Nuevos datos sobre la esfecidofauna ibèrica (Hymenoptera: Sphecidae). III

S'estudia material esfecidològic de la península Ibèrica pertanyent a les subfamilies Crabroninae, Nyssoninae i Philanthinae (sensu Bohart & Menke, 1976); s'han identificat un total de 82 espècies i subspècies. De totes s'amplia llur distribució geogràfica, posant en relleu les citacions d'Encopognathus braunsi Mercet, 1915, Lindenius major Beaumont, 1956, Crossocerus (Blepharipus) nigritus (Lepeletier et Brulle, 1834) i Bembecinus Pulchellus (Mercet, 1906). Es comenta la variació cromàtica d'Ectemnius dives (Lepeletier et Brulle, 1834).Specimens coming from different parts of the Iberian peninsula are studied. 82 species (belonging to the subfamilies Crabroninae, Nyssoninae and Philanthinae sensu Bohart & Menke, 1976), have been identified, increasing the extant knowledge on their distribution. From the faunistic point of view the presence of Encopognathus braunsi Mercet, 1915, Lindenius major Beaumont, 1956, Crossocerus (Blepharipus) nigritus (Lepeletier et Brulle, 1834) and Bembecinus pulchellus (Mercet, 1906) stands out. The chromatic variation in Ectemnius dives (Lepeletier et Brulle, 1834) is discussed.Se estudia material esfecidológico de la península ibérica perteneciente a las subfamilias Crabroninae, Nyssoninae y Philanthinae (sensu Bohart & Menke, 1976); se ha identificado un total de 82 especies y subespecies. De todas se amplía su distribución geográfica, resaltando las citas de Encopognathus braunsi Mercet, 1915; Lindenius major Beaumont, 1956; Crossocerus (Blepharipus) nigritus (Lepeletier et Brulle, 1834) y Bembecinus pulchellus (Mercet, 1906). Se comenta la variación cromática de Ectemnius dives (Lepeletier et BruIle, 1834)

Direct oral anticoagulants vs vitamin K antagonist on dementia risk in atrial fibrillation: systematic review with meta-analysis

© The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attri- bution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adapta- tion, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Oral anticoagulation significantly reduces the incidence of dementia in atrial fibrillation patients. However, this protective effect has not been compared between Direct Oral Anticoagulants (DOAC) and Vitamin K antagonists' anticoagulants (VKA). We conducted an electronic search for potentially eligible studies through the bibliographic databases MEDLINE, CENTRAL, ClinicalTrials.gov, EMBASE and Web of Science. The outcome of interest was dementia. Random-effects meta-analysis was performed. Nine observational studies were included and 1,175,609 atrial fibrillation patients were enrolled. DOAC therapy was associated with a significant reduction when compared with patients under VKA therapy (hazard ratio 0.89; 95% confidence interval 0.80-0.99). The grade of confidence of our results was very low due to the risk of bias. DOAC therapy is associated with a significant decrease in the risk of dementia when compared with VKA therapy. However, the low certainty of the evidence along with the paucityof clinical trials dedicated to answering this important question underscores a need for global clinical research initiatives.Open access funding provided by FCT|FCCN (b-on).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Nernst Effect and Anomalous Transport in Cuprates: A Preformed-Pair Alternative to the Vortex Scenario

We address those puzzling experiments in underdoped high $T_c$ superconductors which have been associated with normal state "vortices" and show these data can be understood as deriving from preformed pairs with onset temperature $T^* > T_c$. For uncorrelated bosons in small magnetic fields, and arbitrary $T^*/T_c$, we present the exact contribution to \textit{all} transport coefficients. In the overdoped regime our results reduce to those of standard fluctuation theories ($T^*\approx T_c$). Semi-quantitative agreement with Nernst, ac conductivity and diamagnetic measurements is quite reasonable.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures; Title, abstract and contents modified, new references added, figures changed, one more figure added; to be published on PR

High frequency of psychosis in late-stage Parkinsońs disease.

BACKGROUND: Psychosis is a frequent non-motor symptom in Parkinson's disease (PD). Estimates of the frequency of Parkinsońs disease psychosis (PDP) vary widely. Knowledge about the frequency and phenomenology of psychosis in late-stage (LS) PD patients is limited.This study aimed to determine the frequency of psychosis in LSPD patients through clinical diagnostic interview (CDI) (gold standard), according to NINDS/NIMH diagnostic criteria for PDP. The secondary objectives were to characterize the phenomenology, to test selected instruments and assess their adequacy in comparison to CDI, and to assess the psychiatric comorbidities. METHODS: A cross-sectional study including LSPD patients (patients with ≥ 7 years from symptoms onset and Hoehn and Yahr scale score > 3 or a Schwab and England scale score < 50% in the ON condition) was conducted. Patients were subjected to psychiatric, neurological, and neuropsychological evaluations. Each patient was interviewed by a psychiatrist who performed a CDI. RESULTS: 92 LSPD patients were included. 55.4% experienced psychotic symptoms according to NINDS/NIMH diagnostic criteria for PDP. Hallucinations were present in 94.1% and delusions in 29.4% of the psychotic patients. Visual hallucinations were the most common (88.23%) psychotic symptom. 72.5% of LSPD patients with psychotic symptoms had at least one comorbid psychiatric diagnosis. Lower frequency of psychosis was found when the assessment was performed only through selected instruments rather than CDI. CONCLUSIONS: A high frequency (55.4%) of psychotic symptoms and comorbid psychiatric (72.5%) diagnosis were found in LSPD patients. The use of CDI, in addition to structured scales may increase the sensitivity of detecting psychotic symptoms

Clinical diagnostic criteria have a high impact on the frequency of dementia in late-stage Parkinson's disease

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.Background: Cognitive impairment is a potential late feature of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, studies in patients with late-stage PD are lacking due to the particular characteristics of this population.Objectives: To evaluate the frequency of dementia in late-stage PD patients and to assess the impact of using different diagnostic criteria.Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study to estimate the frequency of dementia in late-stage PD patients using the International Parkinson and Movement Disorders Society (MDS) (Level II) clinical diagnostic criteria as the primary outcome. We also applied other diagnostic criteria [MDS (Level I), DSM-IV, and DSM-5 criteria] to determine their applicability and impact on dementia frequency.Results: 93 participants with a mean age of 75.8 years (SD 6.8) and 16.5 years (SD 7.5) of disease duration were included. 64.3% were classified as demented using the International Parkinson and Movement Disorders Society (MDS) (Level II) clinical diagnostic criteria. We observed a high discrepancy on the frequency of dementia depending on the criteria applied [6.2% with MDS (Level I), 58.8% with DSM-IV, and 72.0% with DSM-5 criteria].Conclusions: We found a frequency of dementia below what was observed in similar populations. The particular characteristics of our sample may have contributed as protective factors for late-stage dementia. Dementia frequency varied depending on the criteria used mainly due to the presence of major depression.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Profile of cognitive impairment in late‐stage Parkinson's disease

© 2022 The Authors. Brain and Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Introduction: The profile of cognitive impairment associated with the late stages of Parkinson's disease (LSPD) is rarely reported. Its characterization is necessary to better understand the cognitive changes that occur as the disease progresses and to better contribute to its management. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, we characterized the cognitive profile of LSPD patients using the comprehensive assessment methodology proposed by the International Parkinson and Movement Disorders Society Task Force. The association of clinical and demographic variables with dementia diagnosis was also investigated using binary logistic regression analysis. Results: Eighty-four LSPD patients were included (age 75.4 ± 6.9; disease duration 16.9 ± 7.5). Fifty-four (64.3%) were classified as demented and presented a global impairment cognitive profile. In the nondemented group (N = 30), 25 (83.3%) LSPD patients met the diagnostic criteria for mild cognitive impairment, mostly with multiple domain impairment (96.0%) and a heterogeneous profile. Memory was the most frequent and severely impaired cognitive domain in both groups. Disease disability, orientation, complex order comprehension, verbal learning, and visuoconstructive abilities were significantly associated with dementia diagnosis (p < .05). Conclusions: Cognitive impairment in multiple domains was common in LSPD patients. The most frequent and prominent deficits were in the memory domain, with a strong interference from attention impairment. Disease disability, orientation, complex order comprehension, verbal learning, and visuoconstructive abilities proved to be important determinants for dementia diagnosis.This work was supported by a doctoral fellowship (SFRH/BD/139853/2018) from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal, which was assigned to Catarina Severiano e Sousa.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The in-plane paraconductivity in La_{2-x}Sr_xCuO_4 thin film superconductors at high reduced-temperatures: Independence of the normal-state pseudogap

The in-plane resistivity has been measured in $La_{2-x}Sr_xCuO_4$ (LSxCO) superconducting thin films of underdoped ($x=0.10,0.12$), optimally-doped ($x=0.15$) and overdoped ($x=0.20,0.25$) compositions. These films were grown on (100)SrTiO$_3$ substrates, and have about 150 nm thickness. The in-plane conductivity induced by superconducting fluctuations above the superconducting transition (the so-called in-plane paraconductivity, $\Delta\sigma_{ab}$) was extracted from these data in the reduced-temperature range 10^{-2}\lsim\epsilon\equiv\ln(T/\Tc)\lsim1. Such a $\Delta\sigma_{ab}(\epsilon)$ was then analyzed in terms of the mean-field--like Gaussian-Ginzburg-Landau (GGL) approach extended to the high-$\epsilon$ region by means of the introduction of a total-energy cutoff, which takes into account both the kinetic energy and the quantum localization energy of each fluctuating mode. Our results strongly suggest that at all temperatures above Tc, including the high reduced-temperature region, the doping mainly affects in LSxCO thin films the normal-state properties and that its influence on the superconducting fluctuations is relatively moderate: Even in the high-$\epsilon$ region, the in-plane paraconductivity is found to be independent of the opening of a pseudogap in the normal state of the underdoped films.Comment: 35 pages including 10 figures and 1 tabl

Abundancia estival de insectos himenópteros en ambiente citrícola mediterráneo

Con el objetivo de conocer la abundancia y diversidad estival de insectos en ambiente citrícola mediterráneo, se desarrolló una experiencia en la provincia de Valencia entre junio y septiembre de 1999. Se utilizaron dos parcelas, una convencional sometida a la aplicación de abonos y fitosanitarios de síntesis, y otra ecológica mantenida con las normas del Reglamento Europeo para la Producción Ecológica. Los ejemplares fueron recolectados mediante una trampa de barrera tipo “Malaise”, a razón de 8 días por mes y para un total de 4 muestras por parcela. De esta forma, sobre el total de insectos obtenidos (11.113 individuos y 10 órdenes), los Hymenoptera (26,7%) constituyeron el segundo grupo más abundante, por detrás de los Diptera (53,5%), y por delante de los Hemiptera (9,7%) y de los Lepidoptera (4,9%). Por su parte, los 2.971 himenópteros capturados se dividieron en 1.439 especímenes para el cultivo convencional y 1.532 para el ecológico, perteneciendo todos al suborden Apocrita y a un total de 9 superfamilias (3 de Aculeata y 6 de Parasitica) y 42 familias (20 y 22, respectivamente). Asimismo, por cultivos y sobre el total de himenópteros conseguidos, destacaron Apoidea (14,7%) y Scelionidae (13,5%) en el convencional, y Vespoidea (17,7%) y Braconidae (8,8%) en el ecológico. Finalmente, a tenor de los resultados obtenidos, podemos concluir que los himenópteros en conjunto son más abundantes en la parcela ecológica, condición que varía cuando se consideran niveles taxonómicos inferiores

Extensive Sheep and Goat Production: The Role of Novel Technologies towards Sustainability and Animal Welfare

[EN] Sheep and goat extensive production systems are very important in the context of global food security and the use of rangelands that have no alternative agricultural use. In such systems, there are enormous challenges to address. These include, for instance, classical production issues, such as nutrition or reproduction, as well as carbon-efficient systems within the climate-change context. An adequate response to these issues is determinant to economic and environmental sustainability. The answers to such problems need to combine efficiently not only the classical production aspects, but also the increasingly important health, welfare, and environmental aspects in an integrated fashion. The purpose of the study was to review the application of technological developments, in addition to remote-sensing in tandem with other state-of-the-art techniques that could be used within the framework of extensive production systems of sheep and goats and their impact on nutrition, production, and ultimately, the welfare of these species. In addition to precision livestock farming (PLF), these include other relevant technologies, namely omics and other areas of relevance in small-ruminant extensive production: heat stress, colostrum intake, passive immunity, newborn survival, biomarkers of metabolic disease diagnosis, and parasite resistance breeding. This work shows the substantial, dynamic nature of the scientific community to contribute to solutions that make extensive production systems of sheep and goats more sustainable, efficient, and aligned with current concerns with the environment and welfareSIThe CECAV authors acknowledge financial support of the research unit, which was financed by the National Funds from FCT, the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), project number UIDB/CVT/00772/2020. Financial support from FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Lisboa, Portugal) in the form of infrastructural funding to LEAF (UID/AGR/04129) and PhD grants SFRH/BD/143992/2019 (DM Ribeiro) and 2021.07638.BD (L Sacarrão-Birrento). Author L.E.H.C. acknowledges funding from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Spain) (RYC2019- 027064-I/AEI/10.13039/501100011033

Genomic epidemiology and population structure of Neisseria gonorrhoeae from remote highly endemic Western Australian populations

Background: Neisseria gonorrhoeae causes gonorrhoea, the second most commonly notified sexually transmitted infection in Australia. One of the highest notification rates of gonorrhoea is found in the remote regions of Western Australia (WA). Unlike isolates from the major Australian population centres, the remote community isolates have low rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Population structure and whole-genome comparison of 59 isolates from the Western Australian N. gonorrhoeae collection were used to investigate relatedness of isolates cultured in the metropolitan and remote areas. Core genome phylogeny, multilocus sequencing typing (MLST), N. gonorrhoeae multi-antigen sequence typing (NG-MAST) and N. gonorrhoeae sequence typing for antimicrobial resistance (NG-STAR) in addition to hierarchical clustering of sequences were used to characterize the isolates. Results: Population structure analysis of the 59 isolates together with 72 isolates from an international collection, revealed six population groups suggesting that N. gonorrhoeae is a weakly clonal species. Two distinct population groups, Aus1 and Aus2, represented 63% of WA isolates and were mostly composed of the remote community isolates that carried no chromosomal AMR genotypes. In contrast, the Western Australian metropolitan isolates were frequently multi-drug resistant and belonged to population groups found in the international database, suggesting international transmission of the isolates. Conclusions: Our study suggests that the population structure of N. gonorrhoeae is distinct between the communities in remote and metropolitan WA. Given the high rate of AMR in metropolitan regions, ongoing surveillance is essential to ensure the enduring efficacy of the empiric gonorrhoea treatment in remote WA