Placentation in dolphins from the Amazon River Basin: the Boto, Inia geoffrensis, and the Tucuxi, Sotalia fluviatilis

A recent reassessment of the phylogenetic affinities of cetaceans makes it timely to compare their placentation with that of the artiodactyls. We studied the placentae of two sympatric species of dolphin from the Amazon River Basin, representing two distinct families. The umbilical cord branched to supply a bilobed allantoic sac. Small blood vessels and smooth muscle bundles were found within the stroma of the cord. Foci of squamous metaplasia occurred in the allanto-amnion and allantochorion. The interhemal membrane of the placenta was of the epitheliochorial type. Two different types of trophoblastic epithelium were seen. Most was of the simple columnar type and indented by fetal capillaries. However, there were also areolar regions with tall columnar trophoblast and these were more sparsely supplied with capillaries. The endometrium was well vascularised and richly supplied with actively secreting glands. These findings are consistent with the current view that Cetacea are nested within Artiodactyla as sister group to the hippopotamids

First report of cucurbit chlorotic yellows virus infecting watermelon and zucchini in the Canary Islands, Spain

This work was funded by grants from Spanish Ministerio de Econolnia, industria y competitividad (RTA2017-00061-C03-02) and from Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias (IVlA) (51912), both co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).Alfaro Fernández, AO.; Espino De Paz, AI.; Botella-Guillen, M.; Font San Ambrosio, MI.; Sanauja, E.; Galipienso, L.; Rubio, L. (2022). First report of cucurbit chlorotic yellows virus infecting watermelon and zucchini in the Canary Islands, Spain. Plant Disease. 106(7):1-1. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-10-21-2296-PDN11106

Evaluación de la eficacia de los procesos de esterilización de consultorios odontológicos del distrito VI de la provincia de buenos aires, argentina 2006 - 2007, mediante la utilización de indicadores biológicos

En un consultorio odontológico, diversas fuentes de posible infección, como saliva, sangre, instrumentos contaminados, etc., pueden ser transmisores de microorganismos tanto a pacientes como al personal odontológico. El objeti vo del presente trabajo fue evaluar la eficacia de los procesos de esterilización de los consultorios odontológicos del Distrito VI de la Provincia de Buenos Aires mediante la utilización de Indicadores Biológicos. Participaron del estudio 283 odontólogos que llevaron a cabo un total de 320 procesos de esterilización por calor seco y 19 por calor húmedo. En base a los resultados obtenidos se observó que el 35 % (112/320) de los procesos de esterilización por calor seco controlados no cumplieron con los requ isitos, de los cuales 63 repitieron el control y, 55/63 (87%) resolvieron el problema mediante distintas acciones correctivas. Con respecto a la esterilización por calor húmedo, el 32 % (6/19) de los procesos no cumplieron con los requisitos, en 3 de los 6 positivos se efectuaron correcciones simples obteniéndose resultados satisfactorios. El presente trabajo muestra la importancia para la comunidad, de la implementación de rutina de un sistema de control que permita garantizar la esterilidad de los materi ales utilizados en los consultorios odontológicos

Protective efficacy of a live attenuated vaccine against Argentine hemorrhagic fever. AHF Study Group

Fil: Maiztegui, Julio I. ANLIS Dr.C.G.Malbrán. Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Virales Humanas; Argentina.Fil: McKee Jr, K. T. Womack Army Medical Center, Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Estados Unidos.Fil: Barrera Oro, J G. ANLIS Dr.C.G.Malbrán; Argentina.Fil: Harrison, L H. University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health,Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Estados Unidos.Fil: Gibbs, P H. Division of Disease Assessment, US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, Maryland 21701; Estados Unidos.Fil: Feuillade, María Rosa. ANLIS Dr.C.G.Malbrán. Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Virales Humanas; Argentina.Fil: Enria, Delia. ANLIS Dr.C.G.Malbrán. Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Virales Humanas; Argentina.Fil: Briggiler, Ana M. ANLIS Dr.C.G.Malbrán. Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Virales Humanas; Argentina.Fil: Levis, Silvana. ANLIS Dr.C.G.Malbrán. Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Virales Humanas; Argentina.Fil: Ambrosio, Ana María. ANLIS Dr.C.G.Malbrán. Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Virales Humanas; Argentina.Fil: Halsey, N A. Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, Maryland; Estados Unidos.Fil: Peters, C J. Special Pathogens Branch, Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia; Estados Unidos.Argentine hemorrhagic fever (AHF), caused by the arenavirus Junin, is a major public health problem among agricultural workers in Argentina. A prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, efficacy trial of Candid 1, a live attenuated Junin virus vaccine, was conducted over two consecutive epidemic seasons among 6500 male agricultural workers in the AHF-endemic region. Twenty-three men developed laboratory-confirmed AHF during the study; 22 received placebo and 1 received vaccine (vaccine efficacy 95%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 82%-99%). Three additional subjects in each group developed laboratory-confirmed Junin virus infection associated with mild illnesses that did not fulfill the clinical case definition for AHF, yielding a protective efficacy for prevention of any illness associated with Junin virus infection of 84% (95% CI, 60%-94%). No serious adverse events were attributed to vaccination. Candid 1, the first vaccine for the prevention of illness caused by an arenavirus, is safe and highly efficacious

Modeling of the condyle elements within a biomechanical knee model

The development of a computational multibody knee model able to capture some of the fundamental properties of the human knee articulation is presented. This desideratum is reached by including the kinetics of the real knee articulation. The research question is whether an accurate modeling of the condyle contact in the knee will lead to reproduction of the complex combination of flexion/extension, abduction/adduction and tibial rotation ob-served in the real knee? The model is composed by two anatomic segments, the tibia and the femur, whose characteristics are functions of the geometric and anatomic properties of the real bones. The biomechanical model characterization is developed under the framework of multibody systems methodologies using Cartesian coordinates. The type of approach used in the proposed knee model is the joint surface contact conditions between ellipsoids, represent-ing the two femoral condyles, and points, representing the tibial plateau and the menisci. These elements are closely fitted to the actual knee geometry. This task is undertaken by con-sidering a parameter optimization process to replicate experimental data published in the lit-erature, namely that by Lafortune and his co-workers in 1992. Then, kinematic data in the form of flexion/extension patterns are imposed on the model corresponding to the stance phase of the human gait. From the results obtained, by performing several computational simulations, it can be observed that the knee model approximates the average secondary mo-tion patterns observed in the literature. Because the literature reports considerable inter-individual differences in the secondary motion patterns, the knee model presented here is also used to check whether it is possible to reproduce the observed differences with reasonable variations of bone shape parameters. This task is accomplished by a parameter study, in which the main variables that define the geometry of condyles are taken into account. It was observed that the data reveal a difference in secondary kinematics of the knee in flexion ver-sus extension. The likely explanation for this fact is the elastic component of the secondary motions created by the combination of joint forces and soft tissue deformations. The proposed knee model is, therefore, used to investigate whether this observed behavior can be explained by reasonable elastic deformations of the points representing the menisci in the model.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - PROPAFE – Design and Development of a Patello-Femoral Prosthesis (PTDC/EME-PME/67687/2006), DACHOR - Multibody Dynamics and Control of Hybrid Active Orthoses MIT-Pt/BSHHMS/0042/2008, BIOJOINTS - Development of advanced biological joint models for human locomotion biomechanics (PTDC/EME-PME/099764/2008)

Low-Resolution Molecular Models Reveal the Oligomeric State of the PPAR and the Conformational Organization of Its Domains in Solution

The peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs) regulate genes involved in lipid and carbohydrate metabolism, and are targets of drugs approved for human use. Whereas the crystallographic structure of the complex of full length PPARγ and RXRα is known, structural alterations induced by heterodimer formation and DNA contacts are not well understood. Herein, we report a small-angle X-ray scattering analysis of the oligomeric state of hPPARγ alone and in the presence of retinoid X receptor (RXR). The results reveal that, in contrast with other studied nuclear receptors, which predominantly form dimers in solution, hPPARγ remains in the monomeric form by itself but forms heterodimers with hRXRα. The low-resolution models of hPPARγ/RXRα complexes predict significant changes in opening angle between heterodimerization partners (LBD) and extended and asymmetric shape of the dimer (LBD-DBD) as compared with X-ray structure of the full-length receptor bound to DNA. These differences between our SAXS models and the high-resolution crystallographic structure might suggest that there are different conformations of functional heterodimer complex in solution. Accordingly, hydrogen/deuterium exchange experiments reveal that the heterodimer binding to DNA promotes more compact and less solvent-accessible conformation of the receptor complex

Many Labs 5:Testing pre-data collection peer review as an intervention to increase replicability

Replication studies in psychological science sometimes fail to reproduce prior findings. If these studies use methods that are unfaithful to the original study or ineffective in eliciting the phenomenon of interest, then a failure to replicate may be a failure of the protocol rather than a challenge to the original finding. Formal pre-data-collection peer review by experts may address shortcomings and increase replicability rates. We selected 10 replication studies from the Reproducibility Project: Psychology (RP:P; Open Science Collaboration, 2015) for which the original authors had expressed concerns about the replication designs before data collection; only one of these studies had yielded a statistically significant effect (p < .05). Commenters suggested that lack of adherence to expert review and low-powered tests were the reasons that most of these RP:P studies failed to replicate the original effects. We revised the replication protocols and received formal peer review prior to conducting new replication studies. We administered the RP:P and revised protocols in multiple laboratories (median number of laboratories per original study = 6.5, range = 3?9; median total sample = 1,279.5, range = 276?3,512) for high-powered tests of each original finding with both protocols. Overall, following the preregistered analysis plan, we found that the revised protocols produced effect sizes similar to those of the RP:P protocols (?r = .002 or .014, depending on analytic approach). The median effect size for the revised protocols (r = .05) was similar to that of the RP:P protocols (r = .04) and the original RP:P replications (r = .11), and smaller than that of the original studies (r = .37). Analysis of the cumulative evidence across the original studies and the corresponding three replication attempts provided very precise estimates of the 10 tested effects and indicated that their effect sizes (median r = .07, range = .00?.15) were 78% smaller, on average, than the original effect sizes (median r = .37, range = .19?.50)