Mermithid parasitoids are well known to infect spiders; however, their impact on hosts and their taxonomic identity are still poorly analyzed. We present the first record of a mermithid nematode ...infection in the spider genera Piratula (Lycosidae) and Coelotes (Agelenidae), and in the species Alopecosa pulverulenta and Pardosa paludicola (Lycosidae). We describe the maldevelopment of the spiders’ female genitalia induced by the parasitoid and summarize data on the impact of nematode parasitoids on spider development and behaviour. Phylogenetic analysis, based on the 18S rDNA, showed that spider parasitoidism arose independently in different branches of the phylogenetic tree of the family Mermithidae.
Background
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) reduces tremor, rigidity, and akinesia. According to the literature, the dentato-rubro-thalamic tract (DRTt) is verified ...target for DBS in essential tremor; however, its role in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease is only vaguely described. The aim of our study was to identify the relationship between symptom alleviation in PD patients and the distance of the DBS electrode electric field (EF) to the DRTt.
Methods
A single-center retrospective analysis of patients (
N
= 30) with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD) who underwent DBS between November 2018 and January 2020 was performed. DRTt and STN were visualized using diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and tractography protocol of magnetic resonance (MR). The EF was calculated and compared with STN and course of DRTt. Evaluation of patients before and after surgery was performed with use of UPDRS-III scale. The association between distance from EF to DRTt and clinical outcomes was examined. To confirm the anatomical variation between DRTt and STN observed in tractography, white matter dissection was performed with the Klingler technique on ten human brains.
Results
Patients with EF overlapping STN and DRTt benefited from significant motor symptoms improvement. Anatomical findings confirmed the presence of population differences in variability of the DRTt course and were consistent with the DRTt visualized by MR.
Conclusions
DRTt proximity to STN, the main target in PD DBS surgery, confirmed by DWI with tractography protocol of MR combined with proper predefined stimulation parameters may improve efficacy of DBS-STN.
In this paper, we consider parallelization of the loop over elements using OpenMP in FEAP (Taylor,
2014
), which is a research FE code, very popular at universities. Even for a serial version of FEAP ...(a cluster version also exists) such a parallelization is a non-trivial task due to the existing architecture of this code, which complicates efficient parallelization. First, we compare the serial version of FEAP to the parallel code Warp3D (Dodds et al.,
2014
), considering the usage of time and memory. As we found, Warp3D is much faster but uses more memory than FEAP. An analysis of Warp3D helps us to devise our method of parallelization of the loop over elements. Next, we describe several changes in FEAP, which were necessary to parallelize the loop over elements using OpenMP. In particular, the subroutine assembling elemental matrices is identified as crucial to good performance, and several directives for the mutual exclusion synchronization of OpenMP are implemented and tested. Finally, we demonstrate the performance of the parallelized FEAP, designated as ompFEAP, on numerical examples involving 3D and shell elements of FEAP as well as user’s elements. We conclude that ompFEAP, using the directive
ATOMIC
for synchronization of the assembling, provides a very good speedup and efficiency.
Using the large acceptance apparatus FOPI, we study central collisions in the reactions (energies in A GeV are given in parentheses): 40Ca + 40Ca (0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.5, 1.93), 58Ni + 58Ni (0.15, ...0.25, 0.4), 96Ru + 96Ru (0.4, 1.0, 1.5), 96Zr + 96Zr (0.4, 1.0, 1.5), 129Xe + CsI (0.15, 0.25, 0.4), 197Au + 197Au (0.09, 0.12, 0.15, 0.25, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.2, 1.5). The observables include cluster multiplicities, longitudinal and transverse rapidity distributions and stopping, and radial flow. The data are compared to earlier data where possible and to transport model simulations.
Mixed 4-node elements based on the Hu–Washizu (HW) functional are developed for stress and strain representations in various coordinates, including the skew, natural and Cartesian ones. The HW ...functional is used in incremental form, suitable for non-linear materials. The key features of our approach are as follows.
(1)
The representations of stress and strain are assumed in skew coordinates associated with the natural basis at the element’s center, which implies that, for a linear elastic case, the homogenous equilibrium equations and the compatibility condition are satisfied point-wise. For stress, the same 5- and 7-parameter representations as for the Hellinger–Reissner (HR) elements by Wisniewski and Turska Wisniewski K, Turska E. Improved four-node Hellinger–Reissner elements based on skew coordinates. Int J Numer Methods Eng 2008;76:798–836 are used. For strain, a 9-parameter linear representation is selected.
(2)
A mixed element HW14-S using a 5-parameter representation of stresses assumed in skew coordinates is developed from the non-enhanced HW functional. This element is equally accurate as our HR5-S element of Wisniewski and Turska (1998), the HR element by Yuan et al. Yuan K-Y, Huang Y-S, Pian THH. New strategy for assumed stress for 4-node hybrid stress membrane element. Int J Numer Methods Eng 1993;36:1747–63, and the HW elements by Piltner and Taylor Piltner R, Taylor RL. A quadrilateral mixed finite element with two enhanced strain modes. Int J Numer Methods Eng 1995;38:1783–808; Piltner R, Taylor RL. A systematic construction of B-bar functions for linear and non-linear mixed-enhanced finite elements for plane elasticity problems. Int J Numer Methods Eng 1999;44:615–39, and Piltner Piltner R. An implementation of mixed enhanced finite elements with strains assumed in Cartesian and natural element coordinates using sparse
B
¯
-matrices. Eng Comput 2000;17(8):933–49. Compared to these HW elements, our element uses a smaller number of parameters.
(3)
A mixed/enhanced element HW18 using a 7-parameter representation of stress is developed from the enhanced HW functional. For the elements based on this stress representation, the strain representation has to be enriched; we use a 2-parameter EADG enhancement. Various combinations of the natural, skew and Cartesian coordinates are tested, and these for which this element performs best are selected.
(4)
A specific modification of the
F
T
F
product, consisting of the expansion of
F
and the selection of meaningful terms in the product, was applied to selected elements. With this modification, the element HW14-S performs better for coarse distorted meshes than the HW elements described in the literature.
The developed elements are based on the Green strain, and are tested for linear and non-linear constitutive laws modified by the zero normal stress condition, because they will be used as a membrane part of a shell element. Several numerical tests show their performance, in particular, their robustness to the element’s shape distortion for coarse meshes.
The complement system constitutes a series of enzymatic steps involved in the inflammatory response and is activated in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Using Down's syndrome (DS) brains as a temporal model ...for the progression of AD, we examined components of the complement cascade and their relationship to other principal events in AD pathology: Aβ42 deposition, neuritic changes, neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs), and gliosis (reactive astrocytes, activated microglia). Adjacent sections of frontal cortex from 24 DS subjects ranging in age from 12 to 73 years were immunohistochemically examined for immunoreactivity (IR) of classical complement proteins (Clq and C3), markers indicating activation of complement (C4d and C5b-9), the complement inhibitor apolipoprotein J (apo J), and markers of AD neuropathology. Aβ42-labeled diffuse plaques were first detected in a 12-year-old DS subject and were not labeled by any of the complement antibodies. Colocalization of Aβ42 with Clq, C3, C4d, and/or apo J was first detected in compacted plaques in the brain of a 15-year-old DS patient with features of mature AD pathology, such as reactive astrocytes, activated microglia, dystrophic neurites, and a few NFTs. IR for C4d and C5b-9 (membrane attack complex, MAC) was observed in small numbers of plaque-associated dystrophic neurites and in focal regions of pyramidal neurons in this 15-year-old. The only other young (≤30 years) DS brain to show extensive complement IR was that of a 29-year-old DS subject who also displayed the full range of AD neuropathological features. All middle-aged and old DS brains showed IR for Clq and C3, primarily in compacted plaques. In these cases, C4d IR was found in a subset of Aβ42 plaques and, along with C5b-9 IR, was localized to dystrophic neurites in a subset of neuritic plaques, neurons, and some NFTs. Our data suggest that in AD and DS, the classical complement cascade is activated after compaction of Aβ42 deposits and, in some instances, can progress to the local neuronal expression of the MAC as a response to Aβ plaque maturation.
Objective Acute aortic dissection remains a serious emergency in the field of cardiovascular medicine and a challenge for cardiothoracic surgeons. In the present study, we seek to compare the ...outcomes of different surgical techniques in the repair of type A acute aortic dissection. Methods Between April 2015 and May 2023, 213 patients (82 women, aged: 63.9 ± 13.3 years) with acute aortic dissection (205 type A and 8 non-A-non-B dissections) underwent surgical treatment in our department. A total of 45 patients were treated with the frozen elephant trunk (FET) technique supported by the Thoraflex™ Hybrid prosthesis, 33 received total aortic arch replacement (TAR)—standard or conventional elephant trunk—treatment, and 135 were treated with hemiarch replacement (HR). Aortic arch surgery was performed in most patients under moderate hypothermic (28°C on average) circulatory arrest, with selective antegrade cerebral perfusion through the right axillary artery. Results The rates of early mortality were 17.8% (38 perioperative deaths) in the whole population, 8.9% in the FET group of patients, and 33% and 17% in the TAR and HR group of patients, respectively ( P -value 0.025). The rate of spinal cord injury was 2.3% (five patients), and a paresis of recurrent laryngeal occurred in 3.7% of patients (seven patients, four were treated with FET). Permanent neurological dysfunction occurred in 27 patients (12.7%). After a mean follow-up of 3 years, the rate of mid-term mortality of discharged patients was 19.4% (34 deaths: 7 FET, 4 TAR, and 23 HR) and the overall mortality rate was 33.8% 72 deaths: 11 FET (24.4%); 15 TAR (45.4%); 46 HR (34.1%). A total of 8 patients (17.8%) in whom FET was applied received additional endovascular treatment in the descending aorta. Conclusions In our institutional experience, we found that the frozen elephant trunk technique with a high-end Thoraflex Hybrid prosthesis proved its surgical suitability in the treatment of acute aortic dissection with favorable outcomes. The FET technique and our perioperative management led to comparable neurological outcomes and reduced mortality rates in these emergency cases.
Using the large acceptance apparatus FOPI, we study central and semi-central collisions in the reactions (energies in A GeV are given in parentheses): 40Ca+40Ca (0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.5, 1.93), ...58Ni+58Ni (0.15, 0.25, 0.4), 96Ru+96Ru (0.4, 1.0, 1.5), 96Zr+96Zr (0.4, 1.0, 1.5), 129Xe+CsI (0.15, 0.25, 0.4), 197Au+197Au (0.09, 0.12, 0.15, 0.25, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.2, 1.5). The observables include directed and elliptic flow. The data are compared to earlier data where possible and to transport model simulations. A stiff nuclear equation of state is found to be incompatible with the data. Evidence for extra-repulsion of neutrons in compressed asymmetric matter is found.
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