for their crops, harness new data as it becomes available,
and benefit collectively from future developments of the Germinate platform
Visual Personal Familiarity in Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment
BACKGROUND: Patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment are at high risk for developing Alzheimer's disease. Besides episodic memory dysfunction they show deficits in accessing contextual knowledge that further specifies a general concept or helps to identify an object or a person. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the neural networks associated with the perception of personal familiar faces and places in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment and healthy control subjects. Irrespective of stimulus type, patients compared to control subjects showed lower activity in right prefrontal brain regions when perceiving personally familiar versus unfamiliar faces and places. Both groups did not show different neural activity when perceiving faces or places irrespective of familiarity. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our data highlight changes in a frontal cortical network associated with knowledge-based personal familiarity among patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment. These changes could contribute to deficits in social cognition and may reduce the patients' ability to transition from basic to complex situations and tasks
Do Professors Better Maintain Cognitive Functioning in Older Age?
Research on cognitive aging demonstrates age-related cognitive decline. Education is a protective factor against cognitive decline, but few studies have examined the cognitive development of highly educated individuals. This study compared the cognitive performance and intellectual engagement of retired professors (N = 47, Mage = 72.9) and individuals with average education (N = 236, Mage = 72.7) over 5 years. Although the highly educated sample showed better performance in perceptual speed and working memory, cognitive performance was rather stable over time in both samples. Interestingly, high intellectual engagement enabled individuals with average education to keep up with the performance of the highly educated sample on perceptual speed. These findings raise the question whether intellectual engagement is more beneficial than years of education in perceptual speed
Sexually Transmitted Diseases—An Update and Overview of Current Research
A rise in the rates of sexually transmitted diseases, both worldwide and in Germany, has been observed especially among persons between the ages of 15 and 24 years. Since many infections are devoid of symptoms or cause few symptoms, the diseases are detected late, may spread unchecked, and be transmitted unwittingly. In the event of persistent infection, the effects depend on the pathogen in question. Manifestations vary widely, ranging from pelvic inflammatory disease, most often caused by Chlamydia trachomatis (in Germany nearly 30% of PID) or Neisseria gonorrhoeae (in Germany <2% of PID), to the development of genital warts or cervical dysplasia in cases of infection with the HP virus. Causal treatment does exist in most cases and should always be administered to the sexual partner(s) as well. An infection during pregnancy calls for an individual treatment approach, depending on the pathogen and the week of pregnancy
Modelling illustrates that genomic selection provides new opportunities for intercrop breeding
Intercrop breeding programs using genomic selection can produce faster genetic
gain than intercrop breeding programs using phenotypic selection. Intercropping is
an agricultural practice in which two or more component crops are grown together.
It can lead to enhanced soil structure and fertility, improved weed suppression, and
better control of pests and diseases. Especially in subsistence agriculture, intercropping
has great potential to optimize farming and increase profitability. However, breeding
for intercrop varieties is complex as it requires simultaneous improvement of two or
more component crops that combine well in the field. We hypothesize that genomic
selection can significantly simplify and accelerate the process of breeding crops for
intercropping. Therefore, we used stochastic simulation to compare four different
intercrop breeding programs implementing genomic selection and an intercrop breeding
program entirely based on phenotypic selection. We assumed three different levels of
genetic correlation between monocrop grain yield and intercrop grain yield to investigate
how the different breeding strategies are impacted by this factor. We found that
all four simulated breeding programs using genomic selection produced significantly
more intercrop genetic gain than the phenotypic selection program regardless of the
genetic correlation with monocrop yield.We suggest a genomic selection strategy which
combines monocrop and intercrop trait information to predict general intercropping
ability to increase selection accuracy in the early stages of a breeding program and
to minimize the generation interval
Motivations for (non)participation in population-based health studies among the elderly – comparison of participants and nonparticipants of a prospective study on influenza vaccination
Abstract Background Participation in epidemiological studies has strongly declined in recent years. We examined the reasons for (non)participation in population-based health studies among participants and nonparticipants of a prospective study on influenza vaccination among the elderly. Methods Males and females between 65 and 80 years of age (N = 5582) were randomly selected from the residents’ registration office in Hannover, Germany, and were invited to participate in a study featuring vaccination with a seasonal adjuvanted influenza vaccine (Fluad™, Novartis) including five follow-up visits (day 0, 1/3, 7, 21, 70 with respect to vaccination). A 24-item nonresponder questionnaire, including 10 items on reasons for participating in a hypothetical health study, was mailed to 1500 randomly selected nonparticipants. The same 10 items were included in the end-of-study questionnaire administered to the participants in the vaccination study (n = 200). Logistic regression analysis with backward elimination was used to identify the reasons most strongly associated with nonparticipation. Results Five hundred thirty-one (35%) nonparticipants and 200 participants (100%) returned the respective questionnaires. Nonparticipation was associated with a lower interest in obtaining personal health information (OR = 3.32) and a preference for less invasive (OR = 3.01) and less time-demanding (OR = 2.19) studies. Responses to other items, e.g. regarding altruistic motives, monetary compensation, general interest of the study, or study approval through ethics committee and data security authority, did not differ between participants and nonparticipants. Conclusions Participation rates in health studies among elderly individuals could potentially be improved by reducing interventions and time demand, for instance by implementing methods of self-sampling and remote data collection. Trial registration No. 1100359 (ClinicalTrials.gov, date of registration: 09.02.2015)
Establishment of a cohort for deep phenotyping of the immune response to influenza vaccination among elderly individuals recruited from the general population
Elderly individuals have the highest burden of disease from influenza infection but also the lowest immune response to influenza vaccination. A better understanding of the host response to influenza vaccination in the elderly is therefore urgently needed. We conducted a biphasic prospective, population-based study from Dec. 2014 to May 2015 (pilot study) and Sept. 2015 to May 2016 (main study). Individuals 65–80 y of age were randomly selected from the residents' registration office in Hannover, Germany, for the pilot (n = 34) and main study (n = 200). The pilot study tested recruitment for study arms featuring 2, 4, or 5 visits/blood draws. The 5-visit (day 0, 1/3, 7, 21, 70 with respect to vaccination) study arm was selected for the main study. Both studies featured vaccination with Fluad™ (Novartis, Italy), a detailed medical history, a physical exam, recording of adverse events, completion of a questionnaire on common infections and an end-of-study questionnaire, and blood samples. Response rates in the pilot and main studies were 3.7% and 4.0%, respectively. Willingness to participate did not differ among the study arms (Fisher's exact test, p = 0.44). In both studies, there were no losses to follow-up. Compliance with study visits, blood sampling and completion of the questionnaires was very high (100%, >97%, 100%, respectively), as were participants' acceptance of and satisfaction with both phases of the study. The low response rates indicate the need for optimized recruitment strategies if the study population is to be representative of the general population. Nonetheless, the complex prospective study design proved to be highly feasible
From bits to bites: advancement of the germinate platform to support genetic resources collections and pre-breeding informatics for crop wild relatives
The efficient management and distribution of experimental data from pre-breeding projects is important to ensure uptake of valuable germplasm into breeding and research programmes. Being able to access and share this data in standard formats is essential in this process. The adoption of a common informatics platform for crops which may have limited resources brings economies of scale allowing common informatics components to be rolled out across multiple species. The close integration of such a platform with commonly used breeding software, visualization and analysis tools reduces the barrier for entry to researchers working on these data and provides a common framework to facilitate collaborations and data sharing. This work presents significant updates to the Germinate platform and highlights its value in distributing pre-breeding data for 14 crops as part of the project “Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Collecting, Protecting and Preparing Crop Wild Relatives” (hereafter Crop Trust Crop Wild Relatives project) led by the Crop Trust (https://www.cwrdiversity.org). The addition of data on new crop species compliments data that are already publicly available on the platform. We present a suite of updated Germinate features using examples from these crop species and their wild relatives. The use of Germinate within the Crop Wild Relatives project demonstrates the usefulness of the system and the benefits that a shared informatics platform provides.These data resources provide a foundation on which breeding and research communities can develop additional online resources for their crops, harnessing new data as it becomes available, and benefiting collectively from future developments of the Germinate platform. Through this process Germinate will facilitate the utilization of plant genetic resources, including crop wild relatives. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserve