Stimulation of primordial follicle assembly by estradiol-17β requires the action of bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP2)

Primordial follicle (PF) pool determines the availability of follicles for ovulation in all mammals. Premature depletion of the PF reserve leads to subfertility or infertility. Bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP2) promotes PF formation by facilitating oocyte and granulosa cell development. Estradiol-17β (E2) upregulates PF formation in developing hamster ovaries. However, if BMP2 mediates E2 effect is not known. We hypothesize that E2 facilitates the effect of BMP2 on somatic to granulosa cell transition. BMP2 and E2 together significantly upregulated the percentage of PFs in hamster fetal ovaries in vitro compared with either of the treatments alone. E2 also promoted BMP2 expression in vivo. Inhibition of BMP2 receptors suppressed E2-stimulation of PF formation while knockdown of BMP2 in vitro significantly suppressed the E2 effect. In contrast, estrogen receptor blocker did not affect BMP2 action. Inhibition of the activity of E2 or BMP2 receptors, either alone or combined during the last two days of the culture (C6-C8) resulted in a significant decrease in PF formation by C8, suggesting that both BMP2 and E2 action is essential for somatic cell differentiation for PF formation. Together, the results suggest that E2 activates BMP2-BMPR system leading to the formation of primordial follicles

Prediabetes, dyslipidemia and c-reactive protein levels among stroke patients: a hospital-based study in north-east India

Background: Stroke is defined as an abrupt onset of a neurologic deficit lasting for more than 24 hours that is attributable to a focal vascular cause. Hyperglycemia and dyslipidemia are often documented in stroke patients. Elevated CRP level is independently associated with the excessive risk of ischemic stroke. Aim and Objectives were to evaluate the glycemic status, lipid profile and c-reactive protein level in stroke patients admitted in a teaching institute of north-east India.Methods: A cross-sectional hospital-based study conducted in the department of medicine, Agartala Government Medical College and GBP hospital, within a period of January 2020 to June 2021. Data were analyzed by SPSS software version 15 using appropriate statistical tests.Results: Among 200 patients of stroke, 50% was found to be pre-diabetic, 40% known diabetic and 10% newly diagnosed diabetic. 60% were hypertensives. Among them, 80% had ischaemic stroke and 20% hemorrhagic stroke. 70% of the patients had hypercholesterolemia, 60% had hypertriglyceridemia. 80% had raised serum LDL and 57% decreased serum HDL. Out of 200 patients, 60% was found to have raised serum CRP level. 55% of ischaemic stroke patients and 5% of hemorrhagic stroke patients had raised CRP level.Conclusions: Prediabetes and newly diagnosed diabetes are highly prevalent in patients with stroke or TIA. As the prevalence of prediabetes is growing rapidly, prediabetes might become one of the most important modifiable therapeutic targets in both primary and secondary prevention. Early detection of dyslipidemia and treatment with drugs along with dietary modifications and lifestyle changes can reduce the risk of stroke. Since, it was a cross-sectional study, these results need to be validated by further long-term prospective studies

Local and global persistence exponents of two quenched continuous lattice spin models

Local and global persistence exponents associated with zero temperature quenched dynamics of two dimensional XY model and three dimensional Heisenberg model have been estimated using numerical simulations. We have used the method of block persistence to find both global and local exponents simultaneously (in a single simulation). Temperature universality of both the exponents for three dimensional Heisenberg model has been confirmed by simulating the stochastic (with noise) version of the equation of motion. The noise amplitudes added were small enough to retain the dynamics below criticality. In the second part of our work we have studied scaling associated with correlated persistence sites in the three dimensional Heisenberg model in the later stages of the dynamics. The relevant length scale associated with correlated persistent sites was found to behave in a manner similar to the dynamic length scale associated with the phase ordering dynamics.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

Impact of employee motivation on passenger satisfaction levels – A case study in the state of Karnataka (India)

Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies. Faculty of Economics and Business. The University of Sydne

Effects of Hormones on Follicular Gata4 and Gata6 Expression

The GATA gene family consists two sub-groups of six genes namely, gata1-3, and gata4-6 transcription factors.GATA4 increases in developing gonads in the context of sex determination. Both gata4 andgata6 are present primarily in granulosa cells, but also in the theca, germinal epithelium, and corpus lutem. However, little is known about hormones, which may affect GATA4 expression in specific cell types within the ovary. The regulation of both gata4 and gata6 expression seems to be controlled by several factors including hormones, calcium signaling, oxygen levels and transcriptional/translational mechanisms. Deletion of gata4in mice lead to a 75%decrease in litter size while deletion of both gata4 and gata6 results in complete infertility due to inefficient primordial follicle formation, oocyte survival and follicular somatic cell development leading to defective folliculogenesis.https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/surp2022/1040/thumbnail.jp

Nanoindentation of Au nanoparticles – A combined experimental/computational multiscale study

The idea of dimensionality and size effect the strength of metallic specimen as their typical size is pushed into the sub-micrometer scale is well established. The importance of the shape at the nanoscale was demonstrated on Au thin-films and nanoparticles in nanoindentation experiments. It was shown that nanoparticles are substantially softer than thin-films of the same height and the smallest nanoparticles are softer than the largest ones [1]. We propose that the size effect arises from the interaction between the lateral free surfaces on the plastic zone. However, experiments alone cannot provide the understanding on the governing microstructural dislocation mechanisms and we demonstrate here a combined experimental/computational study, by developing a multiscale frame to study nanoindentation of nanoparticles from the atomic- to the macro-scale. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Large-scale adaptive multiple testing for sequential data controlling false discovery and nondiscovery rates

In modern scientific experiments, we frequently encounter data that have large dimensions, and in some experiments, such high dimensional data arrive sequentially rather than full data being available all at a time. We develop multiple testing procedures with simultaneous control of false discovery and nondiscovery rates when $m$-variate data vectors $\mathbf{X}_1, \mathbf{X}_2, \dots$ are observed sequentially or in groups and each coordinate of these vectors leads to a hypothesis testing. Existing multiple testing methods for sequential data uses fixed stopping boundaries that do not depend on sample size, and hence, are quite conservative when the number of hypotheses $m$ is large. We propose sequential tests based on adaptive stopping boundaries that ensure shrinkage of the continue sampling region as the sample size increases. Under minimal assumptions on the data sequence, we first develop a test based on an oracle test statistic such that both false discovery rate (FDR) and false nondiscovery rate (FNR) are nearly equal to some prefixed levels with strong control. Under a two-group mixture model assumption, we propose a data-driven stopping and decision rule based on local false discovery rate statistic that mimics the oracle rule and guarantees simultaneous control of FDR and FNR asymptotically as $m$ tends to infinity. Both the oracle and the data-driven stopping times are shown to be finite (i.e., proper) with probability 1 for all finite $m$ and converge to a finite constant as $m$ grows to infinity. Further, we compare the data-driven test with the existing gap rule proposed in He and Bartroff (2021) and show that the ratio of the expected sample sizes of our method and the gap rule tends to zero as $m$ goes to infinity. Extensive analysis of simulated datasets as well as some real datasets illustrate the superiority of the proposed tests over some existing methods.Comment: 44 pages, 4 figures, 2 table