SMonitoring the operational impact of insecticide usage for malaria control on Anopheles funestus from Mozambique

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Indoor residual spraying (IRS) has again become popular for malaria control in Africa. This combined with the affirmation by WHO that DDT is appropriate for use in the absence of longer lasting insecticide formulations in some malaria endemic settings, has resulted in an increase in IRS with DDT as a major malaria vector control intervention in Africa. DDT was re-introduced into Mozambique's IRS programme in 2005 and is increasingly becoming the main insecticide used for malaria vector control in Mozambique. The selection of DDT as the insecticide of choice in Mozambique is evidence-based, taking account of the susceptibility of <it>Anopheles funestus </it>to all available insecticide choices, as well as operational costs of spraying.</p> <p>Previously lambda cyhalothrin had replaced DDT in Mozambique in 1993. However, resistance appeared quickly to this insecticide and, in 2000, the pyrethroid was phased out and the carbamate bendiocarb introduced. Low level resistance was detected by biochemical assay to bendiocarb in 1999 in both <it>An. funestus </it>and <it>Anopheles arabiensis</it>, although this was not evident in WHO bioassays of the same population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Sentinel sites were established and monitored for insecticide resistance using WHO bioassays. These assays were conducted on 1–3 day old F1 offspring of field collected adult caught <it>An. funestus </it>females to determine levels of insecticide resistance in the malaria vector population. WHO biochemical assays were carried out to determine the frequency of insecticide resistance genes within the same population.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In surveys conducted between 2002 and 2006, low levels of bendiocarb resistance were detected in <it>An. funestus</it>, populations using WHO bioassays. This is probably due to significantly elevated levels of Acetylcholinesterase levels found in the same populations. Pyrethroid resistance was also detected in populations and linked to elevated levels of p450 monooxygenase activity. One site had shown reduction in pyrethroid resistance since the base line in 1999.</p

An analysis of the positional distribution of DNA motifs in promoter regions and its biological relevance

BACKGROUND: Motif finding algorithms have developed in their ability to use computationally efficient methods to detect patterns in biological sequences. However the posterior classification of the output still suffers from some limitations, which makes it difficult to assess the biological significance of the motifs found. Previous work has highlighted the existence of positional bias of motifs in the DNA sequences, which might indicate not only that the pattern is important, but also provide hints of the positions where these patterns occur preferentially.RESULTS: We propose to integrate position uniformity tests and over-representation tests to improve the accuracy of the classification of motifs. Using artificial data, we have compared three different statistical tests (Chi-Square, Kolmogorov-Smirnov and a Chi-Square bootstrap) to assess whether a given motif occurs uniformly in the promoter region of a gene. Using the test that performed better in this dataset, we proceeded to study the positional distribution of several well known cis-regulatory elements, in the promoter sequences of different organisms (S. cerevisiae, H. sapiens, D. melanogaster, E. coli and several Dicotyledons plants). The results show that position conservation is relevant for the transcriptional machinery.CONCLUSION: We conclude that many biologically relevant motifs appear heterogeneously distributed in the promoter region of genes, and therefore, that non-uniformity is a good indicator of biological relevance and can be used to complement over-representation tests commonly used. In this article we present the results obtained for the S. cerevisiae data sets.publishersversionpublishe

Performance of the freshwater shrimp <i>Atyaephyra desmarestii</i> as indicator of stress imposed by textile effluents

Textile plants consume large volumes of water and produce a great amount of wastewaters, which can be important sources of toxic discharges in receiving environments. The objective of this study was to evaluate the acute toxicity of textile effluents on the freshwater shrimp A. desmarestii. A whole effluent toxicity test procedure was used to determine the aggregate toxicity of three samples taken before and after wastewater treatment in a textile mill. The following LC50 &minus; 48 h values (%, v/v) were calculated: Untreated effluent &minus;29% effluent (sample 1), 22% effluent (sample 2), and 47% (sample 3); Treated effluent &minus;73% effluent (sample 1), 74% effluent (sample 2), and &gt; 100% (sample 3). Based upon acute toxicity units (TUa = 100/LC50), untreated effluent varied from toxic in samples 1 and 3 (2.00 &le; TUa &le; 4.00) to very toxic in sample 2 (TUa &gt; 4.0), whereas treated effluent varied from no toxic in sample 3 to moderately toxic in samples 1 and 2 (1.33 &le; TUa &le; 1.99). Despite some limitations and constraints related to innate variability of industrial effluents, our results suggested that A. desmarestii can be a promising and potential test organism for assessing toxicity of complex chemical mixtures

Cardiorespiratory coordination in repeated maximal exercise

Increases in cardiorespiratory coordination (CRC) after training with no differences in performance and physiological variables have recently been reported using a principal component analysis approach. However, no research has yet evaluated the short-term effects of exercise on CRC. The aim of this study was to delineate the behavior of CRC under different physiological initial conditions produced by repeated maximal exercises. Fifteen participants performed 2 consecutive graded and maximal cycling tests. Test 1 was performed without any previous exercise, and Test 2 6 min after Test 1. Both tests started at 0 W and the workload was increased by 25 W/min in males and 20 W/min in females, until they were not able to maintain the prescribed cycling frequency of 70 rpm for more than 5 consecutive seconds. A principal component (PC) analysis of selected cardiovascular and cardiorespiratory variables (expired fraction of O2, expired fraction of CO2, ventilation, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and heart rate) was performed to evaluate the CRC defined by the number of PCs in both tests. In order to quantify the degree of coordination, the information entropy was calculated and the eigenvalues of the first PC (PC1) were compared between tests. Although no significant differences were found between the tests with respect to the performed maximal workload (Wmax), maximal oxygen consumption (VO2 max), or ventilatory threshold (VT), an increase in the number of PCs and/or a decrease of eigenvalues of PC1 (t = 2.95; p = 0.01; d = 1.08) was found in Test 2 compared to Test 1. Moreover, entropy was significantly higher (Z = 2.33; p = 0.02; d = 1.43) in the last test. In conclusion, despite the fact that no significant differences were observed in the conventionally explored maximal performance and physiological variables (Wmax, VO2 max, and VT) between tests, a reduction of CRC was observed in Test 2. These results emphasize the interest of CRC evaluation in the assessment and interpretation of cardiorespiratory exercise testing

Irradiation-responsive polysulfone film as a colorimetric UVA/UVB differentiator

Funding Information: This work was supported by the Associated Laboratory for Sustainable Chemistry-Clean Processes and Technologies-LAQV, which is financed by national funds from FCT/MEC (UID/QUI/50006/2019) and co-financed by the ERDF under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER–007265). The NMR spectrometers are part of The National NMR Facility, supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (RECI/BBB-BQB/0230/2012). This work was also supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the projects UIDB/00100/2020, and by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia through the contract no IST-ID/077/2018 (Bernardo Monteiro). Cláudia C. L. Pereira thanks Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, MCTES, for the Norma transitória DL 57/2016 Program Contract. Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia I.P. for the national funds in the scope of the project UIDB/00100/2020. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Royal Society of Chemistry.A wearable, small size, flexible and energy consumable free colorimetric detector of UVA radiation and UVB/UVA differentiation was created based on the peculiar stimuli-responsive behaviour of an imidazolium based ionic liquid. Semi-transparent polysulfone films are transformed into opaque and homogenous red films under UVA radiation (315-360 nm), while lower wavelength exposure (280-315 nm) induces increased emission detectable under dark light, with no colour modification of the film under visible light. Thermal analysis (TGA and DSC), spectroscopic analysis (FT-IR, 1H-NMR and UV-Vis), scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) were conducted to elucidate confinement mechanism and irradiation effects.publishersversionpublishe

Thermal analysis evaluation of mechanical properties changes promoted by gamma radiation on surgical polymeric textiles

The large number of surgical operations with pos-operative infection problems and the appearing of new infectious diseases, contribute to the development of new materials in order to answer the needs of health care services. This development must take into account the modifications promoted by sterilisation methods in materials, namely by gamma radiation. The Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Thermogravimetry (TGA) techniques show that a nonwoven and a laminate textiles maintain a good molecular cohesion, do not showing high levels of degradation, for gamma radiation dose values lower than 100 kGy in nonwoven and 200 kGy in laminate materials. The tensile strength and the elongation decrease slowly for the nonwoven textile and decrease faster for the laminate textile for 25 and 80 kGy absorbed dose. This paper shows that the DSC and TGA techniques can be helpful for the prevision of mechanical changes occurred in the materials as a consequence of the gamma irradiation

Portuguese 16th to Early 18th Century tin Glazed Ceramics Found at the Tagus Estuary Saltpans

UID/NAN/50024/2019 M-ERA-MNT/0002/2015 UIDB/04209/2020 UIDP/04209/2020Salt was extracted from saltpans, in the South shore of Tagus River by evaporation of the salted sea water which penetrates into the estuary. The walls and the bottom of those saltpans were made of local clays to retain the sea water, and ceramic sherds have been used to endure those walls and also to allow people to walk on the saltpans’ walls. Those sherds constitute an example of the ceramics production in Lisbon workshops, starting in the mid-16th century and reaching high levels of quality in the 17th and 18th century. A detailed archaeometric study of 14 selected sherds dated from the 16th to the early 18th century has been made and the conjugation of the information provided by the micro-Raman, XRD and XRF experiments for those sherds and clays collected locally, allowed us the characterisation of the Lisbon ceramics in that period. Three main groups could be identified in the ceramic bodies; all made with locally collected clays of Miocene origin. In the first group, the potters used raw materials from the clay sources located at Santa Catarina area in Lisbon, most probably mixed with Lapa clays, which were fired at a high temperatures, ranging from 850ºC to 950ºC. Gehlenite and quartz are the dominant minerals of these ceramic bodies. In the second and third groups of Lisbon ceramic bodies, made with Prazeres clays, diopside was also detected but with variable amounts of gehlenite. Clay formations mineralogy mainly include kaolinite, muscovite/illite, quartz, calcite, and feldspars (albite and microcline).publishersversionpublishe

Testimonio extendido por escribano Marcos L. Agrelo

Certificando copia del documento de la deuda contraída por Casimiro Recuero con Juan Facundo Quirog

Cyclin D1 Restrains Oncogene-Induced Autophagy by Regulating the AMPK-LKB1 Signaling Axis.

Autophagy activated after DNA damage or other stresses mitigates cellular damage by removing damaged proteins, lipids, and organelles. Activation of the master metabolic kinase AMPK enhances autophagy. Here we report that cyclin D1 restrains autophagy by modulating the activation of AMPK. In cell models of human breast cancer or in a cyclin D1-deficient model, we observed a cyclin D1-mediated reduction in AMPK activation. Mechanistic investigations showed that cyclin D1 inhibited mitochondrial function, promoted glycolysis, and reduced activation of AMPK (pT172), possibly through a mechanism that involves cyclin D1-Cdk4/Cdk6 phosphorylation of LKB1. Our findings suggest how AMPK activation by cyclin D1 may couple cell proliferation to energy homeostasis