El jardín del Instituto Torroja

This article aims to complete the history about the design and construction of the new headquarters of Torroja Institute. Interestingly, the importance of their gardens has not been deeply discussed, even if they are mentioned several times throughout the literature, there is no text or article that analyzes them. This research is part of a doctoral thesis “The modern garden in Spain (1926-1980)”, that examines the various gardens and open spaces of the ITCC (paths, spatial organization, uses and relationship with the building and the environment). The study relies on plans and photographic archive of the building (construction, visits and events) where the garden is displayed as testimony to the life of this research center, without forgetting its relationship with national and foreign formal trends of the Twentieth Century and its great contribution to the time it was built, being a model for later examples.Este artículo pretende completar la historia del proyecto y construcción de la nueva sede del Instituto Torroja. Curiosamente, no se ha tratado en profundidad la importancia de sus jardines, que aunque son citados múltiples veces en toda la bibliografía, no existe ningún texto ni artículo que los analice. Esta investigación que forma parte de una tesis doctoral sobre «El jardín moderno en España (1926-1980)», examina los diferentes jardines y espacios libres del ITCC (trazados, organización espacial, usos y relación con el edificio y el entorno), apoyándose en la cartografía y el archivo fotográfico del edificio (su construcción, fiestas celebradas, visitas y actos) donde se muestra el jardín como testimonio de la vida de este centro de investigación, sin olvidar su relación con las tendencias formales nacionales y extranjeras del siglo XX y su gran aportación para la época en que se construyó, siendo un modelo para ejemplos posteriores

Reconstrucciones históricas del puente de El Kantara en Constantine, Argelia

Constantine, known as the “city of bridges”, has an exceptional built heritage. Among its bridges, is analyzed as particularly significant the historical reconstructions of “El Kantara”: from the first Roman stone bridge, dated 161, up to the current concrete arch built in 1951, through the Ottoman rebuilding of 1792 and the cast iron French bridge of 1863. The article brings together historical and documentary references of its different configurations. Successive solutions reflects the technological evolution of bridges, while showing its impact on urban transformation and in the construction of the city’s identity.Constantine, conocida como la «ciudad de los puentes», reúne un patrimonio construido excepcional. Entre sus puentes, se analiza como obra especialmente significativa el de «El Kantara» y sus reconstrucciones históricas: desde el primer puente romano de piedra del año 161, hasta el actual arco de hormigón armado que data de 1951, pasando por la reconstrucción otomana de 1792 y el arco de ingeniería francesa de hierro de 1863. El artículo reúne referencias históricas y documentales de sus diferentes configuraciones. Las sucesivas soluciones ponen de manifiesto la evolución tecnológica de la construcción de puentes, a la vez que muestran su incidencia en la transformación urbana y en la propia identidad de la ciudad

Plio-Pleistocene climatic change had a major impact on the assembly and disassembly processes of Iberian rodent communities

Comprehension of changes in community composition through multiple spatio-temporal scales is a prime challenge in ecology and palaeobiology. However, assembly, structuring and disassembly of biotic metacommunities in deep-time is insufficiently known. To address this, we used the extensively sampled Iberian Plio-Pleistocene fossil record of rodent faunas as our model system to explore how global climatic events may alter metacommunity structure. Through factor analysis, we found five sets of genera, called faunal components, which co-vary in proportional diversity over time. These faunal components had different spatio-temporal distributions throughout the Plio-Pleistocene, resulting in non-random changes in species assemblages, particularly in response to the development of the Pleistocene glaciations. Three successive metacommunities with distinctive taxonomic structures were identified as a consequence of the differential responses of their members to global climatic change: (1) Ruscinian subtropical faunas (5.3–3.4 Ma) dominated by a faunal component that can be considered as a Miocene legacy; (2) transition faunas during the Villafranchian–Biharian (3.4–0.8 Ma) with a mixture of different faunal components; and (3) final dominance of the temperate Toringian faunas (0.8–0.01 Ma) that would lead to the modern Iberian assemblage. The influence of the cooling global temperature drove the reorganisation of these rodent metacommunities. Selective extinction processes due to this large-scale environmental disturbance progressively eliminated the subtropical specialist species from the early Pliocene metacommunity. This disassembly process was accompanied by the organisation of a diversified metacommunity with an increased importance of biome generalist species, and finally followed by the assembly during the middle–late Pleistocene of a new set of species specialised in the novel environments developed as a consequence of the glaciations

Antiinflammatory Therapy with Canakinumab for Atherosclerotic Disease

Background: Experimental and clinical data suggest that reducing inflammation without affecting lipid levels may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Yet, the inflammatory hypothesis of atherothrombosis has remained unproved. Methods: We conducted a randomized, double-blind trial of canakinumab, a therapeutic monoclonal antibody targeting interleukin-1β, involving 10,061 patients with previous myocardial infarction and a high-sensitivity C-reactive protein level of 2 mg or more per liter. The trial compared three doses of canakinumab (50 mg, 150 mg, and 300 mg, administered subcutaneously every 3 months) with placebo. The primary efficacy end point was nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, or cardiovascular death. RESULTS: At 48 months, the median reduction from baseline in the high-sensitivity C-reactive protein level was 26 percentage points greater in the group that received the 50-mg dose of canakinumab, 37 percentage points greater in the 150-mg group, and 41 percentage points greater in the 300-mg group than in the placebo group. Canakinumab did not reduce lipid levels from baseline. At a median follow-up of 3.7 years, the incidence rate for the primary end point was 4.50 events per 100 person-years in the placebo group, 4.11 events per 100 person-years in the 50-mg group, 3.86 events per 100 person-years in the 150-mg group, and 3.90 events per 100 person-years in the 300-mg group. The hazard ratios as compared with placebo were as follows: in the 50-mg group, 0.93 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.80 to 1.07; P = 0.30); in the 150-mg group, 0.85 (95% CI, 0.74 to 0.98; P = 0.021); and in the 300-mg group, 0.86 (95% CI, 0.75 to 0.99; P = 0.031). The 150-mg dose, but not the other doses, met the prespecified multiplicity-adjusted threshold for statistical significance for the primary end point and the secondary end point that additionally included hospitalization for unstable angina that led to urgent revascularization (hazard ratio vs. placebo, 0.83; 95% CI, 0.73 to 0.95; P = 0.005). Canakinumab was associated with a higher incidence of fatal infection than was placebo. There was no significant difference in all-cause mortality (hazard ratio for all canakinumab doses vs. placebo, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.83 to 1.06; P = 0.31). Conclusions: Antiinflammatory therapy targeting the interleukin-1β innate immunity pathway with canakinumab at a dose of 150 mg every 3 months led to a significantly lower rate of recurrent cardiovascular events than placebo, independent of lipid-level lowering. (Funded by Novartis; CANTOS ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01327846.

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016

Prospective Cohort Study of Infective Endocarditis in People Who Inject Drugs

International audienceBackground - Infective endocarditis (IE) in people who inject drugs (PWID) is an emergent public health problem. Objectives - The purpose of this study was to investigate IE in PWID and compare it with IE in non-PWID patients. Methods - Two prospective cohort studies (ICE-PCS and ICE-Plus databases, encompassing 8,112 IE episodes from 2000 to 2006 and 2008 to 2012, with 64 and 34 sites and 28 and 18 countries, respectively). Outcomes were compared between PWID and non-PWID patients with IE. Logistic regression analyses were performed to investigate risk factors for 6-month mortality and relapses amongst PWID. Results - A total of 7,616 patients (591 PWID and 7,025 non-PWID) were included. PWID patients were significantly younger (median 37.0 years [interquartile range: 29.5 to 44.2 years] vs. 63.3 years [interquartile range: 49.3 to 74.0 years]; p < 0.001), male (72.5% vs. 67.4%; p = 0.007), and presented lower rates of comorbidities except for human immunodeficiency virus, liver disease, and higher rates of prior IE. Amongst IE cases in PWID, 313 (53%) episodes involved left-side valves and 204 (34.5%) were purely left-sided IE. PWID presented a larger proportion of native IE (90.2% vs. 64.4%; p < 0.001), whereas prosthetic-IE and cardiovascular implantable electronic device-IE were more frequent in non-PWID (9.3% vs. 27.0% and 0.5% vs. 8.6%; both p < 0.001). Staphylococcus aureus caused 65.9% and 26.8% of cases in PWID and non-PWID, respectively (p < 0.001). PWID presented higher rates of systemic emboli (51.1% vs. 22.5%; p < 0.001) and persistent bacteremia (14.7% vs. 9.3%; p < 0.001). Cardiac surgery was less frequently performed (39.5% vs. 47.8%; p < 0.001), and in-hospital and 6-month mortality were lower in PWID (10.8% vs. 18.2% and 14.4% vs. 22.2%; both p < 0.001), whereas relapses were more frequent in PWID (9.5% vs. 2.8%; p < 0.001). Prior IE, left-sided IE, polymicrobial etiology, intracardiac complications, and stroke were risk factors for 6-month mortality, whereas cardiac surgery was associated with lower mortality in the PWID population. Conclusions - A notable proportion of cases in PWID involve left-sided valves, prosthetic valves, or are caused by microorganisms other than S. aureus