Effect of postactivation potentiation on fifty-meter freestyle in national swimmers

Effect of postactivation potentiation (PAP) on fifty meters freestyle in national swimmers. 2013.- The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of PAP on 50m freestyle in national-level swimmers. Four warm-ups were compared: A traditional race-specific warm-up (RSWU), upper body PAP (UBPAP), lower body PAP (LBPAP) and combined PAP warm-up (CPAP). Eighteen (10 men, 8 women) national-level swimmers participated in this study, which included seven separate testing sessions. Participants' 3 repetition maximum (3RM) of the pull-up (PU) was established in session 1. In session 2, rest periods for muscle enhancement of the upper body were determined using a medicine-ballthrow test 4, 8 and 12 minutes post UBPAP stimulus (1 x 3RM of the PU). In session 3, swimmers performed a counter movement jump 4, 8 and 12 minutes post LBPAP stimulus (1x5 jumps to a box whilst carrying 10% of the participants' body weight). The 50m freestyle tests were performed on sessions 4 to 7, preceded by each warm-up protocol and corresponding rest periods. A repeated measures ANOVA (p<0.05) and Bonferroni post hoc test revealed that RSWU elicited faster swimming times than UBPAP (29.00 ± 2.05 vs. 29.36 ± 1.88s p=0.046). Additionally, when data were split into gender, in the male group the UBPAP elicited significantly slower times than RSWU (27.51 ± 1.06 vs. 28.01 ± 1.17s p=0.047) and CPAP (27.49 ± 1.12 vs. 28.01 ± 1.17s p=0.02). These findings suggest individualized PAP warm-up may be a valuable tool to enhance performance in sprint events, particularly in male swimmers. However, the PU may not be an appropriate PAP stimulus on its own

Dung removal increases under higher dung beetle functional diversity regardless of grazing intensification

Dung removal by macrofauna such as dung beetles is an important process for nutrient cycling in pasturelands. Intensification of farming practices generally reduces species and functional diversity of terrestrial invertebrates, which may negatively affect ecosystem services. Here, we investigate the effects of cattle-grazing intensification on dung removal by dung beetles in field experiments replicated in 38 pastures around the world. Within each study site, we measured dung removal in pastures managed with low- and high-intensity regimes to assess between-regime differences in dung beetle diversity and dung removal, whilst also considering climate and regional variations. The impacts of intensification were heterogeneous, either diminishing or increasing dung beetle species richness, functional diversity, and dung removal rates. The effects of beetle diversity on dung removal were more variable across sites than within sites. Dung removal increased with species richness across sites, while functional diversity consistently enhanced dung removal within sites, independently of cattle grazing intensity or climate. Our findings indicate that, despite intensified cattle stocking rates, ecosystem services related to decomposition and nutrient cycling can be maintained when a functionally diverse dung beetle community inhabits the human-modified landscape

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Degradation of human atrial natriuretic peptide by human brain membranes

Human atrial natriuretic peptide (Ser 99-Tyr 126) was rapidly degraded by both choroid plexus and hypothalamic membranes with a complex pattern of cleavage. The use of protease inhibitors allowed a preliminary characterization of the enzymes involved in the hydrolysis of the Ser-Phe and Phe-Arg bonds of iodine-labelled atrial natriuretic peptide. The C-terminal tripeptide was generated by three different enzymatic activities acting on the Ser-Phe bond: endopeptidase 24.11, a phosphoramidon-insensitive metallopeptidase and a thiol protease. Peptides like substance P, neurotensin, bradykinin inhibited the cleavage of the Ser-Phe bond of atrial natriuretic peptide. The C-terminal tripeptide was further degraded by aminopeptidases. Cleavage of the C-terminal dipeptide was inhibited by aprotinin, suggesting the contribution of brain kallikrein in the formation of this metabolite. These results show that many different proteases were involved in the hydrolysis of the C-terminal sequence of atrial natriuretic peptide, at least in vitro and underline the complexity of neuropeptide catabolism by brain preparations. © 1988.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

The interaction of caerulein with the rat pancreas. II. Specific binding of [3H]caerulein on dispersed acinar cells

1. [3H]Caerulein was bound to dispersed acinar cells from rat pancreas in a rapid, reversible, specific, saturable, and temperature-dependent manner. Binding decreased above pH 6.5. Treatment of intact cells with 2, 4-dinitrophenol and oligomycin, p-choloromercuribenzoate, diisopropylfluoro-phosphate and glutaraldehyde impaired [3H]caerulein binding whereas the addition of EGTA inhibited binding. The C-terminal octapeptide of pancreozymin, desulfated caerulein and pentagastrin inhibited binding of [3H]caerulein whereas vasoactive intestinal polypeptide, secretin, bombesin or carbamoylcholine were wothout effect. The good resistance of [3H]caerulein to inactivation by acinar cells at 37 degrees C was reflected in the high proportion of tracer remaining capable of binding to fresh acinar cells. 2. Scatchard plots of [3H]caerulein binding were curvilinear with an upward concavity. The addition of an excess of unlabeled caerulein resulted in the release of as much as 65% of bound [3H]caerulein within 1 min at 37 degrees C. The dissociation of remainder followed much slower kinetics. 3. The results suggested that intact rat pancreatic acinar cells have one class of caerulein binding sites existing in two states: one with high affinity and another with low affinity, the proportion of sites in each state depending on the degree of site occupancy (negative cooperativity), and on the intracellular concentration of nucleotides.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

In vivo metabolism of brain natriuretic peptide in the rat involves endopeptidase 24.11 and angiotensin converting enzyme

The metabolism of brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) was studied in rats infused with 125I-BNP. During the infusion, the intact peptide was progressively converted to labelled degradative products, separated into nine peaks of radioactivity on HPLC, and accounting for ~70% of total plasma radioactivity at the plateau phase. After stopping the infusion, intact BNP disappeared with a half-life of 1.23 ± 0.35 min whereas the labelled fragments accounted for progressively greater proportion of total activity. The degradation of BNP was significantly reduced by phosphoramidon (t 1/2 ,11.28 ± 0.49 min) and captopril (t 1/2 ,6.99 ± 0.34 min). A maximal effect was observed when both protease inhibitors were given simultaneously (t 1/2 ,15.3 ± 0.48 min). When 125I-BNP was incubated in vitro with purified endopeptidase 24.11 (E-24.11) and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE), there was a time-dependent disappearance of the intact peptide associated with the generation of six labelled fragments, corresponding to fragments found in vivo. In serum the peptide was rapidly degraded with a half-life of 4.6 ± 0.1 min, and the pattern of labelled fragtments was similar to that observed during in vitro incubation with ACE. Captopril significantly reduced the rate of degradation of BNP in serum. The results allow to associate two define enzyme activities, namely E-24.11 and ACE, with the metabolism of BNP in vivo. They also indicate that, despite a close homology between ANP and BNP, the two peptides undergo different pathways of clearance.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Hydrolysis of α-human atrial natriuretic peptide in vitro by human kidney membranes and purified endopeptidase-24.11. Evidence for a novel cleavage site

SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Stakeholders' experiences and perception on transitional care initiatives within an integrated care project in Belgium: a qualitative interview study

BackgroundIn 2015, a plan for integrated care was launched by the Belgium government that resulted in the implementation of 12 integrated care pilot project across Belgium. The pilot project Zorgzaam Leuven consists of a multidisciplinary local consortium aiming to bring lasting change towards integrated care for the region of Leuven. This study aims to explore experiences and perceptions of stakeholders involved in four transitional care actions that are part of Zorgzaam Leuven.MethodsThis qualitative case study is part of the European TRANS-SENIOR project. Four actions with a focus on improving transitional care were selected and stakeholders involved in those actions were identified using the snow-ball method. Fourteen semi-structured interviews were conducted and inductive thematic analysis was performed.ResultsProfessionals appreciated to be involved in the decision making early onwards either by proposing own initiatives or by providing their input in shaping actions. Improved team spirit and community feeling with other health care professionals (HCPs) was reported to reduce communication barriers and was perceived to benefit both patients and professionals. The actions provided supportive tools and various learning opportunities that participants acknowledged. Technical shortcomings (e.g. lack of integrated patient records) and financial and political support were identified as key challenges impeding the sustainable implementation of the transitional care actions.ConclusionThe pilot project Zorgzaam Leuven created conditions that triggered work motivation for HCPs. It supported the development of multidisciplinary care partnerships at the local level that allowed early involvement and increased collaboration, which is crucial to successfully improve transitional care for vulnerable patients