Salaslamb8276

13) and overall survival (OS; p = 0.09). No residual disease and a high-complexity surgery significantly prolonged PFS (p  1 cm were resected.Oil palm is the most productive oilseed crop and its oil yield is seriously affected by frequent drought stress. However, little is known about the molecular responses of oil palm to drought stress. We studied the root transcriptomic responses of oil palm seedlings under 14-day drought stress. We identified 1293 differentially expressed genes (DEGs), involved in several molecular processes, including cell wall biogenesis and functions, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis and metabolisms, ion transport and homeostasis and cellular ketone metabolic process, as well as small molecule biosynthetic process. DEGs were significantly enriched into two categories hormone regulation and metabolism, as well as ABC transporters. In addition, three protein-protein interaction networks ion transport, reactive nitrogen species metabolic process and nitrate assimilation, were identified to be involved in drought stress responses. Finally, 96 differentially expressed transcription factors were detected to be associated with drought stress responses, which were classified into 28 families. These results provide not only novel insights into drought stress responses, but also valuable genomic resources to improve drought tolerance of oil palm by both genetic modification and selective breeding.The wavelet local multiple correlation (WLMC) is introduced for the first time in the study of climate dynamics inferred from multivariate climate time series. To exemplify the use of WLMC with real climate data, we analyse Last Millennium (LM) relationships among several large-scale reconstructed climate variables characterizing North Atlantic i.e. sea surface temperatures (SST) from the tropical cyclone main developmental region (MDR), the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the North Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), and tropical cyclone counts (TC). We examine the former three large-scale variables because they are known to influence North Atlantic tropical cyclone activity and because their underlying drivers are still under investigation. WLMC results obtained for these multivariate climate time series suggest that (1) MDRSST and AMO show the highest correlation with each other and with respect to the TC record over the last millennium, and (2) MDRSST is the dominant climate variable that explains TC temporal variability. WLMC results confirm that this method is able to capture the most fundamental information contained in multivariate climate time series and is suitable to investigate correlation among climate time series in a multivariate context.User-friendly phenotypic antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) methods are urgently needed in many fields including clinical medicine, epidemiological studies and drug research. Herein, we report a convenient and cost-effective phenotypic AST method based on online monitoring bacterial growth with a developed 8-channel contactless conductometric sensor (CCS). Using E. coli and V. parahaemolyticus as microorganism models, as well as enoxacin, florfenicol, ampicillin, kanamycin and sulfadiazine as antibiotic probes. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) determination was validated in comparison with standard broth microdilution (BMD) assay. The total essential agreements between the CCS AST assays and the reference BMD AST assays are 68.8-92.3%. The CCS has an approximate price of $9,000 (USD). Requiring neither chemical nor biotic auxiliary materials for the assay makes the cost of each sample  less then  $1. The MICs obtained with the automated CCS AST assays are more precise than those obtained with the manual BMD. Moreover, in 72 percent of the counterpart, the MICs obtained with the CCS AST assays are higher than that obtained with the BMD AST assays. The proposed CCS AST method has advantages in affordability, accuracy, sensitivity and user-friendliness.Outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) produced by Gram-negative bacteria have roles in cell-to-cell signaling, biofilm formation, and stress responses. Here, the effects of abiotic stressors on OMV contents and composition from biofilm cells of the plant health-promoting bacterium Pseudomonas chlororaphis O6 (PcO6) are examined. Two stressors relevant to this root-colonizing bacterium were examined CuO nanoparticles (NPs)-a potential fertilizer and fungicide- and H2O2-released from roots during plant stress responses. Atomic force microscopy revealed 40-300 nm diameter OMVs from control and stressed biofilm cells. Raman spectroscopy with linear discriminant analysis (LDA) was used to identify changes in chemical profiles of PcO6 cells and resultant OMVs according to the cellular stressor with 84.7% and 83.3% accuracies, respectively. All OMVs had higher relative concentrations of proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids than PcO6 cells. The nucleic acid concentration in OMVs exhibited a cellular stressor-dependent increase CuO NP-induced OMVs > H2O2-induced OMVs > control OMVs. Biochemical assays confirmed the presence of lipopolysaccharides, nucleic acids, and protein in OMVs; however, these assays did not discriminate OMV composition according to the cellular stressor. These results demonstrate the sensitivity of Raman spectroscopy using LDA to characterize and distinguish cellular stress effects on OMVs composition and contents.Serotonin (5-HT) and dopamine are critical neuromodulators known to regulate a range of behaviors in invertebrates and mammals, such as learning and memory. Effects of both serotonin and dopamine are mediated largely through their downstream G-protein coupled receptors through cAMP-PKA signaling. While the role of dopamine in olfactory learning in Drosophila is well described, the function of serotonin and its downstream receptors on Drosophila olfactory learning remain largely unexplored. In this study we show that the output of serotonergic neurons, possibly through points of synaptic contacts on the mushroom body (MB), is essential for training during olfactory associative learning in Drosophila larvae. Additionally, we demonstrate that the regulation of olfactory associative learning by serotonin is mediated by its downstream receptor (d5-HT7) in a cAMP-dependent manner. We show that d5-HT7 expression specifically in the MB, an anatomical structure essential for olfactory learning in Drosophila, is critical for olfactory associative learning. Importantly our work shows that spatio-temporal restriction of d5-HT7 expression to the MB is sufficient to rescue olfactory learning deficits in a d5-HT7 null larvae. In summary, our results establish a critical, and previously unknown, role of d5-HT7 in olfactory learning.Multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MDR-TB) accounts for 3.7% of new cases of TB annually worldwide and is a major threat to global public health. Due to the prevalence of the MDR-TB and extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) cases, there is an urgent need for new drugs with novel mechanisms of action. CarD, a global transcription regulator in MTB, binds RNAP and activates transcription by stabilizing the transcription initiation open-promoter complex (RPo). CarD is required for MTB viability and it has highly conserved homologues in many eubacteria. A fluorescence polarization (FP) assay which monitors the association of MTB RNAP, native rRNA promoter DNA and CarD has been developed. Overall, our objective is to identify and characterize small molecule inhibitors which block the CarD/RNAP interaction and to understand the mechanisms by which CarD interacts with the molecules. We expect that the development of a new and improved anti-TB compound with a novel mechanism of action will relieve the burden of resistance. This CarD FP assay is amenable to HTS and is an enabling tool for future novel therapeutic discovery.Pirfenidone is an antifibrotic agent that has been proven to slow down the progression of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of low-dose pirfenidone (that is, less than 1200 mg/day). We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of patients with IPF. The patients were divided into the following three groups, those who were not treated with pirfenidone (control) and those who were treated with pirfenidone at doses less then  1200 mg/day (low-dose group) and ≥ 1200 mg/day (high-dose group). The adjusted mean changes in forced vital capacity (FVC) in 1 year were - 200.7, - 88.4, and - 94.7 mL in the control, low-dose, and high-dose groups (p = 0.021). The FVC declined more significantly in the control group than in the low-dose and high-dose groups. No significant difference in FVC change was observed between the low-dose and high-dose groups. Dyspepsia, anorexia, and nausea were significantly more frequent in the low-dose than in the high-dose group, suggesting that dose reduction is attributed to gastrointestinal tract-related adverse events. Dose reduction may help patients to better control gastrointestinal tract-related adverse events; continuing taking the medication at low doses is also expected to be effective in reducing the FVC decline.It is well known that periodontitis, diagnosed mainly by periodontal probing, is associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes. However, periodontal probing is time-consuming, highly discomforting, inaccurate, and invasive. We aimed to assess whether periodontitis severity based on radiological staging in accordance with the 2017 new consensus classification was related to adverse pregnancy and neonatal outcomes. The medical records of 165 mothers who underwent panoramic radiography within 5 years before and after the time of delivery and of their singleton neonates were retrospectively reviewed. Twenty-two mothers (13.3%) had severe periodontitis (SP), and 143 (86.7%) had mild or moderate periodontitis (MP). In relation to adverse pregnancy outcomes, uterine leiomyoma (18.2% vs. 4.2%, P = 0.029), chronic hypertension (9.1% vs. 0.7%, P = 0.047), and preeclampsia (13.6% vs. 2.1%, P = 0.032) occurred significantly more frequently in the SP group than in the MP group. The incidences of very preterm birth (13.6% vs. 1.4%, P = 0.017), extremely preterm birth (9.1% vs. 0.7%, P = 0.047), and small for gestational age (22.7% vs. 5.6%, P = 0.017) were also significantly higher in the SP group than in the MP group. Radiological screening of maternal periodontitis could be useful for predicting adverse pregnancy and neonatal outcomes as well as diagnosing SP in pregnant women.Grape phylloxera (Daktulosphaira vitifoliae) is a destructive insect pest of grapevines that is highly invasive worldwide, despite strict biosecurity containment measures in place at farm and regional levels. Current phylloxera identification by visual inspection and laboratory-based molecular methods is time-consuming and costly. More rapid and cost-effective methods for identification of this pest would benefit industry, growers, and biosecurity services. Loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) is a new portable technology available for rapid and accurate in-field molecular diagnostics. This study outlines the development of a new LAMP assay to enable the identification of phylloxera specimens. New LAMP primers were developed to specifically amplify phylloxera mitochondrial DNA (5'-COI), which we have shown is effective as a DNA barcode for identification of phylloxera, using LAMP technology. Positive LAMP reactions, containing phylloxera DNA, amplified in less than twelve minutes with an anneal derivative temperature of approximately 79 °C to 80 °C compared to a newly designed synthetic DNA (gBlock) fragment which had an anneal derivative temperature of 82 °C.