Self-organized criticality and pattern emergence through the lens of tropical geometry.

Tropical geometry, an established field in pure mathematics, is a place where string theory, mirror symmetry, computational algebra, auction theory, and so forth meet and influence one another. In this paper, we report on our discovery of a tropical model with self-organized criticality (SOC) behavior. Our model is continuous, in contrast to all known models of SOC, and is a certain scaling limit of the sandpile model, the first and archetypical model of SOC.

A single dose of the novel chimeric subunit vaccine E2-CD154 confers early full protection against classical swine fever virus.

Classical swine fever is an economically important, highly contagious disease of swine worldwide. Subunit vaccines are a suitable alternative for the control of classical swine fever. However, such vaccines have as the main drawback the relatively long period of time required to induce a protective response, which hampers their use under outbreak conditions.

LALF-E7 therapeutic vaccine induces antitumor immunity against human papillomavirus type 16 E7-expressing murine tumor metastases in the lungs.

One important goal of cancer immunotherapy is to prevent and treat tumor metastasis. We have previously reported the significant antitumor effect induced by the immunization with our human papillomavirus therapeutic protein-based vaccine (LALF-E7) without adjuvant and admixed with clinically relevant adjuvants in the subcutaneous TC-1 tumor challenge model. In the present study, we evaluated the efficacy of the above mentioned vaccine formulations in controlling the hematogenous spread of TC-1 tumor cells using a more tumourigenic clone named TC-1* and other intravenous injection site less stressful than the tail vein.

How far from water? terrestrial dispersal and nesting sites of the freshwater turtle Phrynops hilarii in the floodplain of the Paraná River (Argentina).

Terrestrial environments surrounding aquatic resources are important and intensively used by semi-aquatic species. In the present work, terrestrial dispersal and nesting sites of the freshwater turtle Phrynops hilarii were analyzed in the floodplain of the Paraná River, using field data and variables obtained from remote sensing. A total of 112 turtles and 44 nests were recorded during road sampling for one year (covered a total of 786 km in 30 surveys).