Ex vivo perfusion, arteriography, and autotransplantation procedures for kidney salvage

Three kidneys with arterial lesions that would have been difficult or impossible to repair by standard vascular reconstruction were removed, perfused by the Belzer technique, and returned to host after partial or complete autotransplantation. The fact that kidneys can be studied, dissected, repaired, and constantly salvaged with this technique should have important implications in several aspects of urologic operations

Development of an economic evaluation of diagnostic strategies: the case of monogenic diabetes.

notes: PMCID: PMC3657677types: Journal ArticleThis is a freely-available open access publication. Please cite the published version which is available via the DOI link in this recordTo describe the development process for defining an appropriate model structure for the economic evaluation of test-treatment strategies for patients with monogenic diabetes (caused by mutations in the GCK, HNF1A or HNF4A genes).Health Innovation Challenge FundWellcome TrustDepartment of Healt

Role of dissolved nitrate and phosphate in isolates of Mesodinium rubrum and toxin-producing Dinophysis acuminata

Mesodinium rubrum (as prey) is a critical component, in addition to light, for growth and toxin production by the mixotrophic dinoflagellate Dinophysis acuminata. Little is known, however, about the role that dissolved inorganic nutrients play in this predator-prey relationship and system toxicity. A series of experiments were conducted to investigate the possible uptake of dissolved nitrate and phosphate by (1) D. acuminata starved of prey, (2) D. acuminata feeding on M. rubrum, and (3) M. rubrum grown in nutritionally modified medium. All single-clone or mixed cultures were monitored for dissolved and particulate nutrient levels over the growth cycle, as well as for growth rate, biomass, and toxin production when appropriate. Dinophysis acuminata did not utilize dissolved nitrate or phosphate in the medium under nutrient-enriched or nutrientreduced regimes, in the absence or presence of prey, or during any growth phase monitored. Changes in particulate phosphorus and nitrogen in D. acuminata were instead strongly influenced by the consumption of M. rubrum prey, and these levels quickly stabilized once prey were no longer available. Mesodinium rubrum, in contrast, rapidly assimilated dissolved nitrate and phosphate, with maximum uptake rates of 1.38 pmol N cell(-1) d(-1) and 1.63 pmol P cell(-1) d(-1), respectively. While D. acuminata did not benefit directly from the dissolved nitrate and phosphate, its growth (0.37 +/- 0.01 d(-1)) and toxin production rates for okadaic acid, dinophysistoxin-1 and pectenotoxin-2 (0.1, 0.9 and 2.6 pg cell(-1) d(-1), respectively) were directly coupled to prey availability. These results suggest that while dissolved nitrate and phosphate do not have a direct effect on toxin production or retention by D. acuminata, these nutrient pools contribute to prey growth and biomass, thereby indirectly influencing D. acuminata blooms and overall toxins in the system

Complete mitochondrial genome sequence of Urechis caupo, a representative of the phylum Echiura

BACKGROUND: Mitochondria contain small genomes that are physically separate from those of nuclei. Their comparison serves as a model system for understanding the processes of genome evolution. Although hundreds of these genome sequences have been reported, the taxonomic sampling is highly biased toward vertebrates and arthropods, with many whole phyla remaining unstudied. This is the first description of a complete mitochondrial genome sequence of a representative of the phylum Echiura, that of the fat innkeeper worm, Urechis caupo. RESULTS: This mtDNA is 15,113 nts in length and 62% A+T. It contains the 37 genes that are typical for animal mtDNAs in an arrangement somewhat similar to that of annelid worms. All genes are encoded by the same DNA strand which is rich in A and C relative to the opposite strand. Codons ending with the dinucleotide GG are more frequent than would be expected from apparent mutational biases. The largest non-coding region is only 282 nts long, is 71% A+T, and has potential for secondary structures. CONCLUSIONS: Urechis caupo mtDNA shares many features with those of the few studied annelids, including the common usage of ATG start codons, unusual among animal mtDNAs, as well as gene arrangements, tRNA structures, and codon usage biases

Socially-mediated arousal and contagion within domestic chick broods

Emotional contagion – an underpinning valenced feature of empathy – is made up of simpler, potentially dissociable social processes which can include socially-mediated arousal and behavioural/physiological contagion. Previous studies of emotional contagion have often conflated these processes rather than examining their independent contribution to empathic response. We measured socially-mediated arousal and contagion in 9-week old domestic chicks (n = 19 broods), who were unrelated but raised together from hatching. Pairs of observer chicks were exposed to two conditions in a counterbalanced order: air puff to conspecifics (AP) (during which an air puff was applied to three conspecifics at 30 s intervals) and control with noise of air puff (C) (during which the air puff was directed away from the apparatus at 30 s intervals). Behaviour and surface eye temperature of subjects and observers were measured throughout a 10-min pre-treatment and 10-min treatment period. Subjects and observers responded to AP with increased freezing, and reduced preening and ground pecking. Subjects and observers also showed reduced surface eye temperature - indicative of stress-induced hyperthermia. Subject-Observer behaviour was highly correlated within broods during both C and AP conditions, but with higher overall synchrony during AP. We demonstrate the co-occurrence of socially-mediated behavioural and physiological arousal and contagion; component features of emotional contagion

Accumulation-mode aerosol number concentrations in the Arctic during the ARCTAS aircraft campaign: Long-range transport of polluted and clean air from the Asian continent

We evaluate the impact of transport from midlatitudes on aerosol number concentrations in the accumulation mode (light-scattering particles (LSP) with diameters >180 nm) in the Arctic during the Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS) campaign. We focus on transport from the Asian continent. We find marked contrasts in the number concentration (NLSP), transport efficiency (TE N-LSP, the fraction transported from sources to the Arctic), size distribution, and the chemical composition of aerosols between air parcels from anthropogenic sources in East Asia (Asian AN) and biomass burning sources in Russia and Kazakhstan (Russian BB). Asian AN air had lower NLSP and TEN-LSP (25 cm-3 and 18% in spring and 6.2 cm-3 and 3.0% in summer) than Russian BB air (280 cm-3 and 97% in spring and 36 cm-3 and 7.6% in summer) due to more efficient wet scavenging during transport from East Asia. Russian BB in this spring is the most important source of accumulation-mode aerosols over the Arctic, and BB emissions are found to be the primary source of aerosols within all the data in spring during ARCTAS. On the other hand, the contribution of Asian AN transport had a negligible effect on the accumulation-mode aerosol number concentration in the Arctic during ARCTAS. Compared with background air, NLSP was 2.3-4.7 times greater for Russian BB air but 2.4-2.6 times less for Asian AN air in both spring and summer. This result shows that the transport of Asian AN air decreases aerosol number concentrations in the Arctic, despite the large emissions of aerosols in East Asia. The very low aerosol number concentrations in Asian AN air were caused by wet removal during vertical transport in association with warm conveyor belts (WCBs). Therefore, this cleansing effect will be prominent for air transported via WCBs from other midlatitude regions and seasons. The inflow of clean midlatitude air can potentially have an important impact on accumulation-mode aerosol number concentrations in the Arctic. Copyright 2011 by the American Geophysical Union

Fast Ensemble Smoothing

Smoothing is essential to many oceanographic, meteorological and hydrological applications. The interval smoothing problem updates all desired states within a time interval using all available observations. The fixed-lag smoothing problem updates only a fixed number of states prior to the observation at current time. The fixed-lag smoothing problem is, in general, thought to be computationally faster than a fixed-interval smoother, and can be an appropriate approximation for long interval-smoothing problems. In this paper, we use an ensemble-based approach to fixed-interval and fixed-lag smoothing, and synthesize two algorithms. The first algorithm produces a linear time solution to the interval smoothing problem with a fixed factor, and the second one produces a fixed-lag solution that is independent of the lag length. Identical-twin experiments conducted with the Lorenz-95 model show that for lag lengths approximately equal to the error doubling time, or for long intervals the proposed methods can provide significant computational savings. These results suggest that ensemble methods yield both fixed-interval and fixed-lag smoothing solutions that cost little additional effort over filtering and model propagation, in the sense that in practical ensemble application the additional increment is a small fraction of either filtering or model propagation costs. We also show that fixed-interval smoothing can perform as fast as fixed-lag smoothing and may be advantageous when memory is not an issue

Black carbon as an additional indicator of the adverse health effects of airborne particles compared with PM10 and PM2.5.

Current air quality standards for particulate matter (PM) use the PM mass concentration [PM with aerodynamic diameters ≤ 10 μm (PM(10)) or ≤ 2.5 μm (PM(2.5))] as a metric. It has been suggested that particles from combustion sources are more relevant to human health than are particles from other sources, but the impact of policies directed at reducing PM from combustion processes is usually relatively small when effects are estimated for a reduction in the total mass concentration