RNA viruses that affect honeybees have been involved in colony losses reported around the world. The aim of the present work was to evaluate the prevalence and distribution of honeybee viruses during ...2006–2007 in Spanish professional apiaries, and their association with colony losses. Four hundred and fifty-six samples from apiaries located in different geographic regions of Spain were analyzed. Thirty-seven percent of the samples had viral presence. Most (80%) had one virus and 20% two different viruses. All the analyzed viruses, Deformed Wing Virus (DWV), Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV), Black Queen Cell Virus (BQCV), Sacbrood Virus (SBV) and Kashmir Bee Virus (KBV) were detected, but detection rates were lower than expected. According to these results and considering the high prevalence of other honeybee pathogens in Spain, the role of viruses in colony losses in Spain may be discussed.
Summary Background Maintenance therapy improves outcomes in various tumour types, but cumulative toxic effects limit the choice of drugs. We investigated whether maintenance therapy with vinflunine ...would delay disease progression in patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma who had achieved disease control with first-line chemotherapy. Methods We did a randomised, controlled, open-label, phase 2 trial in 21 Spanish hospitals. Eligible patients had locally advanced, surgically unresectable, or metastatic transitional-cell carcinoma of the urothelial tract, adequate organ function, and disease control after four to six cycles of cisplatin and gemcitabine (carboplatin allowed after cycle four). Patients were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive vinflunine or best supportive care until disease progression. We initially used block randomisation with a block size of six. Four lists were created for the two stratification factors of starting dose of vinflunine and presence of liver metastases. After a protocol amendment, number of cisplatin and gemcitabine cycles was added as a stratification factor, and eight lists were created, still with a block size of six. Finally, we changed to a minimisation procedure to reduce the risk of imbalance between groups. Vinflunine was given every 21 days as a 20 min intravenous infusion at 320 mg/m2 or at 280 mg/m2 in patients with an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status score of 1, age 75 years or older, previous pelvic radiotherapy, or creatinine clearance lower than 60 mL/min. The primary endpoint was median progression-free survival longer than 5·3 months in the vinflunine group, assessed by modified intention to treat. Comparison of progression-free survival between treatment groups was a secondary endpoint. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov , number NCT01529411. Findings Between April 12, 2012, and Jan 29, 2015, we enrolled 88 patients, of whom 45 were assigned to receive vinflunine and 43 to receive best supportive care. One patient from the vinflunine group was lost to follow-up immediately after randomisation and was excluded from the analyses. One patient in the best supportive care group became ineligible for the study and did not receive treatment due to a delay in enrolment, but was included in the intention-to-treat efficacy analysis. After a median follow-up of 15·6 months (IQR 8·5–26·0), 29 (66%) of 44 patients in the vinflunine group had disease progression and 24 (55%) had died, compared with 36 (84%) of 43 patients with disease progression and 32 (74%) deaths in the best supportive care group. Median progression-free survival was 6·5 months (95% CI 2·0–11·1) in the vinflunine group and 4·2 months (2·1–6·3) in the best supportive care group (hazard ratio 0·59, 95% CI 0·37–0·96, p=0·031). The most common grade 3 or 4 adverse events were neutropenia (eight 18% of 44 in the vinflunine group vs none of 42 in the best supportive care group), asthenia or fatigue (seven 16% vs one 2%), and constipation (six 14% vs none). 18 serious adverse events were reported in the vinflunine group and 14 in the best supportive care group. One patient in the vinflunine group died from pneumonia that was deemed to be treatment related. Interpretation In patients with disease control after first-line chemotherapy, progression-free survival exceeded the acceptable threshold with vinflunine maintenance therapy. Moreover, progression-free survival was longer with vinflunine maintenance therapy than with best supportive care. Vinflunine maintenance had an acceptable safety profile. Further studies of the role of vinflunine are warranted. Funding Pierre-Fabre Médicament.
Paenibacillus larvae is the causative agent of American Foulbrood (AFB), the most severe bacterial disease that affects honeybee larvae. AFB causes a significant decrease in the honeybee population ...affecting the beekeeping industry and agricultural production. After infection of larvae,
P. larvae secretes proteases that could be involved in the pathogenicity. In the present article, we present the secretion of different proteases by
P. larvae. Inhibition assays confirmed the presence of metalloproteases. Two different proteases patterns (PP1 and PP2) were identified in a collection of
P. larvae isolates from different geographic origin. Forty nine percent of
P. larvae isolates showed pattern PP1 while 51% exhibited pattern PP2. Most isolates belonging to genotype ERIC I – BOX A presented PP2, most isolates belonging to ERIC I – BOX C presented PP1 although relations were not significant. Isolates belonging to genotypes ERIC II and ERIC III presented PP2. No correlation was observed between the secreted proteases patterns and geographic distribution, since both patterns are widely distributed in Uruguay. According to exposure bioassays, isolates showing PP2 are more virulent than those showing PP1, suggesting that difference in pathogenicity could be related to the secretion of proteases.
MorphoSys is a reconfigurable SIMD architecture. In this paper, a BSP-based ray tracing is gracefully mapped onto MorphoSys. The mapping highly exploits ray-tracing parallelism. A straightforward ...mechanism is used to handle irregularity among parallel rays in BSP. To support this mechanism, a special data structure is established, in which no intermediate data has to be saved. Moreover, optimizations such as object reordering and merging are facilitated. Data starvation is avoided by overlapping data transfer with intensive computation so that applications with different complexity can be managed efficiently. Since MorphoSys is small in size and power efficient, we demonstrate that MorphoSys is an economic platform for 3D animation applications on portable devices.
This paper presents a new technique to improve the efficiency of data scheduling for multi-context reconfigurable architectures targeting multimedia and DSP applications. The main goal is to improve ...application energy consumption. Two levels of on-chip data storage are assumed in the reconfigurable architecture. The Data Scheduler attempts to optimally exploit this storage, by deciding in which on-chip memory the data have to be stored in order to reduce energy consumption. We also show that a suitable data scheduling could decrease the energy required to implement the dynamic reconfiguration of the system.
Objective: To investigate the role of nitric oxide (NO) and death regulatory genes, bcl-2 and bax, in human endometria apoptosis.
Design: Expression of bcl-2, bax, NO synthases (NOS), and the ...apoptotic effect of
l-arginine on endometrial explants in vitro.
Setting: Prospective study.
Patient(s): Thirty-seven eumenorrheic women.
Intervention(s): Endometrial samples were obtained with Pipelle suction curette after women signed institutional informed consent forms.
Main Outcome Measure(s): DNA fragmentation (TUNEL), immunohistochemistry, and reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction.
Result(s): Apoptosis was detected in mid and late secretory endometria.
l-arginine induced an increase in apoptosis in stroma (threefold), glands (eightfold), and surface epithelia (fourfold) in proliferative but not secretory endometria explants. Immunostaining of Bcl-2 was almost absent in the secretory endometria, whereas Bax increased in the stroma at the end of the menstrual cycle, coincident to the decrease in the bcl-2
/bax mRNA relative ratio (
P<.05) observed in secretory endometria.
Conclusion(s): The induction of DNA fragmentation by
l-arginine on proliferative endometria suggests that NO may be involved in the endometrial apoptotic process, whose control may be related predominantly to the changes of Bcl-2 expression.
This paper addresses the issue of providing an environment (software and hardware) to perform functional tests on printed circuit boards, using the IEEE 1149.1 standard, and also on integrated ...circuits using scan design like the LSSD testing methodology. This paper also discusses some approaches and presents some options to tackle the problem of performing board and chip functional tests, using a common hardware platform. The main issues of the software environment are discussed and presented, together with an overview of the hardware architecture.
This paper presents an architecture for running interactive ray tracing applications on portable devices such as cell phones, PDAs, and head mounted displays and discusses the main issues related to ...the mapping of this graphics algorithm using fixed-point arithmetic. The paper shows that a floating-point arithmetic unit, with its associated power and area consumption, can be avoided by using appropriate fixed-point arithmetic and block floating-point operations. It is also shown that a computation intensive graphics method like ray tracing can be used to generate simple images at interactive rates on portable devices. This can be achieved by employing a reconfigurable SIMD architecture on a chip, which trades parallelism for frequency of operation, thus providing significant benefits in power saving, which is essential in portable devices.
La Manometría Esofágica constituye una prueba de gran importancia en el estudio de las enfermedades funcionales del esófago, ya que sus resultados ayudan a comprender mejor los mecanismos ...fisiopatológicos presentes en cada paciente y ayudan a adoptar decisiones, ya sea de tratamiento médico o quirúrgico. En determinadas condiciones, como la presencia de grandes hernias hiatales, divertículos esofágicos y pacientes con Acalasia, puede ser imposible realizar la prueba, por no lograr progresión del catéter de registro hacia la cavidad gástrica. En este trabajo se aborda nuestra experiencia de realizar manometrías, pasando previamente una guía hidrofílica a través del endoscopio, sobre la cual se desliza un catéter con canal central. El procedimiento resulta sencillo, práctico y rápido, y permite realizar exitosamente la manometría.Esophageal manometry is a very important test in the study of functional gastric diseases, because its results help a better understanding of the pathological and physiological mechanisms in each and every patient and it helps to take decisions, whether they are surgical or medical decisions. In some conditions as in the presence of great hiatal hernias, esophageal diverticula and achalasia, it might be impossible to perform this test because of no progression of the catheter to the gastric cavity. In this work we approach our experience in manometry, previously passing a hydrophilic line trough the endoscopic device, above which we slide a catheter with a central indentation, allowing a useful manometry.
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