Experience in awake glioma surgery in a South American center. Correlation between intraoperative evaluation, extent of resection and functional outcomes.

Introduction: Gliomas are the second most frequent primary brain tumors. Surgical resection remains a crucial part of treatment, as well as maximum preservation of neurological function. For this reason awake surgery has an important role.The objectives of this article are to present our experience with awake surgery for gliomas in a South American center and to analyze how intraoperative functional findings may influence the extent of resection and neurological outcomes. Materials and methods: Retrospective single center study of a cohort of adult patients undergoing awake surgery for brain glioma, by the same neurosurgeon, between 2012 and 2022 in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Results: A total of 71 patients were included (mean age 34 years, 62% males). Seventy seven percent of tumors were low grade, with average extent of resection reaching 94% of preoperative volumetric assessment. At six months follow up, 81.7% of patients presented no motor or language deficit.Further analysis showed that having a positive mapping did not have a negative impact in the extent of resection, but was associated with short term postoperative motor and language deficits, among other variables, with later improvement. Conclusion: Awake surgery for gliomas is a safe procedure, with the proper training. In this study it was observed that guiding the resection by negative mapping did not worsen the results and that positive subcortical mapping correlated with short term postoperative neurological deficits with posterior improvement within six months in most cases.

In vitro evaluation of nematophagous activity of fungal isolates.

Four filamentous fungi associated with nematodes were isolated and identified from litter samples collected in the Integral Natural Reserve "Bosco Siro Negri" (PV, Italy): Arthrobotrys dactyloides, Arthrobotrys oligospora var. oligospora, Pochonia bulbillosa, and Pochonia chlamydosporia var. catenulata. Their capacity to break down the nematode population was evaluated in vitro by means of simple and reproducible multiwell plates method. All fungal strains were able to cause a death-rate significantly different from the controls (p < 0.05). Precisely, A. dactyloides caused, on average, a 26% death rate increase in the nematode population compared to the control, A. oligospora var. oligospora 25%, P. bulbillosa 12%, and P. chlamidosporia var. catenulata 17%. The method has also allowed to determine the more active fungi as regards the prey's life cycle stage. The most active strains against nematodes (adults) were A. dactyloides and A. oligospora var. oligospora, known to attack adults or larval stages by means of tridimensional traps. On the contrary P. bulbillosa and P. chlamydosporia, known to attack mainly the nematode life stage of cysts, showed lower activity against adult nematodes.

Opportunities for web-based indicators in environmental sciences.

This paper proposes a set of web-based indicators for quantifying and ranking the relevance of terms related to key-issues in Ecology and Sustainability Science. Search engines that operate in different contexts (e.g. global, social, scientific) are considered as web information carriers (WICs) and are able to analyse; (i) relevance on different levels: global web, individual/personal sphere, on-line news, and culture/science; (ii) time trends of relevance; (iii) relevance of keywords for environmental governance. For the purposes of this study, several indicators and specific indices (relational indices and dynamic indices) were applied to a test-set of 24 keywords. Outputs consistently show that traditional study topics in environmental sciences such as water and air have remained the most quantitatively relevant keywords, while interest in systemic issues (i.e. ecosystem and landscape) has grown over the last 20 years. Nowadays, the relevance of new concepts such as resilience and ecosystem services is increasing, but the actual ability of these concepts to influence environmental governance needs to be further studied and understood. The proposed approach, which is based on intuitive and easily replicable procedures, can support the decision-making processes related to environmental governance.

Macrobenthos community structural changes off Cesenatico coast (Emilia Romagna, Northern Adriatic), a six-year monitoring programme.

Soft bottom macrobenthos at a station located off Cesenatico (Emilia Romagna, Northern Adriatic Sea) was investigated seasonally for six years from July 1996 to July 2002. Species composition and abundance of the community have been studied in relation to fluctuation in the water environment parameters, sediment texture patterns and mucilage, that occurred mainly in the water column at the study site. Three major Po river flow peaks occurred in November 1996, October 2000 and May 2002; after these events the community was reduced to minimum abundance values (total density<2000 individuals m(-2)). In the period between the first two episodes the river discharge remained rather low and conditions of increased salinity, lower nutrients and chl a and good oxygen saturation were experienced. The fossorial Crustacean Ampelisca diadema became dominant in the community between the first two river flow events, reaching maximum density of 10,200 individuals m(-2) and substituting the bivalve Corbula gibba, indicator of sediment instability. Species richness increased in the same period. The role of Ampelisca as a facilitator in structuring the community is discussed. Corbula gibba never recovered to initial densities, apart from an abundance peak that occurred in the summer of 2000. Faunal composition seemed to evolve slowly towards a higher degree of structural complexity (positive trend in diversity and evenness index). In the study site near-bottom mucilage events occurred in the summers of 1997, 1998, 2002; they appeared uncorrelated with the observed changes in the community structure. Multivariate analysis of community structure (MDS, ANOSIM) illustrates that community changes in this station are driven mainly by hydrographical conditions influencing sediment texture patterns and trophic resources for the benthos.

Cistercosis espinal: a proposito de un caso / Spynal cystercosis: a case report

Objetivo: comunicar el caso de una paciente de 53 años, oriunda de zona endemica de America Latina, con signos de compresion medular dorsal secundarios a una cisticercosis espinal. Descripcion: paciente de sexo femenino, cuadro progresivo de compresion medular dorsal, con antecedentes de neurocisticercosis. Las neuroimagenes mostraron una lesion intradural - extramedular D5-D6. Intervencion: se abordo quirurgicamente en posicion lateral, verificandose aracnoiditis reaccional y quiste de cisticerco que fue resecado, completandose el tratamiento con Albendazol oral, con regresion de la paraparesia severa preoperatoria y satisfactorio con control imagenologico. Conclusion: la forma espinal es infrecuente en el curso de la neurocisticercosis. La terapeutica implementada en nuestro caso fue concordante con los pocos casos descriptos en la literatura mundial