Characterization of Sex-Based Dna Methylation Signatures in the Airways During Early Life.

Human respiratory conditions are largely influenced by the individual\u27s sex resulting in overall higher risk for males. Sex-based respiratory differences are present at birth suggesting a strong genetic component. Our objective was to characterize early life sex-based genomic signatures determined by variable X-chromosome methylation in the airways. We compared male versus female genome-wide DNA methylation in nasal airway samples from newborns and infants aged 1-6 months (N = 12). We analyzed methylation signals across CpG sites mapped to each X-linked gene using an unsupervised classifier (principal components) followed by an internal evaluation and an exhaustive cross-validation. Results were validated in an independent population of children (N = 72) following the same algorithm. X-linked genes with significant sex-based differential methylation in the nasal airway of infants represented only about 50% of the unique protein coding transcripts. X-linked genes without significant sex-based differential methylation included genes with evidence of escaping X-inactivation and female-biased airway expression. These genes showed similar methylation patterns in males and females suggesting unbalanced X-chromosome dosage. In conclusion, we identified that the human airways have already sex-based DNA methylation signatures at birth. These early airway epigenomic marks may determine sex-based respiratory phenotypes and overall predisposition to develop respiratory disorders later in life

Netlang: A software for the linguistic analysis of corpora by means of complex networks

To date there is no software that directly connects the linguistic analysis of a conversation to a network program. Networks programs are able to extract statistical information from data basis with information about systems of interacting elements. Language has also been conceived and studied as a complex system. However, most proposals do not analyze language according to linguistic theory, but use instead computational systems that should save time at the price of leaving aside many crucial aspects for linguistic theory. Some approaches to network studies on language do apply precise linguistic analyses, made by a linguist. The problem until now has been the lack of interface between the analysis of a sentence and its integration into the network that could be managed by a linguist and that could save the analysis of any language. Previous works have used old software that was not created for these purposes and that often produced problems with some idiosyncrasies of the target language. The desired interface should be able to deal with the syntactic peculiarities of a particular language, the options of linguistic theory preferred by the user and the preservation of morpho-syntactic information (lexical categories and syntactic relations between items). Netlang is the first program able to do that. Recently, a new kind of linguistic analysis has been developed, which is able to extract a complexity pattern from the speaker’s linguistic production which is depicted as a network where words are inside nodes, and these nodes connect each other by means of edges or links (the information inside the edge can be syntactic, semantic, etc.). The Netlang software has become the bridge between rough linguistic data and the network program. Netlang has integrated and improved the functions of programs used in the past, namely the DGA annotator and two scripts (ToXML.pl and Xml2Pairs.py) used for transforming and pruning data. Netlang allows the researcher to make accurate linguistic analysis by means of syntactic dependency relations between words, while tracking record of the nature of such syntactic relationships (subject, object, etc). The Netlang software is presented as a new tool that solve many problems detected in the past. The most important improvement is that Netlang integrates three past applications into one program, and is able to produce a series of file formats that can be read by a network program. Through the Netlang software, the linguistic network analysis based on syntactic analyses, characterized for its low cost and the completely non-invasive procedure aims to evolve into a sufficiently fine grained tool for clinical diagnosis in potential cases of language disorders

Coping with climatic extremes: Dietary fat content decreased the thermal resilience of barramundi (Lates calcarifer)

Aquatic organisms, including important cultured species, are forced to contend with acute changes in water temperature as the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events worsen. Acute temperature spikes are likely to threaten aquaculture species, but dietary intervention may play an important protective role. Increasing the concentration of macronutrients, for example dietary fat content, may improve the thermal resilience of aquaculture species, however, this remains unexplored. To evaluate this hypothesis, we used two commercially available diets (20% versus 10% crude fat) to examine if dietary fat content improves the growth performance of juvenile barramundi (Lates calcarifer) while increasing their resilience to acute thermal stress. Fish were fed their assigned diets for 28-days before assessing the upper thermal tolerance (CTMAX) and the thermal sensitivity of swimming performance (UCRIT) and metabolism. We found that feeding fish a high fat diet resulted in heavier fish, but did not affect the thermal sensitivity of swimming performance or metabolism over an 18 °C temperature range (from 20 to 38 °C). Thermal tolerance was compromised in fish fed the high fat diet by 0.48 °C, showing significantly lower CTMAX. Together, these results suggest that while a high fat diet increases juvenile L. calcarifer growth, it does not benefit physiological performance across a range of relevant water temperatures and may even reduce fish tolerance of extreme water temperatures. These data may have implications for aquaculture production in a warming world, where episodic extremes of temperature are likely to become more frequent

Influence of indentation test factors on the mechanical response of the skin

This study proposes in vivo tests and design of experiments to determine the influence of experimental factors on the mechanical response of the soft tissue. The experimental factors considered are: room temperature (A), indentation velocity (B), indenter temperature (C), pump pressure (D) and muscle activation (E). An inverse method was developed to obtain the constants for constitutive equations of a multilayer biological model (skin, hypodermis, and muscle) through the use of indentation tests in combination with a finite element method. For each combination of the experimental factors, two groups of constants were established from the inverse method. Sixteen combinations of experimental conditions and their corresponding constants for the Mooney-Rivlin constitutive equations were obtained to be used in further numerical models. The factor D and factor interactions ADE, CDE, and ACDE were statistically significant with respect to skin mechanical response. Therefore, it can be concluded that there is not a current equation able to represent the mechanical properties of the skin under all the experimental conditions considered in this stud

Global well-posedness for the KP-I equation on the background of a non localized solution

We prove that the Cauchy problem for the KP-I equation is globally well-posed for initial data which are localized perturbations (of arbitrary size) of a non-localized (i.e. not decaying in all directions) traveling wave solution (e.g. the KdV line solitary wave or the Zaitsev solitary waves which are localized in $x$ and $y$ periodic or conversely)

Comportamiento del cáncer colorectal en pacientes menores de 40 años de dos hospitales universitarios en medellín y neiva entre 1980-2000

Determinar el comportamiento del CCR en pacientes menores de 40 años, diagnosticados en el HUHMP y HUSVP desde 1980 hasta el año 2000, para observar la frecuencia y justificar de manera epidemiológica la importancia de desarrollar nuevos proyectos en el país en esta área

Fenoles totales y actividad antioxidante en hojas de dos especies colombianas del género Meriania (melastomataceae)

Se estudiaron las hojas de las especies Merianiaspeciosa y Meriania nobilis, obteniendoextractos de diferente polaridad, a los que seles realizaron diversas pruebas cualitativas. Sedeterminó el contenido de fenoles totales y seevaluó la actividad captadora de radicales conDPPH (FRS50: capacidad captadora de radicalesque reduce en un 50% al radical DPPH)en microplacas de 96 pozos. Este estudiodeterminó que las dos especies presentan unabuena actividad antioxidante. Los extractosque mayor actividad antioxidante mostraronfueron: butanol con FRS50 de 7,6 ± 0,8 y 23,4± 2,4; acuoso con FRS50 de 28,5 ± 2,9 y 63,0± 2,6 y hexano 2 con FRS50 de 17,0 ± 2,6 y18,2 ± 2,5 mg/L, para las especies M. speciosay M. nobilis respectivamente. Los extractosque presentaron un alto contenido de fenolestotales fueron: metanol 2 con valor de 0,47 ±0,06 y 0,40 ± 0,03 mg equivalentes de ácidogálico (EAG)/g extracto seco (ES) y el extractoacuoso: 0,16 ± 0,06 y 0,12 ± 0,03 mg EAG/gES para las especies M. speciosa y M. nobilisrespectivamente. El extracto butanólico de laespecie M. speciosa mostró la mayor actividadantioxidante con un FRS50 de 7,6 mg/L ± 0,8,este valor es comparable con el valor halladopara la quercetina FRS50: 4,2 mg/L ± 0,4, loque indica que este extracto es promisorioen el contenido de metabolitos secundariosque exhiben actividad antioxidante y parala fabricación de productos agroquímicos,cosméticos y farmacéuticos

Inestabilidad microsatelital en pacientes con cáncer colorectal hereditario sin poliposis (cchsp)

Determinar la frecuencia de Inestabilidad Microsatelital (IM) en pacientes con sospecha clínica de CCHSP, con el fin de iniciar el desarrollo de programas de aproximación diagnóstica

The phase shift of line solitons for the KP-II equation

The KP-II equation was derived by [B. B. Kadomtsev and V. I. Petviashvili,Sov. Phys. Dokl. vol.15 (1970), 539-541] to explain stability of line solitary waves of shallow water. Stability of line solitons has been proved by [T. Mizumachi, Mem. of vol. 238 (2015), no.1125] and [T. Mizumachi, Proc. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh Sect. A. vol.148 (2018), 149--198]. It turns out the local phase shift of modulating line solitons are not uniform in the transverse direction. In this paper, we obtain the $L^\infty$-bound for the local phase shift of modulating line solitons for polynomially localized perturbations

Dengue en el embarazo: efectos en el feto y el recién nacido.

The risk of dengue virus infection during pregnancy has increased due to the current rash of frequent and severe dengue epidemics. The effects of dengue virus in the fetus and newborn children have been studied only superficially and with contradictory results. Therefore, a retrospective cohort study was conducted in Medellin, Colombia, to describe the fetal and postnatal effects of dengue virus infection acquired during pregnancy. Twenty-two babies born from mothers who suffered dengue during the epidemics of 1998 were compared with babies from non-infected mothers. In the exposed cohort, three premature births occurred, three children suffered from fetal anomalies and four children were born with low weight. In the non-exposed children, none of these problems were found. Psychomotor development was normal in both groups. Only the low weight subgroup was statistically significant (Fisher test, p = 0.045). These results suggested that the children from women with dengue during pregnancy present low weight, greater frequency of premature birth and increased fetal distress. A larger sample is necessary to confirm these results.El riesgo de infección por el virus del dengue durante el embarazo se está incrementando ante mayores y más severas epidemias, y las consecuencias sobre el feto y el recién nacido han sido poco estudiadas y, en otros casos, los resultados han sido contradictorios. Por esta razón, se realizó en Medellín un estudio de cohorte retrospectiva, cuyo objetivo fue determinar los efectos que produce el dengue durante el embarazo sobre el feto y el recién nacido. En dicho estudio se evaluaron 22 recién nacidos hijos de mujeres que presentaron dengue durante la epidemia de 1998 y se compararon con 24 recién nacidos, hijos de mujeres embarazadas sin dengue. En la cohorte con dengue se encontraron 3 niños prematuros, 3 niños con sufrimiento fetal y 4 niños con bajo peso al nacer. En la cohorte no expuesta no se encontraron niños con estos problemas. El desarrollo psicomotor fue normal en ambos grupos. De las observaciones anteriores, sólo fue estadísticamente significativa la frecuencia de niños con bajo peso al nacer (prueba exacta de Fisher, p=0,045). Estos resultados preliminares muestran que los recién nacidos de madres que sufrieron dengue durante la gestación tuvieron riesgo de bajo peso al nacer y presentaron con mayor frecuencia prematurez y sufrimiento fetal, aunque se requiere aumentar el tamaño de la muestra para confirmar estos resultados. Sin embargo, es necesario estrechar la vigilancia a las madres embarazadas con dengue dados los efectos nocivos sobre la evolución del recién nacido