Gamma power in rural Pakistani children: links to executive function and verbal ability

Children in low- and middle-income countries are at high risk of cognitive deficits due to environmental deprivation that compromises brain development. Despite the high prevalence of unrealized cognitive potential, very little is known about neural correlates of cognition in this population. We assessed resting EEG power and cognitive ability in 105 highly disadvantaged 48-month-old children in rural Pakistan. An increase in EEG power in gamma frequency bands (21–30 Hz and 31–45 Hz) was associated with better executive function. For girls, EEG gamma power also related to higher verbal IQ. This study identifies EEG gamma power as a neural marker of cognitive function in disadvantaged children in low- and middle-income countries. Elevated gamma power may be a particularly important protective factor for girls, who may experience greater deprivation due to gender inequality.This research was supported by Grand Challenges Canada Saving Brains Initiative Grant 0061-03. The preparation of this article also was supported by a Scholar's Award from the William T. Grant Foundation to Jelena Obradovic. (0061-03 - Grand Challenges Canada Saving Brains Initiative; William T. Grant Foundation)Published versio

Review of the speculative role of co-infections in Streptococcus suis-associated diseases in pigs

Streptococcus suis is one of the most important bacterial swine pathogens affecting post-weaned piglets, causing mainly meningitis, arthritis and sudden death. It not only results in severe economic losses but also raises concerns over animal welfare and antimicrobial resistance and remains an important zoonotic agent in some countries. The definition and diagnosis of S. suis-associated diseases can be complex. Should S. suis be considered a primary or secondary pathogen? The situation is further complicated when referring to respiratory disease, since the pathogen has historically been considered as a secondary pathogen within the porcine respiratory disease complex (PRDC). Is S. suis a respiratory or strictly systemic pathogen? S. suis is a normal inhabitant of the upper respiratory tract, and the presence of potentially virulent strains alone does not guarantee the appearance of clinical signs. Within this unclear context, it has been largely proposed that co-infection with some viral and bacterial pathogens can significantly influence the severity of S. suis-associated diseases and may be the key to understanding how the infection behaves in the field. In this review, we critically addressed studies reporting an epidemiological link (mixed infections or presence of more than one pathogen at the same time), as well as in vitro and in vivo studies of co-infection of S. suis with other pathogens and discussed their limitations and possibilities for improvement and proposed recommendations for future studies.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Growth performances and hematological characterisation of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss Walbaum, 1792)

In present study correlations between hematologic characteristics and growth performances of rainbow trout were investigated. Fish were provided from a raceway trout farm located in the valley of the river Jerka near the city of Novi Pazar (N:43°13’67’’; E:20°43’96’’). The farm consists of 8 concrete lined production ponds (22 x 3 m x 1,2 m each) in which water is exchanged 75 times per day. After stocking fish from production ponds are being monthly classified into two groups depending on their body mass and body length and larger fish are transferred in separate ponds. For this study one year old fish were sampled. 25 from slower and 25 from faster growing group. Analyses were performed in 4 consecutive days in accordance with animal welfare regulations (Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia 41/2009). Fish growth performances were estimated from body mass, total and standard body length and Fulton condition factor. Hematological characterization of rainbow was established on the basis of Red Blood Cell (RBC) and White Blood Cell (WBC) count, hemoglobin concentration, Packed Cell Volume (PCV), Mean Corpuscular Volume of erythrocytes (MCV), Mean Corpuscular Hemoglobin in individual erythrocyte (MCH) and Mean Corpuscular Hemoglobin Concentration (MCHC) in a liter of erythrocytes. The results obtained were statistically analyzed by SPSS. It was found out that there exist significant correlation between hematological and growth characteristics. High linear regression coefficients can explain mass and length gain by hematological parameters

A transformer model for learning spatiotemporal contextual representation in fMRI data

AbstractRepresentation learning is a core component in data-driven modeling of various complex phenomena. Learning a contextually informative representation can especially benefit the analysis of fMRI data because of the complexities and dynamic dependencies present in such datasets. In this work, we propose a framework based on transformer models to learn an embedding of the fMRI data by taking the spatiotemporal contextual information in the data into account. This approach takes the multivariate BOLD time series of the regions of the brain as well as their functional connectivity network simultaneously as the input to create a set of meaningful features that can in turn be used in various downstream tasks such as classification, feature extraction, and statistical analysis. The proposed spatiotemporal framework uses the attention mechanism as well as the graph convolution neural network to jointly inject the contextual information regarding the dynamics in time series data and their connectivity into the representation. We demonstrate the benefits of this framework by applying it to two resting-state fMRI datasets, and provide further discussion on various aspects and advantages of it over a number of other commonly adopted architectures

Evaluation of environmental conditions by fish hematology

In the work are shown basic principles of application of the haematological status in determination of physiological status of fishes, also a review of a number of research from this area is given. One part of the research includes analysis of parametres of hematological status of the individuals in their natural habitat, while the other part is focused on the research of these parametres in experimantal conditions based on changes of some of the factors. Review include erythrocyte line parameters (erythrocyte number, hemoglobin concentration, hematocrit, MCV, MCH and MCHC) in different conditions in species: Barbus balcanicus, Sqalius cephalus, Thymallus thymallus, Oncorhynchus mykiss, Carassius gibelio, Perca fluviatilis, Cyprinus carpio

Gamma power in Pakistani children: Links to executive function and verbal ability

Children in low- and middle-income countries are at high risk of cognitive deficits due to environmental deprivation that compromises brain development. Despite the high prevalence of unrealized cognitive potential, very little is known about neural correlates of cognition in this population. We assessed resting EEG power and cognitive ability in 105 highly disadvantaged 48-month-old children in rural Pakistan. An increase in EEG power in gamma frequency bands (21-30Hz and 31-45Hz) was associated with better executive function. For girls, EEG gamma power also related to higher verbal IQ. This study identifies EEG gamma power as a neural marker of cognitive function in disadvantaged children in low- and middle-income countries. Elevated gamma power may be a particularly important protective factor for girls, who may experience greater deprivation due to gender inequality

A high fat diet induces sex-specific differences in hepatic lipid metabolism and nitrite/nitrate in rats

This work is supported by the grants No.173033 and III41028 from the Ministry of Science, Republic of Serbia.Men and women differ substantially in regard to the severity of insulin resistance (IR) but the underlying mechanism(s) of how this occurs is poorly characterized. We investigated whether a high fat (HF) diet resulted in sex-specific differences in nitrite/nitrate production and lipid metabolism and whether these variances may contribute to altered obesity-induced IR. Male and female Wistar rats were fed a standard laboratory diet or a HF diet for 10 weeks. The level of plasma nitrite/nitrate, as well as free fatty acid (FFA), in both plasma and liver lysates were assessed. The levels of inducible nitric oxide (NO) synthase (iNOS), p65 subunit of NFκB, total and phosphorylated forms of Akt, mTOR and PDK-1 in lysates, and the levels of glucose transporter 2 (Glut-2) and fatty acid translocase/cluster of differentiation 36 (FAT/CD36) in plasma membrane fractions of liver were assessed. HF-fed male rats exhibited a significant increase in plasma nitrite/nitrate, and hepatic FFA and FAT/CD36 levels compared with controls. They also displayed a relative decrease in iNOS and Glut-2 levels in the liver. Phosphorylation of Akt (at Ser473 and Thr308), mTOR and PDK-1 was also reduced. HF-fed female rats exhibited increased levels of NFκB-p65 in liver compared with controls, while levels of Glut-2, FAT/CD36 and Akt phosphorylation at Thr308 and PDK-1 were decreased. Our results reveal that altered lipid and glucose metabolism in obesity, lead to altered iNOS expression and nitrite/nitrate production. It is likely that this mechanism contributes to sex-specific differences in the development of IR.PostprintPeer reviewe

Editorial: Non-coding RNA in diabetes and cardiovascular diseases

Editorial on the Research Topic: [https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/33365/non-coding-rna-in-diabetes-and-cardiovascular-diseases