Six-year follow-up of slaughterhouse surveillance (2008-2013): the Catalan Slaughterhouse Support Network (SESC)

Meat inspection has the ultimate objective of declaring the meat and offal obtained from carcasses of slaughtered animals fit or unfit for human consumption. This safeguards the health of consumers by ensuring that the food coming from these establishments poses no risk to public health. Concomitantly, it contributes to animal disease surveillance. The Catalan Public Health Protection Agency (Generalitat de Catalunya) identified the need to provide its meat inspectors with a support structure to improve diagnostic capacity: the Slaughterhouse Support Network (SESC). The main goal of the SESC was to offer continuing education to meat inspectors to improve the diagnostic capacity for lesions observed in slaughterhouses. With this aim, a web-based application was designed that allowed meat inspectors to submit their inquiries, images of the lesions, and samples for laboratory analysis. This commentary reviews the cases from the first 6 years of SESC operation (2008–2013). The program not only provides continuing education to inspectors but also contributes to the collection of useful information on animal health and welfare. Therefore, SESC complements animal disease surveillance programs, such as those for tuberculosis, bovine cysticercosis, and porcine trichinellosis, and is a powerful tool for early detection of emerging animal diseases and zoonoses

Autoimmune inflammatory disorders, systemic corticosteroids and pneumocystis pneumonia: A strategy for prevention

BACKGROUND: Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) is an increasing problem amongst patients on immunosuppression with autoimmune inflammatory disorders (AID). The disease presents acutely and its diagnosis requires bronchoalveolar lavage in most cases. Despite treatment with intravenous antibiotics, PCP carries a worse prognosis in AID patients than HIV positive patients. The overall incidence of PCP in patients with AID remains low, although patients with Wegener's granulomatosis are at particular risk. DISCUSSION: In adults with AID, the risk of PCP is related to treatment with systemic steroid, ill-defined individual variation in steroid sensitivity and CD4+ lymphocyte count. Rather than opting for PCP prophylaxis on the basis of disease or treatment with cyclophosphamide, we argue the case for carrying out CD4+ lymphocyte counts on selected patients as a means of identifying individuals who are most likely to benefit from PCP prophylaxis. SUMMARY: Corticosteroids, lymphopenia and a low CD4+ count in particular, have been identified as risk factors for the development of PCP in adults with AID. Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (co-trimoxazole) is an effective prophylactic agent, but indications for its use remain ill-defined. Further prospective trials are required to validate our proposed prevention strategy

Southern African Large Telescope Spectroscopy of BL Lacs for the CTA project

In the last two decades, very-high-energy gamma-ray astronomy has reached maturity: over 200 sources have been detected, both Galactic and extragalactic, by ground-based experiments. At present, Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) make up about 40% of the more than 200 sources detected at very high energies with ground-based telescopes, the majority of which are blazars, i.e. their jets are closely aligned with the line of sight to Earth and three quarters of which are classified as high-frequency peaked BL Lac objects. One challenge to studies of the cosmological evolution of BL Lacs is the difficulty of obtaining redshifts from their nearly featureless, continuum-dominated spectra. It is expected that a significant fraction of the AGN to be detected with the future Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) observatory will have no spectroscopic redshifts, compromising the reliability of BL Lac population studies, particularly of their cosmic evolution. We started an effort in 2019 to measure the redshifts of a large fraction of the AGN that are likely to be detected with CTA, using the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). In this contribution, we present two results from an on-going SALT program focused on the determination of BL Lac object redshifts that will be relevant for the CTA observatory

Modelos universitarios en pugna: democratización o mercantilización de la universidad y del conocimiento público en Argentina University models en pugna: democratization or mercantilizacion of the university and of public knowledge in Argentina

Los cambios ocurridos en el sistema universitario argentino se vinculan al modelo económico neoliberal que cobró fuerza en los 90. A partir de entonces, las universidades comenzaron a adecuar sus actividades a una nueva cultura de interacción con el sector productivo en busca de competitividad. En este escenario ubicamos dos discursos en disputa: uno enmarcado en las tendencias a democratizar los espacios públicos y el conocimiento libre; y otro vinculado a la tendencia de mercantilizar la educación y el conocimiento. Ambos tienen presencia en la universidad de hoy y su convivencia da lugar a posicionamientos fuertemente antagónicos que se corresponden con posiciones encontradas acerca de dos distintos modelos universitarios.<br>The changes that occurred in the Argentine university system are connected to the neoliberal economic model which was reinforced in the 90s. Since then, the universities adapted their activities to a new culture of interaction with the productive sector in search of competitiveness. In this context, we locate two speeches: one affirms the trend of democratizing public spaces and free knowledge; and the other, the trend to commercialize knowledge. Both circulate in the university today in strongly antagonistic positions that correspond with two different university models

Outbreaks and clustering of Pneumocystis

several continents. The pathogenesis of these outbreaks has not been clarifi ed and different explanations, e.g., changes in the standard immunosuppressive regimen, an environmental source or patient-to-patient transmission have been proposed [2 – 4]. Recent outbreaks occurred in the absence of chemoprophylaxis, while in general the prescription of trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX) to prevent PCP for at least a duration of 3 – 6 months after kidney transplantation now is a widely accepted prac-tice and incorporated in several kidney transplantation guidelines [5,6]. During the fi rst observations of clusters of PCP in kidney transplant units in the 1980s, where transplant recipients were hospitalized together with AIDS patients, the possibility of patient-to-patient transmission and a rela-tion with the developing HIV epidemic in the northern hemisphere in general was proposed [7]. Outbreaks amon

CTA – the World’s largest ground-based gamma-ray observatory

International audienc

Searching for very-high-energy electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational-wave events with the Cherenkov Telescope Array

The detection of electromagnetic (EM) emission following the gravitational wave (GW) event GW170817 opened the era of multi-messenger astronomy with GWs and provided the first direct evidence that at least a fraction of binary neutron star (BNS) mergers are progenitors of short Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). GRBs are also expected to emit very-high energy (VHE, > 100 GeV) photons, as proven by the recent MAGIC and H.E.S.S. observations. One of the challenges for future multi-messenger observations will be the detection of such VHE emission from GRBs in association with GWs. In the next years, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be a key instrument for the EM follow-up of GW events in the VHE range, owing to its unprecedented sensitivity, rapid response, and capability to monitor a large sky area via scan-mode operation. We present the CTA GW follow-up program, with a focus on the searches for short GRBs possibly associated with BNS mergers. We investigate the possible observational strategies and we outline the prospects for the detection of VHE EM counterparts to transient GW events