The current velocities create down-stream interdependence among closed areas and allow redundancy to develop in some of the areas of the network, with some of the larger areas also showing retention. Source populations for sponges in the upstream closure are likely in adjacent waters of the Canadian continental shelf. Collectively this information can be used to inform management decisions related to the size and placement of these closed areas, and vertical velocity surfaces have potential for use in species distribution modeling of benthic species and habitats.Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of hard biological tissues is challenging due to the fleeting lifetime and low strength of their response to resonant stimuli, especially at low magnetic fields. Consequently, the impact of MRI on some medical applications, such as dentistry, continues to be limited. Here, we present three-dimensional reconstructions of ex-vivo human teeth, as well as a rabbit head and part of a cow femur, all obtained at a field strength of 260 mT. These images are the first featuring soft and hard tissues simultaneously at sub-Tesla fields, and they have been acquired in a home-made, special-purpose, pre-medical MRI scanner designed with the goal of demonstrating dental imaging at low field settings. We encode spatial information with two pulse sequences Pointwise-Encoding Time reduction with Radial Acquisition and a new sequence we have called Double Radial Non-Stop Spin Echo, which we find to perform better than the former. For image reconstruction we employ Algebraic Reconstruction Techniques (ART) as well as standard Fourier methods. An analysis of the resulting images shows that ART reconstructions exhibit a higher signal-to-noise ratio with a more homogeneous noise distribution.Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV), a New World alphavirus of the Togaviridae family of viruses causes periodic outbreaks of disease in humans and equines. Disease following VEEV infection manifests as a febrile illness with flu-like symptoms, which can progress to encephalitis and cause permanent neurological sequelae in a small number of cases. VEEV is classified as a category B select agent due to ease of aerosolization and high retention of infectivity in the aerosol form. Currently, there are no FDA-approved vaccines or therapeutics available to combat VEEV infection. VEEV infection in vivo is characterized by extensive systemic inflammation that can exacerbate infection by potentially increasing the susceptibility of off-site cells to infection and dissemination of the virus. Hence, a therapeutic targeting both the infection and associated inflammation represents an unmet need. We have previously demonstrated that host defense peptides (HDPs), short peptides that are key components of the innate immune response, exhibit antiviral activity against a multitude of viruses including VEEV. In this study, we designed synthetic peptides derived from indolicidin, a naturally occurring HDP, and tested their efficacy against VEEV. Two candidate synthetic peptides inhibited VEEV replication by approximately 1000-fold and decreased the expression of inflammatory mediators such as IL1α, IL1β, IFNγ, and TNFα at both the gene and protein expression levels. Furthermore, an increase in expression levels of genes involved in chemotaxis of leukocytes and anti-inflammatory genes such as IL1RN was also observed. Overall, we conclude that our synthetic peptides inhibit VEEV replication and the inflammatory burden associated with VEEV infection.Current image processing methods for dynamic susceptibility contrast (DSC) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) do not capture complex dynamic information of time-signal intensity curves. We investigated whether an autoencoder-based pattern analysis of DSC MRI captured representative temporal features that improves tissue characterization and tumor diagnosis in a multicenter setting. this website The autoencoder was applied to the time-signal intensity curves to obtain representative temporal patterns, which were subsequently learned by a convolutional neural network. This network was trained with 216 preoperative DSC MRI acquisitions and validated using external data (n = 43) collected with different DSC acquisition protocols. The autoencoder applied to time-signal intensity curves and clustering obtained nine representative clusters of temporal patterns, which accurately identified tumor and non-tumoral tissues. The dominant clusters of temporal patterns distinguished primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL) from glioblastoma (AUC 0.89) and metastasis from glioblastoma (AUC 0.95). The autoencoder captured DSC time-signal intensity patterns that improved identification of tumoral tissues and differentiation of tumor type and was generalizable across centers.Saliva has been widely recognized as a non-invasive, painless and easy-to-collect bodily fluid, which contains biomarkers that can be used for diagnosis of both oral and systemic diseases. Under ambient conditions, salivary biomarkers are subject to degradation. Therefore, in order to minimize degradation during transport and storage, saliva specimens need to be stabilized. The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of preserving saliva samples by drying to provide a shelf-stable source of DNA. Human saliva was dried on filters under ambient conditions using sucrose as lyoprotective agent. Samples were stored under different conditions, i.e. varying relative humidity (RH) and temperature. In addition to assessment of different cell types in saliva and their DNA contents, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was used to evaluate the effects of storage on biomolecular structure characteristics of saliva. FTIR analysis showed that saliva dried without a lyoprotectant exhibits a higher content of extended β-sheet protein secondary structures compared to samples that were dried with sucrose. In order to evaluate differences in characteristic bands arising from the DNA backbone among differently stored samples, principal component analysis (PCA) was performed, allowing a clear discrimination between groups with/without sucrose as well as storage durations and conditions. Our results indicated that saliva dried on filters in the presence of sucrose exhibits higher biomolecular stability during storage.