Greater Numbers Research Articles

Influencing and Regulating the Estrous Cycle in Outbred CD1 Laboratory Mice (Mus musculus)

AbstractThe Whitten effect is a widely used tool for manipulating the mouse estrous cycle and generating reproductively active females within the laboratory setting. Typically, peak numbers of sexually receptive mice occur following exposure to male pheromones, resulting in a higher number of successful copulations on the third day after exposure. Although this method has improved efficiencies, the percentage of females mated and subsequently deemed to be pregnant/pseudopregnant remains relatively low, around 50%. In experiment 1, we aimed to 1) further understand cyclicity; 2) determine whether the initial cycle stage plays an importance on day 3 receptivity; and 3) identify any repetitive patterns/cycle stabilization. Mice (n = 27) were assigned to group cages according to cycle stage (proestrus, estrus, metestrus, diestrus). Experiment 2 was developed to determine an optimum treatment to promote receptivity by exposure to various pheromone stimuli. Mice (n = 45) were randomly assigned to 5 treatment groups (PBS-treated sham soiled bedding, male soiled bedding, live male, pregnant females, and lactating females). In both experiments, daily vaginal cytology was performed for 21 days to determine the cycle stage. Results from experiment 1 indicate that the initial cycle stage did not contribute to day 3 receptivity, although synchronization within several groups/cages was noted, and that the greatest numbers of estrous animals were obtained on days 6 and 7. Experiment 2 revealed that exposure to live males and lactating females both significantly improved receptivity compared with the PBS, male soiled bedding, and pregnant female groups. These results indicate that current strategies used for routine synchronization could be further improved through alternative housing regimens without compromising animal welfare.

Bibliometric Analysis of Factors Affecting Employee Performance with Motivation

Organizational performance can be maximized if the organization is able to utilize its human resources efficiently and effectively and use the right strategy to achieve predetermined goals. This consider points to supply a comprehensive bibliometric examination of components that impact worker execution, with a specific center on inspiration as an interceding variable. This inquire about contributes to the existing writing by systematically mapping patterns within the field, highlighting crevices, and proposing roads for future investigate. Understanding the complex transaction between inspiration and execution is significant for creating more successful human asset methodologies that progress organizational results. The investigate was conducted on May 30, 2024 looking the google researcher database with catchphrases connected employee_performance_AND_motivation within the areas of commerce, administration and bookkeeping with distribution title diary and greatest numbers of comes about are 500 diaries as a test. Metadata recovery utilizing the Publish or Perish (POP) adaptation 7.31 application. The PoP comes about were at that point analyzed unmistakably based on the year of distribution, watchwords, distributer title, source and researcher productivity. In arrange to induce an precise outline of investigate improvement, PoP information is sent out to Exel CSV and Result as RIS record groups. CSV information is made into a turn table and RIS information is analyzed utilizing the VosViewer (VV) application. The comes about appeared that the most elevated number of distributed articles happened in 2023 with 109 distributions. The publisher with the most cites perauthor based on publisher is Academia.edu with 1290 cites perauthor. The most sources are owned by Business Management and Strategy with 758 sources. Some of the keywords with the top total link strength are employee performance, motivation, impact and relationship. The authors who connected to each other in this study totaled 9 people. Some of the keywords recommended for further research related to employee performance and motivation include: compensation, work life balance and work environment.

Finite element analysis in the Dental Sciences: A Bibliometric and a Visual Study

Introduction and aimsFinite element analysis (FEA) is an incrementally practical and precise tool for the prediction of stress effects on different tissue structures and has therefore interested dental researchers for decades. This bibliometric and visualized study was aimed to assess the research progress related to FEA in the dental sciences in terms of research trends and frontiers. MethodsThe articles about FEA studies in this field during 1999 to 2024 were obtained from Web of Science Core Collection. Then, these results were analysed and plotted using Microsoft Excel, VOSviewer, and CiteSpace in order to find out the historical evolution, current hotspots, and future directions. ResultsTotal 2838 literature records related to the topic were retrieved from Web of Science Core Collection. The most active country and institution were USA (538 documents) and Universidade Estadual Paulista (140 documents), respectively. Baggi et al from University of Naples Federico II was the author with the most highly cited article (352 citations), which was published on the Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry in 2008. Dental Materials ranked first (231 documents) among the 10 journals with the greatest numbers of relevant publications. The top three trending keywords were ‘dental implant’, ‘stress distribution’, and ‘fracture’. The endocrown, clear aligner, and posterior edentulism were scientific frontiers in this field. ConclusionThe present study provides a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of research in the dental science by FEA approaches, which will identify active hotspots of scientific interest to guide further research endeavours.

Genetic variations and gene expression profiles of Rice Black-streaked dwarf virus (RBSDV) in different host plants and insect vectors: insights from RNA-Seq analysis

Rice black-streaked dwarf virus (RBSDV) is an etiological agent of a destructive disease infecting some economically important crops from the Gramineae family in Asia. While RBSDV causes high yield losses, genetic characteristics of replicative viral populations have not been investigated within different host plants and insect vectors. Herein, eleven publicly available RNA-Seq datasets from Chinese RBSDV-infected rice, maize, and viruliferous planthopper (Laodelphax striatellus) were obtained from the NCBI database. The patterns of SNP and RNA expression profiles of expected RBSDV populations were analyzed by CLC Workbench 20 and Geneious Prime software. These analyses discovered 2,646 mutations with codon changes in RBSDV whole transcriptome and forty-seven co-mutated hotspots with high variant frequency within the crucial regions of S5-1, S5-2, S6, S7-1, S7-2, S9, and S10 open reading frames (ORFs) which are responsible for some virulence and host range functions. Moreover, three joint mutations are located on the three-dimensional protein of P9-1. The infected RBSDV-susceptible rice cultivar KTWYJ3 and indigenous planthopper datasets showed more co-mutated hotspot numbers than others. Our analyses showed the expression patterns of viral genomic fragments varied depending on the host type. Unlike planthopper, S5-1, S2, S6, and S9-1 ORFs, respectively had the greatest read numbers in host plants; and S5-2, S9-2, and S7-2 were expressed in the lowest level. These findings underscore virus/host complexes are effective in the genetic variations and gene expression profiles of plant viruses. Our analysis revealed no evidence of recombination events. Interestingly, the negative selection was observed at 12 RBSDV ORFs, except for position 1015 in the P1 protein, where a positive selection was detected. The research highlights the potential of SRA datasets for analysis of the virus cycle and enhances our understanding of RBSDV’s genetic diversity and host specificity.

The Impact of Human Cystic Echinococcosis in the Central Asian Region, 1990-2019.

This research aims to update knowledge on the regional and national sickness burden attributable to cystic echinococcosis (CE) from 1990 to 2019, as well as epidemiology and disease control, with a particular emphasis on the People's Central Asian Regions. We calculated the morbidity, mortality, and disability-adjusted life years at the global, regional, and national levels for CE in all central Asian countries from 1990 to 2019, and we analyzed the association between GDP per capita and the disease burden of CE. In 2019, the three greatest numbers of CE cases were recorded in Kazakhstan [23986; 95% uncertainty interval (UI); 19796; 28908]; Uzbekistan (41079; 18351; 76048); and Tajikistan (10887; 4891; 20170) among all 9 countries. The three countries with the greatest ASIR of CE were estimated to be Kazakhstan (127.56; 95% UI: 105.34-153.8), Uzbekistan (123.53; 95% UI: 58.65-219.16), and Tajikistan (121.88; 58.57-213.93). Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan had the biggest increases (125%, 97%, and 83%, respectively) in the number of incident cases of CE, whereas Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Armenia saw the largest decreases (45%, 8%, and 3%, respectively). To reduce the illness burden caused by CE, our findings may help public health professionals and policymakers design cost-benefit initiatives. To lessen the impact of CE on society, it is suggested that more money be given to the region's most endemic nations. Echinococcosis, cystic, negative health effects, life-years lost due to disability, rate of occurrence as a function of age, rate of death as a function of age.

Harvesting nature's bounty: exploring the ethnobotanical landscape of wild edible plants in the Awi Agäw community, Northwestern Ethiopia

BackgroundFeeding the world's future population while still facing a variety of socioeconomic and climate change scenarios with uncertain outcomes is a key global societal concern that should be addressed in a science-based manner. Ethiopia boasts a great diversity of wild edible plant species (WEPS), but millions of its citizens still suffer from chronic hunger every year. In this context, we here document the use and conservation of WEPS in the Awi Agäw community, Northwestern Ethiopia.MethodsWe performed a cross-sectional study from October 2021 to June 2022. Ethnobotanical and conservation status data were collected via semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, field walks and market surveys. A total of 374 respondents from three districts (Guangua, Jawi and Ankasha) were purposely selected for the study. Descriptive statistics, including preference rankings, frequencies and direct matrix rankings, were employed for the data analysis.ResultsWe identified a total of 39 WEPS plant taxa distributed among 26 families and 32 genera. The Moraceae and Rosaceae had the greatest numbers of plants, with five and three species, respectively. The WEPS are regularly consumed in the study area to alleviate hunger. However, threats such as habitat loss, agricultural expansion, deforestation for firewood and other reasons, and pesticide use threaten WEPS availability.ConclusionTherefore, community-based conservation interventions need to be encouraged to safeguard WEPS and associated traditional knowledge. Furthermore, nutritional quality analysis is recommended for the selection of promising WEPS candidates.

Bibliometric Analysis of Trends and Future Directions of Research and Development of Seed Orchards

Seed orchards are important seed resources for producing improved tree crops for future plantations, forest restoration, and forestry practices (i.e., gene conservation) and for transmitting current gene diversity to future generations. Seed orchards are a major sub-division in forest science. The establishment and management of a seed orchard involves many steps, from the selection of superior trees to the harvesting of a seed crop. Studying the trends and future directions of seed orchards using different analysis methods is critically important, especially to establish resistant forests via the production of climate-smart, biotic/abiotic-stress-resistant seedling materials. Published papers related to seed orchards should be analyzed to determine the current trends in this field and to contribute to its future directions. Bibliometric analysis has been used for different purposes in various scientific fields. However, it has not been performed for publications in seed orchards. This study was carried out to analyze the current trends of research on seed orchards and to determine the future directions of these orchards based on published papers. For these purposes, 1018 published papers were obtained from the Science Citation Index, Science Citation Index Expanded, and citation index databases of “Web of Science” using the keyword “seed orchard”. The papers were published between 1980 and 2022 and were subjected to bibliometric analysis based on the most prolific contributors, references, countries, and keywords. CiteSpace software 6.1 R6 was applied to visualize information about seed orchard research. The average number of citations per publication was 13.05, and the 4 H-Index of the publication set was 48. The most prolific contributors with the strongest citation bursts, the highest centrality, and the greatest numbers of published papers were from Canada, Sweden, South Korea, Finland, and Czech Republic, while Canada (186 published articles), the USA (140), and Sweden (115), together with China, Brazil, and Germany, were active countries, especially based on citations from recent years. The “keywords” of the papers were the core of the research. “Mating pattern”, “Swedish forestry”, “fertility variation”, “Hymenoscyphus fraxineus”, “threatened Pacific sandalwood”, “outbreeding depression”, “climate change”, “management”, and “growth”, together with others such as “genetic improvement” and “effective size”, were active study areas and keywords, based on results of the analysis. They also guided the literature search and inventory and classification of early studies and served as predictors for future studies. The results of this study are discussed based on the trends and future directions of the research and development of seed orchards.

Triage implementation in Pakistan: a case of broken healthcare system

Madam, The death toll due to road traffic accidents (RTA) in Pakistan reached 28,170 in 2020, according to WHO. This accounts for 1.93% of all deaths in the World. (1) Mortality due to RTA is an ever-increasing concern and its management, especially in Pakistan, is still a bigger concern. The efficient way of dealing with Trauma is by following globally accepted evidence-based “Advanced Trauma Life Support” guidelines. Triage being the first step in ATLS literally means “to sort”. In other words, identifying the greatest good for greatest numbers. The Emergency Department (ED) rule must be to manage patients based on the severity of problems and not on the order of arrival. Death can be prevented in the patients who benefit the most by getting medical attention the earliest. All the patients escorted and rescued from the place of incident should be sorted rapidly and given a colour-coded tag based on urgency. Onsite triage is the most critical life saving measure. A Karachi based study concluded that most paramedics in ambulances had poor knowledge of pre-hospital management and 72.3% thought they could not do triage. (2) Similarly, another study at the emergency department of a tertiary care hospital in Karachi showed concerningly poor knowledge of triage.(3) Only 5 CPSP accredited public hospitals in Pakistan have emergency medicine as a separate field which results in lack of triage implementation as EDs of most hospitals are run by internal medicine professionals and general surgeons. Simply, implementing triage has shown to reduce and ED mortality (by 3.80%), resources’ utilisation, and length of stay.(4) Punjab, the development hub of Pakistan, provides 22 public hospitals, including only 12 fully functional ones, for dealing with trauma patients. DHQs bearing the burden of all trauma patients of districts are level-III trauma centres lacking in specialised surgical care and categorization of paediatric and adult patients. Other independent trauma care facilities are level-IV trauma centres which act as a relay to stabilise the patients before they are transferred to a better facility. A level-I trauma centre alone can increase 25% survival rate of trauma patients, but unfortunately Pakistan does not have a single level-I trauma centre. (5) Therefore, all Rescue staff must be trained regularly for future enactment of triage to alleviate RTA associated mortality along with upgrading of trauma centres to level-I.

Changescapes

Some aesthetic forms ‘dramatise’ change. I call them ‘changescapes’. They help us know mutability by immersing us in it, by letting us be with it. Change is their theme and it is often their matter too, for they are usually of fragile and ephemeral stuff that reacts to altering conditions in the larger world. Transformations happen at their boundaries, at the limits between the inside and the outside of their systems, and then the symptoms of change become manifest in them, palpably available for our contemplation. These aesthetic forms have become plenteous recently because we are ready now to understand them and because we need now to understand mutability with them. Versions of these forms have been in human cultures for ages. For example, in the Chinese shopping district of almost every sizable city in the world, you’ll find a wonderful shop dedicated to ‘live arts’, where you can buy your aquarium, horticultural and water-fountain supplies. But there’s something about the present historical moment that’s calling changescapes forth in greater numbers and greater variety. Assaying these developments, this essay will finish in aesthetics and linguistics. But it starts with a story.

Carbon dioxide enrichment affected flower numbers transiently and increased successful post-pollination development stably but without altering final acorn production in mature pedunculate oak (Quercus robur L.)

Acorn production in oak (Quercus spp.) shows considerable inter-annual variation, known as masting, which provides a natural defence against seed predators but a highly-variable supply of acorns for uses such as in commercial tree planting each year. Anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases have been very widely reported to influence plant growth and seed or fruit size and quantity via the ‘fertilisation effect’ that leads to enhanced photosynthesis. To examine if acorn production in mature woodland communities will be affected by further increase in CO2, the contents of litter traps from a Free Air Carbon Enrichment (FACE) experiment in deciduous woodland in central England were analysed for numbers of flowers and acorns of pedunculate oak (Quercus robur L.) at different stages of development and their predation levels under ambient and elevated CO2 concentrations. Inter-annual variation in acorn numbers was considerable and cyclical between 2015 and 2021, with the greatest numbers of mature acorns in 2015, 2017 and 2020 but almost none in 2018. The numbers of flowers, enlarged cups, immature acorns, empty acorn cups, and galls in the litter traps also varied amongst years; comparatively high numbers of enlarged cups were recorded in 2018, suggesting Q. robur at this site is a fruit maturation masting species (i.e., the extent of abortion of pollinated flowers during acorn development affects mature acorn numbers greatly). Raising the atmospheric CO2 concentration by 150 μL L−1, from early 2017, increased the numbers of immature acorns, and all acorn evidence (empty cups + immature acorns + mature acorns) detected in the litter traps compared to ambient controls by 2021, but did not consistently affect the numbers of flowers, enlarged cups, empty cups, or mature acorns. The number of flowers in the elevated CO2 plots’ litter traps was greater in 2018 than 2017, one year after CO2 enrichment began, whereas numbers declined in ambient plots. Enrichment with CO2 also increased the number of oak knopper galls (Andricus quercuscalicis Burgsdorf). We conclude that elevated CO2 increased the occurrence of acorns developing from flowers, but the putative benefit to mature acorn numbers may have been hidden by excessive pre- and/or post-dispersal predation. There was no evidence that elevated CO2 altered masting behaviour.

Varied growth response of high alpine Rhododendron myrtifolium and forest zone tree species to climate warming in the Eastern Carpathians, Ukraine

Plants growing along altitudinal transects in alpine and mountainous areas respond differently to climatic conditions. The present study is centred on the unique and ecologically significant species, Rhododendron myrtifolium Schott & Kotschy, an evergreen clump-forming or prostrate dwarf shrub. This high-mountain endemic plant grows at several localities in isolated massifs of the Eastern Carpathians, but the greatest numbers of sites can be found in the subalpine and alpine belts of the Chornohora range. The main objectives of this study were (1) to assess the dendrochronological potential of Rhododendron myrtifolium as a new species in dendrochronological research and (2) to compare the growth response of R. myrtifolium (sampling elevation: 1800–1950 m a.s.l.) with Picea abies Karst. (1350–1500 m a.s.l.) and Abies alba Mill. (950–1050 m a.s.l.) collected from the upper and lower forest belts. Tree-ring material from 97 trees and shrubs enabled the construction of three site chronologies from sites located within the altitudinal transect. The longest chronology, covering the previous 184 years, was developed for fir. The chronology for the rhododendron was the shortest at 66 years. This species is the most sensitive of the three species analysed. The highest positive r-value (r=0.71) was obtained between the rhododendron chronology and the warm-season temperature (from March to July). Also, the growth of this species was significantly positively correlated with the summer temperature (r=0.50). In contrast, fir and spruce demonstrated a similar inverse relationship with August temperatures.

TNF Superfamily and ILC2 Activation in Asthma.

Eosinophilic asthma is the most prevalent and well-defined phenotype of asthma. Despite a majority of patients responding to corticosteroid therapy and T2 biologics, there remains a subset that have recurrent asthma exacerbations, highlighting a need for additional therapies to fully ameliorate airway eosinophilia. Group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2) are considered key players in the pathogenesis of eosinophilic asthma through the production of copious amounts of type 2 cytokines, namely IL-5 and IL-13. ILC2 numbers are increased in the airways of asthmatics and with the greatest numbers of activated ILC2 detected in sputa from severe prednisone-dependent asthma with uncontrolled eosinophilia. Although epithelial-derived cytokines are important mediators of ILC2 activation, emerging evidence suggests that additional pathways stimulate ILC2 function. The tumor necrosis factor super family (TNFSF) and its receptors (TNFRSF) promote ILC2 activity. In this review, we discuss evidence supporting a relationship between ILC2 and TNFSF/TNFRSF axis in eosinophilic asthma and the role of this relationship in severe asthma with airway autoimmune responses.

Returning at Any Cost? How Black College Students’ Feel Toward COVID Vaccines and Institutional Mandates

Decades of research have found African Americans to be unfairly marginalized by healthcare systems. As U.S. colleges released their plans to re-open for in-person classes for the Fall 2021 semester and beyond, research is needed into how African American students view vaccine mandates, such as the one levied in March 2021 by Rutgers University and many other institutions. Subsequently, the purpose of this study is to explore how African American students feel regarding vaccine mandates and a return to in-person learning. In all, this survey study engaged with 180 African American college students currently enrolled in postsecondary education in the United States. Results suggest Black women are more comfortable with COVID-19 vaccinations than Black men, and Black women are more willing to take the COVID-19 vaccine to return to in-person learning on campus. Implications of this work outline how Black women may return to in-person higher education at greater numbers than Black men, perhaps further marginalizing Black men from higher education. Students with disabilities and students attending 4-year institutions also expressed the most discomfort and least likelihood to take a COVID-19 vaccine if it were mandated. Implications for equity and campus safety are addressed.

The History by Shanbal as the Earliest Specimen of the Historiography of Hadramawt

The historiographical tradition of Hadramawt, the autonomous historical and cultural region of South Arabia, began its formation in the IX/XV century. The works of Hadramawt historiography appeared in great numbers following “The History of Hadramawt” by Ahmad bin ‘Abdullah Shanbal. “The History of Hadramawt» belongs to the biographical genre of narrative characterized by a concise form of reporting. It was under the inϐluence of Muslim law and, to a lesser extent, theology, that the history of various branches of knowledge was compiled as a collection of biographies of authoritative ϐigures. Thus, the genre of biography in Arab-Muslim historiography became the most enduring of all forms of historical expression. Shanbal through the prism of biographies of ulems, fakikhs, qadis, rulers and commanders gave us the basis for constructing the history of medieval Hadramawt. This article identiϐies features of the Hadramawt historiographic tradition based on an analysis of the text of Ahmad bin ‘Abdullah Shanbal’s work. In compiling his chronicle, Shanbal apparently relied on Ba Hasan, Ba Shurahbil, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Khatib, Ba Makhrama, genealogies and family hagiologies of sayyids and mashayyih.

Mapping the global research landscape and trends of autoimmune encephalitis: A bibliometric analysis

BackgroundAutoimmune encephalitis (AE) is a neuroautoimmune disease featured by the presence of antibodies targeting neuronal surface, synaptic, or intracellular antigens. An increasing number of articles on its clinical manifestations, treatments, and prognosis have appeared in recent years. The objectives of this study were to summarize this growing body of literature and provide an overview of hotspots and trends in AE research using bibliometric analysis. MethodsWe retrieved AE-related articles published between 1999 and 2022 from the Web of Science Core Collection. Using bibliometric websites and software, we analyzed the data of AE research, including details about countries, institutions, authors, references, journals, and keywords. ResultsWe analyzed 3348 articles, with an average of 32.83 citations per article and an H-index of 141. The USA (1091, 32.587%), China (531, 15.860%), Germany (447, 13.351%), England (266, 7.945%), and Japan (213, 6.362%) had the greatest numbers of publications. The top five institutions by numbers of publications were Oxford (143, 4.271%), the Udice French Research Universities (135, 4.032%), the University of Pennsylvania (135, 4.032%), l’Institut National de la Sante de la Recherche Medicale Inserm (113, 3.375%), and the University of Barcelona (110, 3.286%). The most productive authors were J. Dalmau (98, 2.927%), A. Vincent (65, 2.479%), H. Pruess (64, 1.912%), C. G. Bien (43, 1.284%), and F. Graus (43, 1.284%). “autoimmune encephalitis” was the most frequently used keyword (430), followed by “antibodies” (420), “NMDA receptor encephalitis” (383), and “limbic encephalitis” (368). In recent years, research hotspots have focused on the diagnosis and immunotherapy of NMDAR encephalitis and on limbic encephalitis. ConclusionDeveloped Western countries have made significant contributions to this field. China has shown a steady increase in the number of publications in recent years, but the quality and influence of these articles warrant efforts at improvement. Future directions in AE research lie in two key areas: (i) the clinical manifestations, prevalence, and prognosis of AE (enabled by advances in diagnosis); and (ii) the efficacy and safety of targeted, individualized immunotherapy.

Putting women back into the early modern economy: Work, occupations, and economic development

AbstractA dataset of just under 10,000 work tasks gleaned from court depositions that records women's as well as men's work, and unpaid as well as paid activities, prompts a reassessment of the transformation of the early modern economy and women's role within it. Rather than sectoral change in production activities with a growth of manufacturing at the expense of agriculture, the evidence suggests that work tasks changed little over time despite occupational specialization increasing. Women's labour force participation is shown to contribute 44 per cent of work in the economy, rather than 30 per cent as in previous estimates. This is partly because of the importance of commercialized housework and care work, which has been largely overlooked in existing models of the early modern economy. Turning to waged work, findings confirm that men's and women's participation in paid agricultural work were linked, with women being employed in greater numbers when men were not available. However, these trends had a strong relationship with access to land, a factor that has been neglected in comparison with demographic trends and the cost of consumables. The organization of work was transformed in the seventeenth century as the number of completely landless households increased rapidly.

Profibrotic VEGFR3-Dependent Lymphatic Vessel Growth in Autoimmune Valvular Carditis.

Rheumatic heart disease is the major cause of valvular heart disease in developing nations. Endothelial cells (ECs) are considered crucial contributors to rheumatic heart disease, but greater insight into their roles in disease progression is needed. We used a Cdh5-driven EC lineage-tracing approach to identify and track ECs in the K/B.g7 model of autoimmune valvular carditis. Single-cell RNA sequencing was used to characterize the EC populations in control and inflamed mitral valves. Immunostaining and conventional histology were used to evaluate lineage tracing and validate single-cell RNA-sequencing findings. The effects of VEGFR3 (vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 3) and VEGF-C (vascular endothelial growth factor C) inhibitors were tested in vivo. The functional impact of mitral valve disease in the K/B.g7 mouse was evaluated using echocardiography. Finally, to translate our findings, we analyzed valves from human patients with rheumatic heart disease undergoing mitral valve replacements. Lineage tracing in K/B.g7 mice revealed new capillary lymphatic vessels arising from valve surface ECs during the progression of disease in K/B.g7 mice. Unsupervised clustering of mitral valve single-cell RNA-sequencing data revealed novel lymphatic valve ECs that express a transcriptional profile distinct from other valve EC populations including the recently identified PROX1 (Prospero homeobox protein 1)+ lymphatic valve ECs. During disease progression, these newly identified lymphatic valve ECs expand and upregulate a profibrotic transcriptional profile. Inhibiting VEGFR3 through multiple approaches prevented expansion of this mitral valve lymphatic network. Echocardiography demonstrated that K/B.g7 mice have left ventricular dysfunction and mitral valve stenosis. Valve lymphatic density increased with age in K/B.g7 mice and correlated with worsened ventricular dysfunction. Importantly, human rheumatic valves contained similar lymphatics in greater numbers than nonrheumatic controls. These studies reveal a novel mode of inflammation-associated, VEGFR3-dependent postnatal lymphangiogenesis in murine autoimmune valvular carditis, with similarities to human rheumatic heart disease.

Potential for Use of Species in the Subfamily Erynioideae for Biological Control and Biotechnology.

The fungal order Entomophthorales in the Zoopagomycota includes many fungal pathogens of arthropods. This review explores six genera in the subfamily Erynioideae within the family Entomophthoraceae, namely, Erynia, Furia, Orthomyces, Pandora, Strongwellsea, and Zoophthora. This is the largest subfamily in the Entomophthorales, including 126 described species. The species diversity, global distribution, and host range of this subfamily are summarized. Relatively few taxa are geographically widespread, and few have broad host ranges, which contrasts with many species with single reports from one location and one host species. The insect orders infected by the greatest numbers of species are the Diptera and Hemiptera. Across the subfamily, relatively few species have been cultivated in vitro, and those that have require more specialized media than many other fungi. Given their potential to attack arthropods and their position in the fungal evolutionary tree, we discuss which species might be adopted for biological control purposes or biotechnological innovations. Current challenges in the implementation of these species in biotechnology include the limited ability or difficulty in culturing many in vitro, a correlated paucity of genomic resources, and considerations regarding the host ranges of different species.

Beyond the Numbers: Brass Players Hearing Gender in the Music Workplace

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to understand the experiences of cisgender women, transgender women, and nonbinary brass players. Semi-structured telephone interviews with fifty cisgender women, transgender women, and nonbinary brass players were conducted between January 2019 and January 2020. Participants were asked about their experiences as brass musicians. Many found themselves playing in environments where they felt othered, sexualized, and discriminated against, all of which affect their abilities to play. Even though cisgender women are entering the profession of music and playing in cisgendered male dominated sections in greater numbers, embedded problems with workplace equity are undermining their sense of dignity as credible, valued colleagues. There is more to workplace equity than simply looking at increases in diverse representations of marginalized groups, especially when gendered workplace culture and structures do not change. Our participants described strategies they adopt to exist in these spaces, which illuminate strategies workers deploy to reclaim their dignity at work. Hearing how gender informs the ways these participants envision, seek, and find dignity offers insight into work environments purporting to attract a diverse labor force yet remain rooted in structural and cultural practices that undermine those intentions.

The commercial and regional imagery of big things: Establishing a foundation for the study of oversized roadside landmarks

The highly visible yet poorly studied phenomenon of roadside colossi—oversized commercial buildings and statues in the shape of everyday objects, referred to in this article as Big Things—has often been dismissed as a kitschy by-product of American post-war consumerism and car culture. There are no universal definitions or typologies for this form of material culture, nor is there a sufficiently global history that explains the origin, spread and contemporary popularity of these landmarks. In this article, I address these gaps in the discourse, drawing attention to the rich yet largely untapped theoretical underpinnings of Big Things. In doing so, I highlight the potential for further study of these landmarks as material evidence of broader socio-cultural impulses, particularly in communities across North America and Australia, where Big Things can be found in their greatest numbers.