Selenium-Binding Protein 1 Indicates Myocardial Stress and Risk for Adverse Outcome in Cardiac Surgery

Selenium-binding protein 1 (SELENBP1) is an intracellular protein that has been detected in the circulation in response to myocardial infarction. Hypoxia and cardiac surgery affect selenoprotein expression and selenium (Se) status. For this reason, we decided to analyze circulating SELENBP1 concentrations in patients (n = 75) necessitating cardioplegia and a cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) during the course of the cardiac surgery. Serum samples were collected at seven time-points spanning the full surgical process. SELENBP1 was quantified by a highly sensitive newly developed immunological assay. Serum concentrations of SELENBP1 increased markedly during the intervention and showed a positive association with the duration of ischemia (ρ = 0.6, p < 0.0001). Elevated serum SELENBP1 concentrations at 1 h after arrival at the intensive care unit (post-surgery) were predictive to identify patients at risk of adverse outcome (death, bradycardia or cerebral ischemia, "endpoint 1"; OR 29.9, CI 3.3-268.8, p = 0.00027). Circulating SELENBP1 during intervention (2 min after reperfusion or 15 min after weaning from the CPB) correlated positively with an established marker of myocardial infarction (CK-MB) measured after the intervention (each with ρ = 0.5, p < 0.0001). We concluded that serum concentrations of SELENBP1 were strongly associated with cardiac arrest and the duration of myocardial ischemia already early during surgery, thereby constituting a novel and promising quantitative marker for myocardial hypoxia, with a high potential to improve diagnostics and prediction in combination with the established clinical parameters

Three cities – Lyon, Munich, Vienna – will be SMARTER TOGETHER

In September 2015, the cities of Lyon, Munich and Vienna and 28 partners from research and industry were awarded funding for a joint project proposal within the European „Smart City and Communities“ intiative. Under the headline „SMARTER TOGETHER“, the consortium applied for a volume of 25 Mio. EUR for the implementation of „smart“ and innovative actions in the three partner cities and for cooperation with three so called follower cities – Santiago de Compostela, Sofia und Venice. The requested funding is available as part of the EU-framework programme for research and innovation „Horizon 2020“. The funding is provided to support the implementation and testing of innovative Smart City solutions for low energy districts on a large scale and in an integrated way: Extensive energetic renewal of existing housing stock with (in Lyon and Munich) multi-faceted ownership structures, user-centered sustainable mobility solutions, innovative business models, generation of renewable energy and multiple use of infrastructure through the use of information- and communication technology (ICT). The overall aim is to improve the quality of life in neighbourhoods and to create more sustainable and user-friendly living environments. A particular focus will be on „smart“ and active forms of participation of citizens. The timeframe for the project roll-out is three years (2016-2018) followed by two years of monitoring and evaluation (2019-2020). Thereafter, successful solutions and findings are to be replicated in other districts and cities for further added value. Here, the follower cities Santiago de Compostela, Sofia and Venice as well as the European city network Energy Cities will play an important role. The projects will be implemented in close cooperation between industry, small and medium-sized enterprises, municipal companies, citizens and other interested stakeholders. The EU commission lauded the right balance between innovative technologies and the social dimension of the project: smart and integrated solutions shall improve the quality of life of citizens. The main challenge of Smarter Together is related to the so-called co-creation approach. All involved cities, research institutes and industrial partners as well as external stakeholders seek to jointly create solutions and methodologies for innovative and replicable city development, based on lessons learned and strong knowledge exchange. Therefore the project defrined a complex iterative peer-to-peer process, allowing for a constant knowledge exchange among all affected stakeholders

Binding neutral information to emotional contexts: Brain dynamics of long-term recognition memory

There is abundant evidence in memory research that emotional stimuli are better remembered than neutral stimuli. However, effects of an emotionally charged context on memory for associated neutral elements is also important, particularly in trauma and stress-related disorders, where strong memories are often activated by neutral cues due to their emotional associations. In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate long-term recognition memory (1-week delay) for neutral objects that had been paired with emotionally arousing or neutral scenes during encoding. Context effects were clearly evident in the ERPs: An early frontal ERP old/new difference (300–500 ms) was enhanced for objects encoded in unpleasant compared to pleasant and neutral contexts; and a late central-parietal old/new difference (400–700 ms) was observed for objects paired with both pleasant and unpleasant contexts but not for items paired with neutral backgrounds. Interestingly, objects encoded in emotional contexts (and novel objects) also prompted an enhanced frontal early (180–220 ms) positivity compared to objects paired with neutral scenes indicating early perceptual significance. The present data suggest that emotional—particularly unpleasant—backgrounds strengthen memory for items encountered within these contexts and engage automatic and explicit recognition processes. These results could help in understanding binding mechanisms involved in the activation of trauma-related memories by neutral cues.This research was supported by a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG, WE 4801/3-1) to Mathias Weymar at the University of Greifswald. Carlos Ventura-Bort (E-2013-15) was supported by the program for international stays of the Universitat Jaume I of Castellón, Spain

The effect of a single-session heart rate variability biofeedback on attentional control: does stress matter?

IntroductionVagally mediated heart rate variability is an index of autonomic nervous system activity that is associated with a large variety of outcome variables including psychopathology and self-regulation. While practicing heart rate variability biofeedback over several weeks has been reliably associated with a number of positive outcomes, its acute effects are not well known. As the strongest association with vagally mediated heart rate variability has been found particularly within the attention-related subdomain of self-regulation, we investigated the acute effect of heart rate variability biofeedback on attentional control using the revised Attention Network Test.MethodsFifty-six participants were tested in two sessions. In one session each participant received a heart rate variability biofeedback intervention, and in the other session a control intervention of paced breathing at a normal ventilation rate. After the biofeedback or control intervention, participants completed the Attention Network Test using the Orienting Score as a measure of attentional control.ResultsMixed models revealed that higher resting baseline vagally mediated heart rate variability was associated with better performance in attentional control, which suggests more efficient direction of attention to target stimuli. There was no significant main effect of the intervention on attentional control. However, an interaction effect indicated better performance in attentional control after biofeedback in individuals who reported higher current stress levels.DiscussionThe results point to acute beneficial effects of heart rate variability biofeedback on cognitive performance in highly stressed individuals. Although promising, the results need to be replicated in larger or more targeted samples in order to reach stronger conclusions about the effects

Predictive performance and clinical application of COV50, a urinary proteomic biomarker in early COVID-19 infection: a prospective multicentre cohort study

Background: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is a worldwide challenge. The CRIT-CoV-U pilot study generated a urinary proteomic biomarker consisting of 50 peptides (COV50), which predicted death and disease progression from SARS-CoV-2. After the interim analysis presented for the German Government, here, we aimed to analyse the full dataset to consolidate the findings and propose potential clinical applications of this biomarker. Methods: CRIT-CoV-U was a prospective multicentre cohort study. In eight European countries (Austria, France, Germany, Greece, North Macedonia, Poland, Spain, and Sweden), 1012 adults with PCR-confirmed COVID-19 were followed up for death and progression along the 8-point WHO scale. Capillary electrophoresis coupled with mass spectrometry was used for urinary proteomic profiling. Statistical methods included logistic regression and receiver operating characteristic curve analysis with a comparison of the area under curve (AUC) between nested models. Hospitalisation costs were derived from the care facility corresponding with the Markov chain probability of reaching WHO scores ranging from 3 to 8 and flat-rate hospitalisation costs adjusted for the gross per capita domestic product of each country. Findings: From June 30 to Nov 19, 2020, 228 participants were recruited, and from April 30, 2020, to April 14, 2021, 784 participants were recruited, resulting in a total of 1012 participants. The entry WHO scores were 1-3 in 445 (44%) participants, 4-5 in 529 (52%) participants, and 6 in 38 (4%) participants; and of all participants, 119 died and 271 had disease progression. The odds ratio (OR) associated with COV50 in all 1012 participants for death was 2·44 (95% CI 2·05-2·92) unadjusted and 1·67 (1·34-2·07) when adjusted for sex, age, BMI, comorbidities, and baseline WHO score; and for disease progression, the OR was 1·79 (1·60-2·01) when unadjusted and 1·63 (1·41-1·91) when adjusted (p Interpretation: The urinary proteomic COV50 marker might be predictive of adverse COVID-19 outcomes. Even in people with mild-to-moderate PCR-confirmed infections (WHO scores 1-4), the 0·04 COV50 threshold justifies earlier drug treatment, thereby potentially reducing the number of days in hospital and associated costs. Funding: German Federal Ministry of Health

COMTVal158Met Genotype Affects Complex Emotion Recognition in Healthy Men and Women

The catechol-o-methyltransferase (COMT) gene has repeatedly been shown to change amygdala activity and amygdala-prefrontal connectivity during face processing. Although the COMT gene appears to induce a negativity bias during the neural processing of faces, it is currently unclear whether a similar negativity bias emerges during the behavioral processing of faces. To address this issue, we investigated differences in complex emotion recognition between participants (n = 181) that had been a priori genotyped for functional polymorphisms of the COMT (Val158Met) and serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) gene. We were, thus, able to analyze differences in face processing on basis of participants’ COMT genotype while controlling for participants’ 5-HTTLPR genotype. Variations of participants’ COMT but not 5-HTTLPR genotype accounted for differences in participants’ emotion recognition performance: Met/Met carriers and Met/Val carriers were more accurate in the recognition of negative, but not neutral or positive, expressions than Val/Val carriers. We, therefore, revealed a similar negativity bias during the behavioral processing of faces that has already been demonstrated during the neural processing of faces, indicating that genotype-dependent changes in catecholamine metabolism may affect face processing on the behavioral and neural level

A genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 screen reveals the requirement of host sphingomyelin synthase 1 for infection with Pseudorabies virus mutant gD–Pass

Herpesviruses are large DNA viruses, which encode up to 300 different proteins including enzymes enabling efficient replication. Nevertheless, they depend on a multitude of host cell proteins for successful propagation. To uncover cellular host factors important for replication of pseudorabies virus (PrV), an alphaherpesvirus of swine, we performed an unbiased genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 forward screen. To this end, a porcine CRISPR-knockout sgRNA library (SsCRISPRko.v1) targeting 20,598 genes was generated and used to transduce porcine kidney cells. Cells were then infected with either wildtype PrV (PrV-Ka) or a PrV mutant (PrV-gD–Pass) lacking the receptor-binding protein gD, which regained infectivity after serial passaging in cell culture. While no cells survived infection with PrV-Ka, resistant cell colonies were observed after infection with PrV-gD–Pass. In these cells, sphingomyelin synthase 1 (SMS1) was identified as the top hit candidate. Infection efficiency was reduced by up to 90% for PrV-gD–Pass in rabbit RK13-sgms1KO cells compared to wildtype cells accompanied by lower viral progeny titers. Exogenous expression of SMS1 partly reverted the entry defect of PrV-gD–Pass. In contrast, infectivity of PrV-Ka was reduced by 50% on the knockout cells, which could not be restored by exogenous expression of SMS1. These data suggest that SMS1 plays a pivotal role for PrV infection, when the gD-mediated entry pathway is blocked

Template Induction over Unstructured Email Corpora

Unsupervised template induction over email data is a central component in applications such as information extraction, document classification, and auto-reply. The benefits of automatically generating such templates are known for structured data, e.g. machine generated HTML emails. However much less work has been done in performing the same task over unstructured email data. We propose a technique for inducing high quality templates from plain text emails at scale based on the suffix array data structure. We evaluate this method against an industry-standard approach for finding similar content based on shingling, running both algorithms over two corpora: a synthetically created email corpus for a high level of experimental control, as well as user-generated emails from the well-known Enron email corpus. Our experimental results show that the proposed method is more robust to variations in cluster quality than the baseline and templates contain more text from the emails, which would benefit extraction tasks by identifying transient parts of the emails. Our study indicates templates induced using suffix arrays contain approximately half as much noise (measured as entropy) as templates induced using shingling. Furthermore, the suffix array approach is substantially more scalable, proving to be an order of magnitude faster than shingling even for modestly-sized training clusters. Public corpus analysis shows that email clusters contain on average 4 segments of common phrases, where each of the segments contains on average 9 words, thus showing that templatization could help users reduce the email writing effort by an average of 35 words per email in an assistance or auto-reply related task