Septo-optic dysplasia is a congenital neurological condition with multifactorial etiology, characterized by septum pellucidum agenesis and/or corpus callosum dysgenesis, hypoplasia of the chiasm or optic nerves, and hormonal dysfunction with pituitary or hypothalamic alterations. Diagnosis requires two of these criteria and magnetic resonance is the imaging test of choice. Most cases present with abnormalities of cortical development in the form known as septo-optic dysplasia plus.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDiffuse pulmonary lymphangiomatosis (DLP) is an extremely rare silent disease, characterized by proliferation and thickening of abnormal pulmonary, pleural, and mediastinal soft tissue lymphatic channels. Its clinical presentation is nonspecific symptoms such as cough, dyspnea, and hemoptysis. Tomographic findings for DLP include thickening of the interlobular septa and peribronchovascular interstitium and ground glass opacities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Preventing potential foreign animal diseases is a high priority, with re-emerging threats such as African Swine Fever emerging close to North American borders. The Secure Pork Supply (SPS) plan provides a voluntary framework for swine producer biosecurity planning and disease outbreak preparedness. However, biosecurity knowledge varies greatly among swine veterinarians, managers, and caretakers within the industry, which impacts the understanding, quality, implementation and biosecurity plan agreements with the SPS guidelines unless review procedures and quality control mechanisms are in place.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMotivation: Many diseases, such as cancer, are characterized by an alteration of cellular metabolism allowing cells to adapt to changes in the microenvironment. Stable isotope-resolved metabolomics (SIRM) and downstream data analyses are widely used techniques for unraveling cells' metabolic activity to understand the altered functioning of metabolic pathways in the diseased state. While a number of bioinformatic solutions exist for the differential analysis of SIRM data, there is currently no available resource providing a comprehensive toolbox.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe present the design, fabrication and discuss the performance of a new combined high-resolution Scanning Tunneling and Thermopower Microscope (STM/SThEM). We also describe the development of the electronic control, the user interface, the vacuum system, and arrangements to reduce acoustical noise and vibrations. We demonstrate the microscope's performance with atomic-resolution topographic images of highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) and local thermopower measurements in the semimetal BiTe.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeveral propagation routes drive animal disease dissemination, and among these routes, contaminated vehicles traveling between farms have been associated with indirect disease transmission. In this study, we used near-real-time vehicle movement data and vehicle cleaning efficacy to reconstruct the between-farm dissemination of the African swine fever virus (ASFV). We collected one year of Global Positioning System data of 823 vehicles transporting feed, pigs, and people to 6363 swine production farms in two regions in the U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBelow the Arctic sea ice, under the right conditions, a flux of icy brine flows down into the sea. The icy brine has a much lower fusion point and is denser than normal seawater. As a result, it sinks while freezing everything around it, forming an ice channel called a brinicle (also known as ice stalactite).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPorcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) remains widely distributed across the U.S. swine industry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGiven the proximity of African swine fever (ASF) to the U.S., there is an urgent need to better understand the possible dissemination pathways of the virus within the U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFoot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly infectious condition that affects domestic and wild cloven-hoofed animals. This disease has substantial economic consequences. Livestock movement is one of the primary causes of disease dissemination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSkeletal muscle possesses a remarkable regenerative capacity, mainly relying on a population of undifferentiated and unipotent muscle progenitors, called muscle stem cells (MuSCs) or satellite cells, and their interplay with various cell types within the niche. Investigating the cellular composition of skeletal muscle tissues and the heterogeneity among various cell populations is crucial to the unbiased understanding of how cellular networks work in harmony at the population level in the context of skeletal muscle homeostasis, regeneration, aging, and diseases. As opposed to probing the average profile in a cell population, single-cell RNA-seq has unlocked access to the transcriptomic landscape characterization of individual cells in a highly parallel manner.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTwo-dimensional electronic states at surfaces are often observed in simple wide-band metals such as Cu or Ag (refs. ). Confinement by closed geometries at the nanometre scale, such as surface terraces, leads to quantized energy levels formed from the surface band, in stark contrast to the continuous energy dependence of bulk electron bands.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLactate is a central metabolite in brain physiology but also contributes to tumor development. Glioblastoma (GB) is the most common and malignant primary brain tumor in adults, recognized by angiogenic and invasive growth, in addition to its altered metabolism. We show herein that lactate fuels GB anaplerosis by replenishing the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle in absence of glucose.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe role of transportation vehicles, pig movement between farms, proximity to infected premises, and feed deliveries has not been fully considered in the dissemination dynamics of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV). This has limited efforts for disease prevention, control and elimination restricting the development of risk-based resource allocation to the most relevant modes of PEDV dissemination. Here, we modeled nine pathways of between-farm transmission represented by a contact network of pig movements between sites, farm-to-farm proximity (local transmission), four distinct contact networks of transportation vehicles (trucks that transport pigs from farm-to-farm and farm-to-markets, as well as trucks transporting feed and staff), the volume of animal by-products in feed diets (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe analysis of domestic pig movements has become useful to understand the disease spread patterns and epidemiology, which facilitates the development of more effective animal diseases control strategies. The aim of this work was to analyse the static and spatial characteristics of the pig network, to identify its trading communities and to study the contribution of the network to the transmission of classical swine fever. In this regard, we used the pig movement records from the National Veterinary Service of Ecuador (2017-2019), using social network analysis and spatial analysis to construct a network with registered premises as nodes and their movements as edges.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Pathogenic germline mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 (BRCA1/2) genes contribute to hereditary breast/ovarian cancer (OC) in White/mestizo Colombian women. As there is virtually no genetic data on breast cancer (BC) in Colombians of African descent, we conducted a comprehensive BRCA1/2 mutational analysis of 60 Afro-Colombian families affected by breast/OC.
Materials And Methods: Mutation screening of the complete BRCA1/2 genes for small-scale mutations and large genomic alterations was performed in these families using next-generation sequencing and multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification analysis.
Accounting for multiple modes of livestock disease dissemination in epidemiological models remains a challenge. We developed and calibrated a mathematical model for transmission of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV), tailored to fit nine modes of between-farm transmission pathways including: farm-to-farm proximity (local transmission), contact network of batches of pigs transferred between farms (pig movements), re-break probabilities for farms with previous PRRSV outbreaks, with the addition of four different contact networks of transportation vehicles (vehicles to transport pigs to farms, pigs to markets, feed and crew) and the amount of animal by-products within feed ingredients (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNetwork analysis is a powerful tool to describe, estimate, and predict the role of pig trade in the spread of pathogens and generate essential patterns that can be used to understand, prevent, and mitigate possible outbreaks. This study aimed to describe the network between premises such as production herds, slaughterhouses, and traders of pig movements and identify heterogeneities in the connectivity of premises in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil, using social network analysis (SNA). We used static and temporal network approaches to describe pig trade in the state by quantifying network attributes using SNA parameters, such as causal fidelity, loyalty, the proportion of node-loyalty, resilience of outgoing contact chains, and communities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground Meningiomas are the single most common brain tumor. The incidence of these tumors increases with age; different studies have shown that meningiomas usually appear after the age of 50. These tumors are more common in women than in men, and women are twice as likely to suffer from the condition.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMany aspects of the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) between-farm transmission dynamics have been investigated, but uncertainty remains about the significance of farm type and different transmission routes on PRRSV spread. We developed a stochastic epidemiological model calibrated on weekly PRRSV outbreaks accounting for the population dynamics in different pig production phases, breeding herds, gilt development units, nurseries and finisher farms, of three hog producer companies. Our model accounted for indirect contacts by the close distance between farms (local transmission), between-farm animal movements (pig flow) and reinfection of sow farms (re-break).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA limited understanding of the transmission dynamics of swine disease is a significant obstacle to prevent and control disease spread. Therefore, understanding between-farm transmission dynamics is crucial to developing disease forecasting systems to predict outbreaks that would allow the swine industry to tailor control strategies. Our objective was to forecast weekly porcine epidemic diarrhoea virus (PEDV) outbreaks by generating maps to identify current and future PEDV high-risk areas, and simulating the impact of control measures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Sepsis is associated with high morbidity and mortality and high healthcare costs. We hypothesized that a multifaceted quality improvement project would lead to an improvement in compliance with the sepsis "bundles."
Design: Patients presenting to the emergency department that met criteria for sepsis at triage triggered notification of an emergency department physician and the sepsis response team in order to facilitate timely completion of the 3-hour bundles.
Acid mine drainage (AMD) is the major effluent generated from metal and coal mines, causing serious ecological risks and degradation of aquatic habitats and surrounding soil quality. Biochemical passive reactors (BPRs) are an option for improving AMD affected water. This study investigates the effect of the size and concentration of zerovalent iron nanoparticles (nZVI) on the efficiency of batch BPRs during AMD remediation.
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