Pre-Transplant Screening for Latent Adenovirus in Donors and Recipients

Human adenoviruses are frequent cause of slight self-limiting infections in immune competent subjects, while causing life-threatening and disseminated diseases in immunocompromised patients, particularly in the subjects affected by acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and in bone marrow and organ transplant recipients. Here, infections interest lungs, liver, encephalon, heart, kidney and gastro enteric tract. To date, human adenoviruses comprise 51 serotypes grouped into seven species, among which species C especially possesses the capability to persist in infected tissues. From numerous works, it emerges that in the recipient, because of loss of immune-competence, both primary infection, via the graft or from the environment, and reactivated endogenous viruses can be responsible for transplantation related adenovirus disease. The transplants management should include the evaluation of anti-adenovirus pre-transplant screening similar to that concerning cytomegalovirus. The serological screening on cytomegalovirus immunity is currently performed to prevent viral reactivation from grafts and recipient, the viral spread and dissemination to different organs and apparatus, and potentially lethal outcome

Its moderately extended low-density halo and its accretion history

We present results based on Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS) DR8 astrometric and photometric data sets of the Milky Way globular cluster Pal 13. Because of its relatively small size and mass, there is not yet a general consensus on the existence of extra-tidal structures surrounding it. While some previous results suggest the absence of such features, others show that the cluster is under the effects of tidal stripping. We have built a cluster stellar density map from DECaLS g, r magnitudes-previously corrected for interstellar reddening-of stars placed along the cluster main sequence in the color-magnitude diagram. The resulting density map shows nearly smooth contours around Pal 13 out to approximately 1.6 t the most recent estimate of its Jacobi radius, which was derived whilst taking into account the variation along its orbital motion. This outcome favors the presence of stars escaping the cluster, a phenomenon frequently seen in globular clusters that have crossed the Milky Way disk a comparably large number of times. Particularly, the orbital high eccentricity and large inclination angle of this accreted globular cluster could have been responsible for the relatively large amount of lost cluster mass.Fil: Piatti, Andres Eduardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba. Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Fernández Trincado, José G.. Universidad de Atacama; Chil

Proximity Eliashberg theory of electrostatic field-effect-doping in superconducting films

We calculate the effect of a static electric field on the critical temperature of a s-wave one band superconductor in the framework of proximity effect Eliashberg theory. In the weak electrostatic field limit the theory has no free parameters while, in general, the only free parameter is the thickness of the surface layer where the electric field acts. We conclude that the best situation for increasing the critical temperature is to have a very thin film of a superconducting material with a strong increase of electron-phonon (boson) constant upon charging.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

Old Age and Aerobic Microorganisms of Patients Affected by Clostridium difficile Infection are Associated Primarily with the Intestinal Presence of Clostridium difficile

Clostridium difficile infection in human occurs when the organism is present and germinating in the bowel. Old age of patients\u2019 and particular microorganisms in stools are identified as risk factors for the disease onset. We aimed to investigate if risk factors for C. difficile infections in a large Italian hospital were connected to C. difficile intestinal presence or to germination. Toxin B positivity was linked with age over 65 years (P=0.03), medical hospitalization (P=0.015) and growth of Enterobacteriaceae (P=0.029) and Enterococcus (P=0.05) from the same stools. The presence of tcdB was even more strictly linked with old age (P=0.005), medicine hospitalization (P=0.012) and growth of Enterobacteriaceae (P=0.003) and Enterococcus (P=0.04). Our results indicated that the presence of C. difficile in stools, irrespective of being spore or vegetative form, is reliably associated with old age of subjects and fecal presence of viable Enterobacteriaceae and Enterococcus

Age Determination of Fifteen Old to Intermediate-Age Small Magellanic Cloud Star Clusters

We present CMDs in the V and I bands for fifteen star clusters in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) based on data taken with the Very Large Telescope (VLT, Chile). We selected these clusters from our previous work, wherein we derived cluster radial velocities and metallicities from Calcium II infrared triplet (CaT) spectra also taken with the VLT. We discovered that the ages of six of our clusters have been appreciably underestimated by previous studies, which used comparatively small telescopes, graphically illustrating the need for large apertures to obtain reliable ages of old and intermediate-age SMC star clusters. In particular, three of these clusters, L4, L6 and L110, turn out to be amongst the oldest SMC clusters known, with ages of 7.9 +- 1.1, 8.7 +- 1.2 and 7.6 +- 1.0 Gyr, respectively, helping to fill a possible "SMC cluster age gap" (Glatt et al. 2008). Using the present ages and metallicities from Parisi et al. (2009), we analyze the age distribution, age gradient and age metallicity relation (AMR) of a sample of SMC clusters measured homogeneously. There is a suggestion of bimodality in the age distribution but it does not show a constant slope for the first 4 Gyr (Piatti 2011), and we find no evidence for an age gradient. Due to the improved ages of our cluster sample, we find that our AMR is now better represented in the intermediate/old period than that we derived in Parisi et al. (2009), where we simply took ages available in the literature. Additionally, clusters younger than aprox. 4 Gyr now show better agreement with the bursting model, but we confirm that this model is not a good representation of the AMR during the intermediate-age/old period. A more complicated model is needed to explain the SMC chemical evolution in that period.Comment: 76 pages, 32 figures. Accepted for publication in A

Control of bulk superconductivity in a BCS superconductor by surface charge doping via electrochemical gating

The electrochemical gating technique is a powerful tool to tune the surface conduction properties of various materials by means of pure charge doping, but its efficiency is thought to be hampered in materials with a good electronic screening. We show that, if applied to a metallic superconductor (NbN thin films), this approach allows observing reversible enhancements or suppressions of the bulk superconducting transition temperature, which vary with the thickness of the films. These results are interpreted in terms of proximity effect, and indicate that the effective screening length depends on the induced charge density, becoming much larger than that predicted by standard screening theory at very high electric fields

Comment on "A centrosome-independent role for gamma-TuRC proteins in the spindle assembly checkpoint"

Müller et al. (Reports, 27 October 2006, p. 654) showed that inhibition of the γ-tubulin ring complex (γ-TuRC) activates the spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC), which led them to suggest that γ-TuRC proteins play molecular roles in SAC activation. Because γ-TuRC inhibition leads to pleiotropic spindle defects, which are well known to activate kinetochore-derived checkpoint signaling, we believe that this conclusion is premature