Normal spatial learning and improved spatial working memory in mice (mus musculus) lacking dopamine d4 receptors

Dopamine terminals in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex modulate cognitive processes such as spatial learning and working memory. Because dopamine D4 receptors are expressed in these brain areas we have analyzed mutant mice lacking this receptor subtype (Drd4-/-). Wild-type and Drd4-/- mice were challenged in two spatial learning paradigms: the Morris water maze and an alternation T-maze. Drd4-/- mice showed normal place learning ability to find a hidden platform based on spatial extra-maze cues. In addition, Drd4-/- mice were able to find a new platform location with the same learning plasticity as wild type-mice. Spatial working memory assessed on a T maze showed that Drd4-/- mice were more efficient than wild-type mice in acquiring the maximum plateau of correct alternation scores. These results provide further evidence that the functional consequence of lacking D4 receptors is more evident in behaviors dependent on the integrity of the prefrontal cortex.Fil: Falzone, Tomas Luis. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; ArgentinaFil: Avale, Maria Elena. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; ArgentinaFil: Gelman, Diego Matias. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; ArgentinaFil: Rubinstein, Marcelo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; Argentin

Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry Study of the Essential Oils of Schinus longifolia (Lindl.) Speg., Schinus fasciculata (Griseb.) I. M. Johnst., and Schinus areira L.

The essential oil composition from the aerial parts of three Anacardiaceae growing in Bah¨ªa Blanca, Argentina was studied by gas chromatography and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The essential oils of S. longifolia and S. fasciculata have been studied for the first time. The major constituents were ¦Á-pinene (46.5%), ¦Â-pinene (15.1%) and ¦Á-phellandrene (10.1%) for S. longifolia and limonene (10.9%), ¦Â-phellandrene (6.16%) and ¦Á-phellandrene (5.6%) for S. fasciculata. The major components of the essential oil of S. areira were limonene (28.6%), ¦Á-phellandrene (10.1%), sabinene (9.2%) and camphene (9.2%) differing from the literature data. The essential oils from S. areira and S. longifolia exhibited a high biotoxicity in a brine shrimp assay with Artemia persimilis.Fil: Murray, Ana Paula. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto de Química del Sur. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Química. Instituto de Química del Sur; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Química. Instituto de Investigaciones en Química Orgánica; ArgentinaFil: Frontera, Maria Eugenia. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Química. Instituto de Investigaciones en Química Orgánica; ArgentinaFil: Tomas, María A.. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Química. Instituto de Investigaciones en Química Orgánica; ArgentinaFil: Mulet, María Cristina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Química. Instituto de Investigaciones en Química Orgánica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto de Química del Sur. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Química. Instituto de Química del Sur; Argentin

Effect of pre-treatment on the generation of dipeptidyl peptidase-IV- and prolyl endopeptidase-inhibitory hydrolysates from bovine lung

peer-reviewedThe aim of this work was to study the effect of two different pre-treatments, high temperature (100 °C, 5 min) and high pressure (600 MPa, 3 min), on the potential of the enzymes papain, collagenase and Alcalase® to generate bioactive hydrolysates containing dipeptidyl peptidase-IV- (DPP-IV; EC 3.4.14.5) and prolyl endopeptidase- (PEP; EC 3.4.21.26) inhibitory peptides from bovine lung. Both pre-treatments resulted in an increase in the degree of hydrolysis over a 24 h period (P < 0.001) and significantly increased the DPP-IV- and PEP-inhibitory activities of the generated hydrolysates (P < 0.001). Generated hydrolysates included an Alcalase hydrolysate of pressure-treated bovine lung, which was the most active, and showed DPP-IV and PEP half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values of 1.43 ± 0.06 and 3.62 ± 0.07 mg/ mL, respectively. The major peptides contained in this hydrolysate were determined by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, and results demonstrated that bovine lung is a good substrate for the release of bioactive peptides when proper pre-treatment and enzymatic treatment are applied

Tracer Study of the Nursing Graduates: Basis for Improvement of Curriculum and Instruction

It is most certain that in any academic institution like St. Mary’s College, Inc., factors to consider for the graduates are the quality of education and trainings received from the school of their formation to ensure the highest rate of employability, increased satisfaction on the performance of the graduates and stakeholders. This relevant information can be made available through conducting a tracer study to obtain accurate data to probe on the professional competency of the graduates for the purpose of revising the nursing curriculum for further improvement and satisfaction of the stakeholders. Thus, this tracer study aimed at conveying a positive attitude of concern by getting in touch with the BSN graduates to express interest for social communication and evaluate their present life’s works and conditions. For this study, a total of one hundred ninety (190) graduates from Batch 2007 to 2022 participated through a structured online survey questionnaire formulated by the author, as many of the respondents are working overseas. Based on the results of the data, almost 100% are currently employed in their respective fields of interest both locally and abroad. The graduates’ early phase of experience at work covered a period of waiting for almost 3 to 6 months after passing the board examination before being hired to different hospitals in the locality and overseas either as permanent or probationary employees. Future research on this topic would focus on other variables related to tracer study of graduates in other fields. The data of the study was analyzed using frequencies and percentages. The results revealed that out of the 190 respondents, 146 (68.42%) got employed as nurses and 39 (20.53%) to non-nursing jobs whereas 14 (7.37%) abstained from revealing their current jobs. At the time of the study, 69 (36.32 %) were employed overseas and 121 (63.68%) were working temporarily in the country while waiting for the processing of papers for employment abroad.&nbsp

The Impact of Contact Experiences on Personality and Mental Illness Stigma in the UAE

Mental health illness is one of the most stigmatized diseases globally. Mental illness stigma continues to play an important role that shapes societal responses to individuals with mental illness. Owing to the negative consequences of stigma endorsed by the public and thereby internalized by the individual, better understanding is required to identify how these public negative attitudes develop towards people with mental illness. This study examined whether one’s contact experiences with mental illness influenced the role that their personality plays on mental illness stigma. Participants (N = 203) completed the Social Distance Scale, 20-item short form of the International Personality Item Pool (Mini IPIP), and degree of contact experiences. Results suggested that Openness to Experience and Agreeableness personality traits reported the least amount of stigma and Neuroticism was observed to have the highest amount of stigma towards individuals with mental illness. Having close-contact experience was linked to a lower expression of mental illness stigma whereas, individuals having no previous contact were more likely to engage in greater stigma. No moderating effects of contact experiences on personality and social distance were observed. These findings suggest that certain personality traits may predict greater endorsement of stigma while personal contact experiences may reverse the amount of stigma expressed towards people with mental illness. Moreover, by increasing contact experiences, greater public awareness and acceptance may be achieved allowing for stigmatization towards people with mental illness to decline

Time-varying effects when analysing customer lifetime duration, application to the insurance market

The Cox model (Cox, 1972) is widely used in customer lifetime duration research, but it assumes that the regression coefficients are time invariant. In order to analyse the temporal covariate effects on the duration times, we propose to use an extended version of the Cox model where the parameters are allowed to vary over time. We apply this methodology to real insurance policy cancellation data and we conclude that the kind of contracts held by the customer and the concurrence of an external insurer in the cancellation influence the risk of the customer leaving the company, but the effect differs as time goes by.Cox model, customer lifetime.

RESEARCH CONCERNING THE CHEMICAL CONTROL AGAINST PSEUDOCOCCUS ADONIDUM L.

Pseudococcus adonidum is a polyphag pest, which attacks different species of plants belonging to many genus and families, as: Citrus, Ficus, Cactaceae, Cycas, Dracena, Phoenix, Mimoza, Asparagus, Camellia etc. It is localized in large colonies on leaves, stems, branches, offshoots, and roots. The experiments were performed in solarium conditions during 2001-2002. Testing the efficiency of an insecticide sort was the aim of our experiment. During 2 experimental years, 9 products were tested: Confidor 200 SL, Calypso 400 SC; Pyrinex 25 EC, Vydate 10 G, Fastac 10 CE – RV, Sumithion 50 EC, Mospilan 20 SP, Decis 2,5 EC, Actellic 50 EC

Graph Element Networks: adaptive, structured computation and memory

We explore the use of graph neural networks (GNNs) to model spatial processes in which there is no a priori graphical structure. Similar to finite element analysis, we assign nodes of a GNN to spatial locations and use a computational process defined on the graph to model the relationship between an initial function defined over a space and a resulting function in the same space. We use GNNs as a computational substrate, and show that the locations of the nodes in space as well as their connectivity can be optimized to focus on the most complex parts of the space. Moreover, this representational strategy allows the learned input-output relationship to generalize over the size of the underlying space and run the same model at different levels of precision, trading computation for accuracy. We demonstrate this method on a traditional PDE problem, a physical prediction problem from robotics, and learning to predict scene images from novel viewpoints.Comment: Accepted to ICML 201

A new species of Paracapillaroides (Nematoda: Capillariidae) parasitizing Nemadactylus bergi (Perciformes: Latridae) from the Argentine Sea

A new nematode species, Paracapillaroides acanthocotylus sp. n., is described from the marine fish Nemadactylus bergi (Norman) (Latridae, Perciformes) from waters off Mar del Plata, Argentina (38°08'S, 57°32'W) (prevalence 81.8%, mean intensity 12.4 ± 10.3). The new species is readily distinguished from P. agonostomi Moravec, Salgado-Maldonado et Caspeta-Mandujano, 1999, the only known species of the genus, by having in both sexes a longer oesophagus in relation to total body length. Males of the new species have a shorter and more complex spicule and a markedly different morphology of the spicular sheath; the rays supporting the caudal bursa are also shorter and rounded, instead of digitiform. Furthermore, females of the new species have elevated vulval lips and longer eggs. The complex structure of both the spicule and spicular sheath is unique among all capillariids parasitizing cold-blooded vertebrates. This is the first record of a species of Paracapillaroides in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean.Fil: Rossin, Maria Alejandra. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; ArgentinaFil: Timi, Juan Tomas. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; Argentin