Smartphones: Addiction, or Way of Life?

Due to the widespread popularity and seeming dependence on smartphones, especially by millennials and post-millennials, many parents, teachers, and even medical professionals have expressed concern that an entire generation may be addicted to these devices and the various social media to which they provide access. Sociologically, however, it may be more insightful to apply some of the well-established theories related to social change and adaptation to technology, to describe, analyze, and better explain the massive popularity and widespread use of this particular phenomenon as a way of life and its impact on human behavior, social interaction, culture, and society

Predictive ability of the ISS, NISS, and APACHE II score for SIRS and sepsis in polytrauma patients

Purpose: Systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) and sepsis as causes of multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) remain challenging to treat in polytrauma patients. In this study, the focus was set on widely used scoring systems to assess their diagnostic quality. Methods: A total of 512 patients (mean age: 39.2±16.2, range: 16-88years) who had an Injury Severity Score (ISS) ≥17 were included in this retrospective study. The patients were subdivided into four groups: no SIRS, slight SIRS, severe SIRS, and sepsis. The ISS, New Injury Severity Score (NISS), Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II) scores, and prothrombin time were collected at admission. The Kruskal-Wallis test and χ2-test, multinomial regression analysis, and kernel density estimates were performed. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis is reported as the area under the curve (AUC). Data were considered as significant if p<0.05. Results: All variables were significantly different in all groups (p<0.001). The odds ratio increased with increasing SIRS severity for NISS (slight vs. no SIRS, 1.06, p=0.07; severe vs. no SIRS, 1.07, p=0.04; and sepsis vs. no SIRS, 1.11, p=0.0028) and APACHE II score (slight vs. no SIRS, 0.97, p=0.44; severe vs. no SIRS, 1.08, p=0.02; and sepsis vs. no SIRS, 1.12, p=0.0028). ROC analysis revealed that the NISS (slight vs. no SIRS, AUC 0.61; severe vs. no SIRS, AUC 0.67; and sepsis vs. no SIRS, AUC 0.77) and APACHE II score (slight vs. no SIRS, AUC 0.60; severe vs. no SIRS, AUC 0.74; and sepsis vs. no SIRS, AUC 0.82) had the best predictive ability for SIRS and sepsis. Conclusion: Quick assessment with the NISS or APACHE II score could preselect possible candidates for sepsis following polytrauma and provide guidance in trauma surgeons' decision-makin

Exploring the potential of endophyte-plant interactions for improving crop sustainable yields in a changing climate

Climate change poses a major threat to global food security, significantly reducing crop yields as cause of abiotic stresses, and for boosting the spread of new and old pathogens and pests. Sustainable crop management as a route to mitigation poses the challenge of recruiting an array of solutions and tools for the new aims. Among these, the deployment of positive interactions between the micro-biotic components of agroecosystems and plants can play a highly significant role, as part of the agro-ecological revolution. Endophytic microorganisms have emerged as a promising solution to tackle this challenge. Among these, Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) and endophytic bacteria and fungi have demonstrated their potential to alleviate abiotic stresses such as drought and heat stress, as well as the impacts of biotic stresses. They can enhance crop yields in a sustainable way also by other mechanisms, such as improving the nutrient uptake, or by direct effects on plant physiology. In this review we summarize and update on the main types of endophytes, we highlight several studies that demonstrate their efficacy in improving sustainable yields and explore possible avenues for implementing crop-microbiota interactions. The mechanisms underlying these interactions are highly complex and require a comprehensive understanding. For this reason, omic technologies such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics have been employed to unravel, by a higher level of information, the complex network of interactions between plants and microorganisms. Therefore, we also discuss the various omic approaches and techniques that have been used so far to study plant-endophyte interactions

Lowered Serum Triglyceride Levels among Chronic Hepatitis B-Infected Patients in Ghana

Dyslipidemia is a common finding in most studies of liver diseases. Little is however known about the effect of the two pathological stages of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) infection – chronicsymptomatic and asymptomatic – on the distribution of serum lipids in CHB infection. We conducted a study on CHB-infected patients attending specialist care at the Gastro-Intestinal (GI) Clinic at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) during a 7-month period. 64 participants were randomly sampled over the period. On the basis of serological and liver enzyme assays, participants were categorised as chronic asymptomatic, chronic symptomatic and healthy individuals. The relationship between the hosts pathological stage of infection were evaluated with the indices of lipid metabolism – LDL, HDL, triglyceride, and total serum cholesterol using ANOVA. The 64 volunteers recruited in the study were found to consist of 18 patients (28.1%) who were chronic symptomatic, 35 patients (54.7%) who were chronic asymptomatic hepatitis B, and 11 (17.2%) were healthy subjects. Significant overall male dominance was observed among all categories of population enrolled (p=0.0063). Serum triglyceride levels decreased more among the CHB-infected population compared to the healthy individuals (p=0.0010) with value lowest among the chronic symptomatic population. Basal serum cholesterol, HDL, and LDL were unaffected by the disease. This work reveals that serum triglyceride is significantly lowered in CHB infection and that the extent of this decrease in host is independent of the pathological stage of the infection.Keywords: chronic hepatitis B, lipid metabolism, triglyceride, chronic symptomati

Characterization and analysis of the expression pattern of microRNAs in the grapevine Vitis vinifera

MicroRNAs are small (19-24 nt) noncoding RNAs that play an important role in the regulation of multiple cell events, inhibiting gene expression at the posttranscriptional level by binding target mRNAs that are subsequently degraded or sequestered from translation. The availability of the complete genome sequence of the grapevine (Vitis vinifera), has already permitted genome-wide predictions of microRNAs by purely computational methods. Here we integrate transcriptomic data derived from high-throughput Illumina SOLEXA and ABI SOLiD sequence tags derived from both polyA+ transcripts and isolated small RNAs with oligonucleotide array data. We are thus able to detect both mature microRNAs and to establish whether genomic loci corresponding to the pre-miRNA are expressed in various tissues. In many cases, the unambiguous alignment of sequence tags derived from polyA+ RNA to the genomic sequence allow provisional mapping of primary microRNA transcripts, a first step towards bioinformatics characterization of elements potentially regulating microRNA expression

Comparing the effects of sun exposure and vitamin D supplementation on vitamin D insufficiency, and immune and cardio-metabolic function: the Sun Exposure and Vitamin D Supplementation (SEDS) Study

BACKGROUND Adults living in the sunny Australian climate are at high risk of skin cancer, but vitamin D deficiency (defined here as a serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) concentration of less than 50 nmol/L) is also common. Vitamin D deficiency may be a risk factor for a range of diseases. However, the optimal strategies to achieve and maintain vitamin D adequacy (sun exposure, vitamin D supplementation or both), and whether sun exposure itself has benefits over and above initiating synthesis of vitamin D, remain unclear. The Sun Exposure and Vitamin D Supplementation (SEDS) Study aims to compare the effectiveness of sun exposure and vitamin D supplementation for the management of vitamin D insufficiency, and to test whether these management strategies differentially affect markers of immune and cardio-metabolic function. METHODS/DESIGN The SEDS Study is a multi-centre, randomised controlled trial of two different daily doses of vitamin D supplementation, and placebo, in conjunction with guidance on two different patterns of sun exposure. Participants recruited from across Australia are aged 18-64 years and have a recent vitamin D test result showing a serum 25(OH)D level of 40-60 nmol/L. DISCUSSION This paper discusses the rationale behind the study design, and considers the challenges but necessity of data collection within a non-institutionalised adult population, in order to address the study aims. We also discuss the challenges of participant recruitment and retention, ongoing engagement of referring medical practitioners and address issues of compliance and participant retention. TRIAL REGISTRATION Australia New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry: ACTRN12613000290796 Registered 14 March 2013

Grapevine miRNAs : Towards A Structural And Functional Characterization.

In plants, microRNAs (miRNAs) are key post-transcriptional regulatory elements approximately 21 nt long, coded by MIRNA genes, which regulate plant architecture, nutrient homeostasis and stress response. The crucial role they play in fine tuning gene regulation clearly implies that a complete characterization of genomes structure and function cannot be attained without a deep analysis of this class of regulatory elements. Here we present the characterization of miRNA genes in grapevine, following the annotation of 140 conserved MIRNA genes (Jaillon et al., 2007). Starting from the description of their transcriptional landscape (Mica et al., 2009) we analyzed their genomic structure and interaction with putative targets. We experimentally validated primary transcript boundaries and alternative splicing events of several miRNA genes, confirming bioinformatic predictions and showing different splicing patterns and alternative transcription end points. Putative targets were identified and validated by means of 5\u2019 modified RACE experiments. We are currently focusing on target genes involved in several physiological pathways such as phenylpropanoid pathway and that, according to transcriptome analysis using oligo-chips, are up- or down-regulated in berries after light and heat stress treatments

miRNA DISCOVERY IN GRAPEVINE BY IN SILICO APPROACHES

The key role of non-coding RNAs in many different biological areas has become clear in the last ten years. microRNAs are a group of non-coding small RNAs (20-22 nt long) which are often conserved between related organisms and which are coded by specific genes called MIR genes. All the transcripts that give rise to the same miRNA are grouped in a single family. microRNAs are involved in post-transcriptional gene regulation, inducing transcript cleavage or translation inhibition, throughout sequence similarity. Target genes are associated with many different biological processes and possess no significant similarity to their respective miRNA genes, apart from the 21 nucleotide sequence. In plants, target genes are typically involved in stress response and plant development. They are broadly present in the plant kingdom; in recent years many new species have been investigated and many miRNAs have been discovered, mainly through in silico comparative genomic approaches. Here we present a double in silico approach applied to the complete sequence of the grape (Vitis vinifera L.) genome focused on the discovery of both conserved plant miRNAs and new species-specific miRNAs. Interesting comparative and phylogenetic analyses have been performed that explicit how different miRNA gene families behave during evolution, following geneexpansion or gene-loss, showing in some cases a similar genomic organization, among different species. Moreover, to further characterize these miRNAs and investigate their putative roles, a detailed target analysis has been performed. As expected targets of related families are highly conserved between species, belonging to the same functional categories. Nonetheless a further characterization of these targets and their corresponding miRNAs can clarify their role and possible involvement in plant growth and fruit development

Nanosat Intelligent Power System Development

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is developing a class of satellites called nano-satellites. The technologies developed for these satellites will enable a class of constellation missions for the NASA Space Science Sun-Earth Connections theme and will be of great benefit to other NASA enterprises. A major challenge for these missions is meeting significant scientific- objectives with limited onboard and ground-based resources. Total spacecraft power is limited by the small satellite size. Additionally, it is highly desirable to minimize operational costs by limiting the ground support required to manage the constellation. This paper will describe how these challenges are met in the design of the nanosat power system. We will address the factors considered and tradeoffs made in deriving the nanosat power system architecture. We will discuss how incorporating onboard fault detection and correction capability yields a robust spacecraft power bus without the mass and volume penalties incurred from redundant systems and describe how power system efficiency is maximized throughout the mission duration