Spatiotemporal Analysis of the Population Risk of Congenital Microcephaly in Pernambuco State, Brazil.

Since an outbreak in Brazil, which started in 2015, Zika has been recognized as an important cause of microcephaly. The highest burden of this outbreak was in northeast Brazil, including the state of Pernambuco. The prevalence of congenital microcephaly in Pernambuco state was estimated from the RESP (Registro de Eventos em Saúde Pública) surveillance system, from August 2015 to August 2016 inclusive. The denominators were estimated at the municipality level from official demographic data. Microcephaly was defined as a neonatal head circumference below the 3rd percentile of the Intergrowth standards. Smoothed maps of the prevalence of microcephaly were obtained from a Bayesian model which was conditional autoregressive (CAR) in space, and first order autoregressive in time. A total of 742 cases were identified. Additionally, high and early occurrences were identified in the Recife Metropolitan Region, on the coast, and in a north-south band about 300 km inland. Over a substantial part of the state, the overall prevalence, aggregating over the study period, was above 0.5%. The reasons for the high occurrence in the inland area remain unclear

Purification of a lectin from Cratylia mollis crude extract seed by a single step PEG/phosphate aqueous two-phase system

The partitioning and purification of lectins from the crude extract of Cratylia mollis seeds (Cramoll 1,4) was investigated in aqueous two-phase systems (ATPS). A factorial design model (24) was used to evaluate the influence of polyethylene glycol (PEG) molar mass (15008000g/mol), PEG concentration (12.517.5% w/w), phosphate (1015% w/w) concentration, and pH (68) on the differential partitioning, purification factor, and yield of the lectin. Polymer and salt concentration were the most important variables affecting partition of lectin and used to find optimum purification factor by experimental BoxBehnken design together with the response surface methodology (RSM). ATPS showed best conditions composed by 13.9% PEG1500, 15.3% phosphate buffer at pH 6, which ensured purification factor of 4.70. Sodium dodecyl sulfatepolyacrylamide gel electrophoresis showed a single band of protein with 26.1kDa. Furthermore, results demonstrated a thermostable lectin presenting activity until 60°C and lost hemagglutinating activity at 80°C. According to the obtained data it can be inferred that the ATPS optimization using RSM approach can be applied for recovery and purification of lectins.We are grateful to the following bodies for the grants awarded: CAPES (Coordination for the Improvement of Level Personnel Superior); FACEPE (Pernambuco Science and Technology Foundation): Researcher's scholarship grant: BFP-0017-5.05/18 CNPq (National Council for Scientific Development and Technological) process: 427153/2016-6 and we also thank the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions as these helped us to improve the manuscript.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Multiple Scenario Generation of Subsurface Models:Consistent Integration of Information from Geophysical and Geological Data throuh Combination of Probabilistic Inverse Problem Theory and Geostatistics

Neutrinos with energies above 1017 eV are detectable with the Surface Detector Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The identification is efficiently performed for neutrinos of all flavors interacting in the atmosphere at large zenith angles, as well as for Earth-skimming \u3c4 neutrinos with nearly tangential trajectories relative to the Earth. No neutrino candidates were found in 3c 14.7 years of data taken up to 31 August 2018. This leads to restrictive upper bounds on their flux. The 90% C.L. single-flavor limit to the diffuse flux of ultra-high-energy neutrinos with an E\u3bd-2 spectrum in the energy range 1.0 7 1017 eV -2.5 7 1019 eV is E2 dN\u3bd/dE\u3bd < 4.4 7 10-9 GeV cm-2 s-1 sr-1, placing strong constraints on several models of neutrino production at EeV energies and on the properties of the sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays

Saline pisciculture effluent as an alternative for irrigation of Croton blanchetianus (Euphorbiaceae)

ABSTRACT The use of saline effluents from fish farming in agricultural activities has been increasing, especially in semiarid regions. This study was to evaluate the use of saline effluents from fish farming for the irrigation of Croton blanchetianus and to analyze the physiological and biochemical responses. After the cuttings were planted, irrigation with the effluent began. Treatments included four salinity levels (control, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5 dS m-1). The control treatment was the supply water (0.56 dS m-1). The evaluated variables were growth, relative water content, dry biomass, and levels of proteins, proline, hydrogen peroxide, malondialdehyde, and photosynthetic pigments. Physiological and biochemical adjustments ensured the maintenance of relative water content and osmotic adjustment under saline conditions without increasing lipid peroxidation. The salinity levels did not affect C. blanchetianus, indicating the lack of saline stress. The fish farm effluents are rich in organic matter, from food, and excrement, which was beneficial for the development of C. blanchetianus. The reuse of saline effluents from fish farming for the irrigation of C. blanchetianus can be a viable environmental alternative, avoiding direct disposal into the environment.</div

Extrato etanólico de Senna alata no controle de Fusarium oxysporum, causador da murcha-de-fusarium do meloeiro

A murcha-de-fusarium, causada pelo fungo Fusarium oxysporum, vem-se tornando uma doença importante no meloeiro devido às grandes perdas em áreas de produção no Brasil e no mundo, razão pela qual o objetivo do presente trabalho foi avaliar a eficácia de extratos etanólicos de partes de Senna alata no controle do crescimento micelial de F. oxysporum isolado de plantas de meloeiro. O delineamento experimental foi inteiramente casualizado, distribuído em esquema fatorial 4 x 6 + 1, sendo o primeiro fator partes da planta (caule, folha, raiz e vagem) e, como segundo, seis concentrações (0,25; 0,50; 50; 75; 250; 500 µg mL-1) mais a testemunha, com quatro repetições por tratamento. As variáveis avaliadas foram: taxa de crescimento micelial inibição do crescimento micelial e área abaixo da curva do crescimento micelial. Extratos etanólicos de todas as partes de Senna alata foram eficazes no controle de F. oxysporum. Extratos de raiz e vagem foram os mais eficientes em inibir o crescimento micelial de F. oxysporum, na concentração 500 µg mL-1

Caracterização isoenzimática de clones de bananeira nanicão submetidos à salinidade Isoenzyme characterization of the clones of banana nanicão subjected to salinity

O presente trabalho teve o objetivo de identificar possíveis variações isoenzimáticas em plantas de bananeira, provenientes de gemas da cultivar nanicão, submetidas à pressão de seleção in vitro, com 80 e 100 mol m-3 de NaCl. Após aclimatadas, as plantas foram transferidas para solo com diferentes níveis de salinidade do extrato de saturação do solo (CEe de 0,2, 7,0 e 14,0 dS m-1) e cultivadas, durante 30 dias, em casa-de-vegetação. Em solo com CEe de 14,0 dS m-1 as plantas não resistiram à salinidade. Dos sistemas isoenzimáticos analisados, apenas o sistema peroxidase apresentou atividade em todas as amostras de tecido foliar analisadas. As plantas regeneradas a partir de gemas submetidas ao estresse salino in vitro, apresentaram bandas anódicas e catódicas nos tratamentos com 0,2 e 7,0 dS m-1, enquanto as plantas provenientes de gemas não tratadas em meio salino, apresentaram apenas bandas catódicas. Alterações em número e intensidade de bandas isoenzimáticas podem ser decorrentes de variações somaclonais induzidas pelo estresse salino imposto durante o cultivo in vitro.This study is aimed to identify isoenzimatic variations in banana plants derived from buds of cultivar nanicão subjected to in vitro selection with 80 and 100 mol m-3 of NaCl. After acclimatization, plants were cultivated for 30 days in a greenhouse, under different levels of soil salinity of saturation extracts (ECe = 0.2, 7.0 and 14.0 dS m-1). Plants cultivated in soil with 14.0 dS m-1 did not resist the stress. Among the isoenzimatic systems evaluated, only peroxidase system showed activity in all the leaf samples. Plants regenerated from buds subjected to in vitro saline stress presented anodic and cathodic bands for treatments with 0.2 and 7.0 dS m-1, while plants formed from buds grown on salt free medium showed only cathodic bands. Alterations of band number and intensity could be due to somaclonal variation induced by salt stress during in vitro culture

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and auxin associated with microelements in the development of cuttings of Varronia leucocephala

ABSTRACT The plant Varronia leucocephala is widely used in Brazil for its therapeutic properties. However, a major problem for the seedlings is the low percentage of root formation. The objective of this study was to establish a rooting protocol for V. leucocephala cuttings, using phytoregulators and microelements associated with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. The auxin indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) concentration of 1500 mg L-1 showed the best rooting percentage, and it is proposed associating the microelements zinc and boron with the highest IBA doses. Although an increase in the rooting percentage was observed in the presence of zinc, it was not the most suitable for improving the percentage of propagation. Consequently, association of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi with 1500 mg L-1 IBA plus zinc was selected to evaluate the rooting percentage and sprouting of the aerial part, dry biomass of roots and aerial part, number of leaves, height, mycorrhizal colonization and dependency, spore density, and nutrients of branches and roots. These results show that using zinc with the highest doses of IBA (1500 mg L-1) in plants inoculated with the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (Gigaspora albida) was the most effective at promoting the vegetative propagation of V. leucocephala