The synzootic potential of common epidemics in chamois populations

Altres ajuts: acords transformatius de la UABSouthern chamois (Rupicapra pyrenaica) is a medium-sized and gregarious mountain ungulate with populations affected by periodic outbreaks of border disease virus (BD), infectious keratoconjunctivitis (IKC), and sarcoptic mange (SM). Even though the impact of each disease on chamois populations has been described in detail, there is a lack of information about the potential impact of concomitant epidemics and the synzootic potential (co-occurring enzootic or epizootic processes producing worse health outcomes in wildlife) on chamois populations. Furthermore, whether a specific order of apparition of epidemics is more or less harmful for the host population is practically unknown not only for chamois but also for most mammal populations. Using a population viability analysis (PVA), we studied the consequences of multiple disease outbreaks with synzootic potential on growth rates and probabilities of extinction of virtual populations exposed to hard winters, density dependence, and co-occurring BD, IKC, and SM outbreaks. Such infections are not under cross-immunity nor density-dependent processes and thus are supposed to affect population demography independently. Heavy snowfalls are also likely to occur in our simulated populations. Our simulations showed that a second outbreak, even caused by a low virulent pathogen, causes an increase in the probability of extinction of the host population with regard to the first outbreak. IKC-BD- and SM-BD-affected populations had a higher risk of becoming extinct in 50 years confirming the extra risk of multiple outbreaks on the viability of the affected populations

3PO: Programmed Far-Memory Prefetching for Oblivious Applications

Using memory located on remote machines, or far memory, as a swap space is a promising approach to meet the increasing memory demands of modern datacenter applications. Operating systems have long relied on prefetchers to mask the increased latency of fetching pages from swap space to main memory. Unfortunately, with traditional prefetching heuristics, performance still degrades when applications use far memory. In this paper we propose a new prefetching technique for far-memory applications. We focus our efforts on memory-intensive, oblivious applications whose memory access patterns are independent of their inputs, such as matrix multiplication. For this class of applications we observe that we can perfectly prefetch pages without relying on heuristics. However, prefetching perfectly without requiring significant application modifications is challenging. In this paper we describe the design and implementation of 3PO, a system that provides pre-planned prefetching for general oblivious applications. We demonstrate that 3PO can accelerate applications, e.g., running them 30-150% faster than with Linux's prefetcher with 20% local memory. We also use 3PO to understand the fundamental software overheads of prefetching in a paging-based system, and the minimum performance penalty that they impose when we run applications under constrained local memory.Comment: 14 page

Protective Effect of Intestinal Helminthiasis Against Tuberculosis Progression Is Abrogated by Intermittent Food Deprivation

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is still a major challenge for humankind. Because regions with the highest incidence also have a high prevalence of helminthiasis and nutritional scarcity, we wanted to understand the impact of these on TB progression. Methods: We have developed an experimental murine model for active TB in C3HeB/FeJ, coinfected with Trichuris muris and Heligmosomoides polygyrus nematodes, and exposed to an environmental mycobacterium (M. manresensis) and intermittent fasting. Cause-effect relationships among these factors were explored with Partial Least Squares Path modelling (PLSPM). Results: Previous parasitization had a major anti-inflammatory effect and reduced systemic levels of ADA, haptoglobin, local pulmonary levels of IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, CXCL-1, CXCL-5 and IL-10. Oral administration of heat-killed M. manresensis resulted in a similar outcome. Both interventions diminished pulmonary pathology and bacillary load, but intermittent food deprivation reduced this protective effect increasing stress and inflammation. The PLSPM revealed nematodes might have protective effects against TB progression. Conclusions: Significantly higher cortisol levels in food-deprivation groups showed it is a stressful condition, which might explain its deleterious effect. This highlights the impact of food security on TB eradication policies and the need to prioritize food supply over deworming activities.The project leading to these results has received funding from la Caixa Foundation (ID 100010434), under agreement LCF/ PR/GN16/10290002. This work was supported by the Plan Nacional I + D + I co-financed by ISCIII-Subdirección General de Evaluación and Fondo-EU de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) through PC contract IFI14/00015. LA was supported by the European Commission Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement TBVAC2020 No. 64338. The Experimental Tuberculosis Unit is accredited by the Catalan Agency for Management of University and Research Grants (AGAUR) with code 2017 SGR500 and the IGTP is a member of the CERCA network of institutes. ES and AT are supported by the SpanishMinisterio de Ciencia Innovación y Universidades (MICINN) through a Ramon y Cajal agreements (RYC-2016-21120; RYC-2017-22992). The research activities of CG-A are supported by a research fellow linked to the RYC-2016-21120

Resonance production by neutrinos: I. J=3/2 Resonances

The article contains general formulas for the production of J=3/2 resonances by neutrinos and antineutrinos. It specializes to the P_{33}(1232) resonance whose form factors are determined by theory and experiment and then are compared with experimental results at low and high energies. It is shown that the minimum in the low Q^2 region is a consequence of a combined effect from the vanishing of the vector form factors, the muon mass and Pauli blocking. Several improvements for the future investigations are suggested.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX, misprints corrected, 1 reference adde

Annual short-burst mass anthelmintic administration reduces tuberculosis severity but not prevalence in a wildlife reservoir

Introduction: Tuberculosis (TB), caused by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTC), is an important disease in both human and animal systems. Helminths are commonly found in coinfection with MTC and TB is often exacerbated in such coinfections. Long-term anthelmintic administration, to control helminths, can improve a host’s ability to control MTC infection. Mass drug administration programmes, in which anthelmintics are given only once or twice a year, leaving periods where helminth reinfection can occur, are common in both human and domestic animal populations. To date, the effect of such intermittent control programmes on MTC infection and severity has not been explored. Methods: Here we investigate the consequences of a ten-day, annual, mass ivermectin administration on TB prevalence and severity in free-ranging juvenile and yearling (<2 years) wild boar (Sus scrofa). Results: This single annual anthelmintic treatment administered over six years reduced TB severity. Further, the proportion of wild boar with severe TB continued to decrease with successive treatments. TB prevalence, however, did not decrease significantly over the course of the study. Discussion: While ivermectin has direct anti-mycobacterial effects in vitro, the short duration of treatment means that the reduction in TB severity we observe in wild boar is unlikely to be accounted for by such a direct mechanism. Disruption of the helminth community and subsequent modification or enhancement of the host immune response is a potential mechanism. Future work should examine the consequences of annual anthelmintic drug administration on helminth community composition and structure and on the host immunological responses through time

The NANOGrav 11-year Data Set: High-precision Timing of 45 Millisecond Pulsars

We present high-precision timing data over time spans of up to 11 years for 45 millisecond pulsars observed as part of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) project, aimed at detecting and characterizing low-frequency gravitational waves. The pulsars were observed with the Arecibo Observatory and/or the Green Bank Telescope at frequencies ranging from 327 MHz to 2.3 GHz. Most pulsars were observed with approximately monthly cadence, and six high-timing-precision pulsars were observed weekly. All were observed at widely separated frequencies at each observing epoch in order to fit for time-variable dispersion delays. We describe our methods for data processing, time-of-arrival (TOA) calculation, and the implementation of a new, automated method for removing outlier TOAs. We fit a timing model for each pulsar that includes spin, astrometric, and (for binary pulsars) orbital parameters; time-variable dispersion delays; and parameters that quantify pulse-profile evolution with frequency. The timing solutions provide three new parallax measurements, two new Shapiro delay measurements, and two new measurements of significant orbital-period variations. We fit models that characterize sources of noise for each pulsar. We find that 11 pulsars show significant red noise, with generally smaller spectral indices than typically measured for non-recycled pulsars, possibly suggesting a different origin. A companion paper uses these data to constrain the strength of the gravitational-wave background

A922 Sequential measurement of 1 hour creatinine clearance (1-CRCL) in critically ill patients at risk of acute kidney injury (AKI)

Meeting abstrac

Rationale, study design, and analysis plan of the Alveolar Recruitment for ARDS Trial (ART): Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Background: Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is associated with high in-hospital mortality. Alveolar recruitment followed by ventilation at optimal titrated PEEP may reduce ventilator-induced lung injury and improve oxygenation in patients with ARDS, but the effects on mortality and other clinical outcomes remain unknown. This article reports the rationale, study design, and analysis plan of the Alveolar Recruitment for ARDS Trial (ART). Methods/Design: ART is a pragmatic, multicenter, randomized (concealed), controlled trial, which aims to determine if maximum stepwise alveolar recruitment associated with PEEP titration is able to increase 28-day survival in patients with ARDS compared to conventional treatment (ARDSNet strategy). We will enroll adult patients with ARDS of less than 72 h duration. The intervention group will receive an alveolar recruitment maneuver, with stepwise increases of PEEP achieving 45 cmH(2)O and peak pressure of 60 cmH2O, followed by ventilation with optimal PEEP titrated according to the static compliance of the respiratory system. In the control group, mechanical ventilation will follow a conventional protocol (ARDSNet). In both groups, we will use controlled volume mode with low tidal volumes (4 to 6 mL/kg of predicted body weight) and targeting plateau pressure &lt;= 30 cmH2O. The primary outcome is 28-day survival, and the secondary outcomes are: length of ICU stay; length of hospital stay; pneumothorax requiring chest tube during first 7 days; barotrauma during first 7 days; mechanical ventilation-free days from days 1 to 28; ICU, in-hospital, and 6-month survival. ART is an event-guided trial planned to last until 520 events (deaths within 28 days) are observed. These events allow detection of a hazard ratio of 0.75, with 90% power and two-tailed type I error of 5%. All analysis will follow the intention-to-treat principle. Discussion: If the ART strategy with maximum recruitment and PEEP titration improves 28-day survival, this will represent a notable advance to the care of ARDS patients. Conversely, if the ART strategy is similar or inferior to the current evidence-based strategy (ARDSNet), this should also change current practice as many institutions routinely employ recruitment maneuvers and set PEEP levels according to some titration method.Hospital do Coracao (HCor) as part of the Program 'Hospitais de Excelencia a Servico do SUS (PROADI-SUS)'Brazilian Ministry of Healt

Systems for Using Far Memory in Datacenters

Datacenter efficiency has become increasingly relevant, as the end of Moore's Law and Dennard scaling have caused CPU and memory performance to begin plateauing. Resource disaggregation is a recent datacenter design point, where server nodes share remote resources through a fast (usually RDMA-based) network, enabling greater execution flexibility and performance in datacenters. Remote or far memory--an instance of resource disaggregation--increases flexibility because nodes can access more memory than locally available. And performance in distributed applications can improve as RDMA provides high-performance access to shared state. This dissertation describes two networked systems that allow server nodes in a data center to leverage far memory. First, WICkit is a framework and runtime for Where-Independent Code. WICs are a location-independent abstraction representing complex remote memory accesses, e.g., accessing a value in a hashmap. Without code changes, the WICkit runtime can execute WICs at the client, server, and SmartNIC CPU locations. As different locations provide different performance and resource trade-offs, WICkit allows users to flexibly choose the location when execution begins while obtaining comparable performance to location-specific systems.Second, Cluster Far Memory is a system that transparently allows existing jobs to access far memory. CFM includes a fast swapping mechanism and a far memory-aware job scheduler that enable far memory support at rack scale. Using CFM for memory-intensive workloads, a rack can improve its throughput on the order of 10% or more without increasing the total amount of memory in it