Ten years of the horse reference genome: insights into equine biology, domestication and population dynamics in the post-genome era.

The horse reference genome from the Thoroughbred mare Twilight has been available for a decade and, together with advances in genomics technologies, has led to unparalleled developments in equine genomics. At the core of this progress is the continuing improvement of the quality, contiguity and completeness of the reference genome, and its functional annotation. Recent achievements include the release of the next version of the reference genome (EquCab3.0) and generation of a reference sequence for the Y chromosome. Horse satellite-free centromeres provide unique models for mammalian centromere research. Despite extremely low genetic diversity of the Y chromosome, it has been possible to trace patrilines of breeds and pedigrees and show that Y variation was lost in the past approximately 2300 years owing to selective breeding. The high-quality reference genome has led to the development of three different SNP arrays and WGSs of almost 2000 modern individual horses. The collection of WGS of hundreds of ancient horses is unique and not available for any other domestic species. These tools and resources have led to global population studies dissecting the natural history of the species and genetic makeup and ancestry of modern breeds. Most importantly, the available tools and resources, together with the discovery of functional elements, are dissecting molecular causes of a growing number of Mendelian and complex traits. The improved understanding of molecular underpinnings of various traits continues to benefit the health and performance of the horse whereas also serving as a model for complex disease across species

Australian Fathers\u27 Study: What influences paternal engagement with antenatal care?

This mixed-methods study explores factors associated with and levels of engagement of fathers in antenatal care. One hundred expectant fathers were recruited from antenatal clinics and community settings in Western Australia. They completed validated questionnaires. Eighty-three percent of expectant fathers reported a lack of engagement with antenatal care. Factors significantly associated with lack of engagement in multivariate analysis were working more than 40 hours a week and lack of adequate consultation by antenatal care staff. In qualitative analysis, 6 themes emerged in association with a lack of engagement. They were role in decision making, time pressures, the observer effect, lack of knowledge, barriers to attendance, and feeling unprepared or anxious. Care providers should involve fathers in consultations to improve paternal engagement

Cancer cells migration: a laser scanning confocal microscopy study

Introduction: Nowadays, everyone or almost everyone has seen a love one lose the “battle” against cancer. Even worth than that is to closely watch the pain and agony that current anti-cancer therapies cause to the patient, with a known outcome... Typical cancer therapies target the inhibition of the epidermal growth factor receptor, EGFR, a membrane receptor that plays a key role in regulating normal cellular processes such as cell survival, proliferation and migration. High expression of EGFR is generally associated with invasion, metastasis, late- stage disease, chemotherapy resistance, hormonal therapy resistance and poor general therapeutic outcome. In order to develop new approaches for cancer treatment it is necessary to understand it is necessary to study the morphology of cancer cells when exposed to different stimuli. As in the case of this study human cancer lung cells were stimulated with EGF and its behavior was monitored over time using Laser scanning confocal microscope (Zeiss; LSM780). Results: A set of human cancer lung cells were stimulated with its ligand EGF and another set of human cancer lung cells were not stimulated. The morphological changes were followed Figure 1 – Human lung cancer cells stimulated with of EGF. over time using confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) with time elapse. As it can be seen on figure 1 the cancer cells morphology did significantly changed its phenotype. On the other hand when these cells were stimulated the morphological changes were significant as it can be seen on figure 2. The addition of EGF to the culture medium induce significant morphological changes, namely of loss of cell-cell junctions (b), formation of filipodia (b) and tissue disaggregation (c). Additionally, 3D reconstructions of singles cells were performed which allowed the confirmation of the internalization the EGFR dimers (data not shown). With time elapse laser scanning confocal microscopy it was possible to follow of the events that lead to cell migration, loss of cell-cell junction, filipodia formation and migration in real time

Land use change detection with LANDSAT-2 data for monitoring and predicting regional water quality degradation

The author has identified the following significant results. Comparison between LANDSAT 1 and 2 imagery of Arkansas provided evidence of significant land use changes during the 1972-75 time period. Analysis of Arkansas historical water quality information has shown conclusively that whereas point source pollution generally can be detected by use of water quality data collected by state and federal agencies, sampling methodologies for nonpoint source contamination attributable to surface runoff are totally inadequate. The expensive undertaking of monitoring all nonpoint sources for numerous watersheds can be lessened by implementing LANDSAT change detection analyses

Accelerated anaerobic hydrolysis rates under a combination of intermittent aeration and anaerobic conditions

Anaerobic hydrolysis in activated return sludge was investigated in laboratory scale experiments to find if intermittent aeration would accelerate anaerobic hydrolysis rates compared to anaerobic hydrolysis rates under strict anaerobic conditions. The intermittent reactors were set up in a 240 h experiment with intermittent aeration (3 h:3 h) in a period of 24 h followed by a subsequent anaerobic period of 24 h in a cycle of 48 h which was repeated five times during the experiment. The anaerobic reactors were kept under strict anaerobic conditions in the same period (240 h). Two methods for calculating hydrolysis rates based on soluble chemical oxygen demand were compared. Two-way analysis of variance with the Bonferroni post-test was performed in order to register any significant difference between reactors with intermittent aeration and strictly anaerobic conditions respectively. The experiment demonstrated a statistically significant difference in favor of the reactors with intermittent aeration showing a tendency towards accelerated anaerobic hydrolysis rates due to application of intermittent aeration. The conclusion of the work is thus that intermittent aeration applied in the activated return sludge process can improve the treatment capacity further in full scale applications.</jats:p

An Ultra-Stable Referenced Interrogation System in the Deep Ultraviolet for a Mercury Optical Lattice Clock

We have developed an ultra-stable source in the deep ultraviolet, suitable to fulfill the interrogation requirements of a future fully-operational lattice clock based on neutral mercury. At the core of the system is a Fabry-P\'erot cavity which is highly impervious to temperature and vibrational perturbations. The mirror substrate is made of fused silica in order to exploit the comparatively low thermal noise limits associated with this material. By stabilizing the frequency of a 1062.6 nm Yb-doped fiber laser to the cavity, and including an additional link to LNE-SYRTE's fountain primary frequency standards via an optical frequency comb, we produce a signal which is both stable at the 1E-15 level in fractional terms and referenced to primary frequency standards. The signal is subsequently amplified and frequency-doubled twice to produce several milliwatts of interrogation signal at 265.6 nm in the deep ultraviolet.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure