Lucas

Rainfall influences removal of airborne particulate matter (PM) from leaf surfaces through a process called wash off resulting in throughfall that carries PM to the ground. The present study examined the effects of rainfall characteristics on PM wash-off mass and rate from the foliage of four broadleaf species, to investigate retention of PM pollution. In a controlled rainfall simulation experiment, rainfall intensity was set to 15, 30, and 50mmh(-1), and sampling intervals for the three rainfall intensities were divided into 10, 5, and 3min, respectively...

Phosphorus (P) is a macronutrient essential for plant growth, therefore, soil P level is critical to crop yield potential in agriculture. As Pi levels limit crop yield under many soil conditions, it is crucial to understand the mechanisms by which plants adapt to low-phosphate (Pi) soil conditions and interact with their soil microbiome to improve crop P use efficiency, in order to ensure global food security. Recent advances have been made towards achieving this goal through advancing our understanding of the plant's response to limiting Pi conditions to maintain P homeostasis...

The ability to control lentivirus replication may be determined, in part, by the extent to which individual viral proteins are targeted by the immune system. Consequently, defining the antigens that elicit the most protective immune responses may facilitate the design of effective HIV-1 vaccines. Here we vaccinated four groups of rhesus macaques with a heterologous vector prime/boost/boost/boost (PBBB) regimen expressing the following simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) genes: env, gag, vif, rev, tat, and nef (Group 1); env, vif, rev, tat, and nef (Group 2); gag, vif, rev, tat, and nef (Group 3); or vif, rev, tat, and nef (Group 4)...

BACKGROUND: Complicated diverticulitis (CD) is a common problem for surgeons. In treating it, as a general principle, every verified source of infection should be controlled. Supplementary antimicrobial management involves a delicate balance of optimizing empirical therapy while reducing unnecessary antibiotic use. The necessity to know the most frequent infecting pathogens and their spectra of resistance is becoming pivotal. The aim of this study was to determine the microbiologic profile of complicated intra-abdominal infections (IAIs) secondary to CD, to analyze the role of empirical antimicrobial therapy, and to describe the clinical aspects of CD worldwide...

Strong nonlinearity at the single photon level represents a crucial enabling tool for optical quantum technologies. Here we report on experimental implementation of a strong Kerr nonlinearity by measurement-induced quantum operations on weak quantum states of light. Our scheme coherently combines two sequences of single photon addition and subtraction to induce a nonlinear phase shift at the single photon level. We probe the induced nonlinearity with weak coherent states and characterize the output non-Gaussian states with quantum state tomography...

A SU(N)_{L}×SU(N)_{R} gauge theory for a scalar multiplet Y transforming in the bifundamental representation (N,N[over ¯]) preserves, for N>4, an accidental U(1) symmetry first broken at operator dimension N. A vacuum expectation value for Y can break the symmetry to H_{s}=SU(N)_{L+R} or to H_{h}=SU(N-1)_{L}×SU(N-1)_{R}×U(1)_{L+R}. In the first case the accidental U(1) gets also broken, yielding a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson with mass suppression controlled by N. In the second case a global U(1) remains unbroken...

Melkersson Rosenthal syndrome is a very infrequent disease of unknown etiology, chronic and progressive course, with neurocutaneous disease that affects the orofacial innervation and mucocutaneous tissues with non-caseating granulomatous infiltration. Clinically, it is characterized by the diagnostic triad: recurrent edema of lips and/or face; recurrent and alternating acute peripheral facial paralysis and scrotal or geographic tongue. The condition generally presents as oligosymptomatic or monosymptomatic form...

Populations with limited ranges can be highly vulnerable to changes in their environment and are, thus, of high conservation concern. Populations that experience human-induced range reductions are often highly inbred and lack genetic diversity, but it is unknown whether this is also the case for populations with naturally small ranges. The fishes Poecilia sulphuraria (listed as critically endangered) and Poecilia thermalis, which are endemic to small hydrogen sulfide rich springs in southern Mexico, are examples of such populations with inherently small habitats...

INTRODUCTION: Stem cell therapy for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) seemed to be a promising therapy, however large clinical trials brought differential outcome. It has been shown that paracrine effects of secretomes of stem cells rather than cell therapy might play a fundamental role. The present study sought to compare cell processing protocols of clinical trials and investigated effects of differential cell culture conditions on chemokine secretion and functional effects. METHODS: Different secretomes were compared regarding IL-8, VEGF, MCP-1 and TNF-alpha secretion...

BACKGROUND: C-peptide concentration is widely used as a marker of insulin secretion and is especially relevant in evaluating islet graft function following transplantation, because its measurement is not confounded by the presence of exogenous insulin. To address the shortage of human islet donors, the use of porcine islets has been proposed as a possible solution and the stringent pig-to-non-human primate (NHP) model is often the most relevant for pre-clinical evaluation of the potential for diabetes reversal resulting from an islet xenograft...

Phase 3 randomized controlled trials are the widely accepted gold standard through which treatment decisions are made, as they assess the efficacy of a novel treatment against the control on the relevant patient population. The effectiveness of the novel treatment should be derived by measuring patient-important outcomes; however, to accurately assess these outcomes, clinical trials often require extensive patient follow-up and large sample sizes that can incur substantial expense. For this reason, investigators substitute surrogate end points to reduce the sample size and duration of a trial, ultimately reducing cost...

PURPOSE: To report clinical features of Susac's syndrome (SS) using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA). METHODS: Case report. RESULTS: A 25-year-old Caucasian female with a history of non-pulsatile migraine, tinnitus, and verbal apraxia complaining of peripheral scotoma in left eye due to branch retinal arteriole occlusion (BRAO) was diagnosed as having SS after audiometric test, brain magnetic resonance imaging, and multimodal retinal imaging...

Little is known about biosecurity measures and toxic effects during pesticide application in the province of Jujuy, Argentina, particularly concerning the protective measures and mixture of pesticides used by rural workers. We carried out an observational study of agricultural workers from Jujuy (76 exposed subjects and 53 controls) to investigate the prevalence of chromosomal aberrations (CAs) in human lymphocytes as well as the activity level of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) in red blood cell erythrocytes. Whole blood samples (5 mL) were collected in heparinized Vacutainer tubes for cytogenetic analysis and erythrocyte cholinesterase activity determination according to Ellman's method...

BACKGROUND: Early tumor recurrence after curative resection typically indicates a poor prognosis. The objective of the current study was to investigate the risk factors, treatment, and prognosis of early recurrence of neuroendocrine tumor (NET) liver metastasis (NELM) after hepatic resection. METHODS: A total of 481 patients who underwent curative-intent resection for NELM were identified from a multi-institutional database. Data on clinicopathological characteristics, intraoperative details, and outcomes were documented...

Cyclophosphamide is frequently used to treat cancer, autoimmune and renal diseases, such as rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis. Its side effects are well-known, including bone marrow depression, infections, alopecia, sterility, bladder malignancy and hemorrhagic cystitis. Moreover, in some cases cyclophosphamide use has been related to the onset of hyponatremia, by development of a syndrome of inappropriate antidiuresis. Indeed, severe hyponatremia has been previously reported in patients treated with high-dose or moderate-dose of intravenous cyclophosphamide, while only few cases have been reported in patients treated with low dose...

Understanding the spatio-temporal dynamics of endemic infections is of critical importance for a deeper understanding of pathogen transmission, and for the design of more efficient public health strategies. However, very few studies in this domain have focused on emerging infections, generating a gap of knowledge that hampers epidemiological response planning. Here, we analyze the case of a Chikungunya outbreak that occurred in Martinique in 2014. Using time series estimates from a network of sentinel practitioners covering the entire island, we first analyze the spatio-temporal dynamics and show that the largest city has served as the epicenter of this epidemic...

A successful realization of sub 20 nm features on silicon is becoming the focus of many technological studies, strongly influencing the future performance of modern integrated circuits. Although reactive ion etching (RIE), at both micrometric and nanometric scale has already been the target of many studies, a better understanding of the different mechanisms involved at sub 20 nm size etching is still required. In this work, we investigated the influence of the feature size on etch rate of silicon, performed by Cryogenic RIE process through cylinder-forming polystyrene-block-polymethilmetacrhlate (PS-b-PMMA) DiBlock Copolymers (DBCs) masks with diameter ranging between 19 and 13 nm...

O'Brien et al (Research Article, 24 February 2017, eaag1789) report that the iron-sulfur cluster of primase has a redox role in enzyme activity. Their analysis is based on a partially misfolded structure of the iron-sulfur cluster domain of primase. In the correctly folded structure, two of the three tyrosines putatively involved in electron transfer, Y345 and Y347, contact the RNA/DNA helix, providing an alternative explanation for the data of O'Brien et al.

Impaired insulin-stimulated glucose uptake involves reduced expression of the GLUT4 (solute carrier family 2 facilitated glucose transporter member 4, SLC2A4 gene). 17β-estradiol (E2) modulates SLC2A4/GLUT4 expression, but the involved mechanisms are unclear. Although E2 exerts its biological effects by binding to estrogen receptors 1/2 (ESR1/2), which are nuclear transcriptional factors; extranuclear effects have also been proposed. We hypothesize that E2 regulates GLUT4 through a mechanism related to extranuclear ESR1...

Variation in environmental conditions during larval life stages can shape development during critical windows and have lasting effects on the adult organism. Changes in larval developmental rates in response to environmental conditions, for example, can trade-off with growth to determine body size and condition at metamorphosis, which can affect adult survival and fecundity. However, it is unclear how use of energy and nutrients shape trade-offs across life stage transitions because no studies have quantified these costs of larval development and metamorphosis...