bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Prevalence and Correlates of Diabetes: Inception Cohort of a Semi-Urban Population of Southern India
Authors: Singh Mandeep , Kotwal Atul , Mittal Chetan , Reddy PC , Subbanna J , Babu Ram , Kotwal Anupam 
Published: August 2020

ABSTRACTIntroductionIndia has the second highest number of people with diabetes, however few studies assessed true burden and ensured screening of pre-diabetics. This cross sectional survey (inception cohort) was conducted to estimate the burden and correlates of one of the common risk factors (hyperglycemia / diabetes) likely to impact the morbidity and mortality due to Non-communicable diseases.Research Design and MethodsA cross sectional survey was conducted in villages under Chittoor District, Andhra Pradesh, India. 15,888 individuals (62.1% females and 37.9% males) above 15 years of age participated in the study.Results960 (6.04%) had a history of diabetes while 592 (3.67%) had high random capillary blood glucose (RCBG) ≥200 mg/dL. HbA1c and fasting blood sugar was tested in a subset of those with high RCBG (n = 248) but with no self-reported diabetes and 212 (85.48%) had HbA1c levels > 6.5 and fasting blood sugar ≥126 mg/dL. Thus, 85.48% (n = 506) with high RCBG were likely to be diabetic. The likely magnitude of diabetes in the community was 9.23%. Another 2,331 (14.67%) were found to be at a higher risk of developing diabetes (RCBG 140 to 200 mg/dL). Receiver Operator Characteristic analysis revealed waist circumference as the most important anthropometric measurement predicting high RCBG. Comparison of diabetes and non-diabetics by multivariate logistic regression showed that male gender, age, weight, history of hypertension, family history of diabetes and waist circumference played a significant role in the prevalence of diabetes.ConclusionsThere is high prevalence of diabetes in the rural and semi-urban India. Waist Circumference was the best predictor of Diabetes. RCBG can be considered as a easy, cheap, reliable and important tool for community diagnosis and management of diabetes.Strengths and limitations of the studyA large planned cross-sectional survey to establish a cohort with community participationQuality assurance and control measures at all levels for high internl validityFollow up assurance for the entire communityThese results are from Cross Sectional survey data and thus provides only associationsGenerealizeability to similar populationsWhat is already known?Global burden of disease projected India to have a manifold increase in diabetes between 1995–2025.Diabetes threat is being under-prioritised with increasing pool of undiagnosed diabetes.What are the new findings?Total prevalence of Diabetes 9.77% and 14.67% were at risk of developing Diabetes85.5 % individuals with RCBG≥200mg/dL conform to diabetes as per ADA criteria.Waist Circumference was the best predictor of Diabetes.What do the new findings imply?RCBG can be a reliable, cheap and important tool for community diagnosis and management of diabetes.Cohort established, interventions being implememted with follow up.
Consistent variations in personality traits and their potential for genetic improvement of biocontrol agents:Trichogramma evanescensas a case study
Authors: Silène Lartigue , Myriam Yalaoui , Jean Belliard , Claire Caravel , Louise Jeandroz , Géraldine Groussier , Vincent Calcagno , Philippe Louâpre , François-Xavier Dechaume-Moncharmont , Thibaut Malausa , Jérôme Moreau 
Published: August 2020

ABSTRACTImprovements in the biological control of agricultural pests require improvements in the phenotyping methods used by practitioners to select efficient biological control agent (BCA) populations in industrial rearing or field conditions. Consistent inter-individual variations in behaviour (i.e. animal personality) probably affect BCA efficiency, but have never been taken into account in the development of phenotyping methods, despite having characteristics useful for phenotyping: repeatable (by definition), often heritable, etc. We developed a video-tracking method targeting animal personality traits and evaluated the feasibility of its use for genetic improvement in the BCATrichogramma evanescens, by phenotyping 1,049 individuals from 24 isogenic lines. We found consistent individual variations in boldness, activity and exploration. Personality differences between the 24 isogenic lines suggested a genetic origin of the variations in activity and exploration (broad-sense heritability estimates of 0.06 to 0.11) and revealed a trade-off between exploration and fecundity.
Anin vitrografting method to quantify mechanical forces of adhering tissues
Authors: Kawakatsu Yaichi , Sawai Yu , Kurotani Ken-ichi , Shiratake Katsuhiro , Notaguchi Michitaka 
Published: August 2020

AbstractsGrafting is an indispensable agricultural technology for propagating useful tree varieties and obtaining beneficial traits of two varieties/species—as stock and scion—at the same time. Recent studies of molecular events during grafting have revealed dynamic physiological and transcriptomic changes. Strategies focused on specific grafting steps are needed to further associate each physiological and molecular event with those steps. In this study, we developed a method to investigate the tissue adhesion event, an early grafting step, by improving an artificialin vitrografting system in which two pieces of 1.5-mm thickNicotiana benthamianacut stem sections were combined and cultured on medium. We prepared a silicone sheet containing five special cutouts for adhesion of cut stem slices. We quantitatively measured the adhesive force at these grafting interfaces using a force gauge and found that graft adhesion started 2 days after grafting, with the adhesive force gradually increasing over time. After confirming the positive effect of auxin on grafting by this method, we tested the effect of cellulase treatment and observed significant enhancement of graft tissue adhesion. Compared with the addition of auxin or cellulase individually, the adhesive force was stronger when both auxin and cellulase were added simultaneously. Thein vitrografting method developed in this study is thus useful for examining the process of graft adhesion.
Biological Reinforcement Learning via Predictive Spacetime Encoding
Authors: Yang Minsu Abel , Lee Jee Hang , Lee Sang Wan 
Published: August 2020

AbstractRecent advances in reinforcement learning (RL) have successfully addressed several challenges, such as performance, scalability, or sample efficiency associated with the use of this technology. Although RL algorithms bear relevance to psychology and neuroscience in a broader context, they lack biological plausibility. Motivated by recent neural findings demonstrating the capacity of the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex to gather space and time information from the environment, this study presents a novel RL model, called spacetime Q-Network (STQN), that exploits predictive spatiotemporal encoding to reliably learn highly uncertain environment. The proposed method consists of two primary components. The first component is the successor representation with theta phase precession implements hippocampal spacetime encoding, acting as a rollout prediction. The second component, called Q switch ensemble, implements prefrontal population coding for reliable reward prediction. We also implement a single learning rule to accommodate both hippocampal-prefrontal replay and synaptic homeostasis, which subserves confidence-based metacognitive learning. To demonstrate the capacity of our model, we design a task array simulating various levels of environmental uncertainty and complexity. Results show that our model significantly outperforms a few state-of-the-art RL models. In the subsequent ablation study, we showed unique contributions of each component to resolving task uncertainty and complexity. Our study has two important implications. First, it provides the theoretical groundwork for closely linking unique characteristics of the distinct brain regions in the context of RL. Second, our implementation is performed in a simple matrix form that accommodates expansion into biologically-plausible, highly-scalable, and generalizable neural architectures.
ENERGY OPTIMIZATION DURING WALKING CAN BE A PRIMARILY IMPLICIT PROCESS
Authors: McAllister Megan J. , Blair Rachel L. , Donelan J. Maxwell , Selinger Jessica C. 
Published: August 2020

AbstractGait adaptations, in response to novel environments, devices or changes to the body, can be driven by the continuous optimization of energy expenditure. However, whether energy optimization is primarily an implicit process—occurring automatically and with minimal cognitive attention—or an explicit process—occurring as a result of a conscious, attention-demanding, strategy—remains unclear. Here, we use a dual-task paradigm to test whether energy optimization during walking is primarily an implicit or explicit process. To create our primary energy optimization task, we used lower-limb exoskeletons to shift people’s energetically optimal step frequency to frequencies lower than normally preferred. Our secondary task, designed to draw explicit attention from the optimization task, was an auditory tone discrimination task. We found that adding this secondary task did not disrupt energy optimization during walking; participants in our dual-task experiment adapted their step frequency toward the optima by an amount similar to participants in our previous single-task experiment. We also found that performance on the tone discrimination task did not worsen when participants were optimizing for energetic cost; accuracy scores and reaction times remained unchanged when the exoskeleton altered the energy optimal gaits. Survey responses suggest that dual-task participants were largely unaware of the changes they made to their gait to optimize energy, whereas single-task participants were more aware of their gait changes yet did not leverage this explicit awareness to improve gait optimization. Collectively, our results suggest that energy optimization is primarily an implicit process, allowing attentional resources to be directed toward other cognitive and motor objectives during walking.Summary statementPeople can adapt to energy optimal walking patterns without being consciously aware they are doing so. This allows people to discover energetically efficient gaits while preserving attentional resources for other tasks.
Meta-analysis reveals that sexual signalling in animals is honest and resource-based
Authors: Dougherty Liam R. 
Published: August 2020

AbstractAnimals often need to signal to attract mates, and sexual signalling may impose significant energetic and fitness costs to signallers. Consequently, individuals should strategically adjust signalling effort in order to maximise the fitness payoffs of signalling. An important determinant of these payoffs is individual state, which can influence the resources available to signallers, the likelihood of mating, and the motivation to mate. However, empirical studies often find contradictory patterns of state-based signalling. For example, some studies find that individuals in poor condition signal less, in order to conserve resources (ability-based signalling). In other cases, individuals in poor condition signal more, in order to maximise short-term reproductive success (needs-based signalling). I used meta-analysis to examine animal sexual signalling behaviour in relation to six aspects of individual state: age, mated status, attractiveness, body size, condition, and parasite load. Across 228 studies and 147 species, individuals (who were overwhelmingly male) signalled significantly more when in good condition, and there was a strong positive trend for increased signalling for large, attractive individuals with a low parasite load. Overall, this suggests that animal sexual signalling behaviour is generally honest and ability-based. However, needs-based signalling (terminal investment) was found when considering age, with old virgins signalling more than young virgins. Sexual signalling was not significantly influenced by mated status. There was a large amount of heterogeneity across studies that remained unexplained, and therefore more work is needed to determine the ecological factors influencing the magnitude and direction of state-dependent sexual signalling.
Load-Dependent Relationships between Frontal fNIRS Activity and Performance: A Data-Driven PLS Approach
Authors: Meidenbauer Kimberly L. , Choe Kyoung Whan , Cardenas-Iniguez Carlos , Huppert Theodore J. , Berman Marc G. 
Published: August 2020

AbstractNeuroimaging research frequently demonstrates load-dependent activation in the prefrontal cortex during working memory tasks such as the N-back. Most of this work has been conducted in fMRI, but functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is gaining traction as a less invasive and more flexible alternative to measuring cortical hemodynamics. Few fNIRS studies, however, have examined how working memory load-dependent changes in brain hemodynamics relate to performance. The current study employs a newly developed and robust statistical analysis of task-based fNIRS data in a large sample, and demonstrates the utility of data-driven, multivariate analyses to link brain activation and behavior in this modality. Seventy participants completed a standard N-back task with three N-back levels (N = 1, 2, 3) while fNIRS data were collected from frontal and parietal cortex. Overall, participants showed reliably greater fronto-parietal activation for the 2-back versus the 1-back task, suggesting fronto-parietal fNIRS measurements are sensitive to differences in cognitive load. The results for 3-back were much less consistent, potentially due to poor behavioral performance in the 3-back task. To address this, a multivariate analysis (behavioral partial least squares, PLS) was conducted to examine the interaction between fNIRS activation and performance at each N-back level. Results of the PLS analysis demonstrated differences in the relationship between accuracy and change in the deoxyhemoglobin fNIRS signal as a function of N-back level in four mid-frontal channels. Specifically, greater reductions in deoxyhemoglobin (i.e., more activation) were positively related to performance on the 3-back task, unrelated to accuracy in the 2-back task, and negatively associated with accuracy in the 1-back task. This pattern of results suggests that the metabolic demands correlated with neural activity required for high levels of accuracy vary as a consequence of task difficulty/cognitive load, whereby more automaticity during the 1-back task (less mid-frontal activity) predicted superior performance on this relatively easy task, and successful engagement of this mid-frontal region was required for high accuracy on a more difficult and cognitively demanding 3-back task. In summary, we show that fNIRS activity can track working memory load and can uncover significant associations between brain activity and performance, thus opening the door for this modality to be used in more wide-spread applications.
A closed-loop optogenetic screen for neurons controlling feeding inDrosophila
Authors: Lau Celia KS , Gordon Michael D 
Published: August 2020

AbstractFeeding is an essential part of animal life that is impacted greatly by the sense of taste. Although the characterization of taste-detection at the periphery is extensive, higher-order taste and feeding circuits are still being elucidated. Here, we use an automated closed-loop optogenetic activation screen for novel taste and feeding neurons inDrosophila melanogaster. Out of 122 Janelia FlyLight Project GAL4 lines preselected based on expression pattern, we identify six lines that acutely promote feeding and 35 lines that inhibit it. As proof of principle, we follow up on theR70C07-GAL4neuron population, which strongly inhibits feeding. Using split-GAL4 lines to isolate subsets of theR70C07-GAL4population, we find both appetitive and aversive neurons. We also show thatR70C07-GAL4labels a population of putative second-order taste interneurons that contact both sweet and bitter sensory neurons. These results serve as a resource for further functional dissection of fly feeding circuits.
Predicting gene regulatory networks from cell atlases
Authors: Møller Andreas Fønss , Natarajan Kedar Nath 
Published: August 2020

AbstractRecent single-cell RNA-sequencing atlases have surveyed and identified major cell-types across different mouse tissues. Here, we computationally reconstruct gene regulatory networks from 3 major mouse cell atlases to capture functional regulators critical for cell identity, while accounting for a variety of technical differences including sampled tissues, sequencing depth and author assigned cell-type labels. Extracting the regulatory crosstalk from mouse atlases, we identify and distinguish global regulons active in multiple cell-types from specialised cell-type specific regulons. We demonstrate that regulon activities accurately distinguish individual cell types, despite differences between individual atlases. We generate an integrated network that further uncovers regulon modules with coordinated activities critical for cell-types, and validate modules using available experimental data. Inferring regulatory networks during myeloid differentiation from wildtype and Irf8 KO cells, we uncover functional contribution of Irf8 regulon activity and composition towards monocyte lineage. Our analysis provides an avenue to further extract and integrate the regulatory crosstalk from single-cell expression data.SummaryIntegrated single-cell gene regulatory network from three mouse cell atlases captures global and cell-type specific regulatory modules and crosstalk, important for cellular identity.
Generation of thymidine auxotrophicAgrobacterium tumefaciensstrains for plant transformation
Authors: Aliu Ephraim , Azanu Mercy K. , Wang Kan , Lee Keunsub 
Published: August 2020

AbstractAgrobacterium-mediated transformation is a widely used gene delivery method for fundamental researches and crop trait improvement projects. AuxotrophicAgrobacterium tumefaciensstrains are highly desirable for plant transformation because they can be easily removed from the explants after co-cultivation due to their dependence on essential nutrient supplementation. The thymidine auxotrophicA. tumefaciensstrain LBA4404Thy- has been successfully used for plant transformation, however, auxotrophic version of other commonly used strains are not available yet to public laboratories. Here we report the generation of EHA101, EHA105 and EHA105D thymidine auxotrophic strains. These strains exhibited thymidine-dependent growth in the bacterial medium, and the transient GUS expression assay using Arabidopsis seedling showed that they retain the equivalent T-DNA transfer capability as the original strains thus are suitable for plant transformation.
Differential effects of redox conditions on the decomposition of litter and soil organic matter
Authors: Lin Yang , Campbell Ashley N. , Bhattacharyya Amrita , DiDonato Nicole , Thompson Allison M. , Tfaily Malak M. , Nico Peter S. , Silver Whendee L. , Pett-Ridge Jennifer 
Published: August 2020

AbstractSoil redox conditions exert substantial influence on biogeochemical processes in terrestrial ecosystems. Humid tropical forest soils are often characterized by fluctuating redox dynamics, yet how these dynamics affect patterns in soil versus litter decomposition and associated CO2fluxes is not well understood. We used a13C-labeled litter addition to explicitly follow the decomposition of litter-derived vs. native soil-derived organic matter in response to four different soil redox regimes—static oxic or anoxic, and two oscillating treatments—in soil from the Luquillo Experimental Forest, Puerto Rico. We coupled this incubation experiment with high-resolution mass spectrometry to characterize the preferential decomposition of specific classes of organic molecules. CO2production from litter and soil organic matter (SOM) showed distinctly different responses to redox manipulation. The cumulative production of SOM-derived CO2was positively correlated with the length of soil exposure to an oxic headspace (r= 0.89,n= 20), whereas cumulative13C-litter-derived CO2production was not linked to oxygen availability. The CO2production rate from litter was highest under static anoxic conditions in the first half of the incubation period, and later dropped to the lowest among all redox treatments. In the consistently anoxic soils, we observed the depletion of more oxidized water-extractable organic matter (especially amino sugars, carbohydrates, and proteins) over time, suggesting that under anaerobic conditions, microbes preferentially used more oxidized litter-derived compounds during the early stages of decomposition. Results from kinetic modeling showed that more frequent anoxic exposure limited the decomposition of a slow-cycling C pool, but not a fast-cycling pool. Overall, our results demonstrate that substrate source—freshly added litter vs. native organic matter—plays an important role in the redox sensitivity of organic matter decomposition. In soil environments that regularly experience redox fluctuations, anaerobic heterotrophs can be surprisingly effective in degrading fresh plant litter.
Evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies using a vesicular stomatitis virus possessing SARS-CoV-2 spike protein
Authors: Tani Hideki , Tan Long , Kimura Miyuki , Yoshida Yoshihiro , Yamada Hiroshi , Fukushi Shuetsu , Saijo Masayuki , Kawasuji Hitoshi , Ueno Akitoshi , Miyajima Yuki , Fukui Yasutaka , Sakamaki Ippei , Yamamoto Yoshihiro , Morinaga Yoshitomo 
Published: August 2020

AbstractSARS-CoV-2 is a novel coronavirus that emerged in 2019 and is now classified in the genus Coronavirus with closely related SARS-CoV. SARS-CoV-2 is highly pathogenic in humans and is classified as a biosafety level (BSL)-3 pathogen, which makes manipulating it relatively difficult due to its infectious nature. To circumvent the need for BSL-3 laboratories, an alternative assay was developed that avoids live virus and instead uses a recombinant VSV expressing luciferase and possesses the full length or truncated spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2. Furthermore, to measure SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies under BSL2 conditions, a chemiluminescence reduction neutralization test (CRNT) for SARS-CoV-2 was developed. The neutralization values of the serum samples collected from hospitalized patients with COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 PCR-negative donors against the pseudotyped virus infection evaluated by the CRNT were compared with antibody titers determined from an immunofluorescence assay (IFA). The CRNT, which used whole blood collected from hospitalized patients with COVID-19, was also examined. As a result, the inhibition of pseudotyped virus infection was specifically observed in both serum and whole blood and was also correlated with the results of the IFA. In conclusion, the CRNT for COVID-19 is a convenient assay system that can be performed in a BSL-2 laboratory with high specificity and sensitivity for evaluating the occurrence of neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.