Elderly people in many respects benefit from interaction with dogs

Over the course of evolution, humans and animals have entered into a close relationship. By domesticating animals, humans were able to use them to their own advantage. However, animals should not only be seen as mere providers of material value; in fact, they actually enrich humans' lives on an emotional level. The classic examples for this evolution are dogs: they are considered loyal companions, particularly for children and elderly people. This relationship between humans and animals is the subject of this research study and is examined from a gerontological perspective by employing qualitative social research methods. Conclusion: The results of the study reveal the manifold meanings that pets - in particular dogs - can and do have to the elderly. At this point, it should also be noted that there is still a strong need for further research into this topic from a gerontological perspective

Structural Diversity in Early-Stage Biofilm Formation on Microplastics Depends on Environmental Medium and Polymer Properties

Plastics entering the environment can not only undergo physical degradation and fragmentation processes, but they also tend to be colonized by microorganisms. Microbial colonization and the subsequent biofilm formation on plastics can alter their palatability to organisms and result in a higher ingestion as compared to pristine plastics. To date, the early stage of biofilm formation on plastic materials has not been investigated in context of the environmental medium and polymer properties. We explored the early-stage biofilm formation on polyamide (PA), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) after incubation in freshwater and artificial seawater and categorized the structural diversity on images obtained via scanning electron microscopy. Furthermore, by the measurement of the initial ζ-potential of the plastic materials, we found that PA with the highest negative ζ-potential tended to have the highest structural diversity, followed by PET and PVC after incubation in freshwater. However, PVC with the lowest negative ζ-potential showed the highest structural diversity after incubation in seawater, indicating that the structural diversity is additionally dependent on the incubation medium. Our results give insights into how the incubation medium and polymer properties can influence the early-stage biofilm formation of just recently environmentally exposed microplastics. These differences are responsible for whether organisms may ingest microplastic particles with their food or not

High‐efficiency Al0.22Ga0.78As solar cells grown by molecular beam epitaxy

The quality of pn junction photodetectors made of Al0.2Ga0.8As has been investigated as a first step in the optimization of tandem solar cells. We have obtained 1 sun AM1.5 efficiencies of 16.1% for 0.25 cm2 Al0.22Ga0.78As solar cellsfabricated from molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) material. This efficiency is 3.2 percentage points higher than the previously best reported efficiency of 12.9% for an Al0.2Ga0.8As solar cell fabricated from MBE material

SynBlast: Assisting the analysis of conserved synteny information

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Motivation</p> <p>In the last years more than 20 vertebrate genomes have been sequenced, and the rate at which genomic DNA information becomes available is rapidly accelerating. Gene duplication and gene loss events inherently limit the accuracy of orthology detection based on sequence similarity alone. Fully automated methods for orthology annotation do exist but often fail to identify individual members in cases of large gene families, or to distinguish missing data from traceable gene losses. This situation can be improved in many cases by including conserved synteny information.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here we present the <monospace>SynBlast</monospace> pipeline that is designed to construct and evaluate local synteny information. <monospace>SynBlast</monospace> uses the genomic region around a focal reference gene to retrieve candidates for homologous regions from a collection of target genomes and ranks them in accord with the available evidence for homology. The pipeline is intended as a tool to aid high quality manual annotation in particular in those cases where automatic procedures fail. We demonstrate how <monospace>SynBlast</monospace> is applied to retrieving orthologous and paralogous clusters using the vertebrate <it>Hox </it>and <it>ParaHox </it>clusters as examples.</p> <p>Software</p> <p>The <monospace>SynBlast</monospace> package written in <monospace>Perl</monospace> is available under the GNU General Public License at <url>http://www.bioinf.uni-leipzig.de/Software/SynBlast/</url>.</p

Functional and Comparative Genomics of Hoxa2 Gene cis-Regulatory Elements: Evidence for Evolutionary Modification of Ancestral Core Element Activity

Hoxa2 is an evolutionarily conserved developmental regulatory gene that functions to specify rhombomere (r) and pharyngeal arch (PA) identities throughout the Osteichthyes. Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes) hoxa2a, like orthologous Hoxa2 genes from other osteichthyans, is expressed during embryogenesis in r2--7 and PA2-7, whereas the paralogous medaka pseudogene, ψhoxa2b, is expressed in noncanonical Hoxa2 domains, including the pectoral fin buds. To understand the evolution of cis-regulatory element (CRE) control of gene expression, we conducted eGFP reporter gene expression studies with extensive functional mapping of several conserved CREs upstream of medaka hoxa2a and ψhoxa2b in transient and stable-line transgenic medaka embryos. The CREs tested were previously shown to contribute to directing mouse Hoxa2 gene expression in r3, r5, and PA2-4. Our results reveal the presence of sequence elements embedded in the medaka hoxa2a and ψhoxa2b upstream enhancer regions (UERs) that mediate expression in r4 and the PAs (hoxa2a r4/CNCC element) or in r3--7 and the PAs ψhoxa2b r3--7/CNCC element), respectively. Further, these elements were shown to be highly conserved among osteichthyans, which suggests that the r4 specifying element embedded in the UER of Hoxa2 is a deeply rooted rhombomere specifying element and the activity of this element has been modified by the evolution of flanking sequences that redirect its activity to alternative developmental compartments

Nuclear progestin receptor (Pgr) knockouts in zebrafish demonstrate role for Pgr in ovulation but not in rapid non-genomic steroid mediated meiosis resumption

Progestins, progesterone derivatives, are the most critical signaling steroid for initiating finaloocyte maturation (FOM) and ovulation, in order to advance fully-grown immature oocytesto become fertilizable eggs in basal vertebrates. It is well-established that progestin inducesFOM at least partly through a membrane receptor and a non-genomic steroid signalingprocess, which precedes progestin triggered ovulation that is mediated through a nuclearprogestin receptor (Pgr) and genomic signaling pathway.To determine whether Pgr plays arole in a non-genomic signaling mechanism during FOM, we knocked out Pgr in zebrafishusing transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) and studied the oocyte maturation phenotypes of Pgr knockouts (Pgr-KOs). Three TALENs-induced mutant lines withdifferent frame shift mutations were generated. Homozygous Pgr-KO female fish wereall infertile while no fertility effects were evident in homozygous Pgr-KO males. Oocytesdeveloped and underwent FOM normally in vivo in homozygous Pgr-KO female comparedto the wild-type controls, but these mature oocytes were trapped within the follicular cellsand failed to ovulate from the ovaries.These oocytes also underwent normal germinal vesicle breakdown (GVBD) and FOM in vitro, but failed to ovulate even after treatment withhuman chronic gonadotropin (HCG) or progestin (17a,20β-dihydroxyprogesterone or DHP),which typically induce FOM and ovulation in wild-type oocytes. The results indicate thatanovulation and infertility in homozygous Pgr-KO female fish was, at least in part, due to alack of functional Pgr-mediated genomic progestin signaling in the follicular cells adjacentto the oocytes. Our study of Pgr-KO supports previous results that demonstrate a role forPgr in steroid-dependent genomic signaling pathways leading to ovulation, and the firstconvincing evidence that Pgr is not essential for initiating non-genomic progestin signalingand triggering of meiosis resumption