Local Cattle and Badger Populations Affect the Risk of Confirmed Tuberculosis in British Cattle Herds

Background: The control of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) remains a priority on the public health agenda in Great Britain, after launching in 1998 the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) to evaluate the effectiveness of badger (Meles meles) culling as a control strategy. Our study complements previous analyses of the RBCT data (focusing on treatment effects) by presenting analyses of herd-level risks factors associated with the probability of a confirmed bTB breakdown in herds within each treatment: repeated widespread proactive culling, localized reactive culling and no culling (survey-only). Methodology/Principal Findings: New cases of bTB breakdowns were monitored inside the RBCT areas from the end of the first proactive badger cull to one year after the last proactive cull. The risk of a herd bTB breakdown was modeled using logistic regression and proportional hazard models adjusting for local farm-level risk factors. Inside survey-only and reactive areas, increased numbers of active badger setts and cattle herds within 1500 m of a farm were associated with an increased bTB risk. Inside proactive areas, the number of M. bovis positive badgers initially culled within 1500 m of a farm was the strongest predictor of the risk of a confirmed bTB breakdown. Conclusions/Significance: The use of herd-based models provide insights into how local cattle and badger populations affect the bTB breakdown risks of individual cattle herds in the absence of and in the presence of badger culling. These measures of local bTB risks could be integrated into a risk-based herd testing programme to improve the targeting o

Marking Embryonic Stem Cells with a 2A Self-Cleaving Peptide: A NKX2-5 Emerald GFP BAC Reporter

Fluorescent reporters are useful for assaying gene expression in living cells and for identifying and isolating pure cell populations from heterogeneous cultures, including embryonic stem (ES) cells. Multiple fluorophores and genetic selection markers exist; however, a system for creating reporter constructs that preserve the regulatory sequences near a gene's native ATG start site has not been widely available.Here, we describe a series of modular marker plasmids containing independent reporter, bacterial selection, and eukaryotic selection components, compatible with both Gateway recombination and lambda prophage bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) recombineering techniques. A 2A self-cleaving peptide links the reporter to the native open reading frame. We use an emerald GFP marker cassette to create a human BAC reporter and ES cell reporter line for the early cardiac marker NKX2-5. NKX2-5 expression was detected in differentiating mouse ES cells and ES cell-derived mice.Our results describe a NKX2-5 ES cell reporter line for studying early events in cardiomyocyte formation. The results also demonstrate that our modular marker plasmids could be used for generating reporters from unmodified BACs, potentially as part of an ES cell reporter library

Plasma triglyceride concentrations are rapidly reduced following individual bouts of endurance exercise in women

It is known that chronic endurance training leads to improvements in the lipoprotein profile, but less is known about changes that occur during postexercise recovery acutely. We analyzed triglyceride (TG), cholesterol classes and apolipoproteins in samples collected before, during and after individual moderate- and hard-intensity exercise sessions in men and women that were isoenergetic between intensities. Young healthy men (n = 9) and young healthy women (n = 9) were studied under three different conditions with diet unchanged between trials: (1) before, during and 3 h after 90 min of exercise at 45% VO2peak (E45); (2) before, during and 3 h after 60 min of exercise at 65% VO2peak (E65), and (3) in a time-matched sedentary control trial (C). At baseline, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) was higher in women than men (P < 0.05). In men and in women, total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), HDL-C, apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I), apolipoprotein B (apoB), and LDL peak particle size were unaltered by exercise either during exertion or after 3 h of recovery. In women, but not in men, average plasma TG was significantly reduced below C at 3 h postexercise by approximately 15% in E45 and 25% in E65 (P < 0.05) with no significant difference between exercise intensities. In summary, plasma TG concentration rapidly declines following exercise in women, but not in men. These results demonstrate an important mechanism by which each individual exercise session may incrementally reduce the risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in women

Geomorphic and stratigraphic evidence for an unusual tsunami or storm a few centuries ago at Anegada, British Virgin Islands

© The Author(s), 2010. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Natural Hazards 63 (2012): 51-84, doi:10.1007/s11069-010-9622-6.Waters from the Atlantic Ocean washed southward across parts of Anegada, east-northeast of Puerto Rico, during a singular event a few centuries ago. The overwash, after crossing a fringing coral reef and 1.5 km of shallow subtidal flats, cut dozens of breaches through sandy beach ridges, deposited a sheet of sand and shell capped with lime mud, and created inland fields of cobbles and boulders. Most of the breaches extend tens to hundreds of meters perpendicular to a 2-km stretch of Anegada’s windward shore. Remnants of the breached ridges stand 3 m above modern sea level, and ridges seaward of the breaches rise 2.2–3.0 m high. The overwash probably exceeded those heights when cutting the breaches by overtopping and incision of the beach ridges. Much of the sand-and-shell sheet contains pink bioclastic sand that resembles, in grain size and composition, the sand of the breached ridges. This sand extends as much as 1.5 km to the south of the breached ridges. It tapers southward from a maximum thickness of 40 cm, decreases in estimated mean grain size from medium sand to very fine sand, and contains mud laminae in the south. The sand-and-shell sheet also contains mollusks—cerithid gastropods and the bivalve Anomalocardia—and angular limestone granules and pebbles. The mollusk shells and the lime-mud cap were probably derived from a marine pond that occupied much of Anegada’s interior at the time of overwash. The boulders and cobbles, nearly all composed of limestone, form fields that extend many tens of meters generally southward from limestone outcrops as much as 0.8 km from the nearest shore. Soon after the inferred overwash, the marine pond was replaced by hypersaline ponds that produce microbial mats and evaporite crusts. This environmental change, which has yet to be reversed, required restriction of a former inlet or inlets, the location of which was probably on the island’s south (lee) side. The inferred overwash may have caused restriction directly by washing sand into former inlets, or indirectly by reducing the tidal prism or supplying sand to post-overwash currents and waves. The overwash happened after A.D. 1650 if coeval with radiocarbon-dated leaves in the mud cap, and it probably happened before human settlement in the last decades of the 1700s. A prior overwash event is implied by an inland set of breaches. Hypothetically, the overwash in 1650–1800 resulted from the Antilles tsunami of 1690, the transatlantic Lisbon tsunami of 1755, a local tsunami not previously documented, or a storm whose effects exceeded those of Hurricane Donna, which was probably at category 3 as its eye passed 15 km to Anegada’s south in 1960.The work was supported in part by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under its project N6480, a tsunami-hazard assessment for the eastern United States

A systematic review of non-invasive modalities used to identify women with anal incontinence symptoms after childbirth

© 2018, The International Urogynecological Association. Introduction and hypothesis: Anal incontinence following childbirth is prevalent and has a significant impact upon quality of life (QoL). Currently, there is no standard assessment for women after childbirth to identify these symptoms. This systematic review aimed to identify non-invasive modalities used to identify women with anal incontinence following childbirth and assess response and reporting rates of anal incontinence for these modalities. Methods: Ovid Medline, Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED), Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Cochrane Collaboration, EMBASE and Web of Science databases were searched for studies using non-invasive modalities published from January 1966 to May 2018 to identify women with anal incontinence following childbirth. Study data including type of modality, response rates and reported prevalence of anal incontinence were extracted and critically appraised. Results: One hundred and nine studies were included from 1602 screened articles. Three types of non-invasive modalities were identified: validated questionnaires/symptom scales (n = 36 studies using 15 different instruments), non-validated questionnaires (n = 50 studies) and patient interviews (n = 23 studies). Mean response rates were 92% up to 6 weeks after childbirth. Non-personalised assessment modalities (validated and non-validated questionnaires) were associated with reporting of higher rates of anal incontinence compared with patient interview at all periods of follow-up after childbirth, which was statistically significant between 6 weeks and 1 year after childbirth (p < 0.05). Conclusions: This systematic review confirms that questionnaires can be used effectively after childbirth to identify women with anal incontinence. Given the methodological limitations associated with non-validated questionnaires, assessing all women following childbirth for pelvic-floor symptomatology, including anal incontinence, using validated questionnaires should be considered