Noninvasive detection of macrophage-rich atherosclerotic plaque in hyperlipidemic rabbits using "positive contrast" magnetic resonance imaging.

OBJECTIVES: This study was designed to identify macrophage-rich atherosclerotic plaque noninvasively by imaging the tissue uptake of long-circulating superparamagnetic nanoparticles with a positive contrast off-resonance imaging sequence (inversion recovery with ON-resonant water suppression [IRON]). BACKGROUND: The sudden rupture of macrophage-rich atherosclerotic plaques can trigger the formation of an occlusive thrombus in coronary vessels, resulting in acute myocardial infarction. Therefore, a noninvasive technique that can identify macrophage-rich plaques and thereby assist with risk stratification of patients with atherosclerosis would be of great potential clinical utility. METHODS: Experiments were conducted on a clinical 3-T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner in 7 heritable hyperlipidemic and 4 control rabbits. Monocrystalline iron-oxide nanoparticles (MION)-47 were administrated intravenously (2 doses of 250 mumol Fe/kg), and animals underwent serial IRON-MRI before injection of the nanoparticles and serially after 1, 3, and 6 days. RESULTS: After administration of MION-47, a striking signal enhancement was found in areas of plaque only in hyperlipidemic rabbits. The magnitude of enhancement on magnetic resonance images had a high correlation with the number of macrophages determined by histology (p < 0.001) and allowed for the detection of macrophage-rich plaque with high accuracy (area under the curve: 0.92, SE: 0.04, 95% confidence interval: 0.84 to 0.96, p < 0.001). No significant signal enhancement was measured in remote areas without plaque by histology and in control rabbits without atherosclerosis. CONCLUSIONS: Using IRON-MRI in conjunction with superparamagnetic nanoparticles is a promising approach for the noninvasive evaluation of macrophage-rich, vulnerable plaques.

Enfocament psicosocial del nou delicte de captació i adoctrinament de persones per a cometre activitats terroristes

La darrera reforma del Codi penal espanyol ha suposat la introducció de nous il•lícits penals amb la finalitat de proporcionar respostes més ajustades a les noves realitats criminals. Una d’aquestes modificacions afecta els articles propis de terrorisme i, concretament el 576, que inclou una sèrie de figures delictives noves, com ara, la captació i l’adoctrinament per a cometre activitats terroristes. Tanmateix, aquesta novetat pot provocar malentesos a l’hora d’avaluar el valor de la prova. La captació i l’adoctrinament són fases d’un procés “de radicalització violenta”, sobre el qual no existeix un consens unànime entre els especialistes i acadèmics sobre la descripció del mateix i les variables que hi intervenen. Aquest working paper pretén aportar una visió des de la psicologia social del procés de la radicalització violenta i l’experiència d’una investigació sobre els processos de manipulació psicològica que intervenen en la captació i adoctrinament de terroristes d’una cèl•lula gihadista detectada a presons espanyoles. Els resultats obtinguts poden ser de gran utilitat per realitzar peritatges de la prova més precisos.

The efficacy of single-trial multisensory memories.

This review article summarizes evidence that multisensory experiences at one point in time have long-lasting effects on subsequent unisensory visual and auditory object recognition. The efficacy of single-trial exposure to task-irrelevant multisensory events is its ability to modulate memory performance and brain activity to unisensory components of these events presented later in time. Object recognition (either visual or auditory) is enhanced if the initial multisensory experience had been semantically congruent and can be impaired if this multisensory pairing was either semantically incongruent or entailed meaningless information in the task-irrelevant modality, when compared to objects encountered exclusively in a unisensory context. Processes active during encoding cannot straightforwardly explain these effects; performance on all initial presentations was indistinguishable despite leading to opposing effects with stimulus repetitions. Brain responses to unisensory stimulus repetitions differ during early processing stages (-100 ms post-stimulus onset) according to whether or not they had been initially paired in a multisensory context. Plus, the network exhibiting differential responses varies according to whether or not memory performance is enhanced or impaired. The collective findings we review indicate that multisensory associations formed via single-trial learning exert influences on later unisensory processing to promote distinct object representations that manifest as differentiable brain networks whose activity is correlated with memory performance. These influences occur incidentally, despite many intervening stimuli, and are distinguishable from the encoding/learning processes during the formation of the multisensory associations. The consequences of multisensory interactions that persist over time to impact memory retrieval and object discrimination.

Emissió ràdio a baixa freqüència en fenòmens eruptius i en fonts esteses de raigs gamma d'alta i molt alta energia

La tasca investigadora presentada en aquesta memòria s'ha centrat en les fonts galàctiques de raigs gamma de molt alta energia LS I +61 303, HESS J1708-410 i HESS J1858+020. La primera és una binària de raigs gamma molt estudiada, formada per una estrella massiva i un objecte compacte. S'ha proposat un escenari on l'objecte compacte seria un púlsar jove, i la interacció del seu vent amb el vent de l'estrella generaria els raigs gamma. De totes formes, no s'ha detectat polsos procedents d'aquest putatiu púlsar. L'investigador va realitzar observacions en fase a 1280 MHz amb el radiotelescopi GMRT, sense trobar-hi polsos, cosa que implica un estricte límit superior de 0,38 mJy a la densitat mitjana de flux polsat en un putatiu púlsar amb un període major que 2 mil•lisegons en el sistema binari LS I +61 303. Per altra banda, HESS J1708-410 i HESS J1858+020 són dues fonts esteses de raigs gamma de molt alta energia de les quals no es coneix cap contrapart a d'altres longituds d'ona. L'investigador les va observar amb el GMRT, quatre vegades HESS J1708-410 (dues a 610 MHz i dues a 1400 MHz) i dues vegades HESS J1858+020 (una a cada freqüència). En les imatges realitzades amb aquestes dades no hi ha emissió estesa coincident amb les regions d'emissió de raigs gamma. HESS J1858+020 se solapa parcialment amb una font estesa que podria ser un SNR. De confirmar-se la falta de contrapartida ràdio de HESS J1708-410, estaríem parlant d'un accelerador hadrònic extraordinàriament eficient, d'una classe desconeguda fins ara.

Ostéolyse multicentrique héréditaire [Hereditary multicentric osteolysis]

Report of a family with dominant hereditary multicentric osteolysis. The review of the literature proves the clinical and genetic heterogeneity of the disease.

Infectious minor lymphocyte stimulating (Mls) antigens.

Minor lymphocyte stimulating (Mls) antigens have profound effects on the murine immune system and have been very important for our current understanding of immune tolerance. It has recently been discovered that these Mls antigens are encoded in an open reading frame located in the 3' long terminal repeat of endogenous and infectious mouse mammary tumor viruses (MMTV). In this review we will discuss the effects of a novel infectious MMTV with properties of Mls-1a on the neonatal and adult immune system in comparison to the effects of endogenous Mtv-7 (Mls-1a).

The Swiss cohort of elderly patients with venous thromboembolism (SWITCO65+): rationale and methodology.

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is common and has a high impact on morbidity, mortality, and costs of care. Although most of the patients with VTE are aged ≥65 years, there is little data about the medical outcomes in the elderly with VTE. The Swiss Cohort of Elderly Patients with VTE (SWITCO65+) is a prospective multicenter cohort study of in- and outpatients aged ≥65 years with acute VTE from all five Swiss university and four high-volume non-university hospitals. The goal is to examine which clinical and biological factors and processes of care drive short- and long-term medical outcomes, health-related quality of life, and medical resource utilization in elderly patients with acute VTE. The cohort also includes a large biobank with biological material from each participant. From September 2009 to March 2012, 1,863 elderly patients with VTE were screened and 1003 (53.8 %) were enrolled in the cohort. Overall, 51.7 % of patients were aged ≥75 years and 52.7 % were men. By October 16, 2012, after an average follow-up time of 512 days, 799 (79.7 %) patients were still actively participating. SWITCO65+ is a unique opportunity to study short- and long-term outcomes in elderly patients with VTE. The Steering Committee encourages national and international collaborative research projects related to SWITCO65+, including sharing anonymized data and biological samples.

First occurrence of the crazy ant Paratrechina longicornis (Latreille) (Hym. Formicidae: Formicinae) in Switzerland

Paratrechina longicornis (Latreille) has been recorded for the first time in Switzerland in the Kloten airpot in Zürich. This species originates from the tropics and has been introduced into many parts of the world. In Europe, it was only mentionned from France and the British Isle.

Trace element differentiation in ferruginous accumulation soil patterns under tropical rainforest of southern Cameroon, the role of climatic change

Regions under tropical rainforest cover, such as central Africa and Brazil are characterised by degradation and dismantling of old ferricrete structures. In southern Cameroon, these processes are relayed by present-day ferruginous accumulation soil facies, situated on the middle and the lower part of hill slopes. These facies become progressively harder towards the surface, containing from bottom to top, mainly kaolinite, kaolinite-goethite and Al-rich goethite-hematite, and are discontinuous to the relictic hematite-dominated ferricrete that exist in the upper part of the hill slope. These features were investigated in terms of geochemical differentiation of trace elements. It appears that, in contrast to the old ferricrete facies, the current ferruginous accumulations are enriched in transitional trace elements (V, Cr, Co, Y, Sc) and Ph, while alkali-earth elements are less differentiated. This recent chemical accumulation is controlled both by intense weathering of the granodiorite bedrock and by mobilisation of elements previously accumulated in the old ferricrete. The observed processes are clearly linked to the present-day humid climate with rising groundwater tables. They slowly replace the old ferricretes formed during Cretaceous time under more seasonal climatic conditions, representing an instructive case of continuos global change. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Proyecto de catálogos de productos desarrollado en .NET "Surf eCatalogo"

L'objectiu d'aquest projecte fi de carrera ha estat el disseny i implementació d'un catàleg de productes, en concret un catàleg de productes d'articles relacionats amb el surf "Surf eCatalogo".

Regional-scale integration of multi-scale hydrological and geophysical data using a two-step Bayesian sequential simulation approach

Significant progress has been made with regard to the quantitative integration of geophysical and hydrological data at the local scale for the purpose of improving predictions of groundwater flow and solute transport. However, extending corresponding approaches to the regional scale still represents one of the major challenges in the domain of hydrogeophysics. To address this problem, we have developed a regional-scale data integration methodology based on a two-step Bayesian sequential simulation approach. Our objective is to generate high-resolution stochastic realizations of the regional-scale hydraulic conductivity field in the common case where there exist spatially exhaustive but poorly resolved measurements of a related geophysical parameter, as well as highly resolved but spatially sparse collocated measurements of this geophysical parameter and the hydraulic conductivity. To integrate this multi-scale, multi-parameter database, we first link the low- and high-resolution geophysical data via a stochastic downscaling procedure. This is followed by relating the downscaled geophysical data to the high-resolution hydraulic conductivity distribution. After outlining the general methodology of the approach, we demonstrate its application to a realistic synthetic example where we consider as data high-resolution measurements of the hydraulic and electrical conductivities at a small number of borehole locations, as well as spatially exhaustive, low-resolution estimates of the electrical conductivity obtained from surface-based electrical resistivity tomography. The different stochastic realizations of the hydraulic conductivity field obtained using our procedure are validated by comparing their solute transport behaviour with that of the underlying ?true? hydraulic conductivity field. We find that, even in the presence of strong subsurface heterogeneity, our proposed procedure allows for the generation of faithful representations of the regional-scale hydraulic conductivity structure and reliable predictions of solute transport over long, regional-scale distances.

Biological embedding of early life exposures and disease risk in humans: a role for DNA methylation.

BACKGROUND: Following wider acceptance of "the thrifty phenotype" hypothesis and the convincing evidence that early life exposures can influence adult health even decades after the exposure, much interest has been placed on the mechanisms through which early life exposures become biologically embedded. METHODS: In this review, we summarize the current literature regarding biological embedding of early life experiences. To this end we conducted a literature search to identify studies investigating early life exposures in relation to DNA methylation changes. In addition, we summarize the challenges faced in investigations of epigenetic effects, stemming from the peculiarities of this emergent and complex field. A proper systematic review and meta-analyses were not feasible given the nature of the evidence. RESULTS: We identified 7 studies on early life socioeconomic circumstances, 10 studies on childhood obesity, and 6 studies on early life nutrition all relating to DNA methylation changes that met the stipulated inclusion criteria. The pool of evidence gathered, albeit small, favours a role of epigenetics and DNA methylation in biological embedding, but replication of findings, multiple comparison corrections, publication bias, and causality are concerns remaining to be addressed in future investigations. CONCLUSIONS: Based on these results, we hypothesize that epigenetics, in particular DNA methylation, is a plausible mechanism through which early life exposures are biologically embedded. This review describes the current status of the field and acts as a stepping stone for future, better designed investigations on how early life exposures might become biologically embedded through epigenetic effects. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.