Formation of viable cell fragments by treatment with colchicine

Time-lapse cinematography of human fibroblasts revealed that mitotic cells separated into numerous cell fragments containing varying amounts of chromatin and cytoplasm when treated with colchicine. As cell fragments were very loosely attached to the surface of the culture vessel during their formation, they could be easily detached like mitotic cells by gently shaking the vessel and thus separated from normal interphase cells. Fragments obtained by this procedure were able to exclude trypan blue indicating, therefore, an intact cell membrane. When placed into Petri dishes many of them attached to and even spread out on the surface. Five hours later the majority of the attached fragments incorporated [3H]leucine. Time-lapse films showed that fragments were able to extend and retract pseudopodia at least for several hours after their formation. Although the fragments degenerated within a few days, in the present experiments the possibility was not excluded that fragments which had lost only a very small amount of chromatin and cytoplasm survived for longer periods of time. The observations clearly indicate viability of many newly formed fragments

The Analysis of Speech Act in a Comic Conversation

The purpose of this research was to analyze speech act of comic conversation. An utterance has two kinds of meaning, they are, Proportional meaning (locutionary meaning): is a speech act that a speaker performs when referring or predicting an utterance or the literal meaning of what is said. This is basic literal meaning of the utterance which is conveyed by the particular words and structures that the utterance contain, and Illocutionary meaning (illocutionary force): the social function of what is said. This is the real meaning the speaker intends to express. There are five speech acts classification; they are, First, Representative: statements may be judged true or false because they aim to describe a state of affairs in the world. Second, Directive: statements attempt to make the other person's actions fit the propositional content. Third, Comissive: A statements that commits the speaker to doing something in the future. Then, Expressive: A statement in which the speaker expresses feeling and attitudes about something. And the last, Declarative: statements that attempt to change the world by “representing it as having been changed”. Maxims conversation is one of the instrument to develop the conversation to be good. The theory can be identified four unit, they are: Quality: make your contribution truthful and sincere, Quantity: provide sufficient information, Relation: make your contribution a relevant one, and Manner: make your contribution brief, present it in an orderly fashion and avoid ambiguisties. The focuses of this study are to describe the locutionary and ilocutionary meaning of used in the comic and to describe the speech act classification used in the comic.In this research, researcher used qualitative and the tool of data collection was used documentation. the researcher tried to analyze the data using Ethnography of communication Dell Hymes's SPEAKING mnemonic

Plastron properties of a superhydrophobic surface

Most insects and spiders drown when submerged during flooding or tidal inundation, but some are able to survive and others can remain submerged indefinitely without harm. Many achieve this by natural adaptations to their surface morphology to trap films of air, creating plastrons which fix the water-vapor interface and provide an incompressible oxygen-carbon dioxide exchange surface. Here the authors demonstrate how the surface of an extremely water-repellent foam mimics this mechanism of underwater respiration and allows direct extraction of oxygen from aerated water. The biomimetic principle demonstrated can be applied to a wide variety of man-made superhydrophobic materials

On surface wave fields arising in soil-structure interaction problems

Abstract The paper aims at generalization of the specialized formulation, originally developed for the surface wave fields induced by prescribed surface stresses. We extend this formulation to soil-structure interaction problems with unknown contact stresses and internal sources. The problem for an internal source embedded in an elastic half-plane is reduced to that for prescribed surface stresses by considering the point source solution for an unbounded medium. In this case the sub-problems corresponding to normal and tangential stresses assume a separate treatment. Then, we analyze interaction of an elastic half-plane with a one degree of freedom mass-spring system. The focus is on a near-resonant regime investigated by a perturbation technique

Development of atopic sensitization in Finnish and Estonian children : A latent class analysis in a multicenter cohort

Background: The prevalence of atopy is associated with a Western lifestyle, as shown by studies comparing neighboring regions with different socioeconomic backgrounds. Atopy might reflect various conditions differing in their susceptibility to environmental factors. Objective: We sought to define phenotypes of atopic sensitization in early childhood and examine their association with allergic diseases and hereditary background in Finland and Estonia. Methods: The analysis included 1603 Finnish and 1657 Estonian children from the DIABIMMUNE multicenter young children cohort. Specific IgE levels were measured at age 3, 4, and 5 years, respectively, and categorized into 3 CAP classes. Latent class analysis was performed with the statistical software package poLCA in R software. Results: Both populations differed in terms of socioeconomic status and environmental determinants, such as pet ownership, farm-related exposure, time spent playing outdoors, and prevalence of allergic diseases (all P Conclusion: Despite profound differences in environmental exposures, there might exist genuine patterns of atopic sensitization. The distribution of these patterns might determine the contribution of atopic sensitization to disease onset.Peer reviewe

Protocol study: Sexual and reproductive health knowledge, information-seeking behaviour and attitudes among Saudi women: A questionnaire survey of university students

Copyright © 2014 Farih et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background - Sexual and reproductive health (SRH), a basic right for women worldwide, is infrequently researched in countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). No empirical studies of SRH among Saudi women exist. This protocol describes a study to explore the SRH knowledge, information-seeking behaviour and attitudes of Saudi female university students. Methods/Design - This study will administer a questionnaire survey to female students at 13 universities in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The questionnaire was developed following a literature search to identify relevant content, with psychometrically tested tools used when available. The content layout and the wording and order of the questions were designed to minimize the risk of bias. The questionnaire has been translated into Arabic and piloted in preparation for administration to the study sample. Ethical approval for the study has been granted (reference no. QMREC2012/54). After questionnaire administration, the data will be collated, analysed and reported anonymously. The findings will be published in compliance with reporting guidelines for survey research. Discussion - This study will be the first to provide fundamental information concerning Saudi females university students SRH knowledge and information needs.King Abdullah Scholarship Program, Saudi Arabi

Excessive Unbalanced Meat Consumption in the First Year of Life Increases Asthma Risk in the PASTURE and LUKAS2 Birth Cohorts

A higher diversity of food items introduced in the first year of life has been inversely related to subsequent development of asthma. In the current analysis, we applied latent class analysis (LCA) to systematically assess feeding patterns and to relate them to asthma risk at school age. PASTURE (N=1133) and LUKAS2 (N=228) are prospective birth cohort studies designed to evaluate protective and risk factors for atopic diseases, including dietary patterns. Feeding practices were reported by parents in monthly diaries between the 4(th) and 12(th) month of life. For 17 common food items parents indicated frequency of feeding during the last 4 weeks in 4 categories. The resulting 153 ordinal variables were entered in a LCA. The intestinal microbiome was assessed at the age of 12 months by 16S rRNA sequencing. Data on feeding practice with at least one reported time point was available in 1042 of the 1133 recruited children. Best LCA model fit was achieved by the 4-class solution. One class showed an elevated risk of asthma at age 6 as compared to the other classes (adjusted odds ratio (aOR): 8.47, 95% CI 2.52-28.56, p = 0.001) and was characterized by daily meat consumption and rare consumption of milk and yoghurt. A refined LCA restricted to meat, milk, and yoghurt confirmed the asthma risk effect of a particular class in PASTURE and independently in LUKAS2, which we thus termed unbalanced meat consumption (UMC). The effect of UMC was particularly strong for non-atopic asthma and asthma irrespectively of early bronchitis (aOR: 17.0, 95% CI 5.2-56.1, p < 0.001). UMC fostered growth of iron scavenging bacteria such as Acinetobacter (aOR: 1.28, 95% CI 1.00-1.63, p = 0.048), which was also related to asthma (aOR: 1.55, 95% CI 1.18-2.03, p = 0.001). When reconstructing bacterial metabolic pathways from 16S rRNA sequencing data, biosynthesis of siderophore group nonribosomal peptides emerged as top hit (aOR: 1.58, 95% CI 1.13-2.19, p = 0.007). By a data-driven approach we found a pattern of overly meat consumption at the expense of other protein sources to confer risk of asthma. Microbiome analysis of fecal samples pointed towards overgrowth of iron-dependent bacteria and bacterial iron metabolism as a potential explanation.Peer reviewe