177 research outputs found

    Nomenclatural notes about the names in Amaranthaceae published by Roberto de Visiani

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    The names in Amaranthaceae published by R. de Visiani are investigated. Amaranthus gangeticus var. cuspidatus is a nomen nudum and thus invalid according to Art. 38.1a of the ICN. Amaranthus hierichuntinus, Atriplex patula var. hastifolia, and Chenopodium album var. oblongum are lectotypified, respectively,on a specimen preserved at PAD, and illustrations by Scopoli and Vahl. We here propose to synonymyze the three names (new synonymies) respectively with Amaranthus graecizans subsp. graecizans, Atriplex patula subsp. patula, and the typesubspecies of C. album. For nomenclatural purposes, also the name C. lanceolatum Willd. (heterotypic synonym of C. album subsp. album) is investigated and lectotypified, on a specimen preserved at B

    Aegilops uniaristata Vis. (Poaceae): typification and occurrence in Croatia

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    After 88 years, occurrence of Aegilops uniaristata Vis. (Poaceae) in Croatian flora was confirmed and its distribution is supplemented by new localities. It has been confirmed and its distribution supplemented by new localities. Populations of a few specimens were found in southern Istria, in the vicinity of the small town of Bale, in the village of Krnica and on the Rt Kamenjak promontory, growing within dry Mediterranean grasslands. Based on herbarium revision a lectotype from Visiani’s collection in herbarium PAD and an epitype from the herbarium W were designated

    A Cross-disciplinary Study of the Work and Collections by Roberto de Visiani (1800-1878)

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    Botanists need access to historical collections of dried plants (herbaria) in order to precisely clarify the identity of taxa described by authors of the past. These studies involve the formal process of typifcation, prescribed by the Code of nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, which requires the actual specimens originally used for the descriptions to be identified and designated as types, so to permanently atach them to their scientifc name, and serve as absolute reference. With over 600 newly described taxa and almost 1,000 newly established names, Roberto de Visiani (Ơibenik 1800 - Padova 1878), was one of the most important scholars to direct the Botanical Garden of Padova, a position he held from 1837 to his death. During this time, he transformed it from a mere tool for the teaching of medicine to a modern institution open to the community. He was the author of numerous important works of taxonomy, mostly focussed on the vascular flora of his homeland, Dalmatia. After his death, he left in Padova not only a large collection of about 12,000 specimens, but also thousands of leters he received, manuscripts, and other unpublished material, which have remained almost entirely unstudied, despite his having lived, worked, and left a mark during one of the most defining times for the Garden itself, the University, and the scientific community at large. In the study of the work of 19th century botanists, scientific, historical, and geographical issues are intimately intertwined, but have rarely been considered together, with the widely cross-disciplinary, author- and collection-centric approach that we argue is the best means to solve questions of historical botany. To verify and showcase its efficacy, we set the following goals: 1) to correctly identify and formally designate type material in Visiani's collections, reconstructing the history of botanical explorations in the western Balkans, and his network of relationships and exchanges; 2) to analyse Visiani's work and to reconstruct his scientific standing at the national and international level; 3) to add value to Visiani's collections and archive by making them more accessible to the public. A large amount of diverse materials has been used. One very important source of in formation has been Visiani's Herbarium Dalmaticum, conserved in Padova and we catalogued in 2011-2013. All of Visiani's published works on foristics have been collected and studied, and are analysed in great detail, with special attention dedicated to his masterpiece Flora Dalmatica, and to the four smaller publications he co-authored with Serbian professor Josif Pančić. A more general overview is given for his contributions to other fields. All of Visiani's unpublished material available at the Ancient Library of the Botanical Garden has been digitised and organised. Over a third of the more than 2,000 letters that are conserved in his correspondence have been transcribed. We have also retrieved and transcribed the letters he sent to his best friend, famous lichenologist and palaeobotanist Abramo Massalongo, conserved at the Civic Library of Verona, and those sent to botanist Josif Pančić, conserved at the Botanical Institute of Belgrade. Beyond letters, other unpublished documents, particularly lists of plants, manuscripts for both published and unpublished works, and the rare travel diaries have been analysed. The study of these materials has led to the publication of seven scientifc papers, with forty-one type designations in total, plus detailed notes for seventeen other names. A draf treatment of the 275 names newly published in Flora Dalmatica is presented. Publication will require the input of a Croatian taxonomist. Two other papers in preparation are presented. The data from the herbarium and Visiani's published works have been integrated in a geodatabase managed through QGIS, which allows to investigate them through powerful querying. This instrument is used to produce maps to accompany the detailed chronology of the botanical exploration of Dalmatia and neighbouring regions during Visiani's lifetime that has been put together from all the different sources, as well as to check the correspondence between the herbarium and the published records. Visiani's network of relations and exchanges is clarified, with a discussion on his assistants, gardeners, colleagues, friends, co-authors, and the many plant collectors that provided him with specimens, many of whom were minor figures about whom little to nothing was known from literature. Particularly interesting are the role played by Antonio Bertoloni at the start of Visiani's career, the contribution by Muzio Tommasini to the publication of Flora Dalmatica, Visiani's troubled relationship with its editor Friedrich Hofmeister, and his the very close friendship with Massalongo. Visiani's scientific ideas are discussed in detail. Visiani had a positivistic view of science, and considered experimentation the main road to knowledge; he was not influenced by romantic ideas as many other botanists were at the time. His approach to systematic botany was typical of the first half of the 19th century: he focussed on the careful description of species and the exploration of a regional flora, and was always a strenuous defender of Linnaean practice, for which he was sometimes criticised late in his life. His methods and ideas arguably influenced the school of botany in Padova up to the mid 20th century. While we confirm Visiani's opposition to the unripe pre-Darwinian evolutionary hypotheses, we argue he was not a dogmatic fixist, and pose he may even have converted to evolutionism late in his life. His concepts, methods, and choices in taxonomy and nomenclature, whose understanding is crucial for the typifcation of his names, are clarified and described in detail. A detailed personal biography of Visiani is presented, dealing with topics such as his origins, studies, professional life, travels, character, religion, political ideas, material legacy. As for his stance towards the process of unification of Italy, his position is discovered to have been cautiously anti-Austrian. We argue this may be explained partly with his own ambiguous national identity, and partly with his prioritising the safety of his academic position. Visiani's work as director of the Botanical Garden is reconstructed largely thanks to the analysis of unpublished materials. We detail expenses, works, the growth of living and non-living collections, and his efforts to engage the public. Botanical results are being made available to the community through specialist publications. Unpublished material by Visiani is being made freely available online on the PHAIDRA platform by the University's Library Centre. Publishing of the correspondence between Visiani and Pančić, and Visiani and Massalongo is being discussed. The GIS system will be made available to the Herbarium of Padova; the collected data could be made available to the public with the development of a web application. We conclude that a cross-disciplinary, author- and collection-centric approach in questions of historical botany is highly effective

    A Human Monoclonal Antibody with Neutralizing Activity against Highly Divergent Influenza Subtypes

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    The interest in broad-range anti-influenza A monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) has recently been strengthened by theidentification of anti-hemagglutinin (HA) mAbs endowed with heterosubtypic neutralizing activity to be used in the designof ‘‘universal’’ prophylactic or therapeutic tools. However, the majority of the single mAbs described to date do not bindand neutralize viral isolates belonging to highly divergent subtypes clustering into the two different HA-based influenzaphylogenetic groups: the group 1 including, among others, subtypes H1, H2, H5 and H9 and the group 2 including, amongothers, H3 subtype. Here, we describe a human mAb, named PN-SIA28, capable of binding and neutralizing all testedisolates belonging to phylogenetic group 1, including H1N1, H2N2, H5N1 and H9N2 subtypes and several isolates belongingto group 2, including H3N2 isolates from the first period of the 1968 pandemic. Therefore, PN-SIA28 is capable ofneutralizing isolates belonging to subtypes responsible of all the reported pandemics, as well as other subtypes withpandemic potential. The region recognized by PN-SIA28 has been identified on the stem region of HA and includes residueshighly conserved among the different influenza subtypes. A deep characterization of PN-SIA28 features may represent auseful help in the improvement of available anti-influenza therapeutic strategies and can provide new tools for thedevelopment of universal vaccinal strategies

    Effects of initial-state dynamics on collective flow within a coupled transport and viscous hydrodynamic approach

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    We evaluate the effects of preequilibrium dynamics on observables in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. We simulate the initial nonequilibrium phase within A MultiPhase Transport (AMPT) model, while the subsequent near-equilibrium evolution is modeled using (2+1)-dimensional relativistic viscous hydrodynamics. We match the two stages of evolution carefully by calculating the full energy-momentum tensor from AMPT and using it as input for the hydrodynamic evolution. We find that when the preequilibrium evolution is taken into account, final-state observables are insensitive to the switching time from AMPT to hydrodynamics. Unlike some earlier treatments of preequilibrium dynamics, we do not find the initial shear viscous tensor to be large. With a shear viscosity to entropy density ratio of 0.120.12, our model describes quantitatively a large set of experimental data on Pb+Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider(LHC) over a wide range of centrality: differential anisotropic flow vn(pT) (n=2−6)v_n(p_T) ~(n=2-6), event-plane correlations, correlation between v2v_2 and v3v_3, and cumulant ratio v2{4}/v2{2}v_2\{4\}/v_2\{2\}.Comment: 10 pages, v2: minor revisio

    Diffusion, Crowding & Protein Stability in a Dynamic Molecular Model of the Bacterial Cytoplasm

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    A longstanding question in molecular biology is the extent to which the behavior of macromolecules observed in vitro accurately reflects their behavior in vivo. A number of sophisticated experimental techniques now allow the behavior of individual types of macromolecule to be studied directly in vivo; none, however, allow a wide range of molecule types to be observed simultaneously. In order to tackle this issue we have adopted a computational perspective, and, having selected the model prokaryote Escherichia coli as a test system, have assembled an atomically detailed model of its cytoplasmic environment that includes 50 of the most abundant types of macromolecules at experimentally measured concentrations. Brownian dynamics (BD) simulations of the cytoplasm model have been calibrated to reproduce the translational diffusion coefficients of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) observed in vivo, and “snapshots” of the simulation trajectories have been used to compute the cytoplasm's effects on the thermodynamics of protein folding, association and aggregation events. The simulation model successfully describes the relative thermodynamic stabilities of proteins measured in E. coli, and shows that effects additional to the commonly cited “crowding” effect must be included in attempts to understand macromolecular behavior in vivo

    High Risk of Secondary Infections Following Thrombotic Complications in Patients With COVID-19

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    Background. This study’s primary aim was to evaluate the impact of thrombotic complications on the development of secondary infections. The secondary aim was to compare the etiology of secondary infections in patients with and without thrombotic complications. Methods. This was a cohort study (NCT04318366) of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients hospitalized at IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital between February 25 and June 30, 2020. Incidence rates (IRs) were calculated by univariable Poisson regression as the number of cases per 1000 person-days of follow-up (PDFU) with 95% confidence intervals. The cumulative incidence functions of secondary infections according to thrombotic complications were compared with Gray’s method accounting for competing risk of death. A multivariable Fine-Gray model was applied to assess factors associated with risk of secondary infections. Results. Overall, 109/904 patients had 176 secondary infections (IR, 10.0; 95% CI, 8.8–11.5; per 1000-PDFU). The IRs of secondary infections among patients with or without thrombotic complications were 15.0 (95% CI, 10.7–21.0) and 9.3 (95% CI, 7.9–11.0) per 1000-PDFU, respectively (P = .017). At multivariable analysis, thrombotic complications were associated with the development of secondary infections (subdistribution hazard ratio, 1.788; 95% CI, 1.018–3.140; P = .043). The etiology of secondary infections was similar in patients with and without thrombotic complications. Conclusions. In patients with COVID-19, thrombotic complications were associated with a high risk of secondary infections

    Abdominal drainage after elective colorectal surgery: propensity score-matched retrospective analysis of an Italian cohort

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    background: In italy, surgeons continue to drain the abdominal cavity in more than 50 per cent of patients after colorectal resection. the aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of abdominal drain placement on early adverse events in patients undergoing elective colorectal surgery. methods: a database was retrospectively analysed through a 1:1 propensity score-matching model including 21 covariates. the primary endpoint was the postoperative duration of stay, and the secondary endpoints were surgical site infections, infectious morbidity rate defined as surgical site infections plus pulmonary infections plus urinary infections, anastomotic leakage, overall morbidity rate, major morbidity rate, reoperation and mortality rates. the results of multiple logistic regression analyses were presented as odds ratios (OR) and 95 per cent c.i. results: a total of 6157 patients were analysed to produce two well-balanced groups of 1802 patients: group (A), no abdominal drain(s) and group (B), abdominal drain(s). group a versus group B showed a significantly lower risk of postoperative duration of stay >6 days (OR 0.60; 95 per cent c.i. 0.51-0.70; P < 0.001). a mean postoperative duration of stay difference of 0.86 days was detected between groups. no difference was recorded between the two groups for all the other endpoints. conclusion: this study confirms that placement of abdominal drain(s) after elective colorectal surgery is associated with a non-clinically significant longer (0.86 days) postoperative duration of stay but has no impact on any other secondary outcomes, confirming that abdominal drains should not be used routinely in colorectal surgery

    Bowel preparation for elective colorectal resection: multi-treatment machine learning analysis on 6241 cases from a prospective Italian cohort

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    background current evidence concerning bowel preparation before elective colorectal surgery is still controversial. this study aimed to compare the incidence of anastomotic leakage (AL), surgical site infections (SSIs), and overall morbidity (any adverse event, OM) after elective colorectal surgery using four different types of bowel preparation. methods a prospective database gathered among 78 Italian surgical centers in two prospective studies, including 6241 patients who underwent elective colorectal resection with anastomosis for malignant or benign disease, was re-analyzed through a multi-treatment machine-learning model considering no bowel preparation (NBP; No. = 3742; 60.0%) as the reference treatment arm, compared to oral antibiotics alone (oA; No. = 406; 6.5%), mechanical bowel preparation alone (MBP; No. = 1486; 23.8%), or in combination with oAB (MoABP; No. = 607; 9.7%). twenty covariates related to biometric data, surgical procedures, perioperative management, and hospital/center data potentially affecting outcomes were included and balanced into the model. the primary endpoints were AL, SSIs, and OM. all the results were reported as odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). results compared to NBP, MBP showed significantly higher AL risk (OR 1.82; 95% CI 1.23-2.71; p = .003) and OM risk (OR 1.38; 95% CI 1.10-1.72; p = .005), no significant differences for all the endpoints were recorded in the oA group, whereas MoABP showed a significantly reduced SSI risk (OR 0.45; 95% CI 0.25-0.79; p = .008). conclusions MoABP significantly reduced the SSI risk after elective colorectal surgery, therefore representing a valid alternative to NBP

    Cumulative Prognostic Score Predicting Mortality in Patients Older Than 80 Years Admitted to the ICU.

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    OBJECTIVES: To develop a scoring system model that predicts mortality within 30 days of admission of patients older than 80 years admitted to intensive care units (ICUs). DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: A total of 306 ICUs from 24 European countries. PARTICIPANTS: Older adults admitted to European ICUs (N = 3730; median age = 84 years [interquartile range = 81-87 y]; 51.8% male). MEASUREMENTS: Overall, 24 variables available during ICU admission were included as potential predictive variables. Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify independent predictors of 30-day mortality. Model sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy were evaluated with receiver operating characteristic curves. RESULTS: The 30-day-mortality was 1562 (41.9%). In multivariable analysis, these variables were selected as independent predictors of mortality: age, sex, ICU admission diagnosis, Clinical Frailty Scale, Sequential Organ Failure Score, invasive mechanical ventilation, and renal replacement therapy. The discrimination, accuracy, and calibration of the model were good: the area under the curve for a score of 10 or higher was .80, and the Brier score was .18. At a cut point of 10 or higher (75% of all patients), the model predicts 30-day mortality in 91.1% of all patients who die. CONCLUSION: A predictive model of cumulative events predicts 30-day mortality in patients older than 80 years admitted to ICUs. Future studies should include other potential predictor variables including functional status, presence of advance care plans, and assessment of each patient's decision-making capacity
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