Silphium integrifolium Michx. (Silflower) has been a promising subject for domestication as a perennial oilseed crop. This work was carried out to investigate the seed processing aspect of this effort. Selected physical properties of the seed were evaluated, seed milling to obtain enriched kernel fraction was conducted, and initial characterization of the seed protein was performed. There was wide variation in flat seed length (11.54 to 20.75 mm), width (4.61 to 11.76 mm), and thickness (0.92 to 1.63 mm). The thousand seed weight was 23.8 g but the tapped bulk density was only 189.58 g/L due to the presence of wing around the seed’s periphery. The kernel accounted for 56.14% of the seed weight and contained 31.00% oil. An enriched kernel fraction with 79.6% purity was obtained by roller-milling, sifting, and air classification. Linoleic (62.3%) and oleic (19.62%) acids were the major fatty acids in the oil. The defatted enriched kernel fraction contained 63.41% crude protein. Globulin, glutelin, albumin, and prolamin accounted for 55.63%, 19.28%, 16.38%, and 8.71% of the soluble proteins, respectively. At an extraction pH of 9, protein solubility was 62%. Maximum solubility (70%) was obtained at pH 10 while minimum solubility of 9% occurred between pH 4 and 5.5. Aside from the oil, the dehulling of silflower seeds also produced a high-protein defatted meal, which may be used as is or as a starting material for enriching the protein further into a protein isolate.

Caplacizumab can be used as a treatment for TTP refractory to plasmapheresis and steroid

Psychological and psychosocial issues are more prominent issues of an individual in any disease, which could further deteriorate patients’ condition and hamper their quality of life. However, in treating SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19, those patients’ mental, social, and emotional aspects are still overlooked.

Abstract The primary diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) of the uterine cervix is extremely rare. In the present study, we described two cases of DLBCL of the uterine cervix in reproductive-aged women complaining of postcoital bleeding, recurrent vaginal discharge, and abnormal uterine bleeding.

Mast cells are found in bone marrow, blood, mucosal, and connective tissues. They migrate into the loose connective tissue of all organs. They play a major role in many physiologic processes however as discussed in this article they can become an aggressive force which can damage the natural biological balance

Breast carcinosarcoma is an aggressive subtype of cancer that accounts for less than a percent of all breast malignancies. Carcinosarcoma is difficult to diagnose and treat. In the following, we present a case of breast carcinosarcoma with the treatment method.

The work demonstrates the use of detailed, high-throughput phenotyping to generate and test mechanistic models to explain the genetic diversity of photosynthetic responses to abiotic stress. We assessed a population of recombinant inbred lines (RILs) of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata. (L.) Walp.) with significant differences in a range of photosynthetic responses to chilling. We found well-defined, colocalized (overlapping) QTL intervals for photosynthetic parameters, suggesting linkages among the redox states of QA, the thylakoid pmf, through effects on cyclic electron flow and photodamage to PSII. We propose that these genetic variations optimize photosynthesis in the tolerant lines under low temperatures, preventing recombination reactions within Photosystem II that can lead to deleterious 1O2 production. By contrast, we did not observe linkages to PSI redox state, PSI photodamage or ATP synthase activity, or nyctinastic (diurnally controlled) leaf movements, likely indicating that several proposed models likely do not contribute to the genetic control of photosynthesis at low temperature in our mapping panel. The identified QTL intervals include a range of potential causative genetic components, with direct applications to breeding of photosynthesis for more climate-resilient productivity.

The extensive involvement of the liver due to hydatid cyst and it's invasion to the portal vein and resulted portal vein thrombosis are rare complications of hydatid cyst. The diagnosis and treatment of hydatid liver cyst and its rare complication such as thrombosis in infected patients should be critically considered.

Drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (DRESS) is part of Severe cutaneous adverse reactions. Allopurinol, an uric acid-lowering drug, had been incriminated in several cases of Allopurinol-induced Dress syndrome.Through this paper, we present a case of Allopurinol-induced DRESS syndrome with initial oral mucosal involvement.

Understanding ageing and the diversity of life histories is a cornerstone in biology. Telomeres, the protecting caps of chromosomes, are thought to be involved in ageing, cancer risks and to modulate life-history strategies. They shorten with cell division and age in somatic tissues of most species, possibly limiting lifespan. The resource allocation trade-off hypothesis predicts that short telomeres have thus co-evolved with early reproduction, proactive behaviour and reduced lifespan, i.e. a fast Pace-of-Life Syndrome (POLS). Conversely, since short telomeres may also reduce the risks of cancer, the anti-cancer hypothesis advances that they should be associated with slow POLS. Conclusion on which hypothesis best supports the role of telomeres as mediators of life-history strategies is hampered by a lack of study on wild short-lived vertebrates, apart from birds. Using seven years of data on wild Eastern chipmunks Tamias striatus, we highlighted that telomeres elongate with age and do not limit lifespan in this species. Furthermore, short telomeres correlated with a slow POLS in a sex-specific way. Females with short telomeres had a delayed age at first breeding and a lower fecundity rate than females with long telomeres, whereas those differences were not recorded in males. Our findings support most predictions adapted from the anti-cancer hypothesis, but none of those made under the resource allocation trade-off hypothesis. Results are in line with an increasing body of evidence suggesting that resource allocation trade-offs alone cannot explaining the diversity of telomere length in adult somatic cells and life-histories observed across the tree of life.

Reproductive isolation between geographically separated populations is generally considered the most common form of speciation. However, speciation may also occur in the absence of geographic barriers due phenotypic and genotypic factors such as chemical cue divergence, mating signal divergence and mitonuclear conflict. Here we performed an integrative study based on two genome-wide techniques, 3RAD and ultraconserved elements, coupled with cuticular hydrocarbon and mtDNA sequence data, to assess the species limits within the E. ruidum species-complex, a widespread and conspicuous group of Neotropical ants for which heteroplasmy has been recently discovered in some populations from southeast Mexico. Our analyses indicate the existence of at least five distinct species in this complex, two widely distributed along the Neotropics and three that are restricted to southeast Mexico and that apparently have high levels of heteroplasmy. We found that species boundaries in the complex did not coincide with geographic barriers. We therefore consider possible roles of alternative drivers that may have promoted the observed patterns of speciation, including mitonuclear incompatibility, cuticular hydrocarbon differentiation, and colony structure. Our study highlights the importance of simultaneously assessing different sources of evidence to disentangle the species limits of taxa with complicated evolutionary histories.

Objective To determine the prevalence and course of fear of childbirth (FoC) according to gestational age and to identify risk factors for FoC, the influence of FoC on preferred mode of delivery and self-reported need for help. Study Design Cross-sectional and cohort study Setting Urban hospital, midwifery practices, social media, maternity websites. Population Nulliparous pregnant women May 2020-January 2021. Methods Participants completed an online survey. Women who completed the survey in the first or second trimester(T0) were approached again in their third trimester(T1). Questionnaires indexing FoC, social support, anxiety, depressive symptoms, self-reported need for help, and preferred mode of delivery were included. Main outcome measures Fear of childbirth, defined as W-DEQ A score ≥ 85 Results In total, 364 women were enrolled at T0, and 118 women were included in the longitudinal analysis. Cross-sectional analysis showed a prevalence of FoC of 18.4% with no significant difference between trimesters. In the longitudinal sample, prevalence of FoC decreased from 18.6%(T0) to 11.0%(T1), P=0.004. W-DEQ A mean scores decreased significantly, P<0.001, although 41 (34.7%) women showed an increase in scores. FoC was associated with elevated anxiety, less family support, prenatal care of the obstetrician by choice, preference for a cesarean section, and for pain relief. Women with FoC were more likely to actively seek for help compared to women without FoC. Conclusions While FoC is common, prevalence decreases over the course of pregnancy. Because women with FoC are actively seeking for help, this problem should be addressed better, and help should be offered.

Historical contingency, such as the order of species arrival, can modify competitive outcomes via niche modification or preemption. However how these mechanisms ultimately modify stabilising niche and average fitness differences remains largely unknown. By experimentally assembling two congeneric spider mite species feeding on tomato plants during two generations, we show that order of arrival interacts with species’ competitive ability to determine competitive outcomes. Contrary to expectations, we did not observe that order of arrival cause priority effects. In fact, coexistence was predicted when the inferior competitor (Tetranychus urticae) arrived first. In that case, T. urticae colonized the preferred feeding stratum (leaves) of T. evansi leading to spatial niche preemption, which equalized fitness but also increased niche differences, driving community assembly to a close-to-neutrality scenario. Our study demonstrates how the spatial context of competitive interactions interact with species competitive ability to influence the effect of order of arrival on species coexistence.

Digital point-occurrence records from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and other repositories enable a wide range of research in macroecology and biogeography. However, data errors may hamper immediate use. Manual data cleaning is time-consuming and often unfeasible, given that the databases may contain thousands or millions of records. Automated data cleaning pipelines are therefore of high importance. This study examined the extent to which cleaned data from six pipelines using data cleaning tools (e.g., the GBIF web application, different R packages) affect downstream species distribution models. In addition, we assessed how the pipeline data differ from expert data. From 13,889 North American Ephedra observations in GBIF, the pipelines removed 31.7% to 62.7% false-positives, invalid coordinates, and duplicates, leading to data sets that included between 9,484 (GBIF application) and 5,196 records (manual-guided filtering). The expert data consisted of 703 thoroughly handpicked records, comparable to data from field studies. Although differences in the record numbers were relatively large, stacked species distribution models (sSDM) from the pipelines and the expert data were strongly related (mean Pearson’s r across the pipelines: 0.9986, versus the expert data: 0.9173). The ever-stronger correlations resulted from occurrence information that became increasingly condensed in the course of the workflow (from individual occurrences to collectivized occurrences in grid cells to predicted probabilities in the sSDMs). In sum, our results suggest that the R package-based pipelines reliably identified invalid coordinates. In contrast, the GBIF-filtered data still contained both spatial and taxonomic errors. However, major drawbacks emerge from the fact that no pipeline fully discovered misidentified specimens without the assistance of expert taxonomic knowledge. We conclude that application-filtered GBIF data will still need additional review to achieve higher spatial data quality. Achieving high-quality taxonomic data will require extra effort, probably by thoroughly analyzing the data for misidentified taxa, supported by experts.

Adventitious root (AR) formation is important for the vegetative propagation. The effects of strigolactones (SLs) on AR formation have been rarely reported, especially in woody plants. In this study, we first verified the inhibitory effects of SLs on AR formation in apple materials. Transcriptome analysis identified 12,051 differentially expressed genes over the course of AR formation, with functions related to organogenesis, cell wall biogenesis or plant senescence. WGCNA suggests SLs might inhibit AR formation through repressing the expression of two core hub genes, MdLAC3 and MdORE1. We further verified that enhanced cell wall formation and accelerated senescence were involved in the AR inhibition caused by SLs. Combining small RNA and degradome sequencing, as well as a dual-luciferase sensor system, we identified and validated three negatively correlated miRNA–mRNA pairs, including mdm-miR397–MdLAC3 involved in secondary cell wall formation, and mdm-miR164a/b–MdORE1 involved in senescence. Finally, we have experimentally demonstrated the role of mdm-miR164b–MdORE1 in SLs-mediated inhibition of AR formation. Overall, our findings not only propose a comprehensive regulatory network for the function of SLs on AR formation, but also provide novel candidate genes for the potential genetic improvement of AR formation in woody plants using transgenic or CRISPR technology.

The components of complex differentiable functions define solutions for the Laplace's equation. In this paper we generalize this result; for each PDE of the form Au xx + Bu xy + Cu yy = 0 and for each affine planar vector field ϕ, we give an associative and commutative 2D algebra with unit A, with respect to which the components of all functions of the form L • ϕ define solutions for this PDE, where L is differentiable in the sense of Lorch with respect to A. We give the relations between solutions of this PDEs and components of functions of the form L • ϕ, this as in the case of the relationship between harmonic functions and complex analytic functions. Also, solutions for two dependent variables 3 th order PDEs and 4 th order PDE are constructed; among these are the bi-harmonic, bi-wave, and bi-telegraph equations.

Leukocyte differential test is a widely performed clinical procedure for screening infectious diseases. Existing hematology analyzers require labor-intensive work and a panel of expensive reagents. Here we report an artificial-intelligence enabled reagent-free imaging hematology analyzer (AIRFIHA) modality that can accurately classify subpopulations of leukocytes with minimal sample preparation. AIRFIHA is realized through training a two-step residual neural network using label-free images of isolated leukocytes acquired from a custom-built quantitative phase microscope. By leveraging the rich information contained in quantitative phase images, we not only achieved high accuracy in differentiating B and T lymphocytes, but also classified CD4 and CD8 cells, therefore outperforming the classification accuracy of most current hematology analyzers. We validated the performance of AIRFIHA in a randomly selected test set and cross-validated it across all blood donors. Owing to its easy operation, low cost, and accurate discerning capability of complex leukocyte subpopulations, we envision AIRFIHA is clinically translatable and can also be deployed in resource-limited settings, e.g., during pandemic situations for the rapid screening of infectious diseases.  Corresponding author(s) Email:    rjzhou@cuhk.edu.hk,  rishikesh.pandey@uconn.edu

A document by F. Javier Aoiz. Click on the document to view its contents.

Norway spruce (Picea abies) is an economically and ecologically important tree species that grows across northern and central Europe. Treating Norway spruce with jasmonate has long-lasting beneficial effects on tree resistance to damaging pests, such as the European spruce bark beetle Ips typographus and its fungal associates. The potential involvement of (epi)genetic mechanisms in this long-lasting jasmonate-induced resistance (IR) has gained much recent interest, but remains largely unknown. In this study, we treated 2-year-old spruce seedlings with methyl jasmonate (MeJA) and challenged them with the I. typographus vectored necrotrophic fungus Grosmannia penicillata. MeJA treatment reduced the extent of necrotic lesions in the bark and thus elicited IR to the fungus. The transcriptional response of spruce bark to MeJA treatment was analyzed over a 4-week time course using mRNA-seq. This analysis provided evidence that MeJA treatment induced a transient upregulation of jasmonic acid, salicylic acid and ethylene biosynthesis and downstream signaling genes. Additionally, genes encoding components of the RNA-directed DNA methylation pathway showed long-term repression, suggesting a possible role of DNA demethylation in the maintenance of MeJA-IR. These results provide new clues about the potential mechanisms underpinning long-term MeJA-IR in Norway spruce.

Detergent-mediated virus inactivation (VI) provides a valuable orthogonal strategy for viral clearance particularly for next generation continuous manufacturing. Furthermore, there exists an industry-wide need to replace the conventionally employed detergent, Triton X-100, with eco-friendly alternatives. This study provides a systematic approach to screen detergents as VI agents through the study of VI of three different enveloped viruses for monoclonal antibodies and fusion proteins. We investigated three major aspects of VI namely, the impact of VI agent on the therapeutic quality attributes, clearance of the VI agent and other impurities through subsequent chromatographic steps and lastly the efficacy of VI for the said detergent. Several quality attributes such as charge variance, oxidation, deamidation, glycosylation and aggregation were investigated. Aggregation was a key indicator of stability. Experimental and modeling data was used to decipher the mechanism and kinetics of aggregation for pH sensitive molecules by exploring worst case VI conditions. We found product aggregation and its kinetics to be driven by extrinsic factors such as detergent and protein concentration. Aggregation was also impacted by initial aggregation level as well as intrinsic factors such as the protein sequence and detergent hydrophobicity and critical micelle concentration (CMC). VI efficiency was dependent on the virus tested, duration of incubation as well as detergent CMC and concentration. Dodecyl maltopyranoside (DDM) was found to be a promising candidate for potential application in VI. Knowledge gained here on factors driving product stability and VI provides valuable insight to design, standardize and optimize conditions (concentration, duration of inactivation) for screening of detergent-mediated VI.

Environment or natural capitals provide multiple ecosystem services (ESs) and benefits to people. The approach of ecosystem service values (ESVs) describes the market values of the ecosystem products or services. The changes of ecosystem service valuation and carbon stocks significantly dropped in Ayodhya hill range (extended part of Chhota Nagpur plateau of India) due to rapid land use modification. The principal objectives of this research are (i) to determine the spatiotemporal changing pattern of ESVs through different unit values (for the year 1975, 2000 and 2021) (ii) to analyze the carbon sequestration through InVEST carbon model and (iii) to assess gross primary product (GPP) using MOD17 model. The ESVs result shows that total ESVs over Ayodhya hill range are 256.67, 258.60 and 239.78 million USD for 1975, 2000 and 2021 respectively. Total 16.90 million USD loss has been observed over the study area during the overall study period. Cropland has the highest ESVs due to its high unit values along with high proportion of area. Total 1000759 mg reduction of stored carbon has been estimated whereas a sharp decline of GPP (97.03 gC m-2 year-1) has also been observed during the research period (1975-2021). So, various integrated sustainable environmental management techniques should immediately apply over this nature based economic region for the benefits of local tribal people.

Tumor of lipomatous origin in the ovary is exceedingly rare. We report a case of incidental lipoma in the right ovary in a 41-year-old female with a contralateral borderline serous tumor. It is important to identify such isolated incidental lipoma to differentiate it from other liposarcoma and teratomatous elements.

The recent revolution in shale gas has presented opportunities for distributed manufacturing of key commodity chemicals, such as methanol, from methane. However, the conventional methane-to-methanol process is energy intensive which negatively affects the profitability and sustainability. We report an intensified process configuration that is both economically attractive and environmentally sustainable. This flowsheet is systematically discovered using the building block-based representation and optimization methodology. The new process configuration utilizes membrane-assisted reactive separations and can have as much as 190% higher total annual profit compared to a conventional configuration. Additionally, it has 57% less CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. Such drastic improvement highlights the advantages of building block-based computer-aided process intensification method.

Management of patients with acute heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) with cavo-atrial renal cancer requiring surgery on cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) and possible deep hypothermia circulatory arrest is a challenge. A staged approach using Bivalirudin, plasmapheresis, and intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) was used to preoperatively de-escalate HIT guided by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and serotonin release assay (SRA). Intraoperatively heparin was used as the anticoagulant for CPB as DHCA was likely to be used to remove the atrio-caval tumor. Heparin is effective in preventing clots in the circuit during DHCA. To prevent HIT upon re-exposure to heparin during CPB, a bolus of a Cangrelor (reversible P2Y12 platelet receptor inhibitor) was given before heparin and during CPB whilst platelet activity was monitored using platelet reactivity units (PRU). Postoperatively, to prevent recurrence of HIT, plasmapheresis was used until SRA and optical density (OD) resulted. The patient had a successful outcome.