Mosquito management strategies in European rice fields: Environmental and public health perspectives.

Rice is a crucial food source and an important economic activity globally. Rice fields provide habitats for birds and other organisms but also serve as ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes, including potential vectors such as Culex, Aedes, and Anopheles. There is an urgent need to manage mosquitoes associated with rice crops, as they are important pests and vectors of diverse pathogens.

PSA screening for prostate cancer in the United States: 30 years of controversy.

In 1994, the United States approved the Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) test as a screening tool for prostate cancer. It did so despite the test's inherent weakness: not being prostate cancer specific. Subsequent randomized trials yielded conflicting results as to its benefits.

Small-cell lung cancer metastasis to a meningioma: Case report and review of the literature.

Tumor-to-tumor metastasis is a rare event with meningioma as the recipient tumor accounting for 20% of the reported cases. The most common primary cancers showing this phenomenon are lung and breast cancer. Most lung cancers metastasizing to a meningioma are due to lung adenocarcinoma with the literature containing only 3 prior reports of small-cell lung cancer showing this pattern of spread.

In Vivo Comparison of Backscatter Techniques for Ultrasonic Bone Assessment at the Femoral Neck.

Ultrasonic techniques are being developed to detect changes in cancellous bone caused by osteoporosis. The goal of this study was to test the relative in vivo performance of eight backscatter parameters developed over the last several years for ultrasonic bone assessment: apparent integrated backscatter (AIB), frequency slope of apparent backscatter (FSAB), frequency intercept of apparent backscatter (FIAB), normalized mean of the backscatter difference (nMBD), normalized slope of the backscatter difference (nSBD), normalized intercept of the backscatter difference (nIBD), normalized backscatter amplitude ratio (nBAR) and backscatter amplitude decay constant (BADC). Backscatter measurements were performed on the left and right femoral necks of 80 adult volunteers (age = 25 ± 11 y) using an imaging system equipped with a convex array transducer.

Thermal performance of brick and stone masonry: Cumulative heat flux dataset for main orientations and under diverse seasonal conditions.

This dataset consists of the hourly heat flux for four seasons and orientations of 15 different construction configurations of brick and stone masonry combined with insulation system solutions. The analysis was conducted with the use of Finite Element Modelling (FEM). The development of the models and the investigation of their thermal performance was conducted with the use of thermal modelling and numerical simulation analysis with COMSOL Multiphysics.

A critical review of the factors leading to cardiopulmonary resuscitation as the default position of hospitalized patients in the USA regardless of severity of illness.

Background: Physicians are occasionally faced with patients requesting full resuscitation against medical advice. More commonly, neither patients nor their family members make such a request, but physicians simply presume that providing cardiopulmonary resuscitation comports with the patient's wishes. In the USA, in contrast to other countries, a unilateral Do-Not-Resuscitate order by the physician is either forbidden by State Statute or not enforced by hospital policy.

Emergence of West Nile virus lineage 2 belonging to the Eastern European subclade, Greece.

West Nile virus (WNV) emerged in Greece in 2010 and since then human outbreaks occurred every year except 2015 and 2016. An early start and prolonged WNV transmission season was observed in 2018 with a record number of 316 reported cases and 47 fatalities. The Greek WNV strains detected during 2010-2018 clustered within the central European subclade of lineage 2.

Analysis of population structure and insecticide resistance in mosquitoes of the genus Culex, Anopheles and Aedes from different environments of Greece with a history of mosquito borne disease transmission.

Greece has been recently affected by several mosquito borne diseases with the West Nile Virus (WNV) outbreak in 2010 being one of the largest reported in Europe. Currently at the epicenter of an economic and refugee crisis and visited by over 16 million tourists a year the integrated management of diseases transmitted by mosquitoes is a public health and economic priority. Vector control programs rely mainly on insecticides, however data on insecticide resistance and the mosquito fauna is essential for successful applications.

Lymphocyte apoptosis after major abdominal surgery is not influenced by anesthetic technique: a comparative study of general anesthesia versus combined general and epidural analgesia.

Study Objective: To examine the influence of abdominal colectomy with combined general anesthesia and epidural analgesia versus general anesthesia on apoptosis of circulating lymphocytes.

Design: Prospective, randomized, clinical comparison study.

Setting: Tertiary-care general hospital.

Peripheral subcutaneous stimulation for the treatment of intractable postherpetic neuralgia: two case reports and literature review.

Postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) is a common cause of chronic pain in the elderly. Antidepressants, anticonvulsants, and opioids may reduce discomfort in many patients, while others have pain intractable to all forms of therapy. We present a novel treatment approach for intractable PHN utilizing percutaneous peripheral nerve stimulation.

Angiogenic co-operation of VEGF and stromal cell TP in endometrial carcinomas.

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and thymidine phosphorylase (TP) are important angiogenic enzymes, inducing new blood vessel formation in many human malignancies. In this study, the immunohistochemical expression of the two molecules was analysed in a series of 121 endometrial carcinomas. VEGF was expressed exclusively in cancer cells, while TP expression was shown in cancer cells (TPcc) and in stromal cells (TPsc) of both fibroblastic and myometrial origin.