Litter behaviour on Mediterranean cobble beaches, SE Spain.

Despite the large research effort on reporting quantities of coastal litter, the dynamics of this litter is not yet sufficiently understood. Litter inputs in five cobble beaches located in the Mediterranean (Spain) were studied over three months during winter by biweekly litter tagging. Plastic represented the dominant material that reached the beaches (77%). In remote and narrow beaches, storms constituted the main driver in litter dynamics, favouring the accumulation of floating items such as plastic bottles and wood fragments as well as the largest but contrasting effects, increasing litter inputs and outputs from the beach, respectively. In rural beaches, beach users, mainly fisher people, but also tourists, contributed to a notable input of litter to the beach. Burial and exhumation of litter were reported as common occurring processes. Better management actions are required to improve beach environmental quality.

Beach litter distribution along the western Mediterranean coast of Spain.

The amount and composition of beach litter was assessed, during spring 2018, at 56 sites along the coast of Alicante Province, on the western Mediterranean Sea. Selected sites covered "natural" (19), "village" (17) and "urban" (20) bathing areas and a total of 10,101 litter items was counted in an area of 201,686 m2. Plastic represented the dominant material with 8345 items, i.e. 82.6% of all debris; paper and cardboard numbered 566 items (i.e. 5.6%); pottery and ceramics 348 (3.4%); metal 325 (3.2%); cloth 231 (2.3%); glass 147 (1.5%); rubber 64 (0.6%); wood 46 (0.5%) and other materials summed 29 items, i.e. 0.3% of all debris. Cigarette butts, 45.6% of total items, were observed at different coastal sites: i.e. 1028 units at natural, 1148 at village and 2431 at urban sites. Despite the efforts of local administrations, which enforced cleaning operations at most sites, litter items were essentially related to beachgoers followed by wastewater discharges and fishing activities.

Surgical Orthodontic Approach for the Retreatment of a High Angle Skeletal Class III Patient: Case Report.

The aim of this article is to describe the retreatment ofa high angle skeletal Class II patient with a moderate anterior crossbite who had previous mandibular orthognathic surgery. A traditional orthodontics/orthognathic surgery approach was selected for treatment. Facial balance was improved, and the final occlusal relationships were good.

Toward a comprehensive care of HIV patients: finding a strategy to detect depression in a Spanish HIV cohort.

Depression is a common but frequently undiagnosed feature in individuals with HIV infection. To find a strategy to detect depression in a non-specialized clinical setting, the overall performance of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and the depression identification questions proposed by the European AIDS Clinical Society (EACS) guidelines were assessed in a descriptive cross-sectional study of 113 patients with HIV infection. The clinician asked the two screening questions that were proposed under the EACS guidelines and requested patients to complete the HADS. A psychiatrist or psychologist administered semi-structured clinical interviews to yield psychiatric diagnoses of depression (gold standard). A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis for the HADS-Depression (HADS-D) subscale indicated that the best sensitivity and specificity were obtained between the cut-off points of 5 and 8, and the ROC curve for the HADS-Total (HADS-T) indicated that the best cut-off points were between 12 and 14. There were no statistically significant differences in the correlations of the EACS (considering positive responses to one [A] or both questions [B]), the HADS-D ≥ 8 or the HADS-T ≥ 12 with the gold standard. The study concludes that both approaches (the two EACS questions and the HADS-D subscale) are appropriate depression-screening methods in HIV population. We believe that using the EACS-B and the HADS-D subscale in a two-step approach allows for rapid, assumable and accurate clinical diagnosis in non-psychiatric hospital settings.

Accelerated Osteogenic Orthodontics™ for retreatment of a patient with diminished root length and absence of the maxillary central incisor.

An 18-year-old female patient visited a university orthodontics department with a chief complaint of an unesthetic appearance of her teeth, including a protruded upper central incisor and unsatisfactory results from previous orthodontic treatment. Pretreatment records showed a Class II skeletal and dental relation with proclined upper and lower incisors, replacement of an absent upper left central incisor with the left upper cuspid, presence of the upper left deciduous cuspid, mild crowding, and 4 mm of overbite and overjet. The panoramic radiograph showed shortened roots of multiple teeth. Accelerated Osteogenic Orthodontics™ (AOO™) was recommended as an approach to reduce the treatment time and the risk of further root shortening. Despite being more expensive and requiring a surgical procedure, this treatment option was very attractive to the patient. The overall treatment time was 14 months. Facial balance was improved, and good occlusal relationships were achieved from the functional and esthetic perspectives. In conclusion, surgically facilitated orthodontics (specifically, AOO™) is an efficient and safe therapeutic tool for treating or retreating orthodontic patients with diminished root length.

Factores que afectan la potencia en la producion de vacuna tifoidica / Factors affecting the potency in the production of typhoid vaccine

Se estudiaron las etapas del proceso de produccion de la vacuna tifoidica para explicar la baja potencia de lotes producidos anteriormente en el Instituto Nacional de Higiene. Se encontro que durante el proceso existia perdida del antigeno Vi, el cual es importante en la evaluacion de la potencia de la vacuna en el raton. Se ensayaron algunas modificaciones al metodo de produccion en cultivo estacionario:cambio de medios de cultivo, adicion de iones de Ca + + y Mg + + como estabilizadores y recuperacion del antigenos Vi por el metodo de Jarvis readicionandolo al paquete celular. La adicion de los estabilizadores y el antigeno Vi a la vacuna incremento la potencia a limites superiores a los establecidos por las normas de produccion

Advances in gastric emptying studies by means of computerized scintigraphy.

Gastric emptying studies were begun in 1833. However, as information on this phenomenon became more available it became more difficult to unify studies in order to make them more applicable for the study and treatment of functional disturbances and organic diseases. In this work an innocuous, objective and precise method is described, that consists of the study of gastric emptying in two stages in healthy individuals. In the first, basic substances of food were administered and in the second, usual 1,050 calorie meals all marked with Technetium-99 m macroaggregates, were given. Two scintillation cameras were used coupled to computerized data processing systems from where quantitative information and black and white Polaroid pictures were obtained. In the first stage, six healthy volunteers were studied who received basic food substances in different sessions. In the second stage, 10 healthy volunteers were studied who received a type of meal common in our environment. In all cases gastric emptying curves were obtained plotting radioactivity counts v.s. time. Weibull's distribution was the statistical method applied. According to the ingested substances, results showed different emptying curves of a complex exponential type. Although gastric emptying is immediate, it is parallel to the presence of plateaus in the initial part of the study; an apparently delayed phenomenon that had been overlooked and is explained in the discussion part of this paper. Results obtained have offered the possibility of an abundant volume of studies that should clarify existing doubts in the future with a wide field for clinical application.