| 1. |
- Sabatini, F. M., et al.
(author)
-
sPlotOpen - An environmentally balanced, open-access, global dataset of vegetation plots
- 2021
-
In: Global Ecology and Biogeography. - : Wiley. - 1466-822X .- 1466-8238.
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Motivation Assessing biodiversity status and trends in plant communities is critical for understanding, quantifying and predicting the effects of global change on ecosystems. Vegetation plots record the occurrence or abundance of all plant species co-occurring within delimited local areas. This allows species absences to be inferred, information seldom provided by existing global plant datasets. Although many vegetation plots have been recorded, most are not available to the global research community. A recent initiative, called 'sPlot', compiled the first global vegetation plot database, and continues to grow and curate it. The sPlot database, however, is extremely unbalanced spatially and environmentally, and is not open-access. Here, we address both these issues by (a) resampling the vegetation plots using several environmental variables as sampling strata and (b) securing permission from data holders of 105 local-to-regional datasets to openly release data. We thus present sPlotOpen, the largest open-access dataset of vegetation plots ever released. sPlotOpen can be used to explore global diversity at the plant community level, as ground truth data in remote sensing applications, or as a baseline for biodiversity monitoring. Main types of variable contained Vegetation plots (n = 95,104) recording cover or abundance of naturally co-occurring vascular plant species within delimited areas. sPlotOpen contains three partially overlapping resampled datasets (c. 50,000 plots each), to be used as replicates in global analyses. Besides geographical location, date, plot size, biome, elevation, slope, aspect, vegetation type, naturalness, coverage of various vegetation layers, and source dataset, plot-level data also include community-weighted means and variances of 18 plant functional traits from the TRY Plant Trait Database. Spatial location and grain Global, 0.01-40,000 m(2). Time period and grain 1888-2015, recording dates. Major taxa and level of measurement 42,677 vascular plant taxa, plot-level records. Software format Three main matrices (.csv), relationally linked.
|
|
| 2. |
|
|
| 3. |
|
|
| 4. |
|
|
| 5. |
|
|
| 6. |
|
|
| 7. |
|
|
| 8. |
- Rice, Gillian I, et al.
(author)
-
Genetic, Phenotypic, and Interferon Biomarker Status in ADAR1-Related Neurological Disease.
- 2017
-
In: Neuropediatrics. - : Georg Thieme Verlag KG. - 1439-1899 .- 0174-304X. ; 48:3, s. 166-184
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We investigated the genetic, phenotypic, and interferon status of 46 patients from 37 families with neurological disease due to mutations in ADAR1. The clinicoradiological phenotype encompassed a spectrum of Aicardi-Goutières syndrome, isolated bilateral striatal necrosis, spastic paraparesis with normal neuroimaging, a progressive spastic dystonic motor disorder, and adult-onset psychological difficulties with intracranial calcification. Homozygous missense mutations were recorded in five families. We observed a p.Pro193Ala variant in the heterozygous state in 22 of 23 families with compound heterozygous mutations. We also ascertained 11 cases from nine families with a p.Gly1007Arg dominant-negative mutation, which occurred de novo in four patients, and was inherited in three families in association with marked phenotypic variability. In 50 of 52 samples from 34 patients, we identified a marked upregulation of type I interferon-stimulated gene transcripts in peripheral blood, with a median interferon score of 16.99 (interquartile range [IQR]: 10.64-25.71) compared with controls (median: 0.93, IQR: 0.57-1.30). Thus, mutations in ADAR1 are associated with a variety of clinically distinct neurological phenotypes presenting from early infancy to adulthood, inherited either as an autosomal recessive or dominant trait. Testing for an interferon signature in blood represents a useful biomarker in this context.
|
|
| 9. |
|
|
| 10. |
- Handuleh, Jibril I. M., et al.
(author)
-
Introducing evidence based public health practice through a journal club for public health officers in Somaliland
- 2021
-
In: Somali Health Action Journal. - : Umea University Library. - 2004-1985. ; 1:1
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Evidence based public health is one of the basic training tools of public health students and young officers in decision making. The training tools for early career specialists and trainees in public health is journal clubs (JC). It keeps the knowledge of professionals up to date and assist them in receiving information to design, plan, implement health care services, policies and strategies.The intention of the JC team was to raise awareness of methods for public health literature search, appraising it and applying this knowledge in their daily practices. A senior public health practitioner in Somaliland (the corresponding author) invited medical students and residents to have JCs as a part of their training. They did not accept the offer so the organizer invited practicing junior public health professionals instead. The JC team members were a general practitioner and 3 public health workers from Ministry of Health, public hospital physician, public health school and field public health officer. A weekly or twice weekly journal club took place to train them in critical appraisal. This continued for 15 months in a hybrid mentorship for the health care professionals.The team mentor selected a paper for discussion. Mentees choose a study design appraisal tool from the Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP) that matched the study to present. In the process of appraisal, a team member led the discussion using the checklist.The mentees presented their critical appraisal either orally or via a presentation. The checklist and paper were compared for assessing the study design and structure of the paper of the week.This approach of empowering junior public health officers in Somalia is a way forward for encouraging the professionals to use evidence based practice in their daily practices. This will improve their selection of research tools and translating the scientific work into their practice and services.
|
|
| 11. |
- Pippione, Agnese C., et al.
(author)
-
Hydroxyazole scaffold-based Plasmodium falciparum dihydroorotate dehydrogenase inhibitors : Synthesis, biological evaluation and X-ray structural studies
- 2019
-
In: European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. - : Elsevier BV. - 0223-5234 .- 1768-3254. ; 163, s. 266-280
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Plasmodium falciparum dihydroorotate dehydrogenase (PfDHODH) has been clinically validated as a target for antimalarial drug discovery, as a triazolopyrimidine class inhibitor (DSM265) is currently undergoing clinical development. Here, we have identified new hydroxyazole scaffold-based PfDHODH inhibitors belonging to two different chemical series. The first series was designed by a scaffold hopping strategy that exploits the use of hydroxylated azoles. Within this series, the hydroxythiadiazole 3 was identified as the best selective PfDHODH inhibitor (IC50 12.0 μM). The second series was designed by modulating four different positions of the hydroxypyrazole scaffold. In particular, hydroxypyrazoles 7e and 7f were shown to be active in the low μM range (IC50 2.8 and 5.3 μM, respectively). All three compounds, 3, 7e and 7f showed clear selectivity over human DHODH (IC50 > 200 μM), low cytotoxicity, and retained micromolar activity in P. falciparum-infected erythrocytes. The crystallographic structures of PfDHODH in complex with compounds 3 and 7e proved their binding mode, supplying essential data for future optimization of these scaffolds.
|
|
| 12. |
- Pomarlan, Mihai, et al.
(author)
-
Thinking in front of the box : Towards intelligent robotic action selection for navigation in complex environments using image-schematic reasoning
- 2022
-
In: Proceedings of the Joint Ontology Workshops 2022, Episode VIII: The Svear Sommar of Ontology. - : CEUR-WS.
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- One of the problems an agent faces when operating in a partially known, dynamic, sometimes unpredictable environment is to keep track of aspects of the world relevant to its task, and, if possible, restrict its attention to only these aspects. We present our first steps towards constructing a system that combines image schematic knowledge and reasoning with reactive robotics, and which enables perception that focuses on, and keeps track of, relevant entities and relationships. While our approach is more reasoning intensive than is usual in reactive robotics, the formalism we use for inference is fast and allows an agent to adjust, in real time, the complexity of its action selection procedures according to the complexity of the relevant part of the environment. We illustrate our approach with a few simulated examples of robots performing navigation tasks. In some examples, interaction with obstacles is necessary to complete the navigation tasks, adding complexity to the scenario.
|
|
| 13. |
- Sainas, Stefano, et al.
(author)
-
Targeting Acute Myelogenous Leukemia Using Potent Human Dihydroorotate Dehydrogenase Inhibitors Based on the 2-Hydroxypyrazolo[1,5- a]pyridine Scaffold : SAR of the Aryloxyaryl Moiety
- 2022
-
In: Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 0022-2623 .- 1520-4804. ; 65:19, s. 12701-12724
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In recent years, human dihydroorotate dehydrogenase inhibitors have been associated with acute myelogenous leukemia as well as studied as potent host targeting antivirals. Starting from MEDS433 (IC50 1.2 nM), we kept improving the structure-activity relationship of this class of compounds characterized by 2-hydroxypyrazolo[1,5-a]pyridine scaffold. Using an in silico/crystallography supported design, we identified compound 4 (IC50 7.2 nM), characterized by the presence of a decorated aryloxyaryl moiety that replaced the biphenyl scaffold, with potent inhibition and pro-differentiating abilities on AML THP1 cells (EC50 74 nM), superior to those of brequinar (EC50 249 nM) and boosted when in combination with dipyridamole. Finally, compound 4 has an extremely low cytotoxicity on non-AML cells as well as MEDS433; it has shown a significant antileukemic activity in vivo in a xenograft mouse model of AML.
|
|
