Academic stress is one of the primary factors threatening university students' well-being and performance. Undergraduate students who are working towards applying to medical school, defined as being on the pre-medicine or "premed" pathway, are suspected to have higher academic stress compared to their peers who are not premed. However, what factors contribute to academic stress for premed students is not well understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe objective was to determine the effect of low inclusion levels of dried distillers grains (DDG) on feeding behavior in heifers consuming a high-moisture corn-based diet in the finishing phase. Simmental × Angus heifers (N = 90; 323 ± 50 kg) were fed for 180 d. Heifers were blocked by initial body weight (BW) into two groups, stratified by sire, and assigned to 15 pens with six heifers each.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDetailed crystallographic characterization of a tri-aspartate metal-binding site previously identified on the three-fold symmetry axis of a hexameric enzyme, LarE from Lactobacillus plantarum, was conducted. By screening an array of monovalent, divalent, and trivalent metal ions, we demonstrated that this metal binding site stoichiometrically binds Ca, Mn, Fe/Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, and Cd, but not monovalent metal ions, Cr, Mg, Y, Sr or Ba. Extensive database searches resulted in only 13 similar metal binding sites in other proteins, indicative of the rareness of tri-aspartate architectures, which allows for engineering such a selective multivalent metal ion binding site into target macromolecules for structural and biophysical characterization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSince 2011, tropical beaches from Africa to Brazil, Central America, and the Caribbean have been inundated by tons of sargassum seaweed from a new equatorial source of pelagic sargassum in the Atlantic. In recent years the extraordinary accumulations of sargassum make this a nuisance algal bloom for tropical coasts. In 2018 satellite data indicated floating mats of sargassum that extended throughout the Caribbean to the northeast coast of Brazil with the highest percent coverage over the water yet recorded.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIncreased energy expenditure associated with active inflammation has been thought to be one cause of weight loss in patients with Crohn's disease. Our aim was to test this hypothesis by determining if resting energy expenditure (REE) measured by indirect calorimetry was greater than the predicted energy expenditure (PEE) calculated from the Harris-Benedict formula (variables--sex, age, height, and weight) in each patient. Fifty-four patients with radiographic evidence of Crohn's disease were studied.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeven patients with giant hypertrophic gastropathy participated in a gastric intubation perfusion study to investigate the route and mechanism of protein leakage associated with this disease. All patients had gastric tight junctions wider than those in healthy controls. Acute administration of propantheline bromide reduced gastric albumin leakage (-50.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA prospective evaluation of zinc status was made in 63 randomly selected patients with Crohn's disease. In the patients, mean serum and 24-hr urinary zinc values--105 microgram/dl and 383 microgram/day, respectively--were not different from controls. However, 46% of these patients had less than normal serum zinc and 36% had low urinary zinc excretions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCampylobacter fetus subspecies jejuni was isolated fom the feces of 63 (3.2%) of the 1,953 patients who had stools cultured at the Mayo Clinic in 1979. In contrast, Salmonella and Shigella combined were isolated from 31 (1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe onset of functional nausea among 77 patients was frequently related to an organic disease or to a psychophysiologic response to stress. Later, the nausea had obvious features of conversion, hypochondriasis, or an hallucination. The patients had significant psychiatric disorders as assessed by the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and by clinical examination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeripheral blood mononuclear cells from patients with either Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis (collectively referred to as inflammatory bowel disease) are cytotoxic in vitro for isologous or allogeneic colonic epithelial cells. Utilizing the ability of thymus-derived (T) lymphocytes to bind sheep red blood cells to their surface and the property of bone marrow-derived (B) lymphocytes to display easily detectable surface immunoglobulin determinants, the cytoxicity of these lymphocyte subpopulations was tested. The results indicate that the mononuclear cell required for the lysis of colonic epithelium was not included within the bulk of T or B lymphocytes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIdiopathic late-onset immunoglobulin deficiency in a young man was associated with achlorhydria and a severe intestinal malabsorption syndrome that did not respond to conventional therapy. Combined therapy with high doses of prednisone and tetracycline hydrochloride resulted in weight gain, cessation of diarrhea, improved absorption of water, fat, and vitamin B12, and production of gastric acid after stimulation with histamine. Serum immunoglobulin levels, however, did not increase.
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