Seizure prediction : ready for a new era

Acknowledgements: The authors acknowledge colleagues in the international seizure prediction group for valuable discussions. L.K. acknowledges funding support from the National Health and Medical Research Council (APP1130468) and the James S. McDonnell Foundation (220020419) and acknowledges the contribution of Dean R. Freestone at the University of Melbourne, Australia, to the creation of Fig. 3.Peer reviewedPostprin

Pesticide Residues

METHODOLOGY for residue analysis has advanced rapidly during the current review period, from November 1962 through October 1964. Notable progress has been made in the development and refinement of methods of analysis by which any or all of a large number of pesticide residue chemicals can be detected and measured in one general operation. This is of particular significance because great interest has developed-outside the scientific community as well as within - in the possible presence of pesticide chemicals in all parts of our environment, including man himself. Only by the use of improved methodology will it be possible to accomplish the task of detecting, identifying, and measuring the many possible residual pesticide chemicals. It is only after the presence or absence of these chemicals in any part of our environment has been proved unequivocally that the medical man, the lawyer, the lawmaker, the administrators in government and in industry, and other interested groups can assess the significance of such residues. There are 300 to 400 chemicals registered for use on food products alone, and a few hundred more are registered for other uses whereby they may become part of our environment. The chemist cannot know which of the hundreds of possible pesticide chemical residues to look for in samples of air, water, soil, plants, human and animal tissues, prepared foods, etc. There is an urgent need for general procedures that can identify and measure a large number of chemicals at one time. They must be highly sensitive and accurate, since it is essential that all monitoring of our environment be at a level considerably below any tolerance or otherwise critical level, so that trends can be more readily recognized and assessed for significance. Upward or downward trends in any portion of our environment will be recognizable only when the methodology becomes sufficiently sensitive and accurate so that analyses in the fraction-of-a-part-per-million or even part-per-billion range become routinely dependable (Fischbach, H. Pub. 1082, National Research Council, p. 55, Nov. 29,1962)

Exploring the bioactive landscape of the gut microbiota to identify metabolites underpinning human health

The healthy human gut is colonised by a diverse microbial community (gut microbiota) that provides a variety of ecological and metabolic functions relevant to host health and well-being. Our early understanding and appreciation of the functional capacity of the microbiota was primarily informed by culture-dependent analyses. However, it is now known that the vast majority of gut microbes are resistant to cultivation and remain unrepresented by cultured isolates. Consequently, much of our current awareness of the true biological potential inherent to these communities has been provided by culture-independent (meta)genomic approaches which have revealed that the genetic potential of the gut microbiota is as much as 150 times greater than that of the human genome itself. Despite these advances it is now increasingly accepted that efforts to dissect the functionalities encoded in the human microbiome have not kept pace with DNA sequencing based technologies. For instance, the microbiome encodes a plethora of bioactive peptides and metabolites that affect host health, however, the function(s), mechanism(s) of action and the genetic and regulatory networks underpinning these bioactives remain largely cryptic. Here, we explore the NF-?B suppressive bioactive landscape of the gut microbiota-in particular, we provide an overview of our current understanding of the gut microbiota and propose the integration of new culture-dependent approaches with improved screening, metabolomic and genetic strategies offers new opportunities to identify novel bioactives, and elucidate the relationship between the gut microbiota associated metabolome and host health