In December 2019, the Wuhan Municipal Health and health Commission (Hubei Province, China) reported a series of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology. On January 7, 2020, the Chinese authorities ...identified as a causative agent of the outbreak a new type of virus of the Coronaviridiae family, called SARS-CoV-2. Since then, thounsands of cases have been reported with global dissemination. Infections in humans cause a broad clinical spectrum ranging from mild upper respiratory tract infection, to severe acute respiratory distress syndrome and sepsis. There is not specific treatment for SARS-CoV-2, which is why the fundamental aspects are to establish adequate prevention measures and support treatment and management of complications.
The action of the microorganisms upon the integrity of the constructing material is termed Biodeterioration, concrete resistance to the action of the microorganisms is considered an indirect ...measurement of its durability and could be used as a marker of the integrity of the structure. In Colombia, the studies considering this parameter are rare. The objective of this study was to isolate and characterize the microbial communities present in areas with evident deterioration in the selected buildings. To accomplish this, isolation, culturing and molecular identification of the isolates was performed. Results showed that Cladosporium spp, Aspergillus spp, Mucor spp, Penicillium spp, Penicillium spp, Rhizopus spp, Fusarium spp, Geotrichum spp, and bacterial genera such as Bacillus spp and Amphibacillus spp, coexist within the biofilms sampled. This study is a description and a starting point to deepen the characterization of these communities and to understand the role they perform in the integrity of the building materials considering the climatic and environmental conditions.
Determine the suitability of transcutaneous bilirubin (TCB) as a tool to assess the effectiveness of phototherapy on patched skin.
A prospective observational study was conducted. We covered a ...fragment of skin (sternum) with a photo-opaque patch. Several simultaneous TCB and TSB measurements were performed with the JM-105 bilirubinometer. Bland and Altman test evaluated the agreement between bilirubin levels.
A total of 217 patients were studied, 48.8% were preterm. The mean difference between TSB and TCB before the start of treatment was 1.07 mg/dL. During phototherapy, differences on covered skin were 0.52, 0.27, and 0.39 mg/dL at 24, 48, and 72 h of therapy respectively. The best correlation was observed at 48 h in preterm infants.
The measurement of TCB on patched skin (PTCB) is useful for monitoring the response to phototherapy in term and preterm infants. We use a patch with a removable flap that eases successive measures without disturbing the patients.
Miniature hyperspectral and thermal cameras onboard lightweight unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) bring new opportunities for monitoring land surface variables at unprecedented fine spatial resolution ...with acceptable accuracy. This research applies hyperspectral and thermal imagery from a drone to quantify upland rice productivity and water use efficiency (WUE) after biochar application in Costa Rica. The field flights were conducted over two experimental groups with bamboo biochar (BC1) and sugarcane biochar (BC2) amendments and one control (C) group without biochar application. Rice canopy biophysical variables were estimated by inverting a canopy radiative transfer model on hyperspectral reflectance. Variations in gross primary productivity (GPP) and WUE across treatments were estimated using light-use efficiency and WUE models respectively from the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), canopy chlorophyll content (CCC), and evapotranspiration rate. We found that GPP was increased by 41.9 ± 3.4% in BC1 and 17.5 ± 3.4% in BC2 versus C, which may be explained by higher soil moisture after biochar application, and consequently significantly higher WUEs by 40.8 ± 3.5% in BC1 and 13.4 ± 3.5% in BC2 compared to C. This study demonstrated the use of hyperspectral and thermal imagery from a drone to quantify biochar effects on dry cropland by integrating ground measurements and physical models.
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) management in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is uncertain. The ECCO guidelines 2021 recommended HCV treatment but warn about the risk of IBD reactivation. We aimed to ...evaluate 1) the effectiveness and safety of direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) in IBD; 2) the interaction of DAAs with IBD drugs.
Multicentre study of IBD patients and HCV treated with DAAs. Variables related to liver diseases and IBD, as well as adverse events (AEs) and drug interactions, were recorded. McNemar's test was used to assess differences in the proportion of active IBD during the study period.
We included 79 patients with IBD and HCV treated with DAAs from 25,998 IBD patients of the ENEIDA registry. Thirty-one (39.2 %) received immunomodulators/biologics. There were no significant differences in the percentage of active IBD at the beginning (n = 11, 13.9 %) or at the 12-week follow-up after DAAs (n = 15, 19 %) (p = 0.424). Sustained viral response occurred in 96.2 % (n = 76). A total of 8 (10.1 %) AEs occurred and these were unrelated to activity, type of IBD, liver fibrosis, immunosuppressants/biologics, and DAAs.
We demonstrate a high efficacy and safety of DAAs in patients with IBD and HCV irrespective of activity and treatment of IBD.
LAGO is an extended cosmic ray observatory composed of water-Cherenkov detectors (WCD) placed throughout Latin America. It is dedicated to the study of various issues related to astrophysics, space ...weather and atmospheric physics at the regional scale. In this paper we present the design and implementation of the front-end electronics and the data acquisition system for readout of the WCDs of LAGO. The system consists of preamplifiers and a digital board sending data to a computer via an USB interface. The analog signals are acquired from three independent channels at a maximum rate of ~1.2×105 pulses per second and a sampling rate of 40MHz. To avoid false trigger due to baseline fluctuations, we present in this work a baseline correction algorithm that makes it possible to use WCDs to study variations of the environmental radiation. A data logging software has been designed to format the received data. It also enables an easy access to the data for an off-line analysis, together with the operational conditions and environmental information. The system is currently used at different sites of LAGO.
The Latin American Giant Observatory (LAGO) is an international network of water-Cherenkov detectors (WCD) set in different sites across Latin America. On top of the Sierra Negra volcano in Mexico at ...an altitude of 4530m, LAGO has completed its first out of three instrumented detector. It consists of a cylindrical water tank with a diameter of 7.3m and a height of 1m and a total detection area of 40m2 that is sectioned in four equal slices. In this work we present the full calibration procedure of this detector and the initial measurements of stability in rate. We also derive the effective area to gamma-ray bursts for the complete array using the LAGO simulation chain, based on CORSIKA and GEANT4.
•Calibration of one sectioned water Cherenkov detector of LAGO Sierra Negra.•The photomultiplier tubes characterization in the lab and calibration in site.•Initial measurements of stability in rate in site are presented.•Effective area to gamma-ray bursts are derived from the LAGO simu-lation chain.
The chemical composition of the waste from mamey sapote (Pouteria sapota) and its oil extracted from the seed (MSSO) of ripe and unripe fruits, was studied. The MSSO from ripe fruits was ...dry-fractionated, and the thermal and phase behaviors of its fractions and their mixtures with other known natural fats were analyzed. The main components of the mamey peel and the seed were crude fiber (81.32%) and fat (44.41% db), respectively. The seed oil contained oleic, stearic, palmitic and linoleic as its main fatty acids. The MSSO showed a simple thermal behavior with a broad fusion range and four maximum temperature peaks. The solid fractions showed maximum melting peaks at higher temperatures than the residual liquid. The MSSO solid fractions showed a potential for use as constituents in mixtures with other natural fats, such as cocoa butter or mango seed fat.
Abstract
A search for time-directional coincidences of ultra-high-energy (UHE) photons above 10 EeV with gravitational wave (GW) events from the LIGO/Virgo runs O1 to O3 is conducted with the Pierre ...Auger Observatory. Due to the distinctive properties of photon interactions and to the background expected from hadronic showers, a subset of the most interesting GW events is selected based on their localization quality and distance. Time periods of 1000 s around and 1 day after the GW events are analyzed. No coincidences are observed. Upper limits on the UHE photon fluence from a GW event are derived that are typically at ∼7 MeV cm
−2
(time period 1000 s) and ∼35 MeV cm
−2
(time period 1 day). Due to the proximity of the binary neutron star merger GW170817, the energy of the source transferred into UHE photons above 40 EeV is constrained to be less than 20% of its total GW energy. These are the first limits on UHE photons from GW sources.
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