The Błędów Desert, located in the southern part of Poland, is an anthropogenic creature: it has originated in the early Middle Ages and later in the 16th century, owing to deforestation being the result of the develepment of contemporary lead and silver ores mining and metallurgy. A typical aeolian “desert” ...

A1 adenosine receptor (A1AR) activation within the central nervous system induces torpor, but in obligate hibernators such as the arctic ground squirrel (AGS; Urocitellus parryii), A1AR stimulation induces torpor only during the hibernation season, suggesting a seasonal increase in sensitivity to A1AR signaling. The purpose of this research was to ...

In the previously performed field study from 2007 to 2009, it became evident that foot pad alterations were already commonly found in turkeys at the age of 6 wk. At this early age, 45% of the clinically examined birds were diagnosed with epithelial necrosis. Therefore, it became important to specifically ...

The substituted porphyrin 2-cyano-3-(2'-(5',10',15',20-tetraphenyl porphyrinato zinc-(ii))yl) acrylic acid was used to modify nanostructured Ag surfaces. This porphyrin-modified surface exhibits photocurrent when exposed to a light source, which is modulated in the presence of nucleotides. The addition of the nucleotides adenosine-5'-monophosphate (AMP), guanosine-5'-monophosphate (GMP) and cytidine-5'-monophosphate (CMP) causes partial quenching of ...

Bisphenol A (BPA) is used widely to manufacture food container linings. Mouse models suggest exposure to BPA might increase allergic inflammation. We hypothesized that BPA exposure, as assessed based on urinary BPA concentrations, would be associated with increased odds of wheeze and asthma and increased fraction of exhaled nitric oxide ...

Human disc degeneration initiated by aging in the central nucleus pulposus (hNP) is an irreversible process and the recovery has become seriously emerging. In this study, the related mechanisms of calcitonin on the regeneration of hNP and the effects of calcitonin on the age-related alterations were examined. The harvested hNP ...

Background  Gastrointestinal (GI) complications are common in hereditary transthyretin amyloidosis and an autonomic dysfunction has been considered to explain these symptoms. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of autonomic neuropathy on gastric emptying in hereditary transthyretin amyloidosis and to relate these findings to nutritional status, GI ...

Mouse studies suggest that adropin, a peptide hormone, is required for metabolic homeostasis and prevention of obesity-associated insulin resistance. Whether obesity and insulin resistance are associated with low plasma adropin levels in humans is not known. Our objective was to investigate the hypothesis that obesity and indicators of insulin resistance ...

Background  Gastric emptying (GE) is measured in pharmacodynamic and diagnostic studies. Our aim was to assess inter- and intra-subject coefficients of variation (COV) of scintigraphic GE measurements in healthy subjects, and associations of GE with gender and body mass index (BMI). Methods  Data from participants with scintigraphic measurements of gastric ...

Anecdotal reports suggest bariatric surgery may increase the risk of alcohol use disorder (AUD), but prospective data are lacking. To determine the prevalence of preoperative and postoperative AUD, and independent predictors of postoperative AUD. A prospective cohort study (Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery-2) of adults who underwent bariatric surgery at ...

To assess the role of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), age, smoking and body weight on the development of intestinal metaplasia of the gastric cardia (IMC). Two hundred and seventeen patients scheduled for esophagogastroduodenoscopy were enrolled in this study. Endoscopic biopsies from the esophagus, gastroesophageal junction and ...

Background:  Impaired gallbladder and gastric motility have been associated with obesity in adults. The timing of appearance of this dysfunction, however, is unclear. Methods:  Lean and obese subjects from 3 different age groups were studied noninvasively: 50 newborns (1-12 months old, 6 obese), 18 preadolescents (7-8 years old, 7 obese), ...

Purpose: To describe the gastrointestinal (GI) wall thickness and the thickness of individual wall layers in healthy subjects using ultrasound and to determine whether demographic factors, the ultrasound transducer frequency, or a fasting state influences these measurements. Materials and Methods: After overnight fasting, the GI wall thickness and wall layers ...

Recently, surgical intervention has gained increasing support in adolescents with extreme obesity. This study summarizes the analysis into the effect of laparoscopic adjustable gastric bands (LAGB) on cardiovascular risk factors in 14 extremely obese Portuguese adolescent patients. Data collected both pre- and postoperatively included age, gender, body mass index (BMI), ...

BACKGROUND: Obesity is associated with a poor anesthetic risk, in part because of the greater aspiration rates. A greater gastric residue and lower stomach pH have been implicated. The relationship of obesity to gastric emptying is ill-defined. with contradicting reports stating shorter, similar, and longer times compared with nonobese subjects. ...

To investigate the incidence and mortality of gastric cancer (GC) in Zhuanghe region, northeast China and the influencing factors for their changing trends. All new cancer cases and deaths registered from 2005 to 2010 in Zhuanghe County were reviewed. The annual GC cases, constituent ratio, crude rates, age-standardized rates, their ...

Few studies have evaluated the potential influence of Helicobacter pylori on biomarkers for diabetes. We conducted cross-sectional analyses using data from 7417 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) III (aged ≥18 years) and 6072 participants in NHANES 1999-2000 (aged ≥3 years) to assess the association between ...

Cognitive development is known to involve improvements in accuracy, capacity, and processing speed. Less is known about the role of performance consistency, and there has been virtually no empirical examination of the neural underpinnings of within-person variability in development. In a sample of 92 healthy children and adolescents aged 8-19 ...

Comment on: De Vos D, et al. EMBO Rep 2011; 12:956-62. doi:10.1038/embor.2011.131.

A female child developed multiple, progressive, therapy-resistant, painful large ulcers, vesicles, and pustules since her 4 months of age. The ulcers were large, some even measured more than 8 cm; most had violaceous undermined margin with surrounding erythematous halo, raw and crusted surface and were distributed extensively over scalp, face, ...

PURPOSE: Open-skill sports requires high levels of visual attention, fast and flexible decision making and action execution. We evaluated whether these sports may counteract the well known age-related declines in executive processing. METHODS: Young and middle-age fencers and non-athletes were studied. Participants (N=40) performed visual motor tasks while reaction times ...

Chronic inflammation and cellular senescence are intertwined in the pathogenesis of premature aging, which is considered as an important contributing factor in driving chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Sirtuin1 (SIRT1), a nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD(+))-dependent protein/histone deacetylase, regulates inflammation, senescence/aging, stress resistance, and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) damage repair via deacetylating ...

Aging-related cognitive declines are well documented in humans and animal models. Yet the synaptic and molecular mechanisms responsible for cognitive aging are not well understood. Here we demonstrated age-dependent deficits in long-term synaptic plasticity and loss of dendritic spines in the hippocampus of aged Fisher 344 rats, which were closely ...

A total of 163 echocardiographic studies on western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) were submitted for evaluation; 140 from 99 animals were suitable for analysis. Of these, 81 studies (42 studies from 35 males ranging in age from 11-41+ yr and 39 studies from 31 females ranging in age from ...

Gastric cancer has a high incidence and mortality rate in Korea. Despite a growing older population and an increase in the number of older patients with gastric cancer, the older patients are not willing to undergo surgery due to their operative risks. Hence, to determine the clinical characteristics and outcomes ...

Please cite this paper as: Gao et al. (2011) Detection of 2009 pandemic influenza A(H1N1) virus Infection in different age groups by using rapid influenza diagnostic tests. Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses DOI: 10.1111/j.1750-2659.2011.00313.x. Background  The performance of rapid influenza diagnostic tests (RIDTs) in detecting influenza A(H1N1) 2009 has varied widely. ...

Nutritional epigenetics has emerged as a novel mechanism underlying gene-diet interactions, further elucidating the modulatory role of nutrition in aging and age-related disease development. Epigenetics is defined as a heritable modification to the DNA that regulates chromosome architecture and modulates gene expression without changes in the underlying bp sequence, ultimately ...

Sex change, either protogyny (female to male) or protandry (male to female), is well known among fishes, but evidence of bidirectional sex change or reversed sex change in natural populations is still very limited. This is the first report on female removal experiments for polygnous and protogynous fish species to ...

To analyze traits of metabolic syndrome (MetS) in medulloblastoma survivors. Sixteen childhood medulloblastoma survivors aged 18.0 (4.4) years, with history of craniospinal radiation therapy (RT) were compared with nine control subjects matched by age, gender, and body mass index, according to fat distribution, metabolic and cardiovascular variables. Medulloblastoma patients showed ...

Occupational exposure to nickel (Ni) is associated with an increased risk for lung and nasal cancers. Ni compounds exhibit weak mutagenic activity, cause gene amplification, and disrupt cellular epigenetic homeostasis. However, the Ni-induced changes in global histone modification levels have only been tested in vitro. This study was conducted in ...

Middle-aged individuals may not respond in a similar manner as younger individuals. The study's objective was to examine the effect of static (SS) and dynamic stretching (DS) in young and middle-aged men on subsequent performance. Ten young (22 ± 1.4 years) and 8 middle-aged men (46.3 ± 6.5 years) participated in 3 conditions consisting ...

Abstract Objective.?To determine changes in body composition, physical performance, metabolic and hormonal parameters induced by lifestyle counselling, resistance training and resistance training with soy protein based supplemention in middle aged males. Design.?Randomised controlled study consisting of resistance training without (RT-G) or with (RTS-G) a soy protein based supplement and a ...

Aging is accompanied by alterations in epigenetic marks that control chromatin states, including histone acetylation and methylation. Enzymes that reversibly affect histone marks associated with active chromatin have recently been found to regulate aging in Caenorhabditis elegans. However, relatively little is known about the importance for aging of histone marks ...

It is widely believed that younger prostate cancer patients are at greater risk of recurrence following radiotherapy (RT). From 1992 to 2007, 2168 (395 age ≤ 60) men received conformal RT alone for prostate cancer at our institution (median dose=76 Gy, range: 72-80). Multivariable analysis (MVA) was used to identify ...

Studies comparing young and older adults suggest a deficit in processing context information as a key mechanism underlying cognitive aging. However, the genetic architecture of context processing has not been examined. Consistent with previous results, we found evidence of functionally dissociable components of context processing accuracy in 1127 late middle-aged ...

Defining the molecular events that precipitate multisystem decline is an important component of aging research. In this issue, Jin et al. (2011) show that increased expression of the histone demethylase, utx-1, causes genome-wide decreases in histone H3K27 trimethylation, which includes the insulin/IGF-1 signaling (IIS) pathway that promotes aging.

Turkey rotaviruses are one of the major pathogens responsible for the poult enteritis syndrome (PES). In this study a one step real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) assay targeting the rotaviral non-structural protein 4 (NSP4) was developed. The NSP4 is a highly conserved gene inside the turkey rotavirus genome ...

Object recognition is an important visual process. We are not only required to recognize objects across a variety of lighting conditions and variations in size, but also across changes in viewpoint. It has been shown that reaction times in object matching increase as a function of increasing angular disparity between ...

The physiological effects of the dietary polyphenol resveratrol are being extensively studied. Resveratrol has been proposed to promote healthy aging and to increase lifespan primarily through the activation of the class III histone deacetylases (sirtuins). Although its positive effects are evident in yeast and mice they still have to be ...

Aim: Duplication of 7q34 resulting in generation of BRAF-KIAA1549 fusion transcripts is a characteristic event in pilocytic astrocytoma that may also aid distinction from diffuse astrocytic tumours. Since data on BRAF- KIAA1549 fusion transcript status remain mainly limited to children, we aimed to examine the diagnostic value of BRAF-KIAA1549 fusion ...

Data on the reproductive biology of the genus Hippolyte are available from studies of Hippolyte inermis. These findings support the idea that these species are protandric hermaphrodites, exhibiting sex reversal. However, recent studies of this and other species, such as Hippolyte obliquimanus and Hippolyte williamsi, have not reported sex reversal ...

Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) in the pediatric population is relatively rare but carries significant psychological and physiological consequences. An interdisciplinary group of experts composed of medical and surgical specialists treating patients with SCI formulated the following questions: 1) What is the epidemiology of pediatric spinal cord injury and fractures?; 2) ...

In the human, male ageing results in reproductive hormonal and cellular changes that can influence semen quality (volume, motility, concentration and morphology) and ultimately result in a reduced fertilising capacity and a longer 'time to pregnancy' for ageing men as well as an increased risk for miscarriage. This prospective cohort ...

The aim of the study was to compare baseline cognitive performance of female in respect to male amateur boxers. METHODS. Study population included 28 female amateur boxers. Fifty-six male boxers, matched for age, employment and competitive level to female athletes, formed the control group. All boxers had no history of ...

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) and caliciviruses are enteric pathogens of humans and animals, and pigs have been considered an important reservoir of these viruses. The aim of this study is to determine the infection rates of HEV and caliciviruses (sapovirus [SaV] and norovirus [NoV]) in different age groups of pigs ...

Study design:Secondary analysis of cross-sectional data.Objectives:To identify differences in earnings among participants with spinal cord injury (SCI) and their relation to demographic, injury, educational and employment-related factors.Setting:People living with SCI in the community who were members of a disability support organization.Methods:A total of 76 members who have had traumatic SCI ...

Modic changes are of increasing interest, however their age and gender prevalence are not well described. To date, the associations between Modic changes and other common vertebral pathologies have only been described in small samples (n < 100). Our aim was, in a large dataset of people with low back pain, to ...

This study used an 11-year nationwide database to analyze the incidences of spinal cord injury (SCI) in subgroups by age, gender, injury level, etiology, and socio-economic status. The National Health Insurance Research Database of Taiwan covering over 99% of the population accumulated from 1998 to 2008 was analyzed. All SCI ...

Background Low back pain (LBP) in young athletes is increasing. Understanding spinal pathology related to sports may enhance design of prevention programs. Objective To test the hypothesis that rowing athletes with LBP have a higher likelihood of degenerative disc disease than athletes from other sports. Design Retrospective case series of ...

Kennedy P, Lude P, Elfström ML, Smithson EF. Psychological contributions to functional independence: a longitudinal investigation of spinal cord injury rehabilitation. To investigate the contribution of prerehabilitation appraisals of spinal cord injury (SCI) and patient's coping strategies to the variance in functional independence postdischarge. Longitudinal, cohort study. Patients aged 16 ...