Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A novel approach to study the morphology and chemistry of pollen in a phylogenetic context, applied to the halophytic taxon Nitraria L.(Nitrariaceae)

Nitraria is a halophytic taxon (i.e., adapted to saline environments) that belongs to the plant family Nitrariaceae and is distributed from the Mediterranean, across Asia into the south-eastern tip of Australia. This taxon is thought to have originated in Asia during the Paleogene (66–23 Ma), alongside the proto-Paratethys epicontinental sea. The evolutionary history of Nitraria might hold important clues on the links between climatic and biotic evolution but limited taxonomic documentation of this taxon has thus far hindered this line of research. Here we investigate if the pollen morphology and the chemical composition of the pollen wall are informative of the evolutionary history of Nitraria and could explain if origination along the proto-Paratethys and dispersal to the Tibetan Plateau was simultaneous or a secondary process. To answer these questions, we applied a novel approach consisting of a combination of Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), to determine the chemical composition of the pollen wall, and pollen morphological analyses using Light Microscopy (LM) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). We analysed our data using ordinations (principal components analysis and non-metric multidimensional scaling), and directly mapped it on the Nitrariaceae phylogeny to produce a phylomorphospace and a phylochemospace. Our LM, SEM and FTIR analyses show clear morphological and chemical differences between the sister groups Peganum and Nitraria. Differences in the morphological and chemical characteristics of highland species (Nitraria schoberi, N. sphaerocarpa, N. sibirica and N. tangutorum) and lowland species (Nitraria billardierei and N. retusa) are very subtle, with phylogenetic history appearing to be a more important control on Nitraria pollen than local environmental conditions. Our approach shows a compelling consistency between the chemical and morphological characteristics of the eight studied Nitrariaceae species, and these traits are in agreement with the phylogenetic tree. Taken together, this demonstrates how novel methods for studying fossil pollen can facilitate the evolutionary investigation of living and extinct taxa, and the environments they represent.
Genetic susceptibility of glutathione S‐transferase genes (GSTM1/T1 and P1) to coronary artery disease in Asian Indians

Genetic polymorphisms in glutathione S‐transferase (GST) genes may modulate the risk of cardiovascular diseases. The objective of present study was to investigate the potential association between the polymorphisms of GSTM1/T1 and P1 genes and their influence on diverse clinical parameters and oxidative stress biomarkers in coronary artery disease (CAD) patients in Asian Indians. The present study includes 562 angiographically confirmed CAD patients and 564 healthy control subjects from the north Indian population. Anthropometric and clinical measurements were performed for all the participants. The oxidative stress biomarkers including malondialdehyde and total antioxidant capacity were also measured. The genotyping of the GSTM1/T1 and P1 genes was performed using the multiplex‐PCR and PCR‐RFLP methods. The CAD patients exhibit significantly high values of waist circumference, waist‐to‐hip ratio, body fat (%), glucose, triglycerides, and very low‐density lipoprotein, and reduced high‐density lipoprotein levels compared to control subjects (P < 0.001). Malondialdehyde levels were significantly enhanced, and the total antioxidant capacity was reduced in CAD patients compared to controls (P < 0.001). However, no significant difference in body mass index and total cholesterol levels were observed in CAD patients and control subjects. The frequencies of the GSTM1 and GSTM1/T1 null genotypes in the CAD patients were significantly higher than the control subjects. In contrast, the GSTT1(−) genotype frequencies were significantly lower in CAD patients than the controls. Logistic regression analysis of the data revealed the null genotype of GSTM1 and the GG genotype of the GSTP1 (313A/G) gene were associated with an approximately twofold enhanced risk of developing CAD, whereas GSTT1(−) plays a defensive role against CAD development in north Indians. Upon stratification of data according to the genotypes of the GSTM1/T1 and P1 genes, we did not find significant a difference among the various metabolic traits in CAD patients and controls. Our results suggest that oxidative damage induced by lipid peroxidation with reduced antioxidant capacity and genetic variants in GST genes (GSTM1/T1 and P1) may modify the risk of CAD development in Asian Indian population.
E-Configuration Improves Antioxidant and Cytoprotective Capacities of Resveratrols

The antioxidant and cytoprotective capacities of E-resveratrol and Z-resveratrol were compared using chemical and cellular assays. Chemical assays revealed that the two isomers were dose-dependently active in •O2−-scavenging, ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP), Cu2+-reducing antioxidant capacity (CUPRAC), 2-phenyl-4,4,5,5-tetramethylimidazoline-1-oxyl 3-oxide radical (PTIO•)-scavenging (pH 7.4 and pH 4.5), and 1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl (DPPH•)-scavenging assays. The cellular assay indicated that the two isomers could also increase cell viabilities. However, quantitative analyses suggested that E-resveratrol exhibited stronger effects than Z-resveratrol in all chemical and cellular assays. Finally, the conformations of E-resveratrol and Z-resveratrol were analyzed. It can be concluded that both E-resveratrol and Z-resveratrol can promote redox-related pathways to exhibit antioxidant action and consequently protect bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (bmMSCs) from oxidative damage. These pathways include electron transfer (ET) and H+-transfer, and likely include hydrogen atom transfer (HAT). The E-configuration, however, improves antioxidant and cytoprotective capacities of resveratrols. The detrimental effect of the Z-configuration may be attributed to the non-planar preferential conformation, where two dihedral angles block the extension of the conjugative system.
Dimensional and Categorical Correlates of Substance Use Disorders among Canadian Adolescents with Bipolar Disorder.

Objectives Despite increasing evidence of excessive substance use disorder (SUD) prevalence among adolescents with bipolar disorder (BP), little is known about this topic among Canadian adolescents with BP. We therefore sought to examine the clinical characteristics and dimensional measures of psychopathology associated with comorbid SUD among Canadian BP adolescents. Method Participants were 100 adolescents, ages 13-19 years, with BP I, II, or not otherwise specified (NOS). Diagnoses (current and lifetime) were determined via the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Aged Children, Present and Lifetime version (KSADS-PL). Participants were considered to have lifetime SUD if they met DSM-IV criteria for abuse of or dependence on alcohol or any drug other than nicotine. Chi-square analyses and independent samples t-tests were followed by logistic regression analyses. Results The lifetime prevalence of SUD was 33% (primarily alcohol and cannabis use disorders). In univariate analyses, SUD was associated with greater lifetime prevalence of conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, panic disorder, assault of others, and a greater number of stressful life events. SUD was significantly associated with greater self-reported impulsivity and parent-report of anger/depression in the adolescent. In multivariable analyses, SUD was associated with panic disorder and oppositional defiant disorder. Conclusion SUD is highly prevalent among Canadian adolescents with BP and is associated with anxiety disorders, behavioural disorders, and trait impulsivity. Targeting these clinical characteristics may help guide preventative and treatment strategies for this population.
Therapeutic potential of valproic acid in advanced glaucoma: A pilot study

Purpose: Oral valproic acid (VPA) used as an anticonvulsant has been shown to improve contrast threshold sensitivities in patients receiving it on long-term. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of oral VPA in improving visual function in eyes with advanced stage glaucoma. Methods: In this prospective randomized study, 31 patients (n = 31 eyes) with advanced stage glaucoma (with an intraocular pressure <16 mmHg) in at least one eye received oral VPA 500 mg once a day for 3 months and 33 patients (n = 33 eyes) continued on glaucoma therapy. Patients were followed up at 3 and 12 months (to evaluate the legacy effect of the drug). Blood VPA concentrations were measured at 3 months. Following parameters were assessed at baseline, 3 months and 12 months: log of the minimum angle of resolution (LogMAR) visual acuity, mean deviation on visual fields, and multifocal electroretinogram (ERG). Results: Median LogMar visual acuity in the VPA group improved from 0.3 at baseline to 0.18 and 0.18 at 3 and 12 months, respectively (P < 0.01). In comparison, the median visual acuity in control group at baseline was 0.18 and showed neither worsening nor improvement over 3 and 12 months (P = 0.56). The improvement in VPA group was significant compared to the control group (P < 0.01; Wilcoxon Signed-rank test). An improvement in one line was experienced in 11 out of 31 eyes in the VPA group compared to 1 out of 33 eyes among controls (P = 0.003). No significant improvement was noted in the mean deviation, and the multifocal ERG (Latency and amplitudes) in the VPA-treated patients. The average blood VPA concentration measured at 3 months of therapy was 26 ± 8.9 μg/ml (range 8–55 μg/ml) which is much lower than that achieved during anticonvulsant therapy. None of the patients complained of any adverse effects that required stopping VPA therapy. Conclusion: A 3 months oral VPA therapy results in some improvement in visual acuity in a subgroup of eyes with advanced glaucoma and the effect was seen to persist 9 months after the drug was stopped.
External ankle taping does not alter lower extremity side-step cut and straight sprint biomechanics in young adult males

Abstract Lateral ankle sprains (LAS) are one of the most common musculoskeletal injuries and as a response, clinicians often use external ankle taping prophylactically to reduce the prevalence of injuries. External ankle taping techniques have been shown to significantly reduce passive ankle range of motion; however, there is limited research on the effects of external ankle taping on lower extremity kinematics or kinetics during sport specific tasks. Therefore, our objective was to compare the effects of external ankle taping on ankle, knee and hip kinematics and kinetics compared to no taping during an anticipated sidestep cutting task and a straight sprint task. We conducted a cross-over laboratory study with 16 healthy males. Three-dimensional kinematics and kinetics were collected with a motion capture system and in-ground force plate during 5 trials of a sprint and anticipated side-step cut with or without external ankle taping. Group means and associated 90% confidence intervals were plotted across 100 data points for each task, significance being identified when the confidence intervals did not overlap for three consecutive data points. No significant kinetic or kinematic differences were identified between conditions for the tasks. External ankle taping does not influence lower extremity biomechanics during a control cutting task.
Characteristics of Worriers as a Function of Individual Differences in Effortful Control

ii Acknowledgments. v Vita . vi List of Tables . ixx List of Figures . x Chapter 1: Introduction . 1 Chapter 2: Methods . 29 Chapter 3: Results . 48 Chapter 4: Discussion . 86 References: . 102
Not attackable or not crackable—How pre‐ and post‐attack defenses with different competition costs affect prey coexistence and population dynamics

Abstract It is well‐known that prey species often face trade‐offs between defense against predation and competitiveness, enabling predator‐mediated coexistence. However, we lack an understanding of how the large variety of different defense traits with different competition costs affects coexistence and population dynamics. Our study focusses on two general defense mechanisms, that is, pre‐attack (e.g., camouflage) and post‐attack defenses (e.g., weaponry) that act at different phases of the predator—prey interaction. We consider a food web model with one predator, two prey types and one resource. One prey type is undefended, while the other one is pre‐ or post‐attack defended paying costs either by a higher half‐saturation constant for resource uptake or a lower maximum growth rate. We show that post‐attack defenses promote prey coexistence and stabilize the population dynamics more strongly than pre‐attack defenses by interfering with the predator's functional response: Because the predator spends time handling “noncrackable” prey, the undefended prey is indirectly facilitated. A high half‐saturation constant as defense costs promotes coexistence more and stabilizes the dynamics less than a low maximum growth rate. The former imposes high costs at low resource concentrations but allows for temporally high growth rates at predator‐induced resource peaks preventing the extinction of the defended prey. We evaluate the effects of the different defense mechanisms and costs on coexistence under different enrichment levels in order to vary the importance of bottom‐up and top‐down control of the prey community.
Adverse Outcome Prediction of Iron Deficiency in Patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome

Acute myocardial infarction remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. While iron deficient heart failure patients are at increased risk of future cardiovascular events and see improvement with intravenous supplementation, the clinical relevance of iron deficiency in acute coronary syndrome remains unclear. We aimed to evaluate the prognostic value of iron deficiency in the acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Levels of ferritin, iron, and transferrin were measured at baseline in 836 patients with ACS. A total of 29.1% was categorized as iron deficient. The prevalence of iron deficiency was clearly higher in women (42.8%), and in patients with anemia (42.5%). During a median follow-up of 4.0 years, 111 subjects (13.3%) experienced non-fatal myocardial infarction (MI) and cardiovascular mortality as combined endpoint. Iron deficiency strongly predicted non-fatal MI and cardiovascular mortality with a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.52 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.03-2.26; p = 0.037) adjusted for age, sex, hypertension, smoking status, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, body-mass-index (BMI) This association remained significant (HR 1.73 (95% CI 1.07–2.81; p = 0.026)) after an additional adjustment for surrogates of cardiac function and heart failure severity (N-terminal pro B-type natriuretic peptide, NT-proBNP), for the size of myocardial necrosis (troponin), and for anemia (hemoglobin). Survival analyses for cardiovascular mortality and MI provided further evidence for the prognostic relevance of iron deficiency (HR 1.50 (95% CI 1.02–2.20)). Our data showed that iron deficiency is strongly associated with adverse outcome in acute coronary syndrome.
Fathoming Aspergillus oryzae metabolomes in formulated growth matrices

Abstract The stochasticity of Aspergillus oryzae (Trivially: the koji mold) pan-metabolomes commensurate with its ubiquitously distributed landscapes, i.e. growth matrices have been seemed uncharted since its food fermentative systems are mostly being investigated. In this review, we explicitly have discussed the likely tendencies of A. oryzae metabolomes pertaining to its growth milieu formulated with substrate matrices of varying nature, composition, texture, and associated physicochemical parameters. We envisaged typical food matrices, namely, meju, koji, and moromi as the semi-natural cultivation models toward delineating the metabolomic patterns of the koji mold, which synergistically influences the organoleptic and functional properties of the end products. Further, we highlighted how tailored conditions in sub-natural growth matrices, i.e. synthetic cultivation media blends, inducers, and growth surfaces, may influence A. oryzae metabolomes and targeted phenotypes. In general, the sequential or synchronous growth of A. oryzae on formulated matrices results in a number of metabolic tradeoffs with its immediate microenvironment influencing its adaptive and regulatory metabolomes. In broader context, evaluating the metabolic plasticity of A. oryzae relative to the tractable variables in formulated growth matrices might help approximate its growth and metabolism in the more complex natural matrices and environs. These approaches may considerably help in the design and manipulation of hybrid cultivation systems towards the efficient harnessing of commercial molds.
Accelerating GPU betweenness centrality

Graphs that model social networks, numerical simulations, and the structure of the Internet are enormous and cannot be manually inspected. A popular metric used to analyze these networks is Betweenness Centrality (BC), which has applications in community detection, power grid contingency analysis, and the study of the human brain. However, these analyses come with a high computational cost that prevents the examination of large graphs of interest. Recently, the use of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) has been promising for efficient processing of unstructured data sets. Prior GPU implementations of BC suffer from large local data structures and inefficient graph traversals that limit scalability and performance. Here we present a hybrid GPU implementation that provides good performance on graphs of arbitrary structure rather than just scale-free graphs as was done previously. Our methods achieve up to 13× speedup on high-diameter graphs and an average of 2.71× speedup overall compared to the best existing GPU algorithm. We also observe near linear speedup when running BC on 192 GPUs.
PPARs and Metabolic Disorders Associated with Challenged Adipose Tissue Plasticity

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs) are members of a family of nuclear hormone receptors that exert their transcriptional control on genes harboring PPAR-responsive regulatory elements (PPRE) in partnership with retinoid X receptors (RXR). The activation of PPARs coordinated by specific coactivators/repressors regulate networks of genes controlling diverse homeostatic processes involving inflammation, adipogenesis, lipid metabolism, glucose homeostasis, and insulin resistance. Defects in PPARs have been linked to lipodystrophy, obesity, and insulin resistance as a result of the impairment of adipose tissue expandability and functionality. PPARs can act as lipid sensors, and when optimally activated, can rewire many of the metabolic pathways typically disrupted in obesity leading to an improvement of metabolic homeostasis. PPARs also contribute to the homeostasis of adipose tissue under challenging physiological circumstances, such as pregnancy and aging. Given their potential pathogenic role and their therapeutic potential, the benefits of PPARs activation should not only be considered relevant in the context of energy balance-associated pathologies and insulin resistance but also as potential relevant targets in the context of diabetic pregnancy and changes in body composition and metabolic stress associated with aging. Here, we review the rationale for the optimization of PPAR activation under these conditions.
New Iodine Food Composition Database and Updated Calculations of Iodine Intake among Norwegians

Iodine food composition data of Norwegian foods have been sparse and knowledge about different dietary iodine sources limited. We compiled a comprehensive iodine food composition database and estimated dietary iodine intake among adults in the latest Norwegian national dietary survey (Norkost 3). The iodine content of food and beverages were compiled using international guidelines and standards. Iodine content of 3259 food items were compiled, including analytical values, values from other food composition databases, estimated values, and values that were based on recipes. Estimated iodine intake in the Norkost 3 population ranged from 15 to 1462 µg/day. Men had significantly higher intake of iodine than women (p < 0.001). The proportion of men and women with estimated iodine intake below average requirement was 19% and 33%, respectively. In young women, 46% had estimated iodine intakes below average requirement and a high probability of inadequate iodine intake. Several dietary sources contributed to iodine intake and differences in the consumption pattern may put subgroups at risk of insufficient iodine intake. In the coming years, the determination of iodine in foods and national dietary surveys should be regularly performed to monitor the iodine intake in the Norwegian population.
The Median Nerve at the Carpal Tunnel … and Elsewhere

The median nerve (MN) may be affected by various peripheral neuropathies, each of which may be categorized according to its cause, as either an extrinsic (due to an entrapment or a nerve compression) or an intrinsic (including neurogenic tumors) neuropathy. Entrapment neuropathies are characterized by alterations of the nerve function that are caused by mechanical or dynamic compression. It occurs because of anatomic constraints at specific locations including sites where the nerve courses through fibro-osseous or fibromuscular tunnels or penetrates a muscle. For the diagnosis of peripheral neuropathies, physicians traditionally relied primarily on clinical findings and electrodiagnostic testing with electromyography. However, if further doubt exists, clinicians may ask for an additional imaging evaluation.