-
The Science of the Total Environment Jun 2023Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi were recovered from soil samples from the naturally radioactive soil at the long-abandoned South Terras uranium mine in Cornwall, UK....
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi were recovered from soil samples from the naturally radioactive soil at the long-abandoned South Terras uranium mine in Cornwall, UK. Species of Rhizophagus, Claroideoglomus, Paraglomus, Septoglomus, and Ambispora were recovered, and pot cultures from all except Ambispora were established. Cultures were identified to species level using morphological observation and rRNA gene sequencing combined with phylogenetic analysis. These cultures were used in pot experiments designed with a compartmentalised system to assess the contribution of fungal hyphae to the accumulation of essential elements, such as copper and zinc, and non-essential elements, such as lead, arsenic, thorium, and uranium into root and shoot tissues of Plantago lanceolata. The results indicated that none of the treatments had any positive or negative impact on shoot and root biomass. However, Rhizophagus irregularis treatments showed higher accumulation of copper and zinc in shoots, while R. irregularis and Septoglomus constrictum enhanced arsenic accumulation in roots. Moreover, R. irregularis increased uranium concentration in roots and shoots of the P. lanceolata plant. This study provides useful insight into fungal-plant interactions that determine metal and radionuclide transfer from soil into the biosphere at contaminated sites such as mine workings.
Topics: Mycorrhizae; Uranium; Plant Roots; Copper; Arsenic; Soil; Phylogeny; Soil Pollutants; Plants; Zinc; Glomeromycota
PubMed: 36906011
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.162781 -
Nature Communications Oct 2023During the Mesolithic in Europe, there is widespread evidence for an increase in exploitation of aquatic resources. In contrast, the subsequent Neolithic is...
During the Mesolithic in Europe, there is widespread evidence for an increase in exploitation of aquatic resources. In contrast, the subsequent Neolithic is characterised by the spread of farming, land ownership, and full sedentism, which lead to the perception of marine resources subsequently representing marginal or famine food or being abandoned altogether even at the furthermost coastal limits of Europe. Here, we examine biomarkers extracted from human dental calculus, using sequential thermal desorption- and pyrolysis-GCMS, to report direct evidence for widespread consumption of seaweed and submerged aquatic and freshwater plants across Europe. Notably, evidence of consumption of these resources extends through the Neolithic transition to farming and into the Early Middle Ages, suggesting that these resources, now rarely eaten in Europe, only became marginal much more recently. Understanding ancient foodstuffs is crucial to reconstructing the past, while a better knowledge of local, forgotten resources is likewise important today.
Topics: Humans; Seaweed; Europe; Agriculture; Vegetables
PubMed: 37848451
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-41671-2 -
Schizophrenia Research Apr 2022The current schizophrenia construct as delineated in the latest editions of the DSM and the ICD has some strengths, but also many weaknesses. It improved the reliability...
The current schizophrenia construct as delineated in the latest editions of the DSM and the ICD has some strengths, but also many weaknesses. It improved the reliability of the diagnosis, made communication among clinicians, users and families less ambiguous, is useful for education and training, and for reimbursement and insurance purposes. However, many serious weaknesses should be considered. The term "Schizophrenia" does not recognize the heterogeneity of the disorder and might nourish the belief that schizophrenia represents a unitary disease. In addition, there is no agreement on the existence and nature of a "core aspect" of the disorder. Stable dimensions, in particular negative symptoms and cognitive impairment, which are key determinants of functioning, are not de facto regarded as core aspects. Finally, the construct is associated to the notion of a poor outcome, to a high level of stigma and has acquired a derogatory connotation. We are not ready but should be prepared to abandon the current schizophrenia construct. Clinicians and researchers should be encouraged to complement the ICD/DSM diagnosis with an in-depth characterization of the individual clinical picture, along with other variables, such as family history, comorbidities, vulnerability factors and personal trajectory. The "Primary Psychoses" construct, together with improved cross-sectional and longitudinal phenotypes from representative population and patient cohorts, and the availability of artificial intelligence methods, could lead to a new and more precise taxonomy of psychotic disorders, and increase the probability of identifying meaningful biomarkers to improve prevention, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment for people suffering from psychotic disorders.
Topics: Artificial Intelligence; Cross-Sectional Studies; Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; Humans; Psychotic Disorders; Reproducibility of Results; Schizophrenia
PubMed: 34924240
DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2021.12.007 -
Seminars in Immunology Apr 2013Vaccines, like drugs and medical procedures, are increasingly amenable to individualization or personalization, often based on novel data resulting from high throughput... (Review)
Review
Vaccines, like drugs and medical procedures, are increasingly amenable to individualization or personalization, often based on novel data resulting from high throughput "omics" technologies. As a result of these technologies, 21st century vaccinology will increasingly see the abandonment of a "one size fits all" approach to vaccine dosing and delivery, as well as the abandonment of the empiric "isolate-inactivate-inject" paradigm for vaccine development. In this review, we discuss the immune response network theory and its application to the new field of vaccinomics and adversomics, and illustrate how vaccinomics can lead to new vaccine candidates, new understandings of how vaccines stimulate immune responses, new biomarkers for vaccine response, and facilitate the understanding of what genetic and other factors might be responsible for rare side effects due to vaccines. Perhaps most exciting will be the ability, at a systems biology level, to integrate increasingly complex high throughput data into descriptive and predictive equations for immune responses to vaccines. Herein, we discuss the above with a view toward the future of vaccinology.
Topics: Animals; Drug Discovery; Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions; High-Throughput Screening Assays; Humans; Precision Medicine; Systems Biology; Vaccines
PubMed: 23755893
DOI: 10.1016/j.smim.2013.04.007 -
Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in... Nov 2007A recent commentary defends 1) the concept of 'brain arrest' to explain what brain death is, and 2) the concept that death occurs at 2-5 minutes after absent...
A recent commentary defends 1) the concept of 'brain arrest' to explain what brain death is, and 2) the concept that death occurs at 2-5 minutes after absent circulation. I suggest that both these claims are flawed. Brain arrest is said to threaten life, and lead to death by causing a secondary respiratory then cardiac arrest. It is further claimed that ventilation only interrupts this way that brain arrest leads to death. These statements imply that brain arrest is not death itself. Brain death is a devastating state that leads to death when intensive care, which replaces some of the brain's vital functions such as breathing, is withdrawn and circulation stops resulting in irreversible loss of integration of the organism. Circulatory death is said to occur at 2-5 minutes after absent circulation because, in the context of DCD, the intent is to not attempt reversal of the absent circulation. No defense of this weak construal of irreversible loss of circulation is given. This means that patients in identical physiologic states are dead (in the DCD context) or alive (in the resuscitation context); the current state of death (at 2-5 minutes) is contingent on a future event (whether there will be resuscitation) suggesting backward causation; and the commonly used meaning of irreversible as 'not capable of being reversed' is abandoned. The literature supporting the claim that autoresuscitation does not occur in the context of no cardiopulmonary resuscitation is shown to be very limited. Several cases of autoresuscitation are summarized, suggesting that the claim that these cases are not applicable to the current debate may be premature. I suggest that brain dead and DCD donors are not dead; whether organs can be harvested before death from these patients whose prognosis is death should be debated urgently.
Topics: Brain Death; Death; Heart Arrest; Humans; Organ Transplantation; Prognosis; Remission, Spontaneous; Terminology as Topic; Tissue and Organ Procurement
PubMed: 18036254
DOI: 10.1186/1747-5341-2-28 -
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews Jan 2020Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a heterogeneous clinical syndrome involving distinct pathological processes. Core features of MDD include anhedonia, reduced... (Review)
Review
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a heterogeneous clinical syndrome involving distinct pathological processes. Core features of MDD include anhedonia, reduced motivation, increased anxiety, negative affective bias, cognitive impairments, and dysregulated neuroplasticity mechanisms. There are multiple biological hypotheses related to MDD, including dysfunction of the opioid system. Although opium was abandoned as an antidepressant after the introduction of monoaminergic drugs, there has been renewed interest in targeting the opioid system for MDD. In this review, we discuss the preclinical support of this idea using a neurocircuitry- and molecular neuroplasticity-based approach. This article highlights how the opioid system potently modulates mesolimbic circuitry underlying motivation and reward processing, limbic circuitry underlying fear and anxiety responses, cortical and hippocampal circuitry underlying a variety of cognitive functions, as well as broad functional and structural plasticity mechanisms. Ultimately, a more thorough understanding of how the opioid system modulates these core functional domains may lead to novel treatment strategies and molecular targets in the treatment of MDD.
Topics: Animals; Brain; Depressive Disorder, Major; Humans; Nerve Net; Neuronal Plasticity; Receptors, Opioid
PubMed: 31821832
DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.12.007 -
Cardiovascular Diagnosis and Therapy Apr 2021In patients undergoing transvenous lead extraction (TLE) transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) provide valuable information after procedure.
BACKGROUND
In patients undergoing transvenous lead extraction (TLE) transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) provide valuable information after procedure.
METHODS
We analyzed data from 936 TEE performed in patients undergoing TLE between 2015 and 2019 (mean follow-up 566.23±224.47 days) and assessed the role of echocardiographic phenomena after procedure.
RESULTS
Increment in tricuspid regurgitation (TR) was observed in 9% of patients after TLE. Factors increasing the risk of TR were: binding sites between lead and right ventricle (RV) (OR: 5.429), tricuspid valve (TV) (OR: 3.42), superior vena cava (SVC) (OR: 3.30) and lead-to-lead adhesions (OR: 2.88). Predisposing factors of residual structures after TLE were: asymptomatic masses on the leads (AMEL) (OR: 1.68), binding sites between SVC and cardiac structures (OR: 1.72), and multiple leads (OR: 1.30). Probability of vegetation remnants increased in the presence of abandoned leads (OR: 7.91). The risk factors of tamponade were: dwell time of the oldest lead (OR: 1.17), lead-to-lead adhesion (OR: 22.47), binding sites between lead and TV (OR: 6.08), RA (OR: 11.50), SVC (OR: 4.47), higher LVEF (OR: 2.35; P=0.006), female gender (OR: 5.43), multiple leads (OR: 2.11), looped leads (OR: 4.90) and AMEL (OR: 6.42). The risk of lead fracture was increased by: lead-to-lead adhesion (OR: 5.69), fibrosis binding the lead to RV (OR: 5.16), RA (OR: 2.39) and dwell time of the oldest lead (OR: 1.068). The mortality rate was 11.97% during follow-up. The risk of death was increased by: severe TR and vegetation remnants.
CONCLUSIONS
The most important phenomena evaluated after TLE are: tricuspid valve function, residual fibrosis and vegetation remnants, progression of pericardial effusion and retained lead fragments. Postoperative TEE provides information about the results of TLE and helps establish further management.
PubMed: 33968618
DOI: 10.21037/cdt-20-871 -
Long-term monitoring of mammal communities in the Peneda-Gerês National Park using camera-trap data.Biodiversity Data Journal 2023In the past decades, agricultural land abandonment and declining land-use intensity became common, especially in the Mediterranean countries of southern Europe. In some...
BACKGROUND
In the past decades, agricultural land abandonment and declining land-use intensity became common, especially in the Mediterranean countries of southern Europe. In some areas, this development opened up possibilities for rewilding and the recolonisation or expansion of large mammal populations. Yet, in some instances, co-occurrence of wild mammals and free-ranging domestic herbivores might lead to potential conflicts. It is, therefore, necessary to study the ecological interactions between wild and domestic mammal species to understand the effects of land abandonment and rewilding on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Camera traps are an effective tool for studying species interactions and occupancy dynamics as they allow for long-term monitoring with minimal interference. We conducted a long-term monitoring programme with camera traps in the Peneda-Gerês National Park in northern Portugal. The area has undergone substantial land-use changes following the abandonment of agricultural areas in the past 60 years. While agro-pastoral activities, especially the breeding of free-ranging horses and cattle, are still common in the area, the intensity of these activities has decreased significantly, promoting natural succession and an increase or return of several large mammal species in recent years. Overall, our project aims at: (1) assessing the population trends of the medium and large sized mammals in the area over time; (2) analysing the effects of passive rewilding on occurrence, abundance and behaviour; and (3) understanding potential interactions or conflicts between wild and domestic herbivores. In this publication, we present results of a primary occupancy analysis between 2015 and 2020, as well as a comparison between occupancy and density estimates for 2019.
NEW INFORMATION
Our publication provides a dataset from long-term camera-trap monitoring in the Peneda-Gerês National Park between 2015 and 2021. We established a 16 km² grid of 64 cameras deployed yearly during the summer months. Together with this publication, we publish the data and images collected between 2015 and 2021, using both the Camtrap DP standard and the GBIF Darwin Event Core. We obtained a total of 934,810 pictures on 41,234 trap nights. The pictures were automatically grouped into sequences with each sequence representing a distinct occurrence event, resulting in 80,191 occurrences. Out of those, 14,442 contained observations of a species, while the remaining were either blank or the species was not identifiable. We only obtained the information whether a species was present or absent on a picture, disregarding the number of individuals. Most observations were of domestic cattle () and horses (), followed by European roe deer () and wild boar ). Further observations include red fox (), gray wolf (), Eurasian badger (), stone marten (), common genet (), Iberian ibex () and red deer (). We estimated occupancy and densities for the most common species. The project is on-going and additional data will be included in the future. The dataset is freely available for ecological analysis, but also for training machine-learning systems in automated image classification as all pictures have been manually classified.
PubMed: 38327315
DOI: 10.3897/BDJ.11.e99588 -
International Journal of Nanomedicine 2021It is a fact that the use of antibiotics is inducing a growing resistance on bacteria. This situation is not only the consequence of a drugs' misuse, but a direct... (Review)
Review
It is a fact that the use of antibiotics is inducing a growing resistance on bacteria. This situation is not only the consequence of a drugs' misuse, but a direct consequence of a widespread and continuous use. Current studies suggest that this effect could be reversed by using abandoned antibiotics to which bacteria have lost their resistance, but this is only a temporary solution that in near future would lead to new resistance problems. Fortunately, current nanotechnology offers a new life for old and new antibiotics, which could have significantly different pharmacokinetics when properly delivered; enabling new routes able to bypass acquired resistances. In this contribution, we will focus on the use of porous silica nanoparticles as functional carriers for the delivery of antibiotics and biocides in combination with additional features like membrane sensitizing and heavy metal-driven metabolic-disrupting therapies as two of the most interesting combination therapies.
Topics: Anti-Bacterial Agents; Bacterial Infections; Drug Carriers; Humans; Nanoparticles; Porosity; Silicon Dioxide
PubMed: 34234434
DOI: 10.2147/IJN.S273064 -
Annual International Conference of the... Jul 2023There is a paucity of data regarding the safety of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in patients with abandoned epicardial leads. Few studies have reported temperature...
There is a paucity of data regarding the safety of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in patients with abandoned epicardial leads. Few studies have reported temperature rises up to 76 °C during MRI at 1.5 T in gel phantoms implanted with epicardial leads; however, lead trajectories used in these experiments were not clinically relevant. This work reports patient-specific RF heating of both capped and uncapped abandoned epicardial lead configurations during MRI at both 1.5 T and 3 T field strengths. We found that leads routed along realistic, patient-derived trajectories generated substantially lower RF heating than the previously reported worst-case phantom experiments. We also found that MRI at the head imaging landmark leads to substantially lower RF heating compared to MRI at the chest or abdomen landmarks at both 1.5 T and 3 T. Our results suggest that patients with abandoned epicardial leads may safely undergo MRI for head imaging, but caution is warranted during chest and abdominal imaging.Clinical Relevance- Patients with abandoned epicardial leads may safely undergo MRI for head imaging, but caution is warranted during chest and abdominal imaging.
Topics: Humans; Heating; Prostheses and Implants; Phantoms, Imaging; Temperature; Magnetic Resonance Imaging
PubMed: 38082570
DOI: 10.1109/EMBC40787.2023.10340533