Effect of Europium and Gadolinium Alloying Elements on the Tribological Response of Low Hydrogen Content Amorphous Carbon.

Dopants and alloying elements are commonly introduced in amorphous carbon (a-C) materials to tailor their mechanical and tribological properties. While most published studies have focused on doping and alloying a-C coatings with metals or metalloids, doping a-C films with rare-earth elements has only recently been explored. Notably, our understanding of the shear-induced structural changes occurring in rare-earth-element-containing a-C films is still elusive, even in the absence of any liquid lubricants.

Spectroscopic Evaluation of Surface Chemical Processes Occurring in MoS upon Aging.

Molybdenum disulfide (MoS) coatings have attracted widespread industrial interest owing to their excellent lubricating properties under vacuum and inert conditions. Unfortunately, the increase in MoS interfacial shear strength following prolonged exposure to ambient conditions (a process referred to as "aging") has resulted in reliability issues when MoS is employed as solid lubricant. While aging of MoS is generally attributed to physical and chemical changes caused by adsorbed water and/or oxygen, a mechanistic understanding of the relative role of these two gaseous species in the evolution of the surface chemistry of MoS is still elusive.

Identification of coronaviruses in bats and rodents in northern and central Argentina.

Due to the present pandemic situation and the many animal species that are epidemiologically involved, there has been a surge of renewed interest in investigating the coronavirus (CoV) population circulating in wildlife, especially bats and rodents, which are potential reservoirs of new human pathogens. In Argentina, information about the viruses present in these mammals is very limited. To investigate the presence of coronaviruses in this country, we obtained 457 samples from hematophagous, insectivorous, and frugivorous bats and rodents from two regions of Argentina.

Spinal dural closure without suture: Minimizing the risk of CSF leakage with a flat non-penetrating titanium U-clip.

Background: The classic surgical spinal dural closure technique in surgery on intradural lesions is performed with continuous suture or loose stitches using 4-0 to 6-0 polypropylene monofilament or nylon suture. Dural closure with suture causes irritant damage to the dural/arachnoid interface. The penetrating suture causes new dural holes.

Scleritis associated with relapsing polychondritis.

Aims: To evaluate ocular disease characteristics and successful therapeutic regimens in patients with scleritis associated with relapsing polychondritis (RP). To compare these features with those seen in patients with scleritis associated with other systemic immune-mediated diseases (SIMD).

Methods: Electronic health records of 13 scleritis patients associated with RP were analysed and compared with those of 113 scleritis patients associated with other SIMD seen at two tertiary referral centres.

Scleritis therapy.

Objective: To delineate factors associated with a successful response to treatment in patients with various manifestations of scleritis.

Design: Retrospective case series.

Participants: A total of 392 patients with noninfectious anterior scleritis.

Clinical characteristics of a large cohort of patients with scleritis and episcleritis.

Objective: To evaluate the demographic characteristics, clinical features, ocular complications, and disease associations of patients with scleritis and episcleritis; as well as to delineate the risk factors for decreased vision in patients with scleritis.

Design: Retrospective case series.

Participants: Five hundred patients with scleritis and 85 patients with episcleritis.

Lycopene over-accumulation by disruption of the negative regulator gene crgA in Mucor circinelloides.

Lycopene has become one of the most interesting antioxidant compounds, especially in relation to human health. This work describes a genetic strategy to modify the carotenoid biosynthesis pathway to develop a lycopene-overproducing strain. The crgA gene, a negative regulator of carotenogenesis, was disrupted in the Mucor circinelloides strain MU202, which lacks the lycopene cyclase activity and accumulates lycopene instead of beta-carotene.

Guinea pig-adapted foot-and-mouth disease virus with altered receptor recognition can productively infect a natural host.

We report that adaptation to infect the guinea pig did not modify the capacity of foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) to kill suckling mice and to cause an acute and transmissible disease in the pig, an important natural host for this pathogen. Adaptive amino acid replacements (I(248)-->T in 2C, Q(44)-->R in 3A, and L(147)-->P in VP1), selected upon serial passages of a type C FMDV isolated from swine (biological clone C-S8c1) in the guinea pig, were maintained after virus multiplication in swine and suckling mice. However, the adaptive replacement L(147)-->P, next to the integrin-binding RGD motif at the GH loop in VP1, abolished growth of the virus in different established cell lines and modified its antigenicity.

Towards a multi-site synthetic vaccine to foot-and-mouth disease: addition of discontinuous site peptide mimic increases the neutralization response in immunized animals.

Synthetic replicas of both antigenic sites A and D of foot-and-mouth disease virus have been tested as a first step towards a multicomponent peptide vaccine candidate. A first evaluation has been performed by neutralization assays on cells with serum mixtures from guinea pigs immunized independently with site A (A24) and site D (D8) peptides. The addition of site D antibodies to site A antibodies has a synergistic effect on neutralization.

Recovery of infectious foot-and-mouth disease virus from suckling mice after direct inoculation with in vitro-transcribed RNA.

We assayed the infectivity of naked foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) RNA by direct inoculation of suckling mice. Our results demonstrate that transcripts generated from full-length cDNA clones were infectious, as was virion-extracted RNA. Interestingly, infectious virus could be recovered from a mutant transcript encoding amino acid substitution L-147-->P in capsid protein VP1, known to be noninfectious for BHK-21 cells.