Arthritis Is Developed in Borrelia-Primed And -Infected Mice Deficient of Interleukin-17

Interleukin-17 (IL-17) has been shown to participate in the development of Lyme arthritis in experimental mice. For example, neutralization of IL-17 with antibodies inhibits induction of arthritis in Borrelia-primed and -infected C57BL/6 wild-type mice. We hypothesized that mice lacking IL-17 would fail to develop Borrelia-induced arthritis. IL-17-deficient and wild-type C57BL/6 mice were primed with heat-inactivated Borrelia and then infected with viable spirochetes 3 weeks later. No swelling or major histopathological changes of the hind paws were detected in IL-17-deficient or wild-type mice that were primed with Borrelia or infected with viable spirochetes. By contrast, IL-17-deficient and wild-type mice that were primed and subsequently infected with heterologous Borrelia developed severe swelling and histopathological changes of the hind paws. In addition, Borrelia-primed and -infected IL-17-deficient mice exhibited elevated gamma-interferon (IFN-γ) levels in sera and increased frequencies of IFN-γ-expressing lymphocytes in popliteal lymph nodes compared to Borrelia-primed and -infected wild-type mice. These results demonstrate that IL-17 is not required for development of severe pathology in response to infection with Borrelia burgdorferi, but may contribute to disease through an interaction with IFN-γ

Modelling Functional Behavior of Event-based Systems: A Practical Knowledge-based Approach

AbstractFunctional behavior is considered to be the most basic, yet a critical notion in order to determine the characteristics of a system. However, how to reason about the functional behavior of a system in a systematic manner, is mostly limited by our cognitive processing abilities. While the UML-based behavior models can support a visual conceptualization of the functional behavior, they lack the rigorous, machine-processable reasoning capabilities. In this paper, we present a practical, knowledge-based approach to model the functional behavior that incorporates the notions of Commonsense Reasoning and Functional Reasoning over its core defining aspects. We demonstrate our approach with a detailed example, along with a set of use case scenarios. The main motivation behind this work was to develop a rigorous, logic-based approach to verify the levels of functional consistencies between cross-platform event-based systems. The focus of this paper, however, is to present the representational facility that can be utilized for the consistency validation system. While we provide a brief overview of the consistency validation system in this paper, a separate article will be dedicated for the comprehensive overview of the validation system itself

Nuclear Lattice Simulations with Chiral Effective Field Theory

We study nuclear and neutron matter by combining chiral effective field theory with non-perturbative lattice methods. In our approach nucleons and pions are treated as point particles on a lattice. This allows us to probe larger volumes, lower temperatures, and greater nuclear densities than in lattice QCD. The low energy interactions of these particles are governed by chiral effective theory and operator coefficients are determined by fitting to zero temperature few-body scattering data. Any dependence on the lattice spacing can be understood from the renormalization group and absorbed by renormalizing operator coefficients. In this way we have a realistic simulation of many-body nuclear phenomena with no free parameters, a systematic expansion, and a clear theoretical connection to QCD. We present results for hot neutron matter at temperatures 20 to 40 MeV and densities below twice nuclear matter density.Comment: 41 pages, 23 figure

Climate change impact, adaptation, and mitigation in temperate grazing systems: a review

Managed temperate grasslands occupy 25% of the world, which is 70% of global agricultural land. These lands are an important source of food for the global population. This review paper examines the impacts of climate change on managed temperate grasslands and grassland-based livestock and effectiveness of adaptation and mitigation options and their interactions. The paper clarifies that moderately elevated atmospheric CO2 (eCO2) enhances photosynthesis, however it may be restiricted by variations in rainfall and temperature, shifts in plant’s growing seasons, and nutrient availability. Different responses of plant functional types and their photosynthetic pathways to the combined effects of climatic change may result in compositional changes in plant communities, while more research is required to clarify the specific responses. We have also considered how other interacting factors, such as a progressive nitrogen limitation (PNL) of soils under eCO2, may affect interactions of the animal and the environment and the associated production. In addition to observed and modelled declines in grasslands productivity, changes in forage quality are expected. The health and productivity of grassland-based livestock are expected to decline through direct and indirect effects from climate change. Livestock enterprises are also significant cause of increased global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (about 14.5%), so climate risk-management is partly to develop and apply effective mitigation measures. Overall, our finding indicates complex impact that will vary by region, with more negative than positive impacts. This means that both wins and losses for grassland managers can be expected in different circumstances, thus the analysis of climate change impact required with potential adaptations and mitigation strategies to be developed at local and regional levels

The views of children and young people on the use of silk garments for the treatment of eczema: a nested qualitative study within the CLOTHES randomised controlled trial

Background: Many children suffer with skin diseases, but to date, most dermatological research has been done ‘on’ rather than ‘with’ children; in this study we actively sought the experiences of children and young people. Atopic eczema (AE) is a chronic, itchy, inflammatory skin condition that affects around 20% of children and can impact on health and wellbeing for children and their families. The role of specialist clothing in the management of AE is poorly understood. Objectives: The aim of this study, which was nested in a randomised controlled trial was to qualitatively examine child participants’ experiences of using silk garments for the treatment of AE. Methods: Eighteen children aged 5-15, who took part in the CLOTHES trial, participated in age-appropriate individual interviews or focus groups. Results: Thematic analysis generated 4 themes directly related to the garments: i) expectations of the garments; ii) wearing the silk garments; iii) did they help? and iv) thoughts about the garments. The conclusions from this nested qualitative study are that: there was some limited improvement in eczema for some children but that the hoped for ‘miracle cure’ did not transpire. A mixed picture of knowledge, beliefs and experiences of using the silk garments emerged. Conclusion: Engaging children in the evaluation of the garments provided first hand nuanced insights that enhanced understanding of the CLOTHES study as a whole. This nested study demonstrates that children can and indeed want to be engaged in dermatological research in meaningful ways that add to our understanding of treatment options

A randomised controlled trial of ion-exchange water softeners for the treatment of eczema in children

Epidemiological studies and anecdotal reports suggest a possible link between household use of hard water and atopic eczema. We sought to test whether installation of an ion-exchange water softener in the home can improve eczema in children

Recovering Grammar Relationships for the Java Language Specification

Grammar convergence is a method that helps discovering relationships between different grammars of the same language or different language versions. The key element of the method is the operational, transformation-based representation of those relationships. Given input grammars for convergence, they are transformed until they are structurally equal. The transformations are composed from primitive operators; properties of these operators and the composed chains provide quantitative and qualitative insight into the relationships between the grammars at hand. We describe a refined method for grammar convergence, and we use it in a major study, where we recover the relationships between all the grammars that occur in the different versions of the Java Language Specification (JLS). The relationships are represented as grammar transformation chains that capture all accidental or intended differences between the JLS grammars. This method is mechanized and driven by nominal and structural differences between pairs of grammars that are subject to asymmetric, binary convergence steps. We present the underlying operator suite for grammar transformation in detail, and we illustrate the suite with many examples of transformations on the JLS grammars. We also describe the extraction effort, which was needed to make the JLS grammars amenable to automated processing. We include substantial metadata about the convergence process for the JLS so that the effort becomes reproducible and transparent