Sheep as an experimental model: individual housing allowing visual, auditory, olfactory and tactile contact is not an obstacle for studies involving hormonal interrelationships

Thirty-two ewes were used to determine whether individual housing, allowing contact with neighbours, induces a stress response. Ewes were housed in individual pens designed to allow the ewes to see, hear, smell and touch adjacent animals, and were distributed into four groups (n=8/group): ewes with subcutaneous implants containing melatonin and oestradiol (M+E), melatonin (M), oestradiol (E) and non-implanted control ewes (C). Heart rate, stress indicators (plasma cortisol, glucose, lactate and creatine kinase (CK) concentrations) and luteinizing hormone (LH) concentrations were measured hourly and compared with the resting values (before and after pen housing). Heart rate increased significantly during the introduction into the pen (P<0.001) in all groups, in comparison with the resting values. No significant differences between groups were observed for cortisol concentrations, with the exception of the M group, which showed the highest response (P<0.001) when ewes were introduced into the pens. Lactate, CK and glucose changes in comparison with the resting values were similar between groups. LH concentrations during pen housing decreased significantly in all groups in comparison with resting values. In conclusion, individual confinement of sheep allowing visual, auditory, olfactory and tactile contact with their neighbouring animals was not an obstacle for investigating particular hormonal interrelationships with multiple sampling procedures. However further investigations are required to determine if this conclusion applies to other hormone systems in sheep

A case of concomitant pulmonary tuberculosis and mucormycosis in an insulin-dependent diabetic patient

Conditions, where the patient's immune system is compromised are the main risk factor for mucormycosis. Approximately 23% of the world's population is estimated to have a latent Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection and more than 10 million new cases were estimated in 2017. Pulmonary mucormycosis and tuberculosis co-infections are very rare. We present the case of a 56-year-old insulin-dependent diabetic patient with a pulmonary mucormycosis and tuberculosis co-infection. While the patient did not suffer from ketoacidosis, she had poor glycemic control. A chest X-ray and a computed tomography showed nodular and cavitary lesions in both lungs. The patient was diagnosed through a biopsy of the bronchial mucosa and an RT-PCR for M. tuberculosis from bronchoalveolar lavage. The patient was treated with the recommended 4-drug regimen for TB (i.e. isoniazid, rifampin, pyrazinamide, and ethambutol); concurrently, amphotericin B deoxycholate was administered to treat the mucormycosis infection. Thirty days after initial hospital admission the patient underwent a lobectomy on the right lung. The case described here is only the sixth case reported in the literature of concomitant pulmonary tuberculosis and mucormycosis and the third case associated with a TB and mucormycosis co-infection involving an uncontrolled DM patient to survive

pH-triggered endosomal escape of pore-forming Listeriolysin O toxin-coated gold nanoparticles

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (ERC grant agreement n° 338133)Background: A major bottleneck in drug delivery is the breakdown and degradation of the delivery system through the endosomal/lysosomal network of the host cell, hampering the correct delivery of the drug of interest. In nature, the bacterial pathogen Listeria monocytogenes has developed a strategy to secrete Listeriolysin O (LLO) toxin as a tool to escape the eukaryotic lysosomal system upon infection, allowing it to grow and proliferate unharmed inside the host cell. Results: As a “proof of concept”, we present here the use of purifed His-LLO H311A mutant protein and its conjuga tion on the surface of gold nanoparticles to promote the lysosomal escape of 40 nm-sized nanoparticles in mouse embryonic fbroblasts. Surface immobilization of LLO was achieved after specifc functionalization of the nanoparti cles with nitrile acetic acid, enabling the specifc binding of histidine-tagged proteins. Conclusions: Endosomal acidifcation leads to release of the LLO protein from the nanoparticle surface and its self-assembly into a 300 Å pore that perforates the endosomal/lysosomal membrane, enabling the escape of nanoparticles.Depto. de Química FísicaFac. de Ciencias QuímicasTRUEUnión Europea. FP7Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN)Comunidad de MadridUniversidad Complutense de Madridpu

Statistically derived contributions of diverse human influences to twentieth-century temperature changes

The warming of the climate system is unequivocal as evidenced by an increase in global temperatures by 0.8 °C over the past century. However, the attribution of the observed warming to human activities remains less clear, particularly because of the apparent slow-down in warming since the late 1990s. Here we analyse radiative forcing and temperature time series with state-of-the-art statistical methods to address this question without climate model simulations. We show that long-term trends in total radiative forcing and temperatures have largely been determined by atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, and modulated by other radiative factors. We identify a pronounced increase in the growth rates of both temperatures and radiative forcing around 1960, which marks the onset of sustained global warming. Our analyses also reveal a contribution of human interventions to two periods when global warming slowed down. Our statistical analysis suggests that the reduction in the emissions of ozone-depleting substances under the Montreal Protocol, as well as a reduction in methane emissions, contributed to the lower rate of warming since the 1990s. Furthermore, we identify a contribution from the two world wars and the Great Depression to the documented cooling in the mid-twentieth century, through lower carbon dioxide emissions. We conclude that reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are effective in slowing the rate of warming in the short term.F.E. acknowledges financial support from the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (http://www.conacyt.gob.mx) under grant CONACYT-310026, as well as from PASPA DGAPA of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. (CONACYT-310026 - Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia; PASPA DGAPA of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

Occurrence of Corynebacterium striatum as an emerging antibiotic-resistant nosocomial pathogen in a Tunisian hospital

Corynebacterium striatum is a nosocomial opportunistic pathogen increasingly associated with a wide range of human infections and is often resistant to several antibiotics. We investigated the susceptibility of 63 C. striatum isolated at the Farhat-Hached hospital, Sousse (Tunisia), during the period 2011?2014, to a panel of 16 compounds belonging to the main clinically relevant classes of antimicrobial agents. All strains were susceptible to vancomycin, linezolid, and daptomycin. Amikacin and gentamicin also showed good activity (MICs90 = 1 and 2 mg/L, respectively). High rates of resistance to penicillin (82.5%), clindamycin (79.4%), cefotaxime (60.3%), erythromycin (47.6%), ciprofloxacin (36.5%), moxifloxacin (34.9%), and rifampicin (25.4%) were observed. Fifty-nine (93.7%) out of the 63 isolates showed resistance to at least one compound and 31 (49.2%) were multidrug-resistant. Twenty-nine resistance profiles were distinguished among the 59 resistant C. striatum. Most of the strains resistant to fluoroquinolones showed a double mutation leading to an amino acid change in positions 87 and 91 in the quinolone resistance-determining region of the gyrA gene. The 52 strains resistant to penicillin were positive for the gene bla, encoding a class A ?-lactamase. Twenty-two PFGE patterns were identified among the 63 C. striatum, indicating that some clones have spread within the hospital

Reliability and tolerance comparison in water supply networks

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11269-010-9753-2Urban water supply is a high priority service and so looped networks are extensively used in order to considerably reduce the number of consumers affected by a failure. Looped networks may be redundant in connectivity and capacity. The concept of reliability has been introduced in an attempt to quantitatively measure the possibility of maintaining an adequate service for a given period. Numerous researchers have considered reliability as a measure of redundancy. This concept is usually implicit, but some researchers have even stated it explicitly. This paper shows why reliability cannot be considered a measure of redundancy given that branched networks can achieve high values of reliability and this would deny the fact that a looped network is more reliable than a branched network with a similar layout and size. To this end the paper discusses two quantitative indices for measuring expected network behavior: reliability and tolerance. These indices are calculated and a comparison is made between looped, branched, and mixed networks. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.The authors wish to acknowledge the support received from project IDAWAS, DPI2009-11591, of the Directorate-General of Research at the Spanish Ministry of Education, the grant PAID-02-09 for a stay at the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia by the first author, and a grant MAEC-AECI 0000202066 awarded to the second author by the Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores y Cooperacion of Spain. The use of English in this paper was revised by John Rawlins; and the revision was funded by the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain.Martínez-Rodríguez, JB.; Montalvo Arango, I.; Izquierdo Sebastián, J.; Pérez García, R. (2011). Reliability and tolerance comparison in water supply networks. Water Resources Management. 25(5):1437-1448. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-010-9753-2S14371448255Bao Y, Mays LW (1990) Model for water distribution system reliability. J Hydraul Eng ASCE 116(9):1119–1137Bouchart F, Goulter I (1991) Reliability improvements in design of water distribution networks recognizing valve location. Water Resour Res 27(12):3029–3040Carrión A, Solano H, Gamiz ML, Debón A (2010) Evaluation of the reliability of a water supply network from right-censored and left-truncated break data. Water Resour Manag, Springer Sci 24:2917–2935. Published online: 28 January 2010Chiong C (1985) Optimización de redes cerradas, Doctoral Thesis, CIH-CUJAE, Havana (in Spanish)Christodoulou SE (2010) Water network assessment and reliability analysis by use of survival analysis. Water Resour Manag, Springer Sci, Published online: 19 June 2010Cullinane MJ, Lansey KE, Mays LW (1992) Optimization-availability-based design of water distribution networks. J Hydraul Eng ASCE 118(3):420–441Duan N, Mays LW, Lansey KE (1990) Optimal reliability-based design of pumping and distribution systems. J Hydraul Eng ASCE 116(2):249–268Goulter I (1992) Systems analysis in water distribution network design: from theory to practice. J Water Resour Plan Manage ASCE 118(3):238–248Goulter I (1993) Modern concepts of a water distribution system. Policies for improvement of networks with shortcomings. In: Cabrera E, Martínez F (eds) Water supply systems: state of the art and future trends, Valencia (Spain). Comput Mech Publ, Southampton, pp 121–138Goulter I, Bouchart F (1990) Reliability-constrained pipe network model. J Hydraul Eng ASCE 116(2):211–229Gupta R, Bhave R (1994) Reliability analysis of water distribution systems. J Environ Eng ASCE 120(2):447–460Jacobs P, Goulter I (1991) Estimation of maximum cut-set size for water network failure. J Water Resour Plan Manage ASCE 117(5):588–605Jowitt P, Xu C (1993) Predicting pipe failure effects in water distribution networks. J Water Resour Plan Manage ASCE 119(l):18–31Kalungi P, Tanyimboh TT (2003) Redundancy model for water distribution systems. Rel Eng Syst Safety 82(3):275–286Khomsi D, Walters GA, Thorley ARD, Ouazar D (1996) Reliability tester for water-distribution networks. J Comput Civ Eng ASCE 10(l):10–9Lansey K, Duan N, Mays LW, Tung YK (1989) Water distribution system design under uncertainty. J Water Resour Plan Manage ASCE 115(5):630–645Loganathan GV, Shah MP, Sherali HP (1990) A two-phase network design heuristic for minimum cost water distribution systems under a reliability constraint. Eng Optim 15(4):311–336Martínez JB (2007) Quantifying the economy of water supply looped networks. J Hydraul Eng ASCE 133(1):88–97Martínez JB (2010) Cost and reliability comparison between branched and looped water supply networks. 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In: Proc 8th annual water distrib systems analysis symposium, August 27–30, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA,Walters GA, Knezevic J (1989) Discussion of ‘Reliability based optimization model for water distribution systems’ by Su, Y., Mays, L. W. , Duan, N., and Lansey, K. J Hydraul Eng ASCE 115(8):1157–1158Xu C, Goulter I (1997) Simulation-based optimal design of reliable water distribution networks. In: Zayegh A (ed) Proc 3rd int conf on modeling and simulation. Victoria University of Technology, Melbourne, pp 107–112Xu C, Goulter I (1998) Probabilistic model for water distribution reliability. J Water Resour Plan Manage ASCE 124(4):218–228Xu C, Goulter I (1999) Reliability based optimal design of water distribution networks. J Water Resour Plan Manage ASCE 125(6):352–362Xu C, Goulter I (2000) A model for optimal design of reliable water distribution networks. In: Blain WR, Brebbia CA (eds) Hydraulic engineering software VIII. WIT, Southampton, pp 71–8

High genetic diversity at the extreme range edge: nucleotide variation at nuclear loci in Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) in Scotland

Nucleotide polymorphism at 12 nuclear loci was studied in Scots pine populations across an environmental gradient in Scotland, to evaluate the impacts of demographic history and selection on genetic diversity. At eight loci, diversity patterns were compared between Scottish and continental European populations. At these loci, a similar level of diversity (θsil=~0.01) was found in Scottish vs mainland European populations, contrary to expectations for recent colonization, however, less rapid decay of linkage disequilibrium was observed in the former (ρ=0.0086±0.0009, ρ=0.0245±0.0022, respectively). Scottish populations also showed a deficit of rare nucleotide variants (multi-locus Tajima's D=0.316 vs D=−0.379) and differed significantly from mainland populations in allelic frequency and/or haplotype structure at several loci. Within Scotland, western populations showed slightly reduced nucleotide diversity (πtot=0.0068) compared with those from the south and east (0.0079 and 0.0083, respectively) and about three times higher recombination to diversity ratio (ρ/θ=0.71 vs 0.15 and 0.18, respectively). By comparison with results from coalescent simulations, the observed allelic frequency spectrum in the western populations was compatible with a relatively recent bottleneck (0.00175 × 4Ne generations) that reduced the population to about 2% of the present size. However, heterogeneity in the allelic frequency distribution among geographical regions in Scotland suggests that subsequent admixture of populations with different demographic histories may also have played a role

The Ground-Dwelling Arthropod Community of Península Valdés in Patagonia, Argentina

This is the first study based on a planned and intensive sampling effort that describes the community composition and structure of the ground-dwelling arthropod assemblage of Península Valdés (Patagonia). It was carried out using pitfall traps, opened for two weeks during the summers of 2005, 2006 and 2007. A total of 28, 111 individuals were caught. Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) dominated this community, followed by beetles (Coleoptera) and spiders (Araneae). The most abundant species were Pheidole bergi Mayr (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) and Blapstinus punctulatus Solier (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae). Two new species were very recently described as new based on specimens collected during this study: Valdesiana curiosa Carpintero, Dellapé & Cheli (Hemiptera, Miridae) and Anomaloptera patagonica Dellapé & Cheli (Hemiptera, Oxycarenidae). The order Coleoptera was the most diverse taxa. The distribution of abundance data was best described by the logarithmic series model both at the family and species levels, suggesting that ecological relationships in this community could be controlled by a few factors. The community was dominated by predators from a trophic perspective. This suggests that predation acts as an important factor driving the distribution and abundances of surface-dwelling arthropods in this habitat and as such serves as a key element in understanding desert, above-ground community structure. These findings may also be useful for management and conservation purposes in arid Patagonia

Dysglycemia and Abnormal Adiposity Drivers of Cardiometabolic-Based Chronic Disease in the Czech Population: Biological, Behavioral, and Cultural/Social Determinants of Health

In contrast to the decreasing burden related to cardiovascular disease (CVD), the burden related to dysglycemia and adiposity complications is increasing in Czechia, and local drivers must be identified. A comprehensive literature review was performed to evaluate biological, behavioral, and environmental drivers of dysglycemia and abnormal adiposity in Czechia. Additionally, the structure of the Czech healthcare system was described. The prevalence of obesity in men and diabetes in both sexes has been increasing over the past 30 years. Possible reasons include the Eastern European eating pattern, high prevalence of physical inactivity and health illiteracy, education, and income-related health inequalities. Despite the advanced healthcare system based on the compulsory insurance model with free-for-service healthcare and a wide range of health-promoting initiatives, more effective strategies to tackle the adiposity/dysglycemia are needed. In conclusion, the disease burden related to dysglycemia and adiposity in Czechia remains high but is not translated into greater CVD. This discordant relationship likely depends more on other factors, such as improvements in dyslipidemia and hypertension control. A reconceptualization of abnormal adiposity and dysglycemia into a more actionable cardiometabolic-based chronic disease model is needed to improve the approach to these conditions. This review can serve as a platform to investigate causal mechanisms and secure effective management of cardiometabolic-based chronic disease

The porin and the permeating antibiotic: A selective diffusion barrier in gram-negative bacteria

Gram-negative bacteria are responsible for a large proportion of antibiotic resistant bacterial diseases. These bacteria have a complex cell envelope that comprises an outer membrane and an inner membrane that delimit the periplasm. The outer membrane contains various protein channels, called porins, which are involved in the influx of various compounds, including several classes of antibiotics. Bacterial adaptation to reduce influx through porins is an increasing problem worldwide that contributes, together with efflux systems, to the emergence and dissemination of antibiotic resistance. An exciting challenge is to decipher the genetic and molecular basis of membrane impermeability as a bacterial resistance mechanism. This Review outlines the bacterial response towards antibiotic stress on altered membrane permeability and discusses recent advances in molecular approaches that are improving our knowledge of the physico-chemical parameters that govern the translocation of antibiotics through porin channel