Assessment of Cardiorespiratory Interactions During Spontaneous and Controlled Breathing: Non-linear Model-free Analysis

In this work, nonlinear model-free methods for bivariate time series analysis have been applied to study cardiorespiratory interactions. Specifically, entropy-based (i.e. Transfer Entropy and Cross Entropy) and Convergent Cross Mapping asymmetric coupling measures have been computed on heart rate and breathing time series extracted from electrocardiographic (ECG) and respiratory signals acquired on 19 young healthy subjects during an experimental protocol including spontaneous and controlled breathing conditions. Results evidence a bidirectional nature of cardiorespiratory interactions, and highlight clear similarities and differences among the three considered measures

A Short Description of the First Serbian UV Index Model

A numerical model called “NEOPLANTA” for estimating solar UV irradiance and UV index under cloud-free conditions is being developed and tested at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia. In this paper, the model features, calculation procedure, and input parameters are described. Effects of the absorption of UV radiation by O3, SO2, and NO2 and absorption and scattering by aerosol as well as the air molecules in the atmosphere are included. The performance of the model has been tested with respect to its capability of UV index, which is a weighted integral between 280 and 400 nm of the solar irradiance reaching the ground. For this test 10-day data measured during the spring and summer in 2003, 2004, and 2005 are used. Data are recorded by the Yankee UVB-1 biometer located at the Novi Sad university campus (45.33°N, 19.85°E; 84 m MSL). Error analyses indicate that the modeled values agree well with the observation

Hydride transfer made easy in the oxidation of alcohols catalyzed by choline oxidase

Choline oxidase (E.C. 1.1.3.17) catalyzes the two-step, four-electron oxidation of choline to glycine betaine with betaine aldehyde as enzyme-associated intermediate and molecular oxygen as final electron acceptor (Scheme 1). The gem-diol, hydrated species of the aldehyde intermediate of the reaction acts as substrate for aldehyde oxidation, suggesting that the enzyme may use similar strategies for the oxidation of the alcohol substrate and aldehyde intermediate. The determination of the chemical mechanism for alcohol oxidation has emerged from biochemical, mechanistic, mutagenetic, and structural studies. As illustrated in the mechanism of Scheme 2, the alcohol substrate is initially activated in the active site of the enzyme by removal of the hydroxyl proton. The resulting alkoxide intermediate is then stabilized in the enzyme-substrate complex via electrostatic interactions with active site amino acid residues. Alcohol oxidation then occurs quantum mechanically via the transfer of the hydride ion from the activated substrate to the N(5) flavin locus. An essential requisite for this mechanism of alcohol oxidation is the high degree of preorganization of the activated enzyme-substrate complex, which is achieved through an internal equilibrium of the Michaelis complex occurring prior to, and independently from, the subsequent hydride transfer reaction. The experimental evidence that support the mechanism for alcohol oxidation shown in Scheme 2 is briefly summarized in the Results and Discussion section

Cytokine expression provides clues to the pathophysiology of Gulf War illness and myalgic encephalomyelitis

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. Gulf War illness (GWI) is a chronic disease of unknown etiology characterized by persistent symptoms such as cognitive impairment, unexplained fatigue, pervasive pain, headaches, and gastrointestinal abnormalities. Current reports suggest that as many as 200,000 veterans who served in the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War were afflicted. Several potential triggers of GWI have been proposed including chemical exposure, toxins, vaccines, and unknown infectious agents. However, a definitive cause of GWI has not been identified and a specific biological marker that can consistently delineate the disease has not been defined. Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) is a disease with similar and overlapping symptomology, and subjects diagnosed with GWI typically fit the diagnostic criteria for ME. For these reasons, GWI is often considered a subgroup of ME. To explore this possibility and identify immune parameters that may help to understand GWI pathophysiology, we measured 77 serum cytokines in subjects with GWI and compared these data to that of subjects with ME as well as healthy controls. Our analysis identified a group of cytokines that identified ME and GWI cases with sensitivities of 92.5% and 64.9%, respectively. The five most significant cytokines in decreasing order of importance were IL-7, IL-4, TNF-α, IL-13, and IL-17F. When delineating GWI and ME cases from healthy controls, the observed specificity was only 33.3%, suggesting that with respect to cytokine expression, GWI cases resemble control subjects to a greater extent than ME cases across a number of parameters. These results imply that serum cytokines are representative of ME pathology to a greater extent than GWI and further suggest that the two diseases have distinct immune profiles despite their overlapping symptomology

Author correction : a global database for metacommunity ecology, integrating species, traits, environment and space

Correction to: Scientific Data https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-019-0344-7, published online 08 January 202