Hyperglycaemic emergencies are a common problem

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Wiley encyclopedia of management

Definition of life cycle strategy as included in the Wiley Encyclopedia of Management.peer-reviewe

A knowledge base for the discovery of function, diagnostic potential and drug effects on cellular and extracellular miRNAs

Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs that play an important role in the regulation of various biological processes through their interaction with cellular mRNAs. A significant amount of miRNAs has been found in extracellular human body fluids (e.g. plasma and serum) and some circulating miRNAs in the blood have been successfully revealed as biomarkers for diseases including cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Released miRNAs do not necessarily reflect the abundance of miRNAs in the cell of origin. It is claimed that release of miRNAs from cells into blood and ductal fluids is selective and that the selection of released miRNAs may correlate with malignancy. Moreover, miRNAs play a significant role in pharmacogenomics by down-regulating genes that are important for drug function. In particular, the use of drugs should be taken into consideration while analyzing plasma miRNA levels as drug treatment. This may impair their employment as biomarkers. Description: We enriched our manually curated extracellular/circulating microRNAs database, miRandola, by providing (i) a systematic comparison of expression profiles of cellular and extracellular miRNAs, (ii) a miRNA targets enrichment analysis procedure, (iii) information on drugs and their effect on miRNA expression, obtained by applying a natural language processing algorithm to abstracts obtained from PubMed. Conclusions: This allows users to improve the knowledge about the function, diagnostic potential, and the drug effects on cellular and circulating miRNAs

Off-target effects of bacillus Calmette–Guerin vaccination on immune responses to SARS-CoV-2: implications for protection against severe COVID-19

Background and objectives. Because of its beneficial off-target effects against non-mycobacterial infectious diseases, bacillus Calmette–Guerin (BCG) vaccination might be an accessible early intervention to boost protection against novel pathogens. Multiple epidemiological studies and randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are investigating the protective effect of BCG against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Using samples from participants in a placebo-controlled RCT aiming to determine whether BCG vaccination reduces the incidence and severity of COVID-19, we investigated the immunomodulatory effects of BCG on in vitro immune responses to SARS-CoV-2. Methods. This study used peripheral blood taken from participants in the multicentre RCT and BCG vaccination to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare workers (BRACE trial). The whole blood taken from BRACE trial participants was stimulated with c-irradiated SARS CoV-2-infected or mock-infected Vero cell supernatant. Cytokine responses were measured by multiplex cytokine analysis, and single-cell immunophenotyping was made by flow cytometry. Results. BCG vaccination, but not placebo vaccination, reduced SARS-CoV-2-induced secretion of cytokines known to be associated with severe COVID-19, including IL-6, TNF-a and IL-10. In addition, BCG vaccination promoted an effector memory phenotype in both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, and an activation of eosinophils in response to SARS-CoV-2. Conclusions. The immunomodulatory signature of BCG’s off-target effects on SARS-CoV-2 is consistent with a protective immune response against severe COVID-19

MiRandola 2017: A curated knowledge base of non-invasive biomarkers

miRandola (http://mirandola.iit.cnr.it/) is a database of extracellular non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) that was initially published in 2012, foreseeing the relevance of ncRNAs as non-invasive biomarkers. An increasing amount of experimental evidence shows that ncRNAs are frequently dysregulated in diseases. Further, ncRNAs have been discovered in different extracellular forms, such as exosomes, which circulate in human body fluids. Thus, miRandola 2017 is an effort to update and collect the accumulating information on extracellular ncRNAs that is spread across scientific publications and different databases. Data are manually curated from 314 articles that describe miRNAs, long non-coding RNAs and circular RNAs. Fourteen organisms are now included in the database, and associations of ncRNAs with 25 drugs, 47 sample types and 197 diseases. miRandola also classifies extracellular RNAs based on their extracellular form: Argonaute2 protein, exosome, microvesicle, microparticle, membrane vesicle, high density lipoprotein and circulating. We also implemented a new web interface to improve the user experience

Designing and implementing sample and data collection for an international genetics study: the Type 1 Diabetes Genetics Consortium (T1DGC)

Background and Purpose The Type 1 Diabetes Genetics Consortium (T1DGC) is an international project whose primary aims are to: (a) discover genes that modify type 1 diabetes risk; and (b) expand upon the existing genetic resources for type 1 diabetes research. The initial goal was to collect 2500 affected sibling pair (ASP) families worldwide

DMRN+16: Digital Music Research Network One-day Workshop 2021

DMRN+16: Digital Music Research Network One-day Workshop 2021 Queen Mary University of London Tuesday 21st December 2021 Keynote speakers Keynote 1. Prof. Sophie Scott -Director, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL. Title: "Sound on the brain - insights from functional neuroimaging and neuroanatomy" Abstract In this talk I will use functional imaging and models of primate neuroanatomy to explore how sound is processed in the human brain. I will demonstrate that sound is represented cortically in different parallel streams. I will expand this to show how this can impact on the concept of auditory perception, which arguably incorporates multiple kinds of distinct perceptual processes. I will address the roles that subcortical processes play in this, and also the contributions from hemispheric asymmetries. Keynote 2: Prof. Gus Xia - Assistant Professor at NYU Shanghai Title: "Learning interpretable music representations: from human stupidity to artificial intelligence" Abstract Gus has been leading the Music X Lab in developing intelligent systems that help people better compose and learn music. In this talk, he will show us the importance of music representation for both humans and machines, and how to learn better music representations via the design of inductive bias. Once we got interpretable music representations, the potential applications are limitless

Puzzling over spurdogs : molecular taxonomy assessment of the Squalus species in the Strait of Sicily

The actual occurrence of Squalus megalops in the Mediterranean Sea has recently been questioned. Several research works which sought to assess available morphological and meristic features that differentiate S. megalops from other Squalus species in the Mediterranean Sea, revealed poor discriminatory power and high variability of the assessed characters, especially when comparing S. megalops and S. blainville. The application of molecular tools does not support the presence of S. megalops. In the present study, we screened spurdog species from the Strait of Sicily using a molecular taxonomy approach based on two mitochondrial DNA markers and we report the occurrence of two Squalus lineages characterizing specimens collected from the stretch of sea between Tunisia, southern Sicily, Malta and Libya. The results support the hypothesis that a common species, S. blainville, currently inhabits the Mediterranean Sea, while a second and rare species is probably an occasional visitor with high morphological similarity to the S. megalops and S. blainville but is genetically distinct from both. Within this perspective, the occurrence of S. megalops in the Mediterranean Sea is not confirmed and our study highlights the taxonomic uncertainties in relation to the occurrence and distribution of Squalus species in this region. We encourage the establishment of a coordinated international effort to implement a comprehensive and integrated taxonomic assessment on this genus which represents an irreplaceable component of the biodiversity of the area.peer-reviewe

New Mediterranean biodiversity records (March 2016)

In this Collective Article on “New Mediterranean Biodiversity Records”, we present additional records of species found in the Mediterranean Sea. These records refer to eight different countries mainly throughout the northern part of the basin, and include 28 species, belonging to five Phyla. The findings per country include the following species: Spain: Callinectes sapidus and Chelidonura fulvipunctata; Monaco: Aplysia dactylomela; Italy: Charybdis (Charybdis) feriata, Carcharodon carcharias, Seriola fasciata, and Siganus rivulatus; Malta: Pomacanthus asfur; Croatia: Lagocephalus sceleratus and Pomadasys incisus; Montenegro: Lagocephalus sceleratus; Greece: Amathia (Zoobotryon) verticillata, Atys macandrewii, Cerithium scabridum, Chama pacifica, Dendostrea cf. folium, Ergalatax junionae, Septifer cumingii, Syphonota geographica, Syrnola fasciata, Oxyu- richthys petersi, Scarus ghobban, Scorpaena maderensis, Solea aegyptiaca and Upeneus pori; Turkey: Lobotes surinamensis, Ruvettus pretiosus and Ophiocten abyssicolum. In the current article, the presence of Taractes rubescens (Jordan & Evermann, 1887) is recorded for the first time in the Mediterranean from Italy. The great contribution of citizen scientists in monitoring biodiversity records is reflected herein, as 10% of the authors are citizen scientists, and contributed 37.5% of the new findings.peer-reviewe