Secretory leukocyte protease inhibitor in punch biopsies from human colonic mucosa.

Secretory leukocyte protease inhibitor (SLPI) is a well-known protease inhibitor. Its function is thought to be protease/protease-inhibitor balance. Free proteolytic activity, mainly pancreatic elastase, anionic trypsin and granulocytic elastase, has been demonstrated in faecal extracts from patients with ulcerative colitis. We wanted to verify that SLPI is actually secreted from normal human colonic mucosa. Also, we wanted to ascertain whether studies of SLPI secretion based on punch biopsies were dependent on biopsy area or on biopsy circumference. Normal colonic mucosa was sampled during surgery for colonic cancer. A total of 36 samples from four patients were used. Mucosa preparation was carried out using a punch biopsy technique, and samples of 3, 4 and 6 mm diameter were used. All media contained SLPI at varying concentrations. When expressed in terms of the sample area, the secretion per millimetre-squared seemed to decrease with increasing area. When calculated as secretion per circumference, secretion seemed to be constant. In conclusion, SLPI was secreted from normal human colonic mucosa. The SLPI secretion seemed dependent on the circumference of the biopsy rather than on the area of the biopsy

Actors that Unify Threads and Events

There is an impedance mismatch between message-passing concurrency and virtual machines, such as the JVM. VMs usually map their threads to heavyweight OS processes. Without a lightweight process abstraction, users are often forced to write parts of concurrent applications in an event-driven style which obscures control flow, and increases the burden on the programmer. In this paper we show how thread-based and event-based programming can be unified under a single actor abstraction. Using advanced abstraction mechanisms of the Scala programming language, we implemented our approach on unmodified JVMs. Our programming model integrates well with the threading model of the underlying VM

A bridge between a lonely soul and the surrounding world: A study on existential consequences of being closely related to a person with aphasia

This study illuminates existential consequences of being closely related to a person suffering from aphasia. Seventeen close relatives were interviewed and their narratives were interpreted with inspiration from Ricoeur, Levinas, Husserl, Winnicot, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The emerging interpretations resulted in four themes that illuminate a life characterized by lost freedom, staying, a new form of relationship, and growing strong together with others. An overarching theme suggests that a life together with an aphasic person means being used as a bridge between the aphasic person and the surrounding world. Moreover, it illuminates that a close relative to a person with aphasia is a person who does not leave, despite a heavy burden of lonely responsibility. It is concluded that community services need to fulfill their responsibility of providing support to informal caregivers as suggested by the Swedish lawmakers

Using force covariance to derive effective stochastic interactions in dissipative particle dynamics

There exist methods for determining effective conservative interactions in coarse grained particle based mesoscopic simulations. The resulting models can be used to capture thermal equilibrium behavior, but in the model system we study do not correctly represent transport properties. In this article we suggest the use of force covariance to determine the full functional form of dissipative and stochastic interactions. We show that a combination of the radial distribution function and a force covariance function can be used to determine all interactions in dissipative particle dynamics. Furthermore we use the method to test if the effective interactions in dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) can be adjusted to produce a force covariance consistent with a projection of a microscopic Lennard-Jones simulation. The results indicate that the DPD ansatz may not be consistent with the underlying microscopic dynamics. We discuss how this result relates to theoretical studies reported in the literature.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figure

Microbial risk assessment of drinking water based on hydrodynamic modelling of pathogen concentrations in source water

Norovirus contamination of drinking water sources is an important cause of waterborne disease outbreaks. Knowledge on pathogen concentrations in source water is needed to assess the ability of a drinking water treatment plant (DWTP) to provide safe drinking water. However, pathogen enumeration in source water samples is often not sufficient to describe the source water quality. In this study, the norovirus concentrations were characterised at the contamination source, i.e. in sewage discharges. Then, the transport of norovirus within the water source (the river Gota alv in Sweden) under different loading conditions was simulated using a hydrodynamic model. Based on the estimated concentrations in source water, the required reduction of norovirus at the DWTP was calculated using quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA). The required reduction was compared with the estimated treatment performance at the DWTP. The average estimated concentration in source water varied between 4.8 x 10(2) and 7.5 x 10(3) genome equivalents L-1; and the average required reduction by treatment was between 7.6 and 8.8 Log(10). The treatment performance at the DWTP was estimated to be adequate to deal with all tested loading conditions, but was heavily dependent on chlorine disinfection, with the risk of poor reduction by conventional treatment and slow sand filtration. To our knowledge, this is the first article to employ discharge-based QMRA, combined with hydrodynamic modelling, in the context of drinking water. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Pre‐ and postoperative 68Ga‐DOTATOC positron emission tomography for hormone‐secreting pituitary neuroendocrine tumors

Objectives: Somatostatin receptors (SSTRs) are potential targets for detecting pituitary neuroendocrine tumours (PitNETs) that can be visualized effectively with 68Ga-labelled PET tracers. With this study, we have evaluated the diagnostic properties of such a tracer, 68Ga-DOTATOC, in patients with hormone-producing PitNETs before and after surgery. Design/Methods: This prospective case-control study presents preoperative positron emission tomography (PET) and histopathological data in 18 patients with somatotroph (n = 8), corticotroph (n = 7) and thyrotroph (n = 3) PitNETs. Patients were scanned pre- and postoperatively with 68Ga-DOTATOC PET. For the postoperative part of the study, patients with gonadotroph tumours (n = 7) were also included. Fifteen pituitary healthy controls underwent the same protocol once. The maximum standard uptake value (SUVmax) was analysed in manually outlined regions around the tumour in patients and around the pituitary gland in controls. specimens were collected during surgery in subjects for assessment of adenohypophyseal tumour cell type and the SSTR expression. Results: Thyrotroph tumours showed higher uptake (median SUVmax 41.1; IQR 37.4-60.0) and corticotroph tumours lower uptake (SUVmax 6.8; 2.6-9.3) than normal pituitary gland (SUVmax 13.8; 12.1-15.5). The uptake in somatotroph tumours (SUVmax 15.9; 11.6-19.7) was similar to the uptake in the pituitary gland. There was a strong correlation between SUVmax and SSTR2 expression (r = .75 (P 13.8. Conclusions: 68Ga-DOTATOC PET can be used to detect thyrotroph tumours in the pre- and postoperative imaging assessment. Corticotroph tumours had a significantly lower uptake compared to the pituitary gland but without a distinct increased tumour uptake the clinical postoperative value is limited

Green's functions for parabolic systems of second order in time-varying domains

We construct Green's functions for divergence form, second order parabolic systems in non-smooth time-varying domains whose boundaries are locally represented as graph of functions that are Lipschitz continuous in the spatial variables and 1/2-H\"older continuous in the time variable, under the assumption that weak solutions of the system satisfy an interior H\"older continuity estimate. We also derive global pointwise estimates for Green's function in such time-varying domains under the assumption that weak solutions of the system vanishing on a portion of the boundary satisfy a certain local boundedness estimate and a local H\"older continuity estimate. In particular, our results apply to complex perturbations of a single real equation.Comment: 25 pages, 0 figur