The effects of feed restriction, time of day and time since feeding on behavioral and physiological indicators of hunger in broiler breeder hens

Broiler breeder chickens are commercially feed restricted to slow their growth and improve their health and production, however, there is research demonstrating that this leads to chronic hunger resulting in poor welfare. A challenge in these studies is to account for possible daily rhythms or the effects of time since last meal on measures relating hunger. To address this, we used 3 feed treatments: AL (ad libitum fed), Ram (restricted, fed in the morning), and Rpm (restricted, fed in the afternoon) to control for diurnal effects. We then conducted foraging motivation tests and collected home pen behavior and physiological samples at 4 times relative to feeding throughout a 24-h period. The feed treatment had the largest influence on the data, with AL birds weighing more, having lower concentrations of plasma NEFA, and mRNA expression of AGRP and NPY alongside higher expression of POMC in the basal hypothalamus than Ram or Rpm birds (P &lt; 0.001). R birds were more successful at and had a shorter latency to complete the motivation test, and did more walking and less feeding than AL birds in the home pen (P &lt; 0.01). There was little effect of time since last meal on many measures (P &gt; 0.05) but AGRP expression was highest in the basal hypothalamus shortly after a meal (P &lt; 0.05), blood plasma NEFA was higher in R birds just before feeding (P &lt; 0.001) and glucose was higher in Ram birds just after feeding (P &lt; 0.001), and the latency to complete the motivation test was shortest before the next meal (P &lt; 0.05). Time of day effects were mainly found in the difference in activity levels in the home pen when during lights on and lights off periods. In conclusion, many behavioral and physiological hunger measures were not significantly influenced by time of day or time since the last meal. For the measures that do change, future studies should be designed so that sampling is balanced in such a way as to minimize bias due to these effects.</p

Arsenic hyperaccumulation by different fern species

Pteris vittata was the first identified arsenic (As) hyperaccumulator. Our aim was to test whether As hyperaccumulation occurs in other fern species, and whether P. vittata collected from both contaminated and uncontaminated environments accumulates As similarly. Three accessions of P. vittata, two cultivars of Pteris cretica, Pteris longifoliaandPteris umbrosa were grown with 0-500 mg As kg(-1) added to the substrate. A second experiment compared As uptake by five common ferns obtained from commercial suppliers. The results show that, in addition to P. vittata, P. cretica, P. longifolia and P. umbrosa also hyperaccumulate As to a similar extent. There was little difference between different Pteris species, or between different accessions of P. vittata. By contrast, Asplenium nidus , Davallia canarensis, Polypodium aureum, Polystichum tsus-simense do not hyperaccumulate As. This study identified three new species of As hyperaccumulators in the Pteris genus and suggests that As hyperaccumulation is a constitutive property in P. vittata

Nanoinformatics: developing new computing applications for nanomedicine

Nanoinformatics has recently emerged to address the need of computing applications at the nano level. In this regard, the authors have participated in various initiatives to identify its concepts, foundations and challenges. While nanomaterials open up the possibility for developing new devices in many industrial and scientific areas, they also offer breakthrough perspectives for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases. In this paper, we analyze the different aspects of nanoinformatics and suggest five research topics to help catalyze new research and development in the area, particularly focused on nanomedicine. We also encompass the use of informatics to further the biological and clinical applications of basic research in nanoscience and nanotechnology, and the related concept of an extended ?nanotype? to coalesce information related to nanoparticles. We suggest how nanoinformatics could accelerate developments in nanomedicine, similarly to what happened with the Human Genome and other -omics projects, on issues like exchanging modeling and simulation methods and tools, linking toxicity information to clinical and personal databases or developing new approaches for scientific ontologies, among many others

Fr-TM-align: a new protein structural alignment method based on fragment alignments and the TM-score

©2008 Pandit and Skolnick; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/9/531doi:10.1186/1471-2105-9-531Background: Protein tertiary structure comparisons are employed in various fields of contemporary structural biology. Most structure comparison methods involve generation of an initial seed alignment, which is extended and/or refined to provide the best structural superposition between a pair of protein structures as assessed by a structure comparison metric. One such metric, the TM-score, was recently introduced to provide a combined structure quality measure of the coordinate root mean square deviation between a pair of structures and coverage. Using the TM-score, the TM-align structure alignment algorithm was developed that was often found to have better accuracy and coverage than the most commonly used structural alignment programs; however, there were a number of situations when this was not true. Results: To further improve structure alignment quality, the Fr-TM-align algorithm has been developed where aligned fragment pairs are used to generate the initial seed alignments that are then refined using dynamic programming to maximize the TM-score. For the assessment of the structural alignment quality from Fr-TM-align in comparison to other programs such as CE and TMalign, we examined various alignment quality assessment scores such as PSI and TM-score. The assessment showed that the structural alignment quality from Fr-TM-align is better in comparison to both CE and TM-align. On average, the structural alignments generated using Fr-TM-align have a higher TM-score (~9%) and coverage (~7%) in comparison to those generated by TM-align. Fr- TM-align uses an exhaustive procedure to generate initial seed alignments. Hence, the algorithm is computationally more expensive than TM-align. Conclusion: Fr-TM-align, a new algorithm that employs fragment alignment and assembly provides better structural alignments in comparison to TM-align. The source code and executables of Fr- TM-align are freely downloadable at: http://cssb.biology.gatech.edu/skolnick/files/FrTMalign/

Alcohol Text Messages: A Developmental Study

Risky paternal alcohol use is associated with maternal alcohol use during pregnancy, poor fetal and infant outcomes, domestic violence and depression. This study developed 30 SMS text messages about alcohol for fathers who drink at risky levels. The text messages were developed using two motivational styles: messages presented in a second person voice and the same messages presented in a child’s voice. Fifty-one fathers were recruited through social media to complete an online survey rating the SMS text messages for message importance and likelihood of seeking further information and measuring risky alcohol use and psychosocial distress. Seventeen participants then participated in a semi-structured qualitative interview. Fathers rated the text messages presented in the child’s voice as more important than messages presented in the second person. Qualitative data supported survey results that motivational SMS text messages could provide an acceptable way to raise awareness of risky alcohol consumption for future fathers

Investigating the association between obesity and asthma in 6- to 8-year-old Saudi children:a matched case-control study

Background: Previous studies have demonstrated an association between obesity and asthma, but there remains considerable uncertainty about whether this reflects an underlying causal relationship. Aims: To investigate the association between obesity and asthma in pre-pubertal children and to investigate the roles of airway obstruction and atopy as possible causal mechanisms. Methods: We conducted an age- and sex-matched case–control study of 1,264 6- to 8-year-old schoolchildren with and without asthma recruited from 37 randomly selected schools in Madinah, Saudi Arabia. The body mass index (BMI), waist circumference and skin fold thickness of the 632 children with asthma were compared with those of the 632 control children without asthma. Associations between obesity and asthma, adjusted for other potential risk factors, were assessed separately in boys and girls using conditional logistic regression analysis. The possible mediating roles of atopy and airway obstruction were studied by investigating the impact of incorporating data on sensitisation to common aeroallergens and measurements of lung function. Results: BMI was associated with asthma in boys (odds ratio (OR)=1.14, 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.08–1.20; adjusted OR=1.11, 95% CI, 1.03–1.19) and girls (OR=1.37, 95% CI, 1.26–1.50; adjusted OR=1.38, 95% CI, 1.23–1.56). Adjusting for forced expiratory volume in 1 s had a negligible impact on these associations, but these were attenuated following adjustment for allergic sensitisation, particularly in girls (girls: OR=1.25; 95% CI, 0.96–1.60; boys: OR=1.09, 95% CI, 0.99–1.19). Conclusions: BMI is associated with asthma in pre-pubertal Saudi boys and girls; this effect does not appear to be mediated through respiratory obstruction, but in girls this may at least partially be mediated through increased risk of allergic sensitisation

Male-like sexual behavior of female mouse lacking fucose mutarotase

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Mutarotases are recently characterized family of enzymes that are involved in the anomeric conversions of monosaccharides. The mammalian fucose mutarotase (FucM) was reported in cultured cells to facilitate fucose utilization and incorporation into protein by glycosylation. However, the role of this enzyme in animal has not been elucidated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We generated a mutant mouse specifically lacking the fucose mutarotase (FucM) gene. The <it>FucM </it>knockout mice displayed an abnormal sexual receptivity with a drastic reduction in lordosis score, although the animals were fertile due to a rare and forced intromission by a typical male. We examined the anteroventral periventricular nucleus (AVPv) of the preoptic region in brain and found that the mutant females showed a reduction in tyrosine hydoxylase positive neurons compared to that of a normal female. Furthermore, the mutant females exhibited a masculine behavior, such as mounting to a normal female partner as well as showing a preference to female urine. We found a reduction of fucosylated serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) in a mutant embryo relative to that of a wild-type embryo.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The observation that <it>FucM</it>^-/-female mouse exhibits a phenotypic similarity to a wild-type male in terms of its sexual behavior appears to be due to the neurodevelopmental changes in preoptic area of mutant brain resembling a wild-type male. Since the previous studies indicate that AFP plays a role in titrating estradiol that are required to consolidate sexual preference of female mice, we speculate that the reduced level of AFP in <it>FucM</it>^-/-mouse, presumably resulting from the reduced fucosylation, is responsible for the male-like sexual behavior observed in the FucM knock-out mouse.</p

Productivity links morphology, symbiont specificity, and bleaching in the evolution of Caribbean octocoral symbioses

Many cnidarians host endosymbiotic dinoflagellates from the genus Symbiodinium. It is generally assumed that the symbiosis is mutualistic, where the host benefits from symbiont photosynthesis while providing protection and photosynthetic substrates. Diverse assemblages of symbiotic gorgonian octocorals can be found in hard bottom communities throughout the Caribbean. While current research has focused on the phylo- and population genetics of gorgonian symbiont types and their photo-physiology, relatively less work has focused on biogeochemical benefits conferred to the host and how these benefits vary across host species. Here, we examine this symbiosis among 11 gorgonian species collected in Bocas del Toro, Panama. By coupling light and dark bottle incubations (P/R) with 13C-bicarbonate tracers, we quantified the link between holobiont oxygen metabolism with carbon assimilation and translocation from symbiont to host. Our data show that P/R varied among species, and was correlated with colony morphology and polyp size. Sea fans and sea plumes were net autotrophs (P/R > 1.5) while nine species of sea rods were net heterotrophs with most below compensation (P/R < 1.0). 13C assimilation corroborated the P/R results, and maximum δ13Chost values were strongly correlated with polyp size, indicating higher productivity by colonies with high polyp SA:V. A survey of gorgonian-Symbiodinium associations revealed that productive species maintain specialized, obligate symbioses and are more resistant to coral bleaching, whereas generalist and facultative associations are common among sea rods that have higher bleaching sensitivities. Overall, productivity and polyp size had strong phylogenetic signals with carbon fixation and polyp size showing evidence of trait covariance.published_or_final_versio

Lambda and Antilambda polarization from deep inelastic muon scattering

We report results of the first measurements of Lambda and Antilambda polarization produced in deep inelastic polarized muon scattering on the nucleon. The results are consistent with an expected trend towards positive polarization with increasing x_F. The polarizations of Lambda and Antilambda appear to have opposite signs. A large negative polarization for Lambda at low positive x_F is observed and is not explained by existing models.A possible interpretation is presented.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure

Interpersonal and affective dimensions of psychopathic traits in adolescents : development and validation of a self-report instrument

We report the development and psychometric evaluations of a self-report instrument designed to screen for psychopathic traits among mainstream community adolescents. Tests of item functioning were initially conducted with 26 adolescents. In a second study the new instrument was administered to 150 high school adolescents, 73 of who had school records of suspension for antisocial behavior. Exploratory factor analysis yielded a 4-factor structure (Impulsivity α = .73, Self-Centredness α = .70, Callous-Unemotional α = .69, and Manipulativeness α = .83). In a third study involving 328 high school adolescents, 130 with records of suspension for antisocial behaviour, competing measurement models were evaluated using confirmatory factor analysis. The superiority of a first-order model represented by four correlated factors that was invariant across gender and age was confirmed. The findings provide researchers and clinicians with a psychometrically strong, self-report instrument and a greater understanding of psychopathic traits in mainstream adolescents