Nitrogen and phosphorus removal using tile-treatment wetlands: A 12-year study from the midwestern United States.

Nutrient enrichment from tile-drained agricultural lands to the Mississippi River is a leading cause of hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. Small edge-of-field wetlands can effectively treat nitrate-nitrogen (NO3 -N) export from tiles, although less research exists on their capacity to treat phosphorus (P). Additionally, long-term data are needed to incorporate variability of weather and farming practices into assessments of wetland performance longevity. Research conducted over 12 yr quantified size-effectiveness of wetlands to reduce NO3 -N and dissolved P (orthophosphate [ORP]) loadings from subsurface tile systems. Nitrate-N export was significantly higher during corn (Zea mays L.) than soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] production years, during which 80-84% of mean annual loadings were exported during spring. Wetlands representing 3% (W1) of tile-drained farmland area reduced 15-38% of NO3 -N export, with cumulative reductions of 39-49 and 49-57% observed in wetlands representing 6 (W2) and 9% (W3) areas, respectively. Mass NO3 -N removal ranged from 28 to 52%. Twelve-year total ORP load reductions for W1 ranged from 53 to 81%, with cumulative reductions of 35-91% and 32-95% for W2 and W3 wetlands, respectively. Mass ORP removal ranged from 71 to 85%. Results emphasize how incorporating constructed wetlands into state and watershed-level conservation planning can significantly contribute toward reducing excess N and P export to river systems and ultimately to the Gulf of Mexico.

[Prostate gland - what would urologists like to know from radiologists?] / Die Vorsteherdrüse ­ was möchte der Urologe vom Radiologen wissen?

A more than 100-year period, where the prostate was only seen and treated as a whole is coming to an end right now. Finally, high resolution imaging is providing deep insights and detailed information so that new therapeutic procedures can aim for the smallest targets within the gland. The long-standing wish of patients for individual noninvasive diagnostics and treatment of prostate diseases can now be fulfilled by providing new tailored concepts; however, in order to transfer the enormous amount of new information into the specific clinical patient situation, a closely knit interdisciplinary approach is required. In this setting, the traditional outpatient consultation service is overstretched in every aspect. It is now the time for new innovative constructs. The current one-sided service concept for urologists, radiologists and radiation therapists is therefore behind the times and the development of a "prostate management team" with equally cooperating partners from each specialty is the task for the future.

Long-lived plasma cells are generated in mucosal immune responses and contribute to the bone marrow plasma cell pool in mice.

During systemic immune responses, plasma blasts are generated in secondary lymphoid organs and migrate to the bone marrow, where they can become long-lived, being responsible for the maintenance of long-term antibody titers. Plasma blasts generated in mucosal immune responses of the small intestine home to the lamina propria (LP), producing mainly immunoglobulin A. The migration of these antibody-secreting cells is well characterized during acute immune responses. Less is known about their lifetime and contribution to the long-lived bone marrow compartment. Here we investigate the lifetime of plasma cells (PCs) and the relationship between the PC compartments of the gut and bone marrow after oral immunization. Our findings indicate that PCs in the LP can survive for extended time periods. PCs specific for orally administered antigens can be detected in the bone marrow for at least 9 months after immunization, indicating that the mucosal PC compartment can contribute to the long-lived PC pool in this organ, independent of the participation of splenic B cells. Our findings suggest that the compartmentalization between mucosal and systemic PC pools is less strict than previously thought. This may have implications for the development of vaccines as well as for autoantibody-mediated diseases.

Extracellular Vesicles from MSC Modulate the Immune Response to Renal Allografts in a MHC Disparate Rat Model.

Application of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) has been proposed for solid organ transplantation based on their potent immunomodulatory effects. Since side effects from the injection of large cells cannot be excluded, the hypothesis rises that extracellular vesicles (EV) may cause immunomodulatory effects comparable to MSC without additional side effects. We used MSC-derived EV in a rat renal transplant model for acute rejection. We analysed peripheral blood leukocytes (PBL), kidney function, graft infiltrating cells, cytokines in the graft, and alloantibody development in animals without (allo) and with EV application (allo EV). There was no difference in kidney function and in the PBL subpopulation including Tregs between allo and allo EV. In the grafts T- and B-cell numbers were significantly higher and NK-cells lower in the allo EV kidneys compared to allo. TNF-α transcription was lower in allo EV grafts compared to allo; there was no difference regarding IL-10 and in the development of alloantibodies. In conclusion, the different cell infiltrates and cytokine transcription suggest distinct immunomodulatory properties of EV in allotransplantation. While the increased T- and B-cells in the allo EV grafts may represent a missing or negative effect on the adaptive immune system, EV seem to influence the innate immune system in a contrary fashion.

[Successful therapy of metastatic basal cell carcinoma with vismodegib]. / Erfolgreiche Therapie eines metastasierten Basalzellkarzinoms mit Vismodegib.

A 71-year-old man presented with giant basal cell carcinoma on the abdomen which had metastasized. He was treated with oral vismodegib. Both the primary ulcerated tumor on the abdomen and the metastases responded. Vismodegib was well tolerated without significant side effects. The tumor recurred promptly after vismodegib was discontinued, and then was resistant to therapy when vismodegib was re-administered.

Effect of degeneration on gene expression of chondrogenic and inflammatory marker genes of intervertebral disc cells: a preliminary study.

AIM: New techniques for biological repair in the treatment of degenerative disc disease (DDD) have been developed recently. The question arises whether it is possible to find a predictive marker to identify a patient population which could benefit from this new treatment option. Standard magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) fails to differentiate between pathologic painful and asymptomatic aging discs. Neurological symptoms contribute to identifying the pathological level. In this preliminary translational research study we analysed the gene expression of structure proteins and inflammatory mediators as well as histological features of lumbar intervertebral discs in symptomatic patients with various signs of degeneration in the MRI. METHODS: Specimens of intervertebral disc tissue were obtained from 20 patients undergoing lumbar nucleotomy. Preoperatively, a group selection based on four pre-defined MRI-criteria was performed: Group 1 (mild signs of degeneration), group 2 (moderate), group 3 (moderate-severe), group 4 (severe). RESULTS: An increase of the expression of structural proteins and inflammatory markers could be observed in MRI-groups 2 and 3. Gene expression of collagen type I and II and aggrecan went along with levels of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and (fibroblast growth factor-2) FGF-2 expression. Histological examination showed signs of granulation tissue in only 35% of cases, but no differences between the groups. CONCLUSION: Our findings implicate that the gene expression of structural proteins might correlate with the appearance of inflammatory mediators in symptomatic patients with moderate disc changes in the MRI in this preliminary clinical subset. The assessment of cell activity and protein expression in a larger number of patients could be next step to support and supplement the present data.

Perspectives of clinical genetics professionals toward genome sequencing and incidental findings: a survey study.

The introduction of clinical genome-wide sequencing raises complex issues regarding the management of incidental findings. However, there is a lack of empirical studies assessing views of providers involved in potential disclosure of such findings. In an anonymous survey of 279 clinical genetics professionals, we found that the vast majority of participants agreed that they were interested in knowing about clinically actionable incidental findings in themselves (96%) and their child (99%), and they reported that these types of findings should be disclosed in adult (96%) and minor (98%) patients. Approximately three-fourths agreed that they were personally interested in knowing about an adult-onset clinically actionable disease (78%) and a childhood-onset non-clinically actionable disease (75%) in their child. A similar percentage of participants (70%) felt that these two types of findings should be disclosed to patients. Forty-four percent of participants wanted to know about an incidental finding that indicates an adult-onset non-clinically actionable condition in themselves and 31% wanted to know about this type of information in their child. Findings from this study revealed participants' views highly dependent on clinical actionability. Further research is needed with a broader population of geneticists to increase generalizability, and with diverse patients to assess their perspectives about results disclosure from clinical sequencing.

[Phytobezoar in the common hepatic duct - rare cause of obstructive jaundice following pancreatoduodenectomy: case report and review of the literature]. / Phytobezoar des Ductus hepaticus communis - seltene Differenzialdiagnose einer Cholestase im Langzeitverlauf nach Kausch-Whipple-Operation: Fallbericht und Literaturübersicht.

Obstruction of bile flow following pancreatoduodenectomy can be caused by stenosis of the hepaticojejunostomy created at the time of surgery, obstruction of the bile-draining jejunal loop, stones or, very rarely, ingested foreign bodies in the common hepatic duct. In analogy with endoscopic sphincterotomy or the once popular side-to-side-choledochduodenostomy, the creation of a hepaticojejunostomy eliminates the barrier of the sphincter Oddi, enabling intestinal content such as ingested foreign bodies or food fibers to migrate into the bile duct. We report on the case of a patient developing biliary tract obstruction due to fibrous material in the common hepatic duct 15 years after pancreatoduodenectomy. In addition, an overview of the literature on the rare phenomenon of foreign body-associated obstructive jaundice is given.

[The balanced scorecard--applications in a radiology department]. / Die Balanced Scorecard--Anwendungsmöglichkeiten in der Radiologie.

The balanced scorecard (BSC) represents a comprehensive management tool for organizations with the aim to focus all activities on a chosen strategy. Targets for various perspectives of the environment such as the customer, financial, process, and potential perspective are linked with concrete measures, and cause-effect relationships between the objectives are analyzed. This article shows that the BSC can also be used for the comprehensive control of a radiology department and thus provides a meaningful contribution in organizing the various diagnostic and treatment services, the management of complex clinical environment and can be of help with the tasks in research and teaching.

A novel temporal filtering strategy for functional MRI using UNFOLD.

A major challenge for fMRI at high spatial resolution is the limited temporal resolution. The UNFOLD method increases image acquisition speed and potentially enables high acceleration factors in fMRI. Spatial aliasing artifacts due to interleaved k-space sampling are to be removed from the image time series by temporal filtering before statistical mapping in the time domain can be carried out. So far, low-pass filtering and multi-band filtering have been proposed. Particularly at high UNFOLD factors both methods are non-optimal. Low-pass filtering severely degrades temporal resolution and multi-band filtering leads to temporal autocorrelations affecting statistical modelling of activation. In this work, we present a novel temporal filtering strategy that significantly reduces temporal autocorrelations compared to multi-band filtering. Two datasets (finger-tapping and resting state) were post-processed using the proposed and the multi-band filter with varying set-ups (i.e. transition bands). When the proposed filtering strategy was used, a linear regression analysis revealed that the number of false positives was significantly decreased up to 34% whereas the number of activated voxels was not significantly affected for most filter parameters. In total, this led to an effective increase in the number of activated voxels per false positive for each filter set-up. At a significance level of 5%, the number of activated voxels was increased up to 41% by using the proposed filtering strategy.

Evaluating agricultural best management practices in tile-drained subwatersheds of the Mackinaw River, Illinois.

Best management practices (BMPs) are widely promoted in agricultural watersheds as a means of improving water quality and ameliorating altered hydrology. We used a paired watershed approach to evaluate whether focused outreach could increase BMP implementation rates and whether BMPs could induce watershed-scale (4000 ha) changes in nutrients, suspended sediment concentrations, or hydrology in an agricultural watershed in central Illinois. Land use was >90% row crop agriculture with extensive subsurface tile drainage. Outreach successfully increased BMP implementation rates for grassed waterways, stream buffers, and strip-tillage within the treatment watershed, which are designed to reduce surface runoff and soil erosion. No significant changes in nitrate-nitrogen (NO-N), total phosphorus (TP), dissolved reactive phosphorus, total suspended sediment (TSS), or hydrology were observed after implementation of these BMPs over 7 yr of monitoring. Annual NO-N export (39-299 Mg) in the two watersheds was equally exported during baseflow and stormflow. Mean annual TP export was similar between the watersheds (3.8 Mg) and was greater for TSS in the treatment (1626 ± 497 Mg) than in the reference (940 ± 327 Mg) watershed. Export of TP and TSS was primarily due to stormflow (>85%). Results suggest that the BMPs established during this study were not adequate to override nutrient export from subsurface drainage tiles. Conservation planning in tile-drained agricultural watersheds will require a combination of surface-water BMPs and conservation practices that intercept and retain subsurface agricultural runoff. Our study emphasizes the need to measure conservation outcomes and not just implementation rates of conservation practices.

The floristic heterogeneity of the Pantanal and the occurrence of species with different adaptive strategies to water stress.

The Pantanal is characterised by a diversity of environments with areas ranging from periodic or permanent heavy flooding to areas with low flood levels, and even environments that never flood. Plant species which inhabit the floodplain are distributed in specific niches, with influence of various phytogeographic domains, including the Seasonal Semi-deciduous Forest, Amazon Rainforest, Cerrado and Chaco, as well rocky remnants, with a wide ecological span in their components. In intensely flooded areas, aquatic macrophytes are widely distributed, with their dynamics closely linked to time, depth and extent of flooding. Although the term "Pantanal" suggests a huge swamp-type wetland, water level variation during a seasonal cycle does not directly reach the root system of many plants. The landscape diversity of the Pantanal wetland is molded by the flood pulse, which interferes with the dynamics of plant communities. Therefore, the retraction and expansion of populations or communities is reflected in important ecological characteristics, considering the variety of morphological, anatomical and ecophysiological features of the species, whose phenotype is the result of a particular genotype. The present study discusses peculiar issues in the adaptation of species distributed in the Pantanal biome and underscores the importance of multidisciplinary approaches to obtain conclusive data on adaptive studies.

Attitudes toward genetic research review: results from a survey of human genetics researchers.

BACKGROUND: Researchers often relate personal experiences of difficulties and challenges with Institutional Review Board (IRB) review of their human genetic research protocols. However, there have been no studies that document the range and frequency of these concerns among researchers conducting human genetic/genomic studies. METHODS: An online anonymous survey was used to collect information from human genetic researchers regarding views about IRB review of genetic protocols. Logistic regression was used to test specific hypotheses. Results from the national online survey of 351 human genomic researchers are summarized in this report. RESULTS: Issues involving considerable discussion with IRBs included reconsent of subjects (51%), protection of participants' personal information (39%) and return of results to participants (34%). Over half of the participants had experienced one or more negative consequences of the IRB review process and approximately 25% had experienced one or more positive consequences. Respondents who had served on an IRB were about 80% more likely to report positive consequences of IRB review than their colleagues who had never served on an IRB (p = 0.03). Survey responses were mixed on the need for reconsent before data sharing and risks related to participant reidentification from genomic data. CONCLUSION: The results from this study provide important perspectives of researchers regarding genetic research review and show lack of consensus on key research ethics issues in genomic research.

Public and biobank participant attitudes toward genetic research participation and data sharing.

Research assessing attitudes toward consent processes for high-throughput genomic-wide technologies and widespread sharing of data is limited. In order to develop a better understanding of stakeholder views toward these issues, this cross-sectional study assessed public and biorepository participant attitudes toward research participation and sharing of genetic research data. Forty-nine individuals participated in 6 focus groups; 28 in 3 public focus groups and 21 in 3 NUgene biorepository participant focus groups. In the public focus groups, 75% of participants were women, 75% had some college education or more, 46% were African-American and 29% were Hispanic. In the NUgene focus groups, 67% of participants were women, 95% had some college education or more, and the majority (76%) of participants was Caucasian. Five major themes were identified in the focus group data: (a) a wide spectrum of understanding of genetic research; (b) pros and cons of participation in genetic research; (c) influence of credibility and trust of the research institution; (d) concerns about sharing genetic research data and need for transparency in the Policy for Sharing of Data in National Institutes of Health-Supported or Conducted Genome-Wide Association Studies; (e) a need for more information and education about genetic research. In order to increase public understanding and address potential concerns about genetic research, future efforts should be aimed at involving the public in genetic research policy development and in identifying or developing appropriate educational strategies to meet the public's needs.

In vitro inhibition of fungal activity by macrophage-mediated sequestration and release of encapsulated amphotericin B nanosupension in red blood cells.

The efficacy of antifungal treatment has been diminished by the biodistribution limitations of amphotericin B (AmB) due to its pharmacological profile, as well as the severe side effects it causes. A cellular drug-delivery system, which incorporates human erythrocytes (RBCs) loaded with an AmB nanosuspension (AmB-NS), is developed in order to improve antifungal treatment. AmB-NS encapsulation in RBCs is achieved by using hypotonic hemolysis, leading to intracellular AmB amounts of 3.81 +/- 0.47 pg RBC(-1) and an entrapment efficacy of 15-18%. Upon phagocytosis of AmB-NS-RBCs, leukocytes show a slow AmB release over ten days, and no alteration in cell viability. This results in an immediate, permanent inhibition of intra- and extracellular fungal activity. AmB-NS-RBC-leukocyte-mediated delivery of AmB is efficient in amounts 1000 times lower than the toxic dose. This drug-delivery method is effective for the transport of water-insoluble substances, such as AmB, and this warrants consideration for further testing.

Ecological-evolutionary relationships in Passiflora alata from Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

The geographical distribution, ecological characteristics, flowering and fruiting times, and pollinating agents of Passiflora alata are considered and related to molecular genetic data gathered simultaneously. The first report on this species in Rio Grande do Sul was made in 1934, only in cultivated gardens. Approximately 20 years later, however, the species was already classified as efferata (wild) in Porto Alegre's suburbs. The data presented here, together with the DNA investigations, indicate that P. alata is actively colonizing previously unoccupied areas of this region.

Ecological-evolutionary relationships in Passiflora alata from Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil / Relações ecológico-evolutivas em Passiflora alata do Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil

The geographical distribution, ecological characteristics, flowering and fruiting times, and pollinating agents of Passiflora alata are considered and related to molecular genetic data gathered simultaneously. The first report on this species in Rio Grande do Sul was made in 1934, only in cultivated gardens. Approximately 20 years later, however, the species was already classified as efferata (wild) in Porto Alegre's suburbs. The data presented here, together with the DNA investigations, indicate that P. alata is actively colonizing previously unoccupied areas of this region.

A distribuição geográfica, as características ecológicas, as épocas de florescimento e frutificação, e os agentes polinizadores de Passiflora alata são considerados e relacionados a estudos genético-moleculares desenvolvidos simultaneamente. O primeiro registro da espécie no Rio Grande do Sul foi feito em 1934, apenas em área cultivada. Cerca de 20 anos depois, no entanto, a espécie já era classificada como efferata (selvagem) nos subúrbios de Porto Alegre. Os dados aqui apresentados, junto com as investigações de DNA, indicam que P. alata está colonizando ativamente áreas previamente não ocupadas desta região.

HPLC detection of miltefosine using an evaporative light scattering detector.

Miltefosine has recently been introduced as leishmanicidal drug for oral administration (Impavido). Previous communications report about the use of liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry detection to detect miltefosine in pharmaceutical preparations and biological fluids. We report about a new method to detect miltefosine using an evaporative light scattering detector (ELSD). The absolute recovery of the analyte was greater than 98.0%. The limit of quantification for miltefosine in plasma at a signal-to-noise ratio of 7.3 was 0.34 microg/ml. The precision of the assay yielded coefficients of variation ranging from 1.8 to 4.5% and an accuracy of 97-107%. Our method advances the qualitative and quantitative detection of miltefosine by combining rapid and efficient solid phase extraction and analysis with an evaporative light-scattering detector.