Riverine Carbon Cycling as a Function of Seasonality

Montana has one of the most dynamic climate regimes in all of the United States, with seasonal changes spanning a large range of temperatures.  In Montana, we depend on water originating from snow and glacial melt. These freshwater ecosystems are considered to be some of the most vulnerable to climate change on Earth.  Glacially fed ecosystems are unique habitats for a vast array of life and geochemical processes, including carbon cycling. In order to study carbon cycling in environments vulnerable to change, an interdisciplinary approach including biogeochemical analyses of river DOM production and external allochthonous inputs is necessary to evaluate the impacts of climate change.  The overarching hypothesis for this work is: Seasonal changes in Montana rivers will cause shifts in carbon cycling as ecosystems respond to changes in temperature.  Unlike our initial hypothesis that the amount of sunlight and temperature would play a bigger role in what was happening, the time of the year was much more significant. In Big Sky OC levels in June for the sunny and canopy covered reaches were similar, 1.24 and 1.23 mg C/L, respectively; whereas at the end of July OC in the sunny reach was 0.42 mg C/Land the canopy cover reach was 0.955 mg C/L. The same trend is seen for the urban location in Bozeman. Cell abundance in the reaches followed similar trends, which were not solely based on temperature

Human embryo models: the importance of national policy and governance review

Integrated and non-integrated stem cell-based models of human embryos (SCB-EMs) are becoming widely adopted tools in biomedical research with distinct advantages over animal models for studying human development. Although SCB-EMs have tremendous benefits for research, they raise a number of social, ethical and legal questions which affect future research and widespread adoption in industry and clinical settings. The 2021 ISSCR guidelines for Stem Cell Research and Clinical Translation provide helpful guidance on many of these issues but do not have force in domestic law. Careful appraisal and development of national legal and ethical frameworks is crucial. Paving the way to better regulation provides an ethical and social foundation to continue using human embryo models and to fully realise their potential benefits for reproductive medicine

Effects of Goal Type and Reinforcement Type on Self-Reported Domain-Specific Walking Among Inactive Adults: 2×2 Factorial Randomized Controlled Trial

Background: WalkIT Arizona was a 2×2 factorial trial examining the effects of goal type (adaptive versus static) and reinforcement type (immediate versus delayed) to increase moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) among insufficiently active adults. The 12-month intervention combined mobile health (mHealth) technology with behavioral strategies to test scalable population-health approaches to increasing MVPA. Self-reported physical activity provided domain-specific information to help contextualize the intervention effects. Objective: The aim of this study was to report on the secondary outcomes of self-reported walking for transportation and leisure over the course of the 12-month WalkIT intervention. Methods: A total of 512 participants aged 19 to 60 years (n=330 [64.5%] women; n=425 [83%] Caucasian/white, n=96 [18.8%] Hispanic/Latinx) were randomized into interventions based on type of goals and reinforcements. The International Physical Activity Questionnaire-long form assessed walking for transportation and leisure at baseline, and at 6 months and 12 months of the intervention. Negative binomial hurdle models were used to examine the effects of goal and reinforcement type on (1) odds of reporting any (versus no) walking/week and (2) total reported minutes of walking/week, adjusted for neighborhood walkability and socioeconomic status. Separate analyses were conducted for transportation and leisure walking, using complete cases and multiple imputation. Results: All intervention groups reported increased walking at 12 months relative to baseline. Effects of the intervention differed by domain: a significant three-way goal by reinforcement by time interaction was observed for total minutes of leisure walking/week, whereas time was the only significant factor that contributed to transportation walking. A sensitivity analysis indicated minimal differences between complete case analysis and multiple imputation. Conclusions: This study is the first to report differential effects of adaptive versus static goals for self-reported walking by domain. Results support the premise that individual-level PA interventions are domain- and context-specific and may be helpful in guiding further intervention refinement

Organoid Sample Preparation and Extraction for LC-MS Peptidomics.

This protocol describes the peptidomic analysis of organoid lysates, FACS-purified cell populations, and 2D culture secretions by liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS). Currently, most peptides are quantified by ELISA, limiting the peptides that can be studied. However, an LC-MS-based approach allows more peptides to be monitored. Our group has previously used LC-MS for tissue peptidomics and secretion of enteroendocrine peptides from primary culture. Now, we extend the use to organoid models. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Goldspink et al. (2020)

Phylogeny and classification of novel diversity in Sainouroidea (Cercozoa, Rhizaria) sheds light on a highly diverse and divergent clade

Sainouroidea is a molecularly diverse clade of cercozoan flagellates and amoebae in the eukaryotic supergroup Rhizaria. Previous 18S rDNA environmental sequencing of globally collected fecal and soil samples revealed great diversity and high sequence divergence in the Sainouroidea. However, a very limited amount of this diversity has been observed or described. The two described genera of amoebae in this clade are Guttulinopsis, which displays aggregative multicellularity, and Rosculus, which does not. Although the identity of Guttulinopsis is straightforward due to the multicellular fruiting bodies they form, the same is not true for Rosculus, and the actual identity of the original isolate is unclear. Here we isolated amoebae with morphologies like that of Guttulinopsis and Rosculus from many environments and analyzed them using 18S rDNA sequencing, light microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. We define a molecular species concept for Sainouroidea that resulted in the description of 4 novel genera and 12 novel species of naked amoebae. Aggregative fruiting is restricted to the genus Guttulinopsis, but other than this there is little morphological variation amongst these taxa. Taken together, simple identification of these amoebae is problematic and potentially unresolvable without the 18S rDNA sequence

exoplanet : gradient-based probabilistic inference for exoplanet data & other astronomical time series

Funding: This research was partially conducted during the Exostar19 program at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, which was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF PHY-1748958."exoplanet" is a toolkit for probabilistic modeling of astronomical time series data, with a focus on observations of exoplanets, using PyMC3 (Salvatier et al., 2016). PyMC3 is a flexible and high-performance model-building language and inference engine that scales well to problems with a large number of parameters. "exoplanet" extends PyMC3's modeling language to support many of the custom functions and probability distributions required when fitting exoplanet datasets or other astronomical time series. While it has been used for other applications, such as the study of stellar variability, the primary purpose of "exoplanet" is the characterization of exoplanets or multiple star systems using time-series photometry, astrometry, and/or radial velocity. In particular, the typical use case would be to use one or more of these datasets to place constraints on the physical and orbital parameters of the system, such as planet mass or orbital period, while simultaneously taking into account the effects of stellar variability.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Prenatal exome sequencing in anomalous fetuses: new opportunities and challenges

We investigated the diagnostic and clinical performance of exome sequencing (ES) in fetuses with sonographic abnormalities with normal karyotype, microarray and, in some cases, normal gene specific sequencing

Selective stimulation of colonic L cells improves metabolic outcomes in mice

Funder: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000268Abstract: Aims/hypothesis: Insulin-like peptide-5 (INSL5) is found only in distal colonic L cells, which co-express glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and peptide YY (PYY). GLP-1 is a well-known insulin secretagogue, and GLP-1 and PYY are anorexigenic, whereas INSL5 is considered orexigenic. We aimed to clarify the metabolic impact of selective stimulation of distal colonic L cells in mice. Methods: Insl5 promoter-driven expression of Gq-coupled Designer Receptor Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs (DREADD) was employed to activate distal colonic L cells (LdistalDq). IPGTT and food intake were assessed with and without DREADD activation. Results: LdistalDq cell stimulation with clozapine N-oxide (CNO; 0.3 mg/kg i.p.) increased plasma GLP-1 and PYY (2.67- and 3.31-fold, respectively); INSL5 was not measurable in plasma but was co-secreted with GLP-1 and PYY in vitro. IPGTT (2 g/kg body weight) revealed significantly improved glucose tolerance following CNO injection. CNO-treated mice also exhibited reduced food intake and body weight after 24 h, and increased defecation, the latter being sensitive to 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) receptor 3 inhibition. Pre-treatment with a GLP1 receptor-blocking antibody neutralised the CNO-dependent improvement in glucose tolerance but did not affect the reduction in food intake, and an independent group of animals pair-fed to the CNO-treatment group demonstrated attenuated weight loss. Pre-treatment with JNJ-31020028, a neuropeptide Y receptor type 2 antagonist, abolished the CNO-dependent effect on food intake. Assessment of whole body physiology in metabolic cages revealed LdistalDq cell stimulation increased energy expenditure and increased activity. Acute CNO-induced food intake and glucose homeostasis outcomes were maintained after 2 weeks on a high-fat diet. Conclusions/interpretation: This proof-of-concept study demonstrates that selective distal colonic L cell stimulation has beneficial metabolic outcomes. Graphical abstrac

Using Verbal Autopsy to Measure Causes of Death: the Comparative Performance of Existing Methods.

Monitoring progress with disease and injury reduction in many populations will require widespread use of verbal autopsy (VA). Multiple methods have been developed for assigning cause of death from a VA but their application is restricted by uncertainty about their reliability. We investigated the validity of five automated VA methods for assigning cause of death: InterVA-4, Random Forest (RF), Simplified Symptom Pattern (SSP), Tariff method (Tariff), and King-Lu (KL), in addition to physician review of VA forms (PCVA), based on 12,535 cases from diverse populations for which the true cause of death had been reliably established. For adults, children, neonates and stillbirths, performance was assessed separately for individuals using sensitivity, specificity, Kappa, and chance-corrected concordance (CCC) and for populations using cause specific mortality fraction (CSMF) accuracy, with and without additional diagnostic information from prior contact with health services. A total of 500 train-test splits were used to ensure that results are robust to variation in the underlying cause of death distribution. Three automated diagnostic methods, Tariff, SSP, and RF, but not InterVA-4, performed better than physician review in all age groups, study sites, and for the majority of causes of death studied. For adults, CSMF accuracy ranged from 0.764 to 0.770, compared with 0.680 for PCVA and 0.625 for InterVA; CCC varied from 49.2% to 54.1%, compared with 42.2% for PCVA, and 23.8% for InterVA. For children, CSMF accuracy was 0.783 for Tariff, 0.678 for PCVA, and 0.520 for InterVA; CCC was 52.5% for Tariff, 44.5% for PCVA, and 30.3% for InterVA. For neonates, CSMF accuracy was 0.817 for Tariff, 0.719 for PCVA, and 0.629 for InterVA; CCC varied from 47.3% to 50.3% for the three automated methods, 29.3% for PCVA, and 19.4% for InterVA. The method with the highest sensitivity for a specific cause varied by cause. Physician review of verbal autopsy questionnaires is less accurate than automated methods in determining both individual and population causes of death. Overall, Tariff performs as well or better than other methods and should be widely applied in routine mortality surveillance systems with poor cause of death certification practices