Influence of air velocity on indoor environment quality in unidirectional flow operating theatres: A study based on Computational Fluid Dynamics

It is necessary to characterise air-conditioning airflow in omanuscriprder to optimize hospital Indoor Environment Quality in high-performance operating theatres, and also reduce the risk of nosocomial infection due to pathogen contamination. The aim of this article is to study the prevalence of optimal healthy conditions from controlled air flow quality in hospital facilities, and to minimize energy consumption. To this purpose, the indoor air movement was modelled by Computational Fluid Dynamics technology. The optimal results showed that it is necessary to drive ultra-clean air ranging between 0.25 m/s and 0.40 m/s, values which are adequate to perform efficient sweeping and cleaning of the air near the patient, maintaining unidirectional air flow permanently as the air passes through the surgical field. These speeds must be taken into account as calculation parameters in new hospital facility projects, and as control parameters for the existing operating theatres

Low-count monoclonal B-cell lymphocytosis persists after seven years of follow up and is associated with a poorer outcome

Low-count monoclonal B-cell lymphocytosis is defined by the presence of very low numbers of circulating clonal B cells, usually phenotypically similar to chronic lymphocytic leukemia cells, whose biological and clinical significance remains elusive. Herein, we re-evaluated 65/91 low-count monoclonal B-cell lymphocytosis cases (54 chronic lymphocytic leukemia-like and 11 non-chronic lymphocytic leukemia-like) followed-up for a median of seven years, using high-sensitivity flow cytometry and interphase fluorescence in situ hybridization. Overall, the clone size significantly increased in 69% of low-count monoclonal B-cell lymphocytosis cases, but only one subject progressed to high-count monoclonal B-cell lymphocytosis. In parallel, the frequency of cytogenetic alterations increased over time (32% vs. 61% of cases, respectively). The absolute number of the major T-cell and natural killer cell populations also increased, but only among chronic lymphocytic leukemia-like cases with increased clone size vs. age- and sex-matched controls. Although progression to chronic lymphocytic leukemia was not observed, the overall survival of low-count monoclonal B-cell lymphocytosis individuals was significantly reduced vs. non-monoclonal B-cell lymphocytosis controls (P=0.03) plus the general population from the same region (P≤0.001), particularly among females (P=0.01); infection and cancer were the main causes of death in low-count monoclonal B-cell lymphocytosis. In summary, despite the fact that mid-term progression from low-count monoclonal B-cell lymphocytosis to high-count monoclonal B-cell lymphocytosis and chronic lymphocytic leukemia appears to be unlikely, these clones persist at increased numbers, usually carrying more genetic alterations, and might thus be a marker of an impaired immune system indirectly associated with a poorer outcome, particularly among females.This work was supported by the RD06/0020/0035 and RD12/0036/0048 grants from Red Temática de Investigación Cooperativa en Cáncer (RTICC), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, (Madrid, Spain and FONDOS FEDER); CB16/12/00400 grant (CIBERONC, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, (Madrid, Spain and FONDOS FEDER); the FIS PI06/0824-FEDER, PS09/02430-FEDER, PI12/00905- FEDER, DTS15/00119-FEDER, PI16/00787-FEDER and PI17/00399-FEDER grants, from the Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria of Instituto de Salud Carlos III; the GRS206/A/08 grant, (Ayuda al Grupo GR37 de Excelencia, SAN/1778/2009) from the Gerencia Regional de Salud (Consejería de Educación and Consejería de Sanidad of Castilla y León, Valladolid, Spain) and the SA079U14 grant (Consejería de Educación and Consejería de Sanidad of Castilla y León, Valladolid, Spain). ML Gutiérrez is supported by grant PTA2014-09963-I from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III

Registration of ‘Alba’ Barley

'Alba' (Reg. No. [CV-355, PI 672535]) is a winter, six-row barley released by the Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station in 2012. The name “Alba” was chosen due to the bright and attractive appearance of the crop at maturity. In high rainfall environments, it has a notable yield advantage over check varieties and maintains excellent test weight and kernel plumpness. These advantages are, in part, attributable to resistance to barley stripe rust (incited by Puccinia striiformis f. sp. hordei) and scald (incited by Rhynchosporium commune). The principal end-use of Alba grain is as feed, but it could also be used for food (after pearling) and preliminary tests show that it can be successfully malted and used in craft brewing.This is an author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by the Crop Science Society of America, Inc. and can be found at: https://dl.sciencesocieties.org/publications/jpr,The ‘Alba’ (Reg. No. CV-355, PI 672535) is the registration number that has been assigned to this winter, six-row barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) cultivar. The registration number for ‘Alba’ (Reg. No. CV-355, PI 672535) was assigned after the authors' final manuscript was accepted for publication and may be lacking in the version that appears here

CD69 expression on regulatory T cells protects from immune damage after myocardial infarction.

Increasing evidences advocate for an important function of T cells in controlling immune homeostasis and pathogenesis after myocardial infarction (MI), although the underlying molecular mechanisms remain elusive. In this study, a broad analysis of immune markers in 283 patients revealed a significant CD69 overexpression on Treg cells after MI. Our results in mice showed that CD69 expression on Treg cells increased survival after left-anterior-descending coronary artery (LAD)-ligation. Cd69-/- mice developed strong IL-17+ γδT cell responses after ischemia that increased myocardial inflammation and, consequently, worsened cardiac function. CD69+ Treg cells, by induction of AhR-dependent CD39 ectonucleotidase activity, induced apoptosis and decreased IL-17A production in γδT cells. Adoptive transfer of CD69+ Treg cells to Cd69-/- mice after LAD-ligation reduced IL-17+ γδT cell recruitment, thus increasing survival. Consistently, clinical data from two independent cohorts of patients indicated that increased CD69 expression in peripheral blood cells after acute MI was associated with a lower risk of re-hospitalization for heart failure (HF) after 2.5 years of follow-up. This result remained significant after adjustment for age, sex and traditional cardiac damage biomarkers. Our data highlight CD69 expression on Treg cells as a potential prognostic factor and a therapeutic option to prevent HF after MI.This study was supported by competitive grants from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCIN), through the Carlos III Institute of Health (ISCIII)-Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria (PI22/01759) to P.M.; RTI2018-094727-B-100 to J. M-G; Comunidad de Madrid grants S2017/BMD-3671-INFLAMUNE-CM to P.M. and FSM.; Fundació La Marató TV3 (20152330 31) to J.M-G and F.S-M.; Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCIN) RTI2018-099357-B-I00, and CIBERFES (CB16/10/00282), Human Frontier Science Program (grant RGP0016/2018), and Leducq Transatlantic Networks (17CVD04) to JAE. AC is supported by Marie Skłodowska- Curie grant (agreement No. 713673). R.B-D. is supported by Formación de Profesorado Universitario (FPU16/02780) program from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports. The CNIC is supported by the ISCIII, the MCIN and the Pro CNIC Foundation, and is a Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence (SEV-2015-0505).S

Disease activity influences cardiovascular risk reclassification based on carotid ultrasound in patients with psoriatic arthritis

ABSTRACT: Objective. Because the addition of carotid ultrasound (US) into composite cardiovascular (CV) risk scores has been found effective for identifying patients with inflammatory arthritis and high CV risk, we aimed to determine whether its use would facilitate the reclassification of patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA) into the very high Systematic Coronary Risk Evaluation (SCORE) risk category and whether this might be related to disease features. Methods. This was a cross-sectional study involving 206 patients who fulfilled ClASsification for Psoriatic ARthritis criteria for PsA, and 179 controls. We assessed lipid profile, SCORE, disease activity measurements, and the presence of carotid plaques and carotid intima-media thickness by ultrasonography. A multivariable regression analysis, adjusted for classic CV risk factors, was performed to evaluate whether the risk of reclassification could be explained by disease-related features and to assess the most parsimonious combination of risk reclassification predictors. Results. Forty-seven percent of patients were reclassified into a very high SCORE risk category after carotid US compared to 26% of controls (p < 0.001). Patients included in the low SCORE risk category were those who were more commonly reclassified (30% vs 14%, p = 0.002). The Disease Activity Index for PsA (DAPSA) score was associated with reclassification (? 1.10, 95% CI 1.02?1.19; p = 0.019) after adjusting for age and traditional CV risk factors. A model containing SCORE plus age, statin use, and DAPSA score yielded the highest discriminatory accuracy compared to the SCORE-alone model (area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve 0.863, 95% CI 0.789?0.936 vs 0.716, 95% CI 0.668?0.764; p < 0.001). Conclusion. Patients with PsA are more frequently reclassified into the very high SCORE risk category following carotid US assessment than controls. This was independently explained by the disease activity.Funding: This work was supported by a grant to I.F-A. from the Spanish Ministry of Health, Subdirección General de Evaluación y Fomento de la Investigación, Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2013-2016 and by Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional -FEDER - (Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias, FIS PI14/00394, PI17/00083) Professor González-Gay research was supported by European Union FEDER funds and by the “Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria” (grants PI06/0024, PS09/00748, PI12/00060, PI15/00525 and PI18/00043) of the ‘Instituto de Salud Carlos III’ (ISCIII, Health Ministry, Spain). It was also partially supported by RETICS Programs RD12/0009 (RIER), RD12/0009/0013 and RD16/0012 from the ‘Instituto de Salud Carlos III’ (ISCIII, Health Ministry, Spain)

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected

The USDA Barley Core Collection:Genetic Diversity, Population Structure, and Potential for Genome-Wide Association Studies

New sources of genetic diversity must be incorporated into plant breeding programs if they are to continue increasing grain yield and quality, and tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses. Germplasm collections provide a source of genetic and phenotypic diversity, but characterization of these resources is required to increase their utility for breeding programs. We used a barley SNP iSelect platform with 7,842 SNPs to genotype 2,417 barley accessions sampled from the USDA National Small Grains Collection of 33,176 accessions. Most of the accessions in this core collection are categorized as landraces or cultivars/breeding lines and were obtained from more than 100 countries. Both STRUCTURE and principal component analysis identified five major subpopulations within the core collection, mainly differentiated by geographical origin and spike row number (an inflorescence architecture trait). Different patterns of linkage disequilibrium (LD) were found across the barley genome and many regions of high LD contained traits involved in domestication and breeding selection. The genotype data were used to define 'mini-core' sets of accessions capturing the majority of the allelic diversity present in the core collection. These 'mini-core' sets can be used for evaluating traits that are difficult or expensive to score. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of 'hull cover', 'spike row number', and 'heading date' demonstrate the utility of the core collection for locating genetic factors determining important phenotypes. The GWAS results were referenced to a new barley consensus map containing 5,665 SNPs. Our results demonstrate that GWAS and high-density SNP genotyping are effective tools for plant breeders interested in accessing genetic diversity in large germplasm collections

Genetic Diversity among Wheat Accessions from the USDA National Small Grains Collection

Accessions of common wheat (Triticum aestivum L. subsp. aestivum) from the USDA–ARS National Small Grains Collection (NSGC) are a resource for wheat scientists worldwide. The genetic diversity of the wheat core subset, representing approximately 10% of the collection’s 42,138 T. aestivum accessions, was examined using 390 diversity arrays technology (DArT) markers, 4941 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), and descriptor data. The marker profiles revealed duplicates, which were excluded to form an informative core (iCore) of 3230 accessions. The iCore population structure and diversity within various subgroups were examined with analysis of molecular variance, principal coordinate analysis, cluster analysis, and by ranking the contribution of individual accessions to overall diversity. Accession groups based on molecular marker data corresponded well to their geographic origin, and population structure was accounted for primarily by differences between Iranian landrace accessions and the rest of the accessions. Accessions classified as breeding lines were overrepresented among those ranked as most diverse based on SNP data, whereas Iranian landraces were underrepresented. Although less diverse as a group, Iranian landrace accessions had a higher frequency of resistance to bunt diseases and Russian wheat aphid compared with the iCore as a whole. The present study provides support for establishing core subsets based on geographic origin of accessions and will be a basis for further study of diversity among NSGC wheats