by Nicola Saino, Manuela Caprioli, Maria Romano, Giuseppe Boncoraglio, Diego Rubolini, Roberto Ambrosini, Andrea Bonisoli-Alquati, Andrea Romano

Background

Normal and pathological processes entail the production of oxidative substances that can damage biological molecules and harm physiological functions. Organisms have evolved complex mechanisms of antioxidant defense, and any imbalance between oxidative challenge and antioxidant protection can depress fitness components and accelerate senescence. While the role of oxidative stress in pathogenesis and aging has been studied intensively in humans and model animal species under laboratory conditions, there is a dearth of knowledge on its role in shaping life-histories of animals under natural selection regimes. Yet, given the pervasive nature and likely fitness consequences of oxidative damage, it can be expected that the need to secure efficient antioxidant protection is powerful in molding the evolutionary ecology of animals. Here, we test whether overall antioxidant defense varies with age and predicts long-term survival, using a wild population of a migratory passerine bird, the barn swallow (Hirundo rustica), as a model.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Plasma antioxidant capacity (AOC) of breeding individuals was measured using standard protocols and annual survival was monitored over five years (2006–2010) on a large sample of selection episodes. AOC did not covary with age in longitudinal analyses after discounting the effect of selection. AOC positively predicted annual survival independently of sex. Individuals were highly consistent in their relative levels of AOC, implying the existence of additive genetic variance and/or environmental (including early maternal) components consistently acting through their lives.

Conclusions

Using longitudinal data we showed that high levels of antioxidant protection positively predict long-term survival in a wild animal population. Present results are therefore novel in disclosing a role for antioxidant protection in determining survival under natural conditions, strongly demanding for more longitudinal eco-physiological studies of life-histories in relation to oxidative stress in wild populations.

by Laura Teixidó, Begoña Carrasco, Juan C. Alonso, Jordi Barbé, Susana Campoy

Previous studies have established that the expression of Salmonella enterica pathogenicity island 1 (SPI1), which is essential for epithelial invasion, is mainly regulated by the HilD protein. The ferric uptake regulator, Fur, in turn modulates the expression of the S. enterica hilD gene, albeit through an unknown mechanism. Here we report that S. enterica Fur, in its metal-bound form, specifically binds to an AT-rich region (BoxA), located upstream of the hilD promoter (PhilD), at position -191 to -163 relative to the hilD transcription start site. Furthermore, in a PhilD variant with mutations in BoxA, PhilD*, Fur·Mn²⁺ binding is impaired. In vivo experiments using S. enterica strains carrying wild-type PhilD or the mutant variant PhilD* showed that Fur activates hilD expression, while in vitro experiments revealed that the Fur·Mn²⁺ protein is sufficient to increase hilD transcription. Together, these results present the first evidence that Fur·Mn²⁺, by binding to the upstream BoxA sequence, directly stimulates the expression of hilD in S. enterica.

by Mayur K. Kajla, Lei Shi, Bin Li, Shirley Luckhart, Jianyong Li, Susan M. Paskewitz

Background

Plasmodium requires an obligatory life stage in its mosquito host. The parasites encounter a number of insults while journeying through this host and have developed mechanisms to avoid host defenses. Lysozymes are a family of important antimicrobial immune effectors produced by mosquitoes in response to microbial challenge.

Methodology/Principal Findings

A mosquito lysozyme was identified as a protective agonist for Plasmodium. Immunohistochemical analyses demonstrated that Anopheles gambiae lysozyme c-1 binds to oocysts of Plasmodium berghei and Plasmodium falciparum at 2 and 5 days after infection. Similar results were observed with Anopheles stephensi and P. falciparum, suggesting wide occurrence of this phenomenon across parasite and vector species. Lysozyme c-1 did not bind to cultured ookinetes nor did recombinant lysozyme c-1 affect ookinete viability. dsRNA-mediated silencing of LYSC-1 in Anopheles gambiae significantly reduced the intensity and the prevalence of Plasmodium berghei infection. We conclude that this host antibacterial protein directly interacts with and facilitates development of Plasmodium oocysts within the mosquito.

Conclusions/Significance

This work identifies mosquito lysozyme c-1 as a positive mediator of Plasmodium development as its reduction reduces parasite load in the mosquito host. These findings improve our understanding of parasite development and provide a novel target to interrupt parasite transmission to human hosts.

by Nicholas X. Tan, Jane P. Messina, Li-Gang Yang, Bin Yang, Michael Emch, Xiang-Sheng Chen, Myron S. Cohen, Joseph D. Tucker

Background

Sexually transmitted infections (STI) have made a resurgence in many rapidly developing regions of southern China, but there is little understanding of the social changes that contribute to this spatial distribution of STI. This study examines county-level socio-demographic characteristics associated with syphilis and gonorrhea in Guangdong Province.

Methods/Principal Findings

This study uses linear regression and spatial lag regression to determine county-level (n = 97) socio-demographic characteristics associated with a greater burden of syphilis, gonorrhea, and a combined syphilis/gonorrhea index. Data were obtained from the 2005 China Population Census and published public health data. A range of socio-demographic variables including gross domestic product, the Gender Empowerment Measure, standard of living, education level, migrant population and employment are examined. Reported syphilis and gonorrhea cases are disproportionately clustered in the Pearl River Delta, the central region of Guangdong Province. A higher fraction of employed men among the adult population, higher fraction of divorced men among the adult population, and higher standard of living (based on water availability and people per room) are significantly associated with higher STI cases across all three models. Gross domestic product and gender inequality measures are not significant predictors of reported STI in these models.

Conclusions/Significance

Although many ecological studies of STIs have found poverty to be associated with higher reported STI, this analysis found a greater number of reported syphilis cases in counties with a higher standard of living. Spatially targeted syphilis screening measures in regions with a higher standard of living may facilitate successful control efforts. This analysis also reinforces the importance of changing male sexual behaviors as part of a comprehensive response to syphilis control in China.

by Abby E. Rudolph, Carl Latkin, Natalie D. Crawford, Kandice C. Jones, Crystal M. Fuller

Respondent driven sampling (RDS) was originally developed to sample and provide peer education to injection drug users at risk for HIV. Based on the premise that drug users' social networks were maintained through sharing rituals, this peer-driven approach to disseminate educational information and reduce risk behaviors capitalizes and expands upon the norms that sustain these relationships. Compared with traditional outreach interventions, peer-driven interventions produce greater reductions in HIV risk behaviors and adoption of safer behaviors over time, however, control and intervention groups are not similarly recruited. As peer-recruitment may alter risk networks and individual risk behaviors over time, such comparison studies are unable to isolate the effect of a peer-delivered intervention. This analysis examines whether RDS recruitment (without an intervention) is associated with changes in health-seeking behaviors and network composition over 6 months. New York City drug users (N = 618) were recruited using targeted street outreach (TSO) and RDS (2006–2009). 329 non-injectors (RDS = 237; TSO = 92) completed baseline and 6-month surveys ascertaining demographic, drug use, and network characteristics. Chi-square and t-tests compared RDS- and TSO-recruited participants on changes in HIV testing and drug treatment utilization and in the proportion of drug using, sex, incarcerated and social support networks over the follow-up period. The sample was 66% male, 24% Hispanic, 69% black, 62% homeless, and the median age was 35. At baseline, the median network size was 3, 86% used crack, 70% used cocaine, 40% used heroin, and in the past 6 months 72% were tested for HIV and 46% were enrolled in drug treatment. There were no significant differences by recruitment strategy with respect to changes in health-seeking behaviors or network composition over 6 months. These findings suggest no association between RDS recruitment and changes in network composition or HIV risk, which supports prior findings from prospective HIV behavioral surveillance and intervention studies.

by Shufei Fu, Junhua Zhang, Francesca Menniti-Ippolito, Xiumei Gao, Francesca Galeotti, Marco Massari, Limin Hu, Boli Zhang, Rita Ferrelli, Alice Fauci, Fabio Firenzuoli, Hongcai Shang, Ranieri Guerra, Roberto Raschetti

Background

Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a global public health problem. Therefore, novel and effective drugs that show few side-effects are needed. Early literature studies indicated that Huangqi injection is one of the most commonly used traditional Chinese patent medicines for CHF in China. As a large number of clinical studies has been carried out and published, it is essential to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of Huangqi injection. Therefore, we carried out this systematic review under the support of the framework of the Joint Sino-Italian Laboratory (JoSIL).

Objectives

To evaluate the efficacy and safety of Huangqi injection for CHF according to the available scientific knowledge.

Methods

An extensive search including PubMed, EMBASE, CBM, the Cochrane Library and Chinese literature databases was performed up to July 2008. Clinical trials regarding Huangqi injection for the treatment of CHF were searched for, irrespective of languages. The quality of each trial was assessed according to the Cochrane Reviewers' Handbook 5.0, and RevMan 5.0 provided by the Cochrane Collaboration and STATA 9.2 were used for data analysis.

Results

After selection of 1,205 articles, 62 RCTs and quasi-RCTs conducted in China and published in Chinese journals were included in the review. The methodological quality of the trials was low. In most trials inclusion and exclusion criteria were not specified. Furthermore, only one study evaluated the outcomes for drug efficacy after an adequate period of time. For these reasons and because of the different baseline characteristics we did not conduct a meta-analysis.

Conclusions

Although available studies are not adequate to draw a conclusion on the efficacy and safety of Huangqi injection (a traditional Chinese patent medicine), we hope that our work could provide useful experience on further studies on Huangqi injections. The overall level of TCM clinical research needs to be improved so that the efficacy of TCM can be evaluated by the international community and possibly some TCM can enter into the international market.

by Kai Wu, Yasuyuki Taki, Kazunori Sato, Yuko Sassa, Kentaro Inoue, Ryoi Goto, Ken Okada, Ryuta Kawashima, Yong He, Alan C. Evans, Hiroshi Fukuda

Community structure is a universal and significant feature of many complex networks in biology, society, and economics. Community structure has also been revealed in human brain structural and functional networks in previous studies. However, communities overlap and share many edges and nodes. Uncovering the overlapping community structure of complex networks remains largely unknown in human brain networks. Here, using regional gray matter volume, we investigated the structural brain network among 90 brain regions (according to a predefined anatomical atlas) in 462 young, healthy individuals. Overlapped nodes between communities were defined by assuming that nodes (brain regions) can belong to more than one community. We demonstrated that 90 brain regions were organized into 5 overlapping communities associated with several well-known brain systems, such as the auditory/language, visuospatial, emotion, decision-making, social, control of action, memory/learning, and visual systems. The overlapped nodes were mostly involved in an inferior-posterior pattern and were primarily related to auditory and visual perception. The overlapped nodes were mainly attributed to brain regions with higher node degrees and nodal efficiency and played a pivotal role in the flow of informa- tion through the structural brain network. Our results revealed fuzzy boundaries between communities by identifying overlapped nodes and provided new insights into the understanding of the relationship between the structure and function of the human brain. This study provides the first report of the overlapping community structure of the structural network of the human brain.

Karen Butler maintains that after being heavily sedated she awoke speaking with a thick British accent. Can it be true?

He showed a clip from a local news station that equated the portrayal of homosexuality on 'Glee' to product placement. "You throw a soda in a movie and within a few seconds everybody in the theater is thirsty for that particular brand," the woman in the clip said.

London is unprepared for a terrorist attack on the 2012 Olympics because of a chronic shortage of air ambulance crews and other fast response teams, Lady Justice Hallett warned in her report into the July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks.

Joystick Division looks at gamers' reactions to the PSN hack and outage.

Here’s a headline you don’t see too often: “Rubber Chicken Turned NASA Mission Mascot Embarks on a Flight to Space.” Seriously, this is a true story.

New data from comScore for this past March has pointed to Apple nearly passing RIM in smartphone market share for the US. Shipping 18.65 million iPhones helped Apple gain half a point since December to hit 25.5 percent share in its home country.

Trash talking and sports go together like apples and pie. They are synonymous like chicken and dumplings. They mix beautifully like peanut butter and jelly!

The Long Island Serial Killer may one day take his place alongside the Gacys and the Bundys. Or he may be all but forgotten like these poor lunatics.

Looks like Skype is in play, again. Unlike last time, both the suitors have good business reasons. Between Google and Facebook, the social networking giant makes perfect sense. We actually suggested this deal six months ago. Question is: why does Skype want to sell?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker warned on Friday that trillion-dollar deficits posed a threat to the stability of the U.S. economy and the dollar, and said he is frustrated by the gridlock in Washington.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony said on Saturday it had removed off the Internet the personal details of 2,500 people that had been stolen by hackers and posted on a website.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Al Qaeda has acknowledged that Osama bin Laden is dead, dispelling the doubts of some Muslims over whether the militant group's leader had really been killed by U.S. forces, and vowed to mount more attacks on the West.

Obama, at Fort Campbell, meets with assaulters who killed bin Laden, says 'Job well done'

AP sources: Documents from raid show Bin Laden was directing senior al-Qaida figures

An absolutely beautiful hummingbird illustration by paperfashion, AKA Kathryn Elyse:

According to the etsy listing, it's pencil, ink and watercolor. That tickles me, because yes you can get those bold colors in watercolors, but few people do, and I thought it might be digital. As you can see from her etsy shop (where you can buy a print), the artist predominantly does fashion illustration -- but then, this hummingbird looks like it's wearing bird haute couture. It positively glows.

Painting by Kathryn Elyse, based on an original photo by Jose Yee. (The photo is on a velvety black field, so it's very different, but they're both incredibly strong images.)

via notcot.

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv this week

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Evidence for Dark Energy from the CMB Alone

Detecting Emergent Processes In Cellular Automata With Excess Information

Comparing the Topological and Electrical Structure of the North American Electric Power Infrastructure

An MRI-Derived Definition of MCI-to-AD Conversion for Long-Term, Automatic Prognosis of MCI Patients

A Causal Modelling Approach Demonstrates That The Effect Of Exercise On Pattern Separation Is Independent Of Hippocampal Neurogenesis

A border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia is threatening to overshadow the opening of the annual Asean summit.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg say it is time to "move on" after the UK's decisive rejection of a change to the way MPs are elected to Westminster.

A bold new design for thin film solar cells that requires significantly less silicon -- and may boost their efficiency -- is the result of a new industry/academia collaboration.

New research paves way for the nanoscale self-assembly of organic building blocks, a promising new route towards the next generation of ultra-small electronic devices.

One of the hallmarks of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is an impairment in social cognitive skills. This manifests in individuals with ADS having trouble orienting their attention towards people. Accordingly, they also show deficits orienting their attention in response to social cues from others, such as eye gaze, head turns and pointing gestures. Understanding the social cognitive impairments associated with ASD has been challenging in that studies set in naturalistic settings often reveal the deficit but lab experiments performed on computers don’t. For example, some naturalistic studies have looked at home movies of infants and found that those later diagnosed with ASD showed less social orienting and were less responsive to cues from others to orient to objects. For example, if their mom was in the room, they would look at her a lot less and they’d also be less likely to respond when their mothers tried to direct their attention to a toy in the room by looking or pointing at it. However, people with ASD have been shown to respond to non-naturalistic social cues in the lab. Social orienting has been frequently been tested by use of a variation on Michael Posner’s spatial cueing paradigm. This works as follows:1. Participants are seated in front of a computer2. A stimulus – a pair of eyes gazing to either side (or straight ahead) or arrows pointing to either side or neither – appears on the screen3. Shortly after, a stimulus (the target object) appears to one side or the other, either on the side which the eyes or arrows were pointing towards or the opposite side. 4. Participants have to indicate which side the target object appeared on by pressing either a right or left button.5. Performance on the task is assessed by measuring the amount of time it takes to participants to press the button indicating on which side the target appeared. Most participants, including ASD patients, are as quick with the gaze cue (the eyes) as with the arrow cue. (The left side of the above figure shows a single trial (with “directional eyes”), in which participants first see a fixation cross, then one of four directional/non-directional stimuli, after which the target appears either on the same side indicated by the cue or the opposite side. Participants need to indicate which side a target stimulus appeared on by pushing a button. The right side shows the three other trial types (from top to bottom): neutral arrow, directional arrow, neutral eyes)Past studies have shown that people orient faster to cued (like in the left side of the above figure) versus noncued locations, known as the facilitation effect. Previous studies using this task in ASD versus normal populations have produced inconsistent results, but most of them have shown ASD populations performing comparably to non-ASD populations. In this study, researchers used the above-described cue task to examine the neural mechanisms underlying social orienting in ASD, with the hope that if there were no behavioral differences, neural activity might reveal that ASD individuals are performing the task differently. Other studies have shown that non-ASD populations treat social and non-social cue stimuli differently. It was hoped that neural activity revealed in this study would shed light on the discrepancies in behavioral results for ASD populations in lab versus computer settings. ResultsIn terms of behavior, both the control and the ASD group showed quicker responses for gaze and arrow cues with no between group difference, which is consistent with previous lab studies.However, neural activation patterns showed significant group differences. The control group showed greater activation for social vs. nonsocial cues in many different brain regions, with gaze (eyeball) cues eliciting increased activity in many frontoparietal areas, supporting the idea that neurotypical brains treat social stimuli different from non-social stimuli. The ASD group, on the other hand, showed much less difference in neural activation between social vs. non-social cues. Although these differences in neural activation are too numerous to cover here, one region of interest, superior temporal sulcus (STS), stood out. The STS has been shown to be associated with the perception of eye gaze and other work has suggested the region may be involved in understanding the intentions and mental states of others. In this study, ASD individuals showed decreased STS in the gaze cue condition (versus controls). This data suggests that the STS may not be sensitive toward the social significance of eye gaze in ASD individuals. ImplicationsThe authors point out that although ASD individuals don’t seem to rely on the same neural circuitry to perceive social cues such as eye gaze, they have found a way to use the low-level perceptual information available in social cues to adapt a strategy that allows them to discern that gaze direction conveys meaning about the environment. That being said, ASD individuals mostly don’t do this very well in more naturalistic environments. So, although this strategy might work in a scanner with “cartoon” eyes and where there are no environmental distractions, it’s unlikely that ASD individuals could adapt this strategy in a naturalistic environment. On the contrary, one could also frame these results from the perspective of the ASD individual; that is, given the non-naturalistic environment of the scanner, and the fact that the task demands were very simple and not dependent on social cognitive processing, why should “normals” treat the gaze vs. arrow stimuli differently? Why not just rely on low-level information and thus expend less cognitive energy? It’s a good example of the automaticity of social cognitive processes. Give humans a set of cartoon eyeballs to look at and they can’t help but process these as distinct from something non-social.An additional take away from this paper is that even when one finds no behavioral differences between groups, there might be some interesting differences in neural activity worth exploring via fMRI or EEG. ReferencesGreene DJ, Colich N, Iacoboni M, Zaidel E, Bookheimer SY, & Dapretto M (2011). Atypical neural networks for social orienting in autism spectrum disorders. NeuroImage, 56 (1), 354-62 PMID: 21334443

For many of us a morning without coffee or tea is a like the proverbial day without sunshine. For me much of it is about the ritual. Okay, who am I kidding?

Pole dancing is on the rise as a form of fitness, but calling it a sport may still be a stretch. Or is it?

Kamel Makhloufi created this simple yet stunning visualization of Iraq war casualties using just pixels to represent deaths.

Apartment renters are the angriest and most jaded people on the planet. On one hand, I see where they're coming from: Every day, dozens of people call a renter and visit his/her apartment. The renter has to answer the same questions over and over again, they need to tour people around, and they need to feign excitement.

Think you've mastered Apple's iTunes app? Not so fast. Here are some expert tips guaranteed to help you get even more out of the media database powering your iPhone or iPad.

Your overall happiness may depend in part on whether you drew the long or short version of a gene, say researchers.

Apple reportedly made an extremely interesting move recently. when it hired audio engineer and THX sound system inventor Tomlinson Holman to head up audio at Apple.

At the state level, the GOP's attacks on reproductive rights may widen the already huge gulf between red and blue states in health, family stability, and education.

Smartphones’ share of the global cell phone market is poised to explode over the next four years, according to market research firm Pyramid Research.

No games have been played -- or even any offseason practices held -- but the Green Bay Packers remain a favorite to win Super Bowl XLVI.

Created By WellHome Energy Audits and Insulation Take a looksy at this cute little chart, if only to see how little progress there's been in fuel efficiency over the last 100 years. As you can see, we figured out how to produce cars that get 40 or so mpg some 60 years ago. And only in the last few years have we really started improving on that....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Carl Pope, the chairman of the Sierra Club, has a column over at Common Dreams taking aim at the myriad climate skeptic politicians who fail to see the link between extreme weather events like the Texas wildfires and more severe storms and global warming.Pope points out that these climate-related disasters are already hugely costly, and will only get more expensive -- yet leaders continue to deny global warming exists, then ask for federal assistance when the extreme weather events it makes more likely to occur rock their states. It's a good example of Read the full story on TreeHugger

AMMAN (Reuters) - The United States, reacting to the killing of 27 protesters by Syrian security forces on Friday, threatened to take new steps against the Syrian government unless it stopped killing and harassing its people.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. drone aircraft attack that killed two midlevel al Qaeda militants in Yemen on Thursday was targeting the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a U.S.-born radical known for encouraging attacks on the United States, U.S. media reported.

FORT CAMPBELL, Kentucky (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, basking in U.S. public approval for the killing of Osama bin Laden, flew to a military base in Kentucky on Friday to thank special forces who carried out the deadly raid and led a rally filled with cheering troops.

Activists say Syrian security forces kill 30 protesters; UN gets OK for visit

Costa Rican rescuers find body of third US student swept out to sea.

American intelligence analysts are seeking an example of the handwriting of Osama bin Laden to see if it matches the handwritten document discovered in his compound that discusses a possible attack on American train lines, according to people briefed on the process.

Olympic ticket cash could leave your account soon

Diving the wreck of stricken oil tanker the Torrey Canyon

'We played musical chairs for our lives that morning'