Combined electrochemical and biological treatment for pesticide degradation - Application to phosmet

International audienceThe aim of this study was to determine the feasibility of coupling an electrochemical process with a biological treatment in order to degrade phosmet, an organophosphorous pesticide. The absence of biodegradability of phosmet by Pseudomonas fluorescens and activated sludge was verified in our operational conditions. So, a conventional biological treatment is not appropriate for phosmet polluted effluents. Electrochemical behavior of phosmet was studied by cyclic voltammetry and the feasibility of an electrochemical pretreatment was thus demonstrated. Preliminary results with activated sludge showed a diminution of 26% for COD (chemical oxygen demand) measured when the electrolyzed solution was used as the sole carbon and nitrogen sources. When glucose and ammonium were added as supplementary carbon and nitrogen sources, the COD diminution reached 34% after 79 h of culture. This study demonstrates the feasibility of an electrochemical pre-treatment prior to biotreatment

Pneumonia Recovery; Discrepancies in Perspectives of the Radiologist, Physician and Patient

BACKGROUND: Chest radiographs are often used to diagnose community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), to monitor response to treatment and to ensure complete resolution of pneumonia. However, radiological exams may not reflect the actual clinical condition of the patient. OBJECTIVE: To compare the radiographic resolution of mild to moderately severe CAP to resolution of clinical symptoms as assessed by the physician or rated by the patient. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. PARTICIPANTS: One hundred nineteen patients admitted because of mild to moderately severe CAP with new pulmonary opacities. MAIN MEASURES: Radiographic resolution and clinical cure of CAP were determined at day 10 and 28. Radiographic resolution was defined as the absence of infection-related abnormalities; clinical cure was rated by the physician and defined by improvement of signs and symptoms. In addition, the CAP score, a patient-based symptom score, was calculated. KEY RESULTS: Radiographic resolution, clinical cure and normalization of the CAP score were observed in 30.8%, 93% and 32% of patients at day 10, and in 68.4%, 88.9% and 41.7% at day 28, respectively. More severe CAP (PSI score >90) was independently associated with delayed radiographic resolution at day 28 (OR 4.7, 95% CI 1.3-16.9). All 12 patients with deterioration of radiographic findings during follow-up had clinical evidence of treatment failure. CONCLUSIONS: In mild to moderately severe CAP, resolution of radiographic abnormalities and resolution of symptoms scored by the patient lag behind clinical cure assessed by physicians. Monitoring a favorable disease process by routine follow-up chest radiographs seems to have no additional value above following a patient's clinical cours

A high temperature route to the formation of highly pure quaternary chalcogenide particles

A process route to the fabrication of quaternary chalcogenides (Cu2CoSnS4, Cu2ZnSnS4) particles is proposed in molten KSCN at 400 °C. This high temperature route allows the formation of highly pure and highly crystallized quaternary chalcogenides particles. Control of primary crystallites size is demonstrated by altering the chemical homogeneity of the precursors. This method could be exploited to prepare building blocks for the fabrication of low-cost solar cell absorbers

Existencia de huevos de Trichuris vulpis en heces humanas procedentes del Norte de Marruecos

Se hace un estudio de los huevos de Trichuris vulpis encontrados casualmente en las heces de dos personas, en exámen directo y tras concentración. Para su identificación se comparan con los huevos de Trichuris trichiura, apreciándose las diferencias existentes en longitud y anchura, así como en la forma y tamaño de los mamelones polares.The study about the eggs of Trichuris vulpis which were casually found in the faeces of two persons has be done in two different ways: a direct exarnination and through the method of concentration. In order to identify the eggs they were compared with the Trichuris trichiura, differentiating in length and width of the eggs as well as the shape and size of their polar plugs

Estudio coprológico de infecciones intestinales en los estudiantes marroquíes de la Universidad de Granada

Se ha realizado un estudio coprológico de las muestras fecales de 145 estudiantes marroquíes (varones y hembras) matriculados en la Universidad de Granada durante el curso académico 1985-86. Se ha obtenido un I.P .S. de 42'75%, con un 37,24% de Protozoos y un 9'65% de Helmintos. La prevalencia de los mismos es la siguiente: E. coli: 18'62%; E. hartmanni: 2'75%; E. nana: 15'55%; D.fragilis: 1'37%; J. butschlii: 6'89%; G. lamblia: 4'82%; T. trichiura: 5'51 %; A. lumbricoides: 1'37%; H. nana: 1'37%; S. stercoralis: 1'37%. El trabajo se completa con un estudio estadístico, cuyos resultados se discuten

Neonatal epididymo-orchitis caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa: a case report

Epididymitis and epididymo-orchitis are an uncommon causes of acute testicular pain in neonatal boys, epididymo-orchitis is infection or inflammation of epididymis and testis it's may be associated with urinary tract infections or reflux of urine predisposed by an underlying vasal anomaly. Pediatricians should examine the testicles meticulously after a baby is born

Trust enforcement through self-adapting cloud workflow orchestration

Providing runtime intelligence of a workflow in a highly dynamic cloud execution environment is a challenging task due the continuously changing cloud resources. Guaranteeing a certain level of workflow Quality of Service (QoS) during the execution will require continuous monitoring to detect any performance violation due to resource shortage or even cloud service interruption. Most of orchestration schemes are either configuration, or deployment dependent and they do not cope with dynamically changing environment resources. In this paper, we propose a workflow orchestration, monitoring, and adaptation model that relies on trust evaluation to detect QoS performance degradation and perform an automatic reconfiguration to guarantee QoS of the workflow. The monitoring and adaptation schemes are able to detect and repair different types of real time errors and trigger different adaptation actions including workflow reconfiguration, migration, and resource scaling. We formalize the cloud resource orchestration using state machine that efficiently captures different dynamic properties of the cloud execution environment. In addition, we use validation model checker to validate our model in terms of reachability, liveness, and safety properties. Extensive experimentation is performed using a health monitoring workflow we have developed to handle dataset from Intelligent Monitoring in Intensive Care III (MIMICIII) and deployed over Docker swarm cluster. A set of scenarios were carefully chosen to evaluate workflow monitoring and the different adaptation schemes we have implemented. The results prove that our automated workflow orchestration model is self-adapting, self-configuring, react efficiently to changes and adapt accordingly while supporting high level of Workflow QoS

Progesterone protective effects in neurodegeneration and neuroinflamation

Progesterone is a neuroprotective, promyelinating and antiinflammatory  factor for the nervous system. Here we discuss progesterone effects in models of  motoneuron degeneration and neuroinflammation. In neurodegeneration of the  Wobbler mouse, a subset of spinal cord motoneurons showed increased activity of  nitric oxide synthase (NOS), increased intramitochondrial NOS, decreased activity of  respiratory chain complexes and decreased activity and protein expression of Mnsuperoxide  dismutase type 2 (MnSOD2). Clinically, Wobblers suffered several  degrees of motor impairment. Progesterone treatment restored the expression of  neuronal markers, decreased the activity of NOS and enhanced complex I  respiratory activity and MnSOD2. Long-term treatment with progesterone increased  muscle strength, biceps weight and survival. Collectively, these data supported that  progesterone prevented neurodegeneration. To study progesterone effects in  neuroinflammation, we employed mice with experimental autoimmune  encephalomyelitis (EAE). EAE mice spinal cord showed increased mRNA levels of  the inflammatory mediators tumour necrosis factor α (TNFα) and its receptor TNFR1,  the microglial marker CD11b, iNOS and the toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4). Progesterone  pretreatment of EAE mice blocked the proinflammatory mediators, decreased Iba1+  microglial cells and attenuated clinical signs of EAE. Therefore, reactive glial cells  became targets of progesterone anti-inflammatory effects. These results open the  ground for testing the usefulness of neuroactive steroids for neurological disorders.Fil: de Nicola, Alejandro Federico. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental (i); ArgentinaFil: Gonzalez Deniselle, Maria Claudia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental (i); ArgentinaFil: Garay, Laura Ines. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental (i); ArgentinaFil: Meyer, Maria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental (i); ArgentinaFil: Gargiulo Monachelli, Gisella Mariana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental (i); ArgentinaFil: Guennoun, Rachida. Inserm; Francia. Universite Paris Sud; FranciaFil: Schumacher, M.. Inserm; Francia. Universite Paris Sud; FranciaFil: Carreras, Maria Cecilia. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Hospital de Clínicas General San Martín; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Inmunología, Genética y Metabolismo; ArgentinaFil: Poderoso, Juan José. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Hospital de Clínicas General San Martín; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Inmunología, Genética y Metabolismo; Argentin

Delivery of steric block morpholino oligomers by (R-X-R)4 peptides: structure–activity studies

Redirecting the splicing machinery through the hybridization of high affinity, RNase H- incompetent oligonucleotide analogs such as phosphoramidate morpholino oligonucleotides (PMO) might lead to important clinical applications. Chemical conjugation of PMO to arginine-rich cell penetrating peptides (CPP) such as (R-Ahx-R)4 (with Ahx standing for 6-aminohexanoic acid) leads to sequence-specific splicing correction in the absence of endosomolytic agents in cell culture at variance with most conventional CPPs. Importantly, (R-Ahx-R)4–PMO conjugates are effective in mouse models of various viral infections and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Unfortunately, active doses in some applications might be close to cytotoxic ones thus presenting challenge for systemic administration of the conjugates in those clinical settings. Structure–activity relationship studies have thus been undertaken to unravel CPP structural features important for the efficient nuclear delivery of the conjugated PMO and limiting steps in their internalization pathway. Affinity for heparin (taken as a model heparan sulfate), hydrophobicity, cellular uptake, intracellular distribution and splicing correction have been monitored. Spacing between the charges, hydrophobicity of the linker between the Arg-groups and Arg-stereochemistry influence splicing correction efficiency. A significant correlation between splicing correction efficiency, affinity for heparin and ability to destabilize model synthetic vesicles has been observed but no correlation with cellular uptake has been found. Efforts will have to focus on endosomal escape since it appears to remain the limiting factor for the delivery of these splice-redirecting ON analogs