The effects of moderate prenatal alcohol exposure on performance in object and spatial discrimination tasks by adult male rats.

Exposure to alcohol during pregnancy produces Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders, which in its most severe form is characterized by physical dysmorphology and neurobehavioral alterations. Moderate prenatal alcohol exposure (mPAE) is known to produce deficits in discrimination of spatial locations in adulthood. However, the impact of mPAE on higher-order sensory representations, such as discrimination of perceptually similar stimuli, is currently unknown.

Hydropower capacity factors trending down in the United States.

The United States hydropower fleet has faced increasing environmental and regulatory pressures over the last half century, potentially constraining total generation. Here we show that annual capacity factor has declined at four fifths of United States hydropower plants since 1980, with two thirds of decreasing trends significant at p < 0.05.

Acute Pericarditis: Rapid Evidence Review.

Acute pericarditis is defined as inflammation of the pericardium and occurs in approximately 4.4% of patients who present to the emergency department for nonischemic chest pain, with a higher prevalence in men. Although there are numerous etiologies of pericarditis, most episodes are idiopathic and the cause is presumed to be viral.

Blood myeloid cells differentiate to lung resident cells and respond to pathogen stimuli in a 3D human tissue-engineered lung model.

Respiratory infections remain a leading global health concern. Models that recapitulate the cellular complexity of the lower airway of humans will provide important information about how the immune response reflects the interactions between diverse cell types during infection. We developed a 3D human tissue-engineered lung model (3D-HTLM) composed of primary human pulmonary epithelial and endothelial cells with added blood myeloid cells that allows assessment of the innate immune response to respiratory infection.

Cytokine-Mediated Degradation of the Transcription Factor ERG Impacts the Pulmonary Vascular Response to Systemic Inflammatory Challenge.

Background: During infectious diseases, proinflammatory cytokines transiently destabilize interactions between adjacent vascular endothelial cells (ECs) to facilitate the passage of immune molecules and cells into tissues. However, in the lung, the resulting vascular hyperpermeability can lead to organ dysfunction. Previous work identified the transcription factor ERG (erythroblast transformation-specific-related gene) as a master regulator of endothelial homeostasis.

Cytokine-Mediated Degradation of the Transcription Factor ERG Impacts the Pulmonary Vascular Response to Systemic Inflammatory Challenge.

Background: During infectious diseases, pro-inflammatory cytokines transiently destabilize interactions between adjacent vascular endothelial cells (ECs) to facilitate the passage of immune molecules and cells into tissues. However, in the lung the resulting vascular hyperpermeability can lead to organ dysfunction. Previous work identified the transcription factor ERG as a master regulator of endothelial homeostasis.

Collection and curation of prokaryotic genome assemblies from type strains at NCBI.

The public sequence databases are entrusted with the dual responsibility of providing an accessible archive to all submitters and supporting data reliability and its re-use to all users. Genomes from type materials can act as an unambiguous reference for a taxonomic name and play an important role in comparative genomics, especially for taxon verification or reclassification. The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) collects and curates information on prokaryotic type strains and genomes from type strains.

Gram-Positive Bacteria Cell Wall Peptidoglycan Polymers Activate Human Dendritic Cells to Produce IL-23 and IL-1β and Promote T17 Cell Differentiation.

Gram-positive bacterial infections are a major cause of organ failure and mortality in sepsis. Cell wall peptidoglycan (PGN) is shed during bacterial replication, and PGN promotes a sepsis-like pathology in baboons. Herein, we determined the ability of polymeric PGN free from TLR ligands to shape human dendritic cell (DC) responses that are important for the initiation of T cell immunity.

Hip Fractures: Diagnosis and Management.

Hip fractures are common causes of disability, with mortality rates reaching 30% at one year. Nonmodifiable risk factors include lower socioeconomic status, older age, female sex, prior fracture, metabolic bone disease, and bony malignancy. Modifiable risk factors include low body mass index, having osteoporosis, increased fall risk, medications that increase fall risk or decrease bone mineral density, and substance use.

Revised monthly energy generation estimates for 1,500 hydroelectric power plants in the United States.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) conducts a regular survey (form EIA-923) to collect annual and monthly net generation for more than ten thousand U.

Unilateral Perforant Path Transection Does Not Alter Lateral Entorhinal Cortical or Hippocampal CA3 Expression.

It is well established that degradation of perforant path fibers is associated with age-related cognitive dysfunction and CA3 hyperactivity. Whether this fiber loss triggers a cascade of other functional changes within the hippocampus circuit has not been causatively established, however. Thus, the current study evaluated the effect of perforant path fiber loss on neuronal activity in CA3 and layer II of the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) in relation to mnemonic similarity task performance.

Comparison of potential drinking water source contamination across one hundred U.S. cities.

Drinking water supplies of cities are exposed to potential contamination arising from land use and other anthropogenic activities in local and distal source watersheds. Because water quality sampling surveys are often piecemeal, regionally inconsistent, and incomplete with respect to unregulated contaminants, the United States lacks a detailed comparison of potential source water contamination across all of its large cities. Here we combine national-scale geospatial datasets with hydrologic simulations to compute two metrics representing potential contamination of water supplies from point and nonpoint sources for over a hundred U.

Rodent mnemonic similarity task performance requires the prefrontal cortex.

Mnemonic similarity task performance, in which a known target stimulus must be distinguished from similar lures, is supported by the hippocampus and perirhinal cortex. Impairments on this task are known to manifest with advancing age. Interestingly, disrupting hippocampal activity leads to mnemonic discrimination impairments when lures are novel, but not when they are familiar.

Development of a pharmacy 'patient prioritization tool' for use in a Tertiary Paediatric Hospital.

What Is Known And Objective: Pharmacists play an integral role in paediatric patient care by ensuring the safe and optimal use of medications. There are increasing demands on pharmacists' time and challenges to meet them within allocated resources, and therefore, it is important to ensure that resources are used efficiently. Patient prioritization tools for clinical pharmacists have been proposed via many studies, but are generally adult-based and/or have not been validated to confirm their effectiveness.

NCBI Taxonomy: a comprehensive update on curation, resources and tools.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Taxonomy includes organism names and classifications for every sequence in the nucleotide and protein sequence databases of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration. Since the last review of this resource in 2012, it has undergone several improvements. Most notable is the shift from a single SQL database to a series of linked databases tied to a framework of data called NameBank.

Perindopril in Breast Milk and Determination of Breastfed Infant Exposure: A Prospective Observational Study.

Objective: This study aimed to quantify the amount of perindopril and its active metabolite perindoprilat present in breast milk and corresponding maternal and infant plasma concentrations.

Design: Prospective, longitudinal, observational.

Setting: Tertiary specialist paediatric and obstetric hospital in Adelaide, South Australia.

Multiscale Imaging Reveals Aberrant Functional Connectome Organization and Elevated Dorsal Striatal Expression in Advanced Age.

The functional connectome reflects a network architecture enabling adaptive behavior that becomes vulnerable in advanced age. The cellular mechanisms that contribute to altered functional connectivity in old age, however, are not known. Here we used a multiscale imaging approach to link age-related changes in the functional connectome to altered expression of the activity-dependent immediate-early gene as a function of training to multitask on a working memory (WM)/biconditional association task (BAT).

IRF4-dependent dendritic cells regulate CD8 T-cell differentiation and memory responses in influenza infection.

Acute respiratory disease caused by influenza viruses is imperfectly mitigated by annual vaccination to select strains. Development of vaccines that elicit lung-resident memory CD8 T cells (T) would offer more universal protection to seasonal and emerging pandemic viruses. Understanding how lung-resident dendritic cells (DCs) regulate T differentiation would be an important step in this process.

The Paris pledges and the energy-water-land nexus in Latin America: Exploring implications of greenhouse gas emission reductions.

In the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations worldwide pledged emissions reductions (Nationally Determined Contributions-NDCs) to avert the threat of climate change, and agreed to periodically review these pledges to strengthen their level of ambition. Previous studies have analyzed NDCs largely in terms of their implied contribution to limit global warming, their implications on the energy sector or on mitigation costs. Nevertheless, a gap in the literature exists regarding the understanding of implications of the NDCs on countries' Energy-Water-Land nexus resource systems.

A pathway of global food supply adaptation in a world with increasingly constrained groundwater.

Many of the world's major freshwater aquifers are being exploited unsustainably, with some projected to approach environmentally unsafe drawdown limits within the 21st century. Given that aquifer depletion tends to occur in important crop producing regions, the prospect of running dry poses a significant threat to global food security. Here we use the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) to explore the response of land use and agriculture sectors to severe constraints on global water resources.

Experience-Dependent Effects of Muscimol-Induced Hippocampal Excitation on Mnemonic Discrimination.

Memory requires similar episodes with overlapping features to be represented distinctly, a process that is disrupted in many clinical conditions as well as normal aging. Data from humans have linked this ability to activity in hippocampal CA3 and dentate gyrus (DG). While animal models have shown the perirhinal cortex is critical for disambiguating similar stimuli, hippocampal activity has not been causally linked to discrimination abilities.

Perforant Path Fiber Loss Results in Mnemonic Discrimination Task Deficits in Young Rats.

The observation that entorhinal input to the hippocampus declines in old age is well established across human studies and in animal models. This loss of perforant path fibers is exaggerated in individuals with episodic memory deficits and Mild Cognitive Impairment, suggesting that perforant path integrity is associated with progression to Alzheimer's Disease. During normal aging, behaviors that measure the ability of a study participant to discriminate between stimuli that share features is particularly sensitive to perforant fiber loss.

Transfer of rosuvastatin into breast milk: liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry methodology and clinical recommendations.

Introduction: Rosuvastatin reduces concentrations of total cholesterol (TC) and is used for the management of hypercholesterolemia and prevention of acute coronary syndromes. There are no published reports estimating infant exposure to rosuvastatin through breast milk.

Purpose: The aims of this study were to quantify concentrations of rosuvastatin in human milk and plasma from a lactating woman taking rosuvastatin and to investigate potential infant exposure.