Molecular detection of Rickettsia, Borrelia, and Babesia species in Ixodes ricinus sampled in northeastern, central, and insular areas of Italy.

The aim of the present study was to provide insight into the diversity of tick-borne pathogens circulating in Italy, carried/transmitted by Ixodes ricinus, one of the most abundant tick species in the country. A total of 447 specimens sampled in five areas of northeastern, central and insular Italy were analysed by polymerase chain reaction and sequencing for the presence of rickettsiae, borreliae and babesiae. Several rickettsial species of the spotted fever group of zoonotic concern and other zoonotic pathogens were found, such as Borrelia burgdorferi s.s., Borrelia afzelii, Borrelia garinii, and Babesia venatorum. These findings confirm a wide distribution of tick-borne bacterial and protozoan species in Italy, and highlight the sanitary importance of I. ricinus, often recorded as feeding on humans

Effect of container opening area on air distribution during precooling of horticultural produce

An existing research tool was used to investigate air distribution in horticultural produce containers during forced-air precooling. This tool consisted of an instrumented produce simulator that allowed indirect measurement of surrounding air velocity at different positions inside a package. Using this new research tool for different forced-air cooling conditions, the surrounding air velocity was inferred as a function of the simulator's location in reference to the air entrance. The air pathway during the cooling process was investigated for three total package-opening areas (0.67%, 2%, 6%) at airflow rates ranging from 0.125 to 3.9 L s(-1) kg(-1). The air approach velocity at each position inside a package rose as the opening area increased More vented area also enhanced the cooling efficiency. However increasing the airflow rate resulted in a greater air pressure drop. Opening areas more than 6% of the package surface should be tested to achieve the maximum necessary vented configuration that meets the structure constraints and generates air distribution and cooling efficiency not significantly different from fully open.4762033203

Cell walls of the dimorphic fungal pathogens Sporothrix schenckii and Sporothrix brasiliensis exhibit bilaminate structures and sloughing of extensive and intact layers

This work was supported by the Fundação Carlos Chagas de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ), grants E-26/202.974/2015 and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), grants 229755/2013-5, Brazil. LMLB is a senior research fellow of CNPq and Faperj. NG acknowledged support from the Wellcome Trust (Trust (097377, 101873, 200208) and MRC Centre for Medical Mycology (MR/N006364/1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A Case Based Reasoning View of School Dropout Screening

The cause for student dropout is often termed as the antecedent of failure, since it stands for a key event, which leads to dropout. Indeed, school dropout is well thought out as one of the major worries of our times. It is a multi-layered and complex phenomenon, with many triggers, namely academic striving and failure, poor attendance, retention, disengagement from school or even socio-economic motives. School dropout represents economic and social losses to the individual, family and community. However, it may be prevented if the educational actors hold pro-active strategies (e.g., taking into account similar past experiences). Indeed, this work will start with the development of a decision support system to assess school dropout, centered on a formal framework based on Logic Programming for Knowledge Representation, complemented with a Case-Based Reasoning approach to problem solving, which caters for the handling of incomplete, unknown, or even contradictory information, i.e., it improves the analysis enactment of the retrieving cases process

Evolutionary Analysis of Mitogenomes from Parasitic and Free-Living Flatworms

Copyright: © 2015 Solà et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The attached file is the published version of the article