Oocyte maturity, oocyte fertilization and cleavage-stage embryo morphology are better in natural compared with high-dose gonadotrophin stimulated IVF cycles.

RESEARCH QUESTION Does high-dose gonadotrophin stimulation have an effect on oocyte and early-stage embryo development? DESIGN This was a retrospective study including 616 natural cycle IVF (NC-IVF) and 167 conventional IVF (cIVF) cycles. In total, 2110 oocytes were retrieved and analysed in fresh cycles. In NC-IVF, only human chorionic gonadotrophin was applied to trigger ovulation. In cIVF, antagonist protocols with daily 150-300 IU of human menopausal gonadotrophins were performed. The effect of gonadotrophins on oocyte and early-stage embryo development was analysed. Primary outcomes were the occurrence of mature (metaphase II) oocytes, zygotes and embryos with good morphology at the cleavage stage 2 days after oocyte retrieval. RESULTS The mature oocyte rate (number of mature oocytes/number of retrieved oocytes) was higher in NC-IVF than cIVF cycles (89% versus 82%, adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 1.79, P = 0.001), as was the zygote rate per oocyte retrieved (70% versus 58%, aOR 1.76, P = 0.001) and the zygote rate per mature oocyte (79% versus 71%, aOR 1.62, P = 0.001). The percentage of zygotes that developed into cleavage-stage embryos was no different. For the transferred embryos, the probability of having a good embryo morphology with four blastomeres and a fragmentation of <10% (score 0) in cleavage-stage embryos was found to be higher in NC-IVF (proportional aOR for four blastomeres 2.00, P < 0.001; aOR 1.87 for a fragmentation score of 0, P = 0.003). CONCLUSIONS Oocyte maturity, oocyte fertilization and morphology of the cleavage-stage embryo are affected by high-dose gonadotrophin stimulation in fresh IVF cycles

Gender bias in scholarly peer review

Abstract Peer review is the cornerstone of scholarly publishing and it is essential that peer reviewers are appointed on the basis of their expertise alone. However, it is difficult to check for any bias in the peer-review process because the identity of peer reviewers generally remains confidential. Here, using public information about the identities of 9000 editors and 43000 reviewers from the Frontiers series of journals, we show that women are underrepresented in the peer-review process, that editors of both genders operate with substantial same-gender preference (homophily), and that the mechanisms of this homophily are gender-dependent. We also show that homophily will persist even if numerical parity between genders is reached, highlighting the need for increased efforts to combat subtler forms of gender bias in scholarly publishing

Fused Deposition Modeling of Microfluidic Chips in Transparent Polystyrene

Polystyrene (PS) is one of the most commonly used thermoplastic materials worldwide and plays a ubiquitous role in today’s biomedical and life science industry and research. The main advantage of PS lies in its facile processability, its excellent optical and mechanical properties, as well as its biocompatibility. However, PS is only rarely used in microfluidic prototyping, since the structuring of PS is mainly performed using industrial-scale replication processes. So far, microfluidic chips in PS have not been accessible to rapid prototyping via 3D printing. In this work, we present, for the first time, 3D printing of transparent PS using fused deposition modeling (FDM). We present FDM printing of transparent PS microfluidic channels with dimensions as small as 300 µm and a high transparency in the region of interest. Furthermore, we demonstrate the fabrication of functional chips such as Tesla-mixer and mixer cascades. Cell culture experiments showed a high cell viability during seven days of culturing, as well as enabling cell adhesion and proliferation. With the aid of this new PS prototyping method, the development of future biomedical microfluidic chips will be significantly accelerated, as it enables using PS from the early academic prototyping all the way to industrial-scale mass replication

Replicative manufacturing of metal moulds for low surface roughness polymer replication

Tool based manufacturing processes like injection moulding allow fast and high-quality mass-market production, but for optical polymer components the production of the necessary tools is time-consuming and expensive. In this paper a process to fabricate metal-inserts for tool based manufacturing with smooth surfaces via a casting and replication process from fused silica templates is presented. Bronze, brass and cobalt-chromium could be successfully replicated from shaped fused silica replications achieving a surface roughnesses of Rq 8 nm and microstructures in the range of 5 µm. Injection moulding was successfully performed, using a commercially available injection moulding system, with thousands of replicas generated from the same tool. In addition, three-dimensional bodies in metal could be realised with 3D-Printing of fused silica casting moulds. This work thus represents an approach to high-quality moulding tools via a scalable facile and cost-effective route surpassing the currently employed cost-, labour- and equipment-intensive machining techniques

QuNex—An integrative platform for reproducible neuroimaging analytics

Introduction: Neuroimaging technology has experienced explosive growth and transformed the study of neural mechanisms across health and disease. However, given the diversity of sophisticated tools for handling neuroimaging data, the field faces challenges in method integration, particularly across multiple modalities and species. Specifically, researchers often have to rely on siloed approaches which limit reproducibility, with idiosyncratic data organization and limited software interoperability. Methods: To address these challenges, we have developed Quantitative Neuroimaging Environment & Toolbox (QuNex), a platform for consistent end-to-end processing and analytics. QuNex provides several novel functionalities for neuroimaging analyses, including a “turnkey” command for the reproducible deployment of custom workflows, from onboarding raw data to generating analytic features. Results: The platform enables interoperable integration of multi-modal, community-developed neuroimaging software through an extension framework with a software development kit (SDK) for seamless integration of community tools. Critically, it supports high-throughput, parallel processing in high-performance compute environments, either locally or in the cloud. Notably, QuNex has successfully processed over 10,000 scans across neuroimaging consortia, including multiple clinical datasets. Moreover, QuNex enables integration of human and non-human workflows via a cohesive translational platform. Discussion: Collectively, this effort stands to significantly impact neuroimaging method integration across acquisition approaches, pipelines, datasets, computational environments, and species. Building on this platform will enable more rapid, scalable, and reproducible impact of neuroimaging technology across health and disease

Hierarchical heterogeneity across human cortex shapes large-scale neural dynamics

The large-scale organization of dynamical neural activity across cortex emerges through long-range interactions among local circuits. We hypothesized that large-scale dynamics are also shaped by heterogeneity of intrinsic local properties across cortical areas. One key axis along which microcircuit properties are specialized relates to hierarchical levels of cortical organization. We developed a large-scale dynamical circuit model of human cortex that incorporates heterogeneity of local synaptic strengths, following a hierarchical axis inferred from MRI-derived T1w/T2w mapping, and fit the model using multimodal neuroimaging data. We found that incorporating hierarchical heterogeneity substantially improves the model fit to fMRI-measured resting-state functional connectivity and captures sensory-association organization of multiple fMRI features. The model predicts hierarchically organized high-frequency spectral power, which we tested with resting-state magnetoencephalography. These findings suggest circuit-level mechanisms linking spatiotemporal levels of analysis and highlight the importance of local properties and their hierarchical specialization on the large-scale organization of human cortical dynamics