Local association of Trypanosoma cruzi chronic infection foci and enteric neuropathic lesions at the tissue micro-domain scale

Chagas disease (American trypanosomiasis) is caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. Chagas disease has two types, the cardiac form and the digestive form; some patients have symptoms of both. How the parasite causes digestive disease is poorly understood. It is known that damage to the gut’s nervous system is an important factor, but it has been unclear exactly where and when this damage occurs during the course of an infection and also why only a subset of infected people suffer from this outcome. We studied infections in mice and found certain combinations of strains of parasites and mice that exhibited symptoms similar to human digestive Chagas patients, including a problem with peristalsis that localised specifically to the colon. Using parasites that were genetically engineered to emit both bioluminescent and fluorescent light, we tracked infections over time and were able to analyse rare infected cells deep within the muscle tissue of the wall of the colon. We found evidence of damaged neurons in the same location as these infection foci over 6 months after initial infection. Our results show that digestive Chagas disease probably develops as a result of chronic infection and inflammation, which potentially changes approaches to treatment

Reducing occurrence of Giardia duodenalis in children living in semiarid regions: impact of a large scale rainwater harvesting initiative.

BACKGROUND: In Brazil, about two million people living in rural semiarid regions were benefited with the construction of rainwater cement cisterns, as an initiative from the program "One Million Cisterns" (P1MC). Nevertheless, few epidemiological studies have been conducted to assess health risks or protection effects associated with consumption of this water source. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether access to rainwater harvesting cisterns is associated with the decrease in the occurrence of Giardia duodenalis infections in children, compared to other children living in households supplied by other water sources. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A quasi-experimental study with two concurrent cohorts was developed in two rural municipalities of the semiarid region of Brazil. A sample of 664 children, aged between 4 months and 5 years old, was followed up, of which 332 had access to rainwater cisterns (cistern group) and 332 did not, having water supplied from alternative sources (comparison group). In a period of approximately one year (2010) intestinal parasites were investigated in feces three times. The prevalence of G. duodenalis in children from the cistern group ranged from 4.8 to 10.5%, while the prevalence in the comparison group ranged from 7.6 to 16.7%. Multivariate analysis (GEE) showed a higher risk of G. duodenalis infection in children who did not have access to rainwater cisterns, when compared to children who did (OR 1.72; 95% CI 1.14-2.59). The other variables associated with G. duodenalis infection were: number of rooms per house (OR 0.89; 95% CI 0.80-0.99); family income (OR0.48; 95% CI 0.26-0.88); birth order (OR 1.72; 95% CI 1.17-2.51); preterm children (OR 1.70; 95% CI 1.19-2.43); and improper hand hygiene prior to food preparation (OR 4.78; 95% CI 1.95-11.76). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Ownership of a rainwater cistern is associated with a lower prevalence of G. duodenalis infection in children after adjustment for environmental and family-related factors. Nevertheless, the study suggests the necessity to complement physical interventions with actions related to personal and domestic hygiene to enable further reductions in parasite infections affecting mainly the underprivileged populations

Maternal morbidity and near miss associated with maternal age: the innovative approach of the 2006 Brazilian demographic health survey

OBJECTIVE: To study the prevalence of potentially life-threatening maternal conditions and near miss in Brazil according to maternal age. METHODS: A secondary analysis of the 2006 Brazilian demographic health survey database using a validated questionnaire to evaluate maternal morbidity with a focus on age extremes. The study included 5,025 women with at least 1 live birth in the 5-year reference period preceding their interviews. Three age range periods were used: 15-19 years (younger age), 20-34 years (control), and 35-49 years (advanced maternal age). According to a pragmatic definition, any woman reporting eclampsia, hysterectomy, blood transfusion, or admission to the intensive care unit during her pregnancy/childbirth was considered a near-miss case. The associations between age and severe maternal morbidity were further assessed. RESULTS: For the 6,833 reported pregnancies, 73.7% of the women were 20-34 years old, 17.9% were of advanced maternal age, and only 8.4% were of younger age. More than 22% of the women had at least one of the complications appraised, and blood transfusion, which was more prevalent among the controls, was the only variable with a significant difference among the age groups. The overall rate of maternal near miss was 21.1 per 1000 live births. There was a trend of higher maternal near miss with increasing age. The only significant risk factor identified for maternal near miss was a lower literacy level among older women. CONCLUSIONS: There is a trend towards worse results with increasing age. The investigation of the determinants of maternal near miss at the community level using an innovative approach through a demographic health survey is an example suggested for under-resourced settings

Ambient fabrication of flexible and large-area organic light-emitting devices using slot-die coating

The grand vision of manufacturing large-area emissive devices with low-cost roll-to-roll coating methods, akin to how newspapers are produced, appeared with the emergence of the organic light-emitting diode about 20 years ago. Today, small organic light-emitting diode displays are commercially available in smartphones, but the promise of a continuous ambient fabrication has unfortunately not materialized yet, as organic light-emitting diodes invariably depend on the use of one or more time- and energy-consuming process steps under vacuum. Here we report an all-solution-based fabrication of an alternative emissive device, a light-emitting electrochemical cell, using a slot-die roll-coating apparatus. The fabricated flexible sheets exhibit bidirectional and uniform light emission, and feature a fault-tolerant >1-μm-thick active material that is doped in situ during operation. It is notable that the initial preparation of inks, the subsequent coating of the constituent layers and the final device operation all could be executed under ambient air

Discomfort experienced at the daily life of relatives of people admitted at ICU

This is a qualitative research that aimed to get to know the discomforts experienced at the daily life of relatives of people admitted at the intensive care unit (ICU). It happened on a general ICU at a public hospital, in Salvador-BA, by the second half of 2009. Nine relatives of people admitted were interviewed. The technique used was the analysis from the Grounded Theory. The results showed that the interaction of the families with the reality of life threat from the relative admitted, had as main discomfort, the discontinuity in their daily life, which was characterized by four categories: Living the distress of a possible loss, difficulties to take care of themselves, facing a separation in the family, suffering with changes in their social and professional lives. These discomforts can be minimized by the healthcare team’s effectiveness to the demands of the family and the support of its social network

Gravito-electromagnetic analogies

We reexamine and further develop different gravito-electromagnetic (GEM) analogies found in the literature, and clarify the connection between them. Special emphasis is placed in two exact physical analogies: the analogy based on inertial fields from the so-called "1+3 formalism", and the analogy based on tidal tensors. Both are reformulated, extended and generalized. We write in both formalisms the Maxwell and the full exact Einstein field equations with sources, plus the algebraic Bianchi identities, which are cast as the source-free equations for the gravitational field. New results within each approach are unveiled. The well known analogy between linearized gravity and electromagnetism in Lorentz frames is obtained as a limiting case of the exact ones. The formal analogies between the Maxwell and Weyl tensors are also discussed, and, together with insight from the other approaches, used to physically interpret gravitational radiation. The precise conditions under which a similarity between gravity and electromagnetism occurs are discussed, and we conclude by summarizing the main outcome of each approach.Comment: 60 pages, 2 figures. Improved version (compared to v2) with some re-write, notation improvements and a new figure that match the published version; expanded compared to the published version to include Secs. 2.3 and

Quantifying Tropical Plant Diversity Requires an Integrated Technological Approach

Tropical biomes are the most diverse plant communities on Earth, and quantifying this diversity at large spatial scales is vital for many purposes. As macroecological approaches proliferate, the taxonomic uncertainties in species occurrence data are easily neglected and can lead to spurious findings in downstream analyses. Here, we argue that technological approaches offer potential solutions, but there is no single silver bullet to resolve uncertainty in plant biodiversity quantification. Instead, we propose the use of artificial intelligence (AI) approaches to build a data-driven framework that integrates several data sources – including spectroscopy, DNA sequences, image recognition, and morphological data. Such a framework would provide a foundation for improving species identification in macroecological analyses while simultaneously improving the taxonomic process of species delimitation

Spondarthritis in the Triassic

Background: The evidence of several forms of arthritis has been well documented in the fossil record. However, for pre-Cenozoic vertebrates, especially regarding reptiles, this record is rather scarce. In this work we present a case report of spondarthritis found in a vertebral series that belonged to a carnivorous archosaurian reptile from the Lower Triassic (,245 million years old) of the South African Karoo. Methodology/Principal Findings: Neutron tomography confirmed macroscopic data, revealing the ossification of the entire intervertebral disc space (both annulus fibrosus and nucleus pulposus), which supports the diagnosis of spondarthritis. Conclusions/Significance: The presence of spondarthritis in the new specimen represents by far the earliest evidence of any form of arthritis in the fossil record. The present find is nearly 100 million years older than the previous oldest report of this pathology, based on a Late Jurassic dinosaur. Spondarthritis may have indirectly contributed to the death of the anima