Mcleoddalgaard8018

Within these clades, many different types of traits have evolved, and many types appear to have evolved repeatedly. By contrast, other major arthropod and chordate clades appear to lack all or most trait types, and similar patterns are repeated at smaller phylogenetic scales (e.g. within insects). Although most research on sexual selection focuses on female choice, we find similar numbers of traits (among sampled species) are involved in male contests (44%) and female choice (55%). Overall, these patterns are largely unexplained and unexplored, as are many other fundamental questions about the evolution of these traits. We suggest that understanding the diversity of sexually selected traits may require a shift towards macroevolutionary studies at relatively deep timescales (e.g. tens to hundreds of millions of years ago). © 2020 Cambridge Philosophical Society.Despite growing concern over socioeconomic inequality in health, few studies have focused on health inequality among older adults. The present study examined the independent and joint effects of socioeconomic status (SES) and family functioning on mental health and subjective well-being and explored the gender differences in such relations. Representative survey data on older adults (N = 1,432) were drawn from the third wave of the Hong Kong Panel Study of Social Dynamics conducted in 2015. Descriptive analyses and ordinary least-squares regressions were conducted for data analysis. The results demonstrate that receipt of means-tested welfare payments was associated with more severe mental distress and lower life satisfaction; living in private (as opposed to public or subsidised) housing was associated with better mental health; whereas holding investments and larger residence size were related to higher life satisfaction. Moreover, greater family functioning predicted better mental health and greater subjective well-being and mitigated the detrimental effects of low SES. Gender differences were observed concerning the effects of different predictors. The findings could inform the development of health-promotion services sensitive to gender and socioeconomic differences and facilitate integration of individual- and family-level services for older adults. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.The purposes of this study were to describe the hypertensive population and therapeutic management of hypertension in adults between 18 and 74 years of age in France in 2015. Esteban survey is a cross-sectional survey with a clinical examination conducted in a representative sample of French adults aged 18-74 years between 2014 and 2016. Esteban was entirely public-funded. Blood pressure (BP) was measured during clinical examination with a standardized protocol, and pharmacological treatment was collected through the exhaustive Système National des Données de Santé (SNDS) database. Hypertension was defined by systolic BP (SBP)> 140 mm Hg, diastolic BP (DBP)> 90 mm Hg or treatment with BP-lowering drugs. The therapeutic control of treated hypertensive patients was defined by SBP  less then  140 mm Hg and DBP  less then  90 mm Hg. Adherence to drug treatment was defined as more than 80% of days covered by BP-lowering drug per year. The prevalence of hypertension was 31.3%. 74.7% of aware hypertensive participants taking an antihypertensive drug, and 57.7% of them were treated with a single antihypertensive pharmacological class. Overall, among hypertensives, 24.3% had a satisfactory BP control. Only 49.7% of treated hypertensives participants were controlled, and 33.6% of them were adherent to their drug treatment. The prevalence of hypertension in France remains high, with only 74.7% of the aware hypertensive participants receiving pharmacological therapy and only 48.9% of aware hypertensives with a BP at goal. More effective measures are needed to improve clinical management of hypertension in France. © 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.OBJECTIVES There is a long-standing interest in developing nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) antagonists for concomitant use with nAChR agonists (e.g., nicotine replacement) as complementary smoking cessation aids. Previous studies demonstrate that daily nicotine treatment confers tolerance to some effects of nicotine, as well as cross-tolerance to other nAChR agonists. The current study assessed the extent to which antagonism of nicotine varies as a function of daily nicotine treatment. METHODS Schedule-controlled responding and hypothermia were selected for study because they have been previously used to examine the pharmacology of nicotine, and both are sensitive to the development nicotine tolerance. The rate-decreasing and hypothermic effects of nicotine, as well as antagonism of those effects, were examined in C57BL/6J mice before, during treatment with, and after discontinuation of three daily injections of 1.78 mg/kg nicotine. The nonselective nAChR antagonist mecamylamine and the β2 nAChR antasubtypes. The decreased capacity of mecamylamine and DHβE to antagonize nicotine during chronic nicotine treatment may indicate that their effectiveness as smoking cessations might vary as a function of nicotine tolerance and dependence. © 2020 The Authors. Brain and Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Renal artery stenosis (RAS) is the most common cause of secondary hypertension, via increases in plasma renin-angiotensin-aldosterone levels. Renal artery stenosis is diagnosed from blood examinations such as renin activity and from imaging examinations such as sonography. Patients are required to lie on the bed for 30 min before and during phlebotomy, since plasma renin activity is easily altered by posture. However, no such pre-examination rest is required for sonography. The present study therefore investigated the possible influence of resting before examination on Doppler parameters used for the diagnosis of RAS. Subjects comprised 55 healthy young adults (24 males, 31 females; mean age, 22 ± 1 years). Sonographic measurements were made shortly after subjects entered the examination room and again after 30 min of rest lying on a bed. Median peak systolic velocity in the renal artery was significantly decreased after rest (106 cm/s, interquartile range (IQR) 96-121 cm/s) compared with before rest (120 cm/s, IQR 107-135 cm/s; p  less then  .001). Median acceleration time in the intra-renal segmental artery was also significantly shorter after rest (49 ms, IQR 38-54 ms) compared to before rest (50 ms, IQR 38-59 ms; p = .039). The present results suggest that serious consideration should be given regarding whether pre-examination resting is needed to accurately interpret Doppler measurements of renal blood flow when diagnosing RAS from sonography. © 2020 Scandinavian Society of Clinical Physiology and Nuclear Medicine. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Therapy of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has been a difficult task in the medical field. There is a great clinical need for more effective treatments for IBD. Herein, a targeted oral delivery system of yeast glucan particles (YGPs) carrying a clinically used anti-inflammatory drug methotrexate (MTX) to the inflamed sites in IBD mice for therapy is reported. In the findings, MTX is effectively loaded into YGPs through re-precipitation followed by gelation reaction of alginate to obtain the composite YGPs/MTX, which are internalized into RAW264.7 macrophage cells through dectin-1 and CR3 receptors. Furthermore, YGPs/MTX can suppress the proliferation of macrophage cells efficiently, leading to down-regulation of pro-inflammatory cytokines induced by lipopolysaccharides. Additionally, YGPs accumulate in the inflammation site of colitis mice, enabling YGPs/MTX to target the inflammatory site, significantly improve the efficacy of MTX, and reduce the cytotoxicity of MTX. Therefore, the YGPs-based drug delivery system provides a new strategy for MTX application in the clinical treatment of IBD. © 2020 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.BACKGROUND Invasive group A streptococcal (iGAS) infections are increasing worldwide with at risk groups being children, pregnant women and the elderly. In 2017, there was a rise in iGAS cases in Victoria, prompting a Chief Health Officer advisory. AIMS To describe the characteristics of patients with GAS bacteraemia admitted to a tertiary hospital. To compare at risk groups in our population with those identified in the Victorian Government health alert. METHODS Retrospective review of patients with GAS bacteremia admitted between June 2014 and December 2017 at a tertiary hospital in Melbourne, Victoria. RESULTS Forty-three cases of GAS bacteraemia occurred. Average age was 52 years (range 15-88 years) with 63% male. Average length of stay was 14 days (range 0-72 days) and all-cause mortality occurred in two cases (5%). Twelve patients (28%) presented with shock, 11 (26%) required intensive care unit admission and 13 (30%) surgical intervention. A history of intravenous drug use was documented in 18 cases (42%) and were commonly complicated by bone or joint involvement or thrombosis. Typing of GAS samples identified 22 different emm-types. CONCLUSION GAS bacteraemia resulted in significant morbidity and prolonged hospitalisation. In contrast to the at-risk groups identified in the Victorian Government health advisory, the commonest risk group in this series were people who inject drugs and most commonly middle-aged men. Invasive GAS should be considered if a person who injects drugs presents with acute severe sepsis. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.Meta-analyses based on systematic literature reviews are commonly used to obtain a quantitative summary of the available evidence on a given topic. BAY 2402234 nmr However, the reliability of any meta-analysis is constrained by that of its constituent studies. One major limitation is the possibility of small-study effects, when estimates from smaller and larger studies differ systematically. Small-study effects may result from reporting biases (ie, publication bias), from inadequacies of the included studies that are related to study size, or from reasons unrelated to bias. We propose two estimators based on the median and mode to increase the reliability of findings in a meta-analysis by mitigating the influence of small-study effects. By re-examining data from published meta-analyses and by conducting a simulation study, we show that these estimators offer robustness to a range of plausible bias mechanisms, without making explicit modelling assumptions. They are also robust to outlying studies without explicitly removing such studies from the analysis. When meta-analyses are suspected to be at risk of bias because of small-study effects, we recommend reporting the mean, median and modal pooled estimates. © 2020 The Authors. Research Synthesis Methods published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.We present Mothulity-a novel interface for Mothur, a well-established tool for 16S/ITS biodiversity analysis. Although Mothur is a well-documented and virtually complete software suite, its proper execution might be challenging for first-time users, and editing the Mothur batch scripts is time consuming even for experienced users. Mothur produces little to no graphical output, leaving the generation of plots to the user. Mothulity minimizes the chance of human error through a minimalistic yet powerful interface, with most of the analysis parameters predefined or adjusted automatically. Time spent on running the analysis is drastically reduced, since Mothulity produces an HTML report with publication-quality figures. Finally, Mothulity can be conveniently used with the SLURM workload manager, and is thereby suitable for a range of computing facilities. © 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Basic Protocol 1 Standard operational procedure (SOP) Basic Protocol 2 Generating report on pre-processed data.