Key message
A large association panel of 836 maize inbreds revealed a broader genetic diversity of cold tolerance, as predominantly favorable QTL with small effects were identified, indicating that ...genomic selection is the most promising option for breeding maize for cold tolerance.
Maize (
Zea mays
L.) has limited cold tolerance, and breeding for cold tolerance is a noteworthy bottleneck for reaching the high potential of maize production in temperate areas. In this study, we evaluate a large panel of 836 maize inbred lines to detect genetic loci and candidate genes for cold tolerance at the germination and seedling stages. Genetic variation for cold tolerance was larger than in previous reports with moderately high heritability for most traits. We identified 187 significant single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that were integrated into 159 quantitative trait loci (QTL) for emergence and traits related to early growth. Most of the QTL have small effects and are specific for each environment, with the majority found under control conditions. Favorable alleles are more frequent in 120 inbreds including all germplasm groups, but mainly from Minnesota and Spain. Therefore, there is a large, potentially novel, genetic variability in the germplasm groups represented by these inbred lines. Most of the candidate genes are involved in metabolic processes and intracellular membrane-bounded organelles. We expect that further evaluations of germplasm with broader genetic diversity could identify additional favorable alleles for cold tolerance. However, it is not likely that further studies will find favorable alleles with large effects for improving cold tolerance in maize.
The ENMTools software package was introduced in 2008 as a platform for making measurements on environmental niche models (ENMs, frequently referred to as species distribution models or SDMs), and for ...using those measurements in the context of newly developed Monte Carlo tests to evaluate hypotheses regarding niche evolution. Additional functionality was later added for model selection and simulation from ENMs, and the software package has been quite widely used. ENMTools was initially implemented as a Perl script, which was also compiled into an executable file for various platforms. However, the package had a number of significant limitations; it was only designed to fit models using Maxent, it relied on a specific Perl distribution to function, and its internal structure made it difficult to maintain and expand. Subsequently, the R programming language became the platform of choice for most ENM studies, making ENMTools less usable for many practitioners. Here we introduce a new R version of ENMTools that implements much of the functionality of its predecessor as well as numerous additions that simplify the construction, comparison and evaluation of niche models. These additions include new metrics for model fit, methods of measuring ENM overlap, and methods for testing evolutionary hypotheses. The new version of ENMTools is also designed to work within the expanding universe of R tools for ecological biogeography, and as such includes greatly simplified interfaces for analyses from several other R packages.
This phase III trial compared the efficacy and safety of albumin-bound paclitaxel (nab-paclitaxel) plus carboplatin with solvent-based paclitaxel (sb-paclitaxel) plus carboplatin in advanced ...non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
In all, 1,052 untreated patients with stage IIIB to IV NSCLC were randomly assigned 1:1 to receive 100 mg/m(2) nab-paclitaxel weekly and carboplatin at area under the concentration-time curve (AUC) 6 once every 3 weeks (nab-PC) or 200 mg/m(2) sb-paclitaxel plus carboplatin AUC 6 once every 3 weeks (sb-PC). The primary end point was objective overall response rate (ORR).
On the basis of independent assessment, nab-PC demonstrated a significantly higher ORR than sb-PC (33% v 25%; response rate ratio, 1.313; 95% CI, 1.082 to 1.593; P = .005) and in patients with squamous histology (41% v 24%; response rate ratio, 1.680; 95% CI, 1.271 to 2.221; P < .001). nab-PC was as effective as sb-PC in patients with nonsquamous histology (ORR, 26% v 25%; P = .808). There was an approximately 10% improvement in progression-free survival (median, 6.3 v 5.8 months; hazard ratio HR, 0.902; 95% CI, 0.767 to 1.060; P = .214) and overall survival (OS; median, 12.1 v 11.2 months; HR, 0.922; 95% CI, 0.797 to 1.066; P = .271) in the nab-PC arm versus the sb-PC arm, respectively. Patients ≥ 70 years old and those enrolled in North America showed a significantly increased OS with nab-PC versus sb-PC. Significantly less grade ≥ 3 neuropathy, neutropenia, arthralgia, and myalgia occurred in the nab-PC arm, and less thrombocytopenia and anemia occurred in the sb-PC arm.
The administration of nab-PC as first-line therapy in patients with advanced NSCLC was efficacious and resulted in a significantly improved ORR versus sb-PC, achieving the primary end point. nab-PC produced less neuropathy than sb-PC.
The trial objectives were to identify the maximum-tolerated dose (MTD) of first-line gemcitabine plus nab-paclitaxel in metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma and to provide efficacy and safety data. ...Additional objectives were to evaluate positron emission tomography (PET) scan response, secreted protein acidic and rich in cysteine (SPARC), and CA19-9 levels in relation to efficacy. Subsequent preclinical studies investigated the changes involving the pancreatic stroma and drug uptake.
Patients with previously untreated advanced pancreatic cancer were treated with 100, 125, or 150 mg/m(2) nab-paclitaxel followed by gemcitabine 1,000 mg/m(2) on days 1, 8, and 15 every 28 days. In the preclinical study, mice were implanted with human pancreatic cancers and treated with study agents.
A total of 20, 44, and three patients received nab-paclitaxel at 100, 125, and 150 mg/m(2), respectively. The MTD was 1,000 mg/m(2) of gemcitabine plus 125 mg/m(2) of nab-paclitaxel once a week for 3 weeks, every 28 days. Dose-limiting toxicities were sepsis and neutropenia. At the MTD, the response rate was 48%, with 12.2 median months of overall survival (OS) and 48% 1-year survival. Improved OS was observed in patients who had a complete metabolic response on (18)Ffluorodeoxyglucose PET. Decreases in CA19-9 levels were correlated with increased response rate, progression-free survival, and OS. SPARC in the stroma, but not in the tumor, was correlated with improved survival. In mice with human pancreatic cancer xenografts, nab-paclitaxel alone and in combination with gemcitabine depleted the desmoplastic stroma. The intratumoral concentration of gemcitabine was increased by 2.8-fold in mice receiving nab-paclitaxel plus gemcitabine versus those receiving gemcitabine alone.
The regimen of nab-paclitaxel plus gemcitabine has tolerable adverse effects with substantial antitumor activity, warranting phase III evaluation.
Key message
We identify the largest amount of QTLs for cold tolerance in maize; mainly associated with photosynthetic efficiency, which opens new possibilities for genomic selection for cold ...tolerance in maize.
Breeding for cold tolerance in maize is an important objective in temperate areas. The objective was to carry out a highly efficient study of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for cold tolerance in maize. We evaluated 406 recombinant inbred lines from a multi-parent advanced generation intercross (MAGIC) population in a growth chamber under cold and control conditions, and in the field at early and normal sowing. We recorded cold tolerance-related traits, including the number of days from sowing to emergence, chlorophyll content and maximum quantum efficiency of photosystem II (
F
v
/
F
m
). Association mapping was based on genotyping with near one million single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. We found 858 SNPs significantly associated with all traits, most of them under cold conditions and early sowing. Most QTLs were associated with chlorophyll and
F
v
/
F
m
. Many candidate genes coincided between the current research and previous reports. These results suggest that (1) the MAGIC population is an efficient tool for identifying QTLs for cold tolerance; (2) most QTLs for cold tolerance were associated with
F
v
/
F
m
; (3) most of these QTLs were located in specific genomic regions, particularly bin 10.04; (4) the current study allows genetically improving cold tolerance with genome-wide selection.
This work presents an alternative method to represent documents based on LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) and how it affects to classification algorithms, in comparison to common text ...representation. LDA assumes that each document deals with a set of predefined topics, which are distributions over an entire vocabulary. Our main objective is to use the probability of a document belonging to each topic to implement a new text representation model. This proposed technique is deployed as an extension of the Weka software as a new filter. To demonstrate its performance, the created filter is tested with different classifiers such as a Support Vector Machine (SVM), k-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN), and Naive Bayes in different documental corpora (OHSUMED, Reuters-21578, 20Newsgroup, Yahoo! Answers, YELP Polarity, and TREC Genomics 2015). Then, it is compared with the Bag of Words (BoW) representation technique. Results suggest that the application of our proposed filter achieves similar accuracy as BoW but greatly improves classification processing times.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Complicated appendicitis is a common cause of morbidity in children. Studies have analyzed the risk factors in the surgical treatment of this pathology, including obesity and disease severity, but ...not operative time (OT). We hypothesize that OT is independently associated with increased morbidity for children with complicated appendicitis.
Data were extracted from the 2018 and 2019 National Surgical Quality Improvement Program–Pediatrics data sets. Patients aged 2-18 y who underwent laparoscopic appendectomy for complicated appendicitis were identified. Patient demographics, disease severity, and operative details were evaluated. Surgical site infections (SSIs), hospital length of stay (LOS), ≤30-d readmissions and reoperations, interventional radiologic drain (IR-drain) placement, pneumonia, and death were analyzed. Logistic and linear regression analyses were performed.
A total of 8168 patients were analyzed, with a mean age of 9.96 ± 3.9 y and a mean weight of 41.2 ± 21.2 kg. The mean OT was 55.8 ± 24.9 min, with a mean LOS of 5.15 ± 3.37 d. For every 1-min increase in OT, there was an independently associated increase in the likelihood of any SSI (odds ratio OR = 1.01; 95% confidence interval CI 1.008-1.013), superficial SSI (OR = 1.01; 95% CI 1.004-1.020), organ-space SSI (OR = 1.01; 95% CI 1.008-1.013), IR-drain placement (OR = 1.01; 95% CI 1.008-1.013), and readmission (OR = 1.004; 95% CI 1.000-1.007).
Prolonged OT is independently associated with greater likelihood of any SSI, superficial SSI, organ-space SSI, IR-drain placement, readmission and reoperation within 30 d, and longer hospital LOS. There is a need to determine modifiable factors that prolong OT to aid in the optimization of routine operations to reduce patient morbidity.
•Prolonged operative time is linked to morbidity in various cohorts and procedures.•Ruptured appendicitis is a common pathology in children.•Using NSQIP-P, impact of laparoscopic operative time (OT) on morbidity was analyzed.•Increased OT increased risk of infections, readmission/operation, and hospital stay.•The impact of OT on morbidity highlights the value of efficient operative teams.
Deep learning techniques, in particular generative models, have taken on great importance in medical image analysis. This paper surveys fundamental deep learning concepts related to medical image ...generation. It provides concise overviews of studies which use some of the latest state-of-the-art models from last years applied to medical images of different injured body areas or organs that have a disease associated with (e.g., brain tumor and COVID-19 lungs pneumonia). The motivation for this study is to offer a comprehensive overview of artificial neural networks (NNs) and deep generative models in medical imaging, so more groups and authors that are not familiar with deep learning take into consideration its use in medicine works. We review the use of generative models, such as generative adversarial networks and variational autoencoders, as techniques to achieve semantic segmentation, data augmentation, and better classification algorithms, among other purposes. In addition, a collection of widely used public medical datasets containing magnetic resonance (MR) images, computed tomography (CT) scans, and common pictures is presented. Finally, we feature a summary of the current state of generative models in medical image including key features, current challenges, and future research paths.
Summary
Field observations on crop rotations with maize in temperate areas suggest that faba bean (Vicia faba) could exert some weed control when used as a green manure. To test this hypothesis, two ...glasshouse pot experiments and two field experiments were conducted on the weeding effects over time of faba bean incorporated into the soil. In the pots, faba bean concentrations of 1% and 2% of soil dry weight reduced the germination, root and shoot elongation and aerial biomass of Echinochloa crus galli and Amaranthus retroflexus by ca. 70% when the seeds were sown at the time of faba bean incorporation. These inhibitory effects declined with the delay in sowing. From ca. 21 days after incorporation, fertilising effects became evident in both the maize and the two weeds. In the two field experiments, on land with a history of maize growing in which faba bean biomasses of 6700 and 12 100 kg ha−1 were soil‐incorporated, residue‐mediated reductions of the density and biomass of naturally occurring dominant dicotyledon (A. retroflexus, Chenopodium album and Solanum nigrum) and monocotyledon weeds (Digitaria sanguinalis and Cyperus rotundus) were observed. At emergence, mean differences with respect to control plots ranged from −14.8% to −69.8% for density and from −46.9 to −78.5% for biomass. Impacts were visible at the flowering time, and still statistically significant for some dicotyledons, leading to mean differences of total weed biomass up to −67.2% compared with control plots. Our results indicate that faba bean has potential as green manure for weed control in maize cropping systems.
Sleep is a state of immobility characterized by three key criteria: an increased threshold of arousal, rapid reversal to an alert state and evidence of homeostatic 'rebound sleep' in which there is ...an increase in the time spent in this quiescent state following sleep deprivation. Common European cuttlefish,
, show states of quiescence during which they meet the last two of these three criteria, yet also show spontaneous bursts of arm and eye movements that accompany rapid changes in chromatophore patterns in the skin. Here, we report that this rapid eye movement sleep-like (REMS-like) state is cyclic in nature. Iterations of the REMS-like state last 2.42±0.22 min (mean±s.e.m.) and alternate with 34.01±1.49 min of the quiescent sleep-like state for durations lasting 176.89±36.71 min. We found clear evidence that this REMS-like state (i) occurs in animals younger than previously reported; (ii) follows an ultradian pattern; (iii) includes intermittent dynamic chromatophore patterning, representing fragments of normal patterning seen in the waking state for a wide range of signaling and camouflage; and (iv) shows variability in the intensity of expression of these skin patterns between and within individuals. These data suggest that cephalopods, which are mollusks with an elaborate brain and complex behavior, possess a sleep-like state that resembles behaviorally the vertebrate REM sleep state, although the exact nature and mechanism of this form of sleep may differ from that of vertebrates.
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