Bilateral reversed palmaris longus muscle: a rare anatomical variation

We report a case of bilateral reversed palmaris longus muscle (PLM). The muscle was tendinous in its upper portion and muscular in its lower portion in both arms. This rare variation has been mentioned only once in the literature as a surgical finding. According to the literature, a reversed PLM may cause a compartment syndrome in the wrist area, carpal tunnel, and Guyon’s syndrome. The described variation is also useful to the hand surgeon as a tendon graft, a tendon for transfer, or as an anatomical landmark for operations at this area

Impact of adherence on growth response during the first 2 years of growth hormone treatment

Purpose Adherence to growth hormone (GH) treatment impacts clinical outcomes. The aim of this study is to assess the impact of adherence to rhGH treatment (2 years) on auxological outcomes. Methods Multicentric, retrospective observational study in rhGH-naive GHD/SGA children treated with Saizen (R) during >= 2 years. Growth response was assessed by evaluating the change in height standard deviation score (Delta H SDS) and the index of responsiveness (IoR). Adherence was monitored using EasyPod (TM) Connect device. Results A total of 110 patients (3 Spanish centers) were evaluable (GHD n = 76, SGA n = 34). Adherence was 95.6 and 93.9% (year 1, 2). SGA and GHD children showed an increase of 0.6 cm/year and 1.1 cm/year for each 10% adherence modification. Lower adherence was observed in patients with lower pretreatment height velocity (HV) and in patients whose parents had a lower level of education. A positive correlation between index of responsiveness (IoR) during the first and second years with HV SDS during the second year and between IoR2 and adherence (year 1, 2) was observed. The frequency of patients with HV > 1 SD was higher (p = 0.025) among patients with adherence >90%. The best model to predict the height gain(cm) reaching an adjusted R squared of 0.489 involved percentage of adherence, Tanner stage, pretreatment HV, dose of rhGH, and whether the treatment was initiated before or after puberty. Conclusions Adherence during the first 2 years of response was very high >90% and showed a negative association with age, pretreatment HV and treatment duration and a positive correlation with the level of parent education

Spectroscopic and Mechanistic Studies of Heterodimetallic Forms of Metallo-β-lactamase NDM-1

In an effort to characterize the roles of each metal ion in metallo-β-lactamase NDM-1, heterodimetallic analogues (CoCo-, ZnCo-, and CoCd-) of the enzyme were generated and characterized. UV–vis, 1H NMR, EPR, and EXAFS spectroscopies were used to confirm the fidelity of the metal substitutions, including the presence of a homogeneous, heterodimetallic cluster, with a single-atom bridge. This marks the first preparation of a metallo-β-lactamase selectively substituted with a paramagnetic metal ion, Co(II), either in the Zn1 (CoCd-NDM-1) or in the Zn2 site (ZnCo-NDM-1), as well as both (CoCo-NDM-1). We then used these metal-substituted forms of the enzyme to probe the reaction mechanism, using steady-state and stopped-flow kinetics, stopped-flow fluorescence, and rapid-freeze-quench EPR. Both metal sites show significant effects on the kinetic constants, and both paramagnetic variants (CoCd- and ZnCo-NDM-1) showed significant structural changes on reaction with substrate. These changes are discussed in terms of a minimal kinetic mechanism that incorporates all of the data

Flora nas fazendas.

Na atualidade, a conservação da biodiversidade e dos serviços ambientais representa um dos maiores desafios globais, em função do elevado nível das pressões antrópicas sobre os ecossistemas naturais. Neste contexto, a devastação da Caatinga vem se tornando cada vez mais preocupante não só para os amantes da conservação da natureza, mas também para os diversos setores produtivos que estão direta ou indiretamente ligados a exploração de seus recursos naturais. Apesar de a Caatinga ser o único bioma exclusivamente brasileiro, este ainda é pouco valorizado e carente de estudos. Assim, estamos perdendo um patrimônio único no mundo mesmo antes de conhecer seu potencial. Diante desse cenário de desconhecimento e destruição, ações voltadas para a sustentabilidade da Caatinga se fazem cada vez mais urgentes a fim de revertermos esse quadro. Nessa ótica, o projeto Manejo Sustentável de Fruteiras da Caatinga (SUFICA), em parceria com produtores da região do Vale do Submédio São Francisco, vem buscando identificar formas mais amigáveis de uso das áreas agrícolas, visando o desenvolvimento de uma agricultura sustentável. Nessa publicação, vamos falar sobre a vegetação da Caatinga e sua importância para a manutenção dos serviços ambientais nos agroecossistemas e apresentar parte dos resultados obtidos nas áreas de estudo do projeto

The Eurasian Modern Pollen Database (EMPD), version 2

The Eurasian (nee European) Modern Pollen Database (EMPD) was established in 2013 to provide a public database of high-quality modern pollen surface samples to help support studies of past climate, land cover, and land use using fossil pollen. The EMPD is part of, and complementary to, the European Pollen Database (EPD) which contains data on fossil pollen found in Late Quaternary sedimentary archives throughout the Eurasian region. The EPD is in turn part of the rapidly growing Neotoma database, which is now the primary home for global palaeoecological data. This paper describes version 2 of the EMPD in which the number of samples held in the database has been increased by 60% from 4826 to 8134. Much of the improvement in data coverage has come from northern Asia, and the database has consequently been renamed the Eurasian Modern Pollen Database to reflect this geographical enlargement. The EMPD can be viewed online using a dedicated map-based viewer at https://empd2.github.io and downloaded in a variety of file formats at https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.909130 (Chevalier et al., 2019).Peer reviewe

Gaia Focused Product Release: A catalogue of sources around quasars to search for strongly lensed quasars

Context. Strongly lensed quasars are fundamental sources for cosmology. The Gaia space mission covers the entire sky with the unprecedented resolution of $0.18$" in the optical, making it an ideal instrument to search for gravitational lenses down to the limiting magnitude of 21. Nevertheless, the previous Gaia Data Releases are known to be incomplete for small angular separations such as those expected for most lenses. Aims. We present the Data Processing and Analysis Consortium GravLens pipeline, which was built to analyse all Gaia detections around quasars and to cluster them into sources, thus producing a catalogue of secondary sources around each quasar. We analysed the resulting catalogue to produce scores that indicate source configurations that are compatible with strongly lensed quasars. Methods. GravLens uses the DBSCAN unsupervised clustering algorithm to detect sources around quasars. The resulting catalogue of multiplets is then analysed with several methods to identify potential gravitational lenses. We developed and applied an outlier scoring method, a comparison between the average BP and RP spectra of the components, and we also used an extremely randomised tree algorithm. These methods produce scores to identify the most probable configurations and to establish a list of lens candidates. Results. We analysed the environment of 3 760 032 quasars. A total of 4 760 920 sources, including the quasars, were found within 6" of the quasar positions. This list is given in the Gaia archive. In 87\% of cases, the quasar remains a single source, and in 501 385 cases neighbouring sources were detected. We propose a list of 381 lensed candidates, of which we identified 49 as the most promising. Beyond these candidates, the associate tables in this Focused Product Release allow the entire community to explore the unique Gaia data for strong lensing studies further.Comment: 35 pages, 60 figures, accepted for publication by Astronomy and Astrophysic