Etiological and molecular diagnostic of Carrion’s disease in patients from Cajamarca - Perú

[EN] Poster presented in the poster session in the 15th ICID Abstracts. June 13th-16th 2012, Bangkok, Thailand. Session: Emerging Infectious Diseases. Date: Friday, June 15, 2012. Room: Poster & Exhibition Area.Background: Bartonellagenus is a group of facultative intracellular pathogens that posses able to survive and proliferate inside of erythrocytes. Classified within this genus,Bartonella bacilliformisis of special relevance. This microorganism is the etiological agent of the so called Carrion’s Disease (Human bartonellosis). Additionally the presence of sub-clinical cases (asymptomatyc carriers) is of special interest, because acts as a reservoir of this illness. Carrión’s Disease is an endemic illnes in Perú, affecting in a special manner the north interandean valleys. However, the current in use diagnostic techniques (Giemsa Stain) possess low sensitivity and specificity, and due to the fact thatB. bacilliformispossess a low growth (weeks), bacterial cultures lacks of clinical utility. Thus suspictious cases frequently are not confirmed, and the real relevance of this illness remains underestimated. This work is addressed to the direct identification from blood samples ofBartonella baciliformisusing a conventional PCR. All patients were from the Cajamarca area being enrolled by the Epidemiological Surveillance program of DIRESA. Methods: The samples were processed at arriving to the laboratory, by molecular and microbiological techniques. Thus samples were cultured in Blood Columbia Agar (10%), in anaerobic conditions at 28 ◦C for a period of 2 months. Positive cultures were both Giemsa stained and identified by the amplification of a fragment the 16S rRNA gene. Genetic material was directly extracted from blood samples using the Kit High Pure (Roche diagnostic), and a fragment of 438 bp of the 16S rRNA gene was amplified withBartonellagenus specific primers. All positive PCR were sequenced (Macrogen-Korea). Results: A total of 134 blood samples were processed, from this 12 (8.9%) grown in blood agar, while in 18 (13.4%), including the aforementioned 12, the 16 s rRNA gene was amplified. In all cases the sequence analysis showed the presence ofB. bacilliformis Conclusion: Although microbiological culture is the gold standard in the identification ofBartonellaspp., this technique possess strong limitations due to the low growth of these microorganisms. However, the PCR is a rapid technique, possessing a high sensibility and specificity that may be used as routine diagnostic tool for the identification of Carrion’s Disease.Revisión por pare

Diagnosing and measuring incompatibilities between pairs of services

International audienceThis text presents a tool, from its design to its implementation, which detects all behavioural incompatibilities between two service interfaces. Unlike prior work, the proposed solution does not simply check whether two services are incompatible or not, it rather provides detailed diagnosis, including the incompatibilities and for each one the location in the service interfaces where these incompatibilities occur. A measure of similarity between interfaces which considers outputs from the detection algorithm is proposed too. A visual report of the comparison analysis is also provided which pinpoints a set of incompatibilities that cause a behavioural interface not to simulate another one

Organic nanofibers embedding stimuli-responsive threaded molecular components

While most of the studies on molecular machines have been performed in solution, interfacing these supramolecular systems with solid-state nanostructures and materials is very important in view of their utilization in sensing components working by chemical and photonic actuation. Host polymeric materials, and particularly polymer nanofibers, enable the manipulation of the functional molecules constituting molecular machines, and provide a way to induce and control the supramolecular organization. Here, we present electrospun nanocomposites embedding a self-assembling rotaxane-type system that is responsive to both optical (UV-visible light) and chemical (acid/base) stimuli. The system includes a molecular axle comprised of a dibenzylammonium recognition site and two azobenzene end groups, and a dibenzo[24]crown-8 molecular ring. The dethreading and rethreading of the molecular components in nanofibers induced by exposure to base and acid vapors, as well as the photoisomerization of the azobenzene end groups, occur in a similar manner to what observed in solution. Importantly, however, the nanoscale mechanical function following external chemical stimuli induces a measurable variation of the macroscopic mechanical properties of nanofibers aligned in arrays, whose Young's modulus is significantly enhanced upon dethreading of the axles from the rings. These composite nanosystems show therefore great potential for application in chemical sensors, photonic actuators and environmentally responsive materials.Comment: 39 pages, 16 figure

Oxidation and oxygen diffusion in Ti-6al-4V alloy: improving measurements during sims analysis by rotating the sample

Titanium alloys are attractive to the industrial world, as they offer the benefits of low density, great corrosion resistance, and relatively good strength, making them viable candidates for a multitude of applications. However, above 500 °C, oxidation and oxygen diffusion in titanium alloys need to be taken into account as they change their microstructure and then their mechanical properties. Oxidations were carried out between 600 and 750 °C on a specific titanium alloy: an a-b annealed Ti-6Al-4V. Oxidation kinetics and oxygen diffusion in the matrix were studied. SIMS analyses were realized on rotating specimens of this two-phase polycrystalline alloy in order to reduce roughness. Composition profiles along the sample thickness were compared to microhardness measurements. SIMS mappings were realized on the smooth slopes of the crater

Reactive Tabu Search for Measuring Graph Similarity

Abstract. Graph matching is often used for image recognition. Different kinds of graph matchings have been proposed such as (sub)graph isomorphism or error-tolerant graph matching, giving rise to different graph similarity measures. A first goal of this paper is to show that these different measures can be viewed as special cases of a generic similarity measure introduced in [8]. This generic similarity measure is based on a non-bijective graph matching (like [4] and [2]) so that it is well suited to image recognition. In particular, over/under-segmentation problems can be handled by linking one vertex to a set of vertices. In a second part, we address the problem of computing this measure and we describe two algorithms: a greedy algorithm, that quickly computes sub-optimal solutions, and a reactive Tabu search algorithm, that may improve these solutions. Some experimental results are given.