Hepatitis-B- und -C-assoziierte Glomerulonephritiden

Zusammenfassung: Virale Hepatitiden sind häufig mit extrahepatischen Manifestationen assoziiert. Bei der HepatitisB ist die membranöse Glomerulonephritis (GN) die häufigste histologische Diagnose. Im Rahmen der HepatitisC wird vorwiegend eine membranoproliferative GN mit oder ohne gemischte Kryoglobulinämie beobachtet. Eine zentrale pathogenetische Rolle spielen Immunkomplexe (virale Antigene, antivirale Antikörper, bei Kryoglobulinämie auch Rheumafaktoren). Diese Komplexe werden in der Niere abgelagert und aktivieren Komplement, was schließlich zum Nierenschaden führt. Therapeutisch zentral ist die antivirale Therapie mit dem Ziel der Antigenelimination. Im Falle der HepatitisB kann eine Therapie mit IFNα durchgeführt werden, alternativ mit Lamivudin. Eine immunsuppressive Therapie steht eher im Hintergrund. Bei der HepatitisC ist die Standardtherapie IFNα in Kombination mit Ribavirin. Bei einer zusätzlichen Kryoglobulinämie besteht die Alternative einer Therapie mit Rituximab, bei schwerem Verlauf mit Plasmapherese, Steroiden und Cyclophosphamid. Bei vollständiger Elimination der Virusreplikation ist die Prognose dieser sekundären GN günsti

Maculinea nausithous exploits Myrmica scabrinodis in Transylvania: unusual host ant species of a myrmecophilous butterfly in an isolated region (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae; Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Isolated populations of the myrmecophilous Dusky Large Blue butterfly (Maculinea nausithous) occur in Transylvania (Romania). The hitherto unknown host ant specificity of these populations was investigated at two sites, where Myrmica scabrinodis was the only potential host ant found. A total of 107 M. scabrinodis nests were opened in early summer to check for the presence of M. nausithous larvae, and two of them contained overwintered larvae. Our observations suggest that, like the habitat, the host ant of these isolated populations essentially differs from other central European M. nausithous populations studied, which use exclusively Myrmica rubra

Biophysics of Zebrafish (Danio rerio) Sperm

In the past two decades, laboratories around the world have produced thousands of mutant, transgenic, and wild-type zebrafish lines for biomedical research. Although slow-freezing cryopreservation of zebrafish sperm has been available for 30 years, current protocols lack standardization and yield inconsistent post-thaw fertilization rates. Cell cryopreservation cannot be improved without basic physiological knowledge, which was lacking for zebrafish sperm. The first goal was to define basic cryobiological values for wild-type zebrafish sperm and to evaluate how modern physiological methods could aid in developing improved cryopreservation protocols. Coulter counting methods measured an osmotically inactive water fraction (Vb) of 0.37 ± 0.02 (SEM), an isosmotic cell volume (Vo) of 12.1 ± 0.2 μm3 (SEM), a water permeability (Lp) in 10% dimethyl sulfoxide of 0.021 ± 0.001(SEM) um/min/atm, and a cryoprotectant permeability (Ps) of 0.10 +/− 0.01 (SEM) × 10−3 cm/min. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy indicated that sperm membranes frozen without cryoprotectant showed damage and lipid reorganization, while those exposed to 10% glycerol demonstrated decreased lipid phase transition temperatures, which would stabilize the cells during cooling. The second goal was to determine the practicality and viability of shipping cooled zebrafish sperm overnight through the mail. Flow cytometry demonstrated that chilled fresh sperm can be maintained at 92% viability for 24 h at 0°C, suggesting that it can be shipped and exchanged between laboratories. Additional methods will be necessary to analyze and improve cryopreservation techniques and post-thaw fertility of zebrafish sperm. The present study is a first step to explore such techniques

Surface tensions of multi-component mixed inorganic/organic aqueous systems of atmospheric significance: measurements, model predictions and importance for cloud activation predictions

International audienceIn order to predict the physical properties of aerosol particles, it is necessary to adequately capture the behaviour of the ubiquitous complex organic components. One of the key properties which may affect this behaviour is the contribution of the organic components to the surface tension of aqueous particles in the moist atmosphere. Whilst the qualitative effect of organic compounds on solution surface tensions has been widely reported, our quantitative understanding on mixed organic and mixed inorganic/organic systems is limited. Furthermore, it is unclear whether models that exist in the literature can reproduce the surface tension variability for binary and higher order multi-component organic and mixed inorganic/organic systems of atmospheric significance. The current study aims to resolve both issues to some extent. Surface tensions of single and multiple solute aqueous solutions were measured and compared with predictions from a number of model treatments. On comparison with binary organic systems, two predictive models found in the literature provided a range of values resulting from sensitivity to calculations of pure component surface tensions. Results indicate that a fitted model can capture the variability of the measured data very well, producing the lowest average percentage deviation for all compounds studied. The performance of the other models varies with compound and choice of model parameters. The behaviour of ternary mixed inorganic/organic systems was unreliably captured by using a predictive scheme and this was dependent on the composition of the solutes present. For more atmospherically representative higher order systems, entirely predictive schemes performed poorly. It was found that use of the binary data in a relatively simple mixing rule, or modification of an existing thermodynamic model with parameters derived from binary data, was able to accurately capture the surface tension variation with concentration. Thus, it would appear that in order to model multi-component surface tensions involving compounds used in this study one requires the use of appropriate binary data. However, results indicate that the use of theoretical frameworks which contain parameters derived from binary data may predict unphysical behaviour when taken beyond the concentration ranges used to fit such parameters. The effect of deviations between predicted and measured surface tensions on predicted critical saturation ratios was quantified, by incorporating the surface tension models into an existing thermodynamic framework whilst firstly neglecting bulk to surface partitioning. Critical saturation ratios as a function of dry size for all of the multi-component systems were computed and it was found that deviations between predictions increased with decreasing particle dry size. As expected, use of the surface tension of pure water, rather than calculate the influence of the solutes explicitly, led to a consistently higher value of the critical saturation ratio indicating that neglect of the compositional effects will lead to significant differences in predicted activation behaviour even at large particle dry sizes. Following this two case studies were used to study the possible effect of bulk to surface partitioning on critical saturation ratios. By employing various assumptions it was possible to perform calculations not only for a binary system but also for a mixed organic system. In both cases this effect lead to a significant increase in the predicted critical supersaturation ratio compared to the above treatment. Further analysis of this effect will form the focus of future work

Surface tensions of multi-component mixed inorganic/organic aqueous systems of atmospheric significance: Measurements, model predictions and importance for cloud activation predictions

In order to predict the physical properties of aerosol particles, it is necessary to adequately capture the behaviour of the ubiquitous complex organic components. One of the key properties which may affect this behaviour is the contribution of the organic components to the surface tension of aqueous particles in the moist atmosphere. Whilst the qualitative effect of organic compounds on solution surface tensions has been widely reported, our quantitative understanding on mixed organic and mixed inorganic/organic systems is limited. Furthermore, it is unclear whether models that exist in the literature can reproduce the surface tension variability for binary and higher order multi-component organic and mixed inorganic/organic systems of atmospheric significance. The current study aims to resolve both issues to some extent. Surface tensions of single and multiple solute aqueous solutions were measured and compared with predictions from a number of model treatments. On comparison with binary organic systems, two predictive models found in the literature provided a range of values resulting from sensitivity to calculations of pure component surface tensions. Results indicate that a fitted model can capture the variability of the measured data very well, producing the lowest average percentage deviation for all compounds studied. The performance of the other models varies with compound and choice of model parameters. The behaviour of ternary mixed inorganic/organic systems was unreliably captured by using a predictive scheme and this was dependent on the composition of the solutes present. For more atmospherically representative higher order systems, entirely predictive schemes performed poorly. It was found that use of the binary data in a relatively simple mixing rule, or modification of an existing thermodynamic model with parameters derived from binary data, was able to accurately capture the surface tension variation with concentration. Thus, it would appear that in order to model multi-component surface tensions involving compounds used in this study one requires the use of appropriate binary data. However, results indicate that the use of theoretical frameworks which contain parameters derived from binary data may predict unphysical behaviour when taken beyond the concentration ranges used to fit such parameters. The effect of deviations between predicted and measured surface tensions on predicted critical saturation ratios was quantified, by incorporating the surface tension models into an existing thermodynamic framework whilst firstly neglecting bulk to surface partitioning. Critical saturation ratios as a function of dry size for all of the multi-component systems were computed and it was found that deviations between predictions increased with decreasing particle dry size. As expected, use of the surface tension of pure water, rather than calculate the influence of the solutes explicitly, led to a consistently higher value of the critical saturation ratio indicating that neglect of the compositional effects will lead to significant differences in predicted activation behaviour even at large particle dry sizes. Following this two case studies were used to study the possible effect of bulk to surface partitioning on critical saturation ratios. By employing various assumptions it was possible to perform calculations not only for a binary system but also for a mixed organic system. In both cases this effect lead to a significant increase in the predicted critical supersaturation ratio compared to the above treatment. Further analysis of this effect will form the focus of future work

ASSESSING THE ALIGNMENT BETWEEN GEOMETRY AND COLORS IN TLS COLORED POINT CLOUDS

The integration of the color information from RGB cameras with the point cloud geometry is used in numerous applications. However, little attention has been paid on errors that occur when aligning colors to points in terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) point clouds. Such errors may impact the performance of algorithms that utilize colored point clouds. Herein, we propose a procedure for assessing the alignment between the TLS point cloud geometry and colors. The procedure is based upon identifying artificial targets observed in both LiDAR-based point cloud intensity data and camera-based RGB data, and quantifying the quality of the alignment using differences between the target center coordinates estimated separately from these two data sources. Experimental results with eight scanners show that the quality of the alignment depends on the scanner, the software used for colorizing the point clouds, and may change with changing environmental conditions. While we found the effects of misalignment to be negligible for some scanners, they exhibited clearly systematic patterns exceeding the beam divergence, image and scan resolution for four of the scanners. The maximum deviations were about 2 mrad perpendicular to the line-of-sight when colorizing the point clouds with the respective manufacturer’s software or scanner in-built functions, while they were up to about 5 mrad when using a different software. Testing the alignment quality, e.g., using the approach presented herein, is thus important for applications requiring accurate alignment of the RGB colors with the point cloud geometry

Catches of Euxoa tritici in pheromone traps for Anarsia lineatella are due to the presence of (Z)-5-decenyl acetate as an impurity

Traps baited with the synthetic pheromone of Anarsia lineatella Zeller (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) frequently captured also Euxoa tritici L. males (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) in field tests in Hungary. As (E)-monounsaturated compounds are uncommon among sex attractants or pheromone components of Noctuidae, it was hypothesized that the Euxoa catches may have been due to impurities of the (Z) isomer in synthetic (E)-5-decenyl acetate, which is the major component in the pheromone lure of A. lineatella. Traps baited with synthetic (Z)-5-decenyl acetate captured large numbers of E. tritici, and the compound showed a clear dose–response effect. Reanalysis of the synthetic batch of (E)-5-decenyl acetate used in preparation of the A. lineatella lure showed the presence of 10% of the (Z) isomer. Traps baited with synthetic (Z)-5-decenyl acetate can be used in the future for detection and monitoring purposes of E. tritici, a widely distributed pest of cereals and other field crops. The compound also showed attraction of Euxoa seliginis Duponche