White Stripes Research Articles

Effect of over-the-counter whitening strips and toothpaste on shear bond strength of orthodontic brackets.

BackgroundTo investigate: 1) the effects of over-the-counter white strip enamel bleaching and 2-Step whitening toothpaste application on the shear bond strength of orthodontic brackets at 24-hours and 7-days post-bleaching latent period; and 2) the correlation between amount of bleaching and shear bond strength. Material and MethodsSixty human premolar teeth were randomly assigned into two bleaching groups, white strip group treated with Crest® 3D WHITE™ LUXE Professional Effects Whitestrips (Proctor & Gamble, Greensboro, NC), and whitening toothpaste group, treated with Crest® 3D WHITE™ BRILLIANCE 2-Step Toothpaste (Proctor & Gamble, Greensboro, NC). The groups were further divided into 4 subgroups A, B, C, D (n=15 per group). Subgroups A and C were bonded 7 days after bleaching while subgoups B and D were bonded 24 hours after bleaching. Differences in shear bond strength between the subgroups and an unbleached control group (n=15) were compared using the Kruskal-Wallis test. Spectrophotometric color changes were recorded pre- and post-bleaching. ResultsThe mean shear bond strength for the white strip groups were 10.35±3.6 MPa and 11.69±4.33 MPa for the 7-day and 24-hour delayed bonding periods, respectively. Means for the whitening toothpaste groups were 11.01±4.31 MPa and 10.83±3.79 MPa for the 7-day and 24-hour delayed bonding periods. The mean for the control group was 9.59±3.32 MPa. There were no significant differences in shear bond strength between the groups at 7-days and 24-hour (P=0.650). There was a significant difference between teeth bleached with white strips as compared to those bleached with toothpaste and controls. The correlations between color change and shear bond strength were not significant (P=0.448). ConclusionsThere is a significant difference in the amount of whitening achieved by over-the-counter white strips compared to toothpaste; however, no significant effects on shear bond strength occurred after bleaching with white strips and toothpaste at 24-hours and 7-days. Key words:Bleaching, shear bond strength, orthodontics, over-the-counter.

Istwa across the Water: Haitian History, Memory, and the Cultural Imagination by Toni Pressley-Sanon

Reviewed by: Istwa across the Water: Haitian History, Memory, and the Cultural Imagination by Toni Pressley-Sanon Angela Watkins Istwa across the Water: Haitian History, Memory, and the Cultural Imagination. By Toni Pressley-Sanon. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017. ISBN 0-8130-5440-7. 192 pp. $74.95 hardcover. In Istwa across the Water: Haitian History, Memory, and the Cultural Imagination, Toni Pressley-Sanon foregrounds her examination of cultural production and cultural memory in the African diaspora within three theoretical concepts: tidalectics (the figurative ebb and flow of water that symbolizes the transatlantic dispersal of enslaved Africans and the resulting physical/metaphysical displacement), La Marassa (the sacred twins in Haitian Vodou), and istwa (history, story, and memory).1 Tracing the origins of enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue (Haiti) to Dahomey (present-day Benin) and the Kongo, Pressley-Sanon explores how African belief systems were sustained and redefined in the New World despite the attempted erasure by slave owners and colonists. At times poetic in her explanation of the African diaspora as both fractured and reinvented in an attempt to be made whole, Pressley-Sanon reimagines the capture and survival of enslaved Africans and the transformation of cultural practices that preceded slavery. Beginning with the significance of Haiti's bicolor flag, legendarily created by removing the French flag's white stripe—which, according to Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, had once symbolized the white, slave-owning population of Saint-Domingue (1–2)—Pressley-Sanon contextualizes the fight for independence during the Haitian Revolution as the reclamation of African roots among free and enslaved people of color and the (re)invention of Haitian identity. According to the author, the blue and red of the Haitian flag, which represent the Black and mulatto populations, respectively, also symbolize "two lwa who were invoked most strongly during the Haitian Revolution: Èzili Dantò and Ogou Feray" (1). Bolstered by faith in the African deities from whom they sought guidance and protection, the insurgents defeated their oppressors. [End Page 208] In her book, Pressley-Sanon examines storytelling as an integral part of African and African diasporic culture. She recalls the story of Bokofio, which Melville Herskovits writes about in Dahomey: An Ancient West African Kingdom (1938) after an anthropological field study in the 1930s. Bokofio is taken on a treacherous journey before he is freed and allowed to return home. Pressley-Sanon presents three scenarios through which the story may be understood. She reinscribes the protagonist as someone uprooted from his homeland as a result of the transatlantic slave trade, who is taken to new lands and forced to adapt to a new way of life. Alternatively, she interprets Bokofio's "return" as the physical return to Africa after the end of slavery, in reference to documented cases in which newly freed people were sent back to their native land. Finally, she suggests that Bokofio's return to his homeland is an allusion to the belief that after death the souls of enslaved Africans return to Ginen, the spiritual underworld. She argues that both the oral tradition and the material culture specific to certain regions of the African continent and its diaspora reveal a deeper understanding of how enslaved people "died to one way of being as a result of their contact with the transatlantic slave trade [and] were also reborn to another" (11). According to Pressley-Sanon, the forced assimilation involved the act of forgetting (due to the passage of time or as a survival technique) or maintaining one's cultural beliefs by adopting Western religions and practices as a guise. Pressley-Sanon focuses on material culture in explaining tidalectics in terms of the cyclical nature of history, specifically focusing on how the past informs the present and the recognition of contemporary iterations of bondage and racial oppression. She also explores how these ruptures, as a consequence of chattel slavery, led to a fusion and reinterpretation of various African cultural practices. For example, she refers both to a performance group in Haiti whose costumes consist of cords that represent the power of bociọ, sculptures crafted "to 'work' for their owners to shield them against harm and function in conjunction with vodun [sic] energies to protect humans and...

A Deep Convolutional Neural Network for Classification of Aedes Albopictus Mosquitoes

Monitoring the spread of disease-carrying mosquitoes is a first and necessary step to control severe diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, Zika or yellow fever. Previous citizen science projects have been able to obtain large image datasets with linked geo-tracking information. As the number of international collaborators grows, the manual annotation by expert entomologists of the large amount of data gathered by these users becomes too time demanding and unscalable, posing a strong need for automated classification of mosquito species from images. We introduce the application of two Deep Convolutional Neural Networks in a comparative study to automate this classification task. We use the transfer learning principle to train two state-of-the-art architectures on the data provided by the Mosquito Alert project, obtaining testing accuracy of 94%. In addition, we applied explainable models based on the Grad-CAM algorithm to visualise the most discriminant regions of the classified images, which coincide with the white band stripes located at the legs, abdomen, and thorax of mosquitoes of the Aedes albopictus species. The model allows us to further analyse the classification errors. Visual Grad-CAM models show that they are linked to poor acquisition conditions and strong image occlusions.

Austin Insomnia

Austin Insomnia Stephanie Dickinson Part 1 I see the dress I wore: blue and short-sleeved with fine white stripes, a white collar trimmed with eyelet lace, and on my feet, Babe slingbacks, pantyhose (the shade called coffee) instead of panties. The dress, a gift from a supervisor, whose daughter had outgrown it, must have been expensive; the tag announced itself, as did the midnight-blue lining, a slipperiness that felt like satin. The first time I put it on I noticed a rip in the seam under the right arm. I continued to wear the dress, always conscious of the hole when I lifted my right arm, my only working arm, since my left arm was paralyzed, after a shotgun accident. Still, I liked the feel of the dress, how it slipped around me, like 3 a.m. in the Dallas heat. I labored as a Wanger, i.e. a Wang word processor, sending out annuitant letters to former Mobil employees regarding their 401K plans. There were four other Wangers. Pauline from Taiwan, who now lived in a Dallas suburb that burglars had broken into, and when they cornered her daughter, Pauline had begged them to rape her instead, and they had; and Cleaster, silken-voiced, raised on a hog farm in Arkansas; Marc, a classical violinist from Tyler, Texas, whose father had run him off for being queer; and Lola, with her elegant frowning face, never letting a day go by that she didn't mention the hell of being bused to the integrated school in Lafayette, Louisiana, and white kids throwing rocks. The word processing pool was an oasis for beautiful people, for refugees, for the big hearted. All you needed was a valid social security number and you could skip the interview, slip in through a temporary agency, no references checked. The two things required of you—to work like a dog and eat lunch at your desk. On this August morning, the coffee cart was nearing and the 10:15 a.m. cowbell clanged to announce it. I sat in front of the WANG's green screen, a slow behemoth attached to a wide-track printer with its continuous roll of triplicate paper and a daisy wheel ready to rattle out endless annuitant letters. On my typing stand sat a brutal twelve-column spreadsheet, the same one that appeared on the green screen with its blinking ruler. Standing over me, Jack Buehler, an Annuitant Services manager on the verge of retirement, spoke in his loud twang, his dung-beetle brown eyes flashing; his breath like a sink drain, as if all the body's un fragrant juices had collected there. Now, Stephanie, I want to move the employer contribution from column 4 into column 6 and I'd prefer the totals displayed in ascending to descending order. [End Page 83] I required the WANG Users' Manual for the ascending order operation steps but couldn't reach for it with Jack perching on my shoulder, and there were some keyboard functions that required two hands. Do you think we can get going here? I'd like this spreadsheet printed before lunch, he asked, tugging at the bangs of his toupee that a dog might have mistaken for something edible. I had some feeling in my upper left arm and partial use of my bicep but the rest of the arm, when it wasn't on fire, tingled with the numbness of a foot falling asleep or a faraway bottle of seltzer water. The function I needed to perform to move the column required two hands. I would use my left elbow to hold down the Ctrl key and on the far side of the keyboard, that may as well have been the continental span between the West Coast and East Coast, I would press the Shift key with my index finger. I would not haul my elbow up and expose my clenched left hand to this man. ________ The cowbell had awoken the sundry annuitant advisors who peered out of their offices separated from the cubicles by glass, their desks grown over with paper foliage, leaning towers of duplicate forms from retirees clamoring for life insurance...

Birding By Number

Birding By Number Jason Goldsmith (bio) "The bird sings. Its feathers shine." —Wallace Stevens I When I was five years old, I had a maroon jacket. A thin white stripe ran the length of each sleeve. I wore that jacket everywhere. In the left-hand pocket was a hole that opened into the lining. It was a place I could stash anything that caught my eye: a cigarette butt, a battered bottle cap. Anything different, out of the ordinary. Secured in the jacket's lining these cast-offs might escape the notice of my parents for weeks. But every so often, they would wash my jacket. And it was on one of these occasions that they found a bird. It had been flattened by traffic but was still recognizable. An inquisitive child, I had seen this bird as extraordinary, something to be acknowledged and treasured. A pressed flower. ________ I no longer collect dead birds. But as I sat outside the local library sketching recently, a mother and child handed me an indigo bunting, its neck snapped from a collision with the blue sky reflected in a window. I took its [End Page 87] limp form in my hand, felt its marvelous lift, as if bone and feather were elements lighter than air itself. Already, its bright colors had started to fade. II Dawn in these places is fluorescent, sad, and strange. A breeze whirls fast-food wrappers across the fraying asphalt where chicory and daisy fleabane take root. Beneath the flicker of streetlights, I cross the overlarge and empty parking lot, pass a Burger King, rusty donation bins, and an RC Cola machine, and park beside a cherry-red Prius, the only other car here. Behind its wheel, Richard looks up suddenly, his large eyes pale. ________ I am here to join Richard and Spike as part of a team for the Amos Butler Audubon Society bird-a-thon. This will be my first foray into the peculiar world of competitive birding, where teams vie to identify as many species as they can within a twenty-four-hour window. Teams come back each year. Rivalries are formed. Resentments simmer. Last year, twelve teams identified a total of 207 species (the winning team identified 164 species), down from the previous year, when fourteen teams identified 215 species, and the winning team set a bird-a-thon record of 182 species. These numbers have me on edge. We are a new team—unknown to one another prior, and formed at the last minute—and I worry that I will prove a drag on my teammates. Both Richard and Spike took up birding before I was born—Spike in 1957 and Richard in 1966, when he was in second grade. I recently bought a pair of binoculars and started attending the Sunday morning walks led by the local Audubon chapter, during which Laurie, a short woman with hiking boots and a northeastern accent who is able to identify every song in the woods, asked if I wanted to join a bird-a-thon team. I was flattered until she mentioned that every team member would need to raise at least one hundred dollars in pledges. [End Page 88] ________ This is how I came to be standing in an empty parking lot at 5:00 a.m. on a cold Friday morning with Richard, who brushes dark, floppy hair out his eyes as he explains to me that "the gamesmanship is finding the thing, enjoying it briefly, and moving on." The "game" relies on knowing where and when different species are likely to be seen. Much of this knowledge comes from experience, watching the skies day in and day out. But birding, like everything else in modern life, is now driven by big data. The winning team will compare past years' migration patterns to trending data while monitoring weather patterns across the state to determine what time of month will present the optimal conditions for birding. They will scour databases such as eBird to identify recent sightings of accidentals—birds that have strayed out of their conventional range. They will map a route, establish a detailed itinerary, and prepare site-specific checklists...

Еще раз о Босом волке в тюрко-монгольском эпосе и «Слове о полку Игореве»

The article analyses the names of the wolf in the eposes of the Mongolian and Turkic nations, which is of interest for defining the Mongolian and Turkic epic traditions and perceptions related to the wolf. One of the problems discussed by the author is the understanding of the Old Russian word-combination ‘босый волк’(off-white wolf) which appears in “The Song of Igor’s Campaign”. In the Mongolian folklore, a name of the wolf includes the word hалзн ‘a white mark or white stripe on the forehead of the animal’ which is inherent in the definition of a wolf by color. This specification allows us to eliminate all the fancy translations of the word combination ‘босый волк’(off-white wolf) and matches well the notion of the color of the wolf in the real life.

A mechanism to enhance bicycle conspicuity and visibility and increase detection distances: New insights into bicycle safety

Poor sensory conspicuity and poor visibility of bicycles are key factors that correlate strongly with bicycle-vehicle accidents. Although researchers have explored how to improve detection distances, i.e., the distances from which bicycles can be recognized by other road users, there is a dearth of research on ways to signal bicyclists' presence on the road. This study investigates how to enhance, at minimum cost, the level of visibility and sensory conspicuity of bicycles; it also considers ways to signal their presence to other road users, without necessitating any active behavior by bicyclists themselves. In the first study, the level of visibility of 6 rear-end components of bicycles was analyzed according to Adrian's model; the sensory conspicuity of these same components was analyzed via respondent perceptions in conditions of sunlight, twilight with no car headlights, twilight with car headlights, and night with car headlights. The level of visibility and sensory conspicuity of the 6 rear-end components were compared with considering angular size of the components under 4 lighting conditions. The level of visibility of the rear fender was good under sunlight and night-time conditions; in other conditions, the level of visibility was directly affected by painting the fender a silver color with reflectivity and also by the fender's angular size. However, the rear tire, among the 6 components tested, had a higher visible area when used with a short fender; it also produced rotational effects during riding conditions with no extra effort by the cyclists. In the second study, adhesive tape with specific patterns and 6 different color combinations were applied to the rear tire of a bicycle under the same lighting conditions, with the aim of creating a strong signal of the bicycle's presence for other road users. Among the 6 combinations, white stripes overlaid on the color red provide an optimal combination in terms of detection distance. The mean detection distance of white stripes on red in sunlight was 138.67 m, 94.67 m in twilight without car headlights, 94 m in twilight with car headlights, and 53.67 m at night with car headlights. In addition, this combination strongly signals the presence of the bicycle to other road users with no extra effort by the cyclists, thereby reducing the likelihood of drivers looking but failing to see bicycles. In sum, the study recommends that bicyclists install white stripes overlaid on red, in order to increase visibility and conspicuity and signal the presence of their bicycles, thereby reducing the likelihood of cyclist-vehicle collisions.

A new species of Crocus ser. Verni (Iridaceae) with 2n = 12 chromosomes from the Balkans

A Crocus population in the Northern Albanian Alps obviously belonging to C. ser. Verni was referred to C. heuffelianus, but closer field investigations revealed that it could not be identified with this or any other Verni species. The detailed description of a new species, Crocus bertiscensis, including morphology, leaf anatomy, cytology, and phylogenetic relationship is provided and illustrated. Phylogenetic analyses based on genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism data obtained through genotyping-by-sequencing placed C. bertiscensis as clearly distinct from C. heuffelianus, supporting its rank as a species within C. ser. Verni. Morphologically, it differs from C. heuffelianus by showing paler and flatter perigone segments, short perigone tubes and leaf white stripe width of 1/7 compared to the leaf diameter. Finally, karyological and molecular analysis revealed that C. bertiscensis applies to the 2n = 12 cytotype of C. heuffelianus from Čakor Pass area reported by earlier studies.

Photodynamic therapy of oral lichen planus.

Oral lichen planus (OLP) is a chronic inflammatory and immune-mediated disease affecting the oral mucosa. OLP presents with asymptomatic, lacelike white stripes and/or symptomatic red, ulcerated mucous membranes. Eating, drinking and oral hygiene procedures may be painful resulting in reduced quality of life (QOL). The histopathological picture is a zone of cellular infiltrate, mainly CD8+ cells, in the superficial layer of the connective tissue and signs of liquefaction degeneration of the basal membrane. Conventional treatment is corticosteroids. Local and systemic side effects are common, and patients may develop drug resistance. The intention with this article is to demonstrate the heterogeneity in photodynamic therapy (PDT) of OLP. A search in PubMed, Embase (Ovid) and Medline (Ovid) identified seventeen clinical studies investigating PDT of OLP. Only five were randomised controlled studies and the study groups varied from 5 to 50 patients. Five different photosensitisers or precursors were tested. Both broadband spectrum lamps, lasers and light-emitting-diodes (LEDs), with wavelengths from 420 nm to 682 nm, were used. The number of treatment sessions varied from one to ten. The patients were followed up for 0 to 48 months, but in thirteen studies the post treatment observation time was ≤6 months. Single arm studies demonstrated improvement of OLP except in one study. In all controlled studies except for one, PDT was superior or equal to conventional treatment. The majority of patients experienced a slight burning sensation during light activation, but no serious adverse events were reported. Only few studies examined the effect of PDT on a cellular level.

Deep Spectral-Spatial Features of Near Infrared Hyperspectral Images for Pixel-Wise Classification of Food Products.

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) emerges as a non-destructive and rapid analytical tool for assessing food quality, safety, and authenticity. This work aims to investigate the potential of combining the spectral and spatial features of HSI data with the aid of deep learning approach for the pixel-wise classification of food products. We applied two strategies for extracting spatial-spectral features: (1) directly applying three-dimensional convolution neural network (3-D CNN) model; (2) first performing principal component analysis (PCA) and then developing 2-D CNN model from the first few PCs. These two methods were compared in terms of efficiency and accuracy, exemplified through two case studies, i.e., classification of four sweet products and differentiation between white stripe (“myocommata”) and red muscle (“myotome”) pixels on salmon fillets. Results showed that combining spectral-spatial features significantly enhanced the overall accuracy for sweet dataset, compared to partial least square discriminant analysis (PLSDA) and support vector machine (SVM). Results also demonstrated that spectral pre-processing techniques prior to CNN model development can enhance the classification performance. This work will open the door for more research in the area of practical applications in food industry.

Pinpointing oxidative stress behind the white striping myopathy: depletion of antioxidant defenses, accretion of oxidized proteins and impaired proteostasis.

This study aimed to investigate the molecular mechanisms involved in the onset of the white striping (WS) myopathy with particular attention to the role of oxidative stress and protein oxidation in the loss of meat quality. It was found that WS-M (moderate degree; white stripes <1 mm thickness) and WS-S (severe degree; white stripes >1 mm thickness) breast presented higher pH, hardness, redness, lipid, and collagen content, and lower lightness than normal breast. Compared with the latter, WS-S had a more severe loss of protein thiols (70.7% less thiols than in N), reduced activity of antioxidant enzymes such as catalase (23 versus 40 U g-1 ), glutathione peroxidase (0.21 versus 0.54 U g-1 ), and superoxide dismutase (56 versus 73 U g-1 ), and consequently, had greater accretion of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (0.64 versus 0.22 mg MDAkg-1 muscle), allysine (3.1 versus 1.9 nmol mg-1 protein) and Schiff base structures (645 versus 258 fluorescent units). The analysis of sarcoplasmic proteins revealed that muscles severely affected by the myopathy suffered a chronic impairment of physiological (upregulation of sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ ATPase, sarcalumenin and calsequestrin-2) and metabolic processes (downregulation of pyruvate kinase, creatine kinase, and l-lactate dehydrogenase). The overexpression of ribonuclease / angiogenin inhibitor 1 and Kelch-like proteins in WS chicken breasts indicates altered protein turnover plausibly mediated by oxidative stress and accumulation of oxidized proteins. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry.

A pipistrelle bat on a ship on the Black Sea: facts, hypotheses, and comparisons with mainland specimens of Pipistrellus

The description of the record of a bat found in the period of autumn migrations on a ship on the Black Sea is given. The bat was found on the captain's bridge, and the sailors stated that the bat landed on the ship during flight and was not brought onto the board. The location of the discovery is on a raid near Sevastopol, 9 October 2013, within 10 miles from shore. Morphological features of the specimen are as follows: forearm length is about 33.1 mm, general colouration is brown with a narrow (1–2 mm) whitish stripe along the free edge of the wing up to the hind foot. The morphology of the earlobes, tragus, rhinarium, and post calcarial lobe are typical of P. pipistrellus/pygmaeus/nathusii. The morphology of the rhinarium (without the middle bulge between the nostrils) and the genitals is similar to those in P. nathusii. The most distinctive feature of the specimen is the presence of a white edging on the wings, which is usually common for Asian P. p. bactrianus, but, to some extent, also occurs among southern P. nathusii.

A new species of Corcyrogobius (Teleostei: Gobiidae) from Île de Ngor, Senegal.

Corcyrogobius pulcher sp. nov. is described from off Île de Ngor, Dakar, Senegal. Corcyrogobius pulcher is distinguished from its two congeners by having the rear edge of the jaws ending posteriorly below mideye, second dorsal fin I/9, pectoral fin rays 17, pelvic fins oval or truncated posteriorly, scales in lateral series 26-27, anterior oculoscapular head canal with pore β, suborbital row b of sensory papillae anteriorly beginning below vertical of posterior edge of eye, dark vertical caudal bar, branchiostegal membrane without intense dark spot, cheek with two oblique whitish stripes, the first going from the eye downwards and forward to the posterior jaws, the second on the preopercular, alternating with brown oblique stripe going from behind the eye downwards and forward across the cheek. Furthermore, mitochondrial COI-barcoding data unambiguously support the species-level distinctiveness of the three Corcyrogobius species. A key to the species of Corcyrogobius is provided.

A New Species of the Genus Zhangixalus (Amphibia: Rhacophoridae) from Vietnam

We describe a new species of the genus Zhangixalus Li, Jiang, Ren &amp; Jiang, 2019 from Ha Giang Province, Vietnam based on morphological and molecular data. In the molecular phylogenetic analyses, the new species is nested in the Zhangixalus duboisi (Ohler, Marquis, Swan &amp; Grosjean, 2000) group, where it is sister to Z. duboisi with a genetic distance of 2.51%. The new species, Zhangixalus franki sp. nov., differs from its congeners by a combination of the following morphological characters: size large, SVL 77.9–85.8 mm in males; finger webbing formula I1-1II0-1III½-0IV; dorsal surface of head and body green with dark brown spots; ventral surface grey or dark grey, white stripe along edge of jaw, insertion of limbs, and along lateral ridges of fore and hind limbs and flank, separating upper green part from lower grey part. The new species occurs in evergreen montane tropical forests at an elevation of ca 1300 m a.s.l. The new discovery brings the total number of known species in the genus Zhangixalus to 38 and the species number reported from Vietnam to nine.

WSL9 Encodes an HNH Endonuclease Domain-Containing Protein that Is Essential for Early Chloroplast Development in Rice

BackgroundThe plant chloroplast is essential for photosynthesis and other cellular processes, but an understanding of the biological mechanisms of plant chloroplast development are incomplete.ResultsA new temperature-sensitive white stripe leaf 9(wsl9) rice mutant is described. The mutant develops white stripes during early leaf development, but becomes green after the three-leaf stage under field conditions. The wsl9 mutant was albinic when grown at low temperature. Gene mapping of the WSL9 locus, together with complementation tests indicated that WSL9 encodes a novel protein with an HNH domain. WSL9 was expressed in various tissues. Under low temperature, the wsl9 mutation caused defects in splicing of rpl2, but increased the editing efficiency of rpoB. Expression levels of plastid genome-encoded genes, which are transcribed by plastid-coded RNA polymerase (PEP), chloroplast development genes and photosynthesis-related genes were altered in the wsl9 mutant.ConclusionWSL9 encodes an HNH endonuclease domain-containing protein that is essential for early chloroplast development. Our study provides opportunities for further research on regulatory mechanisms of chloroplast development in rice.

A new millipede-parasitizing horsehair worm, Gordius chiashanus sp. nov., at medium altitudes in Taiwan (Nematomorpha, Gordiida).

Gordius chiashanussp. nov., a newly described horsehair worm that parasitizes the Spirobolus millipede, is one of the three described horsehair worm species in Taiwan. It is morphologically similar to G. helveticus Schmidt-Rhaesa, 2010 because of the progressively broadening distribution of bristles concentrated on the male tail lobes, but it is distinguishable from G. helveticus because of the stout bristles on the mid-body. In addition, a vertical white stripe on the anterior ventral side and areoles on the inside wall of the cloacal opening are rarely mentioned in other Gordius species. Free-living adults emerged and mated on wet soil under the forest canopy in the winter (late November to early February) at medium altitudes (1100–1700 m). Mucus-like structure covering on the body surface, which creates a rainbow-like reflection, might endow the worm with high tolerance to dehydration. Although Gordius chiashanussp. nov. seems to be more adaptive to the terrestrial environment than other horsehair worm species, cysts putatively identified as belonging to this hairworm species found in the aquatic paratenic host, Ephemera orientalis McLachlan, 1875, suggest the life cycle of Gordius chiashanussp. nov. could involve water and land. The free-living adults emerged from the definitive hosts might reproduce in the terrestrial environment or enter an aquatic habitat by moving or being washed away by heavy rain instead of manipulating the behavior of their terrestrial definitive hosts.

Use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for mark-resight nesting population estimation of adult female green sea turtles at Raine Island

Nester abundance is a key measure of the performance of the world's largest green turtle rookery at Raine Island, Australia, and has been estimated by mark-resight counts since 1984. Nesters are first marked by painting their carapace with a longitudinal white stripe. Painted and unpainted turtles are then counted by a surface observer on a small boat in waters adjacent to the reef. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and underwater video may provide more cost-effective and less biased alternatives to this approach, but estimates must be comparable with historical estimates. Here we compare and evaluate the three methods. We found comparatively little variation in resighting probabilities between consecutive days of sampling or time of day, which supports an underlying assumption of the method (i.e. demographic closure during sampling). This lack of bias in the location availability for detection of painted versus unpainted turtles and further supported by a parallel satellite tracking study of 40 turtles at Raine Island. Our results demonstrated that surface observers consistently reported higher proportions of marked turtles than either the UAV or underwater video method. This in turn yielded higher population estimates with UAV or underwater video compared to the historical surface observer method, which suggested correction factors of 1.53 and 1.73 respectively. We attributed this to observer search error because a white marked turtle is easier to spot than the non-marked turtle. In contrast, the UAV and underwater video methods allowed subsequent frame-by-frame review, thus reducing observer search error. UAVs were the most efficient in terms of survey time, personnel commitment and weather tolerance compared to the other methods. However, underwater video may also be a useful alternative for in-water mark-resight surveys of turtles.

Dosimetry-Driven Quality Measure of Brain Pseudo Computed Tomography Generated From Deep Learning for MRI-Only Radiation Therapy Treatment Planning

This study aims to evaluate the impact of key parameters on the pseudo computed tomography (pCT) quality generated from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with a 3-dimensional (3D) convolutional neural network. Four hundred two brain tumor cases were retrieved, yielding associations between 182 computed tomography (CT) and T1-weighted MRI (T1) scans, 180 CT and contrast-enhanced T1-weighted MRI (T1-Gd) scans, and 40 CT, T1, and T1-Gd scans. A 3D CNN was used to map T1 or T1-Gd onto CT scans and evaluate the importance of different components. First, the training set size's influence on testing set accuracy was assessed. Moreover, we evaluated the MRI sequence impact, using T1-only and T1-Gd-only cohorts. We then investigated 4 MRI standardization approaches (histogram-based, zero-mean/unit-variance, white stripe, and no standardization) based on training, validation, and testing cohorts composed of 242, 81, and 79 patients cases, respectively, as well as a bias field correction influence. Finally, 2 networks, namely HighResNet and 3D UNet, were compared to evaluate the architecture's impact on the pCT quality. The mean absolute error, gamma indices, and dose-volume histograms were used as evaluation metrics. Generating models using all the available cases for training led to higher pCT quality. The T1 and T1-Gd models had a maximum difference in gamma index means of 0.07 percentage point. The mean absolute error obtained with white stripe was 78 ± 22 Hounsfield units, which slightly outperformed histogram-based, zero-mean/unit-variance, and no standardization (P < .0001). Regarding the network architectures, 3%/3 mm gamma indices of 99.83% ± 0.19% and 99.74% ± 0.24% were obtained for HighResNet and 3D UNet, respectively. Our best pCTs were generated using more than 200 samples in the training data set. Training with T1 only and T1-Gd only did not significantly affect performance. Regardless of the preprocessing applied, the dosimetry quality remained equivalent and relevant for potential use in clinical practice.

Cycling on the edge: the effects of edge lines, slanted kerbstones, shoulder, and edge strips on cycling behaviour of cyclists older than 50 years

To prevent single-bicycle crashes, this study is the first to evaluate effects of slanted kerbstones, edge lines, shoulder strips, and edge strips on cycling behaviour of cyclists ≥50 years. In Experiment 1, 32 participants cycled on a control path and paths with edge lines, slanted kerbstones, and three types of 0.5 m wide shoulder strips (with grey artificial grass, green artificial grass, or concrete street-print). In Experiment 2, 30 participants cycled a different route including a control path and paths with edge lines or 0.3 m white edge strips. Cyclists rode closer to the main cycle path’s edge in the shoulder strips conditions, although the presence of these strips resulted in a larger total distance to the verge compared to the control condition. Furthermore, cyclists cycled further from the verge in the edge strip condition than the control condition. Safety implications of the shoulder and edge strips are considered to be positive. Practitioner Summary: Older cyclists have a high risk for single-bicycle crashes (e.g. riding into the verge). In two experiments, cyclists ≥50 years cycled a route where different treatments were applied on a cycle path. Shoulder and edge strip treatments were related to more efficient path use and safer distances from the verge. Abbreviations: AGS: artificial grass strip; CL: control location; CSS: concrete street-print strip; ELC: edge line continuous; ELI: edge line intermittent; LP: lateral position; SDLP: standard deviation of the lateral position; SK: slanted kerbstones; WCES: white chippings edge strip

Photoperiod effects on carcass traits, meat quality, and stress response in heart and lung of broilers

This study evaluated effects of photoperiod treatments on slaughter and carcass traits, meat quality, indicators of oxidative stress, and heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70) levels of lung and heart tissues in broilers. Five hundred Ross 308 broiler chicks were used. The treatments consisted of 23 hours of continuous light and one hour of darkness (23L1D), four hours of light followed by two hours of darkness (4L2D), eight hours of light and four hours of darkness (8L4D), and 16 hours of light and eight hours of darkness (16L8D). After 42 days, two birds from each replicate were slaughtered. Birds that had been subjected to 16L8D had lower slaughter, carcass, and breast weights than the other treatments. Significant correlations were observed for slaughter, carcass and breast weights and white stripe. At 10 min post mortem, the pH of the breast was the highest in 23L1D. Breasts from birds subjected to 23L1D and 16L8D had most fat and least protein, while white striping was not different among treatments. The 4L2D treatment resulted in the highest lung glutathione (GSH) concentration. Malondialdehyde (MDA) and GSH concentrations in the heart tissues of broilers from 8L4D and 4L2D were greater than those from 23L1D and 16:8. Glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) and superoxide dismutase concentrations were greatest for birds subjected to 16L8D. Heat shock protein 70 was lowest in lung and heart from birds subjected to 8L4D. Thus, shorter and more frequent periods of darkness can be recommended for welfare with little compromise in performance.&#x0D; Keywords: carcass quality, heat shock protein 70, oxidative stress, white stripe