Distribution of Lymnaeidae (Mollusca: Pulmonata), intermediate snail hosts of Fasciola hepatica in Venezuela

An extensive malacological survey was carried out between 2005-2009 in order to clarify the exact number of lymnaeid species which may be intermediate hosts of Fasciola hepatica in Venezuela. Four species were discovered during this survey, including two local species: Lymnaea cubensis and Lymnaea cousini and two exotic species: Lymnaea truncatula and Lymnaea columella. The most common local species was L. cubensis which was found at 16 out of the 298 sampling sites. This species has a large distribution area throughout the Northern part of Venezuela and was encountered from sea level to an altitude of 1,802 m in state of Trujillo. The second local species L. cousini was collected at only two sites of the Andean Region at altitudes of 3,550 m and 4,040 m, respectively. The European L. truncatula was found at 24 sites all located in the states of Mérida and Táchira at an altitude varying between 1,540-4,000 m. The respective distribution areas of L. cubensis and L. truncatula do not appear to overlap, but more detailed malacological surveys are needed. The fourth lymnaeid species, L. columella was collected in a canal from Mérida at an altitude of 1,929 m and in an irrigation canal from the state of Guárico, at an altitude of 63 m. The role of these four lymnaeid species in the transmission of fascioliasis in Venezuela is discussed.

Dissociation of allocentric and egocentric orientation: Effect on hippocampal place cells and place navigation

Navigation by means of cognitive maps appears to require the hippocampus; hippocampal place cells (PCs) appear to store spatial memories because their discharge is confined to cell-specific places called firing fields (FFs). Experiments with rats manipulated idiothetic and landmark-related information to understand the relationship between PC activity and spatial rotation. Rotating a circular arena in the caused a discrepancy between these cuse. This discrepancy caused most FFs to disappear in both the arena and room reference frames. However, FFs persisted in the rotating arena frame when the discrepancy was reduced by darkness or by a card in the arena. The discrepancy was increased by "field clamping" the rat in a room-defined FF location by rotations that countered its locomotion. Most FFs disspared and reappeared an hour or more after the clamp. Place-avoidance experiments showed that navigation uses independent idiothetic and exteroceptive memories. Rats learned to avoid the unmarked footshock region within a circular arena. When acquired on the stable arena in the light, the location of the punishment was learned by using both room and idiothetic cues; extinction in the dark transferred to the following session in the light. If, however, extinction occured during rotation, only the arena-frame avoidance was extinguished in darkness; the room-defined location was avoided when the light were turned back on. Idiothetic memory of room-defined avoidance was not formed during rotation in light; regardless of rotation with a randomly dispersed pellet. The resulting behaviour alternated between random pellet searching and target-directed navigation, making it possible to examine PC correlates of these two classes of spatial behaviour. The independence of idiothetic and exteroceptive spatial memories and the disruption of PC firing during rotation suggest that PCs may not be necessary for spatial cognition; this idea can be tested by recording during place-avoidance and preference tasks.

Variability of indication criteria in knee and hip replacement: an observational study

BACKGROUND. Total knee (TKR) and hip (THR) replacement (arthroplasty) are effective surgical procedures that relieve pain, improve patients' quality of life and increase functional capacity. Studies on variations in medical practice usually place the indications for performing these procedures to be highly variable, because surgeons appear to follow different criteria when recommending surgery in patients with different severity levels. We therefore proposed a study to evaluate inter-hospital variability in arthroplasty indication. METHODS. The pre-surgical condition of 1603 patients included was compared by their personal characteristics, clinical situation and self-perceived health status. Patients were asked to complete two health-related quality of life questionnaires: the generic SF-12 (Short Form) and the specific WOMAC (Western Ontario and Mcmaster Universities) scale. The type of patient undergoing primary arthroplasty was similar in the 15 different hospitals evaluated.The variability in baseline WOMAC score between hospitals in THR and TKR indication was described by range, mean and standard deviation (SD), mean and standard deviation weighted by the number of procedures at each hospital, high/low ratio or extremal quotient (EQ5-95), variation coefficient (CV5-95) and weighted variation coefficient (WCV5-95) for 5-95 percentile range. The variability in subjective and objective signs was evaluated using median, range and WCV5-95. The appropriateness of the procedures performed was calculated using a specific threshold proposed by Quintana et al for assessing pain and functional capacity. RESULTS. The variability expressed as WCV5-95 was very low, between 0.05 and 0.11 for all three dimensions on WOMAC scale for both types of procedure in all participating hospitals. The variability in the physical and mental SF-12 components was very low for both types of procedure (0.08 and 0.07 for hip and 0.03 and 0.07 for knee surgery patients). However, a moderate-high variability was detected in subjective-objective signs. Among all the surgeries performed, approximately a quarter of them could be considered to be inappropriate. CONCLUSIONS. A greater inter-hospital variability was observed for objective than for subjective signs for both procedures, suggesting that the differences in clinical criteria followed by surgeons when indicating arthroplasty are the main responsible factors for the variation in surgery rates.

La mujer y la geografia universitaria española

This article lies within the sphere of studies initiated recently in various social sciences and which aim to introduce women's problems as an element of analysis, or in other words, the gender perspective. In the field of geography, the earliest contributions of this nature were made in English-speaking countries. It is only in the 1980s that similar contributions begin to appear in Spanish geography, albeit sporadically . In the first part of this article, an analysis is made of the presence of women geographers in Spanish universities, based on a questionnaire submitted to twenty-six departments of geography. The questionnaires provide information on the age, sex and marital status of women staff, and other relevant facts. It becomes evident that women lecturers are in the minority in Spanish university Geography Departments, especially in the top posts, although the percentage compares favourably with English-speaking countries. The second part of the article consists of a study of the written contributions of women geographers through the analysis of the various geographical magazines published by geography departments and other related bodies. The author reaches the conclusion that the percentage of articles written by women geographers is even lower than the corresponding percentage of staff members. Especially noteworthy is the very limited number of articles in the fields of physical geography and geographical theory, in contrast to a certain tendency to publish studies on, for example, population or urban topics with a highly restricted territorial scope

Statistical modeling on coordinates

This paper is a first draft of the principle of statistical modelling on coordinates. Several causes —which would be long to detail—have led to this situation close to the deadline for submitting papers to CODAWORK’03. The main of them is the fast development of the approach along thelast months, which let appear previous drafts as obsolete. The present paper contains the essential parts of the state of the art of this approach from my point of view. I would like to acknowledge many clarifying discussions with the group of people working in this field in Girona, Barcelona, Carrick Castle, Firenze, Berlin, G¨ottingen, and Freiberg. They have given a lot of suggestions and ideas. Nevertheless, there might be still errors or unclear aspects which are exclusively my fault. I hope this contribution serves as a basis for further discussions and new developments

Towards a real-time vision-based navigation system for a small-class UUV

This paper deals with the problem of navigation for an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) through image mosaicking. It represents a first step towards a real-time vision-based navigation system for a small-class low-cost UUV. We propose a navigation system composed by: (i) an image mosaicking module which provides velocity estimates; and (ii) an extended Kalman filter based on the hydrodynamic equation of motion, previously identified for this particular UUV. The obtained system is able to estimate the position and velocity of the robot. Moreover, it is able to deal with visual occlusions that usually appear when the sea bottom does not have enough visual features to solve the correspondence problem in a certain area of the trajectory

Do peroxisome proliferating compounds pose a hepatocarcinogenic hazard to humans?

The purpose of the workshop "Do Peroxisome Proliferating Compounds Pose a Hepatocarcinogenic Hazard to Humans?" was to provide a review of the current state of the science on the relationship between peroxisome proliferation and hepatocarcinogenesis. There has been much debate regarding the mechanism by which peroxisome proliferators may induce liver tumors in rats and mice and whether these events occur in humans. A primary goal of the workshop was to determine where consensus might be reached regarding the interpretation of these data relative to the assessment of potential human risks. A core set of biochemical and cellular events has been identified in the rodent strains that are susceptible to the hepatocarcinogenic effects of peroxisome proliferators, including peroxisome proliferation, increases in fatty acyl-CoA oxidase levels, microsomal fatty acid oxidation, excess production of hydrogen peroxide, increases in rates of cell proliferation, and expression and activation of the alpha subtype of the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR-alpha). Such effects have not been identified clinically in liver biopsies from humans exposed to peroxisome proliferators or in in vitro studies with human hepatocytes, although PPAR-alpha is expressed at a very low level in human liver. Consensus was reached regarding the significant intermediary roles of cell proliferation and PPAR-alpha receptor expression and activation in tumor formation. Information considered necessary for characterizing a compound as a peroxisome proliferating hepatocarcinogen include hepatomegaly, enhanced cell proliferation, and an increase in hepatic acyl-CoA oxidase and/or palmitoyl-CoA oxidation levels. Given the lack of genotoxic potential of most peroxisome proliferating agents, and since humans appear likely to be refractive or insensitive to the tumorigenic response, risk assessments based on tumor data may not be appropriate. However, nontumor data on intermediate endpoints would provide appropriate toxicological endpoints to determine a point of departure such as the LED10 or NOAEL which would be the basis for a margin-of-exposure (MOE) risk assessment approach. Pertinent factors to be considered in the MOE evaluation would include the slope of the dose-response curve at the point of departure, the background exposure levels, and variability in the human response.

Isolated office hypertension: a prehypertensive state?

OBJECTIVE AND METHOD: Isolated office hypertension, defined as hypertensive blood pressure values in a medical setting but normal self-measured or ambulatory-recorded blood pressures, is frequently encountered in clinical practice. Yet, whether this condition represents a transient state in the development of a sustained ambulatory hypertension is still unknown as no long-term analysis of the evolution of ambulatory blood pressure has been carried out in patients with isolated office hypertension. To evaluate whether such patients should be considered as truly normotensive or hypertensive, we have studied the long-term changes in office and ambulatory blood pressures in 81 patients in whom isolated office hypertension was observed between 1982 and 1988. RESULTS: After a 5-6 year follow-up, 60 of the 81 patients had a mean 12 h daytime ambulatory blood pressure greater than 140/90 mmHg, suggesting an evolution towards ambulatory hypertension. The development of hypertension could not be predicted on the basis of the follow-up office blood pressures as these tended to decrease during the follow-up period. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study suggest that patients with isolated office hypertension should not be considered as truly normotensive individuals. Hence, these patients require a careful medical follow-up. Office blood pressure readings alone, however, do not appear to provide a good indicator of the long-term outcome of isolated office hypertension.

La maladie de Still de l'adulte [Adult-onset Still's disease]

La maladie de Still de l'adulte reste un diagnostic souvent évoqué, mais difficile à poser en l'absence d'anomalie clinique ou de laboratoire pathognomonique. Il est encore un diagnostic d'exclusion et la difficulté réside dans l'utilisation rationnelle et adéquate de ces tests d'exclusion. Le traitement reste quant à lui pragmatique, basé sur une analyse de situation et une définition claire des objectifs. Finalement, si les traitements biologiques semblent efficaces, ils restent réservés aux cas résistant aux traitements conventionnels ou corticodépendants. If the diagnosis of Adult-onset Still disease is often entertained, the disease remains difficult to diagnose in the absence of any specific clinical or laboratory anomaly. Diagnosis is still a diagnosis of exclusion, and the difficulty rests in the rational and appropriate use of those exclusion tests. Treatment is pragmatic, based on an analysis of the situation and a clear definition of the objectives. Finally, if biological treatments appear efficient, they should be reserved for patients resistant to conventional therapy or corticodependant

Implementation of a robust coded structured light technique for dynamic 3D measurements

This paper presents the implementation details of a coded structured light system for rapid shape acquisition of unknown surfaces. Such techniques are based on the projection of patterns onto a measuring surface and grabbing images of every projection with a camera. Analyzing the pattern deformations that appear in the images, 3D information of the surface can be calculated. The implemented technique projects a unique pattern so that it can be used to measure moving surfaces. The structure of the pattern is a grid where the color of the slits are selected using a De Bruijn sequence. Moreover, since both axis of the pattern are coded, the cross points of the grid have two codewords (which permits to reconstruct them very precisely), while pixels belonging to horizontal and vertical slits have also a codeword. Different sets of colors are used for horizontal and vertical slits, so the resulting pattern is invariant to rotation. Therefore, the alignment constraint between camera and projector considered by a lot of authors is not necessary

A system to reduce the effect of CCDs saturation

Colour image segmentation based on the hue component presents some problems due to the physical process of image formation. One of that problems is colour clipping, which appear when at least one of the sensor components is saturated. We have designed a system, that works for a trained set of colours, to recover the chromatic information of those pixels on which colour has been clipped. The chromatic correction method is based on the fact that hue and saturation are invariant to the uniform scaling of the three RGB components. The proposed method has been validated by means of a specific colour image processing board that has allowed its execution in real time. We show experimental results of the application of our method

Acute schistosomiasis mansoni: revisited and reconsidered

Acute schistosomiasis is a systemic hypersensitivity reaction against the migrating schistosomula and eggs. A variety of clinical manifestations appear during the migration of schistosomes in humans: cercarial dermatitis, fever, pneumonia, diarrhoea, hepatomegaly, splenomegaly, skin lesions, liver abscesses, brain tumours and myeloradiculopathy. Hypereosinophilia is common and aids diagnosis. The disease has been overlooked, misdiagnosed, underestimated and underreported in endemic areas, but risk groups are well known, including military recruits, some religious congregations, rural tourists and people practicing recreational water sports. Serology may help in diagnosis, but the finding of necrotic-exudative granulomata in a liver biopsy specimen is pathognomonic. Differentials include malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, kala-azar, prolonged Salmonella bacteraemia, lymphoma, toxocariasis, liver abscesses and fever of undetermined origin. For symptomatic hospitalised patients, treatment with steroids and schistosomicides is recommended. Treatment is curative in those timely diagnosed.

Confabulation in schizophrenia: a neuropsychological study.

Confabulation has been documented in schizophrenia, but its neuropsychological correlates appear to be different from those of confabulation in neurological disease states. Forty-five schizophrenic patients and 37 controls were administered a task requiring them to recall fables. They also underwent testing with a range of memory and executive tasks. The patients with schizophrenia produced significantly more confabulations than the controls. After correcting for multiple comparisons, confabulation was not significantly associated with memory impairment, and was associated with impairment on only one of eight executive measures, the Brixton Test. Confabulation scores were also associated with impairment on two semantic memory tests. Confabulation was correlated with intrusion errors in recall, but not false positive errors in a recognition task. The findings suggest that confabulation in schizophrenia is unrelated to the episodic memory impairment seen in the disorder. However, the association with a circumscribed deficit in executive function could be consistent with a defective strategic retrieval account of confabulation similar to that of Moscovitch and co-workers, interacting with defective semantic memory.

Bone Mineral Density and Serum Levels of Soluble Tumor Necrosis Factors, Estradiol, and Osteoprotegerin in Postmenopausal Women with Cirrhosis after Viral Hepatitis

CONTEXT: Cirrhosis after viral hepatitis has been identified as a risk factor for osteoporosis in men. However, in postmenopausal women, most studies have evaluated the effect of primary biliary cirrhosis, but little is known about the effect of viral cirrhosis on bone mass [bone mineral density (BMD)] and bone metabolism. OBJECTIVE: Our objective was to assess the effect of viral cirrhosis on BMD and bone metabolism in postmenopausal women. DESIGN: We conducted a cross-sectional descriptive study. SETTING AND PATIENTS: We studied 84 postmenopausal female outpatients with viral cirrhosis and 96 healthy postmenopausal women from the general community. BMD was measured by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry at lumbar spine (LS) and femoral neck (FN). RESULTS: The percentage with osteoporosis did not significantly differ between patients (LS, 43.1%; FN, 32.2%) and controls (LS, 41.2%; FN, 29.4%), and there was no difference in BMD (z-score) between groups. Serum concentrations of soluble TNF receptors, estradiol, and osteoprotegerin (OPG) were significantly higher in patients vs. controls (P < 0.001, P < 0.05, and P < 0.05, respectively). No significant difference was observed in urinary deoxypyridinoline. Serum OPG levels were positively correlated with soluble TNF receptors (r = 0.35; P < 0.02) and deoxypyridinoline (r = 0.37; P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that bone mass and bone resorption rates do not differ between postmenopausal women with viral cirrhosis and healthy postmenopausal controls and suggests that viral cirrhosis does not appear to increase the risk of osteoporosis in these women. High serum estradiol and OPG concentrations may contribute to preventing the bone loss associated with viral cirrhosis in postmenopausal women.

Can vouchers deliver? An evaluation of subsidies for maternal health care in Cambodia

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of vouchers for maternity care in public health-care facilities on the utilization of maternal health-care services in Cambodia. METHODS: The study involved data from the 2010 Cambodian Demographic and Health Survey, which covered births between 2005 and 2010. The effect of voucher schemes, first implemented in 2007, on the utilization of maternal health-care services was quantified using a difference-in-differences method that compared changes in utilization in districts with voucher schemes with changes in districts without them. FINDINGS: Overall, voucher schemes were associated with an increase of 10.1 percentage points (pp) in the probability of delivery in a public health-care facility; among women from the poorest 40% of households, the increase was 15.6 pp. Vouchers were responsible for about one fifth of the increase observed in institutional deliveries in districts with schemes. Universal voucher schemes had a larger effect on the probability of delivery in a public facility than schemes targeting the poorest women. Both types of schemes increased the probability of receiving postnatal care, but the increase was significant only for non-poor women. Universal, but not targeted, voucher schemes significantly increased the probability of receiving antenatal care. CONCLUSION: Voucher schemes increased deliveries in health centres and, to a lesser extent, improved antenatal and postnatal care. However, schemes that targeted poorer women did not appear to be efficient since these women were more likely than less poor women to be encouraged to give birth in a public health-care facility, even with universal voucher schemes.