Maize inflorescence is a complex phenotype that involves the physical and developmental interplay of multiple traits. Given the evidence that genes could pleiotropically contribute to several of these traits, we used publicly available maize data to assess the ability of multivariate genome-wide association study (GWAS) approaches to identify pleiotropic quantitative trait loci (pQTL). Our analysis of 23 publicly available inflorescence and leaf-related traits in a diversity panel of n = 281 maize lines genotyped with 376,336 markers revealed that the two multivariate GWAS approaches we tested were capable of identifying pQTL in genomic regions coinciding with similar associations found in previous studies. We then conducted a parallel simulation study on the same individuals, where it was shown that multivariate GWAS approaches yielded a higher true positive quantitative trait nucleotide (QTN) detection rate than comparable univariate approaches for all evaluated simulation settings except for when the correlated simulated traits had a heritability of 0.9. We therefore conclude that the implementation of state-of-the-art multivariate GWAS approaches are a useful tool for dissecting pleiotropy, and their more widespread implementation could facilitate the discovery of genes and other biological mechanisms underlying maize inflorescence. © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Japanese Society of Plant Physiologists. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email journals.permissions@oup.com.It remains unclear what clinical features inform the accuracy of a clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer disease (AD). Data were obtained from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center to compare clinical and neuropathologic features among participants who did or did not have Alzheimer disease neuropathologic changes (ADNC) at autopsy. Participants (1854) had a clinical Alzheimer dementia diagnosis and ADNC at autopsy (Confirmed-AD), 204 participants had an AD diagnosis and no ADNC (AD-Mimics), and 253 participants had no AD diagnosis and ADNC (Unidentified-AD). Compared to Confirmed-AD participants, AD-Mimics had less severe cognitive impairment, while Unidentified-AD participants displayed more parkinsonian signs, depression, and behavioral problems. This study highlights the importance of developing a complete panel of biomarkers as a tool to inform clinical diagnoses, as clinical phenotypes that are typically associated with diseases other than AD may result in inaccurate diagnoses. © 2020 American Association of Neuropathologists, Inc. All rights reserved.BACKGROUND Types and correlates of pain medication agreement (PMA) violations in the primary care setting have not been analyzed. METHODS A retrospective analysis was completed to examine patient characteristics and correlates of PMA violations, a proxy for substance misuse, over a 15-year period in an outpatient General Medicine Pain Service within the Division of General Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Patients who signed the PMA were managed for chronic pain from 2002 through 2017 (N = 1,210). The incidence of PMA violations was measured over a 15-year span. Substance misuse was defined a priori in the study as urine toxicology screen positive for illicit or nonprescribed controlled substances, patient engagement in prescription alteration, doctor-shopping, or diversion. RESULTS Most patients received a prescription for a controlled substance (77.4%). During enrollment, 488 (40.3%) patients had one or more violations of their PMA. One-third (33.4%) of pain service patients had a violation within 365 days of signing the agreement. Active tobacco smokers had double the incidence of agreement violation within the first 30 days of enrollment. Almost one-half (49.8%) of violations were due to inconsistent use of controlled substances.  https://www.selleckchem.com/products/tpen.html  Patients with any prior DWI/DUI or drug-related offense had a significantly increased rate of substance misuse (P  less then  0.0001). CONCLUSIONS PMA violations were common among a population of patients managed for chronic nonmalignant pain. Universal opioid prescribing precautions, including PMAs, require further investigation to assess their roles in mitigating the potential patient and societal harms associated with opioid prescribing. © 2020 American Academy of Pain Medicine. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail journals.permissions@oup.com.Many studies showed that anatomical connectivity supports both anatomical and functional hierarchies that span across the primary and association cortices in the cerebral cortex. Even though a structure-function relationship has been indicated to uncouple in the association cortex, it is still unknown whether anatomical connectivity can predict functional activations to the same degree throughout the cortex, and it remains unclear whether a hierarchy of this connectivity-function relationship (CFR) exists across the human cortex. We first addressed whether anatomical connectivity could be used to predict functional activations across different functional domains using multilinear regression models. Then, we characterized the CFR by predicting activity from anatomical connectivity throughout the cortex. We found that there is a hierarchy of CFR between sensory-motor and association cortices. Moreover, this CFR hierarchy was correlated to the functional and anatomical hierarchies, respectively, reflected in functional flexibility and the myelin map. Our results suggest a shared hierarchical mechanism in the cortex, a finding which provides important insights into the anatomical and functional organizations of the human brain. © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail journals.permission@oup.com.Soil salinity is a major source of abiotic plant stress, adversely affecting plant growth, development and productivity. Although the physiological and molecular mechanisms that underlie plant responses to salt stress are becoming increasingly understood, epigenetic modifications, such as histone methylations and their potential regulation of the transcription of masked genes at the genome level in response to salt stress, remain largely unclear. Castor bean, an important non-edible oil crop, has evolved the capacity to grow under salt stress. Here, based on high throughput RNA-seq and ChIP-seq data, we systematically investigated changes in genomic transcription and histone methylations using typical H3K4me3 and H3K27me3 markers in castor bean leaves subjected to salt stress. The results showed that gained or lost histone methylations were closely associated with activating or repressing gene expressions, though variations in both transcriptome and histone methylation modifications were relatively narrow in response to salt stress.