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Studies in the alcohol consumption area are mostly related to the (ab)use of alcohol in young people. However, today, a growing number of researchers are emphasizing the clinical and public health significance of alcohol consumption in the elderly. In the WHO reports, harmful alcohol consumption is responsible for 5.3% of the global burden of the disease. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of alcohol consumption among men and women aged 55 and over in Serbia and Hungary, leveraging data from the 2013 Serbian National Health Survey and from the 2014 Hungarian National Health Survey. Respondents aged 55 and over were analysed based on logistic multivariate models. The prevalence of alcohol consumption was 41.5% and 62.5% in Serbia and Hungary, respectively. It was higher among men in both countries, but among women, it was significantly higher in Hungary than in Serbia. The statistically significant predictors affecting alcohol consumption in Serbia included age, education, well-being index, long-term disease and overall health status, with marital status being an additional factor among men. In Hungary, education and long-term disease affected alcohol consumption in both sexes, while age and employment were additional factors among women. In both countries for both sexes, younger age, more significantly than primary education and good health, was associated with a higher likelihood of alcohol consumption.Salinization of agricultural land is a devastating phenomenon which will affect future food security. Understanding how plants survive and thrive in response to salinity is therefore critical to potentiate tolerance traits in crop species. The halophyte Salicornia europaea has been used as model system for this purpose. High salinity causes NH4+ accumulation in plant tissues and consequent toxicity symptoms that may further exacerbate those caused by NaCl. In this experiment we exposed Salicornia plants to five concentrations of NaCl (0, 1, 10, 50 and 200 mM) in combination with two concentrations of NH4Cl (1 and 50 mM). We confirmed the euhalophytic behavior of Salicornia that grew better at 200 vs. 0 mM NaCl in terms of both fresh (+34%) and dry (+46%) weights. Addition of 50 mM NH4Cl to the growth medium caused a general growth reduction, which was likely caused by NH4+ accumulation and toxicity in roots and shoots. When plants were exposed to high NH4Cl, high salinity reduced roots NH4+ concentration (-50%) compared to 0 mM NaCl. This correlates with the activation of the NH4+ assimilation enzymes, glutamine synthetase and glutamate dehydrogenase, and the growth inhibition was partially recovered. We argue that NH4+ detoxification is an important trait under high salinity that may differentiate halophytes from glycophytes and we present a possible model for NH4+ detoxification in response to salinity.Our objective was to determine the effect of extending postmortem aging from 21 to 84 days on consumer eating quality of beef longissimus lumborum. Strip loins were collected from 108 carcasses. The longissimus lumborum muscle was isolated from strip loins and assigned to one of ten postmortem aging periods from 21 to 84 days (7-day increments) and balanced within four anatomical positions within the muscle. Consumer evaluations for tenderness, juiciness, flavor, and overall liking were conducted using untrained consumer sensory panels consisting of 1080 individual consumers, in accordance with the Meat Standards Australia protocols. These scores were then used to calculate an overall eating quality (MQ4) score. Postmortem aging had no effect (P > 0.05) on tenderness, but juiciness, flavor liking, overall liking, and MQ4 declined (P less then 0.05) as aging period increased. Samples aged 21 to 42 days were most preferred having greater (P less then 0.05) overall liking and greater (P less then 0.05) MQ4 scores than samples aged 70 to 84 days postmortem. These results suggest that longissimus lumborum samples should not be wet-aged longer than 63 days to prevent potential negative eating experiences for consumers; however, altering storage conditions, specifically reducing temperature, could potentially allow for longer chilled storage without such negative effects on flavor and overall liking.Osteosarcoma, the most common of all bone malignancies, has a high likelihood of lung metastasis. Up until now, the molecular mechanisms involved in osteosarcomas with lung metastases are not clearly understood. Recent observations have shown that the chemokine CXCL1 and its receptor CXCR2 assist with the homing of neutrophils into the tumor microenvironment. Here, we show that the CXCL1/CXCR2 paracrine axis is crucial for lung metastasis in osteosarcoma. In an in vivo lung metastasis model of osteosarcoma, lung blood vessels expressed CXCL1 and osteosarcoma cells expressed the CXCR2 receptor. CXCR2 expression was higher in osteosarcoma cell lines than in normal osteoblast cells. Immunohistochemistry staining of clinical osteosarcoma specimens revealed positive correlations between CXCR2 expression and pathology stage and also vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (VCAM-1) expression. High levels of CXCL1 secreted by human pulmonary artery endothelial cells (HPAECs) promoted osteosarcoma cell mobility, which was mediated by the upregulation of VCAM-1 expression. When HPAECs-conditioned media was incubated in osteosarcoma cells, we observed that the CXCR2 receptor and FAK/PI3K/Akt/NF-κB signaling cascade were required for VCAM-1 expression. NVP-CGM097 ic50 Our findings illustrate a molecular mechanism of lung metastasis in osteosarcoma and indicate that CXCL1/CXCR2 is worth targeting in treatment schemas.Monitoring respiratory movements is an effective way to improve radiotherapy treatments of thoracic and abdominal tumors, but the current approach is limited to measuring specific points in the chest and abdomen. In this paper, a dynamic three-dimensional (3D) measurement approach of the human chest and abdomen surface is proposed, which can infer tumor movement more accurately, so the radiotherapy damage to the human body can be reduced. Firstly, color stripe patterns in the RGB color model are projected, then after color correction, the collected stripe image sequences are separated into the three RGB primary color stripe image sequences. Secondly, a fringe projection approach is used to extract the folded phase combined 3D Fourier transform with 3D Gaussian filtering. By the relationship between adjacent fringe images in the time sequence, Gaussian filter parameters with individual characteristics are designed and optimized to improve the accuracy of wrapped phase extraction. In addition, based on the difference between the fractional parts of the folded phase error, one remainder equation can be determined, which is used for time-phase unwrapping.