Major improvements in proteomic techniques in recent years have led to an increase in their application in all biological fields, including plant sciences. For all proteomic approaches, protein ...extraction and sample preparation are of utmost importance for optimal results; however, extraction of proteins from plant tissues represents a great challenge. Plant tissues usually contain relatively low amounts of proteins and high concentrations of proteases and compounds that potentially can limit tissue disintegration and interfere with subsequent protein separation and identification. An effective protein extraction protocol must also be adaptable to the great variation in the sets of secondary metabolites and potentially contaminating compounds that occurs between tissues (e.g., leaves, roots, fruit, seeds and stems) and between species. Here we present two basic protein extraction protocols that have successfully been used with diverse plant tissues, including recalcitrant tissues. The first method is based on phenol extraction coupled with ammonium acetate precipitation, and the second is based on trichloroacetic acid (TCA) precipitation. Both extraction protocols can be completed within 2 d.
Background: In Malaysia, community pharmacies play an important and vital role in both urban and rural areas with approximately 30% of 12,000 registered pharmacists with annual retention certificate ...practicing in community pharmacies. The main objective of this study was to find the perception of respondents on the value and necessity of pharmacists. Materials and Methods: The questionnaire was divided into two sections: the first section assessed the visits to community pharmacies, purpose, interaction with pharmacy staffs, professional fee, and improvements to pharmacy practices; the second section evaluated the characteristics of respondents including an e-consent form. Data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software (version 11.5).Results: The highest number of respondents (66.1%) consulted with the pharmacists for cough and cold, 33.1% for gastric and stomach ailments, and 28.9% for diarrhea and constipation. Only 34% of cases were handled by the pharmacists, whereas 52.1% by the sales assistant. Approximately 88.5% showed satisfaction with the counseling provided. A total of 46.3% did not know whom they dealt with, whereas 51.2% wanted personal attention of the pharmacists instead of the sales assistants. However, 66.9% of respondents preferred to a private consultation room. Records of only 32.2% of respondents were secured by the pharmacies, whereas 42.1% showed interest to pay a professional fee. Moreover, 83.3% agreed the fee of RM5 only, whereas 20.8% agreed to RM10. Among the respondents, majority agreed to pay a fee willingly, but approximately 30% stayed neutral. Conclusion: There is a need for the community pharmacists to play vital roles firsthand at the front desk to serve the patients professionally instead of handing over the responsibilities to the sales assistant.
Limber tail is a condition that typically affects larger working breeds causing tail limpness and pain, resolving without veterinary intervention. It is poorly understood and the disease burden has ...not been well characterised. Data collected from owners of the Dogslife cohort of Labrador Retrievers have been used to describe incidents and a case–control study was undertaken to elucidate risk factors with 38 cases and 86 controls. The cumulative incidence of unexplained tail limpness was 9.7 per cent. Swimming is not a necessary precursor for limber tail, but it is a risk factor (OR=4.7) and working dogs were more susceptible than non‐working dogs (OR=5.1). Higher latitudes were shown to be a risk factor for developing the condition and the case dogs were more related to each other than might be expected by chance. This suggests that dogs may have an underlying genetic predisposition to developing the condition. This study is the first, large‐scale investigation of limber tail and the findings reveal an unexpectedly high illness burden. Anecdotally, accepted risk factors have been confirmed and the extent of their impact has been quantified. Identifying latitude and a potential underlying genetic predisposition suggests avenues for future work on this painful and distressing condition.
Savannas cover one‐fifth of the Earth's surface, harbour substantial biodiversity, and provide a broad range of ecosystem services to hundreds of millions of people. The community composition of ...trees in tropical moist forests varies with climate, but whether the same processes structure communities in disturbance‐driven savannas remains relatively unknown. We investigate how biodiversity is structured over large environmental and disturbance gradients in woodlands of eastern and southern Africa. We use tree inventory data from the Socio‐Ecological Observatory for Studying African Woodlands (SEOSAW) network, covering 755 ha in a total of 6780 plots across nine countries of eastern and southern Africa, to investigate how alpha, beta, and phylogenetic diversity varies across environmental and disturbance gradients. We find strong climate‐richness patterns, with precipitation playing a primary role in determining patterns of tree richness and high turnover across these savannas. Savannas with greater rainfall contain more tree species, suggesting that low water availability places distributional limits on species, creating the observed climate‐richness patterns. Both fire and herbivory have minimal effects on tree diversity, despite their role in determining savanna distribution and structure. High turnover of tree species, genera, and families is similar to turnover in seasonally dry tropical forests of the Americas, suggesting this is a feature of semiarid tree floras. The greater richness and phylogenetic diversity of wetter plots shows that broad‐scale ecological patterns apply to disturbance‐driven savanna systems. High taxonomic turnover suggests that savannas from across the regional rainfall gradient should be protected if we are to maximise the conservation of unique tree communities.
We investigate how different stellar initial mass functions (IMFs) can affect the mass-loss and survival of star clusters. We find that IMFs with radically different low-mass cut-offs (between 0.1 ...and 2 M⊙) do not change cluster destruction time-scales as much as might be expected. Unsurprisingly, we find that clusters with more high-mass stars lose relatively more mass through stellar evolution, but the response to this mass-loss is to expand and hence significantly slow their dynamical evolution. We also argue that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to have clusters with different IMFs that are initially ‘the same’, since the mass, radius and relaxation times depend on each other and on the IMF in a complex way. We conclude that changing the IMF to be biased towards more massive stars does speed up mass-loss and dissolution, but that it is not as dramatic as might be thought.
An ecological footprint is an accounting tool that reports the balance between resource supply and demand to assess environmental sustainability. Among the many available indicators of social ...progress, happiness reflects how a person feels about their quality of life. We combined these two approaches to assess the ecological efficiency of social performance in the low-income community of Felicidade, in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2019. We assessed the ecological footprint and gross domestic happiness (GDH) through questionnaires. We found that the community has a lower environmental footprint than higher-income communities in Brazil. However, the per capita ecological footprint in the community is still above what is available per person globally. We found that the community has a high level of life satisfaction (GDH = 0.86) and that the main contributor to happiness is health, time use, psychological wellbeing, education, good governance, and community vitality. The results suggest that other contributors unrelated to income are more robust determinants of happiness. In Brazil, despite higher footprints characterizing higher-income communities, further efforts in low-income communities are needed to reduce environmental footprints, ensure dignified income, and nurture the underlying conditions for high levels of happiness and social capital.
Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental health disorders and are associated with substantial disability and reduced well-being. It is unknown whether the relative impact of different anxiety ...disorders is due to the anxiety disorder itself or to the co-occurrence with other anxiety disorders. This study compared the functional impact of combinations of anxiety disorders in primary care out-patients.
A total of 1004 patients with panic disorder (PD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), social anxiety disorder (SAD) or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) provided data on their mental and physical functioning, and disability. Multivariate regressions compared functional levels for patients with different numbers and combinations of disorders.
Of the patients, 42% had one anxiety disorder only, 38% two, 16% three and 3% all four. There were few relative differences in functioning among patients with only one anxiety disorder, although those with SAD were most restricted in their work, social and home activities and those with GAD were the least impaired. Functioning levels tended to deteriorate as co-morbidity increased.
Of the four anxiety disorders examined, GAD appears to be the least disabling, although they all have more in common than in distinction when it comes to functional impairment. A focus on unique effects of specific anxiety disorders is inadequate, as it fails to address the more pervasive impairment associated with multiple anxiety disorders, which is the modal presentation in primary care.
During invasion of their plant hosts, species of the oomycete genus Phytophthora secrete glucanase inhibitor proteins (GIPs) into the plant apoplast, which bind and inhibit the activity of plant ...extracellular endo-β-1,3-glucanases (EGases). GIPs show structural homology to the chymotrypsin class of serine proteases (SP) but lack proteolytic activity due to the absence of an intact catalytic triad and, thus, belong to a broader class of proteins called serine protease homologs (SPH). To study the evolutionary relationship between GIPs and functional SP, database searches were used to identify 48 GIP homologs in the P. sojae, P. ramorum, and P. infestans genomes, composing GIPs, SPH, and potentially functional SP. Analyses of P. infestans-inoculated tomato leaves showed that P. infestans GIPs and tomato EGases are present in the apoplast and form stable complexes in planta. Studies of the temporal expression of a four-membered GIP family from P. infestans (PiGIP1 to PiGIP4) further revealed that the genes show distinctly different patterns during an infection timecourse. Codon evolution analyses of GIP homologs identified several positively selected peptide sites and structural modeling revealed them to be in close proximity to rapidly evolving EGase residues, suggesting that the interaction between GIPs and EGases has the hallmarks of a coevolving molecular arms race.
Abstract Purpose We describe the methodology used to create a register of clinical prediction rules relevant to primary care. We also summarize the rules included in the register according to various ...characteristics. Methods To identify relevant articles, we searched the MEDLINE database (PubMed) for the years 1980 to 2009 and supplemented the results with searches of secondary sources (books on clinical prediction rules) and personal resources (eg, experts in the field). The rules described in relevant articles were classified according to their clinical domain, the stage of development, and the clinical setting in which they were studied. Results Our search identified clinical prediction rules reported between 1965 and 2009. The largest share of rules (37.2%) were retrieved from PubMed. The number of published rules increased substantially over the study decades. We included 745 articles in the register; many contained more than 1 clinical prediction rule study (eg, both a derivation study and a validation study), resulting in 989 individual studies. In all, 434 unique rules had gone through derivation; however, only 54.8% had been validated and merely 2.8% had undergone analysis of their impact on either the process or outcome of clinical care. The rules most commonly pertained to cardiovascular disease, respiratory, and musculoskeletal conditions. They had most often been studied in the primary care or emergency department settings. Conclusions Many clinical prediction rules have been derived, but only about half have been validated and few have been assessed for clinical impact. This lack of thorough evaluation for many rules makes it difficult to retrieve and identify those that are ready for use at the point of patient care. We plan to develop an international web-based register of clinical prediction rules and computer-based clinical decision support systems.
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