Adaptive Evolution of Conserved Noncoding Elements in Mammals

Conserved noncoding elements (CNCs) are an abundant feature of vertebrate genomes. Some CNCs have been shown to act as cis-regulatory modules, but the function of most CNCs remains unclear. To study the evolution of CNCs, we have developed a statistical method called the “shared rates test” to identify CNCs that show significant variation in substitution rates across branches of a phylogenetic tree. We report an application of this method to alignments of 98,910 CNCs from the human, chimpanzee, dog, mouse, and rat genomes. We find that ∼68% of CNCs evolve according to a null model where, for each CNC, a single parameter models the level of constraint acting throughout the phylogeny linking these five species. The remaining ∼32% of CNCs show departures from the basic model including speed-ups and slow-downs on particular branches and occasionally multiple rate changes on different branches. We find that a subset of the significant CNCs have evolved significantly faster than the local neutral rate on a particular branch, providing strong evidence for adaptive evolution in these CNCs. The distribution of these signals on the phylogeny suggests that adaptive evolution of CNCs occurs in occasional short bursts of evolution. Our analyses suggest a large set of promising targets for future functional studies of adaptation.</p

Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors Related to Shift Work among Korean Workers Aged from 30 to 49 Years

This study was to compare health behaviors between day workers (DW ) and shift workers (SW), and to investigate the cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors among 30-49 years Korean workers. SW showed higher prevalence of smoking than DW. The proportion of adequate sleep was lower in SW than in DW. DW showed high.er prevalence of impaired fasting glucose, however, there were no significant differences in hypertension, obesity, hypercholesterolemia, and metabolic syndrome between DW and SW. Further research is recommended to include mediating factors such as organizational culture or working time, etc., for scrutinizing the association between work type and CVD risk factors

A Comparison of Education, Business, and Engineering Undergraduate Students’ Internet Use and their Experience, Confidence, and Competence in Using New Literacies of the Internet

This study explored beginning and advanced pre-service teachers’ Internet use and their experience, confidence, and competence in using new literacies of the Internet. In addition, this study compared the pre-service teachers to same-aged business and engineering students. Through using an online survey, this study recruited 1350 students from the various disciplines. This study conducted comparisons between a) underclassmen across the three majors, b) seniors across the majors, and c) underclassmen and seniors within the majors. This study found that as digital natives, education, business, and engineering students used the Internet frequently. However, they were relatively unfamiliar with using new literacies of the Internet during their high school and university educational experiences. Overall, the three majors’ students were confident but they were not competent in using new literacies of the Internet including locating and evaluating information on the Internet. Comparisons between and within the majors revealed that education underclassmen were less confident and competent than engineering underclassmen peers and senior education students in evaluating information on the Internet. Education seniors were comparable to business and engineering seniors in their confidence and competence in both locating and evaluating information on the Internet. The findings imply that teacher educators need to understand the weaknesses of their pre-service teachers and provide them with appropriate opportunities and training to know how to effectively use and furthermore teach new literacies of the Internet

Issues in forest restoration: Forest restoration treatments: Their effect on wildland fire suppression costs

We modeled the effects of proposed forest restoration treatments in Arizona's Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) on fire behavior characteristics and fire suppression costs. We found two significant factors that help explain total wildfire suppression costs: 1) distance from the wildfire to the wildland-urban interface and 2) the proportion of fires with high burn severity. Given our results, we estimate a range for wildland suppression costs at $706-$825 per acre for the current conditions of the 4FRI landscape. After the proposed forest restoration treatments, the suppression costs should be reduced to $287-$327 per acre for the same size fire

Successful detection and removal of predictable juvenile polyp: a case report

Juvenile polyp makes up 70% to 80% of pediatric colon polyp, and the average age of diagnosis is 2 to 5 years. The treatment of juvenile polyp in children is polypectomy through colonoscopy. The fact that the lumen of intestine is much smaller than that of adults and the need to perform polypectomy is a heavy burden on the endoscopists. Recently, fecal calprotectin (FC) has been found to be related to juvenile polyp. A previously healthy 34-month-old female patient presented to the pediatric gastroenterology department with intermittent bloody stools that were progressively worsening. FC level was abnormally elevated at 2,719 µg/g (normal, < 50 µg/g). The polyp was successfully removed with a endoscopic polypectomy. This is the first case in Korea to show that FC can be used to screen juvenile polyp in children. Caution must be taken that FC levels can increase with inflammation, regardless of the number or size of the polyps

Flood Estimation and Prediction Using Particle Filters

Data assimilation methods have received increased attention to accomplish uncertainty assessment and enhancement of forecasting capability in various areas. Despite their potential, applicable software frameworks for probabilistic approaches and data assimilation are still limited because most hydrologic modeling software are based on a deterministic approach. In this study, we developed a hydrologic modeling framework for data assimilation, namely MPI-OHyMoS. While adapting object-oriented features of the original OHyMoS, MPI-OHyMoS allows user to build a probabilistic hydrologic model with data assimilation. In this software framework, sequential data assimilation based on particle filtering is available for any hydrologic models considering various sources of uncertainty originating from input forcing, parameters, and observations. Ensemble simulations are parallelized by a message passing interface (MPI), which can take advantage of high-performance computing (HPC) systems. Structure and implementation processes of data assimilation via MPI-OHyMoS are illustrated using a simple lumped model. We apply this software framework for uncertainty assessment of a distributed hydrologic model in synthetic and real experiment cases. In the synthetic experiment, dual state-parameter updating results in a reasonable estimation of parameters to cover synthetic true within their posterior distributions. In the real experiment, dual updating with identifiable parameters results in a reasonable agreement to the observed hydrograph with reduced uncertainty of parameters

SWP4.1 : Functionalisation of cellulosic fibres : characterization of laccase oxidation of lignosulfonates in presence of lignocellulosic substrates

Laccases (EC 1.10.3.2) are multi–copper oxidases, which catalyze one electron oxidation of a wide range of inorganic and organic substances, coupled with one four-electron reduction of oxygen to water (Xu 1996). Laccases not only catalyze the removal of a hydrogen atom from the hydroxyl group of methoxy-substituted monophenols, ortho- and para-diphenols, but also can oxidize other substrates such as aromatic amines, syringaldazine, and non-phenolic compounds, to form free radicals (Bourbonnais et al. 1997, Li et al. 1999, Robles et al. 2000; Durán and Esposito 2000). It is known that laccases can catalyze the polymerization of various phenols and halogen, alkyl- and alkoxy-substituted anilines (Hoff et al. 1985, Kobayashi et al. 2001, Kobayashi and Higashimura 2003). Only recently has positively been demonstrated that plant laccases are able to polymerize monolignols within the plant cell wall matrix, in the complete absence of peroxidase (Sterjiades et al. 1992, Liu et al.1994, Richardson et al. 2000) and to break down non-phenolic ligno-cellulose by certain phenolic compounds acting as mediators (Bourbonnais et al. 1997). These studies show that laccases are involved only in the early stages of lignification, while peroxidases are involved later (Bao et al. 1993, Wallace & Fry 1999, Boudet 2000). Thus, the oxidation of lignosulfonates with laccase to binding fiber, particle and paper boards could be an important achievement to overcome the environmental limitation of the phenol–formaldehyde resins. The objective of this preliminary work is to characterize four different lignosulfonates after laccase oxidation in order to understand their potentiality toward industrial application as cross-linker for paper and lignocellulosic substrates. The characterization of the four lignosulfonates has shown similar results in term of color and chemical structure as confirmed by the Uv-Vis and FT-IR analysis. However, the particle size of the DP399 showed higher values then DP398 (6.7 and 9.5 nm respectively) indicating that slight changes in the chemical structure can have visible changes in the organization behavior of the lignosulfonates in solution. The lignosulfonate DP400 and DP401 have shown different chemical structure both in Uv-vis and FT-IR spectra and a different particle size range (7.1 and 5.1 nm). As the highest concentration of enzyme was the responsible for the maximum change in the absorbance spectrum the 20 U/mL was the activity selected to perform the assays. The laccase oxidation of the four lignosulfonate showed dramatic changes in the chemical structure of all the samples that could be attributed to the conversion of the oxidized phenolic hydroxyl groups. For all the samples the UV peaks at 250 and 280 nm disappeared and the peaks at 320 and 360 nm are significantly decreased and the visible absorbance showed a general increase in all spectra. In the visible spectra the laccase oxidized lignosulfonates DP398 and DP399 showed similar behavior with the formation of a large shoulder around 400-450 nm. However, the lignosulfonates DP400 and DP401 showed different behavior with the formation of a narrow peak at 650 nm for DP400 and at 450 nm for DP401. The comparison of the FT-IR spectra of the oxidized and raw lignosulfonates showed a similar behavior in all the samples. The growing in the band of the typical aromatic skeletal vibration bands (1600 and 1510 cm−1) and the decreasing in the bands of the ether group and of the C-O, C-H and C=O vibration (between 1300 and 1000 cm−1) indicate a breakdowns of the lignosulfonate structure and a reassembling of the aromatic skeletal in a different polymer structure. The particle size results confirmed this conclusion indicating a growing in the oxidized lignosulfonates size, in special for the DP401 (102.6%), and a decreasing in the polydispersity, in special for DP400 (48.1%), that indicate the decrease of the heterogeneity of the compounds. The K/S values of the lignocellulosic fibers have shown that the oxidized lignosulfonate compounds catalyzed by laccase have poor affinity toward fibers. However, the oxidized lignosulfonate showed significant differences in the UV-vis spectra. The differences between the flax and sisal could be attributed to the different percentage of lignin in the two substrates. In conclusion, the results showed that a huge oxidation of the aromatic structure of the lignosulfonates was achieved and a reorganization of the oxidized lignosulfonate by crosslinking reactions leads to the formation of a new polymer structure

Effects of Dietary Protein and Fat Contents on Renal Function and Inflammatory Cytokines in Rats with Adriamycin-Induced Nephrotic Syndrome

The effects of dietary protein and fat on renal function-related blood and urine parameters, such as albumin, urinary protein,and inflammatory cytokines were investigated in adriamycin- (ADR) induced nephrotic syndrome rats. ADR (2 mg/kg BW) was injected i.p. weekly for six weeks to develop nephrotic syndrome; thereafter rats were fed low-protein/high-fat (LPHF) or high-protein/low-fat (HPLF) diets for five weeks. Renal function-related blood and urine parameters were measured before and after dietary intervention. Serum levels of albumin, TG, and creatinine were significantly higher in the LPHF group than in the HPLF group. Serum levels of albumin were low and urinary protein excretion protein was high in HPLF group. BUN and UUN levels were higher in the HPLF group than in the LPHF. Urinary excretion of creatinine was significantly higher in the HPLF group than in the LPHF group. Serum inflammatory cytokine levels did not differ between the two groups, however the levels of IL-6, TNF-α, and IL-13 in splenocyte supernatants were significantly higher in the LPHF group than in the HPLF group. We confirmed that protein and fat contents in diet affect renal function-related blood and urine parameters and splenocyte inflammatory cytokine levels in ADR-induced nephrotic syndrome rats