240 research outputs found

    Biology of the European Corn Borer (Pyrausta Nubilalis Hubn.) and Two Closely Related Species in Northern Ohio

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    Author Institution: Assistant Entomologist, Cereal and Forage Insect Investigations, Bureau of Entomology, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Sandusky, Ohi

    Evolutionary impact assessment of the North Sea plaice fishery

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    There is growing evidence that fishing causes evolution in life-history traits that affect the productivity of fish stocks. Here we explore the impact of fisheries-induced evolu-tion (FIE) on the productivity of North Sea plaice using an eco-genetic individual-based model by comparing management scenarios with and without an evolutionary re-sponse. Under status-quo management, plaice evolve towards smaller size at age, ear-lier maturation, and higher reproductive investment. Current reference points of maximum sustainable yield (MSY) and corresponding fishing-mortality rate ( ) that ignore FIE will decrease and cannot be considered sustainable. The nature and extent of the change through FIE depend on fishing effort and selectivity. The adverse evolutionary effects can be reduced – and even reversed – by implementing a dome-shaped exploitation pattern protecting the large fish. The evolutionarily sustainable maximum yield can be obtained by combining such a dome-shaped exploitation pattern with a reduction in fishing mortality and an increase in mesh size; it is similar to the maximum sustainable yield that would apply if life-history traits were static. Fisheries managers will need to trade off the short-term loss in yield associated with evolutionarily informed management with the long-term loss in yield FIE causes under evolutionarily uninformed management

    Maxillofacial Fractures in Electric and Conventional Bicycle-Related Accidents

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    PURPOSE: With the increased use of both e-bike and conventional bicycle, the number of bicycle-related accidents has increased accordingly. To determine whether there are differences in maxillofacial injuries between these 2 types of bicycle accidents, e-bike and conventional bicycle accidents were compared.MATERIAL AND METHODS: A retrospective cohort study was conducted for all the consecutive patients with maxillofacial injury due to e-bike and conventional bicycle accidents attending the emergency department of 4 hospitals in the Netherlands between May 2018 and October 2019. Primary outcomes are maxillofacial fractures present or absent and the severity of maxillofacial injury using the Maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale and Facial Injury Severity Scale (FISS) after e-bike and conventional bicycle accidents. A binary logistic regression analysis was used to assess differences in risk between an e-bike and conventional bicycle accident, where age, alcohol use, and comorbidities were added as covariates, for maxillofacial fractures, dental injury, and severe maxillofacial fractures.RESULTS: In total, 311 patients were included (73 e-bikers and 238 conventional cyclists). Sex distribution was equal in both groups (45% male vs 55% female). The e-bike group was older (66 vs 53 median age in years, P &lt; .001) and had more comorbidities (0 vs 1, P &lt; .001), while alcohol use was higher in the conventional bicycle group (32% vs 16%, P = .008). e-Bikers sustained midfacial fractures more frequently (47% vs 34%, P = .04), whereas conventional cyclists more often had mandibular fractures (1% vs 11%, P = .01). Although median Maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale and FISS scores did not differ between e-bike and conventional bicycle accidents, severe maxillofacial fractures (FISS score ≥ 2) were observed more often in the conventional cyclists (45% vs 25%, P = .04). No significant differences in risk of midfacial, mandibular, and severe maxillofacial fractures were found between e-bikers and conventional cyclists irrespective of their age, alcohol use, and comorbidities.CONCLUSION: Both the distribution and the severe maxillofacial fractures differed between the e-bike and conventional bicycle accident patients. Patient-specific characteristics, such as age, alcohol use, and comorbidities, may have a greater influence on sustaining maxillofacial fractures than the type of bicycle ridden.</p

    Mitigating seafloor disturbance of bottom trawl fisheries for North Sea sole Solea solea by replacing mechanical with electrical stimulation

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    Funding: ADR, NTH, PM, HP, JJP, TvK: European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) through the Netherlands Ministry of Agriculture Nature and Food Quality (LNV) (Grand/Award Number: 1300021172); NO ADR, JD, ORE, NTH, AI, FO, HP, JJP, TvK: FP 7 project BENTHIS (grant no. 312088); NO.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

    Pilot Aanleveren Visserijgegevens DCP EU

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    Op grond van een Europese verordening (anon. 2000) zijn de lidstaten van de Europese Unie verplicht om Unie verplicht nationale programma's in te stellen om gegevens te verzamelen waarmee de toestand van visbestanden en de visserijsector geëvalueerd kan worden

    Strong altitudinal partitioning in the distributions of ectomycorrhizal fungi along a short (300 m) elevation gradient

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    • Changes in species richness and distributions of ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungal communities along altitudinal gradients have been attributed to changes in both host distributions and abiotic variables. However, few studies have considered altitudinal relationships of ECM fungi associated with a single host to identify the role of abiotic drivers. To address this, ECM fungal communities associated with one host were assessed along five altitudinal transects in Scotland. • Roots of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) were collected from sites between 300 and 550–600 m altitude, and ECM fungal communities were identified by 454 pyrosequencing of the fungal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region. Soil moisture, temperature, pH, carbon : nitrogen (C : N) ratio and organic matter content were measured as potential predictors of fungal species richness and community composition. • Altitude did not affect species richness of ECM fungal communities, but strongly influenced fungal community composition. Shifts in community composition along the altitudinal gradient were most clearly related to changes in soil moisture and temperature. • Our results show that a 300 m altitudinal gradient produced distinct shifts in ECM fungal communities associated with a single host, and that this pattern was strongly related to climatic variables. This finding suggests significant climatic niche partitioning among ECM fungal species

    Overdetection, overtreatment and costs in prostate-specific antigen screening for prostate cancer

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    Background:Prostate cancer screening with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) has shown to reduce prostate cancer mortality in the European Randomised study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC) trial. Overdetection and overtreatment are substantial unfavourable side effects with consequent healthcare costs. In this study the effects of introducing widespread PSA screening is evaluated.Methods:The MISCAN model was used to simulate prostate cancer growth and detection in a simulated cohort of 100 000 men (European standard population) over 25 years. PSA screening from age 55 to 70 or 75, with 1, 2 and 4-year-intervals is simulated. Number of diagnoses, PSA tests, biopsies, treatments, deaths and corresponding costs for 100 000 men and for United Kingdom and United States are compared.Results:Without screening 2378 men per 100 000 were predicted to be diagnosed with prostate cancer compared with 4956 men after screening at 4-year intervals. By introducing screening, the costs would increase with 100% to \[euro]60 695 000. Overdetection is related to 39% of total costs (\[euro]23 669 000). Screening until age 75 is relatively most expensive because of the costs of overtreatment.Conclusion:Introduction of PSA screening will increase total healthcare costs for prostate cancer substantially, of which the actual screening costs will be a small part

    Elevated CSF and plasma complement proteins in genetic frontotemporal dementia: results from the GENFI study

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    Neuroinflammation is emerging as an important pathological process in frontotemporal dementia (FTD), but biomarkers are lacking. We aimed to determine the value of complement proteins, which are key components of innate immunity, as biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and plasma of presymptomatic and symptomatic genetic FTD mutation carriers.We measured the complement proteins C1q and C3b in CSF by ELISAs in 224 presymptomatic and symptomatic GRN, C9orf72 or MAPT mutation carriers and non-carriers participating in the Genetic Frontotemporal Dementia Initiative (GENFI), a multicentre cohort study. Next, we used multiplex immunoassays to measure a panel of 14 complement proteins in plasma of 431 GENFI participants. We correlated complement protein levels with corresponding clinical and neuroimaging data, neurofilament light chain (NfL) and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP).CSF C1q and C3b, as well as plasma C2 and C3, were elevated in symptomatic mutation carriers compared to presymptomatic carriers and non-carriers. In genetic subgroup analyses, these differences remained statistically significant for C9orf72 mutation carriers. In presymptomatic carriers, several complement proteins correlated negatively with grey matter volume of FTD-related regions and positively with NfL and GFAP. In symptomatic carriers, correlations were additionally observed with disease duration and with Mini Mental State Examination and Clinical Dementia Rating scale® plus NACC Frontotemporal lobar degeneration sum of boxes scores.Elevated levels of CSF C1q and C3b, as well as plasma C2 and C3, demonstrate the presence of complement activation in the symptomatic stage of genetic FTD. Intriguingly, correlations with several disease measures in presymptomatic carriers suggest that complement protein levels might increase before symptom onset. Although the overlap between groups precludes their use as diagnostic markers, further research is needed to determine their potential to monitor dysregulation of the complement system in FTD.© 2022. The Author(s)

    A data-driven disease progression model of fluid biomarkers in genetic frontotemporal dementia

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    Several CSF and blood biomarkers for genetic frontotemporal dementia (FTD) have been proposed, including those reflecting neuroaxonal loss (neurofilament light chain (NfL) and phosphorylated neurofilament heavy chain (pNfH)), synapse dysfunction (neuronal pentraxin 2 (NPTX2)), astrogliosis (glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP)), and complement activation (C1q, C3b). Determining the sequence in which biomarkers become abnormal over the course of disease could facilitate disease staging and help identify mutation carriers with prodromal or early-stage FTD, which is especially important as pharmaceutical trials emerge. We aimed to model the sequence of biomarker abnormalities in presymptomatic and symptomatic genetic FTD using cross-sectional data from the Genetic Frontotemporal dementia Initiative (GENFI), a longitudinal cohort study. 275 presymptomatic and 127 symptomatic carriers of mutations in GRN, C9orf72 or MAPT, as well as 247 non-carriers, were selected from the GENFI cohort based on availability of one or more of the aforementioned biomarkers. Nine presymptomatic carriers developed symptoms within 18 months of sample collection ('converters'). Sequences of biomarker abnormalities were modelled for the entire group using discriminative event-based modelling (DEBM) and for each genetic subgroup using co-initialised DEBM. These models estimate probabilistic biomarker abnormalities in a data-driven way and do not rely on prior diagnostic information or biomarker cut-off points. Using cross-validation, subjects were subsequently assigned a disease stage based on their position along the disease progression timeline. CSF NPTX2 was the first biomarker to become abnormal, followed by blood and CSF NfL, blood pNfH, blood GFAP, and finally CSF C3b and C1q. Biomarker orderings did not differ significantly between genetic subgroups, but more uncertainty was noted in the C9orf72 and MAPT groups than for GRN. Estimated disease stages could distinguish symptomatic from presymptomatic carriers and non-carriers with areas under the curve (AUC) of 0.84 (95% confidence interval 0.80-0.89) and 0.90 (0.86-0.94) respectively. The AUC to distinguish converters from non-converting presymptomatic carriers was 0.85 (0.75-0.95). Our data-driven model of genetic FTD revealed that NPTX2 and NfL are the earliest to change among the selected biomarkers. Further research should investigate their utility as candidate selection tools for pharmaceutical trials. The model's ability to accurately estimate individual disease stages could improve patient stratification and track the efficacy of therapeutic interventions
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