Tumor necrosis factor alpha antagonist drugs and leishmaniasis in Europe.

Leishmaniasis is endemic in Europe and the prevalence of latent infection in the Mediterranean region is high. Reports describing opportunistic leishmaniasis in European patients treated with tumor necrosis factor (TNF) alpha antagonist drugs are rapidly accumulating. For other granulomatous infections, risk of opportunistic disease varies by mode of TNF-alpha antagonism. This study explores whether this may also be the case for leishmaniasis. We ascertained the relative frequency of exposure to different TNF antagonist drugs among published cases of opportunistic leishmaniasis in Europe and compared this with the prescription of these drugs in Europe. We found that risk of opportunistic leishmaniasis is higher in patients receiving anti-TNF monoclonal antibodies (infliximab or adalimumab) compared with patients treated with the TNF-receptor construct etanercept. Clinicians may want to consider these observations, which suggest that etanercept should be favoured over anti-TNF monoclonal antibodies in individuals living in or visiting areas endemic for leishmaniasis until evidence from prospective research is available. A European adverse event reporting system is required to identify rare opportunistic infections associated with immunosuppressive and immunomodulatory biotherapies

On integration of the Kowalevski gyrostat and the Clebsch problems

For the Kowalevski gyrostat change of variables similar to that of the Kowalevski top is done. We establish one to one correspondence between the Kowalevski gyrostat and the Clebsch system and demonstrate that Kowalevski variables for the gyrostat practically coincide with elliptic coordinates on sphere for the Clebsch case. Equivalence of considered integrable systems allows to construct two Lax matrices for the gyrostat using known rational and elliptic Lax matrices for the Clebsch model. Associated with these matrices solutions of the Clebsch system and, therefore, of the Kowalevski gyrostat problem are discussed. The Kotter solution of the Clebsch system in modern notation is presented in detail.Comment: LaTeX, 24 page

Yeast chassis design for dicarboxylic acids production

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Discovery of Novel Term Associations in a Document Collection

Non peer reviewe

Robust vetoes for gravitational-wave burst triggers using known instrumental couplings

The search for signatures of transient, unmodelled gravitational-wave (GW) bursts in the data of ground-based interferometric detectors typically uses `excess-power' search methods. One of the most challenging problems in the burst-data-analysis is to distinguish between actual GW bursts and spurious noise transients that trigger the detection algorithms. In this paper, we present a unique and robust strategy to `veto' the instrumental glitches. This method makes use of the phenomenological understanding of the coupling of different detector sub-systems to the main detector output. The main idea behind this method is that the noise at the detector output (channel H) can be projected into two orthogonal directions in the Fourier space -- along, and orthogonal to, the direction in which the noise in an instrumental channel X would couple into H. If a noise transient in the detector output originates from channel X, it leaves the statistics of the noise-component of H orthogonal to X unchanged, which can be verified by a statistical hypothesis testing. This strategy is demonstrated by doing software injections in simulated Gaussian noise. We also formulate a less-rigorous, but computationally inexpensive alternative to the above method. Here, the parameters of the triggers in channel X are compared to the parameters of the triggers in channel H to see whether a trigger in channel H can be `explained' by a trigger in channel X and the measured transfer function.Comment: 14 Pages, 8 Figures, To appear in Class. Quantum Gra

Yeast chassis design for production of dicarboxylic acids

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a widely used microorganism for industrial biotechnology that has great potential to replace traditional petrochemical synthesis. Optimization of cell factories for production of different biotechnological products is still a cost and time inefficient process. Availability of pre-optimized yeast chassis cells, with improved precursor supply, will overcome such hurdles. Building upon this premise, we have developed a framework for rational design of chassis strains combining genome-scale metabolic models with a multi-objective metaheuristic approach. Here, we present the non-intuitive gene deletion targets optimized for growth-product coupled production of a family of C4-dicarboxylic acids, namely fumaric, succinic and malic acids. Several multi-gene deletion strains, including the chassis cell and the final producer strains, were implemented and experimentally tested. The strains encompassing the chassis backbone produce higher yields of respective targeted compounds than those containing merely the intuitive gene deletion(s). Taking advantage of the growth-product coupled design, best producing strains have been improved by adaptive laboratory evolution. As a proof-of-concept, we have generated pre-optimized chassis yeast cells for enhanced production of C4-dicarboxylic acids, hence showing that modular design strategies may contribute to accelerate cell factory development.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Status of the GEO600 gravitational wave detector

The GEO600 laser interferometric gravitational wave detector is approaching the end of its commissioning phase which started in 1995.During a test run in January 2002 the detector was operated for 15 days in a power-recycled michelson configuration. The detector and environmental data which were acquired during this test run were used to test the data analysis code. This paper describes the subsystems of GEO600, the status of the detector by August 2002 and the plans towards the first science run

Setting upper limits on the strength of periodic gravitational waves from PSR J1939+2134 using the first science data from the GEO 600 and LIGO detectors

Data collected by the GEO 600 and LIGO interferometric gravitational wave detectors during their first observational science run were searched for continuous gravitational waves from the pulsar J1939+2134 at twice its rotation frequency. Two independent analysis methods were used and are demonstrated in this paper: a frequency domain method and a time domain method. Both achieve consistent null results, placing new upper limits on the strength of the pulsar's gravitational wave emission. A model emission mechanism is used to interpret the limits as a constraint on the pulsar's equatorial ellipticity