Complications of Circumcision

In the United States, circumcision is a commonly performed procedure. It is a relatively safe procedure with a low overall complication rate. Most complications are minor and can be managed easily. Though uncommon, complications of circumcision do represent a significant percentage of cases seen by pediatric urologists. Often they require surgical correction that results in a significant cost to the health care system. Severe complications are quite rare, but death has been reported as a result in some cases. A thorough and complete preoperative evaluation, focusing on bleeding history and birth history, is imperative. Proper selection of patients based on age and anatomic considerations as well as proper sterile surgical technique are critical to prevent future circumcision-related adverse events

Inconspicuous Penis

Inconspicous penis refers to a constellation of conditions that make the penis look diminutive and small. This could be secondary to short penile shaft often termed as micropenis. But more commonly, this inconspicuous appearance is secondary to other causes ranging from congenital conditions such as penoscrotal webbing or megaprepuce, developmental conditions like prepubic adiposity that overhang the penis, and iatrogenic causes like trapped penis after adhesions secondary to circumcision. In this paper, we propose to define these entities and provide their descriptions and then to describe their management including surgical correction

HGT turbulence: Confounding phylogenetic influence of duplicative horizontal transfer and differential gene conversion

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) often leads to phylogenetic incongruence. When “duplicative HGT” introduces a second copy of a pre-existing gene, the two copies may then engage in gene conversion, leading to phylogenetically mosiac genes. When duplicative HGT is followed by differential gene conversion among descendant lineages, as under the DH-DC model, phylogenetic analysis is further complicated. To explore the effects of DH-DC on phylogeny reconstruction, we analyzed two sets of sequences: (1) an augmented set of plant mitochondrial atp1 sequences for which we recently published evidence of DH-DC; and (2) a set of simulated sequences for which we varied the extent of chimerism, the number of chimeric genes and nucleotide substitution rates. We show that the phylogenetic behavior of evolutionarily chimeric genes is highly volatile and depends on both the degree of chimerism and the number of differentially chimeric genes present in the analysis. Furthermore, we show that the presence of chimeric genes in gene trees can spuriously affect the phylogenetic position of purely native sequences, especially by attracting these sequences toward basal positions in trees. We propose the term “HGT turbulence” to describe these complex effects of evolutionarily chimeric genes on phylogenetic results

Teaching, Technology, And The Art Of The Deal

This paper illustrates a teaching innovation that took a traditional role playing exercise based on a case study and added some nuances that amplified the learning experience.  The example illustrated in this paper was a didactic negotiation exercise intended to teach simple, basic negotiation principles like zone of possible agreement (ZOPA), opening gambit, and the “feel of the deal,” but this innovation can be applied to many different types of interactive cases. Traditionally, an exercise like this is conducted in one class; however, in this case study, we enhanced the exercise by using two different classes in two different geographical locations taught by two different professors with different styles of teaching negotiation. Additionally, students had a choice of technology by which to perform the negotiation and technology was used to bring both classes together for a debriefing session. The end result was an exponential increase in the learning experience. Not only did the students accomplish the key learning objectives of the case, the negotiation principals, but they also were able to experience different negotiation styles taught by the two professors and experience the impact technology has on communication effectiveness.

Tongue Movements in Feeding and Speech

The position of the tongue relative to the upper and lower jaws is regulated in part by the position of the hyoid bone, which, with the anterior and posterior suprahyoid muscles, controls the angulation and length of the floor of the mouth on which the tongue body \u27rides\u27. The instantaneous shape of the tongue is controlled by the \u27extrinsic muscles \u27 acting in concert with the \u27intrinsic \u27 muscles. Recent anatomical research in non-human mammals has shown that the intrinsic muscles can best be regarded as a \u27laminated segmental system \u27 with tightly packed layers of the \u27transverse\u27, \u27longitudinal\u27, and \u27vertical\u27 muscle fibers. Each segment receives separate innervation from branches of the hypoglosssal nerve. These new anatomical findings are contributing to the development of functional models of the tongue, many based on increasingly refined finite element modeling techniques. They also begin to explain the observed behavior of the jaw-hyoid-tongue complex, or the hyomandibular \u27kinetic chain\u27, in feeding and consecutive speech. Similarly, major efforts, involving many imaging techniques (cinefluorography, ultrasound, electro-palatography, NMRI, and others), have examined the spatial and temporal relationships of the tongue surface in sound production. The feeding literature shows localized tongue-surface change as the process progresses. The speech literature shows extensive change in tongue shape between classes of vowels and consonants. Although there is a fundamental dichotomy between the referential framework and the methodological approach to studies of the orofacial complex in feeding and speech, it is clear that many of the shapes adopted by the tongue in speaking are seen in feeding. It is suggested that the range of shapes used in feeding is the matrix for both behaviors

Pervasive survival of expressed mitochondrial rps14 pseudogenes in grasses and their relatives for 80 million years following three functional transfers to the nucleus

BACKGROUND: Many mitochondrial genes, especially ribosomal protein genes, have been frequently transferred as functional entities to the nucleus during plant evolution, often by an RNA-mediated process. A notable case of transfer involves the rps14 gene of three grasses (rice, maize, and wheat), which has been relocated to the intron of the nuclear sdh2 gene and which is expressed and targeted to the mitochondrion via alternative splicing and usage of the sdh2 targeting peptide. Although this transfer occurred at least 50 million years ago, i.e., in a common ancestor of these three grasses, it is striking that expressed, nearly intact pseudogenes of rps14 are retained in the mitochondrial genomes of both rice and wheat. To determine how ancient this transfer is, the extent to which mitochondrial rps14 has been retained and is expressed in grasses, and whether other transfers of rps14 have occurred in grasses and their relatives, we investigated the structure, expression, and phylogeny of mitochondrial and nuclear rps14 genes from 32 additional genera of grasses and from 9 other members of the Poales. RESULTS: Filter hybridization experiments showed that rps14 sequences are present in the mitochondrial genomes of all examined Poales except for members of the grass subfamily Panicoideae (to which maize belongs). However, PCR amplification and sequencing revealed that the mitochondrial rps14 genes of all examined grasses (Poaceae), Cyperaceae, and Joinvilleaceae are pseudogenes, with all those from the Poaceae sharing two 4-NT frameshift deletions and all those from the Cyperaceae sharing a 5-NT insertion (only one member of the Joinvilleaceae was examined). cDNA analysis showed that all mitochondrial pseudogenes examined (from all three families) are transcribed, that most are RNA edited, and that surprisingly many of the edits are reverse (U→C) edits. Putatively nuclear copies of rps14 were isolated from one to several members of each of these three Poales families. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that the nuclear genes are probably the products of three independent transfers. CONCLUSION: The rps14 gene has, most likely, been functionally transferred from the mitochondrion to the nucleus at least three times during the evolution of the Poales. The transfers in Cyperaceae and Poaceae are relatively ancient, occurring in the common ancestor of each family, roughly 80 million years ago, whereas the putative Joinvilleaceae transfer may be the most recent case of functional organelle-to-nucleus transfer yet described in any organism. Remarkably, nearly intact and expressed pseudogenes of rps14 have persisted in the mitochondrial genomes of most lineages of Poaceae and Cyperaceae despite the antiquity of the transfers and of the frameshift and RNA editing mutations that mark the mitochondrial genes as pseudogenes. Such long-term, nearly pervasive survival of expressed, apparent pseudogenes is to our knowledge unparalleled in any genome. Such survival probably reflects a combination of factors, including the short length of rps14, its location immediately downstream of rpl5 in most plants, and low rates of nucleotide substitutions and indels in plant mitochondrial DNAs. Their survival also raises the possibility that these rps14 sequences may not actually be pseudogenes despite their appearance as such. Overall, these findings indicate that intracellular gene transfer may occur even more frequently in angiosperms than already recognized and that pseudogenes in plant mitochondrial genomes can be surprisingly resistant to forces that lead to gene loss and inactivation

When You CAN See the Difference: The Phonetic Basis of Sonority in American Sign Language

Spoken and signed languages (SL) deliver perceptual cues which exhibit various degrees of perceptual validity during categorization: In spoken languages, listeners develop perceptual biases when integrating multiple acoustic dimensions during auditory categorization (Holt & Lotto, 2006). This leads us to expect differential perceptual validity for dynamic gestural units HANDSHAPE, MOVEMENT, ORIENTATION, and LOCATION produced by manual articulators in SLs. In this study, we use a closed-set sentence discrimination task developed by Bochner et al. (2011) to evaluate the perceptual saliency of the gestural components of signs in American Sign Language (ASL) for naiïve signers and deaf L2 learners of ASL proficient in another SL. Our goal is to gauge which of these features are likely to present the phonetic basis of sonority in sign modality and relay phonemic contrasts perceptible for even first-time signers.25 deaf L2 ASL signers and 28 hearing English speakers with no experience in any SL participated in this study. Results reveal that phonemic contrasts based on HANDSHAPE presented an area of maximum difficulty in phonological discrimination for sign-naïve participants. For all participants, contrasts based on ORIENTATION and LOCATION and involving larger scale articulators, were associated with robust categorical discrimination

Fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda Smith) feeding elicits differential defense responses in upland and lowland switchgrass

Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) is a low input, high biomass perennial grass being developed for the bioenergy sector. Upland and lowland cultivars can differ in their responses to insect herbivory. Fall armyworm [FAW; Spodoptera frugiperda JE Smith (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae)] is a generalist pest of many plant species and can feed on switchgrass as well. Here, in two different trials, FAW larval mass were significantly reduced when fed on lowland cultivar Kanlow relative to larvae fed on upland cultivar Summer plants after 10 days. Hormone content of plants indicated elevated levels of the plant defense hormone jasmonic acid (JA) and its bioactive conjugate JA-Ile although significant differences were not observed. Conversely, the precursor to JA, 12-oxo-phytodienoic acid (OPDA) levels were significantly different between FAW fed Summer and Kanlow plants raising the possibility of differential signaling by OPDA in the two cultivars. Global transcriptome analysis revealed a stronger response in Kanlow plant relative to Summer plants. Among these changes were a preferential upregulation of several branches of terpenoid and phenylpropanoid biosynthesis in Kanlow plants suggesting that enhanced biosynthesis or accumulation of antifeedants could have negatively impacted FAW larval mass gain on Kanlow plants relative to Summer plants. A comparison of the switchgrass-FAW RNA-Seq dataset to those from maize-FAW and switchgrass-aphid interactions revealed that key components of plant responses to herbivory, including induction of JA biosynthesis, key transcription factors and JA-inducible genes were apparently conserved in switchgrass and maize. In addition, these data affirm earlier studies with FAW and aphids that the cultivar Kanlow can provide useful genetics for the breeding of switchgrass germplasm with improved insect resistance

Impact of Social Networks on the Spread of Disease

https://scholar.dsu.edu/research-symposium/1023/thumbnail.jp

The Compost Plant -- Design of an Aeration Device for an Aerated Static Pile of Compost

The URI design team 13 was tasked by The Compost Plant to create an aeration device for a static pile of food-waste-based compost in a 24\u27x24\u27x8\u27 bay. It was required by the sponsor that the device be: temperature controllable, be able to evenly aerate the compost pile so that its temperature throughout would be maintained between 130 and 160° F, be compatible with on-site farm equipment specifically a 504 John Deer Front Loader, cost less than $15,000 to produce, function with a commercially available blower, be safe, and provide for temperature data logging. In order to satisfy these requirements specified by the project sponsors, Team 13 underwent a rigorous design process in Fall 2017 which included background research into the fundamentals of composting, a patent search on current aeration devices, a quality function deployment analysis (QFD) to ensure that the customer parameters were met, and the creation of a detailed design specification that set targets for the project. The Team generated 120 design concepts for different aspects of a design solution. These concepts led to the design of a positive aeration device called the vertical aerator, which was the best design solution because of its simplicity, scalability, and ease of use. For the Compost Plants bay size, two of these devices would be used. Once the design of the vertical aerator had been set, the team began validating and re-designing it so that it complied with the generated design specifications. The main design specifications were that it had to provide the recommended volumetric ow rate of 1,200 cfm to the pile, for both devices to be temperature controllable, aerate a region of wood-chips 2 ft in radius measured from the center of each leg that represented the nominal distance to the edge of the wood-chip layer without drying out the pile, weigh less than 8,000 lbs, cost less than$15,000 to produce, resist clogging from particles with sizes 0.5in 2in and have a Factor of Safety (FOS) of \u3e3 when suspended above the ground. By testing the device using simulations, mathematical calculations, industry standard approximations, research, and experiments on a full-scale PVC model in Spring 2018 it was determined that the final design met all of the listed design specifications. Specifically, it was shown that the device delivered approximately 600 cfm (two devices deliver 1,200 cfm) to the pile in an even manner, equally aerated in all directions a 2 ft region of wood-chips, was unlikely to dry out the pile, weighed approximately 1,900 lbs, cost $10,464.28, resisted clogging, was compatible with a temperature data logging scheme, and had a minimum FOS of 3 when suspended. In addition to this, the economic, social, political, and environmental impacts among other effects of the device were investigated. The method for operating and manufacturing the device were also determined and redesign efforts were made by the team to ease the manufacturability and safety of the device