Age- and size-corrected kicking speed and accuracy in elite junior soccer players.

Kicking powerfully and accurately is essential in soccer, and players who kick proficiently with both feet are highly sought after. Assessing performance in youth players is often confounded by more physically developed players outperforming their smaller peers. To alleviate such bias, we present a testing protocol and normative data developed with an elite Brazilian soccer academy that controls for players' age and size to assess kick performance with both feet.

Low-dose aspirin in pregnancy: who? when? how much? and why?

Purpose Of Review: The use of low dose aspirin (LDA) has become routine in prenatal care for a variety of diagnoses, most importantly in women with a history of preeclampsia and associated poor pregnancy outcomes. Although LDA is currently indicated in patients considered to be at risk for development of preeclampsia, optimal dosing, timing of treatment initiation, and persons of benefit are under investigation. Several studies have also looked at LDA treatment and its effect on other maternal and fetal outcomes.

Prevention of preterm birth in multiples.

Purpose Of Review: Multifetal pregnancy carries increased risk of preterm delivery, and consensus on management options to prevent early birth in this population has not been reached. This review serves to summarize the most contemporary findings on this controversial topic.

Recent Findings: Examination-indicated cerclage is effective in reducing preterm birth in twin pregnancies, whereas cerclages for other indications are less convincing.

Loss of neutral ceramidase protects cells from nutrient- and energy -deprivation-induced cell death.

Sphingolipids are a family of lipids that regulate the cell cycle, differentiation and cell death. Sphingolipids are known to play a role in the induction of apoptosis, but a role for these lipids in necroptosis is largely unknown. Necroptosis is a programmed form of cell death that, unlike apoptosis, does not require ATP.

Renal glycosphingolipid metabolism is dysfunctional in lupus nephritis.

Nearly one half of patients with lupus develop glomerulonephritis (GN), which often leads to renal failure. Although nephritis is diagnosed by the presence of proteinuria, the pathology of nephritis can fall into one of five classes defined by different forms of tissue injury, and the mechanisms involved in pathogenesis are not completely understood. Glycosphingolipids are abundant in the kidney, have roles in many cellular functions, and were shown to be involved in other renal diseases.

Cathepsin C inhibitors: property optimization and identification of a clinical candidate.

A lead generation and optimization program delivered the highly selective and potent CatC inhibitor 10 as an in vivo tool compound and potential development candidate. Structural studies were undertaken to generate SAR understanding.

Glycosphingolipids and kidney disease.

Glycosphingolipids, derived from the addition of sugar-moieties to the sphingolipid ceramide, are highly abundant in the kidney. Glycosphingolipids are known to play an important role in organ function at least in part from inherited lipid storage diseases such as Anderson-Fabry disease (Fabry's disease; FD) that results from a mutation in alpha-galactosidase a (α-GLA or α-Gal A), the enzyme responsible for catalyzing the removal of terminal galactose residues from glycosphingolipids. The inactivation in α-GLA in FD results in the accumulation of glycosphingolipids, including globosides and lactosylceramides, which manifests as several common pathologies including end-stage kidney disease.

Molecular evolution of the Bovini tribe (Bovidae, Bovinae): is there evidence of rapid evolution or reduced selective constraint in Domestic cattle?

Background: If mutation within the coding region of the genome is largely not adaptive, the ratio of nonsynonymous (dN) to synonymous substitutions (dS) per site (dN/dS) should be approximately equal among closely related species. Furthermore, dN/dS in divergence between species should be equivalent to dN/dS in polymorphisms. This hypothesis is of particular interest in closely related members of the Bovini tribe, because domestication has promoted rapid phenotypic divergence through strong artificial selection of some species while others remain undomesticated.

Cervicofacial and mediastinal emphysema complicating a dental procedure.

Cervicofacial subcutaneous emphysema is an infrequently reported sequela of dental surgery. It may be caused by the inadvertent introduction of air into the soft tissues during procedures using high-speed, air-driven handpieces or air-water syringes. In this paper, we present a case in which subcutaneous emphysema developed in a middle-aged woman following routine restorative treatment.

Testing the neutral theory of molecular evolution using genomic data: a comparison of the human and bovine transcriptome.

Despite growing evidence of rapid evolution in protein coding genes, the contribution of positive selection to intra- and interspecific differences in protein coding regions of the genome is unclear. We attempted to see if genes coding for secreted proteins and genes with narrow expression, specifically those preferentially expressed in the mammary gland, have diverged at a faster rate between domestic cattle (Bos taurus) and humans (Homo sapiens) than other genes and whether positive selection is responsible. Using a large data set, we identified groups of genes based on secretion and expression patterns and compared them for the rate of nonsynonymous (dN) and synonymous (dS) substitutions per site and the number of radical (Dr) and conservative (Dc) amino acid substitutions.