174 research outputs found
Bat conservation and zoonotic disease risk: a research agenda to prevent misguided persecution in the aftermath of COVID-19
Letter to the EditorCOVID-19 has spread around the globe, with massive
impacts on global human health, national economies and
conservation activities. In the timely editorial about conservation
in the maelstrom of COVID-19, Evans et al. (2020)
urged the conservation community to collaborate with other
relevant sectors of society in the search for solutions to the
challenges posed by the current pandemic, as well as future
zoonotic outbreaks. Considering the association of COVID 19 with bats (Zhou et al., 2020), bat conservationists will
undoubtedly be key actors in this dialogue, and thus an
action plan on how best to adjust bat conservation to this
new reality, alongside a transdisciplinary research agenda,
are clear prioritiesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Finding needles in haystacks: linking scientific names, reference specimens and molecular data for Fungi
DNA phylogenetic comparisons have shown that morphology-based species recognition often underestimates fungal diversity. Therefore, the need for accurate DNA sequence data, tied to both correct taxonomic names and clearly annotated specimen data, has never been greater. Furthermore, the growing number of molecular ecology and microbiome projects using high-throughput sequencing require fast and effective methods for en masse species assignments. In this article, we focus on selecting and re-annotating a set of marker reference sequences that represent each currently accepted order of Fungi. The particular focus is on sequences from the internal transcribed spacer region in the nuclear ribosomal cistron, derived from type specimens and/or ex-type cultures. Re-annotated and verified sequences were deposited in a curated public database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), namely the RefSeq Targeted Loci (RTL) database, and will be visible during routine sequence similarity searches with NR_prefixed accession numbers. A set of standards and protocols is proposed to improve the data quality of new sequences, and we suggest how type and other reference sequences can be used to improve identification of Fungi
Head Circumference of Infants Born to Mothers with Different Educational Levels; The Generation R Study
Objective: Head circumference (HC) reflect growth and development of the brain in early childhood. It is unknown whether socioeconomic differences in HC are present in early childhood. Therefore, we investigated the association between socioeconomic position (SEP) and HC in early childhood, and potential underlying factors. Methods: The study focused on Dutch children born between April 2002 and January 2006 who participated in The Generation R Study, a population-based prospective cohort study in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Maternal educational level was used as indicator of SEP. HC measures were concentrated around 1, 3, 6 and 11 months. Associations and explanatory factors were investigated using linear regression analysis, adjusted for potential mediators. Results: The study included 3383 children. At 1, 3 and 6 months of age, children of mothers with a low education had a smaller HC than those with a high education (difference at 1 month: -0.42 SD; 95% CI: -0.54,-0.30; at 3 months: -0.27 SD; 95% CI -0.40,-0.15; and at 6 months: -0.13 SD; 95% CI -0.24,-0.02). Child's length and weight could only partially explain the smaller HC at 1 and 3 months of age. At 6 months, birth weight, gestational age and parental height explained the HC differences. At 11 months, no HC differences were found. Conclusion: Educational inequalities in HC in the first 6 months of life can be mainly explained by pregnancy-related factors, such as birth weight and gestational age. These findings further support public health policies to prevent negative birth outcomes in lower socioeconomic groups
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Effects of episodic future thinking and self-projection on childrenâs prospective memory performance
The present study is the first to investigate the benefits of episodic future thinking (EFT) at encoding on prospective memory (PM) in preschool (age: M = 66.34 months, SD = 3.28)and primary school children (age: M = 88.36 months, SD = 3.12). A second aim was to examine if self-projection influences the possible effects of EFT instructions. PM was assessed using a standard PM paradigm in children with a picture-naming task as the ongoing activity in which the PM task was embedded. Further, two first- and two second-order ToM tasks were administered as indicator of childrenâs self-projection abilities. Forty-one preschoolers and 39 school-aged children were recruited. Half of the participants in each age group were instructed to use EFT as a strategy to encode the PM task, while the others received standard PM instructions. Results revealed a significant age effect, with school-aged children significantly outperforming preschoolers and a significant effect of encoding condition with overall better performance when receiving EFT instructions compared to the standard encoding condition. Even though the interaction between age group and encoding condition was not significant, planned comparisons revealed first evidence that compared to the younger age group, older childrenâs PM benefited more from EFT instructions during intention encoding. Moreover, results showed that although self-projection had a significant impact on PM performance, it did not influence the effects of EFT instructions. Overall, results indicate that children can use EFT encoding strategies to improve their PM performance once EFT abilities are sufficiently developed. Further, they provide first evidence that in addition to executive functions, which have already been shown to influence the development of PM across childhood, self-projection seems to be another key mechanism underlying this development
In vitro analysis of the effects on wound healing of high- and low-molecular weight chains of hyaluronan and their hybrid H-HA/L-HA complexes
Abstract
Background: Recent studies have reported the roles of Hyaluronic acid (HA) chains of diverse length in wound
repair, especially considering the simultaneous occurrence in vivo of both high- (H-HA) and low-molecular weight
(L-HA) hyaluronan at an injury site. It has been shown that HA fragments (5 †MW †20 kDa) usually trigger an
inflammatory response that, on one hand, is the first signal in the activation of a repair mechanism but on the
other, when itâs overexpressed, it may promote unwanted side effects. The present experimental research has
aimed to investigate H-HA, L-HA and of a newly developed complex of the two (H-HA/L-HA) for stability (e.g.
hyaluronidases digestion), for their ability to promote wound healing of human keratinocytes in vitro and for their
effect on cellular biomarker expression trends.
Results: Time-lapse video microscopy studies proved that the diverse HA was capable of restoring the monolayer
integrity of HaCat. The H-HA/L-HA complex (0.1 and 1%w/v) proved faster in regeneration also in co-culture
scratch test where wound closure was achieved in half the time of H-HA stimulated cells and 2.5-fold faster than
the control. Gene expression was evaluated for transformation growth factor beta 1 (TGF-ÎČ1) proving that L-HA
alone increased its expression at 4 h followed by restoration of similar trends for all the stimuli. Depending on
the diverse stimulation (H-HA, L-HA or the complex), metalloproteinases (MMP-2, -9, -13) were also modulated differently.
Furthermore, type I collagen expression and production were evaluated. Compared to the others, persistence of a
significant higher expression level at 24 h for the H-HA/L-HA complex was found.
Conclusions: The outcomes of this research showed that, both at high and low concentrations, hybrid complexes
proved to perform better than HA alone thus suggesting their potential as medical devices in aesthetic and
regenerative medicine.
Keywords: Wound healing, Hyaluronan, MMPs, Hybrid complexe
Bottom-up effects of plant diversity on multitrophic interactions in a biodiversity experiment
Biodiversity is rapidly declining1, and this may negatively affect ecosystem processes, including economically important ecosystem services. Previous studies have shown that biodiversity has positive effects on organisms and processes4 across trophic levels. However, only a few studies have so far incorporated an explicit food-web perspective. In an eight-year biodiversity experiment, we studied an unprecedented range of above- and below-ground organisms and multitrophic interactions. A multitrophic data set originating from a single long-term experiment allows mechanistic insights that would not be gained from meta-analysis of different experiments. Here we show that plant diversity effects dampen with increasing trophic level and degree of omnivory. This was true both for abundance and species richness of organisms. Furthermore, we present comprehensive above-ground/below-ground biodiversity food webs. Both above ground and below ground, herbivores responded more strongly to changes in plant diversity than did carnivores or omnivores. Density and richness of carnivorous taxa was independent of vegetation structure. Below-ground responses to plant diversity were consistently weaker than above-ground responses. Responses to increasing plant diversity were generally positive, but were negative for biological invasion, pathogen infestation and hyperparasitism. Our results suggest that plant diversity has strong bottom-up effects on multitrophic interaction networks, with particularly strong effects on lower trophic levels. Effects on higher trophic levels are indirectly mediated through bottom-up trophic cascades
Combination of searches for heavy spin-1 resonances using 139 fbâ1 of proton-proton collision data at s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector
A combination of searches for new heavy spin-1 resonances decaying into different pairings of W, Z, or Higgs bosons, as well as directly into leptons or quarks, is presented. The data sample used corresponds to 139 fbâ1 of proton-proton collisions at
= 13 TeV collected during 2015â2018 with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Analyses selecting quark pairs (qq, bb,
, and tb) or third-generation leptons (ÏÎœ and ÏÏ) are included in this kind of combination for the first time. A simplified model predicting a spin-1 heavy vector-boson triplet is used. Cross-section limits are set at the 95% confidence level and are compared with predictions for the benchmark model. These limits are also expressed in terms of constraints on couplings of the heavy vector-boson triplet to quarks, leptons, and the Higgs boson. The complementarity of the various analyses increases the sensitivity to new physics, and the resulting constraints are stronger than those from any individual analysis considered. The data exclude a heavy vector-boson triplet with mass below 5.8 TeV in a weakly coupled scenario, below 4.4 TeV in a strongly coupled scenario, and up to 1.5 TeV in the case of production via vector-boson fusion
Association of left ventricular longitudinal strain with central venous oxygen saturation and serum lactate in patients with early severe sepsis and septic shock
Nutritional psychiatry research: an emerging discipline and its intersection with global urbanization, environmental challenges and the evolutionary mismatch
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