Lumbopelvic control and pitching performance of professional baseball pitchers

This study assessed the correlation between lumbopelvic control during a single-leg balancing task and in-game pitching performance in Minor-League baseball pitchers. Seventy-five healthy professional baseball pitchers performed a standing lumbopelvic control test during the last week of spring training for the 2008 and 2009 seasons while wearing a custom-designed testing apparatus, the "Level Belt." With the Level Belt secured to the waist, subjects attempted to transition from a 2-leg to a single-leg pitching stance and balance while maintaining a stable pelvic position. Subjects were graded on the maximum sagittal pelvic tilt from a neutral position during the motion. Pitching performance, number of innings pitched (IP), and injuries were compared for all subjects who pitched at least 50 innings during a season. The median Level Belt score for the study group was 7°. Two-sample t-tests with equal variances were used to determine if pitchers with a Level Belt score <7° or ≥7° were more likely to perform differently during the baseball season, and chi-square analysis was used to compare injuries between groups. Subjects scoring <7° on the Level Belt test had significantly fewer walks plus hits per inning than subjects scoring ≥7° (walks plus hits per inning pitched, 1.352 ± 0.251 vs. 1.584 ± 0.360, p = 0.013) and significantly more IP during the season (IP, 78.89 ± 38.67 vs. 53.38 ± 42.47, p = 0.043). There was no significant difference in the number of pitchers injured between groups. These data suggest that lumbopelvic control influences overall performance for baseball pitchers and that a simple test of lumbopelvic control can potentially identify individuals who have a better chance of pitching success.     

An evolutionary genomic approach to identify genes involved in human birth timing

Coordination of fetal maturation with birth timing is essential for mammalian reproduction. In humans, preterm birth is a disorder of profound global health significance. The signals initiating parturition in humans have remained elusive, due to divergence in physiological mechanisms between humans and model organisms typically studied. Because of relatively large human head size and narrow birth canal cross-sectional area compared to other primates, we hypothesized that genes involved in parturition would display accelerated evolution along the human and/or higher primate phylogenetic lineages to decrease the length of gestation and promote delivery of a smaller fetus that transits the birth canal more readily. Further, we tested whether current variation in such accelerated genes contributes to preterm birth risk. Evidence from allometric scaling of gestational age suggests human gestation has been shortened relative to other primates. Consistent with our hypothesis, many genes involved in reproduction show human acceleration in their coding or adjacent noncoding regions. We screened >8,400 SNPs in 150 human accelerated genes in 165 Finnish preterm and 163 control mothers for association with preterm birth. In this cohort, the most significant association was in FSHR, and 8 of the 10 most significant SNPs were in this gene. Further evidence for association of a linkage disequilibrium block of SNPs in FSHR, rs11686474, rs11680730, rs12473870, and rs1247381 was found in African Americans. By considering human acceleration, we identified a novel gene that may be associated with preterm birth, FSHR. We anticipate other human accelerated genes will similarly be associated with preterm birth risk and elucidate essential pathways for human parturition.     

In-Vivo Efficacy of Compliant 3D Nano-Composite in Critical-Size Bone Defect Repair: a Six Month Preclinical Study in Rabbit

Bone defects above critical size do not heal completely by itself and thus represent major clinical challenge to reconstructive surgery. Numerous bone substitutes have already been used to promote bone regeneration, however their use, particularly for critical-sized bone defects along with their long term in vivo safety and efficacy remains a concern. The present study was designed to obtain a complete healing of critical-size defect made in the proximal tibia of New Zealand White rabbit, using nano-hydroxyapatite/gelatin and chemically carboxymethylated chitin (n-HA/gel/CMC) scaffold construct. The bone-implant interfaces and defect site healing was evaluated for a period up to 25 weeks using radiography, micro-computed tomography, fluorescence labeling, and histology and compared with respective SHAM (empty contra lateral control). The viscoelastic porous scaffold construct allows easy surgical insertion and post-operatively facilitate oxygenation and angiogenesis. Radiography of defect treated with scaffold construct suggested expedited healing at defect edges and within the defect site, unlike confined healing at edges of the SHAM sites. The architecture indices analyzed by micro-computed tomography showed a significant increase in percentage of bone volume fraction, resulted in reconciled cortico-trabecular bone formation at n-HA/gel/CMC constructs treated site (15.2% to 52.7%) when compared with respective SHAM (10.2% to 31.8%). Histological examination and fluorescence labeling revealed that the uniformly interconnected porous surface of scaffold construct enhanced osteoblasts’ activity and mineralization. These preclinical data suggest that, n-HA/gel/CMC construct exhibit stimulation of bone''s innate regenerative capacity, thus underscoring their use in guided bone regeneration.     

Hip extension, knee flexion paradox: a new mechanism for non-contact ACL injury

Considering that an athlete performs at-risk sports activities countless times throughout the course of his or her career prior to the instance of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury, one may conclude that non-contact ACL injury is a rare event. Nevertheless, the overall number of non-contact ACL injuries, both in the US and worldwide, remains alarming due to the growing number of recreational and professional athletes participating in high-risk activities. To date, numerous non-contact ACL injury mechanisms have been proposed, but none provides a detailed picture of sequence of events leading to injury and the exact cause of this injury remains elusive. In this perspective article, we propose a new conception of non-contact ACL injury mechanism that comprehensively integrates risk factors inside and outside the knee joint. The proposed mechanism is robust in the sense that it is biomechanically justifiable and addresses a number of confounding issues related to ACL injury.     

Independent and combined abiotic stresses affect the physiology and expression patterns of DREB genes differently in stress‐susceptible and resistant genotypes of banana

In tropics, combined stresses of drought and heat often reduce crop productivity in plants like Musa acuminata L. We compared responses of two contrasting banana genotypes, namely the drought‐sensitive Grand Nain (GN; AAA genome) and drought tolerant Hill banana (HB; AAB genome) to individual drought, heat and their combination under controlled and field conditions. Drought and combined drought and heat treatments caused greater reduction in leaf relative water content and greater increase in ion leakage and H₂O₂ content in GN plants, especially in early stages, while the responses were more pronounced in HB at later stages. A combination of drought and heat increased the severity of responses. Real‐time expression patterns of the A‐1 and A‐2 group DEHYDRATION‐RESPONSIVE ELEMENT BINDING (DREB) genes revealed greater changes in expression in leaves of HB plants for both the individual stresses under controlled conditions compared to GN plants. A combination of heat and drought, however, activated most DREB genes in GN but surprisingly suppressed their expression in HB in controlled and field conditions. Its response seems correlated to a better stomatal control over transpiration in HB and a DREB‐independent pathway for the more severe combined stresses unlike in GN. Most of the DREB genes had abscisic acid (ABA)‐responsive elements in their promoters and were also activated by ABA suggesting at least partial dependence on ABA. This study provides valuable information on physiological and molecular responses of the two genotypes to individual and combined drought and heat stresses.     

Leveraging high-throughput screening data,deep neural networks,and conditional generative adversarial networks to advance predictive toxicology

There are currently 85,000 chemicals registered with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Toxic Substances Control Act, but only a small fraction have measured toxicological data. To address this gap, high-throughput screening (HTS) and computational methods are vital. As part of one such HTS effort, embryonic zebrafish were used to examine a suite of morphological and mortality endpoints at six concentrations from over 1,000 unique chemicals found in the ToxCast library (phase 1 and 2). We hypothesized that by using a conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN) or deep neural networks (DNN), and leveraging this large set of toxicity data we could efficiently predict toxic outcomes of untested chemicals. Utilizing a novel method in this space, we converted the 3D structural information into a weighted set of points while retaining all information about the structure. In vivo toxicity and chemical data were used to train two neural network generators. The first was a DNN (Go-ZT) while the second utilized cGAN architecture (GAN-ZT) to train generators to produce toxicity data. Our results showed that Go-ZT significantly outperformed the cGAN, support vector machine, random forest and multilayer perceptron models in cross-validation, and when tested against an external test dataset. By combining both Go-ZT and GAN-ZT, our consensus model improved the SE, SP, PPV, and Kappa, to 71.4%, 95.9%, 71.4% and 0.673, respectively, resulting in an area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) of 0.837. Considering their potential use as prescreening tools, these models could provide in vivo toxicity predictions and insight into the hundreds of thousands of untested chemicals to prioritize compounds for HT testing.     

Characterization and Fungal Inhibition Activity of Siderophore from Wheat Rhizosphere Associated Acinetobacter calcoaceticus Strain HIRFA32

Acinetobacter calcoaceticus HIRFA32 from wheat rhizosphere produced catecholate type of siderophore with optimum siderophore (ca. 92 % siderophore units) in succinic acid medium without FeSO₄ at 28 °C and 24 h of incubation. HPLC purified siderophore appeared as pale yellow crystals with molecular weight [M⁺¹] m/z 347.18 estimated by LCMS. The structure elucidated by ¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR, HMQC, HMBC, NOESY and decoupling studies, revealed that siderophore composed of 2,3-dihydroxybenzoic acid with hydroxyhistamine and threonine as amino acid subunits. In vitro study demonstrated siderophore mediated mycelium growth inhibition (ca. 46.87 ± 0.5 %) of Fusarium oxysporum. This study accounts to first report on biosynthesis of acinetobactin-like siderophore by the rhizospheric strain of A. calcoaceticus and its significance in inhibition of F. oxysporum.     

Gender-dimorphic regulation of liver proteins in Streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats

To address the issue of gender importance in development of diabetes, in the present study, we performed two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE)-based proteomic study in Streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic rats by investigating gender-dimorphic differential regulation patterns of liver proteins. Animal experiments revealed that females have greater susceptibility towards developing diabetes due to lower insulin secretion, greater severity of liver damage, more impaired regulation of sex hormones as well as lower glucose tolerance and higher blood glucose levels as compared to male diabetic rats when exposed to STZ. Proteomic analysis detected about 730 hepatic protein spots, ranging from 6 to 240 kDa mass between pH 3 ～ 10, of which 45 identified proteins showed gender-dimorphic regulation. Most interesting is that our gender-specific proteome comparison showed that male and female rats displayed different regulations of hepatic proteins involved in lipid metabolism, methionine and citric acid cycles, as well as antioxidative and stress defense system. We for the first time identified chaperonin 10 and D-dopachrome tautomerase showing gender-dependent differential regulation between healthy control and diabetic rats, which have not been reported to date with respect to diabetes pathophysiology. In conclusion, current proteomic study revealed that more severely impaired hepatic protein regulation in female diabetic rats was influential on greater susceptibility of females to STZ-induced diabetes. We expect that the present proteomic data can provide valuable information for evidence-based gender-specific treatment of diabetes.     

Effectiveness of Spray Congealing to Obtain Physically Stabilized Amorphous Dispersions of a Poorly Soluble Thermosensitive API

An amorphous phase produced by micronization up to the molecular or colloidal level of a poorly soluble drug having low lipophilicity can distinctly enhance its solubility characteristics. However, though dispersing the molten mass of a poorly water-soluble drug within polymeric matrix has been found to be most effective in formation of molecular dispersions, the drug molecules which melt at high temperature also accompanied by decomposition, such as acetazolamide, are difficult to formulate as molecular dispersions. Hence, a method is proposed to obtain molecular dispersions of acetazolamide with poloxamer-237 by spray congealing under optimal heat treatment. Uniform molecular and/or colloidal dispersions of the drug were achieved with instantaneous solvent evaporation by mixing a drug solution with molten mass of the plasticizer matrix. Immobilization of dispersed drug molecules was effected subsequently through rapid solidification by spray congealing. Initial characterization of 1:1, 1:1.5, and 1:2 ratios of solid dispersions and devitrification study of an optimized (1:2) ratio ensured efficacy of the proposed method in formation of physically stabilized amorphous systems without thermal degradation and hence resulted in more than ninefold rise in solubility and more than 90% dissolution within initial 10 min. With 1:2 ratio, molecular dispersions could be achieved by initial solvent evaporation stage, which when subjected to spray congealing produced physically stable amorphous systems, without signs of thermal degradation. This study also proposes an opportunity for selection of those polymers with which the drug is immiscible in their fluid state, yet obtaining molecular dispersions.KEY WORDS: low molecular lipophilicity, melt with decomposition, rapid solidification, solid solutions     

FCDD: A Database for Fruit Crops Diseases

Fruit Crops Diseases Database (FCDD) requires a number of biotechnology and bioinformatics tools. The FCDD is a unique bioinformatics resource that compiles information about 162 details on fruit crops diseases, diseases type, its causal organism, images, symptoms and their control. The FCDD contains 171 phytochemicals from 25 fruits, their 2D images and their 20 possible sequences. This information has been manually extracted and manually verified from numerous sources, including other electronic databases, textbooks and scientific journals. FCDD is fully searchable and supports extensive text search. The main focus of the FCDD is on providing possible information of fruit crops diseases, which will help in discovery of potential drugs from one of the common bioresource-fruits. The database was developed using MySQL. The database interface is developed in PHP, HTML and JAVA. FCDD is freely available.

Availability

http://www.fruitcropsdd.com/