Nevin Manimala

J Environ Manage. 2021 Jul 20;297:113258. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.113258. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

An analysis of the influence of water regime on the metal accumulation processes of wetland plants can improve the efficiency of phytoremediation. However, few studies have clearly explored the mechanism of influence of water regime on the process of accumulation of metals by the dominant vegetation in Poyang Lake wetland, the largest freshwater lake in China. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of water regime (Flooding condition [FC], Dry condition [DC] and alternate dry and flooding condition [DFC]) on the accumulation of cadmium (Cd) by Artemisia selengensis Turcz. ex Bess., a dominant plant in the Poyang Lake wetland. The results indicated that FC treatment significantly enhanced the accumulation of Cd by Artemisia roots compared with DFC and DC treatments. In addition, the DFC treatment significantly increased the translocation of Cd from roots to shoots compared with the FC treatment. A multivariate statistical analysis indicated that the rhizosphere Cd fraction, iron plaque on the root surface and rhizosphere pH directly or indirectly significantly influence the process of accumulation of Cd. The conversion of exchangeable fraction to Fe/Mn oxide bound and organic fraction under the DFC and FC treatments decreased the accumulation of Cd in Artemisia. The formation of increased amounts of iron plaque under the FC treatment may enhance the accumulation of Cd in roots, while it may reduce the translocation of Cd to aboveground tissues. In addition, a higher rhizosphere pH under the FC treatment may promote accumulation of Cd in the root by inducing formation of iron plaque. Similarly, compared with the FC treatment, a lower rhizosphere pH and iron plaque can induce the processes of Cd translocation under the DFC treatment. Based on the bioaccumulation factor, translocation factor and the ratio of root/aerial Cd content, treatment with DC benefited the phytoextraction of Cd, while treatment with DFC and FC enhanced the phytostabilization of Cd by Artemisia. This study provides valuable information for deeply understanding the resilience of wetland ecosystems and for enhancing the phytoremediation with wetland plants using water management.

PMID:34298349 | DOI:10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.113258

J Environ Manage. 2021 Jul 20;297:113324. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.113324. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the current status of the livestock industry (cattle, pigs, sheep, and poultry) in China and assesses the potential for biogas production from anaerobically digested livestock manure. According to calculation results based on the latest data of livestock released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China in 2018, China produced 2 × 10¹² kg of manure pollution in 2017, with pig waste representing the largest single manure source. Biogas that can be converted from high organic containing manure is a kind of clean bioenergy with low carbon footprint. In 2017, the energy potential from manure-produced biogas was about 5.74 × 10¹²-6.73 × 10¹² MJ, which corresponds to 4-5% of China’s total energy demand. Correlation analysis between biogas production and the livestock industry showed that crop production had significant effects on manure-generated biogas production. However, it is necessary to address the challenges when applying AD technology. Bioenergy potential from manure will be lost during material collection and transportation. Although large-scale livestock farming remains controversial, this type of farming can improve the energy recovery rate of livestock manure. How to gain benefits and maintain sustainable development is also a bottleneck for AD promotion. Reducing energy input in AD projects as well as enhancing the efficiency of methanogenesis of livestock manure are key factors for achieving a high net output of biogas projects. More inclusive strategies and a broader vision should be adopted to allow stakeholders to benefit from manure-generated biogas projects.

PMID:34298348 | DOI:10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.113324

Mar Pollut Bull. 2021 Jul 20;171:112729. doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2021.112729. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The concentrations of 23 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs; 16 parent and 7 alkylated PAHs) were determined in 113 surface marine sediment samples, 13 on-land sediment samples and 8 subsampled push cores retrieved from the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA). PAHs were extracted via accelerated solvent extraction and quantified via gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The sums of the concentrations of 16 priority PAHs in the surface sediments ranged from 7.8 to 247.7 ng g^-1 (dry weight basis, dw). The PAH inputs to the sediments have remained constant during the last century. Source-diagnostic ratios and statistical analysis suggest that the PAHs in the CAA mainly originate from natural petrogenic sources, with some pyrogenic sources. Temporal trends did not indicate major source shifts and largely indicated petrogenic inputs. Overall, the sediments retrieved from the CAA have low PAH concentrations, which indicates a low ecological risk for benthic or other organisms living near the water-sediment interface.

PMID:34298327 | DOI:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2021.112729

Int J Paleopathol. 2021 Jul 20;34:163-167. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpp.2021.07.005. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To determine the degree of similarity of biologically related individuals according to the occurrence of skeletal developmental anomalies (SDA), to see whether these anomalies reflect documented biological relationships.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: The sample consists of the skeletal remains of seven members of the noble Swéerts-Sporck family from the 17th-20th centuries. Eighty-nine SDA were examined using morphological assessment, X-ray and CT. The degree of similarity was calculated using a similarity coefficient (Cvrček et al., 2018).

RESULTS: There were three shared SDA in the sample (cranial shift at the C-T border, cervical ribs, hypoplasia of rib 12), and another fifteen individual SDA were reported. The degree of similarity between individuals supports their documented relationships. The greatest similarity was found in closely related individuals such as father/son or siblings, and the least between unrelated individuals.

CONCLUSIONS: SDA can be used as a supportive tool for detecting family relationships. The results correspond to the conclusions of earlier analyses of non-metric traits and frontal sinuses in the same sample: the smaller the biological distance between individuals, the greater the degree of their similarity.

SIGNIFICANCE: Using unique human skeletal collections, this communication contributes to the expansion of knowledge about the familial occurrence of SDA.

LIMITATIONS: The small number of individuals limits the use of statistical approaches.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH: The results call for research on this topic using a larger sample with known genealogical data and the same approaches, to confirm our conclusions.

PMID:34298314 | DOI:10.1016/j.ijpp.2021.07.005

Breast. 2021 Jul 8;59:211-220. doi: 10.1016/j.breast.2021.07.006. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: This meta-analysis aimed to test the hypothesis that the HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer (mBC) patients treated with anti-HER2 antibodies in trial intervention arms have a greater prolongation of overall survival (OS) than of progression-free survival (PFS) and this extra-prolongation of median survival time in OS relates specifically to the anti-HER2 antibody.

METHODS: The NCBI/Pubmed and Cochrane databases were searched systematically for HER2-positive or mBC trials published in English during January 1999-November 2017. Treatment arms with shorter PFS were considered as the “control” arm, whereas those with longer PFS as the “test” arm. The between-treatment drug differences were grouped into nine categories. Groups with or without anti-HER2 antibodies were pooled respectively for comparisons. The interrelationships between PFS and OS hazard ratios (HRs) and median survival time differences were investigated by conducting fixed-effects and mixed-effects linear meta-regression analyses.

RESULTS: Twenty-eight trials (10,928 patients) from 438 articles were collected, and four with missing data were excluded in meta-regression analysis. Overall median PFS (HR = 0.73, 95% CI: 0.68-0.78) and median OS (HR = 0.82, 95% CI: 0.77-0.87) weakly favored the longer PFS arm with a weak correlation between the PFS and OS HRs. However, the between-treatment drug difference was anti-HER2 antibody, the absolute increment in median OS time was double that of median PFS time (p < 0.001) and linearly correlated, which was not found with any non-anti-HER2 antibody drug differences.

CONCLUSIONS: Anti-HER2 antibody in patients with HER2-positive mBC prolonged OS more than PFS and mandates further investigation.

PMID:34298300 | DOI:10.1016/j.breast.2021.07.006

Cognition. 2021 Jul 20;215:104780. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104780. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Familiar and unfamiliar voice perception are often understood as being distinct from each other. For identity perception, theoretical work has proposed that listeners use acoustic information in different ways to perceive identity from familiar and unfamiliar voices: Unfamiliar voices are thought to be processed based on close comparisons of acoustic properties, while familiar voices are processed based on diagnostic acoustic features that activate a stored person-specific representation of that voice. To date no empirical study has directly examined whether and how familiar and unfamiliar listeners differ in their use of acoustic information for identity perception. Here, we tested this theoretical claim by linking listeners’ judgements in voice identity tasks to complex acoustic representation – spectral similarity of the heard voice recordings. Participants (N = 177) who were either familiar or unfamiliar with a set of voices completed an identity discrimination task (Experiment 1) or an identity sorting task (Experiment 2). In both experiments, identity judgements for familiar and unfamiliar voices were guided by spectral similarity: Pairs of recordings with greater acoustic similarity were more likely to be perceived as belonging to the same voice identity. However, while there were no differences in how familiar and unfamiliar listeners used acoustic information for identity discrimination, differences were apparent for identity sorting. Our study therefore challenges proposals that view familiar and unfamiliar voice perception as being at all times distinct. Instead, our data suggest a critical role of the listening situation in which familiar and unfamiliar voices are evaluated, thus characterising voice identity perception as a highly dynamic process in which listeners opportunistically make use of any kind of information they can access.

PMID:34298232 | DOI:10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104780

Infancy. 2021 Jul 23. doi: 10.1111/infa.12423. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

To learn their first words, infants must attend to a variety of cues that signal word boundaries. One such cue infants might use is the language-specific phonotactics to track legal combinations and positions of segments within a word. Studies have demonstrated that, when tested across statistically high and low phonotactics, infants repeatedly reject the low-frequency wordforms. We explore whether the capacity to access low-frequency phonotactic combinations is available at 9 months when pre-exposed to wordforms containing statistically low combinations of segments. Using a modified head-turn procedure, one group of infants was presented with nonwords with low-frequency complex onsets (dr-), and another group was presented with zero-frequency onset nonwords (dl-). Following pre-exposure and familiarization, infants were then tested on their ability to segment nonwords that contained either the low- or the zero-frequency onsets. Only infants in the low-frequency condition were successful at the task, suggesting some experience with these onsets supports segmentation.

PMID:34297896 | DOI:10.1111/infa.12423

Eur J Haematol. 2021 Jul 23. doi: 10.1111/ejh.13693. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: Autologous stem cell transplantation is the gold standard for eligible newly diagnosed multiple myeloma patients. Patients are usually hospitalized for administration of mobilization chemotherapy. We aimed to assess safety and efficacy of mobilization therapy with low (2 g/m² ) and intermediate (3-4 g/m² ) dose Cyclophosphamide administered as outpatient.

METHODS: A total of 176 consecutive newly diagnosed transplant-eligible myeloma patients receiving outpatient mobilization were retrospectively evaluated. Induction therapy was mainly performed with new drugs (91%).

RESULTS: Chemotherapy was very well tolerated with 16.6% of patients having all-grade adverse events and only 1.2% having severe adverse events. Most frequently reported adverse events were nausea and vomiting grade 1-2 (6.8%). Only 5.7% of patients required hospitalization for adverse events. Stem cell collection was successful in 93.1% of patients, with a median CD34+ harvest of 8.7×106/Kg. Target for 2 ASCT (at least 6 CD34+x106/Kg) was reached by 76.3% of patients. Administration of Plerixafor on demand was necessary in 12.1% of patients.

CONCLUSIONS: Outpatient mobilization with low and intermediate dose Cyclophosphamide appears an efficient and safe procedure, with minimal and manageable adverse events and low rate of hospitalization.

PMID:34297879 | DOI:10.1111/ejh.13693

J Adv Nurs. 2021 Jul 23. doi: 10.1111/jan.14984. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

AIM: To examine women’s evaluations of quality of care from their perspectives.

BACKGROUND: Assessing women’s satisfaction with the quality of care they receive during childbirth is an important component of care quality that should be analysed. Evidence suggests that childbirth experience has an important impact on women’s health. Therefore, taking into account the perceptions of women about quality is a means to improve care. However, studies examining care quality in this setting remain scarce.

DESIGN: Mixed-methods explanatory sequential design.

METHODS: A national survey with a sample of 1082 participants, and 15 semi-structured interviews. Data collection occurred between January 2017 and January 2019. Quantitative data were obtained through a validated scale, the Quality from the Patient’s Perspective-Intrapartal questionnaire, whose score can range from 1 (minimum satisfaction) to 4 (maximum satisfaction). Semi-structured interviews were conducted for qualitative data. Descriptive statistics, group comparison and qualitative content analysis were included in data analysis.

RESULTS: The mean score on the QPP-I tool was high (3.13; SD 0.74). Variables that had the most influence on the experience were type of birth, type of perineal trauma, admission of the baby, time since birth, home-birth, parity and duration of labour. Data from the qualitative interviews identified five themes that explained women’s experiences with the quality of care. Previous expectations influence the emotions they have regarding the experience. Relationships with professionals and their social skills are fundamental for the evaluation of quality. The separation of the newborn appears as a factor that worsens the appreciation of women. Good pain management and continuity of care by specialists are also named as key elements of the quality of care.

CONCLUSION: Findings demonstrate that experience with childbirth care is of utmost importance for women. They also show the indisputable need to listen to their opinions and assessments when lines of improvement of quality are identified.

IMPACT: This study provides information that can improve the care that women receive during their childbirths. Using their opinions will make them feel an active part of the system and in this way, we will be closer to achieve excellence in our services.

PMID:34297861 | DOI:10.1111/jan.14984

Cancer. 2021 Jul 23. doi: 10.1002/cncr.33811. Online ahead of print.

NO ABSTRACT

PMID:34297849 | DOI:10.1002/cncr.33811