Transcriptional responses of Escherichia coli during recovery from inorganic or organic mercury exposure.

Background: The protean chemical properties of mercury have long made it attractive for diverse applications, but its toxicity requires great care in its use, disposal, and recycling. Mercury occurs in multiple chemical forms, and the molecular basis for the distinct toxicity of its various forms is only partly understood. Global transcriptomics applied over time can reveal how a cell recognizes a toxicant and what cellular subsystems it marshals to repair and recover from the damage.

Antibiotics Dispensed to Privately Insured Pregnant Women with Urinary Tract Infections - United States, 2014.

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) occur in about 8% of pregnant women, and untreated UTIs can have serious consequences, including pyelonephritis, preterm labor, low birth weight, and sepsis (1). Pregnant women are typically screened for UTIs during early pregnancy, and those with bacteriuria are treated with antibiotics (1,2). Antibiotic stewardship is critical to improving patient safety and to combating antibiotic resistance.

The Emotional Resources Group: Provisional outcome data for a pilot six-session emotion regulation programme for secondary care.

Objective: To examine the effectiveness of a new, six-session emotion regulation group intervention designed for the secondary care setting: The Emotional Resources Group (ERG).

Method: In this pilot study, participants were recruited by referral from secondary care mental health services. Forty-seven individuals participated in the study.

Distribution, composition and functions of gelatinous tissues in deep-sea fishes.

Many deep-sea fishes have a gelatinous layer, or subdermal extracellular matrix, below the skin or around the spine. We document the distribution of gelatinous tissues across fish families (approx. 200 species in ten orders), then review and investigate their composition and function.

Developmental and reproductive characteristics of beef heifers classified by pubertal status at time of first breeding.

Data collected for 10 or more years at the West Central Research and Extension Center, North Platte, NE ( = 1,104); the Gudmundsen Sandhills Laboratory, Whitman, NE ( = 1,333); and the USDA, ARS, Fort Keogh Livestock and Range Research Laboratory, Miles City, MT ( = 1,176) were retrospectively analyzed to evaluate growth and reproductive performance of beef heifers classified by pubertal status before first breeding. Concentrations of progesterone in serum from 2 blood samples collected 9 to 11 d apart before the breeding season classified heifers as pubertal (progesterone ≥ 1.0 ng/mL in 1 or both samples) or nonpubertal (progesterone < 1.

Suboptimal infant and young child feeding practices among internally displaced persons during conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Objective: To determine current status, areas for improvement and effect of conflict on infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices among internally displaced persons (IDP) in eastern Ukraine.

Design: Cross-sectional household survey, June 2015.

Setting: Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhia oblasts (Ukrainian administrative divisions) bordering conflict area in Ukraine.

Identification of an Indazole-Based Pharmacophore for the Inhibition of FGFR Kinases Using Fragment-Led Design.

Structure-based drug design (SBDD) has become a powerful tool utilized by medicinal chemists to rationally guide the drug discovery process. Herein, we describe the use of SPROUT, a -based program, to identify an indazole-based pharmacophore for the inhibition of fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) kinases, which are validated targets for cancer therapy. Hit identification using SPROUT yielded 6-phenylindole as a small fragment predicted to bind to FGFR1.

2D or Not 2D? Testing the Utility of 2D Vs. 3D Landmark Data in Geometric Morphometrics of the Sculpin Subfamily Oligocottinae (Pisces; Cottoidea).

We contrast 2D vs. 3D landmark-based geometric morphometrics in the fish subfamily Oligocottinae by using 3D landmarks from CT-generated models and comparing the morphospace of the 3D landmarks to one based on 2D landmarks from images. The 2D and 3D shape variables capture common patterns across taxa, such that the pairwise Procrustes distances among taxa correspond and the trends captured by principal component analysis are similar in the xy plane.

Flaccid skin protects hagfishes from shark bites.

Hagfishes defend themselves from fish predators by releasing large volumes of gill-clogging slime when they are attacked. Slime release is not anticipatory, but is only released after an attack has been initiated, raising the question of how hagfishes survive the initial attack, especially from biting predators such as sharks. We tested two hypotheses that could explain how hagfishes avoid damage from shark bites: puncture-resistant skin, and a loose and flaccid body design that makes it difficult for teeth to penetrate body musculature and viscera.

Mechanical properties of harbor seal skin and blubber - a test of anisotropy.

The skin and blubber of marine mammals provides protection from the surrounding environment, whether that be temperature, microbes, or direct mechanical impacts. To understand the ability of harbor seals' (Phoca vitulina) skin and blubber to resist blunt force trauma, we tested the material properties of these tissues. We quantified two mechanical properties of the tissue: tensile strength and tensile stiffness, at two test speeds, three sample orientations, and two age groups.

Indicators of skin barrier integrity among newborns massaged with mustard oil in rural Nepal.

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the skin barrier changes during postnatal month 1 among infants receiving routine mustard oil massage in the humid conditions of rural Nepal.

Study Design: This was an observational study among 500 live-born neonates receiving mustard oil massage. Skin integrity such as erythema, rash, dryness, skin pH, stratum corneum protein concentration and transepidermal water loss was measured on days 1, 3, 7, 14 and 28.

B'More Fit for Healthy Babies: Using Trauma-Informed Care Policies to Improve Maternal Health in Baltimore City.

Background: Pregnant obese women have an increased risk for infant mortality and poor maternal outcomes. Environmental and social conditions pose barriers for less-advantaged overweight women to participate in weight loss interventions. The B'more Fit for Healthy Babies Program aimed to address existing gender inequities that persist where exposure to community-level trauma is present.

Examining patterns in medication documentation of trade and generic names in an academic family practice training centre.

Background: Studies in the United States have shown that physicians commonly use brand names when documenting medications in an outpatient setting. However, the prevalence of prescribing and documenting brand name medication has not been assessed in a clinical teaching environment. The purpose of this study was to describe the use of generic versus brand names for a select number of pharmaceutical products in clinical documentation in a large, urban academic family practice centre.

Investigating Alkylsilane Monolayer Tribology at a Single-Asperity Contact with Molecular Dynamics Simulation.

Chemisorbed monolayer films are known to possess favorable characteristics for nanoscale lubrication of micro- and nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS). Prior studies have shown that the friction observed for monolayer-coated surfaces features a strong dependence on the geometry of contact. Specifically, tip-like geometries have been shown to penetrate into monolayer films, inducing defects in the monolayer chains and leading to plowing mechanisms during shear, which result in higher coefficients of friction (COF) than those observed for planar geometries.

TopoAngler: Interactive Topology-Based Extraction of Fishes.

We present TopoAngler, a visualization framework that enables an interactive user-guided segmentation of fishes contained in a micro-CT scan. The inherent noise in the CT scan coupled with the often disconnected (and sometimes broken) skeletal structure of fishes makes an automatic segmentation of the volume impractical. To overcome this, our framework combines techniques from computational topology with an interactive visual interface, enabling the human-in-the-Ioop to effectively extract fishes from the volume.

Long-axis twisting during locomotion of elongate fishes.

Fish live in a complex world and must actively adapt their swimming behavior to a range of environments. Most studies of swimming kinematics focus on two-dimensional properties related to the bending wave that passes from head to tail. However, fish also twist their bodies three dimensionally around their longitudinal axis as the bending wave passes down the body.

A prospective, proteomics study identified potential biomarkers of encapsulating peritoneal sclerosis in peritoneal effluent.

Encapsulating peritoneal sclerosis (EPS) is a potentially devastating complication of peritoneal dialysis (PD). Diagnosis is often delayed due to the lack of effective and accurate diagnostic tools. We therefore examined peritoneal effluent for potential biomarkers that could predict or confirm the diagnosis of EPS and would be valuable in stratifying at-risk patients and driving appropriate interventions.

Invertebrate biomechanics.

Invertebrate biomechanics focuses on mechanical analyses of non-vertebrate animals, which at root is no different in aim and technique from vertebrate biomechanics, or for that matter the biomechanics of plants and fungi. But invertebrates are special - they are fabulously diverse in form, habitat, and ecology and manage this without the use of hard, internal skeletons. They are also numerous and, in many cases, tractable in an experimental and field setting.

Open data and digital morphology.

Over the past two decades, the development of methods for visualizing and analysing specimens digitally, in three and even four dimensions, has transformed the study of living and fossil organisms. However, the initial promise that the widespread application of such methods would facilitate access to the underlying digital data has not been fully achieved. The underlying datasets for many published studies are not readily or freely available, introducing a barrier to verification and reproducibility, and the reuse of data.

Comparing Visual and Digital Counting Methods to Estimate Horn Fly (Diptera: Muscidae) Populations on Cattle.

Horn fly, Haematobia irritans (L.), population estimates often serve as a diagnostic tool prior to implementing managerial control options available to researchers and producers. Digital photographs taken of cattle infested with horn flies have been suggested to provide similarly accurate population estimates as compared with traditional visual assessments.

From smooth to rough, from water to air: the intertidal habitat of Northern clingfish (Gobiesox maeandricus).

The Northern clingfish is a small, Eastern North Pacific fish that can attach to rough, fouled rocks in the intertidal. Their ability to attach to surfaces has been measured previously in the laboratory, and in this study, we show the roughness and fouling of the natural habitat of these fish. We introduce a new method for measuring surface roughness of natural substrates with time-limited accessibility.