Advances in Food Allergy Diagnosis

An accurate diagnosis of food allergy is extremely important to guide safe and yet not overly restrictive dietary management. The cornerstone of the diagnosis of food allergy is the clinical history; it allows appropriate selection of the allergens to be tested and interpretation of the results of allergy tests, namely Skin Prick Test (SPT), Specific IgE (sIgE) to allergen extracts and, more recently, specific IgE to allergen components and the Basophil Activation Test (BAT). SPT and sIgE to allergen extracts are very sensitive methods to detect IgE sensitization to a specific food and assess the possibility of spontaneous resolution. Cut-offs have been generated based on the probability of clinical reactivity during oral food challenges and can improve the specificity of SPT and sIgE, helping to confirm the diagnosis of food allergy. Specific IgE to allergen components refines food allergy diagnosis as it allows differentiating species-specific from cross-reactive allergens, aiding the differential diagnosis between a true and potentially severe food allergy from pollen-food syndrome or clinically irrelevant sensitization. The BAT is a new diagnostic test which has high specificity and sensitivity and can complement specific IgE, allowing the deferral of OFC in patients with a positive BAT. Depending on the likelihood of clinical allergy determined based on the combination of the history and the results of allergy tests, an oral food challenge may be indicated to confirm or exclude the diagnosis. Oral food challenge is the gold standard for the diagnosis of food allergy, but is a resource-intensive procedure with some level of risk involved; thus they are reserved for the equivocal cases. This review article discusses the above diagnostic techniques detailing the methods, utility, advantages and disadvantages.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Produção inicial de frutos num plantio de açaí em Porto Velho, Rondônia.

O objetivo deste estudo foi avaliar a produção inicial de frutos entre de um plantio de açaí BRS Pará em Rondônia

Effect of hyperbaric stress on yeast morphology: Study by automated image analysis

The effects of hyperbaric stress on the morphology of Saccharomyces cerevisiae were studied in batch cultures under pressures between 0.1 MPa and 0.6 MPa and different gas compositions (air, oxygen, nitrogen or carbon dioxide), covering aerobic and anaerobic conditions. A method using automatic image analysis for classification of S. cerevisiae cells based on their morphology was developed and applied to experimental data. Information on cell size distribution and bud formation throughout the cell cycle is reported. The results show that the effect of pressure on cell activity strongly depends on the nature of the gas used for pressurization. While nitrogen and air to a maximum of 0.6 MPa of pressure were innocuous to yeast, oxygen and carbon dioxide pressure caused cell inactivation, which was confirmed by the reduction of bud cells with time. Moreover, a decrease in the average cell size was found for cells exposed for 7.5 h to 0.6 MPa CO2.CAPES and CNPq (Brazil). Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Portugal)

Cilia at the node of mouse embryos sense fluid flow for left-right determination via Pkd2

Unidirectional fluid flow plays an essential role in the breaking of left-right (L-R) symmetry in mouse embryos, but it has remained unclear how the flow is sensed by the embryo. We report that the Ca2+ channel Polycystin-2 (Pkd2) is required specifically in the perinodal crown cells for sensing the nodal flow. Examination of mutant forms of Pkd2 shows that the ciliary localization of Pkd2 is essential for correct L-R patterning. Whereas Kif3a mutant embryos, which lack all cilia, failed to respond to an artificial flow, restoration of primary cilia in crown cells rescued the response to the flow. Our results thus suggest that nodal flow is sensed in a manner dependent on Pkd2 by the cilia of crown cells located at the edge of the node.CREST of the Japan Science and Technology Corporation; NIH [P30 DK090744]; Human Frontier Science Program [ST00246/2003C]; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [PE 853/2]; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science; American Heart Association [R10682]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Thermodynamics of cosmological horizons in f(T)f(T) gravity

We explore thermodynamics of the apparent horizon in $f(T)$ gravity with both equilibrium and non-equilibrium descriptions. We find the same dual equilibrium/non-equilibrium formulation for $f(T)$ as for $f(R)$ gravity. In particular, we show that the second law of thermodynamics can be satisfied for the universe with the same temperature of the outside and inside the apparent horizon.Comment: 18 pages, no figure, version accepted for publication in JCA

Periodic boundary conditions on the pseudosphere

We provide a framework to build periodic boundary conditions on the pseudosphere (or hyperbolic plane), the infinite two-dimensional Riemannian space of constant negative curvature. Starting from the common case of periodic boundary conditions in the Euclidean plane, we introduce all the needed mathematical notions and sketch a classification of periodic boundary conditions on the hyperbolic plane. We stress the possible applications in statistical mechanics for studying the bulk behavior of physical systems and we illustrate how to implement such periodic boundary conditions in two examples, the dynamics of particles on the pseudosphere and the study of classical spins on hyperbolic lattices.Comment: 30 pages, minor corrections, accepted to J. Phys.

Observation of confined current ribbon in JET plasmas

we report the identification of a localised current structure inside the JET plasma. It is a field aligned closed helical ribbon, carrying current in the same direction as the background current profile (co-current), rotating toroidally with the ion velocity (co-rotating). It appears to be located at a flat spot in the plasma pressure profile, at the top of the pedestal. The structure appears spontaneously in low density, high rotation plasmas, and can last up to 1.4 s, a time comparable to a local resistive time. It considerably delays the appearance of the first ELM.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure