Darwin

Background and study aims Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) poses the risk of radiation exposure (RE) to patients and staff and increases the risk of adverse biological effects such as cataracts, sterility, and cancer. Newer fluoroscopy equipment (C-Arm) provides options to limit radiation in the form of lower radiation dose and frame rate or time-limited "pulsed" settings. However, the impact of lower settings on image quality has not been assessed, and no standard protocol exists for fluoroscopy settings used during ERCP...

Darwin attributed the absence of species transitions in the fossil record to his hypothesis that speciation occurs within isolated habitat patches too geographically restricted to be captured by fossil sequences. Mayr's peripatric speciation model added that such speciation would be rapid, further explaining missing evidence of diversification. Indeed, Eldredge and Gould's original punctuated equilibrium model combined Darwin's conjecture, Mayr's model and 124 years of unsuccessfully sampling the fossil record for transitions...

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Commonly used risk indexes, such as the NIOSH Lifting Index, do not capture the effect of exoskeletons. This makes it difficult for Health and Safety professionals to rigorously assess the benefit of such devices. The community requires a simple method to assess the effectiveness of back-support exoskeleton's (BSE) in possibly reducing ergonomic risk. The method introduced in this work is termed "Equivalent Weight" (EqW) and it proposes an interpretation of the effect built on the benefit delivered through reduced activation of the erector spinae (ES)...

Microbial mediated nitrogen (N) transformation is subject to multiple controlling factors such as prevailing physical and chemical conditions, and little is known about these processes in sediments of wet-dry tropical macrotidal systems such as Darwin Harbour in North Australia. To understand key transformations, we assessed the association between the relative abundance of nitrogen cycling genes with trophic status, sediment partition and benthic nitrogen fluxes in Darwin Harbour. We analysed nitrogen cycling gene abundance using a functional gene microarray and quantitative PCRs targeting the denitrification gene (nosZ) and archaeal ammonia oxidation (AOA...

BACKGROUND: As modern medicine continues to make strides in effective surgical treatments, we must also consider the critical impact of anesthesia on neuropsychological outcomes. Recent evidence suggests that anesthesia exposure may be a risk factor for postoperative cognitive decline and the eventual development of dementia. OBJECTIVES: To explore the vulnerability of the aging brain in the context of anesthesia exposure in surgery, studies will be reviewed, and pertinent findings will be highlighted and explored to better understand risks and possible factors that need to be considered when contemplating surgery...

BACKGROUND: Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have emerged as pivotal regulators of cellular processes in human malignancies, including oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). METHODS: Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) was used to detect RNA expression levels of circXPO1, miR-524-5p and cyclin D1 (CCND1). Colony formation assay and 5-Ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine (EdU) assay were performed to analyze cell proliferation, while transwell assay was carried out to investigate the cell migration and invasion...

OBJECTIVE: Australia has inadequate publicly available data regarding the use of involuntary psychiatric care. This study examined the association between patient clinical/demographic factors and involuntary psychiatric admission following initial psychiatric assessment in Royal Darwin Hospital. METHOD: Retrospective review of 638 psychiatric assessments followed by covariate analysis of patient variables associated with involuntary psychiatric admission. RESULTS: Most of the 225 psychiatric admissions were involuntary (92%)...

Globally, there is a concerning decline in many insect populations, and this trend likely extends to all arthropods, potentially impacting unique island biota. Native non-endemic and endemic species on islands are under threat due to habitat destruction, with the introduction of exotic, and potentially invasive, species, further contributing to this decline. While long-term studies of plants and vertebrate fauna are available, long-term arthropod datasets are limited, hindering comparisons with better-studied taxa...

Island systems provide important contexts for studying processes underlying lineage migration, species diversification, and organismal extinction. The Hawaiian endemic mints (Lamiaceae family) are the second largest plant radiation on the isolated Hawaiian Islands. We generated a chromosome-scale reference genome for one Hawaiian species, Stenogyne calaminthoides, and resequenced 45 relatives, representing 34 species, to uncover the continental origins of this group and their subsequent diversification. We further resequenced 109 individuals of two Stenogyne species, and their purported hybrids, found high on the Mauna Kea volcano on the island of Hawai'i...

The spectrum averaged cross sections (SACS) in standard neutron field, e.g. 252 Cf(s.f.), is a preferable tool for cross section evaluation and validation. A set of reaction measurements with high energy thresholds was previously performed. The presented work focuses on lower energy threshold reactions, namely on the inelastic scattering of the tin foil, more specifically the reaction 117 Sn(n,n')117m Sn, and the zinc foil reaction, namely 67 Zn(n,p)67 Cu. These reactions are of special interest due to their intermediate energy range, which is essential in classical reactor dosimetry and fast reactor dosimetry...

The Darwin-Bateman paradigm predicts that females enhance their fitness by being choosy and mating with high-quality males, while males should compete to mate with as many females as possible. In many species, males enhance their fitness by defending females and/or resources used by females. That is, males directly defend access to mating opportunities. However, paternity analyses have repeatedly shown that females in most species mate polyandrously, which contradicts traditional expectations that male defensive behaviours lead to monandry...

Timor-Leste is a mountainous, half-island nation with a population of 1.3 million, which shares a land border with Indonesia and is 550 km from Darwin, Australia. Since independence in 2002, Timor-Leste has achieved significant development; however, high levels of poverty remain. Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is endemic in over 100 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and in the Americas. It is transmitted by the bite of infected Aedes aegypti or Ae. albopictus mosquitoes, which are present in Timor-Leste and which contribute to annual rainy-season dengue virus (DENV) outbreaks...

UNLABELLED: In Mycobacterium tuberculosis proteins that are post-translationally modified with Pup, a prokaryotic ubiquitin-like protein, can be degraded by proteasomes. While pupylation is reversible, mechanisms regulating substrate specificity have not been identified. Here, we identify the first depupylation regulators: CoaX, a pseudokinase, and pantothenate, an essential, central metabolite. In a Δ coaX mutant, pantothenate synthesis enzymes were more abundant, including PanB, a substrate of the Pup-proteasome system...

UNLABELLED: Cytokinins are adenine-based hormones that have been well-characterized in plants but are also made by bacteria, including the human-exclusive pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis . In M. tuberculosis , cytokinins activate transcription of an operon that affects the bacterial cell envelope. In plants, cytokinins are broken down by dedicated enzymes called cytokinin oxidases into adenine and various aldehydes. In proteasome degradation-deficient M. tuberculosis , the cytokinin-producing enzyme Log accumulates, resulting in the buildup of at least one cytokinin-associated aldehyde...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Although commonly used for treating complications of chronic pancreatitis (CP), data on the frequency and factors associated with the use of pancreatic endotherapy (PET) are limited. Our aim was to define the utilization and factors predictive for receiving PET in a well-characterized CP cohort. METHODS: This is a cross-sectional analysis of data from PROCEED, a multicenter US cohort study of CP. PET modalities primarily consisted of ERCP. A treatment course was defined as the number of sessions performed for a specific indication...

INTRODUCTION: Online resources are important for patient self-education and reflect public interest. We described commonly asked questions regarding the direct anterior versus posterior approach (DAA, PA) to total hip arthroplasty (THA) and the quality of associated websites. METHODS: We extracted the top 200 questions and websites in Google's "People Also Ask" section for eight queries on January 8, 2023, and grouped websites and questions into DAA, PA, or comparison...

We propose a solvable model of quantum Darwinism to encoding transitions-abrupt changes in how quantum information spreads in a many-body system under unitary dynamics. We consider a random Clifford circuit on an expanding tree, whose input qubit is entangled with a reference. The model has a quantum Darwinism phase, where one classical bit of information about the reference can be retrieved from an arbitrarily small fraction of the output qubits, and an encoding phase where such retrieval is impossible. The two phases are separated by a mixed phase and two continuous transitions...

Diseases affecting wild Australian saltwater crocodiles ( Crocodylus porosus ) are rarely reported due to the difficulty in capturing animals and obtaining samples. In this investigation, we identified two haemoparasites ( Hepatozoon and a filarial nematode) in saltwater crocodiles in Darwin, Australia. Light microscopic examination identified Hepatozoon in 7/7 (100%) wild crocodiles and in 2/20 (10%) of captive ones. When genomic DNAs from these same samples were further investigated using polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based sequencing, we detected Hepatozoon in all 27 blood samples...

BACKGROUND: While there is literature on erectile dysfunction (ED) and premature ejaculation (PE) in men, conclusive evidence regarding these sexual health issues and potential associated factors in the young, single men who have sex with men (MSM) population is lacking. AIM: The study sought to determine the prevalence and factors associated with PE and ED in young single MSM in the capital of Peru. METHODS: This was an analytical cross-sectional study in MSM using an online questionnaire...