Normal Incidence Excitation of Out-of-Plane Lattice Resonances in Bipartite Arrays of Metallic Nanostructures.

As a result of their coherent interaction, two-dimensional periodic arrays of metallic nanostructures support collective modes commonly known as lattice resonances. Among them, out-of-plane lattice resonances, for which the nanostructures are polarized in the direction perpendicular to the array, are particularly interesting since their unique configuration minimizes radiative losses. Consequently, these modes present extremely high quality factors and field enhancements that make them ideal for a wide range of applications. However, for the same reasons, their excitation is very challenging and has only been achieved at oblique incidence, which adds a layer of complexity to experiments and poses some limitations on their usage. Here, we present an approach to excite out-of-plane lattice resonances in bipartite arrays under normal incidence. Our method is based on exploiting the electric-magnetic coupling between the nanostructures, which has been traditionally neglected in the characterization of arrays made of metallic nanostructures. Using a rigorous coupled dipole model, we demonstrate that this coupling provides a general mechanism to excite out-of-plane lattice resonances under normal incidence conditions. We complete our study with a comprehensive analysis of a potential implementation of our results using an array of nanodisks with the inclusion of a substrate and a coating. This work provides an efficient approach for the excitation of out-of-plane lattice resonances at normal incidence, thus paving the way for the leverage of the extraordinary properties of these optical modes in a wide range of applications.

Nonsurgical periodontal treatment in type II diabetics in a middle-income country: a cost-effectiveness analysis.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the nonsurgical periodontal treatment (NSPT) compared with supragingival therapy in type II diabetics with periodontitis. METHODS: A decision tree analysis was used to estimate the costs and health outcomes of two periodontal therapies in a hypothetical cohort of type II diabetics with periodontitis. The analysis was developed from the perspective of a third-party payer at 1 year and 5 years. Probabilities were derived from two systematic reviews. The costs and resource use were validated by a Delphi expert panel. All costs were expressed in USD, using the 25 May 2021 Colombian pesos market exchange rate (USD 1 = COP 3,350). RESULTS: NSPT was a dominant alternative compared with subsidized supragingival therapy in type II diabetics with periodontitis, generating savings of USD 87 and 400, during the first year or up to 5 years, respectively, and improving dental survival from 32 to 69 percent. CONCLUSIONS: NSPT can generate savings by reducing the complications derived from uncontrolled periodontitis and tooth loss.

Limited T cell response to SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine among patients with cancer receiving different cancer treatments.

INTRODUCTION: Patients with cancer (PC) are at high risk of acquiring COVID-19 and can develop more serious complications. Deeper understanding of vaccines immunogenicity in this population is crucial for adequately planning vaccines programs. The ONCOVac study aimed to comprehensively assess the immunogenicity of mRNA-1273 vaccine in terms of humoral and cellular response. METHODS: We conducted a prospective, single-center study including patients with solid tumours treated with cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 inhibitors (CDK4/6i), immunotherapy (IT) or chemotherapy (CT). Patients were enrolled previously to vaccination with mRNA-1273. We also involved health care workers (HCW) to serve as a control group. We took blood samples before first dose administration (BL), after first dose (1D), and after second dose (2D). The primary objective was to compare the rate and magnitude of T cell response after second dose whereas safety and humoral response were defined as secondary objectives. We also collected patient reported outcomes after both the first and second vaccine dose and a six-month follow-up period to diagnose incident COVID-19 cases was planned. RESULTS: The rate of specific anti-S serologic positivity (anti-S IgG cut-off point at 7,14 BAU/mL) was significantly higher in HCW compared to PC after 1D (100% versus 83.8%; p = 0.04), but similar after 2D (100% versus 95.8%; p = 0.5). This difference after 1D was driven by PC treated with CT (100% versus 64.5%; p = 0.001). Cellular response after 2D was significantly lower in PC than in HCW for both CD4+ (91.7% versus 59.7%; p = 0.001) and CD8+ (94.4% versus 55.6%; p < 0.001) T cells. We found a difference on pre-existing CD4+ T cell response in HCW comparing to PC (36% and 17%, p = 0.03); without difference in pre-existing CD8+ T cell response (31% and 23%, p = 0.5). After excluding patients with pre-existing T cell response, PC achieved even lower CD4+ (50.9% versus 95.5%, p < 0.001) and CD8+ (45.5% versus 95.5%, p < 0.001) T cell response compared with HCW. Regarding safety, PC reported notably more adverse events than HCW (96.6% versus 69.2%, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: We demonstrated that PC showed a similar humoral response but a lower T cell response following two doses of mRNA-1273 vaccination. Further studies are needed to complement our results and determine the implication of low T cell response on clinical protection of PC against COVID-19.

Active Low Intrusion Hybrid Monitor for Wireless Sensor Networks.

Several systems have been proposed to monitor wireless sensor networks (WSN). These systems may be active (causing a high degree of intrusion) or passive (low observability inside the nodes). This paper presents the implementation of an active hybrid (hardware and software) monitor with low intrusion. It is based on the addition to the sensor node of a monitor node (hardware part) which, through a standard interface, is able to receive the monitoring information sent by a piece of software executed in the sensor node. The intrusion on time, code, and energy caused in the sensor nodes by the monitor is evaluated as a function of data size and the interface used. Then different interfaces, commonly available in sensor nodes, are evaluated: serial transmission (USART), serial peripheral interface (SPI), and parallel. The proposed hybrid monitor provides highly detailed information, barely disturbed by the measurement tool (interference), about the behavior of the WSN that may be used to evaluate many properties such as performance, dependability, security, etc. Monitor nodes are self-powered and may be removed after the monitoring campaign to be reused in other campaigns and/or WSNs. No other hardware-independent monitoring platforms with such low interference have been found in the literature.

Monitoring pest insect traps by means of low-power image sensor technologies.

Monitoring pest insect populations is currently a key issue in agriculture and forestry protection. At the farm level, human operators typically must perform periodical surveys of the traps disseminated through the field. This is a labor-, time- and cost-consuming activity, in particular for large plantations or large forestry areas, so it would be of great advantage to have an affordable system capable of doing this task automatically in an accurate and a more efficient way. This paper proposes an autonomous monitoring system based on a low-cost image sensor that it is able to capture and send images of the trap contents to a remote control station with the periodicity demanded by the trapping application. Our autonomous monitoring system will be able to cover large areas with very low energy consumption. This issue would be the main key point in our study; since the operational live of the overall monitoring system should be extended to months of continuous operation without any kind of maintenance (i.e., battery replacement). The images delivered by image sensors would be time-stamped and processed in the control station to get the number of individuals found at each trap. All the information would be conveniently stored at the control station, and accessible via Internet by means of available network services at control station (WiFi, WiMax, 3G/4G, etc.).

Prevalencia de infección por Demodex folliculorum en pacientes que acuden a consulta general de oftalmología / The prevalence of Demodex folliculorum infection in patients attending a general ophthalmological consultation

Objetivos Determinar la prevalencia de infección por Demodex folliculorum en pacientes que asisten a consulta general de oftalmología, y su asociación con blefaritis. Métodos Estudio descriptivo de prevalencia. En forma aleatoria se seleccionaron 128 sujetos que asistieron al Centro Oftalmológico Virgilio Galvis y se determinó la presencia de Demodex folliculorum en 4 pestañas de cada uno. Resultados La prevalencia de infección por Demodex folliculorum fue 42,1 % (n= 54). Se diagnosticó blefaritis en el 38,3 % de los pacientes (n=49) y el 63,2 % de ellos (n=31) fueron positivos para D. folliculorum. En el grupo sin blefaritis (n=79) solo el 29,2 % de los individuos tenían el ácaro (n=23) (p=0.0003). Además se encontró una mayor cantidad de parásitos en los pacientes con blefaritis (índice de carga parasitaria 12,7 vs 5,1 (p=0.0001). El 25 % (n=32) de los participantes presentaban descamación en forma de cilindros y en estos el 96,9 % tenían el ácaro (n= 31), mientras que en los sujetos que no tenían cilindros (n=96) el ácaro estuvo presente solo en el 24 % (n=23). Conclusiones El Demodex folliculorum es un parásito que se encuentra en personas sin lesiones oculares, pero que es más frecuente y presenta una mayor carga parasitaria en pacientes con blefaritis. Nuestros resultados sugieren la necesidad de investigar la presencia de Demodex folliculorum en todo paciente con blefaritis y especialmente en los casos en que se observe presencia de descamación en forma de cilindros en las pestañas.

Objectives Determining Demodex folliculorum infection prevalence in patients attending general ophthalmological consultation and such infection's association with blepharitis. Methods This was a descriptive study of such prevalence. 128 subjects who attended the Virgilio Galvis Eye Centre were randomly selected and the presence of D. folliculorum was determined in 4 eyelashes taken from each of them. Results D. folliculorum infection prevalence was 42.1 % (n=54); blepharitis was diagnosed in 38.3 % of the patients (n=49) and 63.2 % of them (n=31) were positive for D. folliculorum. Only 29.2 % of the individuals in the group without blepharitis (n=79) had mites (n=23) (p=0.0003). A higher number of parasites was found in patients with blepharitis (12.7 parasitic load index cf 5.1; p=0.0001); 25 % (n=32) of the participants had scaling in the form of cylinders and 96.9 % of these had the mites (n=31), whereas the mite was only present in 24 % (n=23) of subjects who had no cylinder-type scaling (n=96). Conclusions Demodex folliculorum is a parasite found in people without ocular lesions; however, it is more frequent and has a higher parasite burden in patients with blepharitis. Our results suggested the need for investigating the presence of D. folliculorum in all patients suffering from blepharitis, especially in cases where cylinder-type scaling has been observed in their eyelashes.

[The prevalence of Demodex folliculorum infection in patients attending a general ophthalmological consultation]. / Prevalencia de infección por Demodex folliculorum en pacientes que acuden a consulta general de oftalmología.

OBJECTIVES: Determining Demodex folliculorum infection prevalence in patients attending general ophthalmological consultation and such infection's association with blepharitis. METHODS: This was a descriptive study of such prevalence. 128 subjects who attended the Virgilio Galvis Eye Centre were randomly selected and the presence of D. folliculorum was determined in 4 eyelashes taken from each of them. RESULTS: D. folliculorum infection prevalence was 42.1% (n=54); blepharitis was diagnosed in 38.3% of the patients (n=49) and 63.2% of them (n=31) were positive for D. folliculorum. Only 29.2% of the individuals in the group without blepharitis (n=79) had mites (n=23) (p=0.0003). A higher number of parasites was found in patients with blepharitis (12.7 parasitic load index cf 5.1; p=0.0001); 25% (n=32) of the participants had scaling in the form of cylinders and 96.9% of these had the mites (n=31), whereas the mite was only present in 24% (n=23) of subjects who had no cylinder-type scaling (n=96). CONCLUSIONS: Demodex folliculorum is a parasite found in people without ocular lesions; however, it is more frequent and has a higher parasite burden in patients with blepharitis. Our results suggested the need for investigating the presence of D. folliculorum in all patients suffering from blepharitis, especially in cases where cylinder-type scaling has been observed in their eyelashes.

Historical building monitoring using an energy-efficient scalable wireless sensor network architecture.

We present a set of novel low power wireless sensor nodes designed for monitoring wooden masterpieces and historical buildings, in order to perform an early detection of pests. Although our previous star-based system configuration has been in operation for more than 13 years, it does not scale well for sensorization of large buildings or when deploying hundreds of nodes. In this paper we demonstrate the feasibility of a cluster-based dynamic-tree hierarchical Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) architecture where realistic assumptions of radio frequency data transmission are applied to cluster construction, and a mix of heterogeneous nodes are used to minimize economic cost of the whole system and maximize power saving of the leaf nodes. Simulation results show that the specialization of a fraction of the nodes by providing better antennas and some energy harvesting techniques can dramatically extend the life of the entire WSN and reduce the cost of the whole system. A demonstration of the proposed architecture with a new routing protocol and applied to termite pest detection has been implemented on a set of new nodes and should last for about 10 years, but it provides better scalability, reliability and deployment properties.

A new Gompertz-type diffusion process with application to random growth.

Stochastic models describing growth kinetics are very important for predicting many biological phenomena. In this paper, a new Gompertz-type diffusion process is introduced, by means of which bounded sigmoidal growth patterns can be modeled by time-continuous variables. The main innovation of the process is that the bound can depend on the initial value, a situation that is not provided by the models considered to date. After building the model, a comprehensive study is presented, including its main characteristics and a simulation of sample paths. With the aim of applying this model to real-life situations, and given its possibilities in forecasting via the mean function, discrete sampling based inference is developed. The likelihood equations are not directly solvable, and because of difficulties that arise with the usual numerical methods employed to solve them, an iterative procedure is proposed. The possibilities of the new process are illustrated by means of an application to real data, concretely, to growth in rabbits.