Inhibition of Na(+)-K(+)-ATPase by digoxin and its relation with energy expenditure and nutrient oxidation rate.

This study investigates the effects of digoxin, an inhibitor of the Na+ pump (Na(+)-K(+)-ATPase), on resting metabolic rate (RMR), respiratory quotient (RQ), and nutrient oxidation rate. Twelve healthy male subjects followed a double-blind protocol design and received either 1 mg/day digoxin or a placebo 2 days before indirect calorimetry measurements. Digoxin induced a 0.22 +/- 0.07 kJ/min or 3.8 +/- 1.5% (mean +/- SE, P = 0.01) decrease in RMR and a 0.40 +/- 0.13 kJ/min (P = 0.01) decrease in fat oxidation rate, whereas carbohydrate and protein oxidation rates did not change significantly. A dose-response relationship between serum digoxin and RQ was observed. These results suggest that digoxin reduces not only RMR but also fat oxidation rate by mechanisms that remain to be elucidated. Because a linkage and an association between genes coding the Na(+)-K(+)-ATPase and the RQ have been previously observed, the present demonstration of an effect of Na(+)-K(+)-ATPase inhibition on fat oxidation rate strengthens the concept that the activity of this enzyme may play a role in body weight regulation.

Some spectral properties of the canonical solution operator to $\bar\partial$ on weighted Fock spaces

We characterize the Schatten class membership of the canonical solution operator to $\overline{\partial}$ acting on $L^2(e^{-2\phi})$, where $\phi$ is a subharmonic function with $\Delta\phi$ a doubling measure. The obtained characterization is in terms of $\Delta\phi$. As part of our approach, we study Hankel operators with anti-analytic symbols acting on the corresponding Fock space of entire functions in $L^2(e^{-2\phi})$

Von Neumann-Morgenstern solution and convex descompositions of TU games

We study under which conditions the core of a game involved in a convex decomposition of another game turns out to be a stable set of the decomposed game. Some applications and numerical examples, including the remarkable Lucas¿ five player game with a unique stable set different from the core, are reckoning and analyzed.

Effect of drainage maintenance on the nutrient status on drained Scots pine mires

Tiivistelmä: Kunnostusojituksen vaikutus rämeiden ravinnetilaan

Immunothérapie: une solution dans les carcinomes épidermoïdes de la sphère ORL [Immunotherapy: a new alternative treatment for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma]

In the past decades, prognosis of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) has not improved even though treatment has made substantial progress. Since the description of immune response against some cancers, antitumoral immunotherapy has been studied to be used as adjunctive treatment in various cancer types. This article review contributions made in the field of immunotherapy on HNSCC in the past few years. It appears that this approach may play an important role in the treatment of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Among various TAAs, cancer testis antigens family may be promising candidates for specific immune therapy in HNSCC. Ongoing studies will confirm whether expression CTAs generate an immune response in clinical vaccine trials.

Monitoring the clinical introduction of a glutamine and antioxidant solution in critically ill trauma and burn patients

OBJECTIVE: Enteral glutamine supplementation and antioxidants have been shown to be beneficial in some categories of critically ill patients. This study investigated the impact on organ function and clinical outcome of an enteral solution enriched with glutamine and antioxidant micronutrients in patients with trauma and with burns. METHODS: This was a prospective study of a historical control group including critically ill, burned and major trauma patients (n = 86, 40 patients with burns and 46 with trauma, 43 in each group) on admission to an intensive care unit in a university hospital (matching for severity, age, and sex). The intervention aimed to deliver a 500-mL enteral solution containing 30 g of glutamine per day, selenium, zinc, and vitamin E (Gln-AOX) for a maximum of 10 d, in addition to control treatment consisting of enteral nutrition in all patients and intravenous trace elements in all burn patients. RESULTS: Patients were comparable at baseline, except for more inhalation injuries in the burn-Gln-AOX group (P = 0.10) and greater neurologic impairment in the trauma-Gln-AOX group (P = 0.022). Intestinal tolerance was good. The full 500-mL dose was rarely delivered, resulting in a low mean glutamine daily dose (22 g for burn patients and 16 g for trauma patients). In burn patients intravenous trace element delivery was superior to the enteral dose. The evolution of the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score and other outcome variables did not differ significantly between groups. C-reactive protein decreased faster in the Gln-AOX group. CONCLUSION: The Gln-AOX supplement was well tolerated in critically ill, injured patients, but did not improve outcome significantly. The delivery of glutamine below the 0.5-g/kg recommended dose in association with high intravenous trace element substitution doses in burn patients are likely to have blunted the impact by not reaching an efficient treatment dose. Further trials testing higher doses of Gln are required.

Mynodbcsv: Lightweight Zero-Config Database Solution for Handling Very Large CSV Files.

Volumes of data used in science and industry are growing rapidly. When researchers face the challenge of analyzing them, their format is often the first obstacle. Lack of standardized ways of exploring different data layouts requires an effort each time to solve the problem from scratch. Possibility to access data in a rich, uniform manner, e.g. using Structured Query Language (SQL) would offer expressiveness and user-friendliness. Comma-separated values (CSV) are one of the most common data storage formats. Despite its simplicity, with growing file size handling it becomes non-trivial. Importing CSVs into existing databases is time-consuming and troublesome, or even impossible if its horizontal dimension reaches thousands of columns. Most databases are optimized for handling large number of rows rather than columns, therefore, performance for datasets with non-typical layouts is often unacceptable. Other challenges include schema creation, updates and repeated data imports. To address the above-mentioned problems, I present a system for accessing very large CSV-based datasets by means of SQL. It's characterized by: "no copy" approach - data stay mostly in the CSV files; "zero configuration" - no need to specify database schema; written in C++, with boost [1], SQLite [2] and Qt [3], doesn't require installation and has very small size; query rewriting, dynamic creation of indices for appropriate columns and static data retrieval directly from CSV files ensure efficient plan execution; effortless support for millions of columns; due to per-value typing, using mixed text/numbers data is easy; very simple network protocol provides efficient interface for MATLAB and reduces implementation time for other languages. The software is available as freeware along with educational videos on its website [4]. It doesn't need any prerequisites to run, as all of the libraries are included in the distribution package. I test it against existing database solutions using a battery of benchmarks and discuss the results.

Sedimen-water nutrient fluxes: Preliminary results of in situ measurements in Alfaques Bay, Ebro River Delta.

Sediment-water exchanges of oxygen, ammonium, nitrate, total dissolved nitrogen, phosphate and total dissolved phosphorus were measured by means of an in situ incubator of 7 1 volume and 700 cm2 base area. The incubations lasted for three hours and were done over a whole season on different kinds of sediments in Alfaques Bay. We present some preliminary results on: i) methodological aspects, ii) spatial and temporal variability of fluxes, and iii) estimates of contribution of benthic nutrient regeneration relative to total nutrient loading of the Bay. Oxygen uptake averaged 1700 mmo1 m-2 h-1 (range 200-3500); no differences were found between sandy and muddy sediments. The release of ammonia from the sediment averaged 70 mmo1 m-2 h-1 and was higher in muddy sediments than in sandy ones. Very low to null nitrate and nitrite fluxes and only small fluxes of organic nitrogen were detected. We conclude that ammonium release from sediment is the major path of nitrogen regeneration. Some sediments removed dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP) from the water and released dissolved organic phosphorus (DOP). Additional manipulative experiments revealed DRP release under particular conditions (turbulence, anoxia). From these data, we estimate that at least 50% of the nitrogen requirements of phytoplankton in the area may be supplied by benthic remineralization.

Effects of riparian vegetation removal on nutrient retention in a Mediterranean stream

We examined the effects of riparian vegetation removal on algal dynamics and stream nutrient retention efficiency by comparing NH4-N and PO4-P uptake lengths from a logged and an unlogged reach in Riera Major, a forested Mediterranean stream in northeastern Spain. From June to September 1995, we executed 6 short-term additions of N (as NH4Cl) and P (as Na2HPO4) in a 200-m section to measure nutrient uptake lengths. The study site included 2 clearly differentiated reaches in terms of canopy cover by riparian trees: the first 100 m were completely logged (i.e., the logged reach) and the remaining 100 m were left intact (i.e., the shaded reach). Trees were removed from the banks of the logged reach in the winter previous to our sampling. In the shaded reach, riparian vegetation was dominated by alders (Alnus glutinosa). The study was conducted during summer and fall months when differences in light availability between the 2 reaches were greatest because of forest canopy conditions. Algal biomass and % of stream surface covered by algae were higher in the logged than in the shaded reach, indicating that logging had a stimulatory effect on algae in the stream. Overall, nutrient retention efficiency was higher (i.e., shorter uptake lengths) in the logged than in the shaded reach, especially for PO4-P. Despite a greater increase in PO4-P retention efficiency relative to that of NH4-N following logging, retention efficiency for NH4-N was higher than for PO4-P in both study reaches. The PO4-P mass-transfer coefficient was correlated with primary production in both study reaches, indicating that algal activity plays an important role in controlling PO4-P dynamics in this stream. In contrast, the NH4-N mass-transfer coefficient showed a positive relation-ship only with % of algal coverage in the logged reach, and was not correlated with any algal-related parameter in the shaded reach. The lack of correlation with algal production suggests that mechanisms other than algal activity (i.e., microbial heterotrophic processes or abiotic mechanisms) may also influence NH4-N retention in this stream. Overall, this study shows that logging disturbances in small shaded streams may alter in-stream ecological features that lead to changes in stream nutrient retention efficiency. Moreover, it emphasizes that alteration of the tight linkage between the stream channel and the adjacent riparian zone may directly and indirectly impact biogeochemical processes with implications for stream ecosystem functioning.

Effects of long-term irrigation with treated wastewater. Part I: Evolution of soil physico-chemical properties

The long-term impact of irrigation on a Mediterranean sandy soil irrigated with Treated wastewater (TWW) since 1980 was evaluated. The main soil properties (CEC, pH, size distribution, exchangeable cations and chloride, hydraulic conductivity) as well as the organic matter and Cu, Cr and Pb speciation in an irrigated soil and a non-irrigated control soil at various soil depths were monitored and compared during a 2 years experiment. In this first part, the evolution of the physico-chemical soil properties was described. The irrigation with TWW was beneficial with regard to water and nutrient supplying. All the exchangeable cations other than K(+) were higher in the irrigated soil than in the reference one. A part of the exchangeable cations was not fixed on the exchange complex but stored as labile salts or in concentrated soil solution. Despite the very sandy soil texture, both saturated and unsaturated hydraulic conductivity exhibited a significant diminution in the irrigated soil, but remained high enough to allow water percolation during rainy periods and subsequent leaching of accumulated salts, preventing soil salinization. In the irrigated soil, exchangeable sodium percentage (ESP) exhibited high values (20% on average) and the soil organic C was lower than in the reference. No significant effect was noticed on soil mineralogical composition due to irrigation. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Clonal variation in nutrient content in woody biomass of hybrid aspen (Populus tremula L. x P. tremuloides Michx.)

Abstract