Background
Choroidopathy is a rare manifestation of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). This entity is associated with active phases of severe SLE and it is frequently accompanied by acute kidney ...failure, central nervous system involvement and coagulopathy.
Purpose
To evaluate the choroid thickness of patients with lupus nephritis (LN) without choroidopathy, and to compare this with that of age-matched SLE patients without LN and healthy control subjects.
Study design
Cross-sectional case control study.
Material and methods
Fifteen women with LN in remission phase (study group), 15 women with SLE in remission without LN (SLE control group), and 15 healthy women (healthy control group), without ocular diseases or significant refractive error, were recruited. Full ophthalmological examination and a macular optical coherence tomography in enhanced depth imaging mode were performed. The choroid thickness was measured at nine macular points and six lines of mean choroidal thickness were determined. A comparative analysis between the three groups was performed using the one-way ANOVA test and the paired t-test. The choroid thickness of patients under corticotherapy was also compared to that of patients without corticotherapy. Additionally, the correlation between choroid thickness and disease duration was evaluated using the Pearson analysis.
Results
The mean macular choroidal thickness was 295.73 ± 67.62 μm in the study group, 233.34 ± 41.01 µm in the SLE control group, and 240.98 ± 37.93 μm in the control group (p = 0.00006 and p = 0.0003, respectively). Additionally, the choroid thickness was significantly thicker than in the SLE and healthy control groups at the foveal (p = 0.004 and p < 0.000), nasal (p < 0.000 and p = 0.001), superior (p = 0.002 and p < 0.000) and inferior (p < 0.000 and p = 0.001) mean lines. The choroidal thickness in this group was not associated with the duration of the disease. The subgroup of patients with LN under corticotherapy did not reveal a significantly different choroidal thickness.
Conclusion
This study suggests a relationship between LN and choroidal changes, which may represent an increased risk for choroidopathy in these patients. Choroid thickening was not related with the duration of the disease. This thickening may be correlated with histopathological changes similar to those occurring in kidney glomeruli.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
In this paper, we study classes of minimizers of inhomogeneous two-phase Alt–Caffarelli functionals of the type
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. Hölder and non-degeneracy estimates for minima are obtained and in the particular case where such minimizers are weak solutions of non-singular PDEs we provide log-Lipschitz type estimates. In the sequel, since the Alt–Caffarelli–Friedman monotonicity formula is missing in our context and there is a mistake in a proof of Lipschitz continuity for minimizers in Zheng et al. (Monatsh Math 172:441–475,
2013
), we extend the results of Braga et al. (Ann Inst H Poincaré Anal Non Linéaire 31(4):823–850,
2014
) establishing the Lipschitz regularity for more general class of minima under the additional condition of small Lebesgue density on one of the phases along the free boundary. We finish this paper with a result that establishes density estimates from below for the positive and negative phase on points inside the contact set between the free boundaries in the case where minimizers are not Lipschitz. Such estimates allow us to provide a preliminary full description of the free boundary for any minima even if the Lipschitz regularity (as optimal regularity) is unknown.
Control of a multirotor outdoor aerial manipulator Heredia, G.; Jimenez-Cano, A. E.; Sanchez, I. ...
2014 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems,
09/2014
Conference Proceeding
This paper presents the design and control of a multirotor-based aerial manipulator developed for outdoor operation. The multi-rotor has eight rotors and large payload to integrate a 7-degrees of ...freedom arm and to carry sensors and processing hardware needed for outdoor positioning. The arm can also carry an end-effector and sensors to perform different missions. The paper focuses on the control design and implementation aspects. A stable backstepping-based controller for the multirotor that uses the coupled full dynamic model is proposed, and an admittance controller for the manipulator arm is outlined. Several experimental tests with the aerial manipulator are also presented. In one of the experiments, the performance of the pitch attitude controller is compared to a PID controller. Other experiments of the arm controller following an object with the camera are also presented.
Removing predatory fishes has effects that cascade through ecosystems via interactions between species and functional groups. In Kenyan reef lagoons, fishing-induced trophic cascades produce sea ...urchin-dominated grazing communities that greatly reduce the overall cover of crustose coralline algae (CCA). Certain species of CCA enhance coral recruitment by chemically inducing coral settlement. If sea urchin grazing reduces cover of settlement-inducing CCA, coral recruitment and hence juvenile coral abundance may also decline on fished reefs. To determine whether fishing-induced changes in CCA influence coral recruitment and abundance, we compared (1) CCA taxonomic compositions and (2) taxon-specific associations between CCA and juvenile corals under three fisheries management systems: closed, gear-restricted, and open-access. On fished reefs (gear-restricted and open-access), abundances of two species of settlement-inducing CCA,
Hydrolithon reinboldii
and
H. onkodes
, were half those on closed reefs. On both closed and fished reefs, juveniles of four common coral families (Poritidae, Pocilloporidae, Agariciidae, and Faviidae) were more abundant on
Hydrolithon
than on any other settlement substrate. Coral densities were positively correlated with
Hydrolithon
spp. cover and were significantly lower on fished than on closed reefs, suggesting that fishing indirectly reduces coral recruitment or juvenile success over large spatial scales via reduction in settlement-inducing CCA. Therefore, managing reefs for higher cover of settlement-inducing CCA may enhance coral recruitment or juvenile survival and help to maintain the ecological and structural stability of reefs.
A simple, economical, and environmentally friendly strategy for the one-pot preparation of a nanocomposite made up of gold nanoparticles and Electrogenerated Hydrophilic Carbon material (EHC), is ...reported in this work. The EHC material works itself as the reducing agent and conductive carbon material support. The formation of AuNPs was confirmed by UV–visible spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy. It was demonstrated that after the nanocomposite immobilization on a substrate, the EHC material can be easily removed due to its outstanding solubility in water. This procedure was exemplified for the modification of a glassy carbon electrode, resulting in a bare AuNPs/GC electrode. The cyclic voltammetry was used to evaluate the effectiveness of AuNPs immobilization on the electrode and to track the dependence of the electroactive surface area and Au loading with the reaction mixture composition (HAuCl4/EHC). The potential of the AuNPs and nanocomposite-modified electrodes as sensor platforms for medical and biological applications was exemplified by their performance for the oxygen reduction reaction in a phosphate buffer saline solution.
Display omitted
•Carbon hydrophilic nanomaterial works itself as reducing agent for AuNPs.•Facile strategy to prepare a conductive AuNPs composite.•Elegant method to convert a nanocomposite modified electrode in a bare NPs/GC electrode.•Nanocomposite and nanoparticles modified electrodes were used for O2 sensing.
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