Subclinical First Trimester Renal Abnormalities Are Associated With Preeclampsia in Normoalbuminuric Women With Type 1 Diabetes.

Objective: This study was conducted to determine the utility of tubular (urinary/plasma neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin [NGAL] and urinary kidney injury molecule 1 [KIM-1]) and glomerular (estimated glomerular filtration rate [eGFR]) biomarkers in predicting preeclampsia (PE) in pregnant women with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) who were free of microalbuminuria and hypertension at the first trimester.

Research Design And Methods: This was a prospective study of T1DM pregnancy. Maternal urinary and plasma NGAL, urinary KIM-1 (ELISA of frozen samples), and eGFR (Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration equation) were determined at three study visits (V1: 12.

Risk of pre-eclampsia in women taking metformin: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Aims: To perform meta-analyses of studies evaluating the risk of pre-eclampsia in high-risk insulin-resistant women taking metformin prior to, or during pregnancy.

Methods: A search was conducted of the Medline, EMBASE, Web of Science and Scopus databases. Both randomized controlled trials and prospective observational cohort studies of metformin treatment vs.

The oceanic budgets of nickel and zinc isotopes: the importance of sulfidic environments as illustrated by the Black Sea.

Isotopic data collected to date as part of the GEOTRACES and other programmes show that the oceanic dissolved pool is isotopically heavy relative to the inputs for zinc (Zn) and nickel (Ni). All Zn sinks measured until recently, and the only output yet measured for Ni, are isotopically heavier than the dissolved pool. This would require either a non-steady-state ocean or other unidentified sinks.

Climate controls prokaryotic community composition in desert soils of the southwestern United States.

Aridisols are the dominant soil type in drylands, which occupy one-third of Earth's terrestrial surface. We examined controls on biogeographical patterns of Aridisol prokaryotic (bacterial and archaeal) communities at a regional scale by comparing communities from 100 Aridisols throughout the southwestern United States using high-throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. We found that microbial communities differed among global biomes and deserts of the Southwest.

Linseed Oil Supplementation of Lambs' Diet in Early Life Leads to Persistent Changes in Rumen Microbiome Structure.

Diet has been shown to have a significant impact on microbial community composition in the rumen and could potentially be used to manipulate rumen microbiome structure to achieve specific outcomes. There is some evidence that a window may exist in early life, while the microbiome is being established, where manipulation through diet could lead to long-lasting results. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that dietary supplementation in early life will have an effect on rumen microbial composition that will persist even once supplementation is ceased.

Circulating adipokines are associated with pre-eclampsia in women with type 1 diabetes.

Aims/hypothesis: The incidence of pre-eclampsia, a multisystem disorder of pregnancy, is fourfold higher in type 1 diabetic than non-diabetic women; it is also increased in women with features of the metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance. In a prospective study of pregnant women with type 1 diabetes, we measured plasma levels of adipokines known to be associated with insulin resistance: leptin, fatty acid binding protein 4 (FABP4), adiponectin (total and high molecular weight [HMW]; also known as high molecular mass), retinol binding protein 4 (RBP4) and resistin and evaluated associations with the subsequent development of pre-eclampsia.

Methods: From an established prospective cohort of pregnant type 1 diabetic women, we studied 23 who developed pre-eclampsia and 24 who remained normotensive; for reference values we included 19 healthy non-diabetic normotensive pregnant women.

Effects of maternal diabetes and fetal sex on human placenta mitochondrial biogenesis.

Abnormal placental function in maternal diabetes affects fetal health and can predispose offspring to metabolic diseases in later life. There are fetal sex-specific differences in placenta structure and gene expression, which may affect placental responses to maternal diabetes. The present study examined the effects of maternal diabetes on indices of mitochondrial biogenesis in placentae from male and female offspring.

Patients Visiting Multiple Emergency Departments: Patterns, Costs, and Risk Factors.

Objectives: We sought to characterize the population of patients seeking care at multiple emergency departments (EDs) and to quantify the proportion of all ED visits and costs accounted for by these patients.

Methods: We performed a retrospective, cohort study of deidentified insurance claims for privately insured patients with one of more ED visits between 2010 and 2016. We measured the number of EDs visited by each patient and determined the overall proportion of all ED visits and ED costs accounted for by patients who visit multiple EDs.

Environmental niches and metabolic diversity in Neoarchean lakes.

The diversification of macro-organisms over the last 500 million years often coincided with the development of new environmental niches. Microbial diversification over the last 4 billion years likely followed similar patterns. However, linkages between environmental settings and microbial ecology have so far not been described from the ancient rock record.

Strawberries Improve Pain and Inflammation in Obese Adults with Radiographic Evidence of Knee Osteoarthritis.

Osteoarthritis (OA), the most common form of arthritis, is a significant public health burden in U.S. adults.

Impact of Enteroviral Polymerase Chain Reaction Testing on Length of Stay for Infants 60 Days Old or Younger.

Objective: To determine the impact of a cerebrospinal fluid enterovirus polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test performance on hospital length of stay (LOS) in a large multicenter cohort of infants undergoing evaluation for central nervous system infection.

Study Design: We performed a planned secondary analysis of a retrospective cohort of hospitalized infants ≤60 days of age who had a cerebrospinal fluid culture obtained at 1 of 18 participating centers (2005-2013). After adjustment for patient age and study year as well as clustering by hospital center, we compared LOS for infants who had an enterovirus PCR test performed vs not performed and among those tested, for infants with a positive vs negative test result.

Utility of Lumbar Puncture in Children Presenting With Status Epilepticus.

Objectives: Because meningitis may trigger seizures, we sought to determine its frequency in children with first-time status epilepticus (SE).

Methods: We performed a retrospective cross-sectional study of children aged 1 month to 21 years who presented to a single pediatric emergency department between 1995 and 2012 with SE and who had a lumbar puncture (LP) performed as part of the diagnostic evaluation. We defined bacterial meningitis as a cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) culture positive for a bacterial pathogen or CSF pleocytosis (CSF white blood cells ≥10 cells/mm) with a blood culture positive for a bacterial pathogen.

Correction of Cerebrospinal Fluid Protein in Infants With Traumatic Lumbar Punctures.

In our multicenter cohort of infants ≤60 days of age, we identified 2646 infants with a traumatic lumbar puncture, of which 31 (1.2%) had bacterial meningitis. For every 1000 cerebrospinal fluid red blood cells/mm, cerebrospinal (cerebrospinal fluid) protein increased 1.

BRAF V600 mutation detection in melanoma: a comparison of two laboratory testing methods.

Aims: The assessment of B-raf proto-oncogene, serine/threonine kinase () gene status is now standard practice in patients diagnosed with metastatic melanoma with its presence predicting a clinical response to treatment with BRAF inhibitors. The gold standard in determining BRAF status is currently by DNA-based methods. More recently, a BRAF V600E antibody has been developed.

False Negatives for Remote Life Detection on Ocean-Bearing Planets: Lessons from the Early Earth.

Ocean-atmosphere chemistry on Earth has undergone dramatic evolutionary changes throughout its long history, with potentially significant ramifications for the emergence and long-term stability of atmospheric biosignatures. Though a great deal of work has centered on refining our understanding of false positives for remote life detection, much less attention has been paid to the possibility of false negatives, that is, cryptic biospheres that are widespread and active on a planet's surface but are ultimately undetectable or difficult to detect in the composition of a planet's atmosphere. Here, we summarize recent developments from geochemical proxy records and Earth system models that provide insight into the long-term evolution of the most readily detectable potential biosignature gases on Earth-oxygen (O), ozone (O), and methane (CH).

Paleoecology and paleoceanography of the Athel silicilyte, Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary, Sultanate of Oman.

The Athel silicilyte is an enigmatic, hundreds of meters thick, finely laminated quartz deposit, in which silica precipitated in deep water (>~100-200 m) at the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary in the South Oman Salt Basin. In contrast, Meso-Neoproterozoic sinks for marine silica were dominantly restricted to peritidal settings. The silicilyte is known to contain sterane biomarkers for demosponges, which today are benthic, obligately aerobic organisms.

Addition of Fluorescence Lifetime Spectroscopy to the Tool Kit Used to Study the Formation and Degradation of Luminescent Quantum Dots in Solution.

The increasing commercialization of consumer electronic products that make use of II-VI semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) has raised significant concerns about their impact on natural systems and human health once they are released into the environment at the end of the product's lifetime. In this paper, we demonstrate the addition of fluorescence lifetime spectroscopy to the existing tool kit of spectroscopic techniques to quantitatively monitor changes in QD properties as they form and degrade in solution. Our study reveals that because of its rich information content, fluorescence lifetime spectroscopy has a limited utility as a stand-alone technique in the study of QD formation and degradation.

Untargeted Metabotyping Reveals Population-Level Variation in Plant Flavonoids and Alkaloids.

Metabolomics provides a powerful platform to characterize plants at the biochemical level, allowing a search for underlying genes and associations with higher level complex traits such as yield and nutritional value. Efficient and reliable methods to characterize metabolic variation in economically important species are considered of high value to the evaluation and prioritization of germplasm and breeding lines. In this investigation, a large-scale metabolomic survey was performed on a collection of diverse perennial ryegrass ( L.

Interpretation of Cerebrospinal Fluid White Blood Cell Counts in Young Infants With a Traumatic Lumbar Puncture.

Study Objective: We determine the optimal correction factor for cerebrospinal fluid WBC counts in infants with traumatic lumbar punctures.

Methods: We performed a secondary analysis of a retrospective cohort of infants aged 60 days or younger and with a traumatic lumbar puncture (cerebrospinal fluid RBC count ≥10,000 cells/mm) at 20 participating centers. Cerebrospinal fluid pleocytosis was defined as a cerebrospinal fluid WBC count greater than or equal to 20 cells/mm for infants aged 28 days or younger and greater than or equal to 10 cells/mm for infants aged 29 to 60 days; bacterial meningitis was defined as growth of pathogenic bacteria from cerebrospinal fluid culture.

Evolution of the global phosphorus cycle.

The macronutrient phosphorus is thought to limit primary productivity in the oceans on geological timescales. Although there has been a sustained effort to reconstruct the dynamics of the phosphorus cycle over the past 3.5 billion years, it remains uncertain whether phosphorus limitation persisted throughout Earth's history and therefore whether the phosphorus cycle has consistently modulated biospheric productivity and ocean-atmosphere oxygen levels over time.

Uncovering the spatial heterogeneity of Ediacaran carbon cycling.

Records of the Ediacaran carbon cycle (635-541 million years ago) include the Shuram excursion (SE), the largest negative carbonate carbon isotope excursion in Earth history (down to -12‰). The nature of this excursion remains enigmatic given the difficulties of interpreting a perceived extreme global decrease in the δ C of seawater dissolved inorganic carbon. Here, we present carbonate and organic carbon isotope (δ C and δ C ) records from the Ediacaran Doushantuo Formation along a proximal-to-distal transect across the Yangtze Platform of South China as a test of the spatial variation of the SE.

Tuning Nonlinear Mechanical Mode Coupling in GaAs Nanowires Using Cross-Section Morphology Control.

We investigate the nonlinear mechanical properties of GaAs nanowires with anisotropic cross-section. Fundamental and second order flexural modes are studied using laser interferometry with good agreement found between experiment and theory describing the nonlinear response under mechanical excitation. In particular, we demonstrate that the sign of the nonlinear coupling between orthogonal modes is dependent on the cross-section aspect ratio.

Deciphering Pro-Lymphangiogenic Programs during Mammary Involution and Postpartum Breast Cancer.

Postpartum breast cancers are a highly metastatic subset of young women's breast cancers defined as breast cancers diagnosed in the postpartum period or within 5 years of last child birth. Women diagnosed with postpartum breast cancer are nearly twice as likely to develop metastasis and to die from breast cancer when compared with nulliparous women. Additionally, epidemiological studies utilizing multiple cohorts also suggest that nearly half of all breast cancers in women aged <45 qualify as postpartum cases.

The role and regulation of Rab40b-Tks5 complex during invadopodia formation and cancer cell invasion.

Invadopodia formation and extracellular matrix degradation are key events during cancer cell invasion, yet little is known about mechanisms mediating these processes. Here, we report that Rab40b plays a key role in mediating invadopodia function during breast cancer cell invasion. We also identify Tks5 (also known as SH3PXD2A), a known Src kinase substrate, as a new Rab40b effector protein and show that Tks5 functions as a tether that mediates Rab40b-dependent targeting of transport vesicles containing MMP2 and MMP9 to the extending invadopodia.