One of the commonly used analytical approaches for measuring oxygen isotope ratios δ18O of solids (organic and inorganic) is to pyrolyze the samples to gaseous phases and then send the gas into an isotope ratio mass spectrometer system. Solid samples for δ18O measurements are usually stored in silver cups because of its low reactivity towards oxygen and other oxidants. Samples in silver cups can be dropped directly into the carbon column of the pyrolysis furnace. However, the silver cups can tarnish and then be oxidized over a prolonged storage period. We find that while a small amount of silver oxides does not affect measurements with appreciable sample sizes, it can skew isotope results of small samples. We thus recommend careful storage of samples in silver cups to minimize oxidation, such as under an air-isolated condition, and avoiding prolonged storage for accurate δ18O measurements.

Introduction: Whole-body computed tomography scans (WBCT) are a mainstay in the work-up of polytrauma or multiple trauma patients in the emergency department. While incredibly useful for identifying traumatic injuries, WBCTs also reveal incidental findings in patients, some of which require further diagnostic testing and subsequent treatment. Although the presence of incidental findings in WBCTs have been well documented, there has been no systematic review conducted to organize and interpret findings, determine IF prevalence, and document strategies for best management. Methods: A systematic review was conducted using MEDLINE, PUBMED, and EMBASE. Specific journals and reference lists were hand-mined, and Google Scholar was used to find any additional papers. Data synthesis was performed to gather information on patient demographics, prevalence and type of incidental findings (IFs), and follow-up management was collected. All documents were independently assessed by the two reviewers for inclusion and any disagreements were resolved by consensus. Results: 1231 study results were identified, 59 abstracts, and 12 included in final review. A mean of 53.9% of patients had at least one IF identified, 31.5% had major findings, and 68.5% had minor findings. A mean of 2.7 IFs per patient was reported for articles that included number of total IFs. The mean age of patients included in the studies were 44 years old with IFs more common in older patients and men with more IFs than women. IFs were most commonly found in the abdominal/pelvic region followed by kidneys. Frequency of follow-up documentation was poor. The most common reported mechanisms of injury for patients included in the study were MVA and road traffic accidents (60.0%) followed by falls from >3m (23.2%). Conclusion: Although there is good documentation on the mechanism of injury, patient demographics, and type of IF, follow-up for IFs following acute trauma admission lacks documentation and follow-up and is an identified issue in patient management. There is great need for systematic protocols to address management of IFs in polytrauma patients.

Imprinting, characterized by unequal expression of the offspring's genes in a parent-of-origin dependent manner, has been functionally implicated in brain development and in psychiatric disorders. In this study, unambiguous distortion in paternal but not maternal transmission of the disease-associated single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs6556547 (T/G) clearly indicated the presence of parent-of-origin effect (POE) in the GABAA receptor β2 subunit gene (GABRB2). ‘Flipping’ of allelic mRNA expression in heterozygotes of SNP rs2229944 (C/T) and the observed two-tiered distribution of mRNA expression levels in heterozygotes of the disease-associated SNP rs1816071 (G/A) furnished important support for the occurrence of imprinting at GABRB2. Imprinting in effect introduced heterozygotes from different parents-of-origin endowed with dissimilar mRNA expression capabilities. The deficit of upper-tiered expressions accounted for the lowered mRNA expression levels in the schizophrenic heterozygotes. This pointed to the necessity of differentiating between two kinds of heterozygotes of different parental origins in disease association studies on GABRB2. Bisulfite sequencing revealed hypermethylation in the neighborhood of SNP rs1816071, and methylation differences between controls and schizophrenia patients. Notably, allele-specific methylation was observed at the disease-associated SNPs rs6556547 and rs1816071. These findings raised the possibility that CpG methylation status of these sites could have an impact on the expression of GABRB2 and the risk of schizophrenia. Furthermore, the occurrence of imprinting and allele-specific methylation in the schizophrenia candidate gene GABRB2 was compatible with the epigenetic hypothesis for schizophrenia pathophysiology, thereby calling for the need to explore the role of epigenetic factors in mediating susceptibility to schizophrenia.

GABRB2, the gene for β2 subunit of the gamma-aminobutyric acid type A (GABAA) receptor, is known to display two splicing isoforms in the brain, namely β2L containing Exon 10 and β2S devoid of Exon 10. Previously, the expressions of these isoforms were correlated with both schizophrenia and various sequence polymorphisms of the gene. in the present study, a series of deletions made on Intron 9 of a minigene construct affected the expression of Exon 10, and generated additional splicing variations suggesting the existence of additional splicing variants of β2subunit. A search among brain cDNAs uncovered the two novel short forms: β2S1which is devoid of Exons 10 and 11 and bears an extended Exon 9, and β2S2 which is devoid of Exon 10 and bears a shortened Exon 11.Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction, performed with a cohort of 31 schizophrenics, 30 bipolar disorder and 31 controls of US population, showed that the level of β2S2 was significantly decreased in bipolar disorder, and marginally decreased in schizophrenia, while β2S1 was marginally increased in both of these psychotic disorders. Significant genotypic effects of rs1816071, rs1816072 and rs187269 on β2S2 level were observed in male schizophrenic and bipolar patients. These findings pointed to the neighborhood of Exon 10 as an alternate-splicing hot-spot, and underlined the relevance of β2 subunit isoforms to the etiology of psychotic disorders.

Adults aged > 50 years, which make up to 40% of the European population, are vulnerable to low vitamin B12 (B12) status due to age-related factors that impair digestion and absorption of protein-bound B12 from natural food sources. Older adults are recommended to meeting their dietary B12 intake through the consumption of B12-fortified foods or supplements because these products contain free B12. B12 seems most bioavailable from milk products compared to other food sources, showcasing dairy as a potential vehicle for B12 food fortification. Yogurt is a versatile, popular dairy product, making it a promising food vehicle for B12 fortification to enhance the availability of B12-fortified foods for population groups at risk of B12 deficiency. With the overall goal to develop a novel, B12-fortified dairy product, the objective of this project was to compare the shelf-life stability of different chemical forms of B12 added to yogurt either in isolated or in encapsulated form. For both fortification strategies, we compared methylcobalamin (MeCB), a naturally-occurring B12 form, and cyanocobalamin (CnCB), the synthetic form of B12. Encapsulated microparticles were created by spray-drying a maize starch-derived polymeric material (EUDRAGUARD Natural®) with 1% (w/V) MeCB or CnCB. The release of B12 from encapsulated microparticles was confirmed by in vitro simulated gastrointestinal digestion; maximum B12 release (103% recovery) was achieved under conditions simulating the small intestine, where B12 is absorbed in the human body. Yogurts were produced by incubating whole milk (3.25% milk fat) with yogurt starter bacteria at 43°C overnight; after fermentation and cooling down, isolated (I-MeCB or I-CnCB) or encapsulated B12 powders (E-MeCB or E-CnCB) in the concentration of 50μg of B12/175 g of yogurt were added, creating stirred yogurt. Yogurts were stored at 4°C for eight weeks, with intermittent sampling for B12 stability testing using RIDASCREEN immunoassay. For CnCB-fortified yogurts, I-CnCB and E-CnCB had similar B12 concentrations at baseline (48.3μg and 48.2μg, respectively) and week 8 (53.9μg and 51.4μg, respectively). Difference in B12 content between I-CnCB and E-CnCB was < 5% for both time-points. For MeCB, similar concentrations were found for I-MeCB (64.1μg) and E-MeCB (65.0μg) at baseline; however, at week 8, E-MeCB remained stable (69.8μg) while a pronounced decrease in B12 was observed with I-MeCB (33.3μg). At week 8, I-MeCB B12 concentrations were 52% lower than E-MeCB. In conclusion, CnCB was shown to be the more stable fortificant throughout shelf-life. Encapsulation techniques are a viable option to increase MeCB stability in fortified yogurts.

Short-term survival after paediatric cardiac surgery has improved significantly over the past 20 years and increasing attention is being given to measuring and reducing incidence of morbidities following surgery. How to best use routinely collected data to share morbidity information constitutes a challenge for clinical teams interested in analysing their outcomes for quality improvement. We aimed to develop a tool facilitating this process in the context of monitoring morbidities following paediatric cardiac surgery, as part of a prospective multi-centre research study in the United Kingdom.

We developed a prototype software tool to analyse and present data about morbidities associated with cardiac surgery in children. We used an iterative process, involving engagement with potential users, tool design and implementation, and feedback collection. Graphical data displays were based on the use of icons and graphs designed in collaboration with clinicians.

Our tool enables automatic creation of graphical summaries, displayed as a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, from a spreadsheet containing patient-level data about specified cardiac surgery morbidities. Data summaries include numbers/percentages of cases with morbidities reported, co-occurrences of different morbidities, and time series of each complication over a time window.

Our work was characterised by a very high level of interaction with potential users of the tool, enabling us to promptly account for feedback and suggestions from clinicians and data managers. The United Kingdom centres involved in the project received the tool positively, and several expressed their interest in using it as part of their routine practice.

The earliest colonisation of oceanic islands by Homo sapiens occurred ~50 000–30 000 years ago in the Western Pacific, yet how this was achieved remains a matter of debate. With a focus on East Asia, the research presented here tests the hypothesis that bamboo rafts were used for these early maritime migrations. The authors review the evidence for Palaeolithic seafaring in East Asia as the context for an experimental archaeology project to build two bamboo watercraft. Sea trials demonstrate the unsuitability of bamboo, at least in East Asia, indicating that more sophisticated and durable vessels would have been required to traverse the Kuroshio Current.

It has been over 5 years since the last special issue of Twin Research and Human Genetics on ‘Twin Registries Worldwide: An Important Resource for Scientific Research’ was published. Much progress has been made in the broad field of twin research since that time, and the current special issue is a follow-up to update the scientific community about twin registries around the globe. The present article builds upon our 2013 Registry description by summarizing current information on the Washington State Twin Registry (WSTR), including history and construction methods, member characteristics, available data, and major research goals. We also provide a section with brief summaries of recently completed studies and discuss the future research directions of the WSTR. The Registry has grown in terms of size and scope since 2013; highlights include recruitment of youth pairs under 18 years of age, extensive geocoding work to develop environmental exposures that can be linked to survey and administrative health data such as death records, and expansion of a biobank with specimens collected for genotyping, DNA methylation, and microbiome based-studies.

We consider the steady flow of a granular current over a uniformly sloped surface that is smooth upstream (allowing slip for $x<0$ ) but rough downstream (imposing a no-slip condition on $x>0$ ), with a sharp transition at $x=0$ . This problem is similar to the classical Blasius problem, which considers the growth of a boundary layer over a flat plate in a Newtonian fluid that is subject to a similar step change in boundary conditions. Our discrete particle model simulations show that a comparable boundary-layer phenomenon occurs for the granular problem: the effects of basal roughness are initially localised at the base but gradually spread throughout the depth of the current. A rheological model can be used to investigate the changing internal velocity profile. The boundary layer is a region of high shear rate and therefore high inertial number $I$ ; its dynamics is governed by the asymptotic behaviour of the granular rheology for high values of the inertial number. The $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}(I)$ rheology (Jop et al., Nature, vol. 441 (7094), 2006, pp. 727–730) asserts that $\text{d}\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}/\text{d}I=O(1/I^{2})$ as $I\rightarrow \infty$ , but current experimental evidence is insufficient to confirm this. We show that this rheology does not admit a self-similar boundary layer, but that there exist generalisations of the $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}(I)$ rheology, with different dependencies of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}(I)$ on $I$ , for which such self-similar solutions do exist. These solutions show good quantitative agreement with the results of our discrete particle model simulations.