A High-Resolution Melting Approach for Analyzing Allelic Expression Dynamics

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are single base pair mutations that provide new approaches to studies of allele transcript abundances. High-resolution DNA melting curve (HRM) analysis using a LightScanner (Hi-Res Melting system with Idaho\u27s LC Green) provides post-PCR detection of mutations and SNPs in genomic DNA. This study investigated whether the HRM analysis can distinguish alleles among potato (Solanum tuberosum) transcript abundances. Transcript properties of genes encoding seven carbohydrate metabolism enzymes/proteins in various tissues and cold storage durations were studied. The HRM assay measured differential expression of alleles between different organs, between different storage treatments and stages of tubers from the same variety, and between different varieties with the same treatment. The RT-PCR amplicons were directly sequenced to assist the interpretation of HRM data. The cDNA HRM curves correlated well with the nucleotide polymorphisms of the cDNA sequences and the transcript abundance of alleles and therefore can serve as functional allele activity (FAA) markers. By combining the allelic specificity of HRM with simple PCR design, this technology can be applied to rapidly determine the most active allele of a gene among the cells analyzed

Financial integration and economic growth:impact of renewable energy investments, technology transfer, and climate change on Europe and central Asian economies

Financial integration plays an important role in fostering global economic growth. Energy demand, technology transfer, sustainable production, and climate change have emerged as key drivers of sustainable development. This study explores the influence of financial integration, bolstered by renewable energy-induced trade, industry-driven technology, and environmental concerns, on regional economic growth. This study analyzes a panel of 39 high- and upper-middle-income European and Central Asian countries in 2017–2021. Using a panel generalized method of moments estimator, we reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between regional economic growth and carbon emissions. Moreover, renewable energy-induced trade contributes positively to regional growth while trade openness and technology transfer further enhance this growth. Industry-driven technology negatively impacts regional growth owing to inadequate financial integration. The absence of sustainable energy infrastructure and industrialization also negatively impacts regional growth. Our study underscores the importance of increasing financial integration to promote sustainable energy-driven trade openness and technology transfer in line with the United Nations’ sustainable development agenda

Traditional suburethral sling operations for urinary incontinence in women

Funding Information: We are grateful to Adrian Grant, Jonathan Cook, Aldemar Araujo Castro, and several anonymous peer-referees for assistance and valuable comments on this and previous versions of the review. Sheila Wallace provided support for each version of the review as well as for this update and in the classification and identification of new studies. Fiona Stewart assisted with rewriting the effects of interventions section, conversion of incontinence to continence outcomes, and related changes in 'Summary of findings' tables. The review was originally conceived and conducted by Carlos CB Bezerra and Homero Bruschini. An earlier version of this review was completed as part of a project to add brief economic commentaries to Cochrane Incontinence's Reviews on surgery for urinary incontinence in women (Dean 2017). This project was supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) via the Cochrane Review Incentive Scheme 2016.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Clinicopathological features of craniopharyngioma: A 15-year study from a tertiary care center in Pakistan

Introduction: Craniopharyngiomas (CPs) are benign neoplasms and most common suprasellar tumors. They are more frequent in children, contributing to a significant number of intracranial tumors in the pediatric population and are thought to be arising either from the epithelial remnant cells of the craniopharyngeal duct or from the adenohypophysis epithelium. Two subtypes of CPs exist, namely, adamantinomatous craniopharyngioma (ACP) and papillary craniopharyngioma (PCP). ACP is more common in children with a relatively aggressive clinical course and more frequent relapses than PCP. The study objective was to evaluate the clinicopathological features of CP in our population.Methods: We conducted a retrospective observational study in the Department of Histopathology at Aga Khan Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan, over a period of 15 years, from January 2001 to December 2015. All CP cases were included in the study. A total of 207 cases were diagnosed during this period by histopathologists based on histologic features. All slides were retrieved, and diagnosis was confirmed after a reexamination of slides.Results: We found that the mean age of diagnosis was 25.59±14.71 years, and the median follow-up time was 7 (3-19) years. The number of male patients was 136 (65.7%) and the number of female patients was 71 (34.3%). The most common tumor site was suprasellar (71.5%) followed by the sellar and temporal lobe (12.1% and 6.8%, respectively). The most common complaints were headache (21.7%), followed by loss of vision/decreased vision (16.4%) and vomiting (5.3%). The overall survival rate was 95.2% with a recurrence rate of 5.8%. A significant association of survival was noted with tumor recurrence.Conclusion: CP is a rare brain tumor with good overall survival. We found a low recurrence rate of CP in our study. However, recurrence was found to be the most important factor determining survival in patients with CP

Taxonomy, distribution, epidemiology, disease cycle and management of brown rot disease of peach (Monilinia spp.)

Peach is a temperate fruit and is grown in various edaphoclimatic settings worldwide. Brown rot, caused primarily by Monilinia spp.  is one of the most destructive peach diseases. The disease results in severe pre-harvest and post-harvest losses. More than half of the world’s post-harvest losses of peach can be attributed to brown rot disease. Despite the widespread adoption of management strategies such as pruning, removing fruit mummies, eliminating wild plums, chemical control remains an effective strategy for managing brown rot disease. However, environmental and human health impacts of chemical control and fungicides resistance consequences, these management tactics tend to be re-evaluated. The aim of this review is to comprehensively sum up the available information on the taxonomy, distribution, epidemiology, symptomology, molecular and morphological characterization of brown rot disease, and to date management approaches. However, fast paced current research on brown rot disease of peach management should be carefully updated for the full-proof control of the fungi. Nevertheless, more research and review of the information regarding various aspects of diseases management exclusively biocontrol agents are needed to exploit their actual potential, which is the salient objective of this review. This review will open new avenues giving future prospects and research agenda to the scientists working on this serious pathosystem of peach

Flow of a Second Grade Fluid through Constricted Tube using Integral Method

The steady flow of a second grade fluid through constricted tube for mild stenosis is modeled and analyzed theoretically. The governing equations are simplified by implying an order-of-magnitude analysis. Based on Karman Pohlhausen procedure polynomial solution for velocity profile is presented. Expressions for pressure gradient, shear stress, separation and reattachment points are also calculated. The effects of nondimensional parameters emerging in the model on the velocity profile, shear stress, pressure gradient are discussed and depicted graphically. The effect of non-Newtonian parameter on velocity profile, wall shear stress and pressure gradient is also analyzed. It is found that the Reynolds number strongly effect the wall shear stress, separation and reattachment points

A Bag of Expression framework for improved human action recognition

The Bag of Words (BoW) approach has been widely used for human action recognition in recent state-of-the-art methods. In this paper, we introduce what we call a Bag of Expression (BoE) framework, based on the bag of words method, for recognizing human action in simple and realistic scenarios. The proposed approach includes space time neighborhood information in addition to visual words. The main focus is to enhance the existing strengths of the BoW approach like view independence, scale invariance and occlusion handling. BOE includes independent pairs of neighbors for building expressions, therefore it is tolerant to occlusion and capable of handling view independence up to some extent in realistic scenarios. Our main contribution includes learning a class specific visual words extraction approach for establishing a relationship between these extracted visual words in both space and time dimension. Finally, we have carried out a set of experiments to optimize different parameters and compare its performance with recent state-of-the-art-methods. Our approach outperforms existing Bag of Words based approaches, when evaluated using the same performance evaluation methods. We tested our approach on four publicly available datasets for human action recognition i.e. UCF-Sports, KTH, UCF11 and UCF50 and achieve significant results i.e. 97.3%, 99.5%, 96.7% and 93.42% respectively in terms of average accuracy.Sergio A Velastin has received funding from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, the European Unions Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement nº 600371, el Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (COFUND2013-51509) el Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (CEI-15-17) and Banco Santander

Validated RP-HPLC method for the simultaneous determination of glucosamine sulphate and curcumin in cream formulation: A novel stability-indicating study

Purpose: To develop and validate a stability-indicating reverse phase-high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) method for the simultaneous determination of glucosamine sulphate (GS) and curcumin (Cur) in drug solution and formulation.Methods: The optimized chromatographic conditions were achieved by passing various compositions of mobile phases over  different reverse phase chromatographic columns. Various validation parameters, including linearity, range, limit of detection (LOD), limit of quantification (LOQ), accuracy, precision, specificity and system suitability were performed and evaluated. Stability studies under stressed conditions were done to evaluate the effects of acid, alkali, oxidation, heat and degradation by UV light.Results: The validated method was linear over the concentration range of 0.094 to 1.5 mg/mL for GS and 0.125 to 1.5 mg/mL for Cur, with a correlation coefficient > 0.999. The Intra and inter-day precision were 1.9 % for GS and 0.5 % for Cur, while accuracy was 96 and 102 % for GS and Cur, respectively. Stability studies showed that GS was highly sensitive to acid, alkali and oxidation and less sensitive to heat and UV. Cur was stable against acid, heat and oxidation but sensitive to alkali and UV.Conclusion: The developed and validated method was precise and accurate for both GS and Cur and can potentially be utilized for their identification and quantification at industrial, research and quality control laboratories

Miscellaneous Rheumatic Diseases [73-83]: 73. Is There a Delay in Specialist Referral of Hot Swollen Joint?

Background: Patients with acute, hot, swollen joints commonly present to general practitioners, emergency departments and/or acute admitting teams rather than directly to rheumatology. It is imperative to consider septic arthritis in the differential diagnosis of these patients. The British Society of Rheumatology (BSR) has produced guidelines for the management of this condition, which include recommendations for early specialist referral and joint aspiration of all patients with suspected septic arthritis. We examined whether the initial management of patients with acute hot swollen joint(s) at University College London Hospital (UCLH) follows BSR guidelines. Methods: For the period Feb to Nov 2009, appropriate patients were identified by searching the UCLH database using the diagnostic terms, "pyogenic arthritis”, "septic arthritis” and "gout”; and from all joint aspirate requests sent to microbiology. Medical notes were obtained and any patients who had elective arthroscopies or chronic (> 6 weeks) symptoms were excluded. Data were collected on the time taken from the onset of symptoms to specialist (orthopaedic/rheumatology) referral and joint aspiration, collection of blood cultures and antibiotic treatment with or without microbiology advice. Results: Twenty patients were identified with hot swollen (18 monoarticular, 3 prosthetic) joint(s) of < 2 weeks duration. Of whom, 3/20 (15%) were admitted directly to rheumatology, 7/20 (35%) to the acute admissions unit, 3/20 (15%) to orthopaedic, 4/20 (20%) to a medical team and 1/20 (5%) to general surgery. In 19 (95%) cases, specialist (rheumatology/orthopaedic) advice was sought. Of 14 cases not seen directly by specialists 9 (64%) were referred at 24-48 h and 5 (36%) at 48-192 h. All 20 patients had joint aspiration. In 9/20 (45%) of cases, joint aspiration was performed in less than 6 h, 3/20 (15%) cases at 6-24h and 6/20 (30%) cases at 24-192 h and was not recorded in two patients. Of these, crystals were identified in two and one was culture positive. Blood cultures were received for only 6/20 (30%) of cases and only clearly documented to have been taken prior to antibiotic therapy and none were positive. Of 14/20 (70%) started on antibiotic treatment empirically, only 6 (42%) were preceded by joint aspiration. In the 6 patients not treated with antibiotics due to low index of suspicion of septic arthritis, synovial fluid and blood cultures were negative. Microbiology advice was sought in 10/20 (50%) of cases by the admitting teams but the timing of this advice is unclear. Conclusions: Despite the provision of 24 h rheumatology and orthopaedic cover at UCLH, we found a significant delay in acute medical firms seeking specialist advice on the management of patients with acute, hot swollen joints with subsequent deviation from BSR guidelines. Consequently, we plan to increase awareness of these guidelines amongst medical firms at UCLH. Disclosure statement: All authors have declared no conflicts of interes

SPOROBOLUS SPICATUS, A POTENTIAL TURF GRASS UNDER THE CLIMATIC CONDITIONS OF UAE

Different accessions of Sporobolus spicatus were tested for the possible use in the landscaping sector of United Arab Emirates. In this regards, fifty accessions of S. spicatus were screened against five salinity levels of 15, 30, 45, 60 and 75dSm-1 at 3cm mowing height. Significant variations were found among the treatment for various characters of leaf colour, fresh and dry weight. Most of the accessions of the grass tolerated up to 45 dSm-1, without compromising on quality. Further increase in salinity, most of the accessions ceased to grow, except a few accessions which survived even at salinity levels of 75dSm-1. Many of the grasses exhibit better performance than Paspalam vaginatum, the prevailing commercial turf grass in UAE (used as control in this instance). As a whole accessions 45S, 18S, 35S and 37S showed salinity tolerance at 3cm mowing height and maintaining quality up to the acceptable level. Based on their tolerance to salinity and better performance, these accessions are recommended for turf use in public landscaping