Polycystic ovary syndrome, blood group & diet: A correlative study in South Indian females

Aim: To find out the co-relation between polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) with blood group & diet in South Indian females, between the age-group of (20-30) years. Objectives: Correlative analysis of ABO & Rh system, dietary habits & alcohol consumption with PCOS. Materials & Methods: 100 patients between (20-30) years, diagnosed with PCOS were selected. A standard PCOS questionnaire was given. Blood group & dietary status data were collected. Patients were grouped according to ABO & Rh system considering their diet & alcohol intake (p≤0.05 significant). Result: Our data revealed that the highest risk of PCOS was observed in females with blood group ‘O’ positive followed by ‘B’ positive who were on mixed diet & used to consume alcohol. Our study also suggests that Rh negative individuals didn’t show any association with PCOS. Conclusion: The results of our study suggest that ‘O’ positive females, are more prone to PCOS. Though the relative frequency of B positive individuals are more in India, females with blood group O positive are more susceptible to PCOS, contributing factors being mixed diet & alcohol intake. So, early screening of ‘O’ positive &‘B’ positive females of reproductive age-group in South-India, could be used as a measure for timely diagnosis of PCOS, better management &also prevention of complications. However, further research should be done to investigate the multifaceted mechanisms triggering these effects

Accretion of Planetary Material onto Host Stars

Accretion of planetary material onto host stars may occur throughout a star's life. Especially prone to accretion, extrasolar planets in short-period orbits, while relatively rare, constitute a significant fraction of the known population, and these planets are subject to dynamical and atmospheric influences that can drive significant mass loss. Theoretical models frame expectations regarding the rates and extent of this planetary accretion. For instance, tidal interactions between planets and stars may drive complete orbital decay during the main sequence. Many planets that survive their stars' main sequence lifetime will still be engulfed when the host stars become red giant stars. There is some observational evidence supporting these predictions, such as a dearth of close-in planets around fast stellar rotators, which is consistent with tidal spin-up and planet accretion. There remains no clear chemical evidence for pollution of the atmospheres of main sequence or red giant stars by planetary materials, but a wealth of evidence points to active accretion by white dwarfs. In this article, we review the current understanding of accretion of planetary material, from the pre- to the post-main sequence and beyond. The review begins with the astrophysical framework for that process and then considers accretion during various phases of a host star's life, during which the details of accretion vary, and the observational evidence for accretion during these phases.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures (with some redacted), invited revie

Synergistic Antibacterial Effects of Metallic Nanoparticle Combinations

© The Author(s) 2019.Metallic nanoparticles have unique antimicrobial properties that make them suitable for use within medical and pharmaceutical devices to prevent the spread of infection in healthcare. The use of nanoparticles in healthcare is on the increase with silver being used in many devices. However, not all metallic nanoparticles can target and kill all disease-causing bacteria. To overcome this, a combination of several different metallic nanoparticles were used in this study to compare effects of multiple metallic nanoparticles when in combination than when used singly, as single elemental nanoparticles (SENPs), against two common hospital acquired pathogens (Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas. aeruginosa). Flow cytometry LIVE/DEAD assay was used to determine rates of cell death within a bacterial population when exposed to the nanoparticles. Results were analysed using linear models to compare effectiveness of three different metallic nanoparticles, tungsten carbide (WC), silver (Ag) and copper (Cu), in combination and separately. Results show that when the nanoparticles are placed in combination (NPCs), antimicrobial effects significantly increase than when compared with SENPs (P < 0.01). This study demonstrates that certain metallic nanoparticles can be used in combination to improve the antimicrobial efficiency in destroying morphologically distinct pathogens within the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry.Peer reviewe

Proactive and politically skilled professionals: What is the relationship with affective occupational commitment?

The aim of this study is to extend research on employee affective commitment in three ways: (1) instead of organizational commitment the focus is on occupational commitment; (2) the role of proactive personality on affective occupational commitment is examined; and (3) occupational satisfaction is examined as a mediator and political skills as moderator in the relationship between proactive personality and affective occupational commitment. Two connected studies, one in a hospital located in the private sector and one in a university located in the public sector, are carried out in Pakistan, drawing on a total sample of over 400 employees. The results show that proactive personality is positively related to affective occupational commitment, and that occupational satisfaction partly mediates the relationship between proactive personality and affective occupational commitment. No effect is found for a moderator effect of political skills in the relationship between proactive personality and affective occupational commitment. Political skills however moderate the relationship between proactive personality and affective organizational commitment

Modelling Commonsense Commonalities with Multi-Facet Concept Embeddings

Concept embeddings offer a practical and efficient mechanism for injecting commonsense knowledge into downstream tasks. Their core purpose is often not to predict the commonsense properties of concepts themselves, but rather to identify commonalities, i.e.\ sets of concepts which share some property of interest. Such commonalities are the basis for inductive generalisation, hence high-quality concept embeddings can make learning easier and more robust. Unfortunately, standard embeddings primarily reflect basic taxonomic categories, making them unsuitable for finding commonalities that refer to more specific aspects (e.g.\ the colour of objects or the materials they are made of). In this paper, we address this limitation by explicitly modelling the different facets of interest when learning concept embeddings. We show that this leads to embeddings which capture a more diverse range of commonsense properties, and consistently improves results in downstream tasks such as ultra-fine entity typing and ontology completion

What do Deck Chairs and Sun Hats Have in Common? Uncovering Shared Properties in Large Concept Vocabularies

Concepts play a central role in many applications. This includes settings where concepts have to be modelled in the absence of sentence context. Previous work has therefore focused on distilling decontextualised concept embeddings from language models. But concepts can be modelled from different perspectives, whereas concept embeddings typically mostly capture taxonomic structure. To address this issue, we propose a strategy for identifying what different concepts, from a potentially large concept vocabulary, have in common with others. We then represent concepts in terms of the properties they share with the other concepts. To demonstrate the practical usefulness of this way of modelling concepts, we consider the task of ultra-fine entity typing, which is a challenging multi-label classification problem. We show that by augmenting the label set with shared properties, we can improve the performance of the state-of-the-art models for this task.Comment: Accepted for EMNLP 202

RB1 in cancer: Different mechanisms of RB1 inactivation and alterations of pRb pathway in tumorigenesis.

Loss of RB1 gene is considered either a causal or an accelerating event in retinoblastoma. A variety of mechanisms inactivates RB1 gene, including intragenic mutations, loss of expression by methylation and chromosomal deletions, with effects which are species-and cell type-specific. RB1 deletion can even lead to aneuploidy thus greatly increasing cancer risk. The RB1gene is part of a larger gene family that includes RBL1 and RBL2, each of the three encoding structurally related proteins indicated as pRb, p107, and p130, respectively. The great interest in these genes and proteins springs from their ability to slow down neoplastic growth. pRb can associate with various proteins by which it can regulate a great number of cellular activities. In particular, its association with the E2F transcription factor family allows the control of the main pRb functions, while the loss of these interactions greatly enhances cancer development. As RB1 gene, also pRb can be functionally inactivated through disparate mechanisms which are often tissue specific and dependent on the scenario of the involved tumor suppressors and oncogenes. The critical role of the context is complicated by the different functions played by the RB proteins and the E2F family members. In this review, we want to emphasize the importance of the mechanisms of RB1/pRb inactivation in inducing cancer cell development. The review is divided in three chapters describing in succession the mechanisms of RB1 inactivation in cancer cells, the alterations of pRb pathway in tumorigenesis and the RB protein and E2F family in cance

Inactivation of PNKP by mutant ATXN3 triggers apoptosis by activating the DNA damage-response pathway in SCA3.

Spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3), also known as Machado-Joseph disease (MJD), is an untreatable autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease, and the most common such inherited ataxia worldwide. The mutation in SCA3 is the expansion of a polymorphic CAG tri-nucleotide repeat sequence in the C-terminal coding region of the ATXN3 gene at chromosomal locus 14q32.1. The mutant ATXN3 protein encoding expanded glutamine (polyQ) sequences interacts with multiple proteins in vivo, and is deposited as aggregates in the SCA3 brain. A large body of literature suggests that the loss of function of the native ATNX3-interacting proteins that are deposited in the polyQ aggregates contributes to cellular toxicity, systemic neurodegeneration and the pathogenic mechanism in SCA3. Nonetheless, a significant understanding of the disease etiology of SCA3, the molecular mechanism by which the polyQ expansions in the mutant ATXN3 induce neurodegeneration in SCA3 has remained elusive. In the present study, we show that the essential DNA strand break repair enzyme PNKP (polynucleotide kinase 3'-phosphatase) interacts with, and is inactivated by, the mutant ATXN3, resulting in inefficient DNA repair, persistent accumulation of DNA damage/strand breaks, and subsequent chronic activation of the DNA damage-response ataxia telangiectasia-mutated (ATM) signaling pathway in SCA3. We report that persistent accumulation of DNA damage/strand breaks and chronic activation of the serine/threonine kinase ATM and the downstream p53 and protein kinase C-d pro-apoptotic pathways trigger neuronal dysfunction and eventually neuronal death in SCA3. Either PNKP overexpression or pharmacological inhibition of ATM dramatically blocked mutant ATXN3-mediated cell death. Discovery of the mechanism by which mutant ATXN3 induces DNA damage and amplifies the pro-death signaling pathways provides a molecular basis for neurodegeneration due to PNKP inactivation in SCA3, and for the first time offers a possible approach to treatment.This study was funded by NIH grant NS073976 to TKH and a John Sealy Grant to PSS

Radical SAM enzyme QueE defines a new minimal core fold and metal-dependent mechanism

7-carboxy-7-deazaguanine synthase (QueE) catalyzes a key S-adenosyl-L-methionine (AdoMet)- and Mg[superscript 2+]-dependent radical-mediated ring contraction step, which is common to the biosynthetic pathways of all deazapurine-containing compounds. QueE is a member of the AdoMet radical superfamily, which employs the 5′-deoxyadenosyl radical from reductive cleavage of AdoMet to initiate chemistry. To provide a mechanistic rationale for this elaborate transformation, we present the crystal structure of a QueE along with structures of pre- and post-turnover states. We find that substrate binds perpendicular to the [4Fe-4S]-bound AdoMet, exposing its C6 hydrogen atom for abstraction and generating the binding site for Mg[superscript 2+], which coordinates directly to the substrate. The Burkholderia multivorans structure reported here varies from all other previously characterized members of the AdoMet radical superfamily in that it contains a hypermodified ([β [subscript 6] over α [subscript 3]]) protein core and an expanded cluster-binding motif, CX[subscript 14]CX[subscript 2]C.United States. Dept. of Energy. Office of Biological and Environmental ResearchUnited States. Dept. of Energy. Office of Basic Energy SciencesNational Center for Research Resources (U.S.) (P41RR012408)National Institute of General Medical Sciences (U.S.) (P41GM103473)National Center for Research Resources (U.S.) (5P41RR015301-10)National Institute of General Medical Sciences (U.S.) (8 P41 GM 103403-10)United States. Dept. of Energy (Contract DE-AC02-06CH11357

Coronary sinus neuropeptide y levels and adverse outcomes in patients with stable chronic heart failure

Importance: Chronic heart failure (CHF) is associated with increased sympathetic drive and may increase expression of the cotransmitter neuropeptide Y (NPY) within sympathetic neurons. Objective: To determine whether myocardial NPY levels are associated with outcomes in patients with stable CHF. Design, Setting, and Participants: Prospective observational cohort study conducted at a single-center, tertiary care hospital. Stable patients with heart failure undergoing elective cardiac resynchronization therapy device implantation between 2013 and 2015. Main Outcomes and Measures: Chronic heart failure hospitalization, death, orthotopic heart transplantation, and ventricular assist device placement. Results: Coronary sinus (CS) blood samples were obtained during cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) device implantation in 105 patients (mean [SD] age 68 [12] years; 82 men [78%]; mean [SD] left ventricular ejection fraction [LVEF] 26% [7%]). Clinical, laboratory, and outcome data were collected prospectively. Stellate ganglia (SG) were collected from patients with CHF and control organ donors for molecular analysis. Mean (SD) CS NPY levels were 85.1 (31) pg/mL. On bivariate analyses, CS NPY levels were associated with estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR; rs = -0.36, P < .001); N-terminal-pro hormone brain natriuretic peptide (rs = 0.33; P = .004), and LV diastolic dimension (rs = -0.35; P < .001), but not age, LVEF, functional status, or CRT response. Adjusting for GFR, age, and LVEF, the hazard ratio for event-free (death, cardiac transplant, or left ventricular assist device) survival for CS NPY ≥ 130 pg/mL was 9.5 (95% CI, 2.92-30.5; P < .001). Immunohistochemistry demonstrated significantly reduced NPY protein (mean [SD], 13.7 [7.6] in the cardiomyopathy group vs 31.4 [3.7] in the control group; P < .001) in SG neurons from patients with CHF while quantitative polymerase chain reaction demonstrated similar mRNA levels compared with control individuals, suggesting increased release from SG neurons in patients with CHF. Conclusions and Relevance: The CS levels of NPY may be associated with outcomes in patients with stable CHF undergoing CRT irrespective of CRT response. Increased neuronal traffic and release may be the mechanism for elevated CS NPY levels in patients with CHF. Further studies are warranted to confirm these findings. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01949246