Atypical actinobacillosis in bulls in Argentina: granulomatous dermatitis and lymphadenitis

Actinobacillosis is a common cause of sporadic infection in cattle. It was mostly characterized as a pyogranulomatous inflammation of the tongue, but also soft tissues as lymph nodes, other digestive tract localization and skin. The aim of this study was to describe an episode of granulomatous dermatitis and lymphadenitis affecting a bull herd in Argentina during 2010. Actinobacillus lignieresii was isolated from samples collected from one of the affected bulls, and characteristic lesions were observed. Lesions other than 'wooden tongue' are usually uncommon; however, actinobacillosis should be included as a differential diagnosis for cutaneous diseases.

Outbreak of autochthonous canine visceral leishmaniasis in Santa Catarina, Brazil

The present study reports the first outbreak of autochthonous canine visceral leishmaniasis in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, southern Brazil. Following the report of two cases of CVL, the Control Center of Zoonotic Diseases conducted a serological survey by ELISA and IFAT assays in seven districts of the Santa Catarina Island. Eleven seropositive dogs of autochthonous transmission were used in the present study. Infection by Leishmania sp. was confirmed by parasitological examination of bone marrow, liver, spleen and lymph nodes, culture in Schneider's medium and PCR. Leishmania sp. isolates were characterized by PCR-RFLP and hybridization with specific probes, allowing for the identification of Leishmania infantum. Autochthonous transmission of this disease in an area with high tourist traffic presents a major public health concern and signifies the emergence of an important zoonosis in southern Brazil. Therefore, the implementation of surveillance and control measures is imperative to prevent the spread of the disease among the canine population as well as transmission to the human population.

Development of an indirect ELISA to detect Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis specific antibodies in sheep employing T1 strain culture supernatant as antigen

Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis is the etiologic agent of caseous lymphadenitis (CLA), a chronic disease that affects goats and sheep, characterized by granuloma formation in subcutaneous and internal lymph nodes. CLA causes significant economic losses to commercial goat herds. In this study, we aimed to test secreted antigens secreted from T1 strain bacteria grown in brain heart infusion (BHI) broth in an indirect ELISA system to determine the presence of specific immunoglobulins against C. pseudotuberculosis. We analyzed the BHI antigen electrophoretic profile and the recognition pattern by infected sheep sera samples. The ELISA results were compared with multiplex PCR assay and IFN-gamma production. The ELISA was able to discriminate between negative and positive animals, with a sensitivity of 89% and a specificity of 99%, using microbiological isolation as gold standard. When this assay was compared with multiplex PCR and specific IFN-gamma quantification, six discrepant results were found among thirty-two samples. We concluded that the ELISA using antigens secreted from C. pseudotuberculosis T1 strain growth in BHI broth culture can be used for the serodiagnosis of CLA in sheep.

Mapping the sites of latency and reactivation by bovine herpesvirus 5 (BoHV-5) and a thymidine kinase-deleted BoHV-5 in lambs

A thymidine kinase (tk)-deleted bovine herpesvirus 5 (BoHV-5tkΔ) was previously shown to establish latent infection and reactivate - even poorly - in a sheep model (Cadore et al. 2013). As TK-negative alphaherpesviruses are unlike to reactivate in neural tissue, this study investigated the sites of latency and reactivation by this recombinant in lambs. For this, groups of lambs were inoculated intranasally with the parental BoHV-5 strain (SV-507/99) or with the recombinant BoHV-5tkΔ. During latent infection (40 days post-inoculation, pi), the distribution of recombinant virus DNA in neural and non-neural tissues was similar to that of the parental virus. Parental and recombinant virus DNA was consistently detected by PCR in trigeminal ganglia (TGs); frequently in palatine and pharyngeal tonsils and, less frequently in the retropharyngeal lymph nodes. In addition, latent DNA of both viruses was detected in several areas of the brain. After dexamethasone (Dx) administration (day 40pi), the recombinant virus was barely detected in nasal secretions contrasting with marked shedding of the parental virus. In tissues of lambs euthanized at day 3 post-Dx treatment (pDx), reverse-transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) for a late viral mRNA (glycoprotein D gene) demonstrated reactivation of parental virus in neural (TGs) and lymphoid tissues (tonsils, lymph node). In contrast, recombinant virus mRNA was detected only in lymphoid tissues. These results demonstrate that BoHV-5 and the recombinant BoHV-5tkΔ do establish latent infection in neural and non-neural sites. Reactivation of the recombinant BoHV-5tkΔ, however, appeared to occur only in non-neural sites. In anyway, the ability of a tk-deleted strain to reactivate latent infection deserves attention in the context of vaccine safety.

Uterine lymphangiography: comparison of two methods for locating the medial iliac lymph node

Different methods for lymphatic mapping in dogs, such as infusing tissues with vital dyes or radioactive substances, have been studied, aiming at the early detection of lymph node metastasis. Thus, one could anticipate therapeutic measures and, consequently, prolong the survival and improve the quality of life of the patients. The objectives of this experiment were to locate the nodes responsible for draining the uterine body and horns and to try to establish the relationship between the uterus and the medial iliac lymph nodes to contribute to the early diagnosis and prognosis of uterine disorders. We studied 15 female dogs divided into two groups (5 dead and 10 intraoperative ovariohysterectomy bitches). The dye used was patent blue V (Patent Bleu V®). It was observed that the iliac lymph node chain receives much of the uterine (horns) drainage. This method should be considered for safer studies of uterine sanity. This information suggests that evaluating these lymph nodes will allow correlating changes in their physiological status with uterine pathologies.

Systemic acanthamoebiasis associated with canine distemper in dogs in the semiarid region of Paraíba, Brazil

Infections by free-living amoebae can cause systemic disease in animals and humans. We describe the epidemiological, clinical and pathological aspects of disseminated acanthamoebiasis associated with canine distemper in three dogs of the semiarid region of Paraíba, Northeastern Brazil. Affected dogs developed progressive neurological and respiratory signs that progressed to death within in two to 20 days. Gross lesions were irregular and with yellow-reddish nodules randomly distributed in the lungs, heart, kidneys, spleen, lymph nodes, adrenals, and intestine. One dog had foci of malacia in the parietal cortex and another one in nucleus of brain basis. Histologically, pyogranulomas with areas of necrosis and hemorrhage in all organs affected were observed, associated with myriads of intralesional amoebic trophozoites. All three cases were concomitant canine distemper, that possibly triggered immunosuppression in the dogs. The diagnosis was performed through microscopic findings of infection by free-living amoebae and confirmed Acanthamoeba sp. by immunohistochemistry

Pythiosis in sheep from Paraná, southern Brazil

Abstract: This paper reports pythiosis in a sheep from southwestern Paraná, Brazil, confirmed by indirect ELISA (Enzime-Linked Immunosorbent Assay) and immunohistochemistry, as well as it describes the macro and microscopic injuries, in order to understand the pathogenicity. A 4-year-old ewe from a flock of 30 Santa Inês sheep, raised semi-extensively with access to a weir, showed cachexia, bilateral enlargement in nasal region, a serous and bloody secretion with a fetid odor from its nose and swollen submandibular and retropharyngeal lymph nodes. Blood collection was performed trough jugular vein puncture in order to make complete blood cell count (CBC) and to obtain serum for the subsequent serological examination. As the hematological counts were within the normal range for sheep, the animal was euthanized and submitted to necropsy. Indirect ELISA resulted positive for pythiosis. Necropsy revealed necrosis of the hard palate with a diameter of 3.5cm and extending up to the nasal cavity, forming a fistula. Submandibular and retropharyngeal lymph nodes were enlarged and edematous on section. Microscopic findings for submandibular and retropharyngeal lymph nodes consisted in moderate infiltration of eosinophils mainly in the subcapsular sinus, characterizing reactive eosinophilic lymphadenitis. The nasal cavity revealed rhinitis and oral cavity stomatitis with necro-eosinophilic and pronounced multifocal granulomatous infiltration and presence of hyphae. Hyphae found in palate and nasal cavity were positive for Pythium insidiosum by Grocott's method and immunohistochemistry, the last one considered to be confirmatory for the pathogen diagnostic. This report has an important epidemiological aspect, as it is the first case of pythiosis in sheep confirmed by serology in South Brazil and an alert of possible infection by the pathogen in floodplains.

Libyan breast cancer: Health services and biology. Diagnosis delay and prognostic value of DNA pploidy, S-phase fraction, and Ki-67 and Bcl-2 immunohistochemistry

The aim of this study was to investigate the diagnosis delay and its impact on the stage of disease. The study also evaluated a nuclear DNA content, immunohistochemical expression of Ki-67 and bcl-2, and the correlation of these biological features with the clinicopathological features and patient outcome. 200 Libyan women, diagnosed during 2008–2009 were interviewed about the period from the first symptoms to the final histological diagnosis of breast cancer. Also retrospective preclinical and clinical data were collected from medical records on a form (questionnaire) in association with the interview. Tumor material of the patients was collected and nuclear DNA content analysed using DNA image cytometry. The expression of Ki-67 and bcl-2 were assessed using immunohistochemistry (IHC). The studies described in this thesis show that the median of diagnosis time for women with breast cancer was 7.5 months and 56% of patients were diagnosed within a period longer than 6 months. Inappropriate reassurance that the lump was benign was an important reason for prolongation of the diagnosis time. Diagnosis delay was also associated with initial breast symptom(s) that did not include a lump, old age, illiteracy, and history of benign fibrocystic disease. The patients who showed diagnosis delay had bigger tumour size (p<0.0001), positive lymph nodes (p<0.0001), and high incidence of late clinical stages (p<0.0001). Biologically, 82.7% of tumors were aneuploid and 17.3% were diploid. The median SPF of tumors was 11% while the median positivity of Ki-67 was 27.5%. High Ki-67 expression was found in 76% of patients, and high SPF values in 56% of patients. Positive bcl-2 expression was found in 62.4% of tumors. 72.2% of the bcl-2 positive samples were ER-positive. Patients who had tumor with DNA aneuploidy, high proliferative activity and negative bcl-2 expression were associated with a high grade of malignancy and short survival. The SPF value is useful cell proliferation marker in assessing prognosis, and the decision cut point of 11% for SPF in the Libyan material was clearly significant (p<0.0001). Bcl-2 is a powerful prognosticator and an independent predictor of breast cancer outcome in the Libyan material (p<0.0001). Libyan breast cancer was investigated in these studies from two different aspects: health services and biology. The results show that diagnosis delay is a very serious problem in Libya and is associated with complex interactions between many factors leading to advanced stages, and potentially to high mortality. Cytometric DNA variables, proliferative markers (Ki-67 and SPF), and oncoprotein bcl-2 negativity reflect the aggressive behavior of Libyan breast cancer and could be used with traditional factors to predict the outcome of individual patients, and to select appropriate therapy.

Manifestation of the pairing symmetry in the vortex core structure in iron-based superconductors

The superconducting gap is a basic character of a superconductor. While the cuprates and conventional phonon-mediated superconductors are characterized by distinct d- and s-wave pairing symmetries with nodal and nodeless gap distributions respectively, the superconducting gap distributions in iron-based superconductors are rather diversified. While nodeless gap distributions have been directly observed in Ba1–xKxFe2As2, BaFe2–xCoxAs2, LiFeAs, KxFe2–ySe2, and FeTe1–xSex, the signatures of a nodal superconducting gap have been reported in LaOFeP, LiFeP, FeSe, KFe2As2, BaFe2–xRuxAs2, and BaFe2(As1–xPx)2. Due to the multiplicity of the Fermi surface in these compounds s± and d pairing states can be both nodeless and nodal. A nontrivial orbital structure of the order parameter, in particular the presence of the gap nodes, leads to effects in which the disorder is much richer in dx2–y2-wave superconductors than in conventional materials. In contrast to the s-wave case, the Anderson theorem does not work, and nonmagnetic impurities exhibit a strong pair-breaking influence. In addition, a finite concentration of disorder produces a nonzero density of quasiparticle states at zero energy, which results in a considerable modification of the thermodynamic and transport properties at low temperatures. The influence of order parameter symmetry on the vortex core structure in iron-based pnictide and chalcogenide superconductors has been investigated in the framework of quasiclassical Eilenberger equations. The main results of the thesis are as follows. The vortex core characteristics, such as, cutoff parameter, ξh, and core size, ξ2, determined as the distance at which density of the vortex supercurrent reaches its maximum, are calculated in wide temperature, impurity scattering rate, and magnetic field ranges. The cutoff parameter, ξh(B; T; Г), determines the form factor of the flux-line lattice, which can be obtained in _SR, NMR, and SANS experiments. A comparison among the applied pairing symmetries is done. In contrast to s-wave systems, in dx2–y2-wave superconductors, ξh/ξc2 always increases with the scattering rate Г. Field dependence of the cutoff parameter affects strongly on the second moment of the magnetic field distributions, resulting in a significant difference with nonlocal London theory. It is found that normalized ξ2/ξc2(B/Bc2) dependence is increasing with pair-breaking impurity scattering (interband scattering for s±-wave and intraband impurity scattering for d-wave superconductors). Here, ξc2 is the Ginzburg-Landau coherence length determined from the upper critical field Bc2 = Φ0/2πξ2 c2, where Φ0 is a flux quantum. Two types of ξ2/ξc2 magnetic field dependences are obtained for s± superconductors. It has a minimum at low temperatures and small impurity scattering transforming in monotonously decreasing function at strong scattering and high temperatures. The second kind of this dependence has been also found for d-wave superconductors at intermediate and high temperatures. In contrast, impurity scattering results in decreasing of ξ2/ξc2(B/Bc2) dependence in s++ superconductors. A reasonable agreement between calculated ξh/ξc2 values and those obtained experimentally in nonstoichiometric BaFe2–xCoxAs2 (μSR) and stoichiometric LiFeAs (SANS) was found. The values of ξh/ξc2 are much less than one in case of the first compound and much more than one for the other compound. This is explained by different influence of two factors: the value of impurity scattering rate and pairing symmetry.

Modelling of hydrogen stratification and gas mixing in containment using the APROS code

Hydrogen stratification and atmosphere mixing is a very important phenomenon in nuclear reactor containments when severe accidents are studied and simulated. Hydrogen generation, distribution and accumulation in certain parts of containment may pose a great risk to pressure increase induced by hydrogen combustion, and thus, challenge the integrity of NPP containment. The accurate prediction of hydrogen distribution is important with respect to the safety design of a NPP. Modelling methods typically used for containment analyses include both lumped parameter and field codes. The lumped parameter method is universally used in the containment codes, because its versatility, flexibility and simplicity. The lumped parameter method allows fast, full-scale simulations, where different containment geometries with relevant engineering safety features can be modelled. Lumped parameter gas stratification and mixing modelling methods are presented and discussed in this master’s thesis. Experimental research is widely used in containment analyses. The HM-2 experiment related to hydrogen stratification and mixing conducted at the THAI facility in Germany is calculated with the APROS lump parameter containment package and the APROS 6-equation thermal hydraulic model. The main purpose was to study, whether the convection term included in the momentum conservation equation of the 6-equation modelling gives some remarkable advantages compared to the simplified lumped parameter approach. Finally, a simple containment test case (high steam release to a narrow steam generator room inside a large dry containment) was calculated with both APROS models. In this case, the aim was to determine the extreme containment conditions, where the effect of convection term was supposed to be possibly high. Calculation results showed that both the APROS containment and the 6-equation model could model the hydrogen stratification in the THAI test well, if the vertical nodalisation was dense enough. However, in more complicated cases, the numerical diffusion may distort the results. Calculation of light gas stratification could be probably improved by applying the second order discretisation scheme for the modelling of gas flows. If the gas flows are relatively high, the convection term of the momentum equation is necessary to model the pressure differences between the adjacent nodes reasonably.

Thermal-Aware Networked Many-Core Systems

Advancements in IC processing technology has led to the innovation and growth happening in the consumer electronics sector and the evolution of the IT infrastructure supporting this exponential growth. One of the most difficult obstacles to this growth is the removal of large amount of heatgenerated by the processing and communicating nodes on the system. The scaling down of technology and the increase in power density is posing a direct and consequential effect on the rise in temperature. This has resulted in the increase in cooling budgets, and affects both the life-time reliability and performance of the system. Hence, reducing on-chip temperatures has become a major design concern for modern microprocessors. This dissertation addresses the thermal challenges at different levels for both 2D planer and 3D stacked systems. It proposes a self-timed thermal monitoring strategy based on the liberal use of on-chip thermal sensors. This makes use of noise variation tolerant and leakage current based thermal sensing for monitoring purposes. In order to study thermal management issues from early design stages, accurate thermal modeling and analysis at design time is essential. In this regard, spatial temperature profile of the global Cu nanowire for on-chip interconnects has been analyzed. It presents a 3D thermal model of a multicore system in order to investigate the effects of hotspots and the placement of silicon die layers, on the thermal performance of a modern ip-chip package. For a 3D stacked system, the primary design goal is to maximise the performance within the given power and thermal envelopes. Hence, a thermally efficient routing strategy for 3D NoC-Bus hybrid architectures has been proposed to mitigate on-chip temperatures by herding most of the switching activity to the die which is closer to heat sink. Finally, an exploration of various thermal-aware placement approaches for both the 2D and 3D stacked systems has been presented. Various thermal models have been developed and thermal control metrics have been extracted. An efficient thermal-aware application mapping algorithm for a 2D NoC has been presented. It has been shown that the proposed mapping algorithm reduces the effective area reeling under high temperatures when compared to the state of the art.

A distributed, cloud-ready, digital content processing and transformation platform and a specific use case

Poster at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Ingest into the Digital Preservation Network: Standard Pipelines

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

DataONE Member Node Implementation Workshop

Workshop at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Scheduling dynamic dataflow graphs with model checking

With the shift towards many-core computer architectures, dataflow programming has been proposed as one potential solution for producing software that scales to a varying number of processor cores. Programming for parallel architectures is considered difficult as the current popular programming languages are inherently sequential and introducing parallelism is typically up to the programmer. Dataflow, however, is inherently parallel, describing an application as a directed graph, where nodes represent calculations and edges represent a data dependency in form of a queue. These queues are the only allowed communication between the nodes, making the dependencies between the nodes explicit and thereby also the parallelism. Once a node have the su cient inputs available, the node can, independently of any other node, perform calculations, consume inputs, and produce outputs. Data ow models have existed for several decades and have become popular for describing signal processing applications as the graph representation is a very natural representation within this eld. Digital lters are typically described with boxes and arrows also in textbooks. Data ow is also becoming more interesting in other domains, and in principle, any application working on an information stream ts the dataflow paradigm. Such applications are, among others, network protocols, cryptography, and multimedia applications. As an example, the MPEG group standardized a dataflow language called RVC-CAL to be use within reconfigurable video coding. Describing a video coder as a data ow network instead of with conventional programming languages, makes the coder more readable as it describes how the video dataflows through the different coding tools. While dataflow provides an intuitive representation for many applications, it also introduces some new problems that need to be solved in order for data ow to be more widely used. The explicit parallelism of a dataflow program is descriptive and enables an improved utilization of available processing units, however, the independent nodes also implies that some kind of scheduling is required. The need for efficient scheduling becomes even more evident when the number of nodes is larger than the number of processing units and several nodes are running concurrently on one processor core. There exist several data ow models of computation, with different trade-offs between expressiveness and analyzability. These vary from rather restricted but statically schedulable, with minimal scheduling overhead, to dynamic where each ring requires a ring rule to evaluated. The model used in this work, namely RVC-CAL, is a very expressive language, and in the general case it requires dynamic scheduling, however, the strong encapsulation of dataflow nodes enables analysis and the scheduling overhead can be reduced by using quasi-static, or piecewise static, scheduling techniques. The scheduling problem is concerned with nding the few scheduling decisions that must be run-time, while most decisions are pre-calculated. The result is then an, as small as possible, set of static schedules that are dynamically scheduled. To identify these dynamic decisions and to find the concrete schedules, this thesis shows how quasi-static scheduling can be represented as a model checking problem. This involves identifying the relevant information to generate a minimal but complete model to be used for model checking. The model must describe everything that may affect scheduling of the application while omitting everything else in order to avoid state space explosion. This kind of simplification is necessary to make the state space analysis feasible. For the model checker to nd the actual schedules, a set of scheduling strategies are de ned which are able to produce quasi-static schedulers for a wide range of applications. The results of this work show that actor composition with quasi-static scheduling can be used to transform data ow programs to t many different computer architecture with different type and number of cores. This in turn, enables dataflow to provide a more platform independent representation as one application can be fitted to a specific processor architecture without changing the actual program representation. Instead, the program representation is in the context of design space exploration optimized by the development tools to fit the target platform. This work focuses on representing the dataflow scheduling problem as a model checking problem and is implemented as part of a compiler infrastructure. The thesis also presents experimental results as evidence of the usefulness of the approach.