Behaviour of personality-screened juvenile Oreochromis niloticus in different challenges: Bold fish present more exploratory capacity and learning to face imposed challenges.

The investigation of cultivation and management techniques that take into account behaviour and animal welfare becomes important due to their direct relationship with animal performance. This study aimed to classify juvenile Oreochromis niloticus by personality and compare their performance at exploration and competition tasks. The new object test was used to select bold and shy animals, which were then tested to see which first approached an object.

Development of an Innovative Mechatronic Binder Machine.

This paper describes the development of a mechatronic punch and bind office machine. Integrating smart technologies in the existing traditional business machines will ease the evolution of these systems, enabling productivity and efficiency. The development of an experimental platform that enables further advances in servitization is required.

Cognitive decline in patients with prostate cancer: study protocol of a prospective cohort, NEON-PC.

Introduction: Prostate cancer is the most prevalent oncological disease among men in industrialised countries. Despite the high survival rates, treatments are often associated with adverse effects, including metabolic and cardiovascular complications, sexual dysfunction and, to a lesser extent, cognitive decline. This study was primarily designed to evaluate the trajectories of cognitive performance in patients with prostate cancer, and to quantify the impact of the disease and its treatments on the occurrence of cognitive decline.

High-density transposon libraries utilising outward-oriented promoters identify mechanisms of action and resistance to antimicrobials.

The use of bacterial transposon mutant libraries in phenotypic screens is a well-established technique for determining which genes are essential or advantageous for growth in conditions of interest. Standard, inactivating, transposon libraries cannot give direct information about genes whose over-expression gives a selective advantage. We report the development of a system wherein outward-oriented promoters are included in mini-transposons, generation of transposon mutant libraries in Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa and their use to probe genes important for growth under selection with the antimicrobial fosfomycin, and a recently-developed leucyl-tRNA synthase inhibitor.

Water and Sediment Quality in the Coastal Zone Around the Mouth of Doce River After the Fundão Tailings Dam Failure.

Fundão dam (Minas Gerais, Brazil) breached on 5 November 2015, releasing 50 million m³ of Fe ore tailings and dam materials into the upper Doce River system. The tailings travelled 670 km along the river system to the ocean. Starting on 17 November 2015, 6 days before the tailings reached the Doce River mouth, a water quality monitoring program with a daily sampling schedule was implemented by Samarco Mineração S.

Engineered antigen containing epitopes from Loxosceles spp. spider toxins induces a monoclonal antibody (Lox-mAb3) against astacin-like metalloproteases.

Loxoscelism pose a health issue in the South America. The treatment for these accidents is based on the administration of antivenom produced in animals immunized with Loxosceles venom. In this work, a previously produced non-toxic multiepitopic chimeric protein (rMEPlox), composed of epitopes derived from the main toxins families (sphyngomielinase-D, metalloproteases, and hyaluronidases) of Loxosceles spider venoms, was used as antigen to produce monoclonal antibodies (mAbs).

Longhorn Beetle (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) Assemblage and the Structural Heterogeneity of Habitat at the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.

The longhorn beetles play important roles in the forest ecosystem processes and their diversity is affected by many environmental disturbances worldwide. This study aimed at understanding how the structural heterogeneity of the habitat can affect the longhorn beetle assemblage in three areas of an Atlantic Forest, which suffered differential impacts in the past and are now in different successional stages. The area in the most advanced successional stage had mainly lower density of trees, but with greater availability of dead wood, especially larger diameter classes.

nmrML: A Community Supported Open Data Standard for the Description, Storage, and Exchange of NMR Data.

NMR is a widely used analytical technique with a growing number of repositories available. As a result, demands for a vendor-agnostic, open data format for long-term archiving of NMR data have emerged with the aim to ease and encourage sharing, comparison, and reuse of NMR data. Here we present nmrML, an open XML-based exchange and storage format for NMR spectral data.

Larviculture of a carnivorous freshwater catfish, Lophiosilurus alexandri, screened by personality type.

Considering that each personality type in animals presents distinct physiological and behavioural responses, this study evaluated the efficiency of the Novel Environment test to classify larvae of Lophiosilurus alexandri into bold and shy individuals, which were then investigated for growth, cannibalism and mortality in larviculture of pure and mixed groups. Larvae with an average weight of 24.0±1.

Early sexing techniques in Lophiosilurus alexandri (Steindachner, 1876), a freshwater carnivorous catfish.

This study aimed to evaluate sexing techniques for juvenile Lophiosilurus alexandri. With this aim, we evaluated three techniques: coelioscopy, performed with the use of video surgery equipment; coeliotomy, a surgical procedure for direct visualization of the gonads; and sex determination using a urethral probe to compare the genital papillae. For coelioscopy, the survival rate was 100% 30 days after the procedure, and the fish restarted eating 10 days after surgery.

IMPROVED EXPERIMENTAL MODEL TO EVALUATE SUBMUCOSAL INJECTION SOLUTIONS FOR ENDOSCOPIC SUBMUCOSAL DISSECTION.

Background: Endoscopic submucosal dissection carries an increased risk of bleeding and perforation. The creation of a long lasting submucosal cushion is essential for the safe and complete removal of the lesion. There is not a suitable experimental model for evaluation of the durability of the cushioning effect of different solutions.

Diagnosis of hantavirus infection in humans.

Rodent-borne hantaviruses (family Bunyaviridae, genus Hantavirus) cause hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in the Americas and hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome in Europe and Asia. The viruses are transmitted to humans mainly by inhalation of virus-contaminated aerosols of rodent excreta and secreta. Classic clinical hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome occurs in five phases: fever, hypotension, oliguria, polyuria, and convalescence.

Endovascular model of abdominal aortic aneurysm induction in swine.

Abdominal aortic aneurysms are among the main causes of death. The high morbidity and mortality associated with aneurysm rupture and repair represents a challenge for surgeons and high risk for patients. Although experimental models are useful to understand, train, and develop new treatment and diagnostic methods for this pathology, animal models developed to date are far from ideal.

Innovative immunization protocols using chimeric recombinant protein for the production of polyspecific loxoscelic antivenom in horses.

A chimeric protein (rCpLi) was constructed expressing three epitopes of rLiD1, a dermonecrotic toxin from the venom of Loxosceles intermedia spider. We have analyzed the neutralization potential of sera obtained by immunization of horses with rCpLi and rCpLi combined with initial doses of venoms and compared these with antivenom traditionally produced in horses using crude Loxosceles gaucho, Loxosceles laeta and L. intermedia venoms as antigens.

Fitness and stability of obligate cross-feeding interactions that emerge upon gene loss in bacteria.

Cross-feeding interactions, in which bacterial cells exchange costly metabolites to the benefit of both interacting partners, are very common in the microbial world. However, it generally remains unclear what maintains this type of interaction in the presence of non-cooperating types. We investigate this problem using synthetic cross-feeding interactions: by simply deleting two metabolic genes from the genome of Escherichia coli, we generated genotypes that require amino acids to grow and release other amino acids into the environment.

KNIME-CDK: Workflow-driven cheminformatics.

Background: Cheminformaticians have to routinely process and analyse libraries of small molecules. Among other things, that includes the standardization of molecules, calculation of various descriptors, visualisation of molecular structures, and downstream analysis. For this purpose, scientific workflow platforms such as the Konstanz Information Miner can be used if provided with the right plug-in.

Selection of human tissue-specific elementary flux modes using gene expression data.

Motivation: The analysis of high-throughput molecular data in the context of metabolic pathways is essential to uncover their underlying functional structure. Among different metabolic pathway concepts in systems biology, elementary flux modes (EFMs) hold a predominant place, as they naturally capture the complexity and plasticity of cellular metabolism and go beyond predefined metabolic maps. However, their use to interpret high-throughput data has been limited so far, mainly because their computation in genome-scale metabolic networks has been unfeasible.

Detecting and investigating substrate cycles in a genome-scale human metabolic network.

Substrate cycles, also known as futile cycles, are cyclic metabolic routes that dissipate energy by hydrolysing cofactors such as ATP. They were first described to occur in the muscles of bumblebees and brown adipose tissue in the 1970s. A popular example is the conversion of fructose 6-phosphate to fructose 1,6-bisphosphate and back.

Against the stream: relevance of gluconeogenesis from fatty acids for natives of the arctic regions.

Background: The question whether even-chain fatty acids can be converted into glucose has a long-standing tradition in biochemistry. Since the glyoxylate shunt is absent from mammals, the question has been considered to be solved. It is of particular relevance for understanding the metabolic state of natives of the arctic regions due to the very high fat content of their traditional diet only containing negligible amounts of carbohydrates.

Relations between phenotypic changes of spores and biofilm production by Bacillus atrophaeus ATCC 9372 growing in solid-state fermentation.

Bacillus spp. spores are usually obtained from strains cultivated in artificial media. However, in natural habitats, spores are predominantly formed from bacteria present in highly surface-associated communities of cells.

NAD(+) biosynthesis and salvage--a phylogenetic perspective.

NAD is best known as an electron carrier and a cosubstrate of various redox reactions. However, over the past 20 years, NAD(+) has been shown to be a key signaling molecule that mediates post-translational protein modifications and serves as precursor of ADP-ribose-containing messenger molecules, which are involved in calcium mobilization. In contrast to its role as a redox carrier, NAD(+)-dependent signaling processes involve the release of nicotinamide (Nam) and require constant replenishment of cellular NAD(+) pools.

Does baseline total testosterone improve the yielding of prostate cancer screening?

Previous studies suggest an association between total testosterone (tT) and prostate cancer, but results are conflicting and it is not clear if accounting for the tT levels improves the yielding of patient selection for prostatic biopsy. We evaluated the potential for tT levels and the tT/total PSA (tPSA) ratio to be used as diagnostic tools for prostate cancer and its relation with cancer aggressiveness. We measured tT, tPSA and free PSA (fPSA) in fasting blood samples of 1570 subjects consecutively referred for prostate biopsy due to abnormal digital rectal examination and/or elevated tPSA levels.

Genome-scale metabolic representation of Amycolatopsis balhimycina.

Infection caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is an increasing societal problem. Typically, glycopeptide antibiotics are used in the treatment of these infections. The most comprehensively studied glycopeptide antibiotic biosynthetic pathway is that of balhimycin biosynthesis in Amycolatopsis balhimycina.

Detecting structural invariants in biological reaction networks.

The detection and analysis of structural invariants in cellular reaction networks is of central importance to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of metabolism. In this work, we review different kinds of structural invariants in reaction networks and their Petri net-based representation. In particular, we discuss invariants that can be obtained from the left and right null spaces of the stoichiometric matrix which correspond to conserved moieties (P-invariants) and elementary flux modes (EFMs, minimal T-invariants).