Gestió Sostenible i millora contínua del cicle de l'aigua a Barcelona

Sol·licitant de l'informe: Barcelona Cicle de l'Aigua, S.A

Monitoring SARS-CoV-2 variant transitions using differences in diagnostic cycle threshold values of target genes

Monitoring the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants is important to detect potential risks of increased transmission or disease severity. We investigated the identification of SARS-CoV-2 variants from real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) routine diagnostics data. Cycle threshold (Ct) values of positive samples were collected from April 2021 to January 2022 in the Northern Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (n = 15,254). Viral lineage identification from whole genome sequencing (WGS) was available for 4618 (30.3%) of these samples. Pairwise differences in the Ct values between gene targets (ΔCt) were analyzed for variants of concern or interest circulating in our area. A specific delay in the Ct of the N-gene compared to the RdRp-gene (ΔCt) was observed for Alpha, Delta, Eta and Omicron. Temporal differences in ΔCt correlated with the dynamics of viral replacement of Alpha by Delta and of Delta by Omicron according to WGS results. Using ΔCt, prediction of new variants of concern at early stages of circulation was achieved with high sensitivity and specificity (91.1% and 97.8% for Delta; 98.5% and 90.8% for Omicron). Thus, tracking population-wide trends in ΔCt values obtained from routine diagnostics testing in combination with WGS could be useful for real-time management and response to local epidemics

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

American archaeology in the light of cultural heritage management: the origin, the law, practice

Wydział Historyczny: Instytut ArcheologiiOd wielu lat trwa w Polsce i na świecie dyskusja nad wymogami i standardami, które stworzyłyby efektywny i odpowiedni system ochrony i konserwacji zabytków. Niniejsza praca stawia sobie za cel zaprezentowanie rozwiązań problemów, z jakimi boryka się współczesna archeologia i konserwatorstwo, przyjętych w Stanach Zjednoczonych i jest próbą ich podsumowania. Jest to zagadnienie o tyle ważkie, iż we współczesnym świecie konserwacja dziedzictwa kulturowego czy naturalnego jest nieodzownym elementem regionalnych bądź lokalnych strategii ekorozwoju. Dobrym przykładem takiego planowania w Stanach Zjednoczonych są działania konserwatorskie podejmowane na mocy Państwowej ustawy o zachowaniu dóbr historycznych. Ustawa ta przyczyniła się w dużej mierze do przekształcenia archeologii z dyscypliny czysto badawczej w zarządzającą dziedzictwem archeologicznym. Poprzez ukazanie aktualnego stanu organizacji ochrony zabytków w USA, a także przedstawienie rozwoju instytucji konserwacji i ochrony zasobów archeologicznych i historycznych oraz przesłanek ich tworzenia w kontekście przemian polityczno-społecznych, praca niniejsza może być pomocna w zrozumieniu rzeczywistego stanu zarządzania dziedzictwem kulturowym w USA oraz – co za tym idzie – uświadomić przyczynę braku zaangażowania tego kraju w propozycjach unifikacji legislacyjnych w dziedzinie ochrony dóbr kultury na świecie. W pracy wykorzystano większość dostępnej literatury tematu, łącznie z najnowszymi pozycjami, aby rzetelnie zobrazować aktualnie toczące się w USA istotne dyskusje na tematy związane z zarządzaniem zasobami kulturowymi. Opierałem się nie tylko na publikacjach książkowych i archeologicznych periodykach, ale też i na specjalistycznych biuletynach Służby Parków Narodowych, agend rządowych oraz – przy omawianiu prawnej problematyki ochrony dziedzictwa kulturowego – archiwach spraw sądowych. Przedstawione przykłady obrazujące omawianą w pracy problematykę zaczerpnąłem w dużej mierze z Florydy, stanowiącej obszar mojej zawodowej działalności, niemniej jednak starałem się także o ilustracje z terenów innych stanów, by możliwie wyczerpująco przedstawić dane zagadnieniaAmerican Archaeology in the light of cultural heritage management: the origin, the law, practice. For many years there have been discussions about the regulations and standards, that would provide an efficient and adequate system of protection and conservation of historic properties in Poland and worldwide. The dissertation aims to present solutions to the problems faced by modern archeology and historic preservation that have been adopted in the United States and is an attempt to summarize them. The preservation of cultural heritage and the environment is an essential component of regional or local strategies for sustainable development. Presenting the current state of heritage conservation organization in the U.S., as well as the development of institutions to provide conservation and protection of archaeological and historical resources and the conditions of their formation in the context of the politico-social work, can be helpful in understanding the actual state of cultural heritage management in the U.S and - consequently - realizing the reason for a lack of commitment to unify the country in the legislative proposals in the field of cultural heritage protection in the world. The work utilizes the majority of the available literature of in the theme, including latest papers to accurately present the current discussions in the U.S. relevant to the topic

Las múltiples caras de la hospitalización parcial

Se revisa el papel de la hospitalización parcial dentro del marco de la continuidad asistencial de los servicios de salud mental. A partir del análisis de cuatro casos ejemplificadores de las diversas opciones terapéuticas de estos programas, se cuestionan algunos mitos en relación con esta modalidad y se subrayan las evidencias establecidas con respecto a ésta. Asimismo, se identifican sus principales funciones y los aspectos fundamentales e idiosincráticos que caracterizan a este tipo de recurso

Els residus municipals a Barcelona : balanç 2001-2018

Sol·licitant de l’informe: Gerència de Medi Ambient i Serveis Urban

Neural Network-Based Primary Vertex Reconstruction with FPGAs for the Upgrade of the CMS Level-1 Trigger System

The CMS experiment will be upgraded to maintain physics sensitivity and exploit the higher luminosity of the High Luminosity LHC. Part of this upgrade will see the first level (Level-1) trigger use charged particle tracks within the full outer silicon tracker volume as an input for the first time and new algorithms are being designed to make use of these tracks. One such algorithm is primary vertex finding which is used to identify the hard scatter in an event and separate the primary interaction from additional simultaneous interactions. This work presents a novel approach to regress the primary vertex position and to reject tracks from additional soft interactions, which uses an end-to-end neural network. This neural network possesses simultaneous knowledge of all stages in the reconstruction chain, which allows for end-to-end optimisation. The improved performance of this network versus a baseline approach in the primary vertex regression and track-to-vertex classification is shown. A quantised and pruned version of the neural network is deployed on an FPGA to match the stringent timing and computing requirements of the Level-1 Trigger