Elemental fingerprinting of sea urchin (Paracentrotus lividus) gonads to assess food safety and trace its geographic origin

Sea urchin gonads are an economically valuable seafood item, considered a delicacy in many parts of the world. However, its consumption can either pose a food safety threat, as they accumulate potentially toxic elements from contaminated environments or promote the depletion of natural stocks due to the high demand. Knowing their harvesting location is therefore paramount to guarantee food safety and the conservation of natural stocks. In this study, the elemental fingerprints of sea urchin (Paracentrotus lividus) gonads collected in several locations along the Portuguese coast, in 2020 and 2021, were used to assess the levels of some potentially toxic elements (i. e., As, Cu, Pb and Zn) and to trace the harvesting location of this marine resource. P. lividus gonads presented mean levels of As, Cu, Pb and Zn above the thresholds recommended for human consumption (considering mollusks due to the absence of safety thresholds for echinoderms), in at least one of the sampling locations. The elemental fingerprints of gonads hold the potential to trace the harvesting location of P. lividus, even when it was used elemental fingerprints of different years to train and test the models

Assessment of Chronic Illness-Related Cognitive Fusion: Preliminary Development and Validation of a New Scale with an IBD Sample

Although research recognizes the advantages of creating specific content measures, no specific measure of chronic illness-related cognitive fusion had been developed to date. The current study presents the development and validation of the Cognitive Fusion Questionnaire-Chronic Illness (CFQ-CI) in a sample of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients and the analysis of the role of this construct in the psychological health of those patients. Results indicated that the 7-item CFQ-CI was a unidimensional measure of cognitive fusion in patients with chronic illnesses, and that scores had adequate/good internal consistency and construct, convergent, and discriminant validity. This study also showed that chronic illness-related cognitive fusion as assessed by the CFQ-CI acted as a mediator in the association between both IBD-related symptoms and shame with quality of life. The development of the CFQ-CI may thus contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms influencing functional outcomes in chronic illness

Chiral perturbation theory in a magnetic background - finite-temperature effects

We consider chiral perturbation theory for SU(2) at finite temperature $T$ in a constant magnetic background $B$. We compute the thermal mass of the pions and the pion decay constant to leading order in chiral perturbation theory in the presence of the magnetic field. The magnetic field gives rise to a splitting between $M_{\pi^0}$ and $M_{\pi^{\pm}}$ as well as between $F_{\pi^0}$ and $F_{\pi^{\pm}}$. We also calculate the free energy and the quark condensate to next-to-leading order in chiral perturbation theory. Both the pion decay constants and the quark condensate are decreasing slower as a function of temperature as compared to the case with vanishing magnetic field. The latter result suggests that the critical temperature $T_c$ for the chiral transition is larger in the presence of a constant magnetic field. The increase of $T_c$ as a function of $B$ is in agreement with most model calculations but in disagreement with recent lattice calculations.Comment: 24 pages and 9 fig

A Continental-Wide Perspective: The Genepool of Nuclear Encoded Ribosomal DNA and Single-Copy Gene Sequences in North American Boechera (Brassicaceae)

74 of the currently accepted 111 taxa of the North American genus Boechera (Brassicaceae) were subject to pyhlogenetic reconstruction and network analysis. The dataset comprised 911 accessions for which ITS sequences were analyzed. Phylogenetic analyses yielded largely unresolved trees. Together with the network analysis confirming this result this can be interpreted as an indication for multiple, independent, and rapid diversification events. Network analyses were superimposed with datasets describing i) geographical distribution, ii) taxonomy, iii) reproductive mode, and iv) distribution history based on phylogeographic evidence. Our results provide first direct evidence for enormous reticulate evolution in the entire genus and give further insights into the evolutionary history of this complex genus on a continental scale. In addition two novel single-copy gene markers, orthologues of the Arabidopsis thaliana genes At2g25920 and At3g18900, were analyzed for subsets of taxa and confirmed the findings obtained through the ITS data

Hyperpolarized¹³C-Pyruvate Metabolism as a Surrogate for Tumor Grade and Poor Outcome in Renal Cell Carcinoma—A Proof of Principle Study

Differentiating aggressive clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) from indolent lesions is challenging using conventional imaging. This work prospectively compared the metabolic imaging phenotype of renal tumors using carbon-13 MRI following injection of hyperpolarized [1-13C]pyruvate (HP-13C-MRI) and validated these findings with histopathology. Nine patients with treatment-naïve renal tumors (6 ccRCCs, 1 liposarcoma, 1 pheochromocytoma, 1 oncocytoma) underwent pre-operative HP-13C-MRI and conventional proton (1H) MRI. Multi-regional tissue samples were collected using patient-specific 3D-printed tumor molds for spatial registration between imaging and molecular analysis. The apparent exchange rate constant (kPL) between 13C-pyruvate and 13C-lactate was calculated. Immunohistochemistry for the pyruvate transporter (MCT1) from 44 multi-regional samples, as well as associations between MCT1 expression and outcome in the TCGA-KIRC dataset, were investigated. Increasing kPL in ccRCC was correlated with increasing overall tumor grade (ρ = 0.92, p = 0.009) and MCT1 expression (r = 0.89, p = 0.016), with similar results acquired from the multi-regional analysis. Conventional 1H-MRI parameters did not discriminate tumor grades. The correlation between MCT1 and ccRCC grade was confirmed within a TCGA dataset (p &lt; 0.001), where MCT1 expression was a predictor of overall and disease-free survival. In conclusion, metabolic imaging using HP-13C-MRI differentiates tumor aggressiveness in ccRCC and correlates with the expression of MCT1, a predictor of survival. HP-13C-MRI may non-invasively characterize metabolic phenotypes within renal cancer.</jats:p

Palaeoclimatic conditions in the Mediterranean explain genetic diversity of Posidonia oceanica seagrass meadows

Past environmental conditions in the Mediterranean Sea have been proposed as main drivers of the current patterns of distribution of genetic structure of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica, the foundation species of one of the most important ecosystems in the Mediterranean Sea. Yet, the location of cold climate refugia (persistence regions) for this species during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) is not clear, precluding the understanding of its biogeographical history. We used Ecological Niche Modelling together with existing phylogeographic data to locate Pleistocene refugia in the Mediterranean Sea and to develop a hypothetical past biogeographical distribution able to explain the genetic diversity presently found in P. oceanica meadows. To do that, we used an ensemble approach of six predictive algorithms and two Ocean General Circulation Models. The minimum SST in winter and the maximum SST in summer allowed us to hindcast the species range during the LGM. We found separate glacial refugia in each Mediterranean basin and in the Central region. Altogether, the results suggest that the Central region of the Mediterranean Sea was the most relevant cold climate refugium, supporting the hypothesis that long-term persistence there allowed the region to develop and retain its presently high proportion of the global genetic diversity of P. oceanica.Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal) [SFRH/BPD/85040/2012]; FCT [UID/Multi/04326/2013, FCT-BIODIVERSA/004/2015]; Pew foundation (USA)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium. The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO