Morphine ameliorates pentylenetetrazole-induced locomotor pattern in zebrafish embryos; mechanism involving regulation of opioid receptors, suppression of oxidative stress, and inflammation in epileptogenesis.

Zebrafish () is becoming an increasingly important model in epilepsy research. Pentylenetetrazole (PTZ) is a convulsant agent that induces epileptic seizure-like state in zebrafish and zebrafish embryos and is most commonly used in antiepileptic drug discovery research to evaluate seizure mechanisms. Classical antiepileptic drugs, such as valproic acid (VPA) reduce PTZ-induced epileptiform activities.

The relationship between vitamin D receptor gene polymorphisms and periodontitis in turkish individuals with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Background And Aim: Vitamin D receptor (VDR) gene polymorphisms have been implicated in the pathogenesis of many diseases, such as periodontitis and diabetes mellitus (DM). The present study aimed to evaluate the distributions of VDR polymorphisms in diabetic individuals with healthy periodontium (DMH), diabetic individuals with periodontitis (DMP), nondiabetic individuals with healthy periodontium (H), and nondiabetic individuals with periodontitis (P).

Material And Methods: A total of 200 individuals (DMH = 40, DMP = 60, H = 40, and P = 60) were recruited.

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Cancer Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Importance: The full effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer care disparities, particularly by race and ethnicity, remains unknown.

Objectives: To assess whether the race and ethnicity of patients with cancer was associated with disparities in cancer treatment delays, adverse social and economic effects, and concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic and to evaluate trusted sources of COVID-19 information by race and ethnicity.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This national survey study of US adults with cancer compared treatment delays, adverse social and economic effects, concerns, and trusted sources of COVID-19 information by race and ethnicity from September 1, 2020, to January 12, 2021.

The good, bad and ugly of dispositional greed.

Greed is the insatiable desire for more. It is an important economic motive with numerous implications for consumer behavior and decision processes. We describe research showcasing the good, the bad and the ugly of dispositional greed.

Acinar Atrophy, Fibrosis and Fatty Changes Are Significantly More Common than Sjogren's Syndrome in Minor Salivary Gland Biopsies.

Hyposalivation and xerostomia can result from a variety of conditions. Diagnosis is based on a combination of medical history, clinical and serological parameters, imaging, and minor salivary gland biopsy when indicated. The Objective was to characterize microscopic changes in minor salivary gland biopsies taken in patients with xerostomia.

First Report of Epimeletic and Acoustic Behavior in Mediterranean Common Bottlenose Dolphins () Carrying Dead Calves.

Epimeletic behavior toward dead calves has been frequently reported in cetaceans, mostly with females (presumed mothers) showing supportive behaviors such as carrying, lifting, or sinking, often assisted by "escort" individuals. However, information on acoustic production in such contexts is scarce. This report describes two observations of epimeletic behavior toward dead newborns in bottlenose dolphins and associated acoustic production.

A Note on Religion.

At the beginning of our era, after a battle on the Ionian Sea, Antony and Cleopatra took their own lives in Egypt, and Augustus was made an by his senators Roman emperors had sexual access to those senators' daughters and wives, and to thousands of slaves. But they ran governments with help from their castrated civil servants. And they enforced an Imperial Cult: subjects made sacrifices to the emperor's or procreative spirit; or they got disemboweled by wild animals, or decapitated.

Variation in Petal and Leaf Wax Deposition Affects Cuticular Transpiration in Cut Lily Flowers.

The vase life of cut flowers is largely affected by post-harvest water loss. Cuticular wax is the primary barrier to uncontrolled water loss for aerial plant organs. Studies on leaf cuticular transpiration have been widely conducted; however, little is known about cuticular transpiration in flowers.

Multivariate Streamflow Simulation Using Hybrid Deep Learning Models.

Reliable and accurate streamflow simulation has a vital role in water resource development, mainly in agriculture, environment, domestic water supply, hydropower generation, flood control, and early warning systems. In this context, these days, deep learning algorithms have got enormous attention due to their high-performance simulation capacity. In this study, we compared multilayer perceptron (MLP), long short-term memory (LSTM), and gated recurrent unit (GRU) with the proposed new hybrid models, including CNN-LSTM and CNN-GRU.

A millennium-long climate history of erosive storms across the Tiber River Basin, Italy, from 725 to 2019 CE.

Rainfall erosivity drives damaging hydrological events with significant environmental and socio-economic impacts. This study presents the world's hitherto longest time-series of annual rainfall erosivity (725-2019 CE), one from the Tiber River Basin (TRB), a fluvial valley in central Italy in which the city of Rome is located. A historical perspective of erosive floods in the TRB is provided employing a rainfall erosivity model based on documentary data, calibrated against a sample (1923-1964) of actual measurement data.

An integrated approach for chemical water quality assessment of an urban river stretch through Effect-Based Methods and emerging pollutants analysis with a focus on genotoxicity.

The impact of emerging chemical pollutants, on both status and functionality of aquatic ecosystems is worldwide recognized as a relevant issue of concern that should be assessed and managed by researchers, policymakers, and all relevant stakeholders. In Europe, the Reach Regulation has registered more than 100.000 chemical substances daily released in the environment.

Pediatric ECMO Candidates at Non-ECMO Centers: Transfer, Cannulate, or Treat Locally?

Pediatric inpatient and intensive care specialists working outside of tertiary medical centers confront difficult clinical scenarios related to how best to care for extremely ill children who may or may not benefit from advanced medical technology, and these clinicians are often faced with limited local availability. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a technology that is only available at a subset of tertiary care centers, and the decision to risk the transfer of a child for the potential benefit of ECMO is challenging. This article is aimed at addressing the main factors and ethical principles related to this decision-making: (1) whether ECMO is the standard of care, (2) clinical decision analysis of the risks and benefits, (3) informed consent and education of the parents and/or guardians, and (4) institutional leadership decision-making.

Toward the Development of an On-Chip Acoustic Focusing Fluorescence Lifetime Flow Cytometer.

Conventional flow cytometry is a valuable quantitative tool. Flow cytometers reveal physical and biochemical information from cells at a high throughput, which is quite valuable for many biomedical, biological, and diagnostic research fields. Flow cytometers range in complexity and typically provide multiparametric data for the user at rates of up to 50,000 cells measured per second.

Are geochemical regime shifts identifiable in river waters? Exploring the compositional dynamics of the Tiber River (Italy).

Rivers are dynamic and sensitive systems that change their chemical composition from source to mouth. This is due to the influence of a set of variables controlled by hydro-litho-eco-atmospheric processes and anthropic pressures which are, in turn, affected by catchment attributes. This work proposes a new way of thinking about river geochemistry focused on environmental interconnections rather than single chemical variables.

Capitoline Dolphins: Residency Patterns and Abundance Estimate of at the Tiber River Estuary (Mediterranean Sea).

Periodic assessments of population status and trends to detect natural influences and human effects on coastal dolphin are often limited by lack of baseline information. Here, we investigated for the first time the site-fidelity patterns and estimated the population size of bottlenose dolphins () at the Tiber River estuary (central Mediterranean, Tyrrhenian Sea, Rome, Italy) between 2017 and 2020. We used photo-identification data and site-fidelity metrics to study the tendency of dolphins to remain in, or return to, the study area, and capture-recapture models to estimate the population abundance.

Giovanni Maria Lancisi (1654-1720) and the modern cardiovascular physiology.

Giovanni Maria Lancisi (1654-1720) was one of the most important Italian physicians of the modern age. Orphaned of his mother, he spent his early years in the city of Orvieto; when he was 12, his father brought him back to Rome and enrolled him to study medicine at the Sapienza University in Rome. His dedication to study and work soon led him to increasingly important positions.

Halogenated Volatile Organic Compounds in Water Samples and Inorganic Elements Levels in Ores for Characterizing a High Anthropogenic Polluted Area in the Northern Latium Region (Italy).

This paper shows a characterization of the organic and inorganic fraction of river waters (Tiber and Marta) and ores/soil samples collected in the Northern Latium region of Italy for evaluating the anthropogenic/natural source contribution to the environmental pollution of this area. For organic compounds, organochloride volatile compounds in Tiber and Marta rivers were analyzed by two different clean-up methods (i.e.

Evidence and Considerations on Treatment of Small Size Merkel Cell Head and Neck Carcinoma.

 Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare and aggressive neuroendocrine malignant cancer. It is an epidermal cancer common in the head and neck.  Though there is limited number of cases described in the literature for the treatment difficult to obtain.

Effect of Urban Wastewater Discharge on the Abundance of Antibiotic Resistance Genes and Antibiotic-Resistant in Two Italian Rivers.

Background: Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are microbial factories aimed to reduce the amount of nutrients and pathogenic microorganisms in the treated wastewater before its discharge into the environment. We studied the impact of urban WWTP effluents on the abundance of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and antibiotic-resistant (AR-) in the last stretch of two rivers (Arrone and Tiber) in Central Italy that differ in size and flow volume.

Methods: Water samples were collected in three seasons upstream and downstream of the WWTP, at the WWTP outlet, and at sea sites near the river mouth, and analyzed for the abundance of ARGs by qPCR and AR- using cultivation followed by disk diffusion assays.

Slit-like hypertensive hydrocephalus: Report of a late, complex, and multifactorial complication in an oncologic patient.

Background: Several sophisticated techniques and many chemotherapy drugs have improved life expectancy of oncologic patients allowing us to observe late complications which present many years after the initial treatment.

Case Description: We present a unique case of a patient affected by acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the age of 6 years, treated with whole brain radiotherapy and intrathecal chemotherapy, developing meningiomatosis and leptomeningeal alterations as late complications and the interaction of these two entities caused a peculiar form of hydrocephalus without ventricular dilation. The diagnosis of pseudotumor cerebri was excluded due the postradio/chemotherapy development of meningiomatosis, not present in a previously head magnetic resonance imaging, that exerted compression to the Sylvian aqueduct causing intracranial hypertension with papillary stasis without ventricles enlargement due to brain stiffness.

3-Pyridinylboronic acid normalizes the effects of 1-Methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine exposure in zebrafish embryos.

1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) is a neurotoxin that damages dopaminergic neurons. Zebrafish has been shown to be a suitable model organism to investigate the molecular pathways in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease and also for potential therapeutic agent research. Boron has been shown to play an important role in the neural activity of the brain.

The mitogenome portrait of Umbria in Central Italy as depicted by contemporary inhabitants and pre-Roman remains.

Umbria is located in Central Italy and took the name from its ancient inhabitants, the Umbri, whose origins are still debated. Here, we investigated the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation of 545 present-day Umbrians (with 198 entire mitogenomes) and 28 pre-Roman individuals (obtaining 19 ancient mtDNAs) excavated from the necropolis of Plestia. We found a rather homogeneous distribution of western Eurasian lineages across the region, with few notable exceptions.

Application of effect-based methods (EBMs) in a river basin: a preliminary study in Central Italy.

Introduction: Effect-based methods (EBMs), i.e. in vitro and in vivo bioassays, represent innovative tools for the effect detection of environmental chemical pollutants on living organisms.

Characterization of black patina from the Tiber River embankments using Next-Generation Sequencing.

Black patinas are very common biological deterioration phenomena on lapideous artworks in outdoor environments. These substrates, exposed to sunlight, and atmospheric and environmental agents (i.e.