The protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii is a zoonotic parasite that can be transmitted from animals to humans. Felids, including domestic cats, are definitive hosts that can shed oocysts with their ...feces. In addition to infections that occur by accidental oral uptake of food or water contaminated with oocysts, it is assumed that a large proportion of affected humans may have become infected by consuming meat or other animal products that contained infective parasitic stages of T. gondii. Since farm animals represent a direct source of infection for humans, but also a possible reservoir for the parasite, it is important to control T. gondii infections in livestock. Moreover, T. gondii may also be pathogenic to livestock where it could be responsible for considerable economic losses in some regions and particular farming systems, e.g. in areas where the small ruminant industry is relevant.
This review aims to summarize actual knowledge on the prevalence and effects of infections with T. gondii in the most important livestock species and on the effects of toxoplasmosis on livestock. It also provides an overview on potential risk factors favoring infections of livestock with T. gondii. Knowledge on potential risk factors is prerequisite to implement effective biosecurity measures on farms to prevent T. gondii infections. Risk factors identified by many studies are cat-related, but also those associated with a potential contamination of fodder or water, and with access to a potentially contaminated environment. Published information on the costs T. gondii infections cause in livestock production, is scarce. The most recent peer reviewed reports from Great Britain and Uruguay suggest annual cost of about 5–15 million US $ per country. Since these estimates are outdated, future studies are needed to estimate the present costs due to toxoplasmosis in livestock. Further, the fact that T. gondii infections in livestock may affect human health needs to be considered and the respective costs should also be estimated, but this is beyond the scope of this article.
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•Brief overview on T. gondii prevalence in livestock•Natural and experimental T. gondii infections•Risk factors for T. gondii infection of livestock•Economic impact of toxoplasmosis in livestock
Computer security is one of the main challenges of today's technological infrastructures, whereas intrusion detection systems are one of the most widely used technologies to secure computer systems. ...The intrusion detection systems use a variety of information sources, one of the most important sources are the applications' system calls. The intrusion detection systems use many different detection techniques, e.g. system calls sequences, text classification techniques and system calls graphs. However, existing techniques obtain poor results in the detection of complex attack patterns, so it is necessary to improve the detection results. This paper presents an intrusion detection system model that integrates multiple detection techniques into a single system with the goal of modeling the global behavior of the applications. In addition, the paper proposes a new modified system calls graph to integrate and represent the information of the different techniques in a single data structure. The system uses a deep neural network to combine the results of the different detection techniques used in the global model. The result of the study shows the improvement obtained in the detection results with respect to the use of individual techniques, the proposed model achieves higher detection rates and lower false positives. The proposal has been validated onto three datasets with different levels of complexity.
Fusion oncogenes (FOs) are common in many cancer types and are powerful drivers of tumor development. Because their expression is exclusive to cancer cells and their elimination induces cell ...apoptosis in FO-driven cancers, FOs are attractive therapeutic targets. However, specifically targeting the resulting chimeric products is challenging. Based on CRISPR/Cas9 technology, here we devise a simple, efficient and non-patient-specific gene-editing strategy through targeting of two introns of the genes involved in the rearrangement, allowing for robust disruption of the FO specifically in cancer cells. As a proof-of-concept of its potential, we demonstrate the efficacy of intron-based targeting of transcription factors or tyrosine kinase FOs in reducing tumor burden/mortality in in vivo models. The FO targeting approach presented here might open new horizons for the selective elimination of cancer cells.
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•Microalgae and primary sludge co-digestion at 35 °C showed high biodegradation (65%).•Same biodegradability was observed when digesting Chlorella or Scenedesmus.•Higher annual costs ...were found operating at 100 d SRT compared to 70 d.•5.5-fold increase in energetic demand was found operating at 55 °C compared to 35 °C.•No fouling formation was observed when applying gas sparging and backwashing.
This research work proposes the scale-up evaluation in terms of biological and filtration performance from laboratory to pilot-scale of an anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) co-digesting raw microalgae and primary sludge. Best operating conditions for this scale-up were energetically and economically assessed based on laboratory results. Economic balance showed 3% higher annual costs when operating a reactor at 100 d solids retention time (SRT) compared to 70 d SRT. Energetic balance showed a 5.5-fold increase in heat demand working at thermophilic temperature comparing to mesophilic. The AnMBR operating conditions were set at 70 d SRT and 35 °C. The pilot-scale and lab-scale co-digesters performed similarly in terms of biogas production and system stability. 154 mLbiogas·d−1·L−1reactor were produced at pilot-scale, corresponding to methane yield of 215 mLCH4·gCODinf−1. AnMBR filtration at both laboratory and pilot-scale showed stability working at permeate fluxes of 4.2–5.8 L·m−2·h−1.
Profiling the nascent cellular proteome and capturing early proteomic changes in response to external stimuli provides valuable insights into cellular physiology. Existing metabolic protein labeling ...approaches based on bioorthogonal methionine- or puromycin analogs allow for the selective visualization and enrichment of newly synthesized proteins. However, their applications are limited as they often require methionine-free conditions, auxotrophic cells and/or are toxic to cells. Here, we introduce THRONCAT, a threonine-derived non-canonical amino acid tagging method based on the bioorthogonal threonine analog β-ethynylserine (βES) that enables efficient labeling of the nascent proteome in complete growth media within minutes. We use THRONCAT for the visualization and enrichment of nascent proteins in bacteria, mammalian cells and Drosophila melanogaster. We profile immediate proteome dynamics of B-cells in response to B-cell receptor activation simply by adding βES to the culture medium, demonstrating the ease-of-use of the method and its potential to address diverse biological questions. In addition, using a Drosophila model of Charcot-Marie-Tooth peripheral neuropathy, we show that THRONCAT enables visualization and quantification of relative protein synthesis rates in specific cell types in vivo.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is an effective and safe medical procedure that mainly indicated for depression, but is also indicated for patients with other conditions. However, ECT is among the ...most stigmatized and controversial treatments in medicine. Our objective was to examine social media contents on Twitter related to ECT to identify and evaluate public views on the matter.
We collected Twitter posts in English and Spanish mentioning ECT between January 1, 2019 and October 31, 2020. Identified tweets were subject to a mixed method quantitative-qualitative content and sentiment analysis combining manual and semi-supervised natural language processing machine-learning analyses. Such analyses identified the distribution of tweets, their public interest (retweets and likes per tweet), and sentiment for the observed different categories of Twitter users and contents.
"Healthcare providers" users produced more tweets (25%) than "people with lived experience" and their "relatives" (including family members and close friends or acquaintances) (10% combined), and were the main publishers of "medical" content (mostly related to ECT's main indications). However, more than half of the total tweets had "joke or trivializing" contents, and such had a higher like and retweet ratio. Among those tweets manifesting personal opinions on ECT, around 75% of them had a negative sentiment.
Mixed method analysis of social media contents on Twitter offers a novel perspective to examine public opinion on ECT, and our results show attitudes more negative than those reflected in studies using surveys and other traditional methods.
A
bstract
The
Neutrino Experiment with a Xenon TPC
(NEXT) searches for the neutrinoless double-beta (0
νββ
) decay of
136
Xe using high-pressure xenon gas TPCs with electroluminescent amplification. ...A scaled-up version of this technology with about 1 tonne of enriched xenon could reach in less than 5 years of operation a sensitivity to the half-life of 0
νββ
decay better than 10
27
years, improving the current limits by at least one order of magnitude. This prediction is based on a well-understood background model dominated by radiogenic sources. The detector concept presented here represents a first step on a compelling path towards sensitivity to the parameter space defined by the inverted ordering of neutrino masses, and beyond.
The single–diode model is widely used for the analysis of photovoltaic systems and reproducing accurately the I–V curve. Numerical or analytical methods can be employed to estimate the model ...parameters; among them explicit methods are well assessed providing precise results and low computational complexity, thus suitable to be developed on embedded systems. Due to their approximated nature, the accuracy of such methods may be affected by the operating conditions and by the state of health of the photovoltaic modules that have been characterised. The main contribution of this paper is to analyse a selection of explicit methods with the aim of testing their capability to detect degradation in photovoltaic modules. Since different degradation phenomena are reflected in a variation of the series resistance of the single diode equivalent circuit, the study is mainly focused on the estimation of this parameter. The comparison of different explicit methods has been done by using outdoor experimental I–V curves of a photovoltaic module operating in normal as well as degraded conditions. The analysis shows that only few methods exhibit enough reliability to estimate correctly the model parameters in presence of degradation and are less sensible to the environmental operating conditions.
•Methods for parametric identification of PV models.•Robustness of parameter identification methods in presence of PV degradation.•Explicit methods for reducing computational burden and memory.•Suitable for the online diagnosis of PV arrays.
The extent to which pre-Columbian societies altered Amazonian landscapes is hotly debated. We performed a basin-wide analysis of pre-Columbian impacts on Amazonian forests by overlaying known ...archaeological sites in Amazonia with the distributions and abundances of 85 woody species domesticated by pre-Columbian peoples. Domesticated species are five times more likely than nondomesticated species to be hyperdominant. Across the basin, the relative abundance and richness of domesticated species increase in forests on and around archaeological sites. In southwestern and eastern Amazonia, distance to archaeological sites strongly influences the relative abundance and richness of domesticated species. Our analyses indicate that modern tree communities in Amazonia are structured to an important extent by a long history of plant domestication by Amazonian peoples.
A
bstract
The NEXT experiment aims at searching for the hypothetical neutrinoless double-beta decay from the
136
Xe isotope using a high-purity xenon TPC. Efficient discrimination of the events ...through pattern recognition of the topology of primary ionisation tracks is a major requirement for the experiment. However, it is limited by the diffusion of electrons. It is known that the addition of a small fraction of a molecular gas to xenon reduces electron diffusion. On the other hand, the electroluminescence (EL) yield drops and the achievable energy resolution may be compromised. We have studied the effect of adding several molecular gases to xenon (CO
2
, CH
4
and CF
4
) on the EL yield and energy resolution obtained in a small prototype of driftless gas proportional scintillation counter. We have compared our results on the scintillation characteristics (EL yield and energy resolution) with a microscopic simulation, obtaining the diffusion coefficients in those conditions as well. Accordingly, electron diffusion may be reduced from about 10 mm/
m
for pure xenon down to 2.5 mm/
m
using additive concentrations of about 0.05%, 0.2% and 0.02% for CO
2
, CH
4
and CF
4
, respectively. Our results show that CF
4
admixtures present the highest EL yield in those conditions, but very poor energy resolution as a result of huge fluctuations observed in the EL formation. CH
4
presents the best energy resolution despite the EL yield being the lowest. The results obtained with xenon admixtures are extrapolated to the operational conditions of the NEXT-100 TPC. CO
2
and CH
4
show potential as molecular additives in a large xenon TPC. While CO
2
has some operational constraints, making it difficult to be used in a large TPC, CH
4
shows the best performance and stability as molecular additive to be used in the NEXT-100 TPC, with an extrapolated energy resolution of 0.4% at 2.45 MeV for concentrations below 0.4%, which is only slightly worse than the one obtained for pure xenon. We demonstrate the possibility to have an electroluminescence TPC operating very close to the thermal diffusion limit without jeopardizing the TPC performance, if CO
2
or CH
4
are chosen as additives.
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