Heavy Hymenolepis nana Infection Possibly Through Organic Foods: Report of a Case

We encountered a patient with heavy Hymenolepis nana infection. The patient was a 44-year-old Korean man who had suffered from chronic hepatitis (type B) for 15 years. A large number of H. nana adult worms were found during colonoscopy that was performed as a part of routine health screening. The parasites were scattered throughout the colon, as well as in the terminal ileum, although the patient was immunocompetent. Based on this study, colonoscopy may be helpful for diagnosis of asymptomatic H. nana infections.     

Immunopathological Changes in the Brain of Immunosuppressed Mice Experimentally Infected with Toxocara canis

Toxocariasis is a soil-transmitted helminthozoonosis due to infection of humans by larvae of Toxocara canis. The disease could produce cognitive and behavioral disturbances especially in children. Meanwhile, in our modern era, the incidence of immunosuppression has been progressively increasing due to increased incidence of malignancy as well as increased use of immunosuppressive agents. The present study aimed at comparing some of the pathological and immunological alterations in the brain of normal and immunosuppressed mice experimentally infected with T. canis. Therefore, 180 Swiss albino mice were divided into 4 groups including normal (control) group, immunocompetent T. canis-infected group, immunosuppressed group (control), and immunosuppressed infected group. Infected mice were subjected to larval counts in the brain, and the brains from all mice were assessed for histopathological changes, astrogliosis, and IL-5 mRNA expression levels in brain tissues. The results showed that under immunosuppression, there were significant increase in brain larval counts, significant enhancement of reactive gliosis, and significant reduction in IL-5 mRNA expression. All these changes were maximal in the chronic stage of infection. In conclusion, the immunopathological alterations in the brains of infected animals were progressive over time, and were exaggerated under the effect of immunosuppression as did the intensity of cerebral infection.     

Food consumption and related water resources in Nordic cities

Many modern cities have strongly invested in the sustainability of their urban water management system. Nordic cities like Stockholm or Copenhagen are amongst pioneers in investments towards integrated urban water management. However, cities can never be fully self-sufficient due to their dependency on external (water) resources. In this paper, we quantify this water dependency with respect to food consumption in nine cities located in the five Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland), by means of the water footprint concept. Detailed urban water footprint assessments are scarce in the literature. By analysing national nutrition surveys, we find that urban food intake behaviour differs from national food intake behaviour. In large Nordic cities people eat generally less potatoes, milk products (without cheese), meat and animal fats and they drink less coffee than outside city borders. On the other hand, they generally eat more vegetables and vegetable oils and they drink more tea and alcoholic beverages. This leads consistently – for the six large Nordic cities Stockholm, Malmö, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo and Reykjavik – to slightly smaller food related urban water footprints (−2 to −6%) than national average values. We also analyse the water footprint for different diets based upon Nordic Nutrition Recommendations (NNR) for these cities. We assessed three healthy diet scenarios: 1) including meat (HEALTHY-MEAT), 2) pesco-vegetarian (HEALTHY-PESCO-VEG) and 3) vegetarian (HEALTHY-VEG). This shows that Nordic urban dwellers 1) eat too many animal products (red meat, milk and milk products) and sugar and drink too much alcohol and 2) they eat not enough vegetables, fruit and products from the group pulses, nuts and oilcrops. Their overall energy and protein intake is too high. A shift to a healthy diet with recommended energy and protein intake reduces the urban WF related to food consumption substantially. A shift to HEALTHY-MEAT results in a reduction of −9 to −24%, for HEALTHY-PESCO-VEG the reduction is −29 to −37%, for HEALTHY-VEG the reduction is −36 to −44%. In other words, Nordic urban dwellers can save a lot of water by shifting to a healthy diet.     

Study of Saharan dust influence on PM10 measures in Sicily from 2013 to 2015

Nowadays, particulate matter, especially that with small dimension as PM₁₀, PM_2.5 and PM_1, is the air quality indicator most commonly associated with a number of adverse health effects. In this paper it is analyzed the impact that a natural event, such as the transport of Saharan dust, can have on increasing the particulate matter concentration in Sicily.Consulting the data of daily PM₁₀ concentration, acquired by air quality monitoring network belonging to “Agenzia Regionale Protezionedell’ Ambiente” (Environmental Protection Regional Agency), it was possible to analyze the trend from 2013 to 2015. The days, in which the limit value was exceeded, were subjected to combined analysis. It was based on three models: interpretations of the air masses back-trajectories, using the atmospheric model HYSPLIT (HYbrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated trajectory); on the calculation of the concentration on the ground and at high altitude particulate applying DREAM model (Dust REgional atmospheric model) and on the calculation of the concentration of mineral aerosols according to the atmospheric optical thickness (AOT) applying NAAPS model (Navy Aerosol Analysis and Prediction System).The daily limit value exceedances were attributed to the transport of Saharan dust events exclusively when the three models were in agreement with each other. Identifying the natural events, it was possible to quantify the contribution of the Saharan dust and consequently the reduction of the exceedances number. To quantify the contribution of Saharan dust on daily PM₁₀ concentration, it was calculated the regional background in according to precautionary approach recommended by “Guidance on the quantification of the contribution of natural sources under the EU Air Quality Directive 2008/50/EC”, when the application of the method cannot be validated with chemical analysis, as in this case. In this study is obtained, as the most important quantitative goal, the convergence of the three models to the same result. So, is evident that exceedances of the daily limit value that occurred from 2013 to 2015 in Sicily can be attributed, in most cases, to the Saharan dust intrusion.     

On the use of partial area under the ROC curve for comparison of two diagnostic tests

Evaluation of diagnostic performance is typically based on the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and the area under the curve (AUC) as its summary index. The partial area under the curve (pAUC) is an alternative index focusing on the range of practical/clinical relevance. One of the problems preventing more frequent use of the pAUC is the perceived loss of efficiency in cases of noncrossing ROC curves. In this paper, we investigated statistical properties of comparisons of two correlated pAUCs. We demonstrated that outside of the classic model there are practically reasonable ROC types for which comparisons of noncrossing concave curves would be more powerful when based on a part of the curve rather than the entire curve. We argue that this phenomenon stems in part from the exclusion of noninformative parts of the ROC curves that resemble straight‐lines. We conducted extensive simulation studies in families of binormal, straight‐line, and bigamma ROC curves. We demonstrated that comparison of pAUCs is statistically more powerful than comparison of full AUCs when ROC curves are close to a “straight line”. For less flat binormal ROC curves an increase in the integration range often leads to a disproportional increase in pAUCs’ difference, thereby contributing to an increase in statistical power. Thus, efficiency of differences in pAUCs of noncrossing ROC curves depends on the shape of the curves, and for families of ROC curves that are nearly straight‐line shaped, such as bigamma ROC curves, there are multiple practical scenarios in which comparisons of pAUCs are preferable.     

Resistance to pathogens in terpene down-regulated orange fruits inversely correlates with the accumulation of D-limonene in peel oil glands

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are secondary metabolites acting as a language for the communication of plants with the environment. In orange fruits, the monoterpene D-limonene accumulates at very high levels in oil glands from the peel. Drastic down-regulation of D-limonene synthase gene expression in the peel of transgenic oranges harboring a D-limonene synthase transgene in antisense (AS) configuration altered the monoterpene profile in oil glands, mainly resulting in reduced accumulation of D-limonene. This led to fruit resistance against Penicillium digitatum (Pd), Xanthomonas citri subsp. citri (Xcc) and other specialized pathogens. Here, we analyze resistance to pathogens in independent AS and empty vector (EV) lines, which have low, medium or high D-limonene concentrations and show that the level of resistance is inversely related to the accumulation of D-limonene in orange peels, thus explaining the need of high D-limonene accumulation in mature oranges in nature for the efficient attraction of specialized microorganism frugivores.     

Introducing the vectorial Kappa: An index to quantify congruence between vectorial mosaics

This paper introduces the vectorial Kappa (κ_v) that one can utilize to assess congruence between two vectorial mosaics. The vectorial Kappa extends for vectorial mosaics the approach of the so-called Cohen's Kappa index, commonly used to compare raster mosaics. By comparing both approaches, we aim to demonstrate how efficient and convenient a vector-based congruence may be when working on vectorial mosaics.