New-Onset Seizures 15 Years After Renal Transplant

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Neurohypophyseal hormones: novel actors of striated muscle development and homeostasis

Since the 1980's, novel functional roles of the neurohypophyseal hormones vasopressin and oxytocin have emerged. Several studies have investigated the effects of these two neurohormones on striated muscle tissues, both in vitro and in vivo. Whereas oxytocin appears to have a greater influence on cardiomyocyte differentiation and heart homeostasis, important effects of vasopressin on skeletal myogenic cells, developing muscle and muscle homeostasis have been extensively documented. Recent findings include in vivo results of strategies aimed at sensitizing skeletal muscles to endogenous, physiological vasopressin. These approaches resulted in accelerated and more efficient regeneration of injured or regeneration-impaired muscles. This review summarizes the studies on these novel roles of the two neurohypophyseal hormones, thus opening the possibility of new therapeutic approaches for diseases affecting striated muscle and for antagonizing muscle wasting in disuse and aging

EquiFACS: the Equine Facial Action Coding System

Although previous studies of horses have investigated their facial expressions in specific contexts, e.g. pain, until now there has been no methodology available that documents all the possible facial movements of the horse and provides a way to record all potential facial configurations. This is essential for an objective description of horse facial expressions across a range of contexts that reflect different emotional states. Facial Action Coding Systems (FACS) provide a systematic methodology of identifying and coding facial expressions on the basis of underlying facial musculature and muscle movement. FACS are anatomically based and document all possible facial movements rather than a configuration of movements associated with a particular situation. Consequently, FACS can be applied as a tool for a wide range of research questions. We developed FACS for the domestic horse (Equus caballus) through anatomical investigation of the underlying musculature and subsequent analysis of naturally occurring behaviour captured on high quality video. Discrete facial movements were identified and described in terms of the underlying muscle contractions, in correspondence with previous FACS systems. The reliability of others to be able to learn this system (EquiFACS) and consistently code behavioural sequences was high—and this included people with no previous experience of horses. A wide range of facial movements were identified, including many that are also seen in primates and other domestic animals (dogs and cats). EquiFACS provides a method that can now be used to document the facial movements associated with different social contexts and thus to address questions relevant to understanding social cognition and comparative psychology, as well as informing current veterinary and animal welfare practices

Spondarthritis in the Triassic

Background: The evidence of several forms of arthritis has been well documented in the fossil record. However, for pre-Cenozoic vertebrates, especially regarding reptiles, this record is rather scarce. In this work we present a case report of spondarthritis found in a vertebral series that belonged to a carnivorous archosaurian reptile from the Lower Triassic (,245 million years old) of the South African Karoo. Methodology/Principal Findings: Neutron tomography confirmed macroscopic data, revealing the ossification of the entire intervertebral disc space (both annulus fibrosus and nucleus pulposus), which supports the diagnosis of spondarthritis. Conclusions/Significance: The presence of spondarthritis in the new specimen represents by far the earliest evidence of any form of arthritis in the fossil record. The present find is nearly 100 million years older than the previous oldest report of this pathology, based on a Late Jurassic dinosaur. Spondarthritis may have indirectly contributed to the death of the anima

Effects of the functional HOTAIR rs920778 and rs12826786 genetic variants in glioma susceptibility and patient prognosis

Abnormal expression of the long non-coding RNA HOX transcript antisense intergenic RNA (HOTAIR) is oncogenic in several human cancers, including gliomas. The HOTAIR single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) rs920778 (C > T) and rs12826786 (C > T) present in the intronic enhancer and promoter regions of HOTAIR, respectively, are associated with expression, cancer susceptibility, and patient prognosis in some tumor types. However, the relevance of these HOTAIR SNPs has not been studied in glioma. Here, we report a case-control study comprising 177 Portuguese glioma patients and 199 cancer-free controls. All subjects were genotyped by PCR and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP). No statistically significant differences were found in the genotype or allele distributions of either rs920778 or rs12826786 between glioma patients and controls, suggesting these SNPs are not associated with glioma risk. No significant associations were found between rs920778 variants and HOTAIR expression levels, while rs12826786 CT genotype was associated with increased intratumoral HOTAIR RNA levels when compared to TT genotype (p-value = 0.04). Univariate (Log-rank) and multivariate (Cox proportional) analyses showed both rs920778 CT and rs12826786 CT genotypes were significantly associated with longer overall survival of WHO grade III anaplastic oligodendroglioma patients. Our results suggest that HOTAIR SNPs rs920778 and rs12826786 do not play a significant role in glioma susceptibility, but may be important prognostic factors in anaplastic oligodendroglioma patients. Future studies are warranted to validate and expand these findings, and to further dissect the importance of these SNPs in glioma.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Stellar Population Diagnostics of Elliptical Galaxy Formation

Major progress has been achieved in recent years in mapping the properties of passively-evolving, early-type galaxies (ETG) from the local universe all the way to redshift ~2. Here, age and metallicity estimates for local cluster and field ETGs are reviewed as based on color-magnitude, color-sigma, and fundamental plane relations, as well as on spectral-line indices diagnostics. The results of applying the same tools at high redshifts are then discussed, and their consistency with the low-redshift results is assessed. Most low- as well as high-redshift (z~1) observations consistently indicate 1) a formation redshift z>~3 for the bulk of stars in cluster ETGs, with their counterparts in low-density environments being on average ~1-2 Gyr younger, i.e., formed at z>~1.5-2, 2) the duration of the major star formation phase anticorrelates with galaxy mass, and the oldest stellar populations are found in the most massive galaxies. With increasing redshift there is evidence for a decrease in the number density of ETGs, especially of the less massive ones, whereas existing data appear to suggest that most of the most-massive ETGs were already fully assembled at z~1. Beyond this redshift, the space density of ETGs starts dropping significantly, and as ETGs disappear, a population of massive, strongly clustered, starburst galaxies progressively becomes more and more prominent, which makes them the likely progenitors to ETGs.Comment: To appear on Annual Review of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 44 (2006). 46 pages with 16 figures. Replaced version includes updated references, few typos less, and replaces Fig. 11 and Fig. 16 which had been skrewed u

The Precursors and Products of Justice Climates: Group Leader Antecedents and Employee Attitudinal Consequences

Drawing on the organizational justice, organizational climate, leadership and personality, and social comparison theory literatures, we develop hypotheses about the effects of leader personality on the development of three types of justice climates (e.g., procedural, interpersonal, and informational), and the moderating effects of these climates on individual level justice- attitude relationships. Largely consistent with the theoretically-derived hypotheses, the results showed that leader (a) agreeableness was positively related to procedural, interpersonal and informational justice climates, (b) conscientiousness was positively related to a procedural justice climate, and (c) neuroticism was negatively related to all three types of justice climates. Further, consistent with social comparison theory, multilevel data analyses revealed that the relationship between individual justice perceptions and job attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction, commitment) was moderated by justice climate such that the relationships were stronger when justice climate was high

Tailoring Three-Point Functions and Integrability III. Classical Tunneling

We compute three-point functions between one large classical operator and two large BPS operators at weak coupling. We consider operators made out of the scalars of N=4 SYM, dual to strings moving in the sphere. The three-point function exponentiates and can be thought of as a classical tunneling process in which the classical string-like operator decays into two classical BPS states. From an Integrability/Condensed Matter point of view, we simplified inner products of spin chain Bethe states in a classical limit corresponding to long wavelength excitations above the ferromagnetic vacuum. As a by-product we solved a new long-range Ising model in the thermodynamic limit.Comment: 37 pages, 10 figure

Exploration of the Eucalyptus globulus gene pool

The first Europeans to discover Eucalyptus globulus were French explorers in 1792. Its seed was rapidly spread throughout the world in the 19th century and this was the species by which much of the world first knew the genus. However, it was in the industrial forests of the 20th century that this species, once considered the ‘Prince of Eucalypts’, achieved greatest prominence due to its fast growth and superior pulp qualities. Formal breeding first commenced in 1966 in Portugal and in the late 1980’s large base population trials from open-pollinated seed collections from native stands were established in many countries. These trials have provided unprecedented insights into the quantitative genetic control of numerous traits of economic and ecological importance and how this variation is spatially distributed in the native range of the species. However with large, fully pedigreed breeding populations becoming available for quantitative analysis and the rapidly expanding knowledge of DNA sequence variation, we are now at the threshold of a new understanding of this important eucalypt gene pool. Indications of the significance of non-additive genetic effects are becoming available. The E. globulus chloroplast genome has now been sequenced and several genome maps have been published. Studies of the variation in nuclear microsatellites and the lignin biosynthesis gene CCR confirm the complex, spatially structured nature of the native gene pool. Strong spatial structuring of the chloroplast genome has provided a tool for tracking seed migration and the geographic origin of exotic landraces. Highly divergent lineages of chloroplast DNA have been discovered and studies of the hypervariable JLA+ region argue that some components of the E. globulus gene pool have been assimilated from other species following hybridisation