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The development of the nuclear industry in the countries of the Arabian Gulf demands an investigation of its potential impact on the environment and human activities. It should involve routine monitoring of radionuclide from existing nuclear facilities as well as modelling of accidental release of radioactivity. Agriculture is usually considered the human activity which is the most endangered with radioactive pollution. Although the traditional concept of low-developed agriculture in the United Arab Emirates has been already described from a radioecological point of view, herein, the recent trends of agriculture are recorded. Due to climatic changes and population increase, the use of saline lands will be more pressing. Apart from it, the risk assessment for nuclear events, which was formed mainly for temperate zones, neglected another aspect of arid zones which is underground water reservoirs refilled with episodic heavy rains. The sandy or saline soils are not an effective barrier for the migration of radionuclide deposited in topsoil. A hypersaline environment could prevent the adsorption of radionuclide on soil particles and allow their high bioavailability for halophyte plants. The new principal challenges in radioecological research in arid zones are impacts on (i) saline agriculture, (ii) underground water reservoirs, and (iii) proposal for countermeasures in order to minimise the impact of radioactive contamination., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Embryonic stem cells are crucial for studying developmental biology due to their self-renewal and pluripotency capabilities. This research investigates the differentiation of mouse ESCs into adipocytes, offering insights into obesity and metabolic disorders. Using a monolayer differentiation approach over 30 days, lipid accumulation and adipogenic markers, such as Cebpb , Pparg , and Fabp4, confirmed successful differentiation. RNA sequencing revealed extensive transcriptional changes, with over 15,000 differentially expressed genes linked to transcription regulation, cell cycle, and DNA repair. This study utilized Robust Rank Aggregation to identify critical regulatory genes like PPARG, CEBPA, and EP300. Network analysis further highlighted Atf5 , Ccnd1 , and Nr4a1 as potential key players in adipogenesis and its mature state, validated through RT-PCR. While key adipogenic factors showed plateaued expression levels, suggesting early differentiation events, this study underscores the value of ESCs in modeling adipogenesis. These findings contribute to our understanding of adipocyte differentiation and have significant implications for therapeutic strategies targeting metabolic diseases.

Objective: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) 2022 Report Card provides a systematic evaluation of the physical activity (PA) levels of children and adolescents in the UAE., Methods: The 2022 Report Card utilized data from 2017 to 2021 to inform 10 core PA indicators that were common to the Global Matrix 4.0., Results: One in five (19%) UAE school children achieved the recommended amount of moderate-to-vigorous PA (i.e. ≥60 min/d; Total Physical Activity Grade F). Less than 1% of school children used active transport to and from school (Active Transportation Grade F). One in four (26%) secondary school children achieved the recreational screen time recommendations (i.e. ≤2 h/d; Sedentary Behaviours Grade D-). A quarter of adults reported achieving the recommended PA level (i.e. ≥150 min of moderate-intensity PA per week, or equivalent) (Family and Peers Grade D-). All school children are taught physical education (PE) by a specialist with at least a bachelor's degree in PE; however, the duration of weekly PE classes varied between schools (School Grade A-). The UAE Government has invested significant funds and resources into developing and implementing strategies and facilities that will increase PA across the entire population (Government Grade B+). Organised Sport and Physical Activity, Active Play, Physical Fitness, and Community and Environment indicators were graded 'Incomplete' (INC) due to a lack of available data., Conclusions: Overall, PA levels remain low and sedentary behaviours remain high amongst UAE children and adolescents. The UAE Government has sustained investment in further developing PA opportunities for all children and adults which should translate to increased PA and health improvements at a population level., Competing Interests: The author(s) have no conflicts of interest relevant to this article., (© 2023 The Society of Chinese Scholars on Exercise Physiology and Fitness. Published by Elsevier (Singapore) Pte Ltd.)

Background: Polycystic ovarian syndrome, a common endocrine disorder, is an important cause of infertility among women of reproductive age. Within the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, polycystic ovarian syndrome is found to affect women increasingly. No study has been carried out to critically summarize the evidence on the prevalence of polycystic ovarian syndrome among women suffering from infertility in these countries., Objective: This protocol aims to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of the studies reporting the prevalence of polycystic ovarian syndrome among women seeking infertility treatment in the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates)., Design/methods and Analysis: The systematic review and meta-analysis will follow the following method., Data Source: Five databases, including PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, Web of Science, and SCOPUS, will be searched for observational studies using a combination of relevant keywords and Medical Subject Headings from inception of databases., Data Extraction: Two reviewers will screen titles and abstracts, followed by a full-text search based on the eligibility criteria. The main outcome is to measure the proportion of women who have polycystic ovarian syndrome among infertility-diagnosed patients. In addition, the risk of bias in the included studies will be assessed using the national institute of health quality assessment tool for observational studies., Data Synthesis: The random-effects method of the analysis with the inverse variance will be used to calculate the pooled prevalence of polycystic ovarian syndrome-attributed infertility. Variation in prevalence estimates will be calculated using subgroup analysis based on study and patients' characteristics and publication bias will be assessed via funnel plot inspection and Eggar's test., Discussion: A critical assessment of evidence on the prevalence of polycystic ovarian syndrome in women attending fertility clinics is helpful in risk quantification, enabling better planning for managing infertility in women with polycystic ovarian syndrome., Registration: This protocol has been registered with PROSPERO, protocol registration number (CRD42022355087).

Owing to their sessile nature, plants have developed a tapestry of molecular and physiological mechanisms to overcome diverse environmental challenges, including abiotic stresses. Adaptive radiation in certain lineages, such as Aizoaceae, enable their success in colonizing arid regions and is driven by evolutionary selection. Sesuvium verrucosum (commonly known as Western sea-purslane) is a highly salt-tolerant succulent halophyte belonging to the Aizoaceae family; thus, it provides us with the model-platform for studying plant adaptation to salt stress. Various transcriptional and translational mechanisms are employed by plants to cope with salt stress. One of the systems, namely, ubiquitin-mediated post-translational modification, plays a vital role in plant tolerance to abiotic stress and other biological process. E3 ligase plays a central role in target recognition and protein specificity in ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. Here, we characterize E3 ligases in Sesuvium verrucosum from transcriptome analysis of roots in response to salinity stress. Our de novo transcriptome assembly results in 131,454 transcripts, and the completeness of transcriptome was confirmed by BUSCO analysis (99.3% of predicted plant-specific ortholog genes). Positive selection analysis shows 101 gene families under selection; these families are enriched for abiotic stress (e.g., osmotic and salt) responses and proteasomal ubiquitin-dependent protein catabolic processes. In total, 433 E3 ligase transcripts were identified in S. verrucosum; among these transcripts, single RING-type classes were more abundant compared to multi-subunit RING-type E3 ligases. Additionally, we compared the number of single RING-finger E3 ligases with ten different plant species, which confirmed the abundance of single RING-type E3 ligases in different plant species. In addition, differential expression analysis showed significant changes in 13 single RING-type E3 ligases (p-value < 0.05) under salinity stress. Furthermore, the functions of the selected E3 ligases genes (12 genes) were confirmed by yeast assay. Among them, nine genes conferred salt tolerance in transgenic yeast. This functional assay supports the possible involvement of these E3 ligase in salinity stress. Our results lay a foundation for translational research in glycophytes to develop stress tolerant crops.

Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a major public health issue due to high morbidity and mortality. Different screening programs were implemented to reduce its burden., Objectives: To estimate the prevalence of CRC screening uptake using fecal immunochemical test (FIT) or guaiac fecal occult blood testing (gFOBT) in Emirati nationals. Other objectives were to measure the incidence of CRC in the screened population, to measure the outcomes of follow-up screening colonoscopy after positive FIT/gFOBT and to identify the causes of not performing follow-up screening colonoscopy after positive FIT/gFOBT., Methodology: Adult Emirati nationals aged 40-75 years who visited Ambulatory healthcare services clinics, Abu Dhabi in 2015-2016 were included in the study. The electronic medical records of the eligible individuals were reviewed retrospectively. The prevalence of CRC screening was measured among the eligible population using the FIT/gFOBT. The IBM SPSS Statistics program, version 21.0.0, was used for analysis., Result: 45,147 unique individuals were eligible for screening, and only 23.5% were screened using FIT/gFOBT. Of the screened individuals, 13.5% had positive FIT/ gFOBT, and 30.5% of those underwent follow-up screening colonoscopy. CRC was diagnosed in 11 individuals. Colonic polyp were found in 30.5% of individuals who had undergone a follow-up colonoscopy. Collectively 933 individuals did not undergo follow-up screening colonoscopy after having a positive FIT/gFOBT, and about 36.3% had collected the result and referred to a gastroenterologist but did not attend the appointment., Conclusion: CRC screening uptake using FIT/gFOBT is low among the adult Emirati nationals., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

We propose a classifier system called iPFPi that predicts the functions of un-annotated proteins. iPFPi assigns an un-annotated protein P the functions of GO annotation terms that are semantically similar to P. An un-annotated protein P and a GO annotation term T are represented by their characteristics. The characteristics of P are GO terms found within the abstracts of biomedical literature associated with P. The characteristics of Tare GO terms found within the abstracts of biomedical literature associated with the proteins annotated with the function of T. Let F and F/ be the important (dominant) sets of characteristic terms representing T and P, respectively. iPFPi would annotate P with the function of T, if F and F/ are semantically similar. We constructed a novel semantic similarity measure that takes into consideration several factors, such as the dominance degree of each characteristic term t in set F based on its score, which is a value that reflects the dominance status of t relative to other characteristic terms, using pairwise beats and looses procedure. Every time a protein P is annotated with the function of T, iPFPi updates and optimizes the current scores of the characteristic terms for T based on the weights of the characteristic terms for P. Set F will be updated accordingly. Thus, the accuracy of predicting the function of T as the function of subsequent proteins improves. This prediction accuracy keeps improving over time iteratively through the cumulative weights of the characteristic terms representing proteins that are successively annotated with the function of T. We evaluated the quality of iPFPi by comparing it experimentally with two recent protein function prediction systems. Results showed marked improvement.

Thiopurines play a pivotal role in the management of inflammatory bowel disease. Azathioprine and mercaptopurine have been associated with a number of liver abnormalities, including hepatitis, veno-occlusive disease, nodular regenerative hyperplasia, and peliosis hepatitis. Patients treated with azathioprine and mercaptopurine have their liver chemistry tests routinely checked due to this potential for hepatotoxicity. Hepatoportal sclerosis is a cause of non-cirrhotic portal hypertension that is increasingly being recognized; its etiopathogenesis is not well defined. We present the first case report of mercaptopurine-induced hepatoportal sclerosis leading to non-cirrhotic portal hypertension in a patient with Crohn's disease. He had been treated with mercaptopurine for five years, and his liver chemistry tests were always within normal limits. This case underscores the potential serious liver adverse events that may arise silently and go undetected during treatment with mercaptopurine, and should alert clinicians as to the potential need to discontinue mercaptopurine in this setting., (Copyright © 2012 European Crohn's and Colitis Organisation. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)