1,720,973 research outputs found
Detection of multiple mycotoxin occurrences in soy animal feed by traditional mycological identification combined with molecular species identification
Get PDFAbstractSoy products are a main component of animal feed. Because mycotoxins may harm farm animals, undermining productivity and health, a mycological and toxigenic screening was carried out on 36 batches used in animal feed, collected in 2008, 2009 and 2010 in Italy. The investigated mycoflora of a subset of soy seed (n=6) suggested that Aspergillus spp. and Fusarium spp. frequently colonize soy seeds. Aflatoxins, fumonisins and deoxynivalenol were detected in 88.9%, 72.2% and 30.6% of samples, respectively. Co-occurrence of at least two toxins was observed in 72% of cases. The molecular analysis of the Fusarium spp. population identified Fusarium verticillioides as potential producers of fumonisins, but no known deoxynivalenol producers were detected. It is suggested that the widespread presence of toxins can be due to non-optimal storing conditions of the feed. Moreover, our results suggest that mycotoxin thresholds should be adapted to consider the frequent case of toxin co-occurrence. This approach would better reflect the real toxigenic risk of feedstuffs
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Effects of silver nanoparticles and ions and interactions with first line of defense
Get PDFSummary Silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) are among the most promising groups of NPs (particles with all dimensions below 100 nm) for application in numerous consumer products due to their broad spectrum antimicrobial activities. Examples are incorporation in textiles and plastics, personal care products, water filters, food supplements etc. The extensive application and use together with the not yet fully understood properties of Ag NPs as well as the toxicity of Ag itself has raised concerns on potential impact of Ag NPs on human and environmental health. The research conducted within this thesis aimed at the evaluation of potential hazards of Ag NPs and identification of some key factors that determine the toxicity of Ag NPs. A tiered approach was employed using a battery of standard bioassays with model aquatic organisms, followed by the determination of sub-lethal concentrations for mechanistic endpoints, the identification of target tissues and organisms for Ag NP exposure and uptake and the integration of a proteomic tool to identify subtle changes. One of the main uptake routes for Ag NPs is through ingestion making the gastrointestinal epithelium one of the first ports of potential NP uptake and cell-particle interactions. An in vitro co-culture model incorporating a mucus layer mimicking the gastrointestinal epithelium was established for a more realistic evaluation of Ag NP potential toxicity than using intestinal epithelial cells alone. Indeed, the absence of mucus resulted in an overestimation of Ag NP toxicity. To be able to elucidate subtle changes in cellular functions and identification of particle specific effects and NP modes of action, a proteomic approach was employed. Differences and commonalities were observed between the cellular responses induced Ag NPs of different sizes and AgNO3 as a source of free Ag ions. As the Ag NPs are expected to reach the aquatic environment, a combination of adapted standard ecotoxicity assays with organisms of different trophic levels were used to evaluate the toxic effects Ag NPs. Synthetically produced Ag NPs of different sizes (Ag 20 and 200 nm) as well as Ag NPs synthesized by a biological method (using plant leaf extracts of Ocinum sanctum and Azadirachta indica, Ag 23 and 27 nm, respectively) were used as model particles in order to elucidate the relation between size, synthesis method, NP surface properties, ion dissolution and toxicity. Based on earlier indications of interference of another type of NPs with the multi xenobiotic resistance mechanism (MXR), a first line of defense against xenobiotics, the effects of Ag NPs on the MXR mechanism were studied as well. The MXR mechanism is present in all animals, including humans and aquatic organisms. MXR can be compromised by chemical agents that are structurally and chemically unrelated, and interference with MXR could be the basis for enhanced toxicity by contaminant mixtures. A fast in vitro cellular efflux pump inhibition assay (CEPIA) was established evaluating first the effects of contaminants commonly found in the environment. Next, an in vivo CEPIA assay was established using the juvenile D. magna model aquatic organism and the potential of the MXR modulation by Ag NPs and ionic Ag was quantified in vitro and in vivo. This integrated approach revealed that the size and the synthesis method are the factors affecting most the uptake and toxicity in both cells in vitro as well as in vivo in freshwater crustaceans (daphnids) and dissolution in the different media with the biologically synthesized Ag NPs being more potent compared to the conventional Ag NPs. The gastrointestinal tract is expected to be a target site for Ag NPs exposure and a co-culture of Caco-2-TC7 and HT29-MTX cells optimized and employed in the current study represents a more realistic model compared to Caco-2 monocultures. The mucus layer provides an additional protective barrier and its absence can lead to overestimation of effects in in vitro studies. Ag was detected both in the cells in co-culture, in the gut of daphnids’ as well as specific areas, seemingly developing oocytes, indicating a potential translocation of Ag NPs that could have consequences for fecundity. MXR efflux transporters were found to be modulated by Ag at low concentrations (0.18 µg/L), that are slightly lower compared to the predicted environmental concentrations. The extent to which the Ag ions contribute to the effects of Ag NPs depends on the size and surface properties of the Ag NPs. For the conventional, uncoated Ag NPs, the Ag release is minimal and the size is the determining factor while for biologically synthesized particles the biomolecules present due to the synthesis method and Ag release affect most the uptake and effects. The simultaneous presence of Ag ions and NPs releasing ions can lead to an exacerbation of the effects. The proteomic approach was successfully applied and it proved to be a useful technique in discerning subtle cellular changes in response to Ag NP exposure that would otherwise be unnoticed. Ag NPs 20 nm regulated different sets of proteins with a distinct pattern of cellular responses compared to Ag 200 nm and AgNO3, suggesting a different mode of action with effects being particle- and size-dependent. These results obtained during this thesis are promising for future toxicity testing of new materials using invertebrate organisms and more realistic in vitro models leading to more meaningful results and more accurate assessment of Ag NP hazards.</p
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Towards a realistic risk characterization of complex mixtures using in vitro bioassays
No full text This thesis aims to better understand and further improve the relevance and reliabilityof in vitro bioassaysfor a biobased risk characterisation of complex mixtures, with special focus on persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in sediments. In Chapter 1 the importance of complex mixture characterization in modern society is introduced. The methods available, their current advantages and their disadvantages for complex mixture testing are described. With the shift from policy oriented chemical testing towards the inclusion of in vitro bioanalysis, important challenges have to be overcome to ensure a relevant and reliable quantification of the toxic potency of complex mixtures. These challenges are explained in the introduction, including the status of development and validation of those aspects for reliable testing. One of the main advantages that in vitro bioanalysis has to offer is the possibility to quantify the toxic potency of compounds for which chemical analytical methods have not or hardly been developed, for example because standards do not yet exist. Hydroxylated metabolites of POPs are an example of a toxicologically relevant group of compounds that can exert endocrine disrupting effects, but they cannot yet be routinely analysed. A selection of yet unsolved issues are further studied and discussed in this thesis, as outlined in the “approach and structure of the thesis”. In Chapter 2 a meta-analysis is performed to study the occurrence and relevance of hydroxylated (OH) compounds in humans and wildlife. Reported body burdens of halogenated phenolic contaminants (HPCs), including OH-POP in different tissues from humans and wildlife species, are reviewed in relation to the concentration of their putative parent compounds to be able to reveal relevant exposure routes and sub-populations at risk. Highest OH-POP levels were found in blood plasma, and highly perfused and fetal tissues. Plasma concentrations of analysed known HPCs ranged from 0.1-100 nM in humans and up to 240, 454, 800 and 7650 nM for birds, fish, cetaceans and other mammals, respectively. Reported metabolite blood plasma levels also are compared with relevant toxicological threshold concentrations from toxicological studies, and appeared to fully fall within the in vitro (0.05–10000 nM) and in vivo (3-940 nM) effect concentrations reported for OH-POPs. Given the sensitivity of early developmental stages, and information lacking about the general population, it is advisable to determine HPC background blood levels in children and fetal tissue . Given the toxicological relevance of the OH-POPs, Chapter 3 aims at providing solutions to the long standing problem of the in vitro production and analysis of OH-POP metabolite thyroid hormone disrupting (THD) potency via binding to plasma thyroid hormone binding proteins (THBPs). In sediments and for example seafood, the POPs occur as parent compounds that would only become THD after metabolisation (hydroxylation). Several methods have shown the competitive thyroxine (T4) T4 displacement potency of pure metabolites. However, in vitro metabolization of, among others, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers(PBDEs) followed by in vitro quantification of their potency has encountered drawbacks related to the co-extraction of compounds disturbing the T4-TTR competitive binding assay. The present study identifies and quantifies the major co-extractants, cholesterol and saturated and non-saturated fatty acids (SFA and NSFA), at levels above 20 μM (20 nmol per mg protein in the incubation mixture) following various extraction methods. A new method is presented to in vitro metabolise parent compounds into OH-metabolites followed by selective extraction of metabolites while four-fold reducing co-extraction of the disturbing compounds. In addition a microplate-format non-radioactive fluorescence displacement assay was developed to quantify the TTR binding potency of the metabolites formed. The effectiveness of the in vitro metabolism and extraction of the OH-metabolites of the model compounds CB 77 and BDE 47 was chemically quantified with a newly developed chromatographic method analyzing silylated derivatives of the OH-metabolites and co-extractants. Due to the mentioned improvements, it is now possible to make a dose-response curve up to 50% inhibition with OH-metabolites extracted from bioactivated CB 77 and BDE 47. Without taking the toxic potencies of bio-activated POPs into account with bioanalysis, the hazard and risk posed by POPs will be seriously underestimated. The chapters 4 and 5 are committed to tackle the issues of supramaximal (SPMX) responses and sample extract concentration which are crucial to reliably quantify of the toxic potencies of complex mixtures with in vitro bioassays. A SPMX effect is the phenomenon that compounds induce a maximum response in an assay that is significantly higher than that of the positive control. As the positive control is used to quantify the toxic potency of a sample, this could result in over-estimation of its toxic potency. As this has been most elaborately reported for in vitro estrogenicity assays, a meta-analysis was performed of such assays, compounds and conditions in which the effect is observed (Chapter 4a).For the 21 natural and industrial chemicals that could be identified as SPMX inducers, the culture and exposure conditions varied greatly among and between the assays. Relevant information on assay characteristics, however, sometimes lacked. Diethylstilbestrol (DES), genistein (GEN) and bisphenol A (BPA) were selected to build a database. The meta-analysis revealed that the occurrence of SPMX effects, could be related to a number of specific assay characteristics: 1) the type and concentration of the serum used to supplement the exposure medium; 2) the endpoint used to quantify the estrogenic potency (endogenous or transfected reporter gene), 3) the number of EREs (estrogen responsive elements) used before the reporter gene, and 4) the nature of the promoter’s. There were no indications that solvent concentration in culture, exposure period or cell model influenced the occurrence of SPMX. It is important to understand the mechanism behind this phenomenon because in vitro assays for estrogenicity are used extensively to characterize and quantify the estrogenic potency of compounds, mixtures and environmental extracts. Several SPMX inducers also have been reported to block cellular efflux pumps in vivo and in vitro (Anselmo et al. 2012; Georgantzopoulou et al. 2013). Therefore it was hypothesized that efflux pump blockers present in environmental matrices could increase the internal concentration of bioassay agonists and thus cause the SPMX. In Chapter 4b this hypothesis was tested by adapting a 96-well plate cellular efflux pump inhibition assay (CEPIA) to the H4IIE rat hepatoma cell line used for the DR.Luc reporter gene assay for dioxin-like compounds. The influence of various environmentally relevant efflux pump inhibitors on the 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxine (TCDD) response was tested. Under the DR.Luc assay conditions there was no evidence that P-gp efflux pump inhibitors modified or potentiated the activity of TCDD. Neither genistein nor quercetin, two potent SPMX inducers on ER-mediated assays, induced any signal on the DR.Luc assay, nor influenced the luciferase induction by TCDD. Future work should be focused on testing the consequences of efflux pump inhibition with an AhR-agonist which is a P-gp substrate, as this could result in intracellular accumulation of this AhR-agonist. It is standard practice to use a high single stock concentration of extracts to further dilute test concentrations from and perform the analysis. However, a high contaminant load in an extract may oversaturate the solubility of the extracted compounds in carrier solvents and overload the clean-up columns which may reduce the efficiency of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) elimination from the extract. These problems may cause respectively under- or over-estimation of the quantified dioxin-like toxic potency. Therefore Chapter 5 focuses on the effects of initial stock concentrations, including sonication assisted dissolution and exposure time, on the quantified dioxin-like potency of cleaned nonpolar sediment extracts. Indeed, more than 20 g sediment equivalents (SEQ)/mL DMSO) as initial stock concentrations resulted in underestimation of bio-TEQ levels in the sediments as observed for cleaned nonpolar sediment extracts from various locations in Luxembourg. An overload of extract on clean-up columns caused an over-estimation of the dioxin-like potency at 24 hours of exposure, probably due to limited removal of PAHs that can induce false positive responses in the in vitro assays. Sonication assisted dissolution of the stock before serial dilution strongly reduced the standard variation of the outcomes. Taking into account the aspects revealed in this study, in addition to already described important issues for quality control, the in vitro bioassays based bio-TEQs can be applied in a comprehensive monitoring program to determine whether sediments comply with health and safety standards for humans and the environment. For the generally applied sediment quality criteria, advices are given about maximum initial stock concentrations to achieve reliable bioassay outcomes. The methods and concepts developed for metabolic activation of compounds in non-polar sediment extracts and in in vitro analysis of the TTR-competitive binding are applied in Chapter 6 to extracts from highly or less contaminated sediments collected in Luxembourg. Nonpolar fractions of sediment extracts were incubated with S9 rat microsomes, and the metabolites were extracted with a newly developed method that excludes most of the lipids to avoid interference in the non-radioactive 96-well plate transthyretin (TTR) competitive binding assay. Metabolic activation increased the TTR binding potency of nonpolar fractions of POP-polluted sediments up to 100 times, resulting in potencies up to 240 nmol T4 equivalents/g sediment equivalent (nmol T4-Eq/g SEQ). Without bioactivation, medium polar and polar fractions also contained potent TTR-binding compounds with potencies from 1.6 to 17 nmol T4-Eq/g SEQ. This demonstrates that a more realistic in vitro sediment THD risk characterization should also include testing ofboth polar and medium polar sediment extracts for THD, as well as bioactivated nonpolar sediment fractions. Without bioactivation THD potency is not observed in nonpolar sediment extracts, although in in vivo experiments PCBs and PBDEs, and not with dioxins or PAHs, have shown to be thyroid hormone disrupting (THD), demonstrating this bio-activation is toxicologically relevant and therefore required for sediment hazard characterisation. Chapter 7 discusses the implications of our results to improve the relevance and reliability of in vitro bioassay applied for risk characterisation of complex mixtures from sediments and other matrices. The evidence obtained to support the relevance of POP bio-activation is considered both from the exposure perspective as well as the toxicity perspective. Various features of the newly developed methods and knowledge acquired within this PhD project are discussed in relation to in vitro bioassay risk characterization of sediments towards a realistic in vitro bioassay-based risk characterization of complex mixtures. Some important aspects for the inclusion of metabolizing systems within in vitro bioassay are discussed. In addition, alternatives to deal with the SPMX effect and the definition of suitable sample amounts to improve in vitro bioassay reliability are offered. The suitability of the developed approach application is considered for the risk characterization of sediments. Furthermore, an analysis is made to decide whether this thesis have made in vitro bioassays more reliable and relevant for risk characterization of complex mixtures. Finally, it provides some concluding remarks and aspects for further applications and research.</p
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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