Concomitant Congenital Diaphagmatic Hernia (CDH) and bilateral bacterial glomerulonephritis in a pet chinchilla (Chinchilla lanigera)

Background: The domestic chinchilla has been descended from Chinchilla lanigera (long-tailed Chinchilla) or Chinchilla chinchilla (short-tailed Chinchilla). Both species of chinchilla are currently listed as endangered by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Over the past 20 years, they have spread as pets and overall knowledge about their care is improving. The present case report describes a congenital diaphragmatic hernia in a Chinchilla lanigera. Case presentation: A 1-year-old, 420 g female chinchilla (Chinchilla lanigera) was presented for clinical examination due to 2 days haematuria episodes and anorexia. A complete haematological analysis was performed, showing a moderate neutrophilia and severe renal involvement. X-rays showed severe intestinal meteorism affecting mostly the cecum, and a soft tissue density mass with translucent areas located in the caudal thorax, making it hard to distinguish the cardiac silhouette. A barium swallow (barium sulfate) was performed and after 20 min, radiograms were performed again, showing part of the stomach dislocated in thorax. Ultrasound was also carried out, confirming the partial stomach herniation into the thoracic cavity and a severe nephropathy. The patient was euthanized according to the owner’s wish and a complete necropsy was performed. The diagnosis was congenital diaphragmatic hernia concomitant to a severe bilateral bacterial glomerulonephritis. Discussion and conclusions: Diaphragmatic hernias can be either congenital or acquired. About CDHs in pet chinchillas, literature is still lacking. In this patient there was no history of previous traumas. No scar tissue or thickening involved margins of the pathological diaphragm window at the necropsy, supporting the hypothesis of a congenital defect. Glomerulonephritis most often results from immune-mediated mechanisms, generally after the deposition of soluble immune complexes within the glomeruli. This mechanism is favoured by a prolonged antigenemia that could occur during specific viral infections, chronic bacterial infections, chronic parasitism, autoimmune diseases and neoplasia. Few cases of nephritis are described in chinchillas (Chinchilla lanigera), mostly related to bacterial sepsis or less commonly involving fungi. The evidence of bacterial aggregates in kidneys at the histopathology, confirmed the infective aetiology. No relationship between the diaphragmatic hernia and glomerulonephritis was found in this report

Action Concepts in the Brain: An Activation Likelihood Estimation Meta-Analysis

Many recent neuroimaging studies have investigated the representation of semantic memory for actions in the brain. We used activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analyses to answer two outstanding questions about the neural basis of action concepts. First, on an “embodied” view of semantic memory, evidence to date is unclear regarding whether visual motion or motor systems are more consistently engaged by action concepts. Second, few studies have directly investigated the possibility that action concepts accessed verbally or nonverbally recruit different areas of the brain. Because our meta-analyses did not include studies requiring the perception of dynamic depictions of actions or action execution, we were able to determine whether conceptual processing alone recruits visual motion and motor systems. Significant concordance in brain regions within or adjacent to visual motion areas emerged in all meta-analyses. By contrast, we did not observe significant concordance in motor or premotor cortices in any analysis. Neural differences between action images and action verbs followed a gradient of abstraction among representations derived from visual motion information in the left lateral temporal and occipital cortex. The consistent involvement of visual motion but not motor brain regions in representing action concepts may reflect differences in the variability of experience across individuals with perceiving versus performing actions

Optimization of coupled advanced oxidation processes and activated carbons for purification of salt water

Photocatalysis, ozonation and activated carbons were investigated separately and in combination as tools for the purification of polluted salt water. Coupling different processes enables to overcome many drawbacks related to the use of the single technologies and at the same time to exploit possible synergistic effects. In this work a kinetic analysis was performed for modelling the degradation of 4-nitrophenol (4NP) as a probe pollutant molecule in synthetic seawater. Thus, the optimum synergistic conditions of the three processes acting together were determined and discussed

Novel synthesis of porous aluminium and its application in hydrogen storage

A novel approach for confining LiBH4 within a porous aluminium scaffold was applied in order to enhance its hydrogen storage properties, relative to conventional techniques for confining complex hydrides. The porous aluminium scaffold was fabricated by sintering NaAlH4, which was in the form of a dense pellet, under dynamic vacuum. The final product was a porous aluminium scaffold with the Na and H2 having been removed from the initial pellet. This technique contributed to achieving highly dispersed LiBH4 particles that were also destabilised by the presence of the aluminium scaffold. In this study, the effectiveness of this novel fabrication method of confined/destabilised LiBH4 was extensively investigated, which aimed to simultaneously improve the hydrogen release at lower temperature and the kinetics of the system. These properties were compared with the properties of other confined LiBH4 samples found in the literature. As-synthesised samples were characterised using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), X-ray Diffraction (XRD) and Nitrogen Adsorption measurements. The hydrogen storage capacity of all samples was analysed using temperature programmed desorption in order to provide a comprehensive survey of their hydrogen desorption properties. The porous aluminium scaffold has a wide pore size distribution with most of the porosity due to pores larger than 50 nm. Despite this the onset hydrogen desorption temperature (Tdes) of the LiBH4 infiltrated into the porous aluminium scaffold was 200 °C lower than that of bulk LiBH4 and 100 °C lower than that of nanosized LiBH4. Partial cycling could be achieved below the melting point of LiBH4 but the kinetics of hydrogen release decreased with cycle number

Solar neutrino detection in a large volume double-phase liquid argon experiment

Precision measurements of solar neutrinos emitted by specific nuclear reaction chains in the Sun are of great interest for developing an improved understanding of star formation and evolution. Given the expected neutrino fluxes and known detection reactions, such measurements require detectors capable of collecting neutrino-electron scattering data in exposures on the order of 1 ktonne yr, with good energy resolution and extremely low background. Two-phase liquid argon time projection chambers (LAr TPCs) are under development for direct Dark Matter WIMP searches, which possess very large sensitive mass, high scintillation light yield, good energy resolution, and good spatial resolution in all three cartesian directions. While enabling Dark Matter searches with sensitivity extending to the "neutrino floor" (given by the rate of nuclear recoil events from solar neutrino coherent scattering), such detectors could also enable precision measurements of solar neutrino fluxes using the neutrino-electron elastic scattering events. Modeling results are presented for the cosmogenic and radiogenic backgrounds affecting solar neutrino detection in a 300 tonne (100 tonne fiducial) LAr TPC operating at LNGS depth (3,800 meters of water equivalent). The results show that such a detector could measure the CNO neutrino rate with ~15% precision, and significantly improve the precision of the 7Be and pep neutrino rates compared to the currently available results from the Borexino organic liquid scintillator detector.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures, 6 table

Tailored for Real-World: A Whole Slide Image Classification System Validated on Uncurated Multi-Site Data Emulating the Prospective Pathology Workload.

Standard of care diagnostic procedure for suspected skin cancer is microscopic examination of hematoxylin & eosin stained tissue by a pathologist. Areas of high inter-pathologist discordance and rising biopsy rates necessitate higher efficiency and diagnostic reproducibility. We present and validate a deep learning system which classifies digitized dermatopathology slides into 4 categories. The system is developed using 5,070 images from a single lab, and tested on an uncurated set of 13,537 images from 3 test labs, using whole slide scanners manufactured by 3 different vendors. The system\u27s use of deep-learning-based confidence scoring as a criterion to consider the result as accurate yields an accuracy of up to 98%, and makes it adoptable in a real-world setting. Without confidence scoring, the system achieved an accuracy of 78%. We anticipate that our deep learning system will serve as a foundation enabling faster diagnosis of skin cancer, identification of cases for specialist review, and targeted diagnostic classifications

N-terminal prohormone brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) as a noninvasive marker for restrictive syndromes

Constrictive pericarditis (CP) and restrictive cardiomyopathy share many similarities in both their clinical and hemodynamic characteristics and N-terminal prohormone brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) is a sensitive marker of cardiac diastolic dysfunction. The objectives of the present study were to determine whether serum NT-proBNP was high in patients with endomyocardial fibrosis (EMF) and CP, and to investigate how this relates to diastolic dysfunction. Thirty-three patients were divided into two groups: CP (16 patients) and EMF (17 patients). The control group consisted of 30 healthy individuals. Patients were evaluated by bidimensional echocardiography, with restriction syndrome evaluated by pulsed Doppler of the mitral flow and serum NT-proBNP measured by immunoassay and detected by electrochemiluminescence. Spearman correlation coefficient was used to analyze the association between log NT-proBNP and echocardiographic parameters. Log NT-proBNP was significantly higher (P < 0.05) in CP patients (log mean: 2.67 pg/mL; 95%CI: 2.43-2.92 log pg/mL) and in EMF patients (log mean: 2.91 pg/mL; 95%CI: 2.70-3.12 log pg/mL) compared with the control group (log mean: 1.45; 95%CI: 1.32-1.60 log pg/mL). There were no statistical differences between EMF and CP patients (P = 0.689) in terms of NT-proBNP. The NT-proBNP log tended to correlate with peak velocity of the E wave (r = 0.439; P = 0.060, but not with A wave (r = -0.399; P = 0.112). Serum NT-proBNP concentration can be used as a marker to detect the presence of diastolic dysfunction in patients with restrictive syndrome; however, serum NT-proBNP levels cannot be used to differentiate restrictive cardiomyopathy from CP

The Nylon Scintillator Containment Vessels for the Borexino Solar Neutrino Experiment

Borexino is a solar neutrino experiment designed to observe the 0.86 MeV Be-7 neutrinos emitted in the pp cycle of the sun. Neutrinos will be detected by their elastic scattering on electrons in 100 tons of liquid scintillator. The neutrino event rate in the scintillator is expected to be low (~0.35 events per day per ton), and the signals will be at energies below 1.5 MeV, where background from natural radioactivity is prominent. Scintillation light produced by the recoil electrons is observed by an array of 2240 photomultiplier tubes. Because of the intrinsic radioactive contaminants in these PMTs, the liquid scintillator is shielded from them by a thick barrier of buffer fluid. A spherical vessel made of thin nylon film contains the scintillator, separating it from the surrounding buffer. The buffer region itself is divided into two concentric shells by a second nylon vessel in order to prevent inward diffusion of radon atoms. The radioactive background requirements for Borexino are challenging to meet, especially for the scintillator and these nylon vessels. Besides meeting requirements for low radioactivity, the nylon vessels must also satisfy requirements for mechanical, optical, and chemical properties. The present paper describes the research and development, construction, and installation of the nylon vessels for the Borexino experiment