Forest Bathing Always Makes Sense: Blood Pressure-Lowering and Immune System-Balancing Effects in Late Spring and Winter in Central Europe

Various formats of forest bathing have been receiving increasing attention owing to their perspectives in health promotion and the treatment of chronic lifestyle diseases. The majority of field studies are still being conducted in the Far Eastern region, and they often make psychological assessments mainly in the green season. In our pretest–posttest field experiment, twelve healthy, working-age volunteers participated in a 2-h leisurely forest walking program, first in the green season (May) and then in the winter season (January), in the Mecsek Hills, next to Pécs, Hungary. Systolic blood pressure decreased after the trips both in late spring and in the winter. Based on changes in the expressions of CD69, an early activation marker, NKG2D, a major recognition receptor, perforin, granzyme B, and TIM-3, an inhibitory immune checkpoint molecule, on CD8+ cytotoxic T, NK, NKdim, NKbright, and NKT cells, we detected the stimulation of NKbright cells and activation of all examined immune cell subsets in the green season. In the winter, a slight activating and an interesting balancing effect regarding TIM-3 could be observed considering our finding that basal (pretest) TIM-3 expression by NK cells was significantly lower in the winter. Our work expands the knowledge on and potentials of forest medicine

The pathogenic c.1171A>G (p.Arg391Gly) and c.2359G>A (p.Val787Ile) ABCC6 variants display incomplete penetrance causing pseudoxanthoma elasticum in a subset of individuals

ABCC6 promotes ATP efflux from hepatocytes to bloodstream. ATP is metabolized to pyrophosphate, an inhibitor of ectopic calcification. Pathogenic variants of ABCC6 cause pseudoxanthoma elasticum, a highly variable recessive ectopic calcification disorder. Incomplete penetrance may initiate disease heterogeneity, hence symptoms may not, or differently manifest in carriers. Here, we investigated whether incomplete penetrance is a source of heterogeneity in pseudoxanthoma elasticum. By integrating clinical and genetic data of 589 patients, we created the largest European cohort. Based on allele frequency alterations, we identified two incomplete penetrant pathogenic variants, c.2359G>A (p.Val787Ile) and c.1171A>G (p.Arg391Gly), with 6.5% and 2% penetrance, respectively. However, when penetrant, the c.1171A>G (p.Arg391Gly) manifested a clinically unaltered severity. After applying in silico and in vitro characterization, we suggest that incomplete penetrant variants are only deleterious if a yet unknown interacting partner of ABCC6 is mutated simultaneously. The low penetrance of these variants should be contemplated in genetic counseling

Proceedings of Abstracts Engineering and Computer Science Research Conference 2019

© 2019 The Author(s). This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. For further details please see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Note: Keynote: Fluorescence visualisation to evaluate effectiveness of personal protective equipment for infection control is © 2019 Crown copyright and so is licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Under this licence users are permitted to copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information; adapt the Information; exploit the Information commercially and non-commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application. Where you do any of the above you must acknowledge the source of the Information in your product or application by including or linking to any attribution statement specified by the Information Provider(s) and, where possible, provide a link to this licence: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/This book is the record of abstracts submitted and accepted for presentation at the Inaugural Engineering and Computer Science Research Conference held 17th April 2019 at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK. This conference is a local event aiming at bringing together the research students, staff and eminent external guests to celebrate Engineering and Computer Science Research at the University of Hertfordshire. The ECS Research Conference aims to showcase the broad landscape of research taking place in the School of Engineering and Computer Science. The 2019 conference was articulated around three topical cross-disciplinary themes: Make and Preserve the Future; Connect the People and Cities; and Protect and Care

Search for top-down and bottom-up drivers of latitudinal trends in insect herbivory in oak trees in Europe

The strength of species interactions is traditionally expected to become stronger toward the Equator. However, recent studies have reported opposite or inconsistent latitudinal trends in the bottom-up (plant quality) and top-down (natural enemies) forces driving insect herbivory, possibly because these forces have rarely been studied concomitantly. This makes previous attempts to understand the effect of large scale climatic gradients on insect herbivory unsuccessful

VALUE IN GRASS – MATTER OF FIBRE AND CARBS

Climate adaptation is a major challenge. Chasing the sufficient amount of hay is getting in higher priority. Distant mass hay producers give favourable offers despite long distances. Quality is also gaining position and indicators like RFQ (Relative Forage Quality) is highlighting the marketing language. Hay market as we knew no longer exists in Hungary. Most farmers produce their own hay and do not spend extra cents to buy bales. Climate change however, force them to adapt and store more bales for the future. Horse owners and dairy farmers are the main driver to convince hay producers to provide high quality forage. We gathered Hungarian regional hay-price information and evaluated the trends in this sector. The demand-driven hay-price is in contradiction with premium quality timothy grass hay

VALUE IN GRASS – MATTER OF FIBRE AND CARBS

Climate adaptation is a major challenge. Chasing the sufficient amount of hay is getting in higher priority. Distant mass hay producers give favourable offers despite long distances. Quality is also gaining position and indicators like RFQ (Relative Forage Quality) is highlighting the marketing language. Hay market as we knew no longer exists in Hungary. Most farmers produce their own hay and do not spend extra cents to buy bales. Climate change however, force them to adapt and store more bales for the future. Horse owners and dairy farmers are the main driver to convince hay producers to provide high quality forage. We gathered Hungarian regional hay-price information and evaluated the trends in this sector. The demand-driven hay-price is in contradiction with premium quality timothy grass hay

Field Practice Report UPT BP3 Region IX Percut Sei Tuan District Deli Serdang Regency

84 HlmSetehh praktik lapangan yang dilakukan di UPT BP3 Wilayah IX Desa Percut Sei Tuan dapat diambil kesimpulan sebagai berkut : 1. Budidaya padi varietas ir 36 terdiri dari kegiatan persemaian pengolahan lahan penanaman pemeliharaan dan pemanenan. Dalam pemeliharaan tanaman padi permasalahannya adalah serangan hama dan penyakit adapun pemecahan masalahnya adalah dengan menggunakan beberapa pestisida yang direkomendasikan oleh pemerintah serta mengikuti anjuran penyuluhan. 2. Manajemen yang digunakan dalam pembibitan padi dalam penyuluhan pertanian di UPT BP3 Percut Sei Tuan ini terdiri dari perencanaan pengorganisasian. Pelaksanaan dan pengawasan telah berjalan dengan bak dan mengikuti sesuai yang telah direncanakan oleh penyuluh pertanian. 3. Perencanaan yang dilakukan di pembibitan meliputi pemilihan lokasi di beberapa Desa Percut Sei Tuan penyiapan lokasi, pemesanan kecambah penggunaan pupuk dan perawatan. SARAN Adapun saran yang didapatkan adalah bahwa PKL (praktek kerja lapangan) sangatlah bermanfaat bagi mahasiswa. Oleh karena itu mahasiswa di harapkan untuk lebih serius mengkuti PKL agar dapat memahami maupun mempelajari budidaya tanaman padi. Oleh karena itu kritikan dan juga saran sangatlah kami harapkan untuk perbaikan laporan di masa yang akan datang

Variation in chemical defense among natural populations of common toad, Bufo bufo, tadpoles: the role of environmental factors

Defensive toxins are widespread in nature, yet we know little about how various environmental factors shape the evolution of chemical defense, especially in vertebrates. In this study we investigated the natural variation in the amount and composition of bufadienolide toxins, and the relative importance of ecological factors in predicting that variation, in larvae of the common toad, Bufo bufo, an amphibian that produces toxins de novo. We found that tadpoles' toxin content varied markedly among populations, and the number of compounds per tadpole also differed between two geographical regions. The most consistent predictor of toxicity was the strength of competition, indicating that tadpoles produced more compounds and larger amounts of toxins when coexisting with more competitors. Additionally, tadpoles tended to contain larger concentrations of bufadienolides in ponds that were less prone to desiccation, suggesting that the costs of toxin production can only be afforded by tadpoles that do not need to drastically speed up their development. Interestingly, this trade-off was not alleviated by higher food abundance, as periphyton biomass had negligible effect on chemical defense. Even more surprisingly, we found no evidence that higher predation risk enhances chemical defenses, suggesting that low predictability of predation risk and high mortality cost of low toxicity might select for constitutive expression of chemical defense irrespective of the actual level of predation risk. Our findings highlight that the variation in chemical defense may be influenced by environmental heterogeneity in both the need for, and constraints on, toxicity as predicted by optimal defense theory

The pathogenic p.(R391G) ABCC6 displays incomplete penetrance implying the necessity of an interacting partner for the development of pseudoxanthoma elasticum

ABCC6 encodes a transmembrane transporter playing a primary role in the efflux of ATP from hepatocytes to the bloodstream. ATP is then cleaved to AMP and inorganic pyrophosphate, a major inhibitor of ectopic calcification. Pathogenic variants of ABCC6 cause pseudoxanthoma elasticum, a multisystemic recessive ectopic calcification disease of variable severity. One of the mechanisms influencing the heterogeneity of a disorder is the penetrance of pathogenic variants. The penetrance of a sequence variant shows the proportion of individuals developing the expected phenotype in the presence of the variant. Incomplete penetrance indicates that the disease does not develop in all the cases when the pathogenic variant is present. Here, we investigated whether incomplete penetrance participates in the heterogeneity of pseudoxanthoma elasticum. By integrating the clinical and genetic data of 590 patients, we created the largest European pseudoxanthoma elasticum cohort. We identified two incomplete penetrant pathogenic variants, p.(V787I) and p.(R391G), based on their allele frequencies in our cohort and in the European reference population of gnomAD. The detailed characterization of the frequent p.(R391G) pathogenic variant suggested only 2% penetrance with an unaltered severity of the clinical phenotype. Based on our biochemical analysis, we hypothesize that the variant becomes deleterious only if an interacting partner is mutated simultaneously. These data point to new molecular mechanisms by revealing the potential existence of the first interacting partner of ABCC6. Our data are important for genetic counseling of pseudoxanthoma elasticum, suggesting a much lower disease heritability of these pathogenic variants