Short oestrous cycles in sheep during anoestrus involve defects in progesterone biosynthesis and luteal neovascularisation

Anoestrous ewes can be induced to ovulate by the socio-sexual, 'ram effect'. However, in some ewes the induced ovulation is followed by an abnormally short luteal phase causing a so called, "short cycle". The defect responsible for this luteal dysfunction has not been identified. In this experiment we investigated ovarian and uterine factors implicated in male-induced short cycles in anoestrus ewes using a combined endocrine and molecular strategy. Prior to ovulation, we were able to detect a moderate loss of thecal expression of steroid acute regulatory protein (STAR) in ewes that had not received progesterone priming (which prevents short cycles). At and following ovulation we were able to identify significant loss of expression of genes coding key proteins involved in the biosynthesis of progesterone (STAR, CYP11A1, HSD3B) as well as genes coding proteins critical for vascular development during early luteal development (VEGFA, VEGFR2) suggesting dysfunction in at least two pathways critical for normal luteal function. Furthermore, these changes were associated with a significant reduction of progesterone production and luteal weight. Additionally, we cast doubt on the proposed uterine-mediated effect of prostaglandin F2α as a cause of short cycles by demonstrating both the dysregulation of luteal expression of the PGF receptor, which mediates the luteal effects of PGF2α, and by finding no significant changes in the circulating concentrations of PGFM, the principal metabolite of PGF2α in ewes with short cycles. This study is the first of its kind to examine concurrently, the endocrine and molecular events in the follicular and early luteal stages of the short cycle

Stabilization of metal-laden hazardous wastes using lime-containing ash from two FBC`s and a spray-drier

Clean coal technology by-products, collected from commercial operations under steady state conditions, are reacted at bench-scale with metal-laden hazardous wastes. Reaction conditions involve mixing calibrated weight ratios of by-product to hazardous waste with attention to minimizing added moisture. Of the 15 heavy metals monitored, lead appeared to be the element of greatest concern both from a leaching and a regulatory point of view. While leaching information is focused on lead stabilization, similar information exists for other metals as well. Stabilized solid products of reactions are sampled for TCLP evaluations. For samples showing evidence of metal stabilization, further experimentation was conducted evaluating optimum moisture content and development of physical strength (measured as compressive strength) over time of curing. Results show that certain hazardous wastes are highly amenable to chemical stabilization, while others are not; certain by-products provided superior stabilization, but did not allow for strength generation over time

Treatment of metal-laden hazardous wastes with advanced clean coal technology by-products. Quarterly report, September 30--December 30, 1996

This report describes the activities of the project team during the reporting period. The principal work has focused upon microscopic evaluation of sandblast residue treated with two by-products, completing scholarly work, seeking a subcontractor to replace Mill Service, Inc. (MSI) for the field work of Phase 2, preparing and giving a poster, and making and responding to several outside contacts. The main part of this report is found in an appendix entitled, ``Chemistry and microstructure of sand blast waste and its residue when treated with by-products from clean coal technologies.`

Single-Image Depth Prediction Makes Feature Matching Easier

Good local features improve the robustness of many 3D re-localization and multi-view reconstruction pipelines. The problem is that viewing angle and distance severely impact the recognizability of a local feature. Attempts to improve appearance invariance by choosing better local feature points or by leveraging outside information, have come with pre-requisites that made some of them impractical. In this paper, we propose a surprisingly effective enhancement to local feature extraction, which improves matching. We show that CNN-based depths inferred from single RGB images are quite helpful, despite their flaws. They allow us to pre-warp images and rectify perspective distortions, to significantly enhance SIFT and BRISK features, enabling more good matches, even when cameras are looking at the same scene but in opposite directions.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication at the European conference on computer vision (ECCV) 202

Orofacial manifestations in outpatients with anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa focusing on the vomiting behavior

Objective: This case-control study aims to evaluate the oral health status and orofacial problems in a group of outpatients with eating disorders (ED)—either anorexia nervosa (AN) or bulimia nervosa (BN)—further focusing on the influence of vomit. Materials and methods: Fifty-five women outpatients with AN or BN diagnosis were invited to participate, of which 33 agreed. ED outpatients and matched controls were submitted to a questionnaire and clinical oral examination. Results: Multivariate analysis identified a significantly higher incidence of teeth-related complications (i.e., tooth decay, dental erosion, and self-reported dentin hypersensitivity), periodontal disease, salivary alterations (i.e., hyposalivation and xerostomia), and oral mucosa-related complications in ED outpatients. Dental erosion, self-reported dentin hypersensitivity, hyposalivation, xerostomia, and angular cheilitis were found to be highly correlated with the vomiting behavior. Conclusions: ED outpatients were found to present a higher incidence of oral-related complications and an inferior oral health status, compared to gender- and age-matched controls. Alterations verified within outpatients were acknowledged to be quite similar to those previously reported within inpatients, in both of nature and severity, thus sustaining that the cranio-maxillofacial region is significantly affected by ED, even in the early/milder forms of the condition, as expectedly verified within outpatients.The work was supported by the Faculty of Dental Medicine, U. Porto

Genotype x environment interactions in eggplant for fruit phenolic acid content

Eggplant fruit are a rich source of phenolic acids that influence fruit culinary quality and antioxidant content. We evaluated the influence of production environments and stability of diverse genotypes across environments for eggplant fruit phenolic acid content. Ten Solanum melongena accessions consisting of five F-1 hybrid cultivars, three open-pollinated cultivars and two land race accessions, plus one S. macrocarpon and one S. aethiopicum accession, were grown at two locations under greenhouse and open field environments. Twenty phenolic acid conjugates were identified in fruit flesh and assigned to six classes that included hydroxycinnamic acid amides, caffeoylquinic acid esters, hydroxycinnamoylquinic acid esters, malonylcaffeoylquinic acid esters, di-hydroxycinnamoylquinic acid esters, and other hydroxycinnamic acid conjugates. There were significant differences among accessions for total phenolic acid conjugate content and for all six classes. There were no significant differences detected among the environments for any of the variables. However, the environment x accession interaction was highly significant for all phenolic acid classes. Broad-sense heritability estimates for all six phenolic acid classes were high, ranging from 0.64 to 0.96. Stability analysis demonstrated widespread instability for phenolic acid content across environments. Stability of the predominant caffeoylquinic acid esters class positively influenced stability of total phenolic acid content for some but not all genotypes. High heritability, coupled with highly significant genotype x environment interactions suggests that stability estimates may improve the efficiency of breeding new genotypes with predictable performance across environments.Stommel, JR.; Whitaker, B.; Haynes, K.; Prohens Tomás, J. (2015). Genotype x environment interactions in eggplant for fruit phenolic acid content. Euphytica. 205(3):823-836. doi:10.1007/s10681-015-1415-2S8238362053Allard RW, Bradshaw AD (1964) Implications of genotype–environment interactions in applied plant breeding. Crop Sci 4:503–507Baixauli C (2001) Berenjena. In: Nuez F, Liacer G (eds) La horticultura española. Ediciones de Horticultura, Reus, pp 104–108Bravo L (1998) Polyphenols: chemistry, dietary sources, metabolism, and nutritional significance. Nutr Rev 56:317–333Dixon RA, Pavia NL (1995) Stress-induced phenylpropanoid metabolism. Plant Cell 7:1085–1097Dogan M, Arslan O, Dogan S (2002) Substrate specificity, heat inactivation and inhibition of polyphenol oxidase from different aubergine cultivars. Int J Food Sci Technol 37:415–423Dos Santos MD, Almeida MC, Lopes NP, de Souza GE (2006) Evaluation of the anti-inflammatory, analgesic and anti-pyretic activities of the natural polyphenol chlorogenic acid. Biol Pharm Bull 29:2236–2240Fernandez GCJ (1991) Analysis of genotype × environment interaction by stability estimates. HortScience 26:947–950García-Salas P, Gómez-Caravaca AM, Morales-Soto A, Segura-Carretero A, Fernández-Gutiérrez A (2014) Identification and quantification of phenolic compounds in diverse cultivars of eggplant grown in different seasons by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to diode array detector and electrospray-quadrupole-time of flight-mass spectrometry. Food Res Int 57:114–122Hanson PM, Yang RY, Tsou SCS, Ledesma K, Engle L, Lee TC (2006) Diversity in eggplant (Solanum melongena) for superoxide scavenging activity, total phenolics, and ascorbic acid. J Food Compos Anal 19:594–600Kang MS (1989) A new SAS program for calculating stability variance parameters. J Hered 80:415Klein RM (1990) Failure of supplementary ultraviolet radiation to enhance flower color under greenhouse conditions. HortScience 25:307–308Knapp SJ, Stroup WW, Ross WM (1985) Exact confidence intervals for heritability on a progeny mean basis. Crop Sci 25:192–194Luthria D, Singh AP, Wilson T, Vorsa N, Banuelos GS, Vinyard BT (2010) Influence of conventional and organic agricultural practices on the phenolic content in eggplant pulp: plant to plant variation. Food Chem 121:406–411Ma C, Whitaker BD, Kennelly EJ (2010) New 5-O-caffeoylquinic acid derivatives in fruit of wild eggplant relative S. viarum. J Agric Food Chem 58:9645–9651Manach C, Scalbert A, Morand C, Remesy C, Jimenez L (2004) Polyphenols: food sources and bioavailability. Am J Clin Nutr 79:727–747Mennella G, Scalzo R, Fibiani M, D’Alessandro A, Francese G, Toppino L, Acciarri N, Almeida AE, Rotino GL (2012) Chemical and bioactive quality traits during fruit ripening in eggplant (S. melongena L.) and allied species. J Agric Food Chem 60:11821–11831Meyer RS, Karol KG, Little DP, Nee MH, Litt A (2012) Phylogeographic relationships among Asian eggplants and new perspectives on eggplant domestication. Mol Phylogenet Evol 63:685–701Ong KW, Hsu A, Tan BK (2012) Chlorogenic acid stimulates glucose transport in skeletal muscle via AMPK activation: a contributor to the beneficial effects of coffee on diabetes. PLoS One 7:e32718Payyavula RS, Duroy AN, Kuhl JC, Pantoha A, Pillai SS (2012) Differential effects of environment on potato phenylpropanoid and carotenoid expression. BMC Plant Biol 12:39Plazas M, Prohens J, Cuñat AN, Vilanova S, Gramazio P, Herraiz FJ, Andújar I (2014) Reducing capacity, chlorogenic acid content and biological activity in a collection of scarlet (Solanum aethiopicum) and gboma (S. macrocarpon) eggplants. Int J Mol Sci 15:17221–17241Prior RL (2003) Fruits and vegetables in the prevention of cellular oxidative damage. Am J Clin Nutr 78:570S–578SPritts M, Luby J (1990) Stability indices for horticultural crops. HortScience 25:740–745Prohens J, Rodriguez-Burruezo A, Raigon MD, Nuez F (2007) Total phenolic acid concentration and browning susceptibility in a collection of different varietal types and hybrids of eggplant: implications for breeding for higher nutritional quality and reduced browning. J Am Soc Hortic Sci 132:638–646Prohens J, Whitaker BD, Plazas M, Vilanova S, Hurtado M, Blasco M, Gramazio P, Stommel JR (2013) Genetic diversity in morphological characters and phenolic acids content resulting from an interspecific cross between eggplant, Solanum melongena, and its wild ancestor (S. incancum). Ann Appl Biol 162:242–257Raigon MD, Prohens J, Munoz-Falcon JE, Nuez F (2008) Comparison of eggplant landraces and commercial varieties for fruit content of phenolics, minerals, dry matter and protein. J Food Compos Anal 21:370–376Raigon MD, Rodriguez-Burruezo A, Prohens J (2010) Effects of organic and conventional cultivation methods on composition of eggplant fruits. Agric Food Chem 58:6833–6840San Jose R, Sanchez-Mata MC, Camara M, Prohens J (2014) Eggplant fruit composition as affected by the cultivation environment and genetic constitution. J Sci Food Agric 94:2774–2784Sato Y, Itagaki S, Kurokawa T, Ogur J, Kobayashi M, Hirano T, Sugawara M, Iseki K (2011) In vitro and in vivo antioxidant properties of chlorogenic acid and caffeic acid. Int J Pharm 403:136–138Setimela PS, Vivek B, Banziger M, Crossa J, Maideni F (2007) Evaluation of early to medium maturing open pollinated maize varieties in SADC region using GGE biplot based on the SREG model. Field Crop Res 103:161–169Shukla GK (1972) Some statistical aspects of partitioning genotype environment components of variability. Heredity 29:237–245Stommel JR, Whitaker BD (2003) Phenolic acid content and composition of eggplant fruit in a germplasm core subset. J Am Soc Hortic Sci 128:704–710Suzuki A, Yamamoto N, Jokura H, Yamamoto M, Fujii A, Tokimitsu I, Saito I (2006) Chlorogenic acid attenuates hypertension and improves endothelial function in spontaneously hypertensive rats. J Hypertens 24:1065–1073University of Maryland (2007) Commercial vegetable production recommendations, University of Maryland Cooperative Extension Service Bulletin 236. College Park, MDWhitaker BD, Stommel JR (2003) Distribution of hydroxycinnamic acid conjugates in fruit of commercial eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) cultivars. J Agric Food Chem 51:3448–3454Winter M, Herrmann K (1986) Esters and glucosides of hydroxycinnamic acids in vegetables. J Agric Food Chem 34:616–620Wu S, Meyer RS, Whitaker BD, Litt A, Kennelly EJ (2013) A New liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry-based strategy to integrate chemistry, morphology, and evolution of eggplant (Solanum) species. J Chromatogr A 1314:154–172Yang JS, Liu CW, Ma YS, Weng SW, Tang NY, Wu SH, Ji BC, Ma CY, Ko YC, Funayama S, Kuo CL (2012) Chlorogenic acid induces apoptotic cell death in U937 leukemia cells through caspase- and mitochondria-dependent pathways. In Vivo 26:971–97

Administration of single-dose GnRH agonist in the luteal phase in ICSI cycles: a meta-analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The effects of gonadotrophin-releasing hormone agonist (GnRH-a) administered in the luteal phase remains controversial. This meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the effect of the administration of a single-dose of GnRH-a in the luteal phase on ICSI clinical outcomes.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The research strategy included the online search of databases. Only randomized studies were included. The outcomes analyzed were implantation rate, clinical pregnancy rate (CPR) per transfer and ongoing pregnancy rate. The fixed effects model was used for odds ratio. In all trials, a single dose of GnRH-a was administered at day 5/6 after ICSI procedures.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>All cycles presented statistically significantly higher rates of implantation (P < 0.0001), CPR per transfer (P = 0.006) and ongoing pregnancy (P = 0.02) in the group that received luteal-phase GnRH-a administration than in the control group (without luteal-phase-GnRH-a administration). When meta-analysis was carried out only in trials that had used long GnRH-a ovarian stimulation protocol, CPR per transfer (P = 0.06) and ongoing pregnancy (P = 0.23) rates were not significantly different between the groups, but implantation rate was significant higher (P = 0.02) in the group that received luteal-phase-GnRH-a administration. On the other hand, the results from trials that had used GnRH antagonist multi-dose ovarian stimulation protocol showed statistically significantly higher implantation (P = 0.0002), CPR per transfer (P = 0.04) and ongoing pregnancy rate (P = 0.04) in the luteal-phase-GnRH-a administration group. The majority of the results presented heterogeneity.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These findings demonstrate that the luteal-phase single-dose GnRH-a administration can increase implantation rate in all cycles and CPR per transfer and ongoing pregnancy rate in cycles with GnRH antagonist ovarian stimulation protocol. Nevertheless, by considering the heterogeneity between the trials, it seems premature to recommend the use of GnRH-a in the luteal phase. Additional randomized controlled trials are necessary before evidence-based recommendations can be provided.</p

A Protocol for the Secure Linking of Registries for HPV Surveillance

In order to monitor the effectiveness of HPV vaccination in Canada the linkage of multiple data registries may be required. These registries may not always be managed by the same organization and, furthermore, privacy legislation or practices may restrict any data linkages of records that can actually be done among registries. The objective of this study was to develop a secure protocol for linking data from different registries and to allow on-going monitoring of HPV vaccine effectiveness.A secure linking protocol, using commutative hash functions and secure multi-party computation techniques was developed. This protocol allows for the exact matching of records among registries and the computation of statistics on the linked data while meeting five practical requirements to ensure patient confidentiality and privacy. The statistics considered were: odds ratio and its confidence interval, chi-square test, and relative risk and its confidence interval. Additional statistics on contingency tables, such as other measures of association, can be added using the same principles presented. The computation time performance of this protocol was evaluated.The protocol has acceptable computation time and scales linearly with the size of the data set and the size of the contingency table. The worse case computation time for up to 100,000 patients returned by each query and a 16 cell contingency table is less than 4 hours for basic statistics, and the best case is under 3 hours.A computationally practical protocol for the secure linking of data from multiple registries has been demonstrated in the context of HPV vaccine initiative impact assessment. The basic protocol can be generalized to the surveillance of other conditions, diseases, or vaccination programs