Efectos de la aclimatización al cortisol y a la salinidad en el Na+/K+/2Cl–- cotransportador de expresión génica y en la actividad Na+, K+-ATPasa en las branquias de juveniles del Esturión de Persia

Na+, K+-ATPase activity and Na+/K+/2Cl–- cotransporter (NKCC) gene expression in the gills of Persian sturgeon, Acipenser persicus, fry (2-3 g, 3.30-8.12 cm total body length) in freshwater (control group), diluted Caspian Sea water (5 ppt) and after treatment with cortisol in freshwater were studied. Na+, K+-ATPase activity was lower in the 5 ppt-acclimated fish (1.07±0.05 _mol Pi/mg protein/h) than in the control fish (1.19±0.05 μmol Pi/mg protein/h) but this difference was not significant. nKCC gene expression in the 5 ppt-acclimated fish (1.6±0.07) was significantly higher than in the control fish (0.8±0.00). In the cortisol treated fish, Na+, K+-ATPase activity (1.91±0.05 μmol Pi/mg protein/h) and NKCC gene expression (3.2±0.1) were significantly higher than in the control group. our results show that Persian sturgeon fry (2-3 g) can tolerate 5 ppt salinity by changing their enzymatic content and activity, and that exogenous cortisol application can increase the osmoregulatory capacity of fry before release into brackish water and can reduce their mortality.Se estudió la actividad Na+, K+-ATPasa y el cotransportador de expresión génica (NKCC) Na+/K+/2Cl–- en las branquias de juveniles de esturión de Persia, Acipenser persicus, (2-3 g, 3.30-8.12 cm de longitud total) en agua dulce (grupo control), agua diluida del mar Caspio (5 ppt) y posterior tratamiento con cortisol en agua dulce. La actividad Na+, K+-ATPasa fue menor en los peces aclimatados en 5 ppt (1.07±0.05 μmol Pi/mg proteína/h) que en los peces (1.19±0.05 μmol Pi/mg proteína/h), pero esta diferencia no fue significativa. La expresión génica NKCC en peces desde 5 ppt de salinidad (1.6±0.07) fue significativamente más alta que en el grupo (0.8±0.00). en los peces tratados con cortisol la actividad Na+, K+-ATPasa (1.91±0.05 μmol P Pi/mg proteína/h) y la expresión génica NKCC (3.2±0.1) incrementaron significativamente en comparación con el grupo control. nuestros resultados mostraron que los juveniles de esturión de Persia (2-3 g) pueden tolerar 5 ppt de salinidad y esta capacidad se consiguió cambiando su contenido y actividad enzimática; -la aplicación de cortisol exógeno puede incrementar la capacidad osmoregulatoria de los juveniles antes de soltarlos a aguas salobres y puede reducir su mortalidad

The Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Adulthood Aggression and Self-Esteem-A Study on Male Forensic Clients

Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are stressful or traumatic events, including abuse and neglect. The long-term effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) occurring during childhood or adolescence; may lead to a wide range of physical and psychological health issues throughout a person’s lifespan. Children with ACEs, develops poor relation skills and low self-esteem, which may increase the likelihood of interpersonal problems and physical aggression in adult life. The current study examined the correlation among adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), self-esteem, and aggressive behavior.Materials and Methods: The sample included 350 adult male clients, accused of physical aggression in forensic setting. All participants completed interviews, focusing on different types of maltreatment prior to age 18, using the modified standardized Adverse Childhood Experiences International Questioner (ACE-IQ) and self-esteem level by Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale.Results: The most commonly reported adverse experience was family dysfunction, mainly violence in the family that caused problems. Strong correlations were shown to exist between various ACEs and aggressive behavior. Negative correlation detected between self–esteem and all categories subjected for ACE except sexual abuse and community violence (P=0>.05).Conclusion: Much attention has been focused on adverse childhood experiences as risk factors for a spectrum of violence-related outcomes during adulthood

Protective Effect of Docetaxel Against Autophagy-Related Genes in Vitrification of Mouse Metaphase II Oocytes

Background: Autophagy is a conservative mechanism for cell survival as the main response of cells to stress conditions. The present study aimed to assess the effect of docetaxel on the survival, fertilization, and expression of autophagy-related genes in vitrified oocytes. Methods: The study was conducted in 2018 at the Stem Cells Technology Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (Shiraz, Iran). Denuded oocytes were randomly selected and assigned to five groups, namely control (n=133), docetaxel (n=136), docetaxel+cryoprotectants (n=146), docetaxel+vitrification (n=138), and vitrification (n=145). The effect of vitrification on the expression of autophagy-related gene 5 (ATG5) and Beclin-1 was determined using a real-time polymerase chain reaction. Data were analyzed using SPSS software (version 26.0) and GraphPad Prism 9.Results: Survival and fertilization rates in each experimental group were significantly reduced compared to the control group (P=0.001). After in vitro fertilization of oocytes, the 2-cell formation rate was significantly reduced in the docetaxel+vitrification and vitrification groups compared to the control and docetaxel groups (P=0.001 and P=0.001, respectively). Pre-incubation of oocytes with docetaxel reduced gene expression levels of Beclin-1 and ATG5 in the docetaxel+cryoprotectants and docetaxel+vitrification groups (P=0.001 and P=0.019, respectively). The expression level of these genes was also reduced in the docetaxel group compared to the control group (P=0.001). Conclusion: Incubation of mouse metaphase II oocytes with docetaxel prior to vitrification reduced the expression of autophagy-related genes and increased survival and fertilization rates compared to untreated oocytes

SLO-Net: Enhancing Multiple Sclerosis Diagnosis Beyond Optical Coherence Tomography Using Infrared Reflectance Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscopy Images.

Several machine learning studies have used optical coherence tomography (OCT) for multiple sclerosis (MS) classification with promising outcomes. Infrared reflectance scanning laser ophthalmoscopy (IR-SLO) captures high-resolution fundus images, commonly combined with OCT for fixed B-scan positions. However, no machine learning research has utilized IR-SLO images for automated MS diagnosis. This study utilized a dataset comprised of IR-SLO images and OCT data from Isfahan, Iran, encompassing 32 MS and 70 healthy individuals. A number of convolutional neural networks (CNNs)-namely, VGG-16, VGG-19, ResNet-50, ResNet-101, and a custom architecture-were trained with both IR-SLO images and OCT thickness maps as two separate input datasets. The highest performing models for each modality were then integrated to create a bimodal model that receives the combination of OCT thickness maps and IR-SLO images. Subject-wise data splitting was employed to prevent data leakage among training, validation, and testing sets. Overall, images of the 102 patients from the internal dataset were divided into test, validation, and training subsets. Subsequently, we employed a bootstrapping approach on the training data through iterative sampling with replacement. The performance of the proposed bimodal model was evaluated on the internal test dataset, demonstrating an accuracy of 92.40% ± 4.1% (95% confidence interval [CI], 83.61-98.08), sensitivity of 95.43% ± 5.75% (95% CI, 83.71-100.0), specificity of 92.82% ± 3.72% (95% CI, 81.15-96.77), area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) curve of 96.99% ± 2.99% (95% CI, 86.11-99.78), and area under the precision-recall curve (AUPRC) of 97.27% ± 2.94% (95% CI, 86.83-99.83). Furthermore, to assess the model generalization ability, we examined its performance on an external test dataset following the same bootstrap methodology, achieving promising results, with accuracy of 85.43% ± 0.08% (95% CI, 71.43-100.0), sensitivity of 97.33% ± 0.06% (95% CI, 83.33-100.0), specificity of 84.6% ± 0.10% (95% CI, 71.43-100.0), AUROC curve of 99.67% ± 0.02% (95% CI, 95.63-100.0), and AUPRC of 99.65% ± 0.02% (95% CI, 94.90-100.0). Incorporating both modalities improves the performance of automated diagnosis of MS, showcasing the potential of utilizing IR-SLO as a complementary tool alongside OCT. Should the results of our proposed bimodal model be validated in future work with larger and more diverse datasets, diagnosis of MS based on both OCT and IR-SLO can be reliably integrated into routine clinical practice

Research Paper: The Experimental Investigation of Filter Effect on Visibility of Fringes in Quantum Single Photon Interferometry

This study investigates the effect of the filter on the visibility of fringes in single-photon interference. A pair of photons by spontaneous parametric down-conversion is produced using a nonlinear crystal. One of them passes through a Mach-Zehnder interferometer due to the principle of indistinguishability of the paths, which interferes with itself. By changing the length of the paths of the Mach-Zehnder arms with the help of a stage, the interference happens in the coincidence pattern. In order to align the optical elements and minimize the optical path difference in the interferometer arms, interferometry with laser and white light has been used before single photon interferometry. By placing filters with different bandwidths in the signal and idler photons path, we see interference fringes with different visibility. An interference pattern is obtained by recording the coincidence between the correlated photons. The results show that the frequency bandwidth of filters affects the coherence length of generated photons and so the visibility of interference fringes

Effects of Cortisol on Gill Chloride Cells in Persian Sturgeon Acipenser persicus Fry

Objective: cortisol is the major corticosteroid in fish osmoregulation and Persian sturgeonis one of the endangered and economical species of the Caspian Sea sturgeons;this study is one of the first to investigate the effects of cortisol on one species of theAcipenserids species.Materials and Methods: Samples were fixed in Bouin’s solution, dehydrated, embeddedwith paraplast and subsequently sectioned. Immunohistochemical studies wereperformed by using IgGα5 and flourescin isothiocyanate conjugated (FITC) antibodiesthrough fluorescence light microscopy. Measurements of the chloride cells were examinedby Image Tools (2.0) image analysis software.Results: In the cortisol treatment there were 492 chloride cells per mm2 of the gill epitheliumwhich was significantly (p = 0.01) higher than the control group (289 chloride cells).The lengths of chloride cells were 13.9325 ± 0.5 μm and 16.0935 ± 0.5 μm in the cortisoland control groups, respectively; as reported, the length was significantly smaller in thecortisol group (p = 0.02). The widths of the chloride cells were 7.718 ± 0.3 μm and 7.922± 0.4 μm in the cortisol and control groups which were without any significant differences.Both the dispersion and numbers of chloride cells in four locations (on the filament, basementof the lamellae, interlamellar region and on the lamellae) were significantly different(p = 0.01) between the two experimental groups.Conclusion: exogenous cortisol can cause significant cellular and morphometric changesin gills of the Persian sturgeon fry for their adaptation to salinity

Comparison of the Expression of Hepatic Genes by Human Wharton’s Jelly Mesenchymal Stem Cells Cultured in 2D and 3D Collagen Culture Systems

Background: Human Wharton’s jelly mesenchymal stem cells (HWJMSCs) express liver-specific markers such as albumin, alpha-fetoprotein, cytokeratin-19, cytokeratin-18, and glucose-6-phosphatase. Therefore, they can be considered as a good source for cell replacement therapy for liver diseases. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of various culture systems on the hepatocyte-specific gene expression pattern of naïve HWJMSCs. Methods: HWJMSCs were characterized as MSCs by detecting the surface CD markers and capability to differentiate toward osteoblast and adipocyte. HWJMSCs were cultured in 2D collagen films and 3D collagen scaffolds for 21 days and were compared to control cultures. Real time RT-PCR was used to evaluate the expression of liver-specific genes. Results: The HWJMSCs which were grown on non-coated culture plates expressed cytokeratin-18 and -19, alpha-fetoprotein, albumin, glucose-6-phosphatase, and claudin. The expression of the hepatic nuclear factor 4 (HNF4) was very low. The cells showed a significant increase in caludin expression when they cultured in 3D collagen scaffolds compared to the conventional monolayer culture and 2D collagen scaffold. Conclusion: Various culture systems did not influence on hepatocyte specific marker expression by HWJMSCs, except for claudin. The expression of claudin showed that 3D collagen scaffold provided the extracellular matrix for induction of the cells to interconnect with each other