Il problema della contaminazione ambientale da parte di prodotti farmaceutici e prodotti per la cura della persona (PPCP) è centrale nello sviluppo di nuove tecniche per il trattamento delle acque reflue. I rischi per la salute e l'ambiente non sono trascurabili e i trattamenti delle acque reflue non adeguati alla loro rimozione. L'efficacia ormai accertata degli ultrasuoni nella rimozione di numerosi contaminanti organici ha aperto la strada alla valutazione dei possibili effetti nel trattamento dei prodotti farmaceutici. Di particolare interesse le applicazioni al trattamento del Diclofenac (DCF)). Sono stati analizzati, con varie prove sperimentali, i parametri che influenzano la degradazione del DCF e da questi è emerso che a consentire il processo non sono le reazioni pirolitiche ma piuttosto le reazioni di ossidazione dei radicali idrossilici. Altro fattore di notevole interesse è dato dall'aumento del rapporto BOD5/COD che evidenzia la formazione di sottoprodotti organici biodegradabili. Il trattamento non consente una completa mineralizzazione del campione né l'eliminazione completa tossicità. L'irradiazione ad ultrasuoni può connotarsi quindi come un pre-trattamento a cui associare un trattamento biologico per la completa rimozione del contaminante. 

Radar-based dynamic gesture recognition has great potential in human-computer interaction (HCI) applications. With the development of wideband radar, the radar signal of hand gestures is often represented by the three-dimensional (3D) range-Doppler-time cube, which is mainly processed by multichannel two-dimensional (2D) CNNs and 3D CNNs. However, the utilization and fusion of different kinds of features in existing networks is simple and not well optimized. In this paper, an efficient attention method named three-dimensional united attention (3D-UA) module in 3D space is proposed. The 3D-UA module applies a multi-scale pyramid convolution spatially, extracts channel attention weights on feature maps and captures the global temporal cues simultaneously. Furthermore, a network named 3D-UANet is proposed by replacing the 3x3x3 convolution with the 3D-UA module in the 3D-ResNet. 3D-UANet can efficiently extract the range-Doppler-time features of gestures. Experimental results show that the proposed method has good generalization performance on data from subjects in complex scenes.

–Title:Pediatric Colon Cancer - When Enemies Band Together.

A 69-year-old man presented with bloody pleural fluid effusion with elevated human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) levels obtained by thoracentesis. The patient’s condition rapidly declined, and he died. An autopsy revealed primary lung choriocarcinoma. The early diagnosis of choriocarcinoma based on β-hCG levels in pleural fluid may be possible.

The origin of tetrapod has been one of intense debating open questions for decades between coelacanth(Latimeria chalumnae) and lungfish (Protopterus annectens). For resolving this incongruence in phylogenies, a genome-wide data mining approach is used to retrieve 43 shared genes of seven taxa from GenBank and further 1001 orthologous genes of ten taxa from the Ensembl and NCBI. We used the maximum gene-support tree approach and the majority-rule branch approach to analyze 43 nuclear genes encoding amino acid residues and compared these results to those inferred with the concatenation approach. Our results successfully provide strong evidence in favor of the lungfish-tetrapod hypothesis, but rejecting the coelacanth-tetrapod hypothesis based on significantly fewer gene supports and lower taxon jackknife probabilities for the coelacanth-tetrapod clade than the lungfish-tetrapod one with the maximum gene-support tree approach and the jackknife method for taxon subsampling. When more and more genomic data become available in recent years, sequence data of 1001 shared genes was mined. We used the maximum gene-support approach with this larger dataset successfully to infer that lungfish is the closest relative of land vertebrates with a significant difference at p < 0.01 (Chi-Square test) in gene support values between a maximum gene-support tree and the second most gene support tree with ML methods. The second most support to the maximum (SM ratio), a relative value, is a better support index than a single absolute value of support to show the insight of the phylogenetic support. Our results also show increasing the number of shared genes is much more effective than increasing the number of taxa.

Environmental heterogeneity is an important driver of ecological communities. Here, we assessed the effects of local and landscape spatial environmental heterogeneity on ant community structure in temperate semi-natural upland grasslands of Central Germany. We surveyed 33 grassland sites representing a gradient in elevation and landscape composition. Local environmental heterogeneity was measured in terms of variability of temperature and moisture within and between grasslands sites. Grassland management type (pasture vs. meadows) was additionally included as a local environmental heterogeneity measure. The complexity of habitat types in the surroundings of grassland sites were used as a measure of landscape environmental heterogeneity. As descriptors of ant community structure, we considered species composition, community evenness, and functional response traits. We found that extensively grazed pastures and within-site heterogeneity in soil moisture at local scale, and a high diversity of land cover types at the landscape scale affected ant species composition by promoting nest densities. Ant community evenness was high in wetter grasslands with low within-site variability in soil moisture and surrounded by a less diverse landscape. Fourth-corner models revealed that ant community structure response to environmental heterogeneity was mediated mainly by worker size, colony size, and life history traits related with colony reproduction and foundation. We discuss how within-site local variability in soil moisture and low intensity grazing promote ant species densities, and highlight the role of habitat temperature and humidity affecting on community evenness. We hypothesize that a higher diversity of land cover types in a forest-dominated landscape buffers less favorable environmental conditions for ant species establishment and dispersal between grasslands. We conclude that spatial environmental heterogeneity at local and landscape scale plays an important role as deterministic force in filtering ant species and, along with neutral processes (e.g. stochastic colonization), in shaping ant community structure in temperate semi-natural upland grasslands.

The predicted temperature increase caused by climate change is a threat to biodiversity. Male reproduction is particularly sensitive to elevated temperatures resulting in sterility. Here we investigate temperature induced changes in reproductive tissues and the fertility reduction in male Drosophila melanogaster. We challenged males during development and either allowed them to recover or not in early adulthood, while measuring several determinants of male reproductive success. We found significant differences in recovery rate, organ sizes, sperm production and other key reproductive traits among males from our different temperature treatments. Spermatogenesis and hence sperm maturation was impaired before reaching the upper thermal sterility threshold. While some effects were reversible, this did not compensate the earlier damage imposed. Surprisingly, developmental heat stress was damaging to accessory gland growth and female post mating responses mediated by seminal fluid proteins were impaired regardless of the possibility of recovery. We suggest that sub-lethal thermal sterility and the subsequent fertility reduction is caused by a combination of malfunctioning reproductive traits: inefficient functionality of the accessory gland and alteration of spermatogenesis.

A parameter-uniform numerical scheme for a system of weakly coupled singularly perturbed reaction-diffusion equations of arbitrary size with appropriate boundary conditions is investigated. More precisely, quadratic $B$-spline basis functions with an exponentially graded mesh are used to solve a $\ell\times\ell$ system whose solution exhibits parabolic (or exponential) boundary layers at both endpoints of the domain. A suitable mesh generating function is used to generate the exponentially graded mesh. The decomposition of the solution into regular and singular components is obtained to provide error estimates. A convergence analysis is addressed, which shows a uniform convergence of the second order. To validate the theoretical findings, two test problems are solved numerically.

Pollination is a key step of plant reproduction, allowing individual plants to produce offspring as father, mother or both. However, few studies exist that consider together male and female pollination success. This implies studying both mating system, through paternity analyses, and seed set, by measuring the percentage of flowers giving a seed. Studying these two processes together is needed as they are not independent: gaining fitness advantage through one sex can incur fitness costs through the other due to various tradeoffs including direct sexual interference. Hence, we developed the first spatially explicit mixed-mating model integrating these two interactive processes, by coupling a mating model with a fruit set model, therefore jointly exploring pollen export and import. We used as model an insect-pollinated tree species, chestnut. We carried out a paternity analysis based on nearly exhaustive sampling of potential pollen donors in an intensively studied plot of 273 trees belonging to three interfertile chestnut species and including both male-fertile and male-sterile individuals. We collected a large dataset of 1924 mating events. We further performed fruit set measurements for 216 trees. Our process-based model predicts fruit set with great accuracy, but only if we account for self-pollen interference and associated ovule discounting, a form of sexual interference. This model represents an important step forward for fundamental pollination studies aiming at comprehensively exploring pollen emission, transport and reception in a single study, thus clarifying the consequences of pollination on male and female fitness.

Evolutionary divergence and speciation often occur at a slower rate in the marine realm due to the higher potential for long-distance reproductive interaction through larval dispersal. One common evolutionary pattern in the Indo-Pacific, is divergence of populations and species at the peripheries of widely-distributed organisms. However, the evolutionary and demographic histories of such divergence are yet to be well understood. Here we address these issues by coupling genome-wide SNP data with mitochondrial DNA sequences to test the patterns of genetic divergence and possible secondary contact among geographically distant populations of the highly valuable spiny lobster Panulirus homarus species complex, distributed widely through the Indo-Pacific, from South Africa to the Marquesas Islands. After stringent filtering, 2020 SNPs were used for population genetic and demographic analyses, revealing strong regional structure (FST = 0.148, P<0001), superficially in accordance with previous analyses. However, detailed demographic analyses supported a much more complex evolutionary history of these populations, including a hybrid origin of a North-West Indian Ocean (NWIO) population, which has previously been discriminated morphologically, but not genetically. The best-supported demographic models suggested that the current genetic relationships among populations were due to a complex series of past divergences followed by asymmetric migration in more recent times. Overall, this study suggests that alternating periods of marine divergence and gene flow have driven the current genetic patterns observed in this lobster and may help explain the observed wider patterns of marine species diversity in the Indo-Pacific.

Sequence covariation in multiple sequence alignments of homologous proteins has been used extensively to obtain insights into protein structure. However, global statistical inference is required in order to ascertain direct relationships between amino acid positions in these sequences that are not simply secondary correlations induced by interactions with a third residue. Methods for statistical inference of such covariation have been developed to exploit the growing availability of sequence data. These hints about the folded protein structure provide critical a priori information for more detailed 3D predictions by neural networks. We present a novel method for protein structure inference using an iterative parameter-free model estimator which uses the formalism of statistical physics. With no tunable learning rate, our method scales to large system sizes while providing improved performance in the regime of small sample sizes. We apply this method to 40974 PDB structures and compare its performance to that of other methods. Our method outperforms existing methods for 76% of analysed proteins.

Abstract: Background: Telemedicine can be used to meet several objectives: reduce the time needed to obtain a diagnosis, monitor patients at home, reduce the risk of intra-hospital infection, inform citizens and train health professionals. In Morocco, this technology is currently being tested. Objective: Health professionals are the main users of telemedicine systems, and their acceptance will contribute to the successful implementation of this technology. The objective of this study is to provide a better understanding of the issues surrounding the acceptance of telemedicine technology by Moroccan health professionals in the public sector, for a possible generalization of this technology in Morocco. Method: Following a literature review, we mobilized a modified version of the unified model of technology acceptance and use, to explain and understand the determinants of health professionals’ intention to accept telemedicine technology. In order to confirm the proposed model, a hybrid exploratory qualitative approach via the method of semi-directive interviews was used, with a sample of doctors and nurses who constitute, in our opinion, the main actors towards an acceptance of this technology within Moroccan hospitals

The function y=f(x)  is represented as an interpolated function and then integrated between the provided limits to solve numerical integration. It can be used to discover the anti-derivative of an integrand that cannot be expressed in simple form, as well as to provide an estimated solution for a definite integral that cannot be solved analytically. When the function y=f(x) is not known directly, the numerical value of the definite integral ∫a ^b f(x)dx is solved in this study. Finally, we'll look at the quadrature formula, which includes the Trapezoidal rule, Simpson's rules, Weddle rule, Boole rule, and Romberg's integration.

Factors shaping the interspecific variations in herbivory have puzzled ecologists for decades and several hypotheses have been proposed. In a tropical rain forest in Yunnan Province, China, we collected 6,732 leaves from 129 species with canopy heights ranging from 1.6 m to 65.0 m above the ground. We tested the role of plant apparency, leaf traits and the diversity, composition and structural heterogeneity of neighbors in shaping the interspecific variations in herbivory. Results show that leaf herbivory decreased with canopy height and specific leaf area and increased with leaf size. However, neighboring species' diversity, composition, and structural heterogeneity showed no association with herbivory. Therefore, neither the plant apparency hypothesis nor the associational resistance hypothesis was supported in this hyper-diverse tropical rainforest. Our results highlight the importance of vertical structures and organic sizes in shaping herbivory patterns in natural communities.

A common conversion factor of 6.25 has been used worldwide to estimate crude protein content. However, many researchers especially Jones (1931) has extensively researched and did not agree with using the same factor for every food ingredient as it resulted in misleading estimation of crude protein content. ICMR/NIN and FAO/WHO/UNU recommendations over decades for protein and amino acid requirements using various techniques are used to state Estimated Average Requirement (EAR) and Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) as accurate as possible. In the present manuscript, nitrogen: protein conversion factor has been reworked using NDpCal%.

This paper responds to a call to address the development and building of river-human relationships in the 21 st Century. Many literatures have identified the historical instrumental exploitation of natural resources underpinning urbanisation and the economic development of industry and society as leading to the wide-spread degradation of environments including rivers. Clearly such relationships can no longer be considered as appropriate in the 21 st Century. This paper intends to present a conceptual rethink to address the following question: Are there potential approaches by which humans can develop harmonious coexistent relationships with riverine landscapes and associated ecosystems? In answering this question, this paper draws on ideas from new materialism thinking. New materialism offers useful guidance in understanding human-river relationships in which river landscapes are not static backgrounds to the performance of the social. River systems and environments are active participants influencing and shaping social performances through multiple and diverse interconnected and complex human-nonhuman relationships and co-productive partnerships. It is concluded that new materialist perspectives provide important guidance for developing harmonious river-human relationships. De-centring the human as the dominant actor in relations with river landscapes and acknowledging rivers as key stakeholders within river-human relationships may enhance the building of harmonious coexistent and mutually beneficial relationships in the 21 st Century. It is further concluded the Nature Futures Framework (NFF) and Human-River Encounter Sites (HRES) frameworks in their capacity to accommodate new materialist thinking provide an opportunity for further exploration and examination of the possibilities for building harmonious coexistent river-human relationships.

Background: Acute respiratory infections (ARIs) result in millions of illnesses and hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations annually in the US. The responsible viruses include influenza, parainfluenza, human metapneumovirus, coronaviruses, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and human rhinoviruses. This study estimated the population-based hospitalization burden of 18 respiratory viruses (RV) over 4 years, from 7/1/2015 to 6/30/2019 among adults ≥18 years of age for Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania. Methods: We used population-based statewide hospital discharge data, health system electronic medical record (EMR) data for RV tests, census data, and a published method to calculate burden. Results: Among 26,211 eligible RV tests, 67.6% were negative for any virus. The viruses detected were rhinovirus/enterovirus (2,552; 30.1%), influenza A (2,299; 27.1%), RSV (1,082; 12.7%), human metapneumovirus (832; 9.8%), parainfluenza (601; 7.1%), influenza B (565; 6.7%), non-SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus (420; 4.9% 1.5 years of data available), and adenovirus (136; 1.6%). Most tests were among female (58%) and white (71%) patients with 60% of patients ≥65 years, 24% 50-64 years and 16% 18-49 years. The annual burden, ranged from 137-174/100,000 population for rhinovirus/enterovirus; 99-182/100,000 for influenza A; 56-81/100,000 for RSV. Among adults <65 years, rhinovirus/enterovirus hospitalization burden was higher than influenza A; whereas the reverse was true for adults ≥65 years. RV hospitalization burden increased with increasing age. Conclusions: These virus-specific ARI population-based hospital burden estimates showed significant non-influenza burden. These estimates can serve as the basis for several areas of research that are essential for setting funding priorities and guiding public health policy.

Crimean - Congo haemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV) is a tick-borne viral haemorrhagic febrile disease that is highly pathogenic in humans with enzootic cycle between tick vectors and animal hosts. Human infection with CCHFV takes the clinical form of viral haemorrhagic disease, a major health condition but with limited testing in Nigeria. In this study, blood samples were collected from 333 pastoralists’ cattle in North Central Nigeria and 1,470 ticks were picked from the animals. For serology, Enzyme Linked Immuno Sorbent Assay (ELISA) was performed using a double antigen multi species ELISA kit with sensitivity and specificity of 98.9% and 95% respectively at 95% confidence interval to detect IgG antibody to CCHFV in plasma. RT-qPCR virological technique was used to identify viral antigen in ticks that were pooled based on location and genus. Four species of ticks were morphologically identified to parasitize cattle in the sampled location namely; Rhipicephalus ( Boophilus) decoloratus (34.6%), Hyalomma truncatum (32.9%), Amblyomma variegatum (24.6%) and Rhipicephalus sanguineus (8%). The seroprevalence of CCHFV was found to be 67%. In Kaduna state, 85 of 108 plasma samples tested positive (78.7%) while in Plateau state 138 of 225 plasma samples tested positive (61.3%). Of the 41 pools of tick tested for CCHF, one (1) pool of 35 Rhipicephalus ( Boophilus) ticks (2.4%) was positive for CCHF virus with qPCR cycle threshold of 31.88. Although Hyalomma spp. is documented to be the main vector of CCHFV, in the present investigation, Rhipicephalus ( Boophilus) species was identified to play a role as reservoir of CCHF. The high seroprevalence of CCHF in livestock underscores the public health risk associated with CCHFV at the human-animal interface in Nigeria.

Carnivore communities are extremely important for maintaining the structure/function of ecosystems. Exploring the carnivore coexistence can provide the data needed for the development of effective conservation strategies for endangered species. We aimed to (1) reveal the dietary composition of a carnivore community that inhabits the Everest region by analyzing molecular diets, (2) assess activity patterns by analyzing camera-trapping records. Dietary analysis revealed 22 food MOTUs of 7 orders and 2 classes. Snow leopard and wolf mainly preyed on ungulate mammals (%PR = 61%, 50%), while lynx and red fox mainly consumed small mammals (%PR = 62%, 76%). Higher dietary overlap (Pianka’s index = 0.95 ~ 0.97) was observed between similar-sized predators (snow leopard versus wolf, lynx versus fox); and there was no dietary difference between them (P > 0.05). Lower dietary overlap (Pianka’s index = 0.53 ~ 0.67) was observed between predators with large body size difference (snow leopard versus lynx, snow leopard versus red fox, wolf versus fox); and dietary difference was significant (P < 0.01), indicating the existence of dietary partitioning. In activity pattern analysis, predators exhibited higher temporal overlap with the more frequently consumed prey species, indicating that predator activity can be regulated by prey availability. Snow leopard and wolf had the higher activity overlap (Δ = 0.87) suggesting the lack of temporal partitioning. Red fox had the lower coefficients of overlap with snow leopard and wolf (Δ = 0.60, Δ = 0.59), suggesting that fox temporally avoid snow leopard and wolf slightly. We revealed the coexistence mechanisms of a carnivore community in the Everest region, by confirming that sympatric coexistence was facilitated by both dietary and temporal partitioning. These results will help to increase understanding of carnivore communities, and provide the scientific foundation for the conservation of threatened species in the Mount Everest region.

A document by Israel Cruz-Jiménez. Click on the document to view its contents.

In this paper, the cubic B-spline element method is proposed for a class of fourth order nonlinear parabolic problem with variable coefficient. We prove the boundness of the approximate solutions of the semi-discrete and fully discrete finite element schemes. The boundness is the basis of error analysis of nonlinear parabolic problem, especially in the case of fourth order term with variable coefficient. The error estimates are discussed by constructing the energy functional in $L^2$ norm and $H^2$ norm. Numerical results confirm our results of theoretical analysis.

：Coronary heart disease (CHD) affects a wide population and has a high mortality rate, which seriously threatens the life safety of patients. Early diagnosis and effective treatment can significantly improve the survival and prognosis of the CHD patients. At present, it is mainly judged by detecting various myocardial biomarkers, myocardial movement and coronary blood flow. Stress echocardiography (SE) is one of the commonly used detection methods. It can not only judge the severity of coronary stenosis, but also evaluate myocardial survival and distinguish hibernating myocardium and stunned myocardium. In recent years, it has also emerged in non-coronary heart disease such as artificial valve and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. This article briefly reviews the principle and classification of SE, and it mainly discusses its important value in the diagnosis and prognosis of CHD.

Aim Pharmacokinetics have historically been assessed using drug concentration data obtained via blood draws and bench-top analysis. The cumbersome nature of these typically constrains studies to at most a dozen concentration measurements per dosing event. This, in turn, limits our statistical power in the detection of hours-scale, time-varying physiological processes. Given recent advent of in-vivo electrochemical aptamer-based (EAB) sensors, however, we can now obtain hundreds of concentration measurements per administration. Our aim in this paper is to assess the ability of these time-dense datasets to describe time-varying pharmacokinetic models with good statistical significance. Methods Here we use seconds-resolved measurements of plasma tobramycin concentrations in rats to statistically compare traditional one- and two-compartmental pharmacokinetic models to new models in which the proportional relationship between a drug’s plasma concentration and its elimination rate varies in response to changing kidney function. Results We find that a modified one-compartment model in which the proportionality between the plasma concentration of tobramycin and its elimination rate falls reciprocally with time either meets or is preferred over the standard two-compartment pharmacokinetic model for half of the datasets characterized. When we reduce the impact of the drug’s rapid distribution phase on the model, this one-compartment, time-varying model is statistically preferred over or tied with the standard two-compartment model for 80% of our datasets. Conclusions Our results highlight both the impact that simple physiological changes (such as varying kidney function) can have on drug pharmacokinetics and the ability of high-time-resolution EAB sensor measurements to identify such impacts.

Vacuolar Phosphate Transporter1 (VPT1)-mediated phosphate uptake in the vacuoles is essential to plant development and fruit ripening. Interestingly, in this study, we find that the VvVPT1 protein positively regulates grape berry soluble sugar accumulation, potentially associated to its sugar transport activity. The VvVPT1 is isolated from grape ( Vitis vinifera) berries, which mainly accumulated glucose and fructose. This tonoplast-localized VvVPT1 contains SPX (Syg1/Pho81/XPR1) and MFS (major facilitator superfamily) domains and its mRNA expression could be induced by sucrose. Using transient transgenic systems in grape berry, we found that the downregulation and upregulation of VvVPT1 expression inhibited and promoted ripening and affected hexose contents, fruit firmness, and ripening-related gene expression. The VvVPT1 protein has low affinity for Pi, while possesses high affinity for hexose absorption in yeast system, dependent on its SPX domain. In conparision to the VPT1 available (only strawberry FaVPT1 and Arabidopsis AtVPT1), as expected, the three proteins all have low-affinity Pi transport activity, strickingly, they appear different sugar transport capacity, in consistent with their soluble sugar status. Together, these data first demonstrate that VvVPT1 can promote grape berry hexose accumulation and ripening, associated to its SPX and MFS domains in direct transport of hexose into the vacuole. Finally, vacuolar phosphate transporter1 (VPT1)-mediated alternative accumulation of soluble sugar varies with fruit types is discussed.