The predictive value of HLA-DR matching and cytokine gene polymorphisms in renal allograft acute rejection: A living-unrelated donor (LURD) study

Background: In addition to Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA) compatibility, gene polymorphisms in cytokines might also be important in the quality of allogeneic immune response. Objective: To evaluate the influence of HLA-DR matching and a number of cytokine gene polymorphisms on acute rejection after living-unrelated donor (LURD) kidney transplantation. Methods: A total of 42 renal transplants performed at Hashemi Nejad Kidney Hospital (Tehran/Iran) and followed up for 3 months post-transplantation were included. Using PCR-SSP, HLA-DR alleles (DR1-18) of recipients and donors and gene polymorphisms in TNF-a, TGF-b1, IL-10, IL-6, and IFN-γ of recipients were determined. Results: Acute rejection was observed in 11(26.2) of renal recipients. The frequency of one and two HLA-DR mismatches in rejector group was 2(18.2) and 9(81.8) and in non-rejector group was 13(41.9) and 17(54.8), respectively. HLA-DR incompatibility was not significantly higher in rejector (1.82±0.40) compared with non-rejector (1.52±0.57) recipients (P=0.069) and more than half of non-rejectors had completely mismatched HLA-DR antigens with donors. Polymorphisms associated with the mentioned cytokines had no correlation with acute rejection. Conclusion: The predictive value of HLA-DR mismatching for acute rejection is not as prominent in LURD kidney transplantation as in the cadaveric one. In addition, we failed to demonstrate an association between combined cytokine genotypes and HLA-DR matching with acute rejection. Further and more detailed immunogenetic investigations are required in order to have a better prediction of the transplant outcome

Macrosegregation Resulting from Directional Solidification Through an Abrupt Change in Cross-Sections

Simulations of the directional solidification of two hypoeutectic alloys (Al-7Si alloy and Al-19Cu) and resulting macrosegregation patterns are presented. The casting geometries include abrupt changes in cross-section from a larger width of 9.5 mm to a narrower 3.2 mm width then through an expansion back to a width of 9.5 mm. The alloys were chosen as model alloys because they have similar solidification shrinkages, but the effect of Cu on changing the density of the liquid alloy is about an order of magnitude greater than that of Si. The simulations compare well with experimental castings that were directionally solidified in a graphite mold in a Bridgman furnace. In addition to the simulations of the directional solidification in graphite molds, some simulations were effected for solidification in an alumina mold. This study showed that the mold must be included in numerical simulations of directional solidification because of its effect on the temperature field and solidification. For the model alloys used for the study, the simulations clearly show the interaction of the convection field with the solidifying alloys to produce a macrosegregation pattern known as "steepling" in sections with a uniform width. Details of the complex convection- and segregation-patterns at both the contraction and expansion of the cross-sectional area are revealed by the computer simulations. The convection and solidification through the expansions suggest a possible mechanism for the formation of stray grains. The computer simulations and the experimental castings have been part of on-going ground-based research with the goal of providing necessary background for eventual experiments aboard the ISS. For casting practitioners, the results of the simulations demonstrate that computer simulations should be applied to reveal interactions between alloy solidification properties, solidification conditions, and mold geometries on macrosegregation. The simulations also presents the possibility of engineering the mold-material to avoid, or mitigate, the effects of thermosolutal convection and macrosegregation by selecting a mold material with suitable thermal properties, especially its thermal conductivity

Analysing the impact of far-out sidelobes on the imaging performance of the SKA-LOW telescope

The Square Kilometre Array’s Low Frequency instrument (SKA-LOW) will operate in the undersampled regime for most of the frequency band where grating lobes pose particular challenges. To achieve the expected level of sensitivity for SKA-LOW, it is particularly important to understand how interfering sources in both near and far side-lobes of the station beam affect the imaging performance. In this study, we discuss options for station designs, and adopting a random element layout, we assess its effectiveness by investigating how sources far from the main lobe of the station beam degrade images of the target field. These sources have the effect of introducing a noise-like corruption to images, which is called the far sidelobe confusion noise (FSCN). Using $\tiny{OSKAR}$, a software simulator accelerated using graphics processing units, we carried out end-to-end simulations using an all-sky model and telescope configuration representative of the SKA-LOW instrument. The FSCN is a function of both the station beam and the interferometric point spread function, and decreases with increasing observation time until the coverage of the aperture plane no longer improves. Using apodization to reduce the level of near-in sidelobes of the station beam had a notable improvement on the level of the FSCN at low frequencies. Our results indicate that the effects of picking up sources in the sidelobes are worse at low frequencies, where the array is less sparse.This work used the Wilkes GPU cluster at the University of Cambridge High Performance Computing Service (http://www.hpc.cam.ac.uk/), provided by Dell Inc., NVIDIA and Mellanox, and part funded by STFC with industrial sponsorship from Rolls Royce and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

Effect of Onopordon acanthium L. as add on antihypertensive therapy in patients with primary hypertension taking Losartan: A pilot study

Purpose: Onopordon acanthium L. is known for its medicinal properties. Our recent study showed that its seed extract is a novel natura angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitor (ACEI). This study was carried out to investigate its possible antihypertensive effects in patients receiving losartan. Methods: This uncontrolled clinical trial was carried out among 20 patients (30-60y) with uncontrolled hypertension despite receiving 50 mg losartan (stage I & II) in two hospitals in Iran. After completing informed consent, patients were treated by 2 capsules each 1g of Onopordon acanthium seed extract (OSE) as add-on therapy, two times per day. Results: 18 patients completed the study (50.94 ±8.37y). Mean systolic blood pressure (SBP) at the baseline was 151.9 ± 13.74mmHg and at the end of the study, it was 134.6 ± 18.25 mmHg and mean diastolic blood pressure (DBP) was 97.41 ± 10.36 at the baseline and was 85.71 ± 7.481 after 8 weeks. OSE significantly reduced SBP and DBP at the end of 8 weeks (P=0.003, 95% CI: -19.7, -15.1; P=0.0006, 95% CI: -10.23, -13.15; respectively). No evidence of hepatic or renal toxicity was detected. Conclusion: Based on the results of this study OSE has antihypertensive property with no significant adverse effects. However, because of the low number of samples, this medication may be not safely administered. The results of this study could be the basis for further studies with larger sample size. IRCT registration number: IRCT2013020712391N. © 2018 The Authors

Effect of Onopordon acanthium L. as add on antihypertensive therapy in patients with primary hypertension taking Losartan: A pilot study

Purpose: Onopordon acanthium L. is known for its medicinal properties. Our recent study showed that its seed extract is a novel natura angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitor (ACEI). This study was carried out to investigate its possible antihypertensive effects in patients receiving losartan. Methods: This uncontrolled clinical trial was carried out among 20 patients (30-60y) with uncontrolled hypertension despite receiving 50 mg losartan (stage I & II) in two hospitals in Iran. After completing informed consent, patients were treated by 2 capsules each 1g of Onopordon acanthium seed extract (OSE) as add-on therapy, two times per day. Results: 18 patients completed the study (50.94 ±8.37y). Mean systolic blood pressure (SBP) at the baseline was 151.9 ± 13.74mmHg and at the end of the study, it was 134.6 ± 18.25 mmHg and mean diastolic blood pressure (DBP) was 97.41 ± 10.36 at the baseline and was 85.71 ± 7.481 after 8 weeks. OSE significantly reduced SBP and DBP at the end of 8 weeks (P=0.003, 95% CI: -19.7, -15.1; P=0.0006, 95% CI: -10.23, -13.15; respectively). No evidence of hepatic or renal toxicity was detected. Conclusion: Based on the results of this study OSE has antihypertensive property with no significant adverse effects. However, because of the low number of samples, this medication may be not safely administered. The results of this study could be the basis for further studies with larger sample size. IRCT registration number: IRCT2013020712391N. © 2018 The Authors

Macrosegregation Caused by Convection Associated with Directional Solidification through Cross-Section Change

Al-7 wt% Si and Pb-6 wt% Sb alloy samples were directionally solidified (DS), with liquid above and solid below and gravity pointing down, in cylindrical graphite crucibles through an abrupt cross-section change. Fraction eutectic distribution in the microstructure, primary dendrite spacing and primary dendrite trunk diameters have been measured in the DS samples in the vicinity of section change in order to examine the effect of convection associated with the combined influence of thermosolutal factors and solidification shrinkage. It is observed that convection not only produces extensive radial and axial macrosegregation near cross-section change, it also affects the dendritic array morphology. Primary dendrite spacing and primary dendrite trunk diameter, both, are influenced by this convection. In addition to the experimental results, preliminary results from a numerical model which includes solidification shrinkage and thermosolutal convection in the mushy zone in its analysis will also be presente

AMI-LA Observations of the SuperCLASS Super-cluster

We present a deep survey of the SuperCLASS super-cluster - a region of sky known to contain five Abell clusters at redshift $z\sim0.2$ - performed using the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager (AMI) Large Array (LA) at 15.5$~$GHz. Our survey covers an area of approximately 0.9 square degrees. We achieve a nominal sensitivity of $32.0~\mu$Jy beam$^{-1}$ toward the field centre, finding 80 sources above a $5\sigma$ threshold. We derive the radio colour-colour distribution for sources common to three surveys that cover the field and identify three sources with strongly curved spectra - a high-frequency-peaked source and two GHz-peaked-spectrum sources. The differential source count (i) agrees well with previous deep radio source count, (ii) exhibits no evidence of an emerging population of star-forming galaxies, down to a limit of 0.24$~$mJy, and (iii) disagrees with some models of the 15$~$GHz source population. However, our source count is in agreement with recent work that provides an analytical correction to the source count from the SKADS Simulated Sky, supporting the suggestion that this discrepancy is caused by an abundance of flat-spectrum galaxy cores as-yet not included in source population models.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Differential role of gpaB and sidA gene expressions in relation to virulence in Aspergillus species from patients with invasive aspergillosis

The virulence genes in invasive aspergillosis (IA) have not been analyzed adequately. The present study was designed to evaluate the expression of gpaB and sidA genes, which are important virulence genes in Aspergillus spp. from bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) samples. Direct examination and culture on Czapek Agar and Sabouraud Dextrose Agar media were performed for 600 BAL specimens isolated from patients with possible aspergillosis. A Galactomannan ELISA assay was also carried out. The expression levels of the gpaB and sidA genes in isolates were analyzed using quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). We identified 2 species, including Aspergillus flavus (A. flavus) and Aspergillus fumigatus (A. fumigatus) in 25 positive samples for invasive aspergillosis as validated using GM-ELISA. A. flavus is the main pathogen threatening transplant recipients and cancer patients worldwide. In this study, A. flavus had low levels of the gpaB gene expression compared to A. fumigatus (p = 0.006). The highest sidA expression was detected in transplant recipients (p = 0.05). There was no significant correlation between sidA expression and underlying disease (p = 0.15). The sidA and gpaB gene expression patterns may provide evidence that these virulence genes play important roles in the pathogenicity of Aspergillus isolates; however, there are several regulatory genes responsible for the unexpressed sidA and gpaB genes in the isolates. © 2018 Sociedade Brasileira de Microbiologi

Evaluation of the MICAST #2-12 AI-7wt%Si Sample Directionally Solidified Aboard the International Space Station

The US team of the European led "MIcrostructure Formation in CASTing of Technical Alloys under Diffusive and Magnetically Controlled Convective Conditions" (MICAST) program recently received a third Aluminum - 7wt% silicon alloy that was processed in the microgravity environment aboard the International Space Station. The sample, designated MICAST#2-12, was directionally solidified in the Solidification with Quench Furnace (SQF) at a constant rate of 40micometers/s through an imposed temperature gradient of 31K/cm. Procedures taken to evaluate the state of the sample prior to sectioning for metallographic analysis are reviewed and rational for measuring the microstructural constituents, in particular the primary dendrite arm spacing (Lambda (sub1)), is given. The data are presented, put in context with the earlier samples, and evaluated in view of a relevant theoretical model