Abstract
The influence of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) in the emerging South Atlantic region during the late Aptian (Early Cretaceous) is reflected in the spatio-temporal distribution of ...plant communities recorded in eight Brazilian sedimentary basins. The distribution of the bioclimatic groups of hygrophytes, hydrophytes, tropical lowland flora, upland flora, and xerophytes was quantified using pollen and spores. A predominance of xerophytes from the tropical xerophytic shrubland biome characterized the pre-evaporitic, evaporitic, and post-evaporitic paleoclimatic phases, in particular the evaporitic phase. The region experienced humidity events in the pre-evaporitic and post- evaporitic phases, especially near the paleoequator, where the tropical rainforest biome with two phytophysiognomies (lowland and montane rainforests) prevailed. Increasing humidity had a positive effect on plant diversity.
The late Aptian (Early Cretaceous) is a crucial time interval for understanding the paleoceanographic changes in the Southern Hemisphere. Oceanographic changes in the emerging South Atlantic Ocean ...during this interval are reflected in the stratigraphic distribution of dinoflagellate communities recorded in the Muribeca and Riachuelo formations of the Sergipe Basin in northeastern Brazil. The Subtilisphaera community, in the lower and middle parts of the section, appears to be related to the Subtilisphaera Ecozone and suggests the onset of Tethyan influence in the central South Atlantic, in a restricted to inner‐neritic environment. The succeeding Spiniferites community, in the middle part of the section, represents the first significant transgression, probably of eustatic origin. The Cyclonephelium‐Exochosphaeridium community, in the upper part of the section, appears to be related to an oceanic event characterized by intermittent dysoxic‐anoxic conditions. The uppermost part of the section is dominated by the Spiniferites community, related to a progressive regional transgression and culminating in an open‐marine, fully Tethyan environment in the central part of the widening South Atlantic.
Key Points
Upper Aptian samples from the South Atlantic Ocean are examined
Three dinocyst communities identified in late Aptian
The oceanographic fluctuations is matched by the changes in dinocyst communities
Abstract
Zinc oxide (ZnO) is the most widely used activator in the rubber industry; however, there is growing concern about its use as it can become toxic to the environment, particularly in aquatic ...systems. This study describes the synthesis of magnesium oxide (MgO) assisted by the
Alpinia zerumbet
extract, which is then used as an activator in the replacement of ZnO to vulcanize nitrile rubber (NBR) containing 33% and 45% acrylonitrile (ACN). The
t
90
for NBR‐33% and NBR‐45% are 20 and 15 min, respectively. This indicates a reduction of 5 min in
t
90
with an increase in ACN. In comparison, ZnO‐activated NBR compounds exhibit the opposite trend, with
t
90
increasing from 10 for NBR‐33% to 19 min for NBR‐45%. Furthermore, the decrease in activation energy (
E
a
) with the increase in conversion for 33%‐MgO and 45%‐MgO indicates that vulcanization with MgO is a complex process. This behavior is comparable to that of 45%‐ZnO, but not for 33%‐ZnO because its
E
a
remains oscillating at 80–90 kJ mol
−1
in the entire conversion range. The crosslink densities of 33%‐MgO and 45%‐MgO are 5.87 and 4.78 mol cm
−3
, respectively. These values are slightly higher than those for 33%‐ZnO (5.77 mol cm
−3
) and 45%‐ZnO (4.38 mol cm
−3
).
Objective:The authors examined the prospective relationship between physical activity and incident depression and explored potential moderators.Method:Prospective cohort studies evaluating incident ...depression were searched from database inception through Oct. 18, 2017, on PubMed, PsycINFO, Embase, and SPORTDiscus. Demographic and clinical data, data on physical activity and depression assessments, and odds ratios, relative risks, and hazard ratios with 95% confidence intervals were extracted. Random-effects meta-analyses were conducted, and the potential sources of heterogeneity were explored. Methodological quality was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale.Results:A total of 49 unique prospective studies (N=266,939; median proportion of males across studies, 47%) were followed up for 1,837,794 person-years. Compared with people with low levels of physical activity, those with high levels had lower odds of developing depression (adjusted odds ratio=0.83, 95% CI=0.79, 0.88; I2=0.00). Furthermore, physical activity had a protective effect against the emergence of depression in youths (adjusted odds ratio=0.90, 95% CI=0.83, 0.98), in adults (adjusted odds ratio=0.78, 95% CI=0.70, 0.87), and in elderly persons (adjusted odds ratio=0.79, 95% CI=0.72, 0.86). Protective effects against depression were found across geographical regions, with adjusted odds ratios ranging from 0.65 to 0.84 in Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania, and against increased incidence of positive screen for depressive symptoms (adjusted odds ratio=0.84, 95% CI=0.79, 0.89) or major depression diagnosis (adjusted odds ratio=0.86, 95% CI=0.75, 0.98). No moderators were identified. Results were consistent for unadjusted odds ratios and for adjusted and unadjusted relative risks/hazard ratios. Overall study quality was moderate to high (Newcastle-Ottawa Scale score, 6.3). Although significant publication bias was found, adjusting for this did not change the magnitude of the associations.Conclusions:Available evidence supports the notion that physical activity can confer protection against the emergence of depression regardless of age and geographical region.
There is an increasing use of the procedure, anatomical endoscopic enucleation of the prostate, as an alternative to conventional transurethral resection of prostate for surgical treatment of benign ...prostatic hyperplasia. However, barriers to adoption of this procedure remain and no prior studies explored this important aspect till date. The aim of this study is to identify the predictors and barriers of surgeon‐related practices in this area. The study findings may also provide valuable insight into current practice trends worldwide. To achieve the objectives, we conducted an online, cross‐sectional, questionnaire‐based study between 1st September 2019 and 5th October 2019 to investigate the knowledge, attitudes and practices among urologists worldwide. Our findings showed that the main barriers for adoption of the procedure were lack of mentorship, a steep learning curve, and unavailability of morcellator, bipolar or laser energy sources. Fear of urinary incontinence, bleeding and bladder injury were not major hindrance to adoption of this technique. The results also demonstrated that there will be continued increase in utility of the procedure in the future.
We investigated the regenerative capacity of intravenous administration of bone marrow-derived mononuclear cells (BMMCs) in a rat model of bilateral renal ischemia/reperfusion (IR) injury and the ...involvement of inflammatory anti-inflammatory and other biological markers in this process.
Rats were subjected to 1h bilateral renal pedicle clamping. BMMCs were injected i.v 1h after reperfusion and tracked by 99mTc and GFP+ BMMCs. Twenty-four hours after reperfusion, renal function and histological changes were evaluated. The mRNA (real time PCR) and protein (ELISA and immuno-staining) expression of biological markers were analyzed.
Renal function and structure improved after infusion of BMMCs in the IR group (IR-C). Labeled BMMCs were found in the kidneys after therapy. The expression of inflammatory and biological markers (TLR-2, TRL-4, RAGE, IL-17, HMGB-1, KIM-1) were reduced and the expression of anti-inflammatory and antioxidant markers (IL-10, Nrf2, and HO-1) were increased in IR-C animals compared with IR untreated animals (IR-S). The apoptotic index diminished and the proliferation index increased in IR-C compared with IR-S.
The results contribute to our understanding of the role of different biological players in morphofunctional renal improvement and cytoprotection in a post-ischemic reperfusion kidney injury model subjected to cellular therapy.
This paper presents variable-wise kernel hard clustering algorithms in the feature space in which dissimilarity measures are obtained as sums of squared distances between patterns and centroids ...computed individually for each variable by means of kernels. The methods proposed in this paper are supported by the fact that a kernel function can be written as a sum of kernel functions evaluated on each variable separately. The main advantage of this approach is that it allows the use of adaptive distances, which are suitable to learn the weights of the variables on each cluster, providing a better performance. Moreover, various partition and cluster interpretation tools are introduced. Experiments with synthetic and benchmark datasets show the usefulness of the proposed algorithms and the merit of the partition and cluster interpretation tools.
•The paper gives kernel-based hard clustering algorithms in the feature space.•The algorithms learn a relevance weight for each variable.•Partition and cluster interpretation tools are given.•Applications on synthetic and real datasets corroborate the proposed algorithms.
BACKGROUND:The authors hypothesized that low tidal volume (VT) would minimize ventilator-induced lung injury regardless of the degree of mechanical power. The authors investigated the impact of ...power, obtained by different combinations of VT and respiratory rate (RR), on ventilator-induced lung injury in experimental mild acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).
METHODS:Forty Wistar rats received Escherichia coli lipopolysaccharide intratracheally. After 24 h, 32 rats were randomly assigned to be mechanically ventilated (2 h) with a combination of different VT (6 ml/kg and 11 ml/kg) and RR that resulted in low and high power. Power was calculated as energy (ΔP,L/E,L) × RR (ΔP,L = transpulmonary driving pressure; E,L = lung elastance), and was threefold higher in high than in low power groups. Eight rats were not mechanically ventilated and used for molecular biology analysis.
RESULTS:Diffuse alveolar damage score, which represents the severity of edema, atelectasis, and overdistension, was increased in high VT compared to low VT, in both low (low VT11 9 to 14, high VT18 15 to 20) and high (low VT19 16 to 25, high VT29 27 to 30) power groups. At high VT, interleukin-6 and amphiregulin expressions were higher in high-power than in low-power groups. At high power, amphiregulin and club cell protein 16 expressions were higher in high VT than in low VT. Mechanical energy and power correlated well with diffuse alveolar damage score and interleukin-6, amphiregulin, and club cell protein 16 expression.
CONCLUSIONS:In experimental mild ARDS, even at low VT, high mechanical power promoted ventilator-induced lung injury. To minimize ventilator-induced lung injury, low VT should be combined with low power.
In this manuscript, a method for designing Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy discrete-time regulators based on linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) is proposed to control the variation of the knee joint angle ...movement of paraplegic patients through electrical stimulation. A simple method for discretizing nonlinear systems described by T-S fuzzy models is used. The control strategy is applied for a paraplegic volunteer and a healthy one. The results and analysis show that the controlled system attended the design specifications for small values of the sample time considered for the discretization.
The retina is the sensory tissue responsible for the first stages of visual processing, with a conserved anatomy and functional architecture among vertebrates. To date, retinal eye diseases, such as ...diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, glaucoma, and others, affect nearly 170 million people worldwide, resulting in vision loss and blindness. To tackle retinal disorders, the developing retina has been explored as a versatile model to study intercellular signaling, as it presents a broad neurochemical repertoire that has been approached in the last decades in terms of signaling and diseases. Retina, dissociated and arranged as typical cultures, as mixed or neuron- and glia-enriched, and/or organized as neurospheres and/or as organoids, are valuable to understand both neuronal and glial compartments, which have contributed to revealing roles and mechanisms between transmitter systems as well as antioxidants, trophic factors, and extracellular matrix proteins. Overall, contributions in understanding neurogenesis, tissue development, differentiation, connectivity, plasticity, and cell death are widely described. A complete access to the genome of several vertebrates, as well as the recent transcriptome at the single cell level at different stages of development, also anticipates future advances in providing cues to target blinding diseases or retinal dysfunctions.
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