Otitis media and interna with or without polyps in cats:association between meningeal enhancement on postcontrast MRI, cerebrospinal fluid abnormalities, and clinician treatment choice and outcome

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between meningeal enhancement (MgE) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis results, their individual association with bacteriology results from affected ear samples and whether these test results influenced clinicians' therapeutic choice in cats with otitis media and interna (OMI). METHODS This was a multicentre retrospective study carried out over an 8-year period. Cats diagnosed with OMI, with or without a nasopharyngeal polyp, leading to peripheral vestibular signs were included. Only cats for which MRI with postcontrast T1-weighted sequences and CSF analyses available were included. Cats with intra-axial MRI lesions or empyema were excluded. RESULTS Fifty-eight cats met the inclusion criteria. MgE was reported in 26/58 cases, of which nine had an abnormal CSF result (increased total nucleated cell count [TNCC] or total protein); 32/58 cases had no MgE, of which 10 showed abnormal CSF results. There was no association between bacteriology results (external ear canal or bulla) and MgE or abnormal CSF results. CSF abnormalities were statistically significantly more common in acute cases (n = 16/37) than in chronic cases (n = 3/21; Fischer's test P = 0.04). Prednisolone was prescribed in 10/16 cases with increased TNCC. Among the 42 cases with normal TNCC, 15 received prednisolone and 13 received non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Various antimicrobial drugs were prescribed in 53/58 cats. Duration of antimicrobial treatment was similar, regardless of positive bacterial culture (5.58 vs 4.22 weeks), abnormal CSF (5.83 vs 4.76 weeks) or MgE (5.33 vs 4.90 weeks). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE No association was found between the CSF and MgE results. Furthermore, no association was found between MgE, CSF or bacteriology findings. In addition, abnormal CSF results might lead the clinician to treat with corticosteroids, but they did not have any impact on duration of antimicrobial treatment. CSF abnormalities were seen significantly less frequently in chronic cases. The outcome tended to be poorer when MgE was detected on MRI

New records of small mammals in Sierra de las Quijadas National Park, San Luis, Argentina

Se reportan tres nuevas especies para el Parque Nacional Sierra de las Quijadas, San Luis (Argentina). Se realizaron cuatro muestreos con trampas de captura viva, en módulos RAPELD, con un esfuerzo de muestreo de 5.200 trampas-noche. Los nuevos registros corresponden a la marmosa coligruesa del Chaco Seco, Thylamys bruchi (Thomas, 1921), la laucha colilarga baya del Monte, Eligmodontia moreni (Thomas, 1896) y la laucha de las salinas, Salinomys delicatus Braun & Mares, 1995. Todasson especies endémicas de Argentina central, destacándose S. delicatus, por encontrarse amenazada. Se evidencia la elevada riqueza y la necesidad de estudios de base en la región.We report three new species for Sierra de las Quijadas National Park, San Luis (Argentina). Four samplings were made using live traps in RAPELD modules, with a total sampling effort of 5,200 trapnights. The new records correspond to: the Dry Chaco fat-tailed opossum, Thylamys bruchi (Thomas, 1921); the Monte gerbil mouse, Eligmodontia moreni (Thomas, 1896); and the delicate salt flat mouse, Salinomys delicatus Braun & Mares, 1995. These are endemic species of central Argentina, highlighting the presence of S. delicatus, categorized as endangered. These results show the high richness and the need of base-line studies in this area.Fil: Ochoa, Ana Cecilia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Investigaciones Biológicas de San Luis. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Ciencias Físico Matemáticas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Investigaciones Biológicas de San Luis; ArgentinaFil: Gatica, Ailin. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Investigaciones Biológicas de San Luis. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Ciencias Físico Matemáticas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Investigaciones Biológicas de San Luis; ArgentinaFil: Carrizo, María C.. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; ArgentinaFil: Martinez Retta, Lucía. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Laboratorio de Biología; ArgentinaFil: Puegher, Danila M.. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Laboratorio de Biología; ArgentinaFil: Kajin, Maja. Universidade do Estado de Rio do Janeiro; BrasilFil: Mangione, Antonio Marcelo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Investigaciones Biológicas de San Luis. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Ciencias Físico Matemáticas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Investigaciones Biológicas de San Luis; Argentin

A standard protocol to report discrete stage-structured demographic information

Stage-based demographic methods, such as matrix population models (MPMs), are powerful tools used to address a broad range of fundamental questions in ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation science. Accordingly, MPMs now exist for over 3000 species worldwide. These data are being digitised as an ongoing process and periodically released into two large open-access online repositories: the COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database and the COMADRE Animal Matrix Database. During the last decade, data archiving and curation of COMPADRE and COMADRE, and subsequent comparative research, have revealed pronounced variation in how MPMs are parameterized and reported. Here, we summarise current issues related to the parameterisation and reporting of MPMs that arise most frequently and outline how they affect MPM construction, analysis, and interpretation. To quantify variation in how MPMs are reported, we present results from a survey identifying key aspects of MPMs that are frequently unreported in manuscripts. We then screen COMPADRE and COMADRE to quantify how often key pieces of information are omitted from manuscripts using MPMs. Over 80% of surveyed researchers (n = 60) state a clear benefit to adopting more standardised methodologies for reporting MPMs. Furthermore, over 85% of the 300 MPMs assessed from COMPADRE and COMADRE omitted one or more elements that are key to their accurate interpretation. Based on these insights, we identify fundamental issues that can arise from MPM construction and communication and provide suggestions to improve clarity, reproducibility and future research utilising MPMs and their required metadata. To fortify reproducibility and empower researchers to take full advantage of their demographic data, we introduce a standardised protocol to present MPMs in publications. This standard is linked to www.compa dre-db.org, so that authors wishing to archive their MPMs can do so prior to submission of publications, following examples from other open-access repositories such as DRYAD, Figshare and Zenodo. Combining and standardising MPMs parameterized from populations around the globe and across the tree of life opens up powerful research opportunities in evolutionary biology, ecology and conservation research. However, this potential can only be fully realised by adopting standardised methods to ensure reproducibility

On stability and reachability of perturbed positive systems

This paper deals mainly with the structural properties of positive reachability and stability. We focus our attention on positive discrete-time systems and analyze the behavior of these systems subject to some perturbation. The effects of permutation and similar transformations are discussed in order to determine the structure of the perturbation such that the closed-loop system is positively reachable and stable. Finally, the results are applied to Leslie’s population model. The structure of the perturbation is shown such that the properties of the original system remain and an explicit expression of its set of positively reachable populations is given.The authors would like to thank the referee and the associate editor for their very helpful suggestions. This work has been partially supported by Spanish Grant MTM2013 43678 P.Cantó Colomina, B.; Coll, C.; Sánchez, E. (2014). On stability and reachability of perturbed positive systems. Advances in Difference Equations. 296(1):1-11. https://doi.org/10.1186/1687-1847-2014-296S1112961Cantó B, Coll C, Sánchez E: Parameter identification of a class of economical models. Discrete Dyn. Nat. Soc. 2010., 2010: Article ID 408346Cao H, Zhou Y: The discrete age-structured SEIT model with application to tuberculosis transmission in China. Math. Comput. Model. 2012, 55: 385-395. 10.1016/j.mcm.2011.08.017Coll C, Herrero A, Sánchez E, Thome N: A dynamic model for a study of diabetes. Math. Comput. Model. 2009, 50: 713-716. 10.1016/j.mcm.2008.12.027Emmert HE, Allen LSJ: Population persistence and extinction in a discrete-time, stage-structured epidemic model. J. Differ. Equ. Appl. 2004, 10: 1177-1199. 10.1080/10236190410001654151Li CK, Schneider H: Applications of Perron-Frobenius theory to population dynamics. J. Math. Biol. 2002, 44: 450-462. 10.1007/s002850100132Li X, Wang W: A discrete epidemic model with stage structure. Chaos Solitons Fractals 2006, 26: 947-958.De la Sen M, Alonso-Quesada S: Some equilibrium, stability, instability and oscillatory results for an extended discrete epidemic model with evolution memory. Adv. Differ. Equ. 2013., 2013: Article ID 234Caccetta L, Rumchev VG: A survey of reachability and controllability for positive linear systems. Ann. Oper. Res. 2000, 98: 101-122. 10.1023/A:1019244121533Berman A, Plemons RJ: Nonnegative Matrices in Mathematical Science. SIAM, Philadelphia; 1994.Diblík J, Khusainov D, Ruzicková M: Controllability of linear discrete systems with constant coefficients and pure delay. SIAM J. Control Optim. 2008, 47: 1140-1149. 10.1137/070689085Diblík J, Feckan M, Pospísil M: On the new control functions for linear discrete delay systems. SIAM J. Control Optim. 2014, 52: 1745-1760. 10.1137/140953654Bru R, Romero S, Sánchez E: Canonical forms for positive discrete-time linear systems. Linear Algebra Appl. 2000, 310: 49-71. 10.1016/S0024-3795(00)00044-6Farina L, Rinaldi S: Positive Linear Systems. Wiley, New York; 2000.Bru R, Coll C, Romero S, Sánchez E: Reachability indices of positive linear systems. Electron. J. Linear Algebra 2004, 11: 88-102.Kajin M, Almeida PJAL, Vieira MV, Cerqueira R: The state of the art of population projection models: from the Leslie matrix to evolutionary demography. Oecol. Aust. 2012, 16(1):13-22. 10.4257/oeco.2012.1601.02Leslie PH: Some further notes on the use of matrices in population mathematics. Biometrika 1948, 35: 213-245. 10.1093/biomet/35.3-4.213Muratori S, Rinaldi S: Equilibria, stability and reachability of Leslie systems with nonnegative inputs. IEEE Trans. Autom. Control 1990, 35: 1065-1068. 10.1109/9.58539Caswell H: Matrix Population Models: Construction, Analysis and Interpretation. Sinauer, Sunderland; 2001

A standard protocol to report discrete stage‐structured demographic information

Stage-based demographic methods, such as matrix population models (MPMs), are powerful tools used to address a broad range of fundamental questions in ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation science. Accordingly, MPMs now exist for over 3000 species worldwide. These data are being digitised as an ongoing process and periodically released into two large open-access online repositories: the COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database and the COMADRE Animal Matrix Database. During the last decade, data archiving and curation of COMPADRE and COMADRE, and subsequent comparative research, have revealed pronounced variation in how MPMs are parameterized and reported. Here, we summarise current issues related to the parameterisation and reporting of MPMs that arise most frequently and outline how they affect MPM construction, analysis, and interpretation. To quantify variation in how MPMs are reported, we present results from a survey identifying key aspects of MPMs that are frequently unreported in manuscripts. We then screen COMPADRE and COMADRE to quantify how often key pieces of information are omitted from manuscripts using MPMs. Over 80% of surveyed researchers (n = 60) state a clear benefit to adopting more standardised methodologies for reporting MPMs. Furthermore, over 85% of the 300 MPMs assessed from COMPADRE and COMADRE omitted one or more elements that are key to their accurate interpretation. Based on these insights, we identify fundamental issues that can arise from MPM construction and communication and provide suggestions to improve clarity, reproducibility and future research utilising MPMs and their required metadata. To fortify reproducibility and empower researchers to take full advantage of their demographic data, we introduce a standardised protocol to present MPMs in publications. This standard is linked to www.compadre-db.org, so that authors wishing to archive their MPMs can do so prior to submission of publications, following examples from other open-access repositories such as DRYAD, Figshare and Zenodo. Combining and standardising MPMs parameterized from populations around the globe and across the tree of life opens up powerful research opportunities in evolutionary biology, ecology and conservation research. However, this potential can only be fully realised by adopting standardised methods to ensure reproducibility

A standard protocol to report discrete stage-structured demographic information

Stage-based demographic methods, such as matrix population models (MPMs), are powerful tools used to address a broad range of fundamental questions in ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation science. Accordingly, MPMs now exist for over 3000 species worldwide. These data are being digitised as an ongoing process and periodically released into two large open-access online repositories: the COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database and the COMADRE Animal Matrix Database. During the last decade, data archiving and curation of COMPADRE and COMADRE, and subsequent comparative research, have revealed pronounced variation in how MPMs are parameterized and reported. Here, we summarise current issues related to the parameterisation and reporting of MPMs that arise most frequently and outline how they affect MPM construction, analysis, and interpretation. To quantify variation in how MPMs are reported, we present results from a survey identifying key aspects of MPMs that are frequently unreported in manuscripts. We then screen COMPADRE and COMADRE to quantify how often key pieces of information are omitted from manuscripts using MPMs. Over 80% of surveyed researchers (n = 60) state a clear benefit to adopting more standardised methodologies for reporting MPMs. Furthermore, over 85% of the 300 MPMs assessed from COMPADRE and COMADRE omitted one or more elements that are key to their accurate interpretation. Based on these insights, we identify fundamental issues that can arise from MPM construction and communication and provide suggestions to improve clarity, reproducibility and future research utilising MPMs and their required metadata. To fortify reproducibility and empower researchers to take full advantage of their demographic data, we introduce a standardised protocol to present MPMs in publications. This standard is linked to www.compadre-db.org, so that authors wishing to archive their MPMs can do so prior to submission of publications, following examples from other open-access repositories such as DRYAD, Figshare and Zenodo. Combining and standardising MPMs parameterized from populations around the globe and across the tree of life opens up powerful research opportunities in evolutionary biology, ecology and conservation research. However, this potential can only be fully realised by adopting standardised methods to ensure reproducibility

Case report: Embedding "digital chronotherapy" into medical devices -- A canine validation for controlling status epilepticus through multi-scale rhythmic brain stimulation

Circadian and other physiological rhythms play a key role in both normal homeostasis and disease processes. Such is the case of circadian and infradian seizure patterns observed in epilepsy. However, these rhythms are not fully exploited in the design of active implantable medical devices. In this paper we explore a new implantable stimulator that implements chronotherapy as a feedforward input to supplement both open-loop and closed-loop methods. This integrated algorithm allows for stimulation to be adjusted to the ultradian, circadian and infradian patterns observed in patients through slowly-varying temporal adjustments of stimulation and algorithm sub-components, while also enabling adaption of stimulation based on immediate physiological needs such as a breakthrough seizure or change of posture. Embedded physiological sensors in the stimulator can be used to refine the baseline stimulation circadian pattern as a “digital zeitgeber,” i.e., a source of stimulus that entrains or synchronizes the subject's natural rhythms. This algorithmic approach is tested on a canine with severe drug-resistant idiopathic generalized epilepsy exhibiting a characteristic diurnal pattern correlated with sleep-wake cycles. Prior to implantation, the canine's cluster seizures evolved to status epilepticus (SE) and required emergency pharmacological intervention. The cranially-mounted system was fully-implanted bilaterally into the centromedian nucleus of the thalamus. Using combinations of time-based modulation, thalamocortical rhythm-specific tuning of frequency parameters as well as fast-adaptive modes based on activity, the canine experienced no further SE events post-implant as of the time of writing (7 months). Importantly, no significant cluster seizures have been observed either, allowing the reduction of rescue medication. The use of digitally-enabled chronotherapy as a feedforward signal to augment adaptive neurostimulators could prove a useful algorithmic method in conditions where sensitivity to temporal patterns are characteristics of the disease state, providing a novel mechanism for tailoring a more patient-specific therapy approach