Characterization of an infectious pancreatic necrosis (IPN) virus carrier cell culture with resistance to superinfection with heterologous viruses

A state of persistence of a non susceptible fish cell line with infectious pancreatic necrosis virus (IPNV) was established in vitro by experimental infection. The persistently infected culture showed sustained production of infectious virus and could be continuously passaged for months. A distinct feature of this culture is that only a very small fraction of the cells harbours virus replication, in contrast to other reported IPNV-persistently infected cells from salmonid fish, where nearly all the cells express viral antigens. In spite of the small number of detectable IPNV-infected cells, the carrier culture shows resistance to superinfection with homologous as well as heterologous viruses. Temperature shift-up experiments indicate that viral interference is due to continuous replication of IPNV in the culture. Quantitation of Mx gene expression suggested that the interference phenomenon could be mediated by the activation of the interferon (IFN) system. However, conditioned medium from the IPNV-infected cell cultures only marginally protected other cells against VHSV infection, indicating that other type I IFN-independent mechanism may be underlying the resistance of the persistently infected culture to infection with heterologous viruses. Our study defines a novel in vitro model of IPNV persistence and contributes to the understanding of the widespread distribution of aquabirnaviruses in marine and fresh water environments by establishing a carrier state in non susceptible fish species

Fruit splitting in 'Nova' hybrid mandarin in relation to the anatomy of the fruit and fruit set treatments

Fruil splining in the mandarin orange cultivar ‘Nova’ is related lo lhe prescnce of an open stylar end in lhe fruit This opening arises from a cavily present at lhe base of lhe style, and is formed in a varjable proportion of fruits. The edis at lhe boltom of lhis styie cavily form a rind-lilce lissue which develop into a navel struclure. The size ofthis nave! is larger in open-slylar end bearing fruits and, according!y, ia sp!it fruil. The number of split fruil per tree is unrelaled to lhe number of fruit set. The application of gibberel!ic acid (GA,) has a variable effect on set and splitting depending on its timing. This hormone increases fruit sp!ilting when app!ied aI flowering, bel reduces it when applied shortly afler lhe end of lhe June drop. Ilhas on!y a minor effect on fruit seI

La Panera del Valle, un ejemplo del valioso patrimonio etnográfico asturiano y una nueva línea de estudio de sus decoraciones polícromas

Little is known about the polychrome decoration of Asturian hórreos and paneras, their materials an tecniques. Filling this gap in the research is of paramount importance in order to protect this heritage, with over four centuries of history in some cases.Through the use of scientific methods like scanning electron microscopy in combination with a dispersive X-ray energy system (SEM-EDX), and gas chromatography – mass spectrometry (GC-SM), microsamples from the panera “del Valle” in Allande have been analysed.Las policromías que decoran los hórreos y paneras asturianos han sido, a nivel matérico y de técnica de ejecución, unas absolutas desconocidas hasta la fecha. Cubrir este vacío es fundamental para la salvaguarda y conservación de este patrimonio que, en algunos casos supera los cuatro siglos de antigüedad.Métodos científicos de análisis como la microscopía electrónica de barrido acoplada a un sistema de energía dispersiva de rayos X (SEM-EDX) y la cromatografía de gases – espectrometría de masas (GC-SM) han permitido estudiar este aspecto a partir de las micromuestras tomadas en la panera de “El Valle” en el concejo de Allande

The "Panera del Valle", an example of valuable asturian ethnographic heritage and a new line of studies in polichromies

Las policromías que decoran los hórreos y paneras asturianos han sido, a nivel matérico y de técnica de ejecución, unas absolutas desconocidas hasta la fecha. Cubrir este vacío es fundamental para la salvaguarda y conservación de este patrimonio que, en algunos casos supera los cuatro siglos de antigüedad. Métodos científicos de análisis como la microscopía electrónica de barrido acoplada a un sistema de energía dispersiva de rayos X (SEM-EDX) y la cromatografía de gases – espectrometría de masas (GC-SM) han permitido estudiar este aspecto a partir de las micromuestras tomadas en la panera de “El Valle” en el concejo de Allande.Little is known about the polychrome decoration of Asturian hórreos and paneras, their materials an tecniques. Filling this gap in the research is of paramount importance in order to protect this heritage, with over four centuries of history in some cases. Through the use of scientific methods like scanning electron microscopy in combination with a dispersive X-ray energy system (SEM-EDX), and gas chromatography – mass spectrometry (GC-SM), microsamples from the panera “del Valle” in Allande have been analysed.Departamento de Historia del Arte. Universidad de Granada

Recurrence Rate and Morbidity after Ultrasound-guided Transvaginal Aspiration of Ultrasound Benign-appearing Adnexal Cystic Masses with and without Sclerotherapy: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

To determine the pooled recurrence rate of benign adnexal masses/cysts (namely simple cyst, endometrioma, hydrosalpinx, peritoneal cyst) after transvaginal ultrasound-guided aspiration, with or without sclerotherapy

Semisupervised Speech Data Extraction from Basque Parliament Sessions and Validation on Fully Bilingual Basque–Spanish ASR

In this paper, a semisupervised speech data extraction method is presented and applied to create a new dataset designed for the development of fully bilingual Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems for Basque and Spanish. The dataset is drawn from an extensive collection of Basque Parliament plenary sessions containing frequent code switchings. Since session minutes are not exact, only the most reliable speech segments are kept for training. To that end, we use phonetic similarity scores between nominal and recognized phone sequences. The process starts with baseline acoustic models trained on generic out-of-domain data, then iteratively updates the models with the extracted data and applies the updated models to refine the training dataset until the observed improvement between two iterations becomes small enough. A development dataset, involving five plenary sessions not used for training, has been manually audited for tuning and evaluation purposes. Cross-validation experiments (with 20 random partitions) have been carried out on the development dataset, using the baseline and the iteratively updated models. On average, Word Error Rate (WER) reduces from 16.57% (baseline) to 4.41% (first iteration) and further to 4.02% (second iteration), which corresponds to relative WER reductions of 73.4% and 8.8%, respectively. When considering only Basque segments, WER reduces on average from 16.57% (baseline) to 5.51% (first iteration) and further to 5.13% (second iteration), which corresponds to relative WER reductions of 66.7% and 6.9%, respectively. As a result of this work, a new bilingual Basque–Spanish resource has been produced based on Basque Parliament sessions, including 998 h of training data (audio segments + transcriptions), a development set (17 h long) designed for tuning and evaluation under a cross-validation scheme and a fully bilingual trigram language model.This work was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (OPEN-SPEECH project, PID2019-106424RB-I00) and by the Basque Government under the general support program to research groups (IT-1704-22)

Effect of 2.4-d exogenous application on the abscission and fruit growth in sweet orange. var. salustiana.

The effect of 2.4-D applications in full bloom on the abscission and fruit growth process was studied on sweet orange fruit in 20-year-old trees of Citrus sinensis (L.) Osbeck cv. Salustiana with a high flowering level. Abscission was determined on the whole tree and on the leafy inflorescences. Growth variables of the fruit were characterized (diameter, fresh and dry weight). 2.4-D application (20 mg L-1, 3.6 L per tree) increased the growth rate of the fruits and fruits size at maturity, however reduced the number of fruits which kept constant the yield at harvest. Differences between the diameter of the control fruits and the fruits treated with 2.4-D were observed during the early fruitlet development and until day 43 after anthesis. These differences increased with time following a linear relationship. For all the studied variables the diary increase level reaches the maximum by day 53, when the cell expansion of the vesicles starts

Narrow-diameter implants: are they a predictable treatment option? A literature review

Objective: To evaluate the predictability of narrow-diameter implants as a treatment option in routine clinical practice. A literature review was performed of studies reporting clinical results obtained with these implants. Survival rates, peri-implant bone loss and related complications were evaluated. The working hypothesis was that narrow-diameter implants offer clinical results similar to those obtained with implants of greater diameter. Material and Methods: A Medline-PubMed search covering the period between 2002 and 2012 was carried out. Studies published in English and with a follow-up period of at least 12 months were considered for inclusion. A manual search was also conducted in different journals with an important impact factor. Results: Twenty-one studies meeting the screening criteria were included in the literature review. A total of 2980 narrow-diameter implants placed in 1607 patients were analyzed. Conclusions: The results obtained from the literature indicate that narrow-diameter implants are a predictable treatment option, since they afford clinical results comparable to those obtained with implants of greater diameter

Growth of Escherichia coli in human milk and powdered infant formula under various treatments and feeding conditions in neonatal units

Milk supplied to neonates in neonatal units is kept at room temperature for some time, which could influence microbial growth. This study aims to evaluate the growth of Escherichia coli in HM and PIF under various treatments and conditions, as well as to determine the influence of different thawing methods on microbial growth in HM. The number of E. coli generations appearing over a 4 h period at 22 °C in HM (frozen; frozen and pasteurized; and frozen, pasteurized, and fortified) and in PIF (four brands) was determined. E. coli counts in HM inoculated and thawed using different methods were also compared. In frozen HM and in pasteurized and frozen HM, significant differences were found after 2.5 h and 1.5 h, respectively. In PIF, differences were found between 1.5 and 3 h. With regard to the thawing process, the lowest microorganism counts were obtained at 4 °C overnight; thus, it seems advisable to store milk at room temperature for a maximum of 1 h during administration in neonatal units. Thawing HM at 4 °C overnight should be the method of choice

Risk factors for non-melanoma skin cancer in kidney transplant patients in a Spanish population in the Mediterranean region

Non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) is the most frequent malignancy in organ transplant recipients. The aetiology of NMSC after transplant is multifactorial. The aim of this study was to determine the clinical and environmental factors involved in the development of NMSC in a Spanish kidney transplant population from the Mediterranean region. A total of 289 patients who had received a kidney transplant during the period January 1996 to December 2010 were included in the study. Both prospective and retrospective data were used. All patients underwent a structured interview and a complete examination of the skin. After a median follow-up of 72 months (range 12-180 months), 73 of the 289 patients (25.2%) developed 162 tumours. The ratio of basal cell carcinoma to squamous cell carcinoma was 2.21:1. The cumulative incidence of NMSC increased with the duration of immunosuppression, from 20.78% at 5 years, to 37.35% at 10 years to 53.08% at 15 years after transplantation. Age at the time of transplant, phototype and occupational sun exposure were associated with a higher risk of NMSC. NMSC is a significant clinical problem in kidney transplant recipients. This has implications for the development of prevention and surveillance strategies. Clinical and environmental factors may be used to identify those patients who are at risk for NMSC