2,191 research outputs found

    Murine Anti-vaccinia Virus D8 Antibodies Target Different Epitopes and Differ in Their Ability to Block D8 Binding to CS-E

    Get PDF
    The IMV envelope protein D8 is an adhesion molecule and a major immunodominant antigen of vaccinia virus (VACV). Here we identified the optimal D8 ligand to be chondroitin sulfate E (CS-E). CS-E is characterized by a disaccharide moiety with two sulfated hydroxyl groups at positions 4′ and 6′ of GalNAc. To study the role of antibodies in preventing D8 adhesion to CS-E, we have used a panel of murine monoclonal antibodies, and tested their ability to compete with CS-E for D8 binding. Among four antibody specificity groups, MAbs of one group (group IV) fully abrogated CS-E binding, while MAbs of a second group (group III) displayed widely varying levels of CS-E blocking. Using EM, we identified the binding site for each antibody specificity group on D8. Recombinant D8 forms a hexameric arrangement, mediated by self-association of a small C-terminal domain of D8. We propose a model in which D8 oligomerization on the IMV would allow VACV to adhere to heterogeneous population of CS, including CS-C and potentially CS-A, while overall increasing binding efficiency to CS-E

    Papermaking at Hayle Mill

    Get PDF
    65 pages, 1 unnumbered leaf of plates : illustrations, samples, 1 folded map. Includes a book, Papermaking at Hayle Mill, 1808-1987 by Maureen Green; a map, The Loose Valley, 1856 with the mills on Loose Stream; Mill photographs; Sample papers; and 12 proof sheets for the book; all issued in a box. Printed in black, red, and blue. Contents printed inside the box: Hayle Mill book -- Loose Valley map -- Mill photographs -- Sample papers. Printed on Finale, the last paper made at Hayle Mill. ... The portrait of Samuel Green was prepared and printed on Epson Archival paper by Ellen Dorn Levitt who also scanned the watermarks and maps preparing them, with Claire Van Vliet, for platemaking. Much of the letterpress printing used polymer plates from Boxcar Press ... and was printed by Andrew Miller-Brown. ... the photographs were scanned by Ellen Dorn Levitt from old prints in the Hayle Mill Archive and cleaned up in Photoshop. They were printed by Emily Corrow on a Xerox Docucolor 240 copier in Hammermill 100lb archival cover copy paper --Colophon of book. Exposed stitch binding. Two color fabric covering on clamshell box, title printed on paper, mounted on box spine. Gift of the Museum on behalf of the original donor, Ruth Fine. Curated title for Fleet Library Special Collections exhibition By Hand: Women & Books Exhibit fall, 2021.https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/specialcollections_books_printmaking/1003/thumbnail.jp

    Flecainide overdose – support using an intra-aortic balloon pump

    Get PDF
    BACKGROUND: Flecainide is an antiarrhythmic agent which is being used increasingly for the management of super-ventricular arrhythmias. Overdose with flecainide is frequently fatal with mortality reported as high as 22% due to arrhythmias, myocardial depression and conduction defects leading to electro-mechanical dissociation and asytole. Supportive measures are often required during the case and previously have included inotropes, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and cardiopulmonary bypass. CASE PRESENTATION: A 47 year old lady presented to the emergency department with a four hour history of severe central chest pain. Her ECG showed atrial fibrillation and broad QRS complexes with a sine wave appearance. She had a past history of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation and significant psychiatric history. Following thrombolysis for a presumed myocardial infarction she developed cardiogenic shock with severely impaired left ventricular function. An intra-aortic balloon pump was inserted and coronary angiography demonstrated normal coronary arteries. With inotropic support she improved over 48 hours, with both her QRS duration and left ventricular function returning to normal. Biochemical testing following her discharge demonstrated significantly elevated levels of flecainide. CONCLUSION: The use of an intra-aortic balloon pump is a useful supportive measure during the acute phase of flecainide overdose associated with severe myocardial depression

    Parthenon -- a performance portable block-structured adaptive mesh refinement framework

    Full text link
    On the path to exascale the landscape of computer device architectures and corresponding programming models has become much more diverse. While various low-level performance portable programming models are available, support at the application level lacks behind. To address this issue, we present the performance portable block-structured adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) framework Parthenon, derived from the well-tested and widely used Athena++ astrophysical magnetohydrodynamics code, but generalized to serve as the foundation for a variety of downstream multi-physics codes. Parthenon adopts the Kokkos programming model, and provides various levels of abstractions from multi-dimensional variables, to packages defining and separating components, to launching of parallel compute kernels. Parthenon allocates all data in device memory to reduce data movement, supports the logical packing of variables and mesh blocks to reduce kernel launch overhead, and employs one-sided, asynchronous MPI calls to reduce communication overhead in multi-node simulations. Using a hydrodynamics miniapp, we demonstrate weak and strong scaling on various architectures including AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, Intel and AMD x86 CPUs, IBM Power9 CPUs, as well as Fujitsu A64FX CPUs. At the largest scale on Frontier (the first TOP500 exascale machine), the miniapp reaches a total of 1.7×10131.7\times10^{13} zone-cycles/s on 9,216 nodes (73,728 logical GPUs) at ~92% weak scaling parallel efficiency (starting from a single node). In combination with being an open, collaborative project, this makes Parthenon an ideal framework to target exascale simulations in which the downstream developers can focus on their specific application rather than on the complexity of handling massively-parallel, device-accelerated AMR.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in IJHPCA, Codes available at https://github.com/parthenon-hpc-la

    Measurement of H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> within living drosophila during aging using a ratiometric mass spectrometry probe targeted to the mitochondrial matrix

    Get PDF
    Hydrogen peroxide (H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;) is central to mitochondrial oxidative damage and redox signaling, but its roles are poorly understood due to the difficulty of measuring mitochondrial H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; in vivo. Here we report a ratiometric mass spectrometry probe approach to assess mitochondrial matrix H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels in vivo. The probe, MitoB, comprises a triphenylphosphonium (TPP) cation driving its accumulation within mitochondria, conjugated to an arylboronic acid that reacts with H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; to form a phenol, MitoP. Quantifying the MitoP/MitoB ratio by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry enabled measurement of a weighted average of mitochondrial H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; that predominantly reports on thoracic muscle mitochondria within living flies. There was an increase in mitochondrial H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; with age in flies, which was not coordinately altered by interventions that modulated life span. Our findings provide approaches to investigate mitochondrial ROS in vivo and suggest that while an increase in overall mitochondrial H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; correlates with aging, it may not be causative

    Creation of an NCI comparative brain tumor consortium: informing the translation of new knowledge from canine to human brain tumor patients

    Get PDF
    On September 14–15, 2015, a meeting of clinicians and investigators in the fields of veterinary and human neuro-oncology, clinical trials, neuropathology, and drug development was convened at the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Maryland. This meeting served as the inaugural event launching a new consortium focused on improving the knowledge, development of, and access to naturally occurring canine brain cancer, specifically glioma, as a model for human disease. Within the meeting, a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) assessment was undertaken to critically evaluate the role that naturally occurring canine brain tumors could have in advancing this aspect of comparative oncology aimed at improving outcomes for dogs and human beings. A summary of this meeting and subsequent discussion are provided to inform the scientific and clinical community of the potential for this initiative. Canine and human comparisons represent an unprecedented opportunity to complement conventional brain tumor research paradigms, addressing a devastating disease for which innovative diagnostic and treatment strategies are clearly needed

    Does clinical equipoise apply to cluster randomized trials in health research?

    Get PDF
    This article is part of a series of papers examining ethical issues in cluster randomized trials (CRTs) in health research. In the introductory paper in this series, Weijer and colleagues set out six areas of inquiry that must be addressed if the cluster trial is to be set on a firm ethical foundation. This paper addresses the third of the questions posed, namely, does clinical equipoise apply to CRTs in health research? The ethical principle of beneficence is the moral obligation not to harm needlessly and, when possible, to promote the welfare of research subjects. Two related ethical problems have been discussed in the CRT literature. First, are control groups that receive only usual care unduly disadvantaged? Second, when accumulating data suggests the superiority of one intervention in a trial, is there an ethical obligation to act

    Increased HIV Incidence in Men Who Have Sex with Men Despite High Levels of ART-Induced Viral Suppression: Analysis of an Extensively Documented Epidemic

    Get PDF
    Background: There is interest in expanding ART to prevent HIV transmission, but in the group with the highest levels of ART use, men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM), numbers of new infections diagnosed each year have not decreased as ART coverage has increased for reasons which remain unclear. Methods: We analysed data on the HIV-epidemic in MSM in the UK from a range of sources using an individual-based simulation model. Model runs using parameter sets found to result in good model fit were used to infer changes in HIV-incidence and risk behaviour. Results: HIV-incidence has increased (estimated mean incidence 0.30/100 person-years 1990–1997, 0.45/100 py 1998–2010), associated with a modest (26%) rise in condomless sex. We also explored counter-factual scenarios: had ART not been introduced, but the rise in condomless sex had still occurred, then incidence 2006–2010 was 68% higher; a policy of ART initiation in all diagnosed with HIV from 2001 resulted in 32% lower incidence; had levels of HIV testing been higher (68% tested/year instead of 25%) incidence was 25% lower; a combination of higher testing and ART at diagnosis resulted in 62% lower incidence; cessation of all condom use in 2000 resulted in a 424% increase in incidence. In 2010, we estimate that undiagnosed men, the majority in primary infection, accounted for 82% of new infections. Conclusion: A rise in HIV-incidence has occurred in MSM in the UK despite an only modest increase in levels of condomless sex and high coverage of ART. ART has almost certainly exerted a limiting effect on incidence. Much higher rates of HIV testing combined with initiation of ART at diagnosis would be likely to lead to substantial reductions in HIV incidence. Increased condom use should be promoted to avoid the erosion of the benefits of ART and to prevent other serious sexually transmitted infections
    corecore