Medusa

The present study aimed to examine the optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) parameters associated with macular neovascularization (MNV) in patients diagnosed with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) and treated with either intravitreal conbercept (IVC) or ranibizumab (IVR). It enrolled 39 nAMD patients presenting with MNV, including 23 in the IVC group and 16 in the IVR group. All participants were treatment-naïve with intravitreal therapy and they underwent treatment following a '3+PRN' regimen...

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We examined gelatinous zooplankton from off eastern Australia for lepocreadiid trematode metacercariae. From 221 specimens of 17 species of cnidarian medusae and 218 specimens of four species of ctenophores, infections were found in seven cnidarian and two ctenophore species. Metacercariae were distinguished using cox1 mtDNA, ITS2 rDNA and morphology. We identified three species of Prodistomum Linton, 1910 [P. keyam Bray & Cribb, 1996, P. orientale (Layman, 1930), and Prodistomum Type 3], two species of Opechona Looss, 1907 [O...

For most residents of Europe, war is a new experience in which they find themselves both as witnesses and participants. In this paper the war in Ukraine serves as an illustration and case example. Like any unfamiliar experience, war elicits profound emotional responses which can be so overwhelming that an individual may be unable to fully process them and to create mental representations of the reality of war. When the psyche becomes entrapped in an unprocessed state, without the capacity to derive meaning from it, this results in the "fossilization" of the psyche akin to what McGinley and Segal describes as a totalitarian state of mind...

A common approach for understanding how drugs induce their therapeutic effects is to identify the genetic determinants of drug sensitivity. Because 'chemo-genetic profiles' are performed in a pooled format, inference of gene function is subject to several confounding influences related to variation in growth rates between clones. In this study, we developed Method for Evaluating Death Using a Simulation-assisted Approach (MEDUSA), which uses time-resolved measurements, along with model-driven constraints, to reveal the combination of growth and death rates that generated the observed drug response...

A developmental venous anomaly (DVA) is a venous drainage of the associated parenchyma that is normally asymptomatic. However, a DVA located adjacent to the aqueduct can cause obstructive hydrocephalus by blocking the flow of cerebrospinal fluid. We describe a rare case of obstructive hydrocephalus due to aqueductal stenosis secondary to a DVA. A 43-year-old man presented with sudden bilateral temporal pain during weight training. Using a 3-Tesla scanner, cranial magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed, and hydrocephalus was found with mild enlargement of the lateral and third ventricles...

Colletotrichum graminicola, the causal agent of maize leaf anthracnose and stalk rot, differentiates a pressurized infection cell called an appressorium in order to invade the epidermal cell, and subsequently forms biotrophic and necrotrophic hyphae to colonize the host tissue. While the role of force in appressorial penetration is established (Bechinger et al., 1999), the involvement of cell wall-degrading enzymes (CWDEs) in this process and in tissue colonization is poorly understood, due to the enormous number and functional redundancy of these enzymes...

BACKGROUND: Retail sales of derived psychoactive cannabis products (DPCPs) have increased in the U.S. since passing the 2018 Farm Bill and is unregulated in most states. This study investigated the types and commonly sold brands of DPCPs as well as promotional pricing on April 20th, a day associated with cannabis use. METHODS: On April 19-20, 2023, investigators conducted telephone surveys with 98 retail stores that sold DPCPs in Fort Worth, Texas (where the market was largely unregulated)...

Cilia are widely present in metazoans and have various sensory and motor functions, including collection of particles through feeding currents in suspensivorous animals. Suspended particles occur at low densities and are too small to be captured individually, and therefore must be concentrated. Animals that feed on these particles have developed different mechanisms to encounter and capture their food. These mechanisms occur in three phases: (i) encounter; (ii) capture; and (iii) particle handling, which occurs by means of a cilia-generated current or the movement of capturing structures (e...

Gas chromatography (GC) is crucial for measuring atmospheric halogenated greenhouse gases (hGHGs), usually coupled with electron capture detector (ECD, with higher sensitivity) or mass spectrometry (MS, with higher selectivity). This review compares GC-ECD and GC-MS for analyzing atmospheric hGHGs in terms of analytical methodology, performance, and instrumentation. For hGHGs such as SF6 , chlorofluorocarbons, and N2 O, ECD can be employed in the single column, forecut-backflush (FCBF), and preconcentration methods...

During their long evolutionary history, jellyfish have faced changes in multiple environmental factors, to which they may selectively fix adaptations, allowing some species to survive and inhabit diverse environments. Previous findings have confirmed the jellyfish's ability to synthesize large ATP amounts, mainly produced by mitochondria, in response to environmental challenges. This study characterized the respiratory chain from the mitochondria of the jellyfish Stomolophus sp2 (previously misidentified as Stomolophus meleagris)...

In this study we address the diversity of the scyphozoan jellyfish genus Nausithoe Klliker, 1853 (Nausithoidae, Coronatae), questioning the feasibility of using some characters of the medusa stage to identify species and filling in gaps concerning species of the genus and their distributions. Like most scyphozoans, the vast majority of the 21 Nausithoe species have a metagenetic life cycle, but similarity of most polyps within the genus highlights the need for studying morphology of the medusa stage. By analyzing morphological features on preserved and live specimens (polyps and medusae) and comparing these data with the original descriptions, we were able to validate twenty species of the group, providing new information for some of them...

An undescribed species of ulmarid medusa was observed in situ and captured at 812 m depth within the Sumisu Caldera, Ogasawara Islands, Japan. Morphological and molecular evidence points to it being distinct from other ulmarid medusae and a new species (pagesi), genus (Santjordia) and subfamily (Santjordiinae) are herein erected to contain it. This new subfamily of semaeostome ulmarid medusae has both marginal and subumbrellar rhopalia, making it unique within the order Semaeostomeae. Although the combination of subumbrellar tentacles and the lack of branched canals should warrant the erection of a new family within the Semaeostomeae, a lack of information on the gonad structure and poor bootstrap support in the molecular phylogenetic tree cause us to relegate it to the catch-all family Ulmaridae, until greater taxon sampling and phylogenetic analyses are carried out for the Semaeostomeae...

Scyphomedusae are widespread in the oceans and their swimming has provided valuable insights into the hydrodynamics of animal propulsion. Most of this research has focused on symmetrical, linear swimming. However, in nature, medusae typically swim circuitous, nonlinear paths involving frequent turns. Here we describe swimming turns by the scyphomedusa Aurelia aurita during which asymmetric bell margin motions produce rotation around a linearly translating body center. These jellyfish 'skid' through turns and the degree of asynchrony between opposite bell margins is an approximate predictor of turn magnitude during a pulsation cycle...

Will et al .'s (2021 Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 118, e2106640118 (doi:10.1073/pnas.2106640118)) found the Medusa effect, which refers to the tendency that people evaluate a 'person in picture' more mindful than a 'person in picture of a picture'. The present study tried to directly replicate the Experiments 2 and 5 of Will et al .'s (2021), to examine the reliability, validity and generalization of the Medusa effect, as well as its effect on prosocial behaviour. We used the same stimuli and methodology as the original research, but recruited participants in Japan with a larger sample size ( N = 1387 in total) as a registered report...

An important mechanical property of cells is their membrane bending modulus, κ. Here, we introduce MEDUSA (MEmbrane DiffUse Scattering Analysis), a cloud-based analysis tool to determine the bending modulus, κ, from the analysis of X-ray diffuse scattering. MEDUSA uses GPU (graphics processing unit) accelerated hardware and a parallelized algorithm to run the calculations efficiently in a few seconds. MEDUSA's graphical user interface allows the user to upload 2-dimensional data collected from different sources, perform background subtraction and distortion corrections, select regions of interest, run the fitting procedure and output the fitted parameters, the membranes' bending modulus κ, and compressional modulus B...

Deconvoluting cell-state abundances from bulk RNA-sequencing data can add considerable value to existing data, but achieving fine-resolution and high-accuracy deconvolution remains a challenge. Here we introduce MeDuSA, a mixed model-based method that leverages single-cell RNA-sequencing data as a reference to estimate cell-state abundances along a one-dimensional trajectory in bulk RNA-sequencing data. The advantage of MeDuSA lies primarily in estimating cell abundance in each state while fitting the remaining cells of the same type individually as random effects...

AIM: Given its excellent capability of escaping from unavoidable harm and death, Turritopsis sp. ( T. sp. ) has captured the attention and fascination of scientists as a less conventional tool for aging research. The current study introduces a method for establishment of a research model and comprehensive transcriptomic analysis to reveal the structural and functional diversity of T. sp. METHODS: T. sp. medusae collected from the Pacific Ocean near Japan were reared using a common laboratory setting...

Blastema formation is a crucial process that provides a cellular source for regenerating tissues and organs. While bilaterians have diversified blastema formation methods, its mechanisms in non-bilaterians remain poorly understood. Cnidarian jellyfish, or medusae, represent early-branching metazoans that exhibit complex morphology and possess defined appendage structures highlighted by tentacles with stinging cells (nematocytes). Here, we investigate the mechanisms of tentacle regeneration, using the hydrozoan jellyfish Cladonema pacificum...

Jellyfish represent one of the most basal animal groups with complex life cycles. The polyp-to-medusa transition, termed strobilation, is the pivotal process that determines the switch in swimming behavior and jellyfish blooms. Their microbiota plays an essential role in strobilation. Here, we investigated microbiota-mediated host phenotype dynamics during strobilation in the jellyfish Aurelia coerulea via antibiotic-induced microbiome alteration. Microbial depletion delayed the initiation of strobilation and resulted in fewer segments and ephyrae, which could be restored via microbial recolonization...