Physiological and pathophysiological investigation of lacrimal and pancreatic ductal epithelial cells

The investigation of epithelial functions under physiological and pathophysiologycal conditions is essential for the better understanding of their role in the body and their related diseases. We have very limited information about the role of LG ducts in tear secretion. Pancreatic research provided useful tools to study the LG ductal functions and opened new potentials in LG research . Thanks to these tools, in the past decades our knowledge were increasing from the physiology and patophysiology of the exocrine pancreas, although there are still many open questions. One of this questions is the pathomechanism of the biliary AP. Better understanding of the disease may lead to the development of new therapeutical approaches. Therefore this work was aimed to demonstrate the importance of physiological characterisation of epithelial cells and to study their function under pathophysiological conditions. Investigation of lacrimal gland ductal secretion In the first part of this study our AIM was to investigate the osmotic water permeability of LG duct epithelium by means of calculation of filtration permeability and to investigate LG ductal fluid secretion with the following METHODS: Experiments were performed on isolated rabbit LG duct segments maintained in short-term culture. Osmotically determined fluid movement or fluid secretion into the closed intraluminal space of cultured LG interlobular ducts was analyzed using video microscopic technique. Therefore our RESULTS were: • The end of the LG ducts sealed after overnight incubation forming a closed luminal space. • For the calculation of osmotic water permeability, ducts were initially perfused with isotonic HEPES buffered solution, and then with hypotonic HEPES buffered solution. Filtration permeability was calculated from the initial slope of the relative volume increase. • Secretory responses to carbachol or to forskolin stimulation were also investigated. Forskolin stimulation resulted in a rapid and sustained secretory response in both solutions. Forskolin- stimulated fluid secretion was completely inhibited by bumetanide both in HEPES buffered and in HCO3-/CO2 buffered solutions, suggesting the central role NKCC1. • Administration of carbachol initiated a rapid but short secretory response in both HEPES buffered and in HCO3-/CO2 buffered solutions. Atropine completely abolished the carbachol-evoked fluid secretion. CONCLUSIONS from the results: (i) A new method was introduced to investigate LG duct function. (ii) Water permeability of rabbit LG duct epithelium was measured by calculating filtration permeability. (iii) Fluid secretion of LG duct cells induced by carbachol or forskolin was also demonstrated. These results provide calculated values of lacrimal duct osmotic permeability and direct experimental evidence of LG duct fluid secretion.   Effect of acids on pancreatic ductal cells Earlier studies showed that CDCA strongly inhibits pancreatic ductal HCO3- secretion through the destruction of mitochondrial function, which may have significance in the pathomechanism of AP. UDCA is known to protect the mitochondria against hydrophobic bile acids and has ameliorating effect on cell death in heptocytes. Therefore, our AIM was to investigate whether UDCA pretreatment has any effect on CDCA-induced pancreatic ductal injury. To study ductal functions under phatophysiological conditions we used the following METHODS: • Guinea pig intra-interlobular pancreatic ducts were isolated by collagenase digestion. Ducts were treated with UDCA for 5 and 24 h and the effect of CDCA on intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i), pH (pHi), morphological and functional changes of mitochondria, and the rate of apoptosis were investigated. • AP was induced in rat by retrograde intraductal injection of CDCA (0.5%) and the disease severity of pancreatitis was assessed by measuring standard laboratory and histological parameters. Using in vitro and in vivo approaches our RESULST showed that UDCA pretreatment: • completely prevented the inhibitory effect of CDCA on ductal acid-base transporters, • decreased the rate of CDCA-induced mitochondrial injury and cell death • reduced the severity of experimental AP induced by CDCA. Therefore our CONCLUSION is that these results clearly demonstrate that UDCA: (i) suppresses the CDCA-induced pancreatic ductal injury by reducing apoptosis and mitochondrial damage (ii) reduces the severity of CDCA-induced AP. The protective effect of UDCA against hydrophobic bile acids may represent a novel therapeutical target in the treatment of biliary AP

Bio, psycho, or social: supervised machine learning to classify discursive framing of depression in online health communities

Supervised machine learning on textual data has successful industrial/business applications, but it is an open question whether it can be utilized in social knowledge building outside the scope of hermeneutically more trivial cases. Combining sociology and data science raises several methodological and epistemological questions. In our study the discursive framing of depression is explored in online health communities. Three discursive frameworks are introduced: the bio-medical, psychological, and social framings of depression. ~80 000 posts were collected, and a sample of them was manually classifed. Conventional bag-of-words models, Gradient Boosting Machine, word-embedding-based models and a state-of-the-art Transformer-based model with transfer learning, called DistilBERT were applied to expand this classifcation on the whole database. According to our experience ‘discursive framing’ proves to be a complex and hermeneutically difcult concept, which afects the degree of both inter-annotator agreement and predictive performance. Our fnding confrms that the level of inter-annotator disagreement provides a good estimate for the objective difculty of the classifcation. By identifying the most important terms, we also interpreted the classifcation algorithms, which is of great importance in social sciences. We are convinced that machine learning techniques can extend the horizon of qualitative text analysis. Our paper supports a smooth ft of the new techniques into the traditional toolbox of social sciences

Talajok változása Székesfehérváron hét év távlatában

Az ipari termelés mellett a lakókörnyezetünk van a legjelentősebb hatással talajaink állapotára. A városi, illetve antropogén talajok fogalma már évtizedek óta foglalkoztatja a tudományos világot, és ma már önálló talajtani kategóriaként kezelik azt. Azonban nem elég leírni az antropogén talajokat alakító folyamatokat, hanem rendszeresen nyomon is kell követni őket. Az emberi környezet-ben a változások sokkal gyorsabban bekövetkeznek, és akár évek alatt is gyökeresen eltérő képet mutathatnak ezek a talajok.Nyugat-Magyarországon városi talajokkal először a Soproni Egyetem kezdett el foglalkozni, és ezen kutatások kereteiben készült el 2011 márciusa és júniusa között egy Székesfehér-vár teljes területét lefedő kutatás, mely során képet kaptunk a város talajainak állapotáról. 2018 júliusában kijelölt monitoringpontokon a talajokat ismét mintáztuk, és alapvető tulajdonságaik alapján kiérté-keltük őket. Elsősorban káliumkloridos és vizes kémhatásukat, a szénsavas mésztartalmukat és a fizikai féleségüket vizsgáltuk-.A hét évvel korábbi eredményekkel összehasonlítva és a város ez idő alatt történő változásait figyelembe véve kísérletet tettünk arra, hogy a tulajdonságok időben való változását megbecsüljük. A kiértékelésekhez térinformatikai programokkal (Google maps, QGIS) tudtuk megállapítani a talajtulajdonságok térbeli mintázatát, és a fejlesztések felvételével, ábrázolásával pontosítottunk a változások becsléséhez. A város már ilyen rövid időtáv alatt is jelentősen át tudta formálni a talajállapotokat a legaktívabb zónákban. Hét év távlatában főként a város talajának fizikai jellemzőiben figyelhettünk meg változást. A magasabb homoktartalmú fizikai féleségű talajok irányába történő elmozdulást tapasztaltunk, amely a többletvízhatások kezelésének szempontjából lehet egy pozitív változás a városban, de a megnövekedett aszályos időszakok során nehézségeket is okozhat. n addition to industrial production, our living environment has the most significant impact on the condition of soils. The concept of urban and anthropogenic soils has occupied the scientific world for decades, and is now treated as an independent soil category. However, it is not enough to describe the processes that shape anthropogenic soils, they must also be monitored regularly. In the human en-vironment changes occur much faster, and these soils can show a radically different picture even in a matter of years. The University of Sopron was the first to deal with urban soils in Western Hungary, and within the framework of this research, a studycovering the entire area of Székesfehérvár was com-pleted between March and June 2011, during which we got an idea of the state of the city's soils. In July 2018, we sampled the soils at designated monitoring points again and evaluated them based on their basic properties. We primarily examined their pH with potassium chloride and water, their carbonated lime contentand their physical properties. By comparing with the results of seven years earlier and taking into account the changes of the city during this time, we attempted to estimate the change of the properties over time. For the evaluations, we were able to determine the spatial pattern of the soil prop-erties with GIS programs (Google maps, QGIS), and we made it more precise by recording and repre-senting the developments to estimate the changes. Even in such a short period of time, the city was able to significantly reshape the soil conditions in the most active zones. Over the course of seven years, we could observe changes mainly in the physical characteristics of the city's soil. We have experienced a shift towards soils with a higher sand content, which can be a positive change in the city from the point of view of managing the effects of excess water, but can also cause difficulties during periods of in-creased drought

Az Információs Társadalomban megjelenő tanulmányok topikelemzése

A tanulmány dedikáltan az Információs Társadalom folyóirat jubileumi számába készült, elsődleges célja, hogy áttekintse a folyóirat elmúlt éveinek publikációit és szerzői hálózatát. A tanulmány szerzői azt vizsgálják, hogy az Információs Társadalom folyóirat milyen témákat emelt be az „information society studies” hazai diskurzusába az elmúlt 15 évben. A cikk szerzői természetesnyelv-feldolgozással (Natural Language Processing, NLP), azon belül is topikmodellezéssel elemzik a folyóiratban 2005-től megjelent tanulmányokat, hogy feltárják a folyóirat tematikus szerkezetét. Az elemzés során 10 topikot, vagyis látens témát különítenek el, például a hálózatok/rendszerek, az oktatás, az adatvédelem és az internet és közösségek területét azonosítva a Látens Dirichlet Allokáció (LDA) eljárás segítségével. A tartalmi elemzés mellett a cikk betekintést nyújt a folyóiratba publikálók társ-szerzőségi hálózatába, valamint a szerzők és az egyes topikok kapcsolatába is. A társszerzőség szerinti hálózatban három, viszonylag sok szerzőt tartalmazó algráf azonosítható, de a hálózat alapját jellemzően diádok, triádok és négyes csoportok alkotják. A szerzők cikkeinek topikhovatartozása azt mutatja, hogy a sokat publikáló szerzők cikkei jellemzően 3-4 topikba kerülnek

IP3 receptor isoforms differently regulate ER-mitochondrial contacts and local calcium transfer

Contact sites of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and mitochondria locally convey calcium signals between the IP3 receptors (IP3R) and the mitochondrial calcium uniporter, and are central to cell survival. It remains unclear whether IP3Rs also have a structural role in contact formation and whether the different IP3R isoforms have redundant functions. Using an IP3R-deficient cell model rescued with each of the three IP3R isoforms and an array of super-resolution and ultrastructural approaches we demonstrate that IP3Rs are required for maintaining ER-mitochondrial contacts. This role is independent of calcium fluxes. We also show that, while each isoform can support contacts, type 2 IP3R is the most effective in delivering calcium to the mitochondria. Thus, these studies reveal a non-canonical, structural role for the IP3Rs and direct attention towards the type 2 IP3R that was previously neglected in the context of ER-mitochondrial calcium signaling

Microglial control of neuronal development via somatic purinergic junctions

Microglia, the resident immune cells of the brain, play important roles during development. Although bi-directional communication between microglia and neuronal progenitors or immature neurons has been demonstrated, the main sites of interaction and the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. By using advanced methods, here we provide evidence that microglial processes form specialized contacts with the cell bodies of developing neurons throughout embryonic, early postnatal, and adult neurogenesis. These early developmental contacts are highly reminiscent of somatic purinergic junctions that are instrumental for microglia-neuron communication in the adult brain. The formation and maintenance of these junctions is regulated by functional microglial P2Y12 receptors, and deletion of P2Y12Rs disturbs proliferation of neuronal precursors and leads to aberrant cortical cytoarchitecture during development and in adulthood. We propose that early developmental formation of somatic purinergic junctions represents an important interface for microglia to monitor the status of immature neurons and control neurodevelopment