Life History, Biology, and Distribution of Pterostichus melanarius (Coleoptera: Carabidae) in North America.

Pterostichus melanarius (Illiger, 1798) is a Palearctic generalist predator native to Europe. It was unintentionally introduced to North America at least twice in the mid 1920s and has since become widespread in Canada and the United States. Although P.

Crop-associated virus reduces the rooting depth of non-crop perennial native grass more than non-crop-associated virus with known viral suppressor of RNA silencing (VSR).

As agricultural acreage expanded and came to dominate landscapes across the world, viruses gained opportunities to move between crop and wild native plants. In the Midwestern USA, virus exchange currently occurs between widespread annual Poaceae crops and remnant native perennial prairie grasses now under consideration as bioenergy feedstocks. In this region, the common aphid species Rhopalosiphum padi L.

Intermittent catheterization with a hydrophilic-coated catheter delays urinary tract infections in acute spinal cord injury: a prospective, randomized, multicenter trial.

Objective: To investigate whether intermittent catheterization (IC) with a hydrophilic-coated catheter delays the onset of the first symptomatic urinary tract infection (UTI) and reduces the number of symptomatic UTIs in patients with acute spinal cord injury (SCI) compared with IC with standard, uncoated catheters.

Design: A prospective, randomized, parallel-group trial.

Setting: Fifteen North American SCI centers.

A lipidomic screen of palmitate-treated MIN6 β-cells links sphingolipid metabolites with endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and impaired protein trafficking.

Saturated fatty acids promote lipotoxic ER (endoplasmic reticulum) stress in pancreatic β-cells in association with Type 2 diabetes. To address the underlying mechanisms we employed MS in a comprehensive lipidomic screen of MIN6 β-cells treated for 48 h with palmitate. Both the overall mass and the degree of saturation of major neutral lipids and phospholipids were only modestly increased by palmitate.

Increased fatty acid desaturation and enhanced expression of stearoyl coenzyme A desaturase protects pancreatic beta-cells from lipoapoptosis.

Increased availability of fatty acids causes cell death and dysfunction in beta-cell lines, isolated islets, and animal models of diabetes. From the MIN6 beta-cell line, we selected two subpools that are resistant to palmitate-induced apoptosis. Protection was not universal because palmitate-resistant cells remained sensitive to cytokine- and streptozotocin-induced apoptosis.

Chronic effects of fatty acids on pancreatic beta-cell function: new insights from functional genomics.

Type 2 diabetes can be viewed as a failure of the pancreatic beta-cell to compensate for peripheral insulin resistance with enhanced insulin secretion. This failure is explained by both a relative loss of beta-cell mass as well as secretory defects that include enhanced basal secretion and a selective loss of sensitivity to glucose. These features are reproduced by chronic exposure of beta-cells to fatty acids (FAs), suggesting that hyperlipidemia might contribute to decompensation.

Expression profiling of palmitate- and oleate-regulated genes provides novel insights into the effects of chronic lipid exposure on pancreatic beta-cell function.

Chronic lipid exposure is implicated in beta-cell dysfunction in type 2 diabetes. We therefore used oligonucleotide arrays to define global alterations in gene expression in MIN6 cells after 48-h pretreatment with oleate or palmitate. Altogether, 126 genes were altered > or =1.