Molecular mechanisms underlying increased PDYN and dynorphin expression in the prefrontal cortex of alcoholic men

Alcohol dependence is a chronic relapsing disorder caused by drug x gene x environment interactions for which pharmacotherapy is but moderately effective. The prefrontal cortex is a brain region important for cognitive control / behavioral flexibility which function is impaired in alcoholics. Although the exact role of the dynorphin / κ-opioid receptor system in alcohol dependence is unknown, it has been suggested to contribute to the psychopathology of this disorder. Consistently, prodynorphin gene and dynorphin peptide expression is increased in the prefrontal cortex of alcoholic men. The aim of this thesis was to identify molecular mechanisms underlying these alterations. In line with this aim, we have shown that prodynorphin is regulated by the transcriptional control protein repressor element 1 silencing transcription factor in vitro and that repressor element 1 silencing transcription factor target gene and protein expression is altered in the prefrontal cortex of alcoholic men

Commentary: comparing efficiency in aquatic and terrestrial animal production systems

First paragraph: Aquaculture is receiving increased attention from a variety of stakeholders. This is largely due to its current role in the global food system of supplying more than half of the seafood consumed, and also because the industry continues to steadily expand (UN Food and Agriculture Organization 2018). A recent article in Environmental Research Letters, 'Feed conversion efficiency in aquaculture: do we measure it correctly?', by Fry et al (2018a) found that measuring feed conversion efficiency of selected aquatic and terrestrial farmed animals using protein and calorie retention resulted in species comparisons (least to most efficient) and overlap among species dissimilar from comparisons based on widely used weight-based feed conversion ratio (FCR) values. The study prompted spirited discussions among researchers, industry representatives, and others. A group assembled to write a standard rebuttal, but during this process, decided it was best to engage the study's original authors to join the discourse. Through this collaboration, we provide the resultant additional context relevant to the study in order to advance conversations and research on the use of efficiency measures in aquatic and terrestrial animal production systems

Miljöarbete inom Svensk Tillverkningsindustri. En färd från myt till verklighet

Föreliggande undersökning genomfördes under hösten och vintern 2007 av forskare vid Internatio-nella Institutet för Industriell Miljöekonomi (IIIEE) vid Lunds Universitet på uppdrag av Miljömålsrå-det. Syftet med undersökningen var att belysa dagens miljöarbete inom tillverkningsindustrin och göra jämförelser med resultat från tidigare motsvarande studier som genomfördes 1991 och 1998. Syftet var också att belysa hur och i vilken omfattning de nationella miljökvalitetsmålen påverkar företagens miljöarbete. Rapporten bidrog därmed till den samlade utvärderingen av arbetet med de nationella miljökvalitetsmålen som presenterades under våren 2008. Undersökningen baserades på telefonintervjuer med miljöansvariga/personer som konkret utför miljöarbete i 272 slumpvis valda tillverkande företag fördelade över landet i olika branscher och storleksklasser. Bortfallsfrekvensen var 16 procent. Miljöarbetet undersöktes genom vilka konkreta åtgärder som genomförts inom olika områden, hur dessa åtgärder speglas i den övergripande bil-den av företagets miljöaspekter, hur miljöarbetet organiserats och personalen involverats. En sam-lad bedömning av företagens miljöarbete gjordes genom att indela dem i olika kategorier. Katego-rierna motsvarar en femgradig ”betygsskala” från miljöpassiva till miljöanpassade strategier för mil-jöarbetet. Företagens drivkrafter, policies och motiv för miljöarbete undersöktes också. Under tidsperioden 1991- 2007 har tillverknings¬industrins miljöarbete suc¬cessivt förbättrats. Kategorimedelvärdet (”medel¬betyget”) har höjts mellan varje undersökningstillfälle, såväl totalt sett som inom varje storleksklass, vilket framgår av diagrammet. Kategorimedel¬värdet för hela till-verkningsindustrin var år 2007 1,9 jämförelse med 1,4 år 1991. Kategorimedelvärdet för anställda inom tillverkningsindustrin har ökat från 2,1 år 1991 till 2,7 år 2007. Ett mönster som går igen från de tidigare undersökningarna är att de större företagen i allmänhet har mer utvecklat miljöarbete och tydligare miljöstrategi än de mindre företagen. De största företagen (>500 anställda) införde mycket av sitt miljöarbete under 1990-talet och har fortsatt att utveckla sitt miljöarbete. Det är dock bland de medelstora (50 – 499 anställda) företagen de tydligaste förbättringarna kan konstateras. Kategorimedelvärdet har även ökat inom storleksklassen småföretag (1- 49 anställda), men i väsentligt lägre utsträckning. Fortfarande är miljömedvetenheten relativt låg bland de minsta före-tagen. Miljökravställarna har skiftat från att domineras av miljömyndigheterna till i allt högre grad utgöras av kunder och konsumenter. Klassiska ”end-of-pipe”-lösningar på miljöproblemen har under perio-den 1991-2007 kompletterats en blandning av tekniska och organisatoriska åtgärder. Miljöanpass-ning av transporterna har seglat upp som en miljöaspekt som anses som allt viktigare och underle-verantörernas roll i miljöarbetet har fått större betydelse. Miljöarbetet integreras i styrningen och uppföljningen i företagen och ifrågasätts alltmer sällan. Företag med miljöledningssystem (ISO 14001) har generellt ett mer utvecklat och systematiskt miljöarbete. De flesta tillverkningsföretag (78 procent) känner inte till Sveriges 16 miljökvalitetsmål. Omkring var femte företag (21 procent) känner till målen, men endast 1 procent av företagen vet vilka de olika målen är. Dessa siffror präglas dock av småföretagens stora dominans i antal. Mer än hälften av de företag som har femtio eller fler anställda känner till miljökvalitetsmålen. Det är endast 5 procent av det totala antalet tillverkande företag som anser sig påverkade av miljömålen. Eftersom dessa i huvudsak är större företag sysselsätter de emellertid ca 30 procent av arbetskraften inom tillverk-ningsindustrin

Dissociation of sensitivity to spatial frequency in word and face preferential areas of the fusiform gyrus

Different cortical regions within the ventral occipitotemporal junction have been reported to show preferential responses to particular objects. Thus, it is argued that there is evidence for a left-lateralized visual word form area and a right-lateralized fusiform face area, but the unique specialization of these areas remains controversial. Words are characterized by greater power in the high spatial frequency (SF) range, whereas faces comprise a broader range of high and low frequencies. We investigated how these high-order visual association areas respond to simple sine-wave gratings that varied in SF. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we demonstrated lateralization of activity that was concordant with the low-level visual property of words and faces; left occipitotemporal cortex is more strongly activated by high than by low SF gratings, whereas the right occipitotemporal cortex responded more to low than high spatial frequencies. Therefore, the SF of a visual stimulus may bias the lateralization of processing irrespective of its higher order properties

Predictive Association of Smoking with Depressive Symptoms : a Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Twins

Longitudinal, genetically informative studies of the association between cigarette smoking and depressive symptoms among adolescents are limited. We examined the longitudinal association of cigarette smoking with subsequent depressive symptoms during adolescence in a Finnish twin cohort. We used prospective data from the population-based FinnTwin12 study (maximum N = 4152 individuals, 1910 twin pairs). Current smoking status and a number of lifetime cigarettes smoked were assessed at the age of 14 and depressive symptoms at the age of 17. Negative binomial regression was conducted to model the association between smoking behavior and subsequent depressive symptoms among individuals, and within-pair analyses were conducted to control for unmeasured familial confounding. Analyses were adjusted for age, sex, school grades, drinking alcohol to intoxication, health status, family structure, parental education, and smoking, as well as for pre-existing depressiveness. The results of the individual-level analyses showed that cigarette smoking at the age of 14 predicted depressive symptoms at the age of 17. Compared to never smokers, those who had smoked over 50 cigarettes (incidence rate ratio, IRR = 1.43, 95% CI 1.28-1.60) and regular smokers (IRR = 1.46, 95% CI 1.32-1.62) had higher depression scores. The associations were attenuated when adjusted for measured covariates and further reduced in within-pair analyses. In the within-pair results, the estimates were lower within monozygotic (MZ) pairs compared to dizygotic (DZ) pairs, suggesting that shared genetic factors contribute to the associations observed in individual-based analyses. Thus, we conclude that cigarette smoking is associated with subsequent depressive symptoms during adolescence, but the association is not independent of measured confounding factors and shared genetic influences.Peer reviewe

Comparison of Asian Aquaculture Products by Use of Statistically Supported Life Cycle Assessment

We investigated aquaculture production of Asian tiger shrimp, whiteleg shrimp, giant river prawn, tilapia, and pangasius catfish in Bangladesh, China, Thailand, and Vietnam by using life cycle assessments (LCAs), with the purpose of evaluating the comparative eco-efficiency of producing different aquatic food products. Our starting hypothesis was that different production systems are associated with significantly different environmental impacts, as the production of these aquatic species differs in intensity and management practices. In order to test this hypothesis, we estimated each system's global warming, eutrophication, and freshwater ecotoxicity impacts. The contribution to these impacts and the overall dispersions relative to results were propagated by Monte Carlo simulations and dependent sampling. Paired testing showed significant (p < 0.05) differences between the median impacts of most production systems in the intraspecies comparisons, even after a Bonferroni correction. For the full distributions instead of only the median, only for Asian tiger shrimp did more than 95% of the propagated Monte Carlo results favor certain farming systems. The major environmental hot-spots driving the differences in environmental performance among systems were fishmeal from mixed fisheries for global warming, pond runoff and sediment discards for eutrophication, and agricultural pesticides, metals, benzalkonium chloride, and other chlorine-releasing compounds for freshwater ecotoxicity. The Asian aquaculture industry should therefore strive toward farming systems relying upon pelleted species-specific feeds, where the fishmeal inclusion is limited and sourced sustainably. Also, excessive nutrients should be recycled in integrated organic agriculture together with efficient aeration solutions powered by renewable energy sources. © 2015 American Chemical Society.Additional coauthors: M. Mahfujul Haque Froukje Kruijssen, Geert R. de Snoo, Reinout Heijungs, Peter M. van Bodegom, and Jeroen B. Guiné

Combined analysis of weak lensing and X-ray blind surveys

We present a joint weak lensing and X-ray analysis of 4 deg$^2$ from the CFHTLS and XMM-LSS surveys. Our weak lensing analysis is the first analysis of a real survey using shapelets, a new generation weak lensing analysis method. We create projected mass maps of the images, and extract 6 weak-lensing-detected clusters of galaxies. We show that their counts can be used to constrain the power spectrum normalisation $\sigma_8 =0.92_{-0.30}^{+0.26}$ for $\Omega_m=0.24$. We show that despite the large scatter generally observed in the M-T relation derived from lensing masses, tight constraints on both its slope and normalisation $M_*$ can be obtained with a moderate number of sources provided that the covered mass range is large enough. Adding clusters from Bardeau et al. (2007) to our sample, we measure $M_* = 2.71_{-0.61}^{+0.79} 10^{14} h^{-1} M_\odot$. Although they are dominated by shot noise and sample variance, our measurements are consistent with currently favoured values, and set the stage for future surveys. We thus investigate the dependence of those estimates on survey size, depth, and integration time, for joint weak lensing and X-ray surveys. We show that deep surveys should be dedicated to the study of the physics of clusters and groups of galaxies. For a given exposure time, wide surveys provide a larger number of detected clusters and are therefore preferred for the measurement of cosmological parameters such as $\sigma_8$ and $M_*$. We show that a wide survey of a few hundred square degrees is needed to improve upon current measurements of these parameters. More ambitious surveys covering 7000 deg$^2$ will provide the 1% accuracy in the estimation of the power spectrum and the M-T relation normalisations.Comment: MNRAS in press Matches accepted version. References update

Up-regulation of endothelin type B receptors in the human internal mammary artery in culture is dependent on protein kinase C and mitogen-activated kinase signaling pathways

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Up-regulation of vascular endothelin type B (ET_B) receptors is implicated in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease. Culture of intact arteries has been shown to induce similar receptor alterations and has therefore been suggested as a suitable method for, <it>ex vivo</it>, in detail delineation of the regulation of endothelin receptors. We hypothesize that mitogen-activated kinases (MAPK) and protein kinase C (PKC) are involved in the regulation of endothelin ET_Breceptors in human internal mammary arteries.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Human internal mammary arteries were obtained during coronary artery bypass graft surgery and were studied before and after 24 hours of organ culture, using <it>in vitro </it>pharmacology, real time PCR and Western blot techniques. Sarafotoxin 6c and endothelin-1 were used to examine the endothelin ET_Aand ET_Breceptor effects, respectively. The involvement of PKC and MAPK in the endothelin receptor regulation was examined by culture in the presence of antagonists.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The endohtelin-1-induced contraction (after endothelin ET_Breceptor desensitization) and the endothelin ET_Areceptor mRNA expression levels were not altered by culture. The sarafotoxin 6c contraction, endothelin ET_Breceptor protein and mRNA expression levels were increased after organ culture. This increase was antagonized by; (1) PKC inhibitors (10 μM bisindolylmaleimide I and 10 μM Ro-32-0432), and (2) inhibitors of the p38, extracellular signal related kinases 1 and 2 (ERK1/2) and C-jun terminal kinase (JNK) MAPK pathways (10 μM SB203580, 10 μM PD98059 and 10 μM SP600125, respectively).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In conclusion, PKC and MAPK seem to be involved in the up-regulation of endothelin ET_Breceptor expression in human internal mammary arteries. Inhibiting these intracellular signal transduction pathways may provide a future therapeutic target for hindering the development of vascular endothelin ET_Breceptor changes in cardiovascular disease.</p

Reframing the sustainable seafood narrative

The dominant sustainable seafood narrative is one where developed world markets catalyze practice improvements by fisheries and aquaculture producers that enhance ocean health. The narrow framing of seafood sustainability in terms of aquaculture or fisheries management and ocean health has contributed to the omission of these important food production systems from the discussion on global food system sustainability. This omission is problematic. Seafood makes critical contributions to food and nutrition security, particularly in low income countries, and is often a more sustainable and nutrient rich source of animal sourced-food than terrestrial meat production. We argue that to maximize the positive contributions that seafood can make to sustainable food systems, the conventional narratives that prioritize seafood's role in promoting ‘ocean health’ need to be reframed and cover a broader set of environmental and social dimensions of sustainability. The focus of the narrative also needs to move from a producer-centric to a ‘whole chain’ perspective that includes greater inclusion of the later stages with a focus on food waste, by-product utilization and consumption. Moreover, seafood should not be treated as a single aggregated item in sustainability assessments. Rather, it should be recognized as a highly diverse set of foods, with variable environmental impacts, edible yield rates and nutritional profiles. Clarifying discussions around seafood will help to deepen the integration of fisheries and aquaculture into the global agenda on sustainable food production, trade and consumption, and assist governments, private sector actors, NGOs and academics alike in identifying where improvements can be made.Until 15 December 2019, this article can be freely accessed online at: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1ZyqC3Q8oP-AK

Control and Scheduling Joint Design

International audienceControl systems and real-time computing have for a long time been associated in control systems, with the aim of controlling a process and bringing it towards a state which complies with the objectives specified by the user. The process is often a phys- ical device, for instance mechanical (rolling mills), electromechanical (DVD player, robots), thermal (internal combustion engines), chemical (reactors), hydraulic (energy production). . . These can be complex processes associating several of these technolo- gies, for instance in terrestrial, aerial or underwater vehicles. They can also be com- puting components (scheduling of tasks, network gateway, website management) or electronic (power supply of a chip, phase locked loop), or even simulated components (avatar control in a virtual world, "hardware-in-the-loop" real-time simulators). The increasing complexity of these systems requires reviewing their properties in order to better integrate the control system design and implementation constraints executed on computing systems. The first section will recall the main properties of closed loop control as well as the constraints and limitations induced by their digital implementation. Section 1.2 examines how the control task scheduling constraints can be relaxed by exploiting these properties. The design of scheduling controllers can be performed in the formalism of sampled systems (Section 1.3), but also in that of weakly strong real-time scheduling (Section 1.4). Finally, an example of designing and implementing the scheduling control of tasks in a video decoder will be detailed in Section 1.5