Gewaspatronen H-WodKa: Studie Atlas

Deze atlas bevat kaarten met gewaspatronen voor 10 agrarische percelen in de Hoeksche Waard voor de periode 2006-2010. De kaarten geven een indicatie van de biomassa voor drie momenten in een groeiseizoen (twee in 2010). Deze momenten betreffen het begin, het midden en het eind van het groeiseizoen. De timing van de opnames is afhankelijk van de beschikbaarheid van geschikte remote sensing beelden

Individual human serum differs in the amount of antibodies with affinity for pig fetal ventral mesencephalic cells and the ability to lyse these cells by complement activation

Xenografting pig fetal ventral mesencephalic (pfVM) cells to repair the dopamine deficit in patients with Parkinson's disease is the focus of both experimental and clinical investigations. Although there have been marked advances in the experimental and even clinical application of these xenogeneic transplantations, questions regarding the host's xenospecific immune response remain unanswered. It has been shown that human serum is able to lyse pfVM tissue by both anti-gal-gal and non-anti-gal-gal antibodies by complement activation. The aim of this study was to investigate whether interindividual differences exist in the levels of pfVM cell-specific IgM and IgG subclass antibodies, their ability to lyse pfVM cells in vitro and the relationship between both. Pig fetal VM cells were incubated with heat-inactivated serum from 10 different individuals and binding of IgM antibodies and IgG subclass antibodies to pfVM cells was analyzed by flow cytometry. The ability to lyse pfVM cells was analyzed exposing Cr-51-labeled pfVM cells to fresh serum or isolated IgM and IgG from the same individuals and subsequent determination of released Cr-51 from lysed cells. Strong differences were found between individuals in the levels of pfVM cell-specific IgM antibodies: antibody levels differed up to 40-fold. pfVM-specific IgG1 and IgG2 levels were only detectable in a few individuals. The ability to lyse pfVM cells ranged from negligible lysis up to 66.5% specific lysis. There was a strong correlation between the levels of individual pfVM-specific IgM antibodies and the ability to lyse pfVM cells in vitro. Isolated IgM, but not IgG, was able to lyse pfVM cells in the presence of complement. In conclusion, the interindividual differences in the levels of IgM with affinity for pfVM cells and their ability to lyse pfVM cells in vitro are considerable. Only few individuals possessed IgG1 and IgG2 subclass antibodies with affinity for pfVM. These findings may influence patient selection for porcine transplants and chances of graft survival in individual patients

Porcine fetal ventral mesencephalic cells are targets for primed xenoreactive human T cells

Xenotransplantation of porcine fetal ventral mesencephalic (pfVM) cells to overcome the dopamine shortage in the striatum of patients with Parkinson's disease seems a viable alternative to allotransplantion of human fetal donor tissue, especially because the latter is complicated by both practical and ethical issues. There is, however, little known about the xenospecific immune responses involved in such an intracerebral xenotransplantation. The aim of our study was to investigate whether 1) naive human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PMBC) display cytotoxicity against pfVM cells of E28 pig fetuses, and 2) priming of human PBMC by xenogeneic antigen presenting cells (APC) modulates pfVM-directed cellular cytotoxicity. For this purpose fresh PMBC from nine individual donors were primed by incubation with either irradiated pfVM cells or porcine spleen cells (PSC) as APC in the presence of IL-2 for 1 week before assessing cytotoxicity in a Cr-51 release assay. Also, direct NK reactivity and antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) of fresh PMBC against pfVM cells was assessed. No direct cytotoxicity of naive cells (either NK reactivity or ADCC) against pfVM cells could be determined. Only PMBC primed with PSC were capable of lysing pfVM cells. PBMC primed with pfVM cells did not show cytolytic capacity towards pfVM. Interestingly, large differences in xenospecific T-cell responses exist between individual donor PBMC. Thus, human T cells are capable of killing pfVM cells in a xenoreactive response, but only after priming by donor APC. The large interindividual differences between human donors in their xenoreactive response may influence patient selection for xenotransplantation and chances of graft survival for individual patients

Quantum phase transitions in superconducting arrays under external magnetic fields

We study the zero-temperature phase transitions of two-dimensional superconducting arrays with both the self- and the junction capacitances in the presence of external magnetic fields. We consider two kinds of excitations from the Mott insulating phase: charge-dipole excitations and single-charge excitations, and apply the second-order perturbation theory to find their energies. The resulting phase boundaries are found to depend strongly on the magnetic frustration, which measures the commensurate-incommensurate effects. Comparison of the obtained values with those in recent experiment suggests the possibility that the superconductor-insulator transition observed in experiment may not be of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless type. The system is also transformed to a classical three-dimensional XY model with the magnetic field in the time-direction; this allows the analogy to bulk superconductors, revealing the nature of the phase transitions.Comment: 9 pages including 7 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

The Impacts of Deep Surgical Site Infections on Readmissions, Length of Stay, and Costs:A Matched Case-Control Study Conducted in an Academic Hospital in the Netherlands

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the impacts of deep surgical site infections (dSSIs) regarding hospital readmissions, prolonged length of stay (LoS), and estimated costs. Patients and Methods: We designed and applied a matched case–control observational study using the electronic health records at the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands. We compared patients with dSSI and non-SSI, matched on the basis of having similar procedures. A prevailing topology of surgeries categorized as clean, clean-contami-nated, contaminated, and dirty was applied. Results: Out of a total of 12,285 patients, 393 dSSI were identified as cases, and 2864 patients without SSIs were selected as controls. A total of 343 dSSI patients (87%) and 2307 (81%) controls required hospital readmissions. The median LoS was 7 days (P25-P75: 2.5–14.5) for dSSI patients and 5 days (P25-P75: 1–9) for controls (p-value: <0.001). The estimated mean cost per hospital admission was €9,016 (SE±343) for dSSI patients and €5,409 (SE±120) for controls (p<0.001). Independent variables associated with dSSI were patient’s age ≥65 years (OR: 1.334; 95% CI: 1.036–1.720), the use of prophylactic antibiotics (OR: 0.424; 95% CI: 0.344–0.537), and neoplasms (OR: 2.050; 95% CI: 1.473–2.854). Conclusion: dSSI is associated with increased costs, prolonged LoS, and increased read-mission rates. Elevated risks were seen for elderly patients and those with neoplasms. Additionally, a protective effect of prophylactic antibiotics was found