Studies on Schistosomiasis. 9. Pathology of the bovine urinary tract

Pathological findings in the urinary tract of 40 head of cattle, experimentally or naturally infested with Schistosoma mattheei, are presented. Lesions of the ureter found in 57,5% of the cases consisted of linear granulomata with associated haemorrhages or granular patches. The segmental hydro-ureter caused by disruption of the muscular tunic by a granular patch type of lesion was a prominent finding. Bilharzial bladder lesions observed in 75% of the animals were of 4 distinct types: granulomatous foci 1-2 mm in diameter, granular patches, polypoid patches and polyps. In all cases with bladder lesions the fundus was affected; neck and trigonal lesions tended to occur in the more severely affected bladders. The Hoeppli phenomenon was more common than in other species and was associated with the subacute stage of lesion. Urinary bladders with ovum granulomata: throughout the lamina had more severe microscopic lesions than those with ovum granulomata in the submucosa only. The stage of development of the bladder lesion was related directly to the length of infestation of the animal. There was an inverse ratio between the percentage of live ova in the bladders and increased chronicity of the lesions. Since the effects of reinfestation on the pathology were quantitative, a larger percentage of the reinfested animals had bladder and ureteric lesions, which tended to be more severe and, in the bladder, more chronic than in singly infested animals. A significant rank correlation was observed between the W-D index (relating the worm burdens and the duration of infestation) and the severity of macroscopic and microscopic bladder lesions (P< 0,001). The duration of infestation and the W-D index were significantly greater in animals with bladder lesions than in those without (P< 0,000 1) and no lesions of the bladders and ureters were found in animals infested less than 185 days, indicating an extended prepatent period in bovine urinary schistosomiasis. On the other hand, there were no significant differences between the worm burdens of animals with or without bladder lesions, suggesting that the first lesions appear between 70 and 185 days after infestation, regardless of the number of worms present. Possible migration routes to the urinary tract are discussed. The bilharzial granulomata observed in the renal pelvis of 20% of the animals is the first reported incidence of bilharzial lesions of the renal pelvis. The incidence of renal parenchymal lesions in infested animals was more than double that in uninfested controls.The articles have been scanned in colour with a HP Scanjet 5590; 300dpi. Adobe Acrobat XI Pro was used to OCR the text and also for the merging and conversion to the final presentation PDF-format

Evidence for Unusual Dynamical Arrest Scenario in Short Ranged Colloidal Systems

Extensive molecular dynamics simulation studies of particles interacting via a short ranged attractive square-well (SW) potential are reported. The calculated loci of constant diffusion coefficient $D$ in the temperature-packing fraction plane show a re-entrant behavior, i.e. an increase of diffusivity on cooling, confirming an important part of the high volume-fraction dynamical-arrest scenario earlier predicted by theory for particles with short ranged potentials. The more efficient localization mechanism induced by the short range bonding provides, on average, additional free volume as compared to the hard-sphere case and results in faster dynamics.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Studies on schistosomiasis. 6. A field outbreak of bilharzia in cattle

An outbreak of bilharzia (Schistosoma mattheei) infestation involving about 100 oxen on the farm Otthilie near Tolwe in northern Transvaal is described. Infestation of the cattle appears to have occurred per os from a single drinking trough. The cattle showed clinical signs and pathological lesions of both the reinfestation and the acute syndromes. The worm burdens were the highest recorded hitherto in naturally infested cattle. Severe macroscopic clay pipe stem periportal fibrosis, granulomata of the ureters and severe grey pigmentation of the lungs, are described for the first time in naturally infested cattle. There was more marked liver pigmentation than had been encountered previously in this host. A striking feature in every case was conspicuous congestion and enlargement of the ileo-cecal valve, which was dark red in colour. Treatment of affected animals with injectable trichlorphon controlled the outbreak without causing mass embolism and liver infarcts. At least 11 treatments at a dosage level of 10-12 mg/kg per treatment at 3-5 day intervals are necessary. Faecal examinations for eggs or miracidia cannot be used to assess the worm burden or the clinical state of the animal. Moreover, it is suggested that this disease may be confused with other conditions and this probably accounts for the rarity of reports of outbreaks in ruminants.The articles have been scanned in colour with a HP Scanjet 5590; 300dpi. Adobe Acrobat XI Pro was used to OCR the text and also for the merging and conversion to the final presentation PDF-format

Multimodal multi-center analysis of electroconvulsive therapy effects in depression: Brainwide gray matter increase without functional changes

Background: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is an effective treatment for severe depression and induces gray matter (GM) increases in the brain. Small-scale studies suggest that ECT also leads to changes in brain functioning, but findings are inconsistent. In this study, we investigated the influence of ECT on changes in both brain structure and function and their relation to clinical improvement using multicenter neuroimaging data from the Global ECT-MRI Research Collaboration (GEMRIC). Methods: We analyzed T1-weighted structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and functional resting-state MRI data of 88 individuals (49 male) with depressive episodes before and within one week after ECT. We performed voxel-based morphometry on the structural data and calculated fractional amplitudes of low-frequency fluctuations, regional homogeneity, degree centrality, functional connectomics, and hippocampus connectivity for the functional data in both unimodal and multimodal analyses. Longitudinal effects in the ECT group were compared to repeated measures of healthy controls (n = 27). Results: Wide-spread increases in GM volume were found in patients following ECT. In contrast, no changes in any of the functional measures were observed, and there were no significant differences in structural or functional changes between ECT responders and non-responders. Multimodal analysis revealed that volume increases in the striatum, supplementary motor area and fusiform gyrus were associated with local changes in brain function. Conclusion: These results confirm wide-spread increases in GM volume, but suggest that this is not accompanied by functional changes or associated with clinical response. Instead, focal changes in brain function appear related to individual differences in brain volume increases.publishedVersio

Comprehensive evaluation of deconvolution methods for human brain gene expression

Transcriptome deconvolution aims to estimate the cellular composition of an RNA sample from its gene expression data, which in turn can be used to correct for composition differences across samples. The human brain is unique in its transcriptomic diversity, and comprises a complex mixture of cell-types, including transcriptionally similar subtypes of neurons. Here, we carry out a comprehensive evaluation of deconvolution methods for human brain transcriptome data, and assess the tissue-specificity of our key observations by comparison with human pancreas and heart. We evaluate eight transcriptome deconvolution approaches and nine cell-type signatures, testing the accuracy of deconvolution using in silico mixtures of single-cell RNA-seq data, RNA mixtures, as well as nearly 2000 human brain samples. Our results identify the main factors that drive deconvolution accuracy for brain data, and highlight the importance of biological factors influencing cell-type signatures, such as brain region and in vitro cell culturing.Gavin J. Sutton, Daniel Poppe, Rebecca K. Simmons, Kieran Walsh, Urwah Nawaz, Ryan Lister, Johann A. Gagnon-Bartsch, Irina Voineag

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02

Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment

This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw > 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour, are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017 +/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio

Observation of a new chi_b state in radiative transitions to Upsilon(1S) and Upsilon(2S) at ATLAS

The chi_b(nP) quarkonium states are produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and recorded by the ATLAS detector. Using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.4 fb^-1, these states are reconstructed through their radiative decays to Upsilon(1S,2S) with Upsilon->mu+mu-. In addition to the mass peaks corresponding to the decay modes chi_b(1P,2P)->Upsilon(1S)gamma, a new structure centered at a mass of 10.530+/-0.005 (stat.)+/-0.009 (syst.) GeV is also observed, in both the Upsilon(1S)gamma and Upsilon(2S)gamma decay modes. This is interpreted as the chi_b(3P) system.Comment: 5 pages plus author list (18 pages total), 2 figures, 1 table, corrected author list, matches final version in Physical Review Letter

Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version to appear in Physics Letters