Mattinglybank6224

PURPOSE To introduce an assessment tool (rubric) for evaluating ophthalmology residents' competency in pterygium surgery. METHODS A panel of experienced international surgeons collaborated and developed the rubric. After describing various stages of the procedure, the Dreyfus scale of skill acquisition was used for scoring each stage. After finalizing the rubric, two surgeons independently evaluated 20 masked pterygium surgery videos of 10 residents and scored the videos according to the rubric. The agreement between the scores of them was examined with the intra-class correlation coefficient test. RESULTS This rubric divides pterygium surgery into 13 different stages and covers the two most common techniques of pterygium surgery; conjunctival autograft and amniotic membrane transplant. The rubric showed face and content validity. Overall, an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.90 (95% confidence interval 0.76-0.96, P  less then  0.001) was achieved between the two surgeons. The residents scored significantly higher on surgeries performed later in their rotation compared to the earlier surgeries (4.32 ± 0.35 vs 3.96 ± 0.31, P = 0.006). Certain stages of pterygium surgery were more strongly correlated with the residents' past pterygium surgical experience. CONCLUSION This study introduces an international rubric for assessing competency in pterygium surgery. In addition to face and content validity, this rubric shows high inter-rater reliability. This may be a useful tool for teaching and measuring competency in pterygium surgery. Members of sox gene family play critical roles in development, and some of them has crucial functions in sexual dimorphism. To understand the role of two SoxB2 genes, Sox14b and Sox21 of mud crab Scylla paramamosain, the full-length 1939 bp SpSox14b cDNA sequence and 861 bp SpSox21 cDNA sequence were obtained from the crab's transcriptome database, which encode 397 and 259 amino acids respectively. The results of sq-PCR showed that SpSox14b was expressed in all tissues, while SpSox21 was only expressed in the testis and brain. qRT-PCR showed that the expression level of SpSox14b in ovary was significantly higher than that of testis, and during the gonad development its expression was the highest in O2 (previtellogenesis) stage. The expression level of SpSox21 in testis was much higher than in brain, and was significantly higher in T3 (the mature sperm stage) than in other stages of testis development. Meanwhile, in different stages of larval development, SpSox21 was low expressed in zoea, then increased significantly in megalopa. Therefore we speculated that SpSox14b and SpSox21 may play different roles in the gonad development of mud crab, especially SpSox21 may be involved in the development and maintenance of testis. The expression level of SpSox14b and SpSox21 during the eye-pigment formation was significantly higher than that in other embryonic development stages, the results of whole-mount in situ hybridization showed that SpSox14b and SpSox21 were mainly located near the head and the compound eyes in eye-pigment formation stage and hatching. It suggested that they may be involved in the formation of brain nerves and are related to the regulation of body segments, and play different roles in sexual dimorphism. V.The aoudad or Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia) is a threatened ungulate emblematic of North Africa, whose population structure and subspecific taxonomy have not been examined genetically. This knowledge is essential and urgently needed to inform ongoing conservation and management efforts. We analysed the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene and four nuclear genes (casein kappa, spectrin beta nonerythrocytic 1, thyroglobulin, thyrotropin subunit beta) for the first phylogeographic survey of the aoudad, and uncovered a deep Mediterranean-Saharan mitochondrial split separating two highly distinct evolutionary lineages. Their level of divergence is greater than or comparable to those observed between several pairs of congeneric species of different caprine genera. The split was estimated to have occurred in the Early Pleistocene, about 1.3 million years ago. None of the four nuclear genes surveyed, chosen because they have been used in phylogeographic and species-level phylogenetic studies of bovids, allowed us to detect, likely due to their slow evolutionary rate, the substantial and geographically coherent subdivision revealed by mitochondrial DNA. This study is evidence and testament to the ability of mitochondrial DNA, probably unrivalled by any other single-locus marker, as an exploratory tool for investigating population genealogy and history and identifying potential evolutionarily significant units for conservation in animals. OBJECTIVE Overweight and obesity are major risk factors for Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM), cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer. Genetic predisposition has been shown to play a key role in obesity, and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified multiple loci linked with obesity in various ethnic groups. The aim of this study was to validate the reported genetic variants associated with obesity and overweight in a young UAE Arab population. METHODS Twenty-two associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) at 11 loci (FTO, MC4R, TMEM18, KCTD15, MTCH2, SH2B1, TFAP2B, GNPDA2, NEGR1, PCSK1 and BDNF) were studied in 392 controls and 318 overweight/obese young Emiratis (aged 18-35 years). RESULTS After adjusting for age and smoking, rs3751812 of the FTO gene was associated with overweight/obesity in male participants (p-value  less then  0.016), while SNPs rs17782313, rs571312 of the MC4R gene and rs12463617 of the TMEM18 gene were significantly associated with overweight/obesity in female particve a modifying effect on the risk of overweight/obesity caused by the rs3751812. Population-specific, sex-specific genetic profiling is important in understanding the heritability of obesity. Hereditary cerebellar degenerations are severe and complex diseases for which there is currently no effective causal treatment. A hopeful method could be the support of plasticity or neurotransplantation. However, there are still many unknown aspects which could influence the outcome of treatment. VIT-2763 research buy As neurotrophic factors are essential in neuroplasticity and neuronal integration, potential abnormalities in their levels could be involved in the pathogenesis of the disease and would possibly explain the unsuitability of diseased cerebellum for the graft integration. The aim of this study was to identify and compare basal levels of trophic factors BDNF and GDNF in the cerebellum in two mouse models of cerebellar degeneration - Lurcher and pcd. Basal levels of BDNF in the cerebellum have been shown to be lower in both mutant models than in healthy controls. However, the GDNF levels were surprisingly increased in the cerebella of Lurcher mutant mice compared to both wild type and pcd mice. In addition, a different distribution of GFAP-positive cells in the cerebellum was revealed in Lurcher mice.