Decline of vasopressin immunoreactivity and messenger RNA levels in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis following castration

Vasopressinergic (VP) neurons in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) of the rat are regulated by gonadal steroids. Gonadectomy causes the projections of the BNST to lose their VP immunoreactivity gradually over a period lasting more than 2 months. Here we have compared the rate of decline of VP mRNA and VP immunoreactivity in the BNST of adult male rats following castration. In experiment 1, the peak number of VP-immunoreactive cells and the level of VP gene expression were compared in sham-operated controls and at 1, 3, or 8 weeks postcastration. The number of VP-immunoreactive cells was not decreased at 1 week postcastration but was significantly reduced (p \u3c 0.0001) at 3 and 8 weeks postcastration. VP gene expression declined more rapidly, and both the total number of labeled cells (p \u3c 0.0001) and the average number of grains per cell (p \u3c 0.01) were significantly reduced by 1 week postcastration. No VP-expressing cells were detectable at 3 or 8 weeks. The difference in the rate of decline in the number of cells labeled by the two techniques following castration did not appear to be due to colchicine pretreatment. In experiment 2, VP mRNA in the BNST was compared in sham-operated controls or at 1, 3, or 7 d postcastration. A significant decrease (p \u3c 0.01) in the average number of grains per cell was detectable by just 1 d following castration, and the number of labeled cells was significantly reduced (p \u3c 0.001) by 3 d postcastration. These results indicate that the capacity of BNST cells to synthesize VP responds more dynamically to changes in gonadal steroid levels than do levels of VP immunoreactivity. This difference may reflect the delay between VP gene expression and the processing of VP precursor molecules. Alternatively, gonadal steroids may modulate the release of VP from cells in the BNST

A systematic review of health-related quality of life in cutaneous melanoma

Melanoma can be considered an emerging chronic disease that may considerably affect patients’ lives. The authors systematically reviewed the available literature on health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and melanoma. Of reviews and the selected studies, reference lists were hand-searched. The quality of the eligible studies was appraised based on 14 previously published criteria. Of the 158 abstracts, 44 articles were appraised, resulting in 13 selected studies written in English (published between 2001 and 2008). Most studies assessed patients from specialised centres with varying, but relatively advanced, disease stages. The most commonly used instruments were the SF-36 and EORTC QLQ-C30. Recently, a melanoma-specific HRQOL questionnaire [FACT-Melanoma (FACT-M)] was introduced for clinical trial purposes. It showed that approximately one-third of melanoma patients experienced considerable levels of distress, mostly at the time of diagnosis and following treatment. Systemic therapies affected HRQOL negatively in the short term, but to a lesser extent in the long term. Health status and patients’ psychological characteristics are associated with higher levels of HRQOL impairment. The authors found that the impact of melanoma on patients’ HRQOL is comparable to that of other cancers. Accurately assessing HRQOL impairment in melanoma patients is pivotal, as it may affect disease management, including therapy and additional counselling, future preventive behaviour and perhaps even prognosis

MOMDIS: a Glauber model computer code for knockout reactions

A computer program is described to calculate momentum distributions in stripping and diffraction dissociation reactions. A Glauber model is used with the scattering wavefunctions calculated in the eikonal approximation. The program is appropriate for knockout reactions at intermediate energy collisions (30 MeV $\leq$ E$_{lab}/$nucleon $\leq 2000$ MeV). It is particularly useful for reactions involving unstable nuclear beams, or exotic nuclei (e.g. neutron-rich nuclei), and studies of single-particle occupancy probabilities (spectroscopic factors) and other related physical observables. Such studies are an essential part of the scientific program of radioactive beam facilities, as in for instance the proposed RIA (Rare Isotope Accelerator) facility in the US.Comment: 22 pages. Accepted for publication in Computer Physics Communications. Code available from CPC web sit

Changes in duodenal tissue-associated microbiota following hookworm infection and consecutive gluten challenges in humans with coeliac disease

A reduced diversity of the gastrointestinal commensal microbiota is associated with the development of several inflammatory diseases. Recent reports in humans and animal models have demonstrated the beneficial therapeutic effects of infections by parasitic worms (helminths) in some inflammatory disorders, such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and coeliac disease (CeD). Interestingly, these studies have described how helminths may alter the intestinal microbiota, potentially representing a mechanism by which they regulate inflammation. However, for practical reasons, these reports have primarily analysed the faecal microbiota. In the present investigation, we have assessed, for the first time, the changes in the microbiota at the site of infection by a parasitic helminth (hookworm) and gluten-dependent inflammation in humans with CeD using biopsy tissue from the duodenum. Hookworm infection and gluten exposure were associated with an increased abundance of species within the Bacteroides phylum, as well as increases in the richness and diversity of the tissue-resident microbiota within the intestine, results that are consistent with previous reports using other helminth species in humans and animal models. Hence, this may represent a mechanism by which parasitic helminths may restore intestinal immune homeostasis and exert a therapeutic benefit in CeD, and potentially other inflammatory disorders.This work was supported by grants 613718 to P.G., and 1037304 and 1020114 to A.L. from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC), and by the Royal Society and the Isaac Newton Trust/Wellcome Trust ISSF/University of Cambridge Joint Research Grants Scheme to C.C. T.J. is supported by scholarships from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) Doctoral Training Partnerships program

VITALAS at TRECVID-2009

This paper describes the participation of VITALAS in the TRECVID-2009 evaluation where we submitted runs for the High-Level Feature Extraction (HLFE) and Interactive Search tasks. For the HLFE task, we focus on the evaluation of low-level feature sets and fusion methods. The runs employ multiple low-level features based on all available modalities (visual, audio and text) and the results show that use of such features improves the retrieval eectiveness signicantly. We also use a concept score fusion approach that achieves good results with reduced low-level feature vector dimensionality. Furthermore, a weighting scheme is introduced for cluster assignment in the \bag-of-words" approach. Our runs achieved good performance compared to a baseline run and the submissions of other TRECVID-2009 participants. For the Interactive Search task, we focus on the evaluation of the integrated VITALAS system in order to gain insights into the use and eectiveness of the system's search functionalities on (the combination of) multiple modalities and study the behavior of two user groups: professional archivists and non-professional users. Our analysis indicates that both user groups submit about the same total number of queries and use the search functionalities in a similar way, but professional users save twice as many shots and examine shots deeper in the ranked retrieved list.The agreement between the TRECVID assessors and our users was quite low. In terms of the eectiveness of the dierent search modalities, similarity searches retrieve on average twice as many relevant shots as keyword searches, fused searches three times as many, while concept searches retrieve even up to ve times as many relevant shots, indicating the benets of the use of robust concept detectors in multimodal video retrieval. High-Level Feature Extraction Runs 1. A VITALAS.CERTH-ITI 1: Early fusion of all available low-level features. 2. A VITALAS.CERTH-ITI 2: Concept score fusion for ve low-level features and 100 concepts, text features and bag-of-words with color SIFT descriptor based on dense sampling. 3. A VITALAS.CERTH-ITI 3: Concept score fusion for ve low-level features and 100 concepts combined with text features. 4. A VITALAS.CERTH-ITI 4: Weighting scheme for bag-of-words based on dense sampling of the color SIFT descriptor. 5. A VITALAS.CERTH-ITI 5: Baseline run, bag-of-words based on dense sampling of the color SIFT descriptor. Interactive Search Runs 1. vitalas 1: Interactive run by professional archivists 2. vitalas 2: Interactive run by professional archivists 3. vitalas 3: Interactive run by non-professional users 4. vitalas 4: Interactive run by non-professional user

Changes in duodenal tissue-associated microbiota following hookworm infection and consecutive gluten challenges in humans with coeliac disease

A reduced diversity of the gastrointestinal commensal microbiota is associated with the development of several inflammatory diseases. Recent reports in humans and animal models have demonstrated the beneficial therapeutic effects of infections by parasitic worms (helminths) in some inflammatory disorders, such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and coeliac disease (CeD). Interestingly, these studies have described how helminths may alter the intestinal microbiota, potentially representing a mechanism by which they regulate inflammation. However, for practical reasons, these reports have primarily analysed the faecal microbiota. In the present investigation, we have assessed, for the first time, the changes in the microbiota at the site of infection by a parasitic helminth (hookworm) and gluten-dependent inflammation in humans with CeD using biopsy tissue from the duodenum. Hookworm infection and gluten exposure were associated with an increased abundance of species within the Bacteroides phylum, as well as increases in the richness and diversity of the tissue-resident microbiota within the intestine, results that are consistent with previous reports using other helminth species in humans and animal models. Hence, this may represent a mechanism by which parasitic helminths may restore intestinal immune homeostasis and exert a therapeutic benefit in CeD, and potentially other inflammatory disorders