Increased plasma levels of metalloproteinase-9 are associated with abdominal aortic aneurysms

AbstractPurpose: Previous investigators have identified disease-specific elevations of metalloelastase-9 (MMP-9) in aneurysm tissue biopsies. We hypothesized that circulating MMP-9 might also be elevated in patients with aneurysms. The purpose of this study was to compare plasma and aortic tissue MMP-9 levels in patients with infrarenal aneurysms (AAAs), patients with symptomatic aortoiliac occlusive disease (AOD), and healthy patients. Methods: A sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used to measure plasma MMP-9 in patients with AAA (n = 22; mean age, 72.7 years), with AOD (n = 9; mean age, 60.5 years), and without disease (n = 8; mean age, 35.3 years). The MMP-9 levels also were measured in 48-hour supernatants of organ culture tissue explants from patients with AAA (n = 10; mean age, 66.2 years) and AOD (n = 5; mean age, 50.4 years) and organ donors (n = 7; mean age, 48.1 years). The results were reported as the mean ± the standard error of the mean and analyzed with analysis of variance with multivariate regression. Results: The plasma MMP-9 levels were significantly higher in the patients with AAA (85.66 ng/mL ± 11.64) than in the patients with AOD (25.75 ng/mL ± 4.159; P < .001) or the healthy patients (13.16 ng/mL ± 1.94; P < .001). No significant difference in plasma MMP-9 levels between patients with AOD and healthy patients was identified. The patients with multiple aneurysms had significantly higher levels of plasma MMP-9 than did the patients with an isolated AAA (134.68 ng/mL ± 17.5 vs 71.03 ng/mL ± 10.7; P < .04). In organ culture, AAA and AOD tissue explants produced significantly higher levels of MMP-9 (3218.5 ng/gm ± 1115.2 and 1283.1 ng/gm ± 310.6 aortic tissue) than did disease-free explants (6.14 ng/gm ± 2.3 aortic tissue; P < .0001). No significant difference in MMP-9 production between AAA and AOD explants was identified. Conclusion: Plasma MMP-9 levels are significantly higher in patients with AAA than in patients with AOD or in healthy volunteers. The patients with multiple aneurysms have higher levels than those patients with an isolated AAA. Organ culture studies suggest that diseased aortic tissue is the source of MMP-9. (J Vasc Surg 1999;29:122-9.

Economic Values for Perennial Ryegrass Traits in New Zealand Dairy Farm Systems

Perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) is the main species used in dairy pastures throughout New Zealand. There are approximately 30 perennial ryegrass cultivars sold commercially in New Zealand, but currently there is no evaluation system which allows farmers to compare the potential impact of different cultivars on the profitability of their farm business. Such an economic evaluation system requires information on performance values (PV) for cultivars which quantifies their performance with respect to the major productivity traits (herbage accumulation (HA, kg DM/ha), nutritive value and persistence) relative to a genetic base, and economic values (EV, Doyle and Elliott 1983) which estimate the additional profit resulting from each unit change in the trait of interest (Equation 1). Economic value = Δ operating profit/Δ trait of interest (1) This paper describes a system modelling approach developed to estimate EV for seasonal HA of pasture in the major dairying regions of New Zealand. This information is used in the DairyNZ Forage Value Index system (www.dairynzfvi.co.nz) which is being developed to include information on all three productivity traits for commercially available ryegrass cultivars

MicroMAPS CO Measurements over North America and Europe during Summer-Fall 2004

The MicroMAPS instrument is a nadir-viewing, gas filter-correlated radiometer which operating in the 4.67 micrometer fundamental band of carbon monoxide. Originally designed and built for a space mission, this CO remote sensor is being flown in support of satellite validation and science instrument demonstrations for potential UAV applications. The MicroMAPS instrument system, as flown on Proteus, was designed by a senior student design project in the Aerospace Engineering Department, Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, VA. and then revised by Systems Engineers at NASA Langley. The final instrument system was integrated and tested at NASA LaRC, in partnership with Scaled Composites and Virginia Space Grant Consortium (VSGC). VSGC supervised the fabrication of the nacelle that houses the instrument system on the right rear tail boom of Proteus. Full system integration and flight testing was performed at Scaled Composites, in Mojave, in June 2004. Its successful performance enabled participation in four international science missions on Proteus: in 2004, INTEX -NA over eastern North America in July, ADRIEX over the Mediterranean region and EAQUATE over the United Kingdom region in September,and TWP-ICE over Darwin, Australia and the surrounding oceans in Jan-Feb 2006. These flights resulted in nearly 300 hours of data. In parallel with the engineering developments, theoretical radiative transfer models were developed specifically for the MicroMAPS instrument system at the University of Virginia, Mechanical Engineering Department by a combined undergraduate and graduate student team. With technical support from Resonance Ltd. in June 2005, the MicroMAPS instrument was calibrated for the conditions under which the Summer-Fall 2004 flights occurred. The analyses of the calibration data, combined with the theoretical radiative transfer models, provide the first data reduction for the science flights reported here. These early results and comparisons with profile data from the NASA DC-8, the coincident AIRS CO retrievals, and selected CO measurements from the MOZAIC program will be presented

Development of a Forage Evaluation System for Perennial Ryegrass Cultivar and Endophyte Combinations in New Zealand Dairy Systems

An economic index for perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) cultivars is a relatively new concept, although recently introduced in Ireland (McEvoy et al. 2011). By contrast, in dairy cattle breeding, the concept of an economic index rating animals and economic values underlying that index is well entrenched (Philipson et al. 1994; Veerkamp, 1998). Historically, forage evaluation data for individual cultivars were either displayed using absolute numbers for seasonal dry matter production within a season or across all seasons with a notation to indicate statistical differences, or percentage values where a reference cultivar is 100. The adoption of an economic index and routine evaluation approach for perennial ryegrass provides a method to identify traits of economic importance to focus plant breeding efforts better and to provide clarity for farmers around predicting cultivars that will maximise farm profit. It also allows for routine tracking of genetic gain of individual traits and the economic index. In this paper, the economic based forage evaluation techniques now used in New Zealand for perennial ryegrass cultivar/endophyte combinations are presented

Diagnosing Acute Compartment Syndrome – where have we got to?

Open Access via the Springer Compact AgreementPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Evolutionary and ecological processes influencing chemical defense variation in an aposematic and mimetic Heliconius butterfly

Chemical defences against predators underlie the evolution of aposematic coloration and mimicry, which are classic examples of adaptive evolution. Surprisingly little is known about the roles of ecological and evolutionary processes maintaining defence variation, and how they may feedback to shape the evolutionary dynamics of species. Cyanogenic Heliconius butterflies exhibit diverse warning color patterns and mimicry, thus providing a useful framework for investigating these questions. We studied intraspecific variation in de novo biosynthesized cyanogenic toxicity and its potential ecological and evolutionary sources in wild populations of Heliconius erato along environmental gradients, in common-garden broods and with feeding treatments. Our results demonstrate substantial intraspecific variation, including detectable variation among broods reared in a common garden. The latter estimate suggests considerable evolutionary potential in this trait, although predicting the response to selection is likely complicated due to the observed skewed distribution of toxicity values and the signatures of maternal contributions to the inheritance of toxicity. Larval diet contributed little to toxicity variation. Furthermore, toxicity profiles were similar along steep rainfall and altitudinal gradients, providing little evidence for these factors explaining variation in biosynthesized toxicity in natural populations. In contrast, there were striking differences in the chemical profiles of H. erato from geographically distant populations, implying potential local adaptation in the acquisition mechanisms and levels of defensive compounds. The results highlight the extensive variation and potential for adaptive evolution in defense traits for aposematic and mimetic species, which may contribute to the high diversity often found in these systems.Peer reviewe

The Pan-STARRS Moving Object Processing System

We describe the Pan-STARRS Moving Object Processing System (MOPS), a modern software package that produces automatic asteroid discoveries and identifications from catalogs of transient detections from next-generation astronomical survey telescopes. MOPS achieves > 99.5% efficiency in producing orbits from a synthetic but realistic population of asteroids whose measurements were simulated for a Pan-STARRS4-class telescope. Additionally, using a non-physical grid population, we demonstrate that MOPS can detect populations of currently unknown objects such as interstellar asteroids. MOPS has been adapted successfully to the prototype Pan-STARRS1 telescope despite differences in expected false detection rates, fill-factor loss and relatively sparse observing cadence compared to a hypothetical Pan-STARRS4 telescope and survey. MOPS remains >99.5% efficient at detecting objects on a single night but drops to 80% efficiency at producing orbits for objects detected on multiple nights. This loss is primarily due to configurable MOPS processing limits that are not yet tuned for the Pan-STARRS1 mission. The core MOPS software package is the product of more than 15 person-years of software development and incorporates countless additional years of effort in third-party software to perform lower-level functions such as spatial searching or orbit determination. We describe the high-level design of MOPS and essential subcomponents, the suitability of MOPS for other survey programs, and suggest a road map for future MOPS development.Comment: 57 Pages, 26 Figures, 13 Table