Effect of Bonny Light Crude Oil Pollution of Soil on the Growth of dayflower (Commelina benghalensis L.) in the Niger Delta, Nigeria

The effect of Bonny Light Crude oil pollution of soil and successive plantings in the same soil at 4 – week intervals on the growth of dayflower (Commelina benghalensis L.) was investigated. The factorial sets of treatments were two levels of oil pollution (0 and 50 mg/g) and 5 successive plantings. Characters assessed were mean plant height, leaf area per plant and mean dry matter weight. At each of the 5 croppings mean plant characters assessed were significantly higher (P = 0.05) at 0 mg/g oil pollution than at the 50 mg oil/g soil pollution level. In the Control treatments, a declining trend in plant growth was observed from the 1st to the 5th crop. In contrast, in the oil-treated soils, an increasing trend was observed. @JASE

Short-term HFD does not alter lipolytic function of adipocytes

A short bout of high fat diet (HFD) impairs glucose tolerance and hepatic insulin sensitivity. We recently identified adipose tissue inflammation and resulting dysfunctional adipose tissue-liver cross-talk as an early event in the development of HFD-induced hepatic insulin resistance. In particular, reducing white adipose tissue (WAT) inflammation by adipocyte-specific depletion of Fas/CD95 protected mice from developing hepatic insulin resistance but not hepatic steatosis. Herein, we expanded our previous work and determined the impact of four days of HFD on lipolytic activity of isolated adipocytes. Compared with chow-fed mice, the degree of basal and isoproterenol-stimulated free fatty acid (FFA) and glycerol release was similar in HFD-fed animals. Moreover, insulin's ability to suppress lipolysis remained intact, suggesting retained insulin sensitivity. Despite unaltered lipolysis, circulating FFA concentrations were greatly increased in non-fasted HFD-fed mice. In conclusion, a short-term HFD challenge does not affect lipolytic function of adipocytes. The observed increase of circulating FFA levels in randomly fed animals may rather be the result of increased dietary fat supply

15-Year Follow-up of Neuromuscular Function in Patients With Unilateral Nonreconstructed Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injury Initially Treated With Rehabilitation and Activity Modification: A Longitudinal Prospective Study.

Background: It has been suggested that neuromuscular function is of importance in the overall outcome after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury. Hypothesis: Good neuromuscular function can be achieved and maintained over time in subjects with ACL injury treated with rehabilitation and activity modification but without reconstructive surgery. Study Design: Case series; Level of evidence, 4. Methods: One hundred consecutive patients (42 women and 58 men) with acute ACL injury at a nonprofessional, recreational or competitive activity level were assessed 1, 3, and 15 years after injury. Their mean age at inclusion was 26 years (range, 15-43 years). All patients initially underwent rehabilitation and were advised to modify their activity level, especially by avoiding contact sports. Patients with recurrent giving-way episodes or secondary meniscal injuries that required fixation were subsequently excluded and underwent reconstruction of the ACL. Sixty-seven patients (71% of those available for follow-up) with unilateral nonreconstructed injury remained at the 15-year follow-up. Fifty-six of these 67 patients were examined with the single-legged hop test for distance and knee muscle strength. The limb symmetry index (LSI), calculated by dividing the result for the injured leg by that of the uninjured leg and multiplying by 100, was used for comparisons over time (paired t test). Results: The LSI for the single-legged hop test was higher at the 3-year follow-up (mean, 98.5%; standard deviation [SD], 7.6%) than at the 15-year follow-up (mean, 94.8%; SD, 10.5%) (mean difference, -3.7%; 95% confidence interval [Cl], -6.1% to -1.2%; P = .004). The LSI for isometric extension was higher at the 15-year follow-up (mean, 97.2%; SD, 13.7%) than at the 1-year follow-up (mean, 88.2%; SD, 15.4%) (mean difference, 9.0%; 95% Cl, 3.7% to 14.4%; P = .001). At the 15-year follow-up, between 69% and 85% of the patients had an LSI >= 90%. Conclusions: Good functional performance and knee muscle strength can be achieved and maintained over time in the majority of patients with ACL injury treated with rehabilitation and early activity modification but without reconstructive surgery

The LSST DESC data challenge 1: Generation and analysis of synthetic images for next-generation surveys

Data Challenge 1 (DC1) is the first synthetic data set produced by the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC). DC1 is designed to develop and validate data reduction and analysis and to study the impact of systematic effects that will affect the LSST data set. DC1 is comprised of r-band observations of 40 deg2 to 10 yr LSST depth. We present each stage of the simulation and analysis process: (a) generation, by synthesizing sources from cosmological N-body simulations in individual sensor-visit images with different observing conditions; (b) reduction using a development version of the LSST Science Pipelines; and (c) matching to the input cosmological catalogue for validation and testing. We verify that testable LSST requirements pass within the fidelity of DC1. We establish a selection procedure that produces a sufficiently clean extragalactic sample for clustering analyses and we discuss residual sample contamination, including contributions from inefficiency in star-galaxy separation and imperfect deblending. We compute the galaxy power spectrum on the simulated field and conclude that: (i) survey properties have an impact of 50 per cent of the statistical uncertainty for the scales and models used in DC1; (ii) a selection to eliminate artefacts in the catalogues is necessary to avoid biases in the measured clustering; and (iii) the presence of bright objects has a significant impact (2-6) in the estimated power spectra at small scales (> 1200), highlighting the impact of blending in studies at small angular scales in LSST

NDUFV1 mutations in complex I deficiency: Case reports and review of symptoms.

Mitochondrial complex I (CI) deficiency is the most common oxidative phosphorylation disorder described. It shows a wide range of phenotypes with poor correlation within genotypes. Herein we expand the clinics and genetics of CI deficiency in the brazilian population by reporting three patients with pathogenic (c.640G>A, c.1268C>T, c.1207dupG) and likely pathogenic (c.766C>T) variants in the NDUFV1 gene. We show the mutation c.766C>T associated with a childhood onset phenotype of hypotonia, muscle weakness, psychomotor regression, lethargy, dysphagia, and strabismus. Additionally, this mutation was found to be associated with headaches and exercise intolerance in adulthood. We also review reported pathogenic variants in NDUFV1 highlighting the wide phenotypic heterogeneity in CI deficiency

Non-abelian T-duality, Ramond Fields and Coset Geometries

We extend previous work on non-abelian T-duality in the presence of Ramond fluxes to cases in which the duality group acts with isotropy such as in backgrounds containing coset spaces. In the process we generate new supergravity solutions related to D-brane configurations and to standard supergravity compactifications.Comment: 35 pages, Late

Smeared versus localised sources in flux compactifications

We investigate whether vacuum solutions in flux compactifications that are obtained with smeared sources (orientifolds or D-branes) still survive when the sources are localised. This seems to rely on whether the solutions are BPS or not. First we consider two sets of BPS solutions that both relate to the GKP solution through T-dualities: (p+1)-dimensional solutions from spacetime-filling Op-planes with a conformally Ricci-flat internal space, and p-dimensional solutions with Op-planes that wrap a 1-cycle inside an everywhere negatively curved twisted torus. The relation between the solution with smeared orientifolds and the localised version is worked out in detail. We then demonstrate that a class of non-BPS AdS_4 solutions that exist for IASD fluxes and with smeared D3-branes (or analogously for ISD fluxes with anti-D3-branes) does not survive the localisation of the (anti) D3-branes. This casts doubts on the stringy consistency of non-BPS solutions that are obtained in the limit of smeared sources.Comment: 23 pages; v2: minor corrections, added references, version published in JHE

Cross-species gene expression analysis of species specific differences in the preclinical assessment of pharmaceutical compounds

Animals are frequently used as model systems for determination of safety and efficacy in pharmaceutical research and development. However, significant quantitative and qualitative differences exist between humans and the animal models used in research. This is as a result of genetic variation between human and the laboratory animal. Therefore the development of a system that would allow the assessment of all molecular differences between species after drug exposure would have a significant impact on drug evaluation for toxicity and efficacy. Here we describe a cross-species microarray methodology that identifies and selects orthologous probes after cross-species sequence comparison to develop an orthologous cross-species gene expression analysis tool. The assumptions made by the use of this orthologous gene expression strategy for cross-species extrapolation is that; conserved changes in gene expression equate to conserved pharmacodynamic endpoints. This assumption is supported by the fact that evolution and selection have maintained the structure and function of many biochemical pathways over time, resulting in the conservation of many important processes. We demonstrate this cross-species methodology by investigating species specific differences of the peroxisome proliferatoractivator receptor (PPAR) a response in rat and human

Establishing the precise evolutionary history of a gene improves prediction of disease-causing missense mutations

PURPOSE: Predicting the phenotypic effects of mutations has become an important application in clinical genetic diagnostics. Computational tools evaluate the behavior of the variant over evolutionary time and assume that variations seen during the course of evolution are probably benign in humans. However, current tools do not take into account orthologous/paralogous relationships. Paralogs have dramatically different roles in Mendelian diseases. For example, whereas inactivating mutations in the NPC1 gene cause the neurodegenerative disorder Niemann-Pick C, inactivating mutations in its paralog NPC1L1 are not disease-causing and, moreover, are implicated in protection from coronary heart disease. METHODS: We identified major events in NPC1 evolution and revealed and compared orthologs and paralogs of the human NPC1 gene through phylogenetic and protein sequence analyses. We predicted whether an amino acid substitution affects protein function by reducing the organism’s fitness. RESULTS: Removing the paralogs and distant homologs improved the overall performance of categorizing disease-causing and benign amino acid substitutions. CONCLUSION: The results show that a thorough evolutionary analysis followed by identification of orthologs improves the accuracy in predicting disease-causing missense mutations. We anticipate that this approach will be used as a reference in the interpretation of variants in other genetic diseases as well. Genet Med 18 10, 1029–1036

Cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with hard and light intensity physical activity but not time spent sedentary in 10–14 year old schoolchildren: the HAPPY study

Sedentary behaviour is a major risk factor for developing chronic diseases and is associated with low cardiorespiratory fitness in adults. It remains unclear how sedentary behaviour and different physical activity subcomponents are related to cardiorespiratory fitness in children. The purpose of this study was to assess how sedentary behaviour and different physical activity subcomponents are associated with 10–14 year-old schoolchildren's cardiorespiratory fitness