Down Regulation with Luteal GnRH Agonist Therapy in Euploid Embryo Transfers Does Not Impact Pregnancy Rates

Introduction : Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists have been used during assisted reproductive technology (ART) treatment for pituitary suppression and stimulation. Currently, clinical opinion is divided about whether GnRH agonist therapy improves pregnancy rates when used for luteal down-regulation in a frozen euploid embryo transfer (FET). This study evaluated the clinical utility of GnRH agonist down-regulation in single, euploid FET cycles. Methods : A retrospective analysis was performed, using data from patients who underwent a single, euploid FET cycle from 2012 to 2019. Patients were segregated into two cohorts: Group A: single, euploid FET with down-regulation using GnRH agonist; Group B: single, euploid FET without down-regulation using GnRH agonist. Primary outcomes include pregnancy rates among cohorts. Results : Group A demonstrated a pregnancy rate of 72.92% in 96 cycles. Group B demonstrated a pregnancy rate of 73.27% in 5,668 cycles. There was no difference in pregnancy rates between groups, X2(2, N = 5764) = .0061, p = .94. A subgroup of patients (n=5) with endometriosis in Group A achieved an 80% (4/5) pregnancy rate. Discussion : Single, euploid FET cycle pregnancy rates were not affected by the use of down-regulation with a GnRH agonist. Increased pregnancy rates found with prolonged GnRH agonist use in other studies weren’t seen with short term use for FET cycles. Future research should focus on molecular markers and gene transcription signatures to attempt to define whether there is an ideal population of patients who would benefit from GnRH agonist down-regulation prior to FET

Combler le « vide institutionnel » : Le comportement social et les performances des entreprises familiales comparés à ceux des autres entreprises des marchés émergents dans le secteur des hautes technologies.

Les entreprises familiales (EF) sont réputées prendre un soin particulier de leurs employés, avec l’objectif de créer une « communauté » interne très soudée. Leurs relations et contacts avec leurs partenaires extérieurs seraient aussi plus approfondis et personnels. Ces deux attitudes favoriseraient la viabilité d’une entreprise qui doit faire vivre la famille propriétaire, ainsi que les générations suivantes. Ces liens sociaux nous paraissent pouvoir compenser le manque de capital, de produits et d’infrastructure propre aux économies émergentes dynamiques. Cette étude, menée dans un secteur très compétitif de marché émergent, les entreprises de haute technologie en Corée, examine trois points majeurs :(1) Les relations internes et les liens avec l’extérieur sont plus développés dans les EF que dans les autres. (2) Ces relations améliorent la performance des secteurs de haute technologie dans les marchés émergents, pour lesquels il est indispensable, du fait de leur nature compétitive complexe et évolutive, de disposer d’une expertise pointue et d’un capital social à l’intérieur comme à l’extérieur de l’entreprise. (3) Les performances des EF sont plus dépendantes de ces relations communautaires et de ces liens avec l’extérieur que celles des autres entreprises, parce que dans ce cadre personnel et intime, les employés et les partenaires extérieurs ont généralement tendance à récompenser la générosité, ou au contraire à punir l’égoïsme, d’une famille propriétaire qu’ils voient à l’oeuvre de leurs propres yeux. Nos observations empiriques confirment la plupart de ces hypothèses de façon significative.We argue that family businesses (FBs) will tend to treat their employees with unusual consideration to form a cohesive internal “community”. They are also expected to develop deeper, more extensive “connections” or relationships with outside stakeholders. Both behaviors should increase the viability of a business intended to support an owning family and its later generations. Such social linkages, we believe, may compensate for the lack of capital, product and labor institutional infrastructures in dynamic emerging economies. This survey study of a most challenging emerging market sector, namely, Korean high technology businesses, largely supports these expectations

Uses of the supernatural in the Middle Welsh Chwedyl Iarlles y Ffynnawn

This paper examines supernatural episodes in the story of the Knight of the Lion. The story has closely related versions in French (Yvain, ou le Chevalier au Lion) and in Welsh (Owein: Chwedyl Iarlles y Ffynnawn), which allow for analysis and comparison. Even without assuming which author wrote first, we can still study how each text was adapted differently for audiences in Wales and France. This essay finds eleven episodes across both texts (eight in Yvain and nine in Owein). We categorise the supernatural in these episodes as mirabilia, magicus or miraculosus, after Le Goff, Kieckhefer and Sweeney. Our final analysis shows that miraculosus dominates in the French version, presumably due to a Christianising urge of Chrétien de Troyes which emphasises the agency of God in the text. This is not the case in the Welsh version where mirabilis episodes dominate, and the supernatural elements are kept separate from the religious aspects of the text. This analysis suggests that Welsh audiences were more comfortable with secular episodes of the supernatural than French audiences.Este trabajo analiza los episodios sobrenaturales en la historia del Caballero del León, cuyas versiones en francés (Yvain, ou le Chevalier au Lion) y en galés (Owein: Chwedyl Iarlles y Ffynnawn) son muy cercanas y permiten, así, su comparación. Incluso sin asumir una postura respecto de qué autor compuso primero, es posible estudiar el modo en el que cada texto fue adaptado de forma diferente para sus respectivos públicos. Se han encontrado once episodios a lo largo de ambos textos (ocho en Yvain y nueve en Owein) cuyo elemento o aspecto sobrenatural ha sido categorizado como mirabilia, magicus o miraculosus en función de los trabajos de Le Goff, Kieckhefer y Sweeney. Nuestro estudio muestra que lo miraculosus domina en la versión francesa, probablemente debido al matiz cristiano que le impone Chrétien de Troyes y que enfatiza la agencia divina en el relato. En cambio, en la versión galesa predominan los episodios mirabilis, y los elementos sobrenaturales se mantienen separados de los aspectos religiosos del texto. Este análisis sugiere que el público galés estaría más cómodo que el francés con episodios sobrenaturales decarácter secular

A century of warfare shoots holes in anti-Caulerpa campaign

Effort to have all varieties of the marine alga Caulerpa taxifolia listed as noxious weeds hinges on the argument that the alga's proliferation in the Mediterranean Sea is a cause and not a consequence of environmental degradation. Until now, the occurrence of two populations in a pristine part of the northern Mediterranean near the island of Porquerolles has upheld this claim. Here we show that the alga's development at Porquerolles is indeed a consequence of environmental degradation caused by military weapons' impacts on seagrass beds during the last century. The available data show that substratum enrichment plays a key role in fostering development of Caulerpa, irrespective of whether this results directly from pollution or from the impacts of pollution and other anthropogenic factors on benthic vegetation cover

A novel inhibitor of p75-neurotrophin receptor improves functional outcomes in two models of traumatic brain injury.

The p75 neurotrophin receptor is important in multiple physiological actions including neuronal survival and neurite outgrowth during development, and after central nervous system injury. We have discovered a novel piperazine-derived compound, EVT901, which interferes with p75 neurotrophin receptor oligomerization through direct interaction with the first cysteine-rich domain of the extracellular region. Using ligand binding assays with cysteine-rich domains-fused p75 neurotrophin receptor, we confirmed that EVT901 interferes with oligomerization of full-length p75 neurotrophin receptor in a dose-dependent manner. Here we report that EVT901 reduces binding of pro-nerve growth factor to p75 neurotrophin receptor, blocks pro-nerve growth factor induced apoptosis in cells expressing p75 neurotrophin receptor, and enhances neurite outgrowth in vitro Furthermore, we demonstrate that EVT901 abrogates p75 neurotrophin receptor signalling by other ligands, such as prion peptide and amyloid-β. To test the efficacy of EVT901 in vivo, we evaluated the outcome in two models of traumatic brain injury. We generated controlled cortical impacts in adult rats. Using unbiased stereological analysis, we found that EVT901 delivered intravenously daily for 1 week after injury, reduced lesion size, protected cortical neurons and oligodendrocytes, and had a positive effect on neurological function. After lateral fluid percussion injury in adult rats, oral treatment with EVT901 reduced neuronal death in the hippocampus and thalamus, reduced long-term cognitive deficits, and reduced the occurrence of post-traumatic seizure activity. Together, these studies provide a new reagent for altering p75 neurotrophin receptor actions after injury and suggest that EVT901 may be useful in treatment of central nervous system trauma and other neurological disorders where p75 neurotrophin receptor signalling is affected

Probing the Circumgalactic Medium at High-Redshift Using Composite BOSS Spectra of Strong Lyman-alpha Forest Absorbers

We present composite spectra constructed from a sample of 242,150 Lyman-alpha (Lya) forest absorbers at redshifts 2.4<z<3.1 identified in quasar spectra from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) as part of Data Release 9 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. We select forest absorbers by their flux in bins 138 km/s wide (approximately the size of the BOSS resolution element). We split these absorbers into five samples spanning the range of flux -0.05 < F<0.45. Tests on a smaller sample of high-resolution spectra show that our three strongest absorption bins would probe circumgalactic regions (projected separation < 300 proper kpc and |Delta v| < 300km/s) in about 60% of cases for very high signal-to-noise ratio. Within this subset, weakening Lya absorption is associated with decreasing purity of circumgalactic selection once BOSS noise is included. Our weaker two Lya absorption samples are dominated by the intergalactic medium. We present composite spectra of these samples and a catalogue of measured absorption features from HI and 13 metal ionization species, all of which we make available to the community. We compare measurements of seven Lyman series transitions in our composite spectra to single line models and obtain further constraints from their associated excess Lyman limit opacity. This analysis provides results consistent with column densities over the range 14.4 <~ Log (N_HI) <~ 16.45. We compare our measurements of metal absorption to a variety of simple single-line, single-phase models for a preliminary interpretation. Our results imply clumping on scales down to ~30 pc and near-solar metallicities in the circumgalactic samples, while high-ionization metal absorption consistent with typical IGM densities and metallicities is visible in all samples.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures, 5 tables, link to downloadable data included. Accepted by MNRAS 2014 March 20. New sections 3.4 and 6.1 limiting the occurrence and impact of Lyman limit system

Air mass factor formulation for spectroscopic measurements from satellites: Application to formaldehyde retrievals from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment

Abstract. We present a new formulation for the air mass factor (AMF) to convert slant column measurements of optically thin atmospheric species from space into total vertical columns. Because of atmospheric scattering, the AMF depends on the vertical distribution of the species. We formulate the AMF as the integral of the relative vertical distribution (shape factor) of the species over the depth of the atmosphere, weighted by altitudedependent coefficients (scattering weights) computed independently from a radiative transfer model. The scattering weights are readily tabulated, and one can then obtain the AMF for any observation scene by using shape factors from a three dimensional (3-D) atmospheric chemistry model for the period of observation. This approach subsequently allows objective evaluation of the 3-D model with the observed vertical columns, since the shape factor and the vertical column in the model represent two independent pieces of information. We demonstrate the AMF method by using slant column measurements of formaldehyde at 346 nm from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment satellite instrument over North America during July 1996. Shape factors are computed with the Global Earth Observing System CHEMistry (GEOS-CHEM) global 3-D model and are checked for consistency with the few available aircraft measurements. Scattering weights increase by an order of magnitude from the surface to the upper troposphere. The AMFs are typically 20-40 % less over continents than over the oceans and are approximately half the values calculated in the absence of scattering. Model-induced errors in the AMF are estimated to be • 10%. The GEOS-CHEM model captures 50 % and 60 % of the variances in the observed slant and vertical columns, respectively. Comparison of the simulated and observed vertical columns allows assessment of model bias. 1

The large-scale Quasar-Lyman \alpha\ Forest Cross-Correlation from BOSS

We measure the large-scale cross-correlation of quasars with the Lyman \alpha\ forest absorption in redshift space, using ~ 60000 quasar spectra from Data Release 9 (DR9) of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). The cross-correlation is detected over a wide range of scales, up to comoving separations r of 80 Mpc/h. For r > 15 Mpc/h, we show that the cross-correlation is well fitted by the linear theory prediction for the mean overdensity around a quasar host halo in the standard \Lambda CDM model, with the redshift distortions indicative of gravitational evolution detected at high confidence. Using previous determinations of the Lyman \alpha\ forest bias factor obtained from the Lyman \alpha\ autocorrelation, we infer the quasar bias factor to be b_q = 3.64^+0.13_-0.15 at a mean redshift z=2.38, in agreement with previous measurements from the quasar auto-correlation. We also obtain a new estimate of the Lyman \alpha\ forest redshift distortion factor, \beta_F = 1.1 +/- 0.15, slightly larger than but consistent with the previous measurement from the Lyman \alpha\ forest autocorrelation. The simple linear model we use fails at separations r < 15 Mpc/h, and we show that this may reasonably be due to the enhanced ionization due to radiation from the quasars. We also provide the expected correction that the mass overdensity around the quasar implies for measurements of the ionizing radiation background from the line-of-sight proximity effect.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures, published in JCA

Reduced electric field in junctionless transistors

The electric field perpendicular to the current flow is found to be significantly lower in junctionless transistors than in regular inversion-mode or accumulation-mode field-effect transistors. Since inversion channel mobility in metal-oxide-semionductor transistors is reduced by this electric field, the low field in junctionless transistor may give them an advantage in terms of current drive for nanometer-scale complementary metal-oxide semiconductor applications. This observation still applies when quantum confinement is present. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. (doi:10.1063/1.3299014