The regulation and deregulation of Wnt signaling by PARK genes in health and disease

Wingless/Int (Wnt) signaling pathways are signal transduction mechanisms that have been widely studied in the field of embryogenesis. Recent work has established a critical role for these pathways in brain development, especially of midbrain dopaminergic neurones. However, the fundamental importance of Wnt signaling for the normal function of mature neurones in the adult central nervous system has also lately been demonstrated by an increasing number of studies. Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disease worldwide and is currently incurable. This debilitating disease is characterized by the progressive loss of a subset of midbrain dopaminergic neurones in the substantia nigra leading to typical extrapyramidal motor symptoms. The aetiology of PD is poorly understood but work performed over the last two decades has identified a growing number of genetic defects that underlie this condition. Here we review a growing body of data connecting genes implicated in PD--most notably the PARK genes--with Wnt signaling. These observations provide clues to the normal function of these proteins in healthy neurones and suggest that deregulated Wnt signaling might be a frequent pathomechanism leading to PD. These observations have implications for the pathogenesis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases in general

Using Smoke Condensed Liquids from Pruned Fruit-Tree Branches for <i>Aedes</i> Mosquito Larva Control

Some mosquitos are disease-causing vectors. Their widespread existence poses a great threat to disease control worldwide. Finding an effective, low-cost solution for mosquito population control is desperately needed. Pruned branches from three fruit trees of date, pomelo, and guava were chopped, dried, and smoldered to form biochar and smoke. The smoke was condensed at 6 °C to form a smoke condensed liquid (SCL) to be used as a larvicide for mosquito larva control. The SCL had a smoky smell, minimal nutrients, and little metal contents, yet contained plenty of phenolic molecules commonly used as biocides. Via bacterial inhibition zone tests, ten percent of the date, pomelo, and guava SCLs had 1.44, 1.13, and 0.83 times higher bactericidal effects, respectively, than the use of 75% ethanol. The effectiveness of bacterial inhibition was positively related to the amounts of volatile compounds in the SCL liquids. As for larvicidal effects, a ten percent solution of the date and pomelo SCLs killed all tested larvae within 2 hrs. The reactive time versus each SCL’s LC50 was determined and fitted with a first-order mathematic model. The adopted model and its estimated parameters showed satisfactory results in presenting the dose–effect relationships in larval mortality of all the tested SCLs. Finally, the liquid pHs and dissolved oxygen (DO) over time were examined for their effectiveness and variation, respectively, and the SCL addition was concluded as the sole key factor in the mortality of the tested larvae

Using Smoke Condensed Liquids from Pruned Fruit-Tree Branches for Aedes Mosquito Larva Control

Some mosquitos are disease-causing vectors. Their widespread existence poses a great threat to disease control worldwide. Finding an effective, low-cost solution for mosquito population control is desperately needed. Pruned branches from three fruit trees of date, pomelo, and guava were chopped, dried, and smoldered to form biochar and smoke. The smoke was condensed at 6 &deg;C to form a smoke condensed liquid (SCL) to be used as a larvicide for mosquito larva control. The SCL had a smoky smell, minimal nutrients, and little metal contents, yet contained plenty of phenolic molecules commonly used as biocides. Via bacterial inhibition zone tests, ten percent of the date, pomelo, and guava SCLs had 1.44, 1.13, and 0.83 times higher bactericidal effects, respectively, than the use of 75% ethanol. The effectiveness of bacterial inhibition was positively related to the amounts of volatile compounds in the SCL liquids. As for larvicidal effects, a ten percent solution of the date and pomelo SCLs killed all tested larvae within 2 hrs. The reactive time versus each SCL&rsquo;s LC50 was determined and fitted with a first-order mathematic model. The adopted model and its estimated parameters showed satisfactory results in presenting the dose&ndash;effect relationships in larval mortality of all the tested SCLs. Finally, the liquid pHs and dissolved oxygen (DO) over time were examined for their effectiveness and variation, respectively, and the SCL addition was concluded as the sole key factor in the mortality of the tested larvae

Treating High COD Dyeing Wastewater via a Regenerative Sorption-Oxidation Process Using a Nano-Pored Activated Carbon

Nowadays, the structural complexity of dyes used in the textile industry and the widely adopted water-saving strategy in the dyeing processes often fail plants&rsquo; biological wastewater treatment units due to chemical oxygen demand (COD) overload. To alleviate this problems, this study investigated a regenerable adsorption&ndash;oxidation process to treat dyeing wastewater with COD around 10,000 mg/dm3 using a highly nano-pored activated carbon (AC) as a COD adsorbent, followed by its regeneration using hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizing reagent. In addition to studying AC&rsquo;s COD adsorption and oxidation performance, its operational treatment conditions in terms of temperature and pH were assessed. The results firstly demonstrated that about 50&ndash;60% of the COD was consistently adsorbed during the repeated adsorption operation before reaching AC&rsquo;s maximum adsorption capacity (qmax) of 0.165 g-COD/g-AC. The optimal pH and temperature during adsorption were 4.7 and 25 &deg;C, respectively. Secondly, AC regeneration was accomplished by using an initial peroxide concentration of 2.5% (by wt %) and EDTA-Fe of 2.12 mmole/dm3. The reuse of the regenerated ACs was doable. Surprisingly, after the first AC regeneration, the COD adsorption capacity of the regenerated AC even increased by ~7% with respect to the virgin AC. Thirdly, the results of a five-consecutive adsorption&ndash;regeneration operation showed that a total of 0.3625 g COD was removed by the 5 g AC used, which was equivalent to an adsorption capacity (q) of 0.0725 (= 0.3625/5) g-COD/g-AC during each adsorption stage. Based on the obtained results, a regenerable COD adsorption&ndash;oxidation process using a nano-pored AC to treat the high-textile-COD wastewater looks promising. Thus, a conceptual treatment unit was proposed, and its potential benefits and limitations were addressed

The first mitochondrial genome for the butterfly family Riodinidae ( Abisara fylloides ) and its systematic implications

The Riodinidae is one of the lepidopteran butterfly families. This study describes the complete mitochondrial genome of the butterfly species Abisara fylloides , the first mitochondrial genome of the Riodinidae family. The results show that the entire mitochondrial genome of A. fylloides is 15 301 bp in length, and contains 13 protein-coding genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes, 22 transfer RNA genes and a 423 bp A+T-rich region. The gene content, orientation and order are identical to the majority of other lepidopteran insects. Phylogenetic reconstruction was conducted using the concatenated 13 protein-coding gene (PCG) sequences of 19 available butterfly species covering all the five butterfly families (Papilionidae, Nymphalidae, Peridae, Lycaenidae and Riodinidae). Both maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference analyses highly supported the monophyly of Lycaenidae+Riodinidae, which was standing as the sister of Nymphalidae. In addition, we propose that the riodinids be categorized into the family Lycaenidae as a subfamilial taxon

Computer-aided recognition and assessment of a porous bioelastomer in ultrasound images for regenerative medicine applications

It is difficult to use a single edge operator in image processing to extract continuous and accurate contours of a porous bioelastomer due to the fuzzy boundary and complex background in ultrasound images. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a joint algorithm for bioelastomer contour detection and a texture feature extraction method for monitoring the degradation performance of bioelastomers. First, the mean-shift clustering method is utilized to obtain the clustering feature information of bioelastomers and native tissue from manually segmented images, and this information is used as the initial information in the image binarization algorithm for image partitioning. Second, Otsu's thresholding method and mathematical morphology are applied in the process of image binarization. Finally, the Canny edge detector is employed to extract the complete bioelastomers contour from the binary image. To verify the robustness of the proposed joint algorithm, the results using the proposed joint algorithm, where mean-shift clustering is replaced with k-means clustering are also obtained. The proposed joint algorithm based on mean-shift clustering outperforms the joint algorithm based on k-means clustering, as well as algorithms that directly apply the Canny, Sobel and Laplacian methods. Texture feature extraction is based on the computer-aided recognition of bioelastomers. The region of interest (ROI) is set in the scaffold region, and the first-order statistical features and second-order statistical features of the greyscale values of the ROI are extracted and analysed. The proposed joint algorithm can not only extract ideal bioelastomers contours from ultrasound images but also provide valuable feedback on the degradation behaviour of bioelastomers at implant sites