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Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic lung disease characterized by airway obstruction and inflammation. Non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) lung infections are common in COPD, promoting frequent exacerbations and accelerated lung function decline. The relationship with immune responses and NTHi are poorly understood. Herein, we comprehensively characterized the respiratory microbiome and mycobiome of patients while investigating microbial dynamics and host immune changes attributable to NTHi killing activity. Mild-to-moderate COPD patients encompassing frequent and infrequent exacerbators and healthy volunteers (HV) were enrolled. Microbial composition, proteomics and NTHi killing activity was analyzed using bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF). In addition, antigen–antibody titers in sera to COPD pathogens were determined using a multiplex assay. Differential abundance analysis revealed an enrichment of Actinobacteria and Bacteroidetes in the BALF of COPD and HV subjects respectively. Significant differences in the IgA titer response were observed against NTHi antigens in COPD vs. HV. Notably, there was also significantly greater killing activity against NTHi in BALF from COPD vs. HV subjects (OR = 5.64; 95% CI = 1.75–20.20; p = 0.001). Stratification of COPD patients by NTHi killing activity identified unique microbial and protein signatures wherein Firmicutes, Actinobacteria and haptoglobin were enriched in patients with killing activity. We report that differences in host immune responses and NTHi-killing activity are associated with microbiome changes in mild-to-moderate COPD. This is suggestive of a potential link between the respiratory microbiome and immune activity against NTHi in the context of COPD pathogenesis even at this disease stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT. Recent recession of high-mountain glacier ice and perennial snow and ice patches has exposed megafossil and macrofossil tree remnants and peat, offering a new source of Holocene high alpine [...]

ABSTRACT. This study addresses the long-standing issue of postglacial immigration of Picea abies (Norway spruce) into Scandinavia. The main methodological focus is on using megafossil tree remains (wood and cones) [...]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2745.2009.01488.x Byline: Leif Kullman (1), Lisa Oberg (2) Keywords: Betula pubescens ssp. czerepanovii; climate change; monitoring; Picea abies; Pinus sylvestris; Swedish Scandes; tree line advance Abstract: Summary Elevational tree line change in the southern Swedish Scandes was quantified for the period 1915-2007 and for two sub-periods 1915-1975 and 1975-2007. The study focused on Betula pubescens ssp. czerepanovii, Picea abies and Pinus sylvestris at a large number of sites distributed over an 8000-km.sup.2 area. The basic approach included revisitations of fixed sites (elevational belt transects) and measurements of tree line positions (m a.s.l.) during these three periods. Over the past century, tree lines of all species rose at 95% of the studied localities, with means of 70-90 m. All three species displayed maximum upshifts by about 200 m, which manifests a near-perfect equilibrium with instrumentally recorded air temperature change. This magnitude of response was realized only in particular topographic situations, foremost wind-sheltered and steep concave slopes. Other sites, with more wind-exposed topoclimatic conditions, experienced lesser magnitudes of upshifts. Thus, spatial elevational tree line responses to climate change are markedly heterogeneous and site-dependent. Modelling of the future evolution of the forest-alpine tundra transition has to consider this fact. Even in a hypothetical case of substantial climate warming, tree lines are unlikely to advance on a broad front and a large proportion of the alpine tundra will remain treeless. During the period 1975-2007, the tree lines of Picea and Pinus (in particular) advanced more rapidly than that of Betula towards the alpine region. These species-specific responses could signal a potential trajectory for the evolution of the ecotone in a warmer future. Thereby a situation with some resemblance with the relatively warm and dry early Holocene would emerge. Substantial tree line upshifts over the past two to three decades coincide with air and soil warming during all seasons. This implies that both summer and winter temperatures have to be included in models of climate-driven tree line performance. Synthesis. Maximum tree line rise by 200 m represents a unique trend break in the long-term Holocene tree line regression, which has been driven by average climate cooling for nearly 10 000 years. Tree line positions are well-restored to their pre-Little Ice Age positions. Recent tree line ascent is a truly anomalous event in Holocene vegetation history and possibly unprecedented for seven millennia. Author Affiliation: (1)Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umea University, SE-901 87 Umea, Sweden (2)Department of Natural Sciences, Mid Sweden University, SE-851 70 Sundsvall, Sweden Article History: Received 26 September 2008; accepted 27 January 2009Handling Editor: Richard Bradshaw Article note: (*) Correspondence author: leif.kullman@emg.umu.se

Today, many of the 10 million childhood deaths each year are caused by diseases of poverty--diarrhea and pneumonia, for example, which were previously major causes of childhood death in many European countries. Specific analyses of the historical decline of child mortality may shed light on the potential equity impact of interventions to reduce child mortality. In our study of the impact of improved water and sanitation in Stockholm from 1878 to 1925, we examined the decline in overall and diarrhea mortality among children, both in general and by socioeconomic group. We report a decline in overall mortality and of diarrhea mortality and a leveling out of socioeconomic differences in child mortality due to diarrheal diseases, but not of overall mortality. The contribution of general and targeted policies is discussed. (Am J Public Health. 2005;95:208--216, doi: 10.2105/ AJPH.2003.034900)

In this article the author talks about the adaptive responses to the COVID-19 shutdown at the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections. It mentions that the creative and collective efforts of staff, online projects were developed with the remote resources at hand and staff were able to focus on projects such as data clean-up, transcription and enhancing finding aids.

An important challenge in drug discovery and disease prognosis is to predict genes that are preferentially expressed in one or a few tissues, i.e. showing a considerably higher expression in one tissue(s) compared to the others. Although several data sources and methods have been published explicitly for this purpose, they often disagree and it is not evident how to retrieve these genes and how to distinguish true biological findings from those that are due to choice-of-method and/or experimental settings. In this work we have developed a computational approach that combines results from multiple methods and datasets with the aim to eliminate method/study-specific biases and to improve the predictability of preferentially expressed human genes. A rule-based score is used to merge and assign support to the results. Five sets of genes with known tissue specificity were used for parameter pruning and cross-validation. In total we identify 3434 tissue-specific genes. We compare the genes of highest scores with the public databases: PaGenBase (microarray), TiGER (EST) and HPA (protein expression data). The results have 85% overlap to PaGenBase, 71% to TiGER and only 28% to HPA. 99% of our predictions have support from at least one of these databases. Our approach also performs better than any of the databases on identifying drug targets and biomarkers with known tissue-specificity.

Tachykinin NK receptors (NKRs) differ to a large degree among species with respect to their affinities for small molecule antagonists. The aims of the present study were to clone NKRs from gerbil (NK2R and NK3R) and dog (NK1R, NK2R and NK3R) in which the sequence was previously unknown and to investigate the potency of several NKR antagonists at all known human, dog, gerbil and rat NKRs. The NKR protein coding sequences were cloned and expressed in CHO cells. The inhibitory concentrations of selective and non-selective NKR antagonists were determined by inhibition of agonist-induced mobilization of intracellular Ca2+. Receptor homology models were constructed based on the rhodopsin crystal structure to investigate and identify the antagonist binding sites and interaction points in the transmembrane (TM) regions of the NKRs. Data collected using the cloned dog NK1R confirmed that the dog NK1R displays similar pharmacology as the human and the gerbil NK1R, but differs greatly from the mouse and the rat NK1R. Despite species-related amino acid (AA) differences located close to the antagonist binding pocket of the NK2R, they did not affect the potency of the antagonists ZD6021 and saredutant. Two AA differences located close to the antagonist binding site of NK3R likely influence the NK3R antagonist potency, explaining the 3-10-fold decrease in potency observed for the rat NK3R. For the first time, detailed pharmacological experiments in vitro with cloned NKRs demonstrate that not only human, but also dog and gerbil NKR displays similar antagonist pharmacology while rat diverges significantly with respect to NK1R and NK3R.

As in European countries a century ago, diarrhea is a major cause of child mortality in poor countries today. In Stockholm at the turn of the 19th century, political commitment, infrastructural investments in water and sanitation, and enforcement of sanitary improvements by a strong implementing organization helped eliminate diarrhea as a principal cause of death among children. These interventions also had an equitable impact on social class differences in diarrhea mortality, but not on overall mortality; overall mortality declined, but class differences remained. General infrastructural improvement and health education coupled with targeted interventions to vulnerable children may be successful in improving child health and reducing social differentials in mortality. Specific health care interventions may need to be complemented by infrastructural investments to improve water and sanitation if diarrhea mortality is to be further reduced in poor countries today.

Over recent years, there has been a growing interest in extracting information automatically or semi-automatically from the scientific literature. This paper describes a novel ontology-based interactive information extraction (OBIIE) framework and a specific OBIIE system. We describe how this system enables life scientists to make ad hoc queries similar to using a standard search engine, but where the results are obtained in a database format similar to a pre-programmed information extraction engine. We present a case study in which the system was evaluated for extracting co-factors from EMBASE and MEDLINE.