Search results for "management"

Reducing sample size in experiments with animals: historical controls and related strategies

2015

Reducing the number of animal subjects used in biomedical experiments is desirable for ethical and practical reasons. Previous reviews of the benefits of reducing sample sizes have focused on improving experimental designs and methods of statistical analysis, but reducing the size of control groups has been considered rarely. We discuss how the number of current control animals can be reduced, without loss of statistical power, by incorporating information from historical controls, i.e. subjects used as controls in similar previous experiments. Using example data from published reports, we describe how to incorporate information from historical controls under a range of assumptions that mig…

2017

Functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a promising neuroimaging method for investigating networks of cortical regions over time. We propose a directed effective connectivity method (TPDC) allowing the capture of both time and frequency evolution of the brain’s networks using fNIRS data acquired from healthy subjects performing a continuous finger-tapping task. Using this method we show the directed connectivity patterns among cortical motor regions involved in the task and their significant variations in the strength of information flow exchanges. Intra and inter-hemispheric connections during the motor task with their temporal evolution are also provided. Characterisation of the …

Twitter as a tool for teaching and communicating microbiology: the #micromoocsem initiative

2016

López-Goñi, Ignacio et al.

Deep Learning Architectures for DNA Sequence Classification

2017

DNA sequence classification is a key task in a generic computational framework for biomedical data analysis, and in recent years several machine learning technique have been adopted to successful accomplish with this task. Anyway, the main difficulty behind the problem remains the feature selection process. Sequences do not have explicit features, and the commonly used representations introduce the main drawback of the high dimensionality. For sure, machine learning method devoted to supervised classification tasks are strongly dependent on the feature extraction step, and in order to build a good representation it is necessary to recognize and measure meaningful details of the items to cla…

Associations between breastfeeding mode and duration and food neophobia in toddlerhood : A cross-sectional study among Norwegian toddlers

2020

Background Research on the association between breastfeeding duration and food neophobia is inconclusive. Breastfeeding and measures to reduce food neophobia are highly recommended to ensure a healthy diet early in life. Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between breastfeeding duration and food neophobia in young Norwegian children. Design Participants (n = 246) were recruited through kindergartens in four Norwegian counties in 2017. The parents of 1-year-olds filled in questionnaires, including standardized questions on breastfeeding and food neophobia. Cross-sectional results are presented. Comparisons of child neophobia score at 16 months of age according to …

Biofilm biodiversity in French and Swiss show caves using the metabarcoding approach: First data.

2018

International audience; In recent decades, show caves have begun to suffer from microorganism proliferation due to artificial lighting installations for touristic activity. In addition to the aesthetic problem, light encourages microorganisms that are responsible for physical and chemical degradation of limestone walls, speleothems and prehistoric paintings of cultural value. Microorganisms have previously been described by microscopy or culture-dependent methods, but data provided by new generation sequencing are rare. The authors identified, for the first time, microorganisms proliferating in one Swiss and in four French show caves using three different primers. The results showed that bo…

Fresh water, marine and terrestrial cyanobacteria display distinct allergen characteristics.

2017

During the last decades, global cyanobacteria biomass increased due to climate change as well as industrial usage for production of biofuels and food supplements. Thus, there is a need for thorough characterization of their potential health risks, including allergenicity. We therefore aimed to identify and characterize similarities in allergenic potential of cyanobacteria originating from the major ecological environments. Different cyanobacterial taxa were tested for immunoreactivity with IgE from allergic donors and non-allergic controls using immunoblot and ELISA. Moreover, mediator release from human FceR1-transfected rat basophilic leukemia (RBL) cells was measured, allowing in situ ex…

2015

The University of Minnesota Biocatalysis/Biodegradation Database and Pathway Prediction System (UM-BBD/PPS) has been a unique resource covering microbial biotransformation pathways of primarily xenobiotic chemicals for over 15 years. This paper introduces the successor system, enviPath (The Environmental Contaminant Biotransformation Pathway Resource), which is a complete redesign and reimplementation of UM-BBD/PPS. enviPath uses the database from the UM-BBD/PPS as a basis, extends the use of this database, and allows users to include their own data to support multiple use cases. Relative reasoning is supported for the refinement of predictions and to allow its extensions in terms of previo…

Reactome graph database: Efficient access to complex pathway data

2018

Reactome is a free, open-source, open-data, curated and peer-reviewed knowledgebase of biomolecular pathways. One of its main priorities is to provide easy and efficient access to its high quality curated data. At present, biological pathway databases typically store their contents in relational databases. This limits access efficiency because there are performance issues associated with queries traversing highly interconnected data. The same data in a graph database can be queried more efficiently. Here we present the rationale behind the adoption of a graph database (Neo4j) as well as the new ContentService (REST API) that provides access to these data. The Neo4j graph database and its qu…

Analysis of propionate‐degrading consortia from agricultural biogas plants

2016

Abstract In order to investigate the propionate‐degrading community of agricultural biogas plants, four propionate‐degrading consortia (Ap1a, N12, G12, and Wp2a) were established from different biogas plants which were fed with renewable resources. The consortia were cultivated in a batch for a period of 2–4 years and then analyzed in an 8‐week batch experiment for microbial succession during propionate degradation. Community shifts showed considerable propagation of Syntrophobacter sulfatireducens, Cryptanaerobacter sp./Pelotomaculum sp., and “Candidatus Cloacamonas sp.” in the course of decreasing propionate concentration. Methanogenic species belonged mainly to the genera Methanosarcina,…