Portermiller9987

UVC disinfection has been recognised by the WHO as an effective disinfection treatment to provide decentralized potable water. Under real conditions there are still unknowns that limit this application including the influence of suspended solids and natural organic matter. Docetaxel cost This work aims to investigate the influence of two key parameters, suspended solids and natural organic matter, on the efficiency of UVC disinfection of surface water to achieve the drinking water quality requirements established by the WHO for point of use (POU) technologies. Kaolinite (turbidity agent) and humic acids (HA, model of organic matter) were used in a factorial design of experiments (Turbidity from 0 to 5 NTU, and HA from 0 to 3.5 mg/L) to investigate their effect on UVC inactivation of MS2 phage in surface water. A collimated beam (12 W) and a commercial UVC disinfection flow system (16 W) designed to provide drinking water at households were used. The UVC flow system both in the laboratory and in the field was able to achieve water in a household without the need of expensive and laborious biological monitoring tools.

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women world-wide and the most common cause of cancer deaths, which can often be managed with early diagnosis and subsequent treatment. Here, we focus on geographic disparities in incidence within Portugal for three age groups of women (30-49; 50-69; 70-84 years).

Age-period-cohort (APC) models are widely used in cancer surveillance, and these models have recently been extended to allow spatially-varying effects. We apply novel spatial APC models to estimate relative risk and age-adjusted temporal trends at the district level for the 20 districts in Portugal. Our model allows us to report on country-wide trends, but also to investigate geographic disparities between districts and trends within districts.

Age-adjusted breast cancer incidence was increasing over 1998-2011 for all three age groups and in every district in Portugal. However, we detect spatially-structured between-district heterogeneity in relative risk and age-adjusted trends (Net Drifts) for each of the three age groups, which is most pronounced in the highly-screened (50-69yo) and late-onset (70-84yo) groups of women.

We present evidence of disparities in breast cancer incidence at a more granular geographic level than previously reported. Some disparities may be due to latent risk factors, which cannot be accounted for by age, birth year, and geographic location alone.

Our study motivates resuming data collection for breast cancer incidence at the district level in Portugal, as well as the study of exogenous risk factors.

Our study motivates resuming data collection for breast cancer incidence at the district level in Portugal, as well as the study of exogenous risk factors.Establishing anatomical coordinate systems (CS) from anatomical landmarks is sensitive to landmark selection. Vastly different results can be obtained amongst observers which can greatly affect the resulting joint kinematics. The aim of this study is to introduce an objective method for calculating functional CS definitions for bones in joints that observe three-cylindrical-joint kinematic chain decomposition methods and to apply the method on tibiofemoral joint specimens. This method is driven by low resistance joint motion during loading profiles and not from anatomical landmark selection. Two anatomical CS definitions were established from points collected by five observers, for twelve knees. The knees underwent passive flexion and internal/external rotation using the anatomical CSs. The kinematics from these profiles were used in linear least squares minimization of off-axis motions to redefine the tibia and femur origins, the femur flexion axis and the tibia internal rotation axis. Significant improvements in reproducibility of 7.4 mm (tibia origin, p less then 0.001), 3.4 mm (femur origin, p less then 0.001), and 2.9° (femur FE-axis, p less then 0.001) between the two functional CSs compared to the two anatomical CSs were observed. Functional CSs led to significant decreases in off-axis motion during discrete passive flexion profiles. This new strategy for establishing functional CSs provides an objective approach that will reduce the effects of observer error in establishing CSs. Additionally, functional CSs allow for better interpretations of kinematic responses due to loading because effects of kinematic cross-talk is minimized.Cartilage wear particles are released into the synovial fluid by mechanical and chemical degradation of the articular surfaces during osteoarthritis and attach to the synovial membrane. Accumulation of wear particles could alter key tissue-level mechanical properties of the synovium, hindering its characteristically low-friction interactions with underlying articular surfaces in the synovial joint. The present study employs a custom loading device to further the characterization of native synovium friction properties, while investigating the hypothesis that attachment of cartilage wear particles increases friction coefficient. Juvenile bovine synovium demonstrated characteristically low friction coefficients in sliding contact with glass, in agreement with historical measurements. Friction coefficient increased with higher normal load in saline, while lubrication with native synovial fluid maintained low friction coefficients at higher loads. Cartilage wear particles generated from juvenile bovine cartilage attached directly to synovium explants in static culture, with incorporation onto the tissue denoted by cell migration onto the particle surface. In dilute synovial fluid mimicking the decreased lubricating properties during osteoarthritis, wear particle attachment significantly increased friction coefficient against glass, and native cartilage and synovium. In addition to providing a novel characterization of synovial joint tribology this work highlights a potential mechanism for cartilage wear particles to perpetuate the degradative environment of osteoarthritis by modulating tissue-level properties of the synovium that could impact macroscopic wear as well as mechanical stimuli transmitted to resident cells.The directionality of the longitudinal association between depressive symptoms and memory remains a topic of intense debate. A unidirectional association where depression impacts the change in memory (or vice-versa) and a bidirectional association where the trajectories of both dimensions affect each other lead to different clinical implications.

This study investigated the depression-memory longitudinal association in a sample of 2057 older adults aged between 60 and 99 years old from the Virginia Cognitive Aging Project. The bivariate dual change score model was used to investigate the directionality of the association between episodic memory and three dimensions of depression (somatic symptoms, depressed affect, and positive affect) throughout ten years (five measurement points), controlling for education and sex.

the bidirectional model showed the best fit between somatic symptoms and memory, with a significant coupling effect observed from initial somatic symptoms to subsequent changes in memory. For depressed and positive affect, the unidirectional model with initial levels of depression predicting following changes in memory showed the best fit to the data, with significant coupling effects observed. Higher initial levels of somatic symptoms and depressed affect predicted a subsequent decline in memory, and higher initial levels of positive affect predicted subsequent better memory performance. Statistical adjustments for covariates (education and sex) had no significant influence on these associations.

Our findings support a unidirectional association with higher depressive symptoms preceding a steeper decline in memory in older adults. We discuss the clinical implications for depressive symptoms as a predictor of subsequent memory decline.

Our findings support a unidirectional association with higher depressive symptoms preceding a steeper decline in memory in older adults. We discuss the clinical implications for depressive symptoms as a predictor of subsequent memory decline.Consistency and regularity, concepts that arise, respectively, from the connectionist and classical cognitive modeling work in alphabetic reading, are two ways to characterize the orthography-to-phonology mappings of written languages. These concepts have been applied to Chinese reading research despite important differences across writing systems, with mixed results concerning their relative importance. The present study of covert naming in Chinese is distinctive in testing the ERP effects of regularity and consistency in a fully orthogonal design. We found that consistency, but not regularity, affected the N170, P200 and N400 as well as pronunciation transcription accuracies, demonstrating a more prominent role of consistency than regularity in character naming, consistent with conclusions from English word naming. To capture a generalization across writing systems, we propose mapping congruence as a writing-system-independent way of referring to orthography-to-phonology mappings and illustrate these congruence effects in an interactive framework of character identification.Despite substantial research to profile the microbial characteristics in the atmosphere, the changing metabolism underpinning microbial successional dynamics remains ambiguous. Herein, we applied qPCR, high-throughput sequencing of the genes encoding 16S and ITS rRNA to render the bacterial/fungal dynamics of ambient PM2.5 filters maintained at constant conditions of temperature (20 ± 2 °C) and humidity (50 ± 5%). The incubation experiments which lasted for 50 days aim to simulate a metabolic process of microbe in two types PM2.5 (polluted and non-polluted). The results show that microbial community species in polluted PM2.5 had faster decay rates, more bacterial diversity and less fungal community compared to the non-polluted ones. For bacteria, the proportion of anaerobic species is higher than aerobic ones, and their performance of contain mobile elements, form-biofilms, and pathogenic risks declined rapidly as times went by. Whereas for fungi, saprotroph species occupied about 70% of the population, resulting in a specified peak of abundance due to the adequacy nutrients supplied by the apoptosis cells. Combining the classified microbial species, we found stable community structure and the volatile ones related to the various metabolic survival strategies during different time. Without the input of peripheral environment, the health risks of airborne microbe descend to a healthy level after 20 days, implying their biologic effectiveness was about 20 days no matter the air is polluted or not. This study provided new insights into the different metabolic survival of airborne microorganisms in ideal and stable conditions.

Small bowel evisceration through spontaneous perforation of the rectum is an extremely rare condition in which the small bowel herniates mostly through a defect in the anterior rectal wall.

We present the case of a 25-year-old otherwise healthy lady who denied any history of rectal prolapse or trauma.

Small bowel evisceration through rectum is a rare surgical emergency with a mortality rate as high as 42.3%. Apart from trauma, chronic constipation, rectal prolapse, presence of a deep Douglas pouch and a sliding hernia formed by the cul-de-sac have also been described as etiological factors.

It is extremely difficult to find out the actual cause of "spontaneous" small bowel evisceration, especially in young adults.

It is extremely difficult to find out the actual cause of "spontaneous" small bowel evisceration, especially in young adults.