Paecilomyces fumosoroseus blastospore production using liquid culture in a bioreactor

There are many advantages to using liquid cultures for the production of blastospores. These include mainly the processes of scale up which are relatively easy, as well as the control of parameters such astemperature, aeration and pH. In this work, we evaluated the production of Paecilomyces fumosoroseus blastospores using a low-cost liquid culture medium in a fermenter in comparison to a mediumcommonly used for this purpose, with regard to yield and viability of blastospores. The two media contained the same concentration of glucose but differed in N source (M1 containing casamino acidsand M2 provided with collagen peptone and yeast extract). Starting with an inoculum of 1x106 blastospores/ml, M2 medium produced 2x1010 blastospores/ml after incubation for 72 h at 520 rev/minagitation and 1 v/v/m (volume air/volume liquid.min) aeration, while only 2.4 x 108/ml were produced with M1. In addition, the microorganisms in medium M1 grew more slowly during log phase and reached an earlier plateau at 36 h fermentation. The medium containing collagen peptone and yeast extract is an excellent alternative for the production of P. fumosoroseus blastospores, providing lower cost, higher yield and shorter propagation time, but formulation does need to be improved

Antagonistic activity of selected strains of Bacillus thuringiensis against Rhizoctonia solani of chili pepper

The aim of this work was to determine, in vitro, the antagonistic effectiveness of 60 strains of Bacillus thuringiensis against damping-off and root and stem rot caused by Rhizoctonia solani. The strains wereobtained from the International Collection of Entomopathogenic Bacillus at the FCB-UANL. During the in vitro dual culture assay only 16 of the strains displayed an inhibitory effect. Six strains were chosen to bescreened simultaneously by volatile antibiotics, thermostability and seedling assay. In the volatile antibiotics assay, the strains GM-11 and GM-121 showed the best inhibitory effect over R. solani growth.None of the strains showed an efficient antagonistic effect during the thermoestability assay. In seedling assay, majority of the antagonistic isolates, GM-23, GM-11and GM-121, were effective in the reduction of R. solani infection. In addition, GM-23 increased the length of pepper seedlings. These results suggest that the B. thuringiensis strains studied have an excellent potential to be used as bio-control agents of R. solani in chili pepper

Correction to: Comparative effectiveness and safety of non-vitamin K antagonists for atrial fibrillation in clinical practice: GLORIA-AF Registry

International audienceIn this article, the name of the GLORIA-AF investigator Anastasios Kollias was given incorrectly as Athanasios Kollias in the Acknowledgements. The original article has been corrected

Patterns of oral anticoagulant use and outcomes in Asian patients with atrial fibrillation: a post-hoc analysis from the GLORIA-AF Registry

Background: Previous studies suggested potential ethnic differences in the management and outcomes of atrial fibrillation (AF). We aim to analyse oral anticoagulant (OAC) prescription, discontinuation, and risk of adverse outcomes in Asian patients with AF, using data from a global prospective cohort study. Methods: From the GLORIA-AF Registry Phase II-III (November 2011-December 2014 for Phase II, and January 2014-December 2016 for Phase III), we analysed patients according to their self-reported ethnicity (Asian vs. non-Asian), as well as according to Asian subgroups (Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other Asian). Logistic regression was used to analyse OAC prescription, while the risk of OAC discontinuation and adverse outcomes were analysed through Cox-regression model. Our primary outcome was the composite of all-cause death and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE). The original studies were registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT01468701, NCT01671007, and NCT01937377. Findings: 34,421 patients were included (70.0 ± 10.5 years, 45.1% females, 6900 (20.0%) Asian: 3829 (55.5%) Chinese, 814 (11.8%) Japanese, 1964 (28.5%) Korean and 293 (4.2%) other Asian). Most of the Asian patients were recruited in Asia (n = 6701, 97.1%), while non-Asian patients were mainly recruited in Europe (n = 15,449, 56.1%) and North America (n = 8378, 30.4%). Compared to non-Asian individuals, prescription of OAC and non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulant (NOAC) was lower in Asian patients (Odds Ratio [OR] and 95% Confidence Intervals (CI): 0.23 [0.22-0.25] and 0.66 [0.61-0.71], respectively), but higher in the Japanese subgroup. Asian ethnicity was also associated with higher risk of OAC discontinuation (Hazard Ratio [HR] and [95% CI]: 1.79 [1.67-1.92]), and lower risk of the primary composite outcome (HR [95% CI]: 0.86 [0.76-0.96]). Among the exploratory secondary outcomes, Asian ethnicity was associated with higher risks of thromboembolism and intracranial haemorrhage, and lower risk of major bleeding. Interpretation: Our results showed that Asian patients with AF showed suboptimal thromboembolic risk management and a specific risk profile of adverse outcomes; these differences may also reflect differences in country-specific factors. Ensuring integrated and appropriate treatment of these patients is crucial to improve their prognosis. Funding: The GLORIA-AF Registry was funded by Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH

Emotional processing in Parkinson's disease and anxiety: an EEG study of visual affective word processing

A general problem in the design of an EEG-BCI system is the poor quality and low robustness of the extracted features, affecting overall performance. However, BCI systems that are applicable in real-time and outside clinical settings require high performance. Therefore, we have to improve the current methods for feature extraction. In this work, we investigated EEG source reconstruction techniques to enhance the extracted features based on a linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV) beamformer. Beamformers allow for easy incorporation of anatomical data and are applicable in real-time. A 32-channel EEG-BCI system was designed for a two-class motor imagery (MI) paradigm. We optimized a synchronous system for two untrained subjects and investigated two aspects. First, we investigated the effect of using beamformers calculated on the basis of three different head models: a template 3-layered boundary element method (BEM) head model, a 3-layered personalized BEM head model and a personalized 5-layered finite difference method (FDM) head model including white and gray matter, CSF, scalp and skull tissue. Second, we investigated the influence of how the regions of interest, areas of expected MI activity, were constructed. On the one hand, they were chosen around electrodes C3 and C4, as hand MI activity theoretically is expected here. On the other hand, they were constructed based on the actual activated regions identified by an fMRI scan. Subsequently, an asynchronous system was derived for one of the subjects and an optimal balance between speed and accuracy was found. Lastly, a real-time application was made. These systems were evaluated by their accuracy, defined as the percentage of correct left and right classifications. From the real-time application, the information transfer rate (ITR) was also determined. An accuracy of 86.60 ± 4.40% was achieved for subject 1 and 78.71 ± 0.73% for subject 2. This gives an average accuracy of 82.66 ± 2.57%. We found that the use of a personalized FDM model improved the accuracy of the system, on average 24.22% with respect to the template BEM model and on average 5.15% with respect to the personalized BEM model. Including fMRI spatial priors did not improve accuracy. Personal fine- tuning largely resolved the robustness problems arising due to the differences in head geometry and neurophysiology between subjects. A real-time average accuracy of 64.26% was reached and the maximum ITR was 6.71 bits/min. We conclude that beamformers calculated with a personalized FDM model have great potential to ameliorate feature extraction and, as a consequence, to improve the performance of real-time BCI systems