Sandfly surveillance and investigation of Leishmania spp. DNA in sandflies in Kosovo

In the past decade, leishmaniasis seems to be re-emerging in Balkan countries. There are serious implications that Kosovo is a visceral leishmaniasis endemic region with autochthonous transmission; nevertheless, surveillance of vectors, reservoirs or the disease is not yet established. Gaining knowledge about sandfly vector species is a prerequisite for the development of a monitoring and control plan in the future. After a long gap in research of over 70 years, sandfly studies in Kosovo were resumed in 2014. During this presence/absence study, nine sandfly species were detected: Phlebotomus papatasi, Ph. perfiliewi, Ph. tobbi, Ph. neglectus, Ph. simici, Ph. balcanicus, Ph. alexandri, Ph. mascittii and Sergentomyia minuta. Three species are new with regard to the fauna of Kosovo – Ph. alexandri, Ph. balcanicus and Ph. mascittii. Besides increased diversity, changes in the number of collected specimens and distribution range of species were recorded, with Ph. neglectus being the most dominant species with the widest distribution. Testing of randomly chosen females for Leishmania spp. DNA resulted the in detection of L. tropica in a specimen of Ph. neglectus. The presence of numerous vector species in the sandfly fauna of Kosovo pose a threat for the re-emergence of vector-borne diseases. Therefore, continuous surveillance is recommended with regular updates on vector distribution and abundance.     

Daily movements and home range of Eastern Hermann's Tortoise,Testudo hermanni boettgeri (Reptilia: Testudines)

Understanding the movements of animals in the wild is critical for providing important information regarding their conservation and management. With this aim in mind, we studied a population of Testudo hermanni in their natural habitat using micro GPS devices. Additionally, using VHF transmitters we tracked six individuals (four females and two males) from May to August 2015. The overall home range size varied from 813 and 123,567 m². Home range size did not differ significantly between males and females, and was also independent of the size of the individual (expressed as straight carapace length). Individual movements were confined to short distances (males 25.7 m; females 18.5 m). Activity levels were highest in July and August for males and May and July for females.     

Particle simulation on the Cell BE architecture

This paper presents two parallel formulations for the Barnes-Hut algorithm on the Cell architecture, which differ in tree distribution and construction phases of the algorithm. In the initial parallelization, the domains are dynamically partitioned and assigned to the synergistic processing elements (SPEs), and SPEs construct local trees of the sub-domains in parallel. The enhanced parallelization scheme provides better clustering of the particles by sequentially constructing the global tree of the entire work space in the power processing element (PPE) and by partitioning the tree into sub-trees that can fit in the Local Store. SPEs operate on the sub-tree data and construct local trees in parallel. Our experimental evaluation indicates that this application performs much faster on the Cell BE compared to the Intel Xeon based system. Specifically, our first and second methods on the Cell BE outperform Intel Xeon by a factor of 5.8 and 7.1 for 8192 particles, respectively.     

Asymmetrically reliable caches for multicore architectures under performance and energy constraints

Cache structures in a multicore system are more vulnerable to soft errors due to high transistor density. Protecting all caches unselectively has notable overhead on performance and energy consumption. In this study, we propose asymmetrically reliable caches to supply reliability need of the system using sufficient additional hardware under the performance and energy constraints. In our framework, a chip multiprocessor is composed of a high reliability core which has ECC protection, and a set of low reliability cores which have no protection on their data caches. Between two types of cores, there is also a middle-level reliability core which has only parity check. Application threads are mapped on the different cores in terms of reliability based on their critical data usage. The experimental results for selected applications show that our proposed techniques improve reliability with considerable performance and energy overhead on the average compared to traditional unsafe caches.     

Time course of hemorheological alterations after heavy anaerobic exercise in untrained human subjects.

The time course of hemorheological alterations was investigated after heavy anaerobic exercise in untrained male human subjects. The Wingate protocol was performed by each subject, and blood lactate, red blood cell (RBC) deformability and aggregation, white blood cell (WBC) activation, and several hematological parameters were investigated during 24 h after the exercise and compared with preexercise values. Compared with the preexercise value, blood lactate level was found to be approximately 10-fold higher immediately after the exercise. There was a transient, significant increment of RBC and WBC counts immediately after exercise that was followed by a decrement of RBC count. There was a second increase of WBC count, accompanied with increased percentages of granulocytes and granulocyte activation, starting 45 min after exercise. RBC deformability was found to be impaired immediately after exercise and remained reduced for at least 12 h; RBC aggregation was also found to be decreased after exercise, with the onset of this decrease delayed by 30 min. The results of this study indicate that a single bout of heavy anaerobic exercise may induce significant hemorheological deterioration lasting for up to 12 h and thus suggest the need to consider such effects in individuals with impaired cardiovascular function.     

Histopathological analysis of vesicular and bullous lesions in Kaposi sarcoma

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: In this study, the clinical and morphological features of vesiculobullous lesions observed in Kaposi sarcoma are analyzed, and the features of bullous Kaposi sarcoma cases are emphasized. METHODS: A total of 178 biopsy materials of 75 cases diagnosed as classic-type cutaneous Kaposi sarcoma were reviewed. Twenty-five cases showing vesiculobullous features were included in the study. Tumor, epidermis, dermis, and clinical data regarding these cases was evaluated. RESULTS: Vesicular changes were observed in 21 (12%) out of 178 lesions of the 75 cases, while bullous changes were present in only 4 (2%). In all cases where vesicular and bullous changes were detected, tumor, epidermis, and dermis changes were similar. All cases were nodular stage KS lesions, whereas hyperkeratosis and serum exudation in the epidermis, marked edema in the dermis, and enlarged lymphatic vessels and chronic inflammatory response were observed. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that changes in vascular resistance occurring during tumor progression are the most important factors comprising vesiculobullous morphology. Virtual slides The virtual slide(s) for this article can be found here: http://www.diagnosticpathology.diagnomx.eu/vs/1646397188748474.     

ADAMTS9 activation by interleukin 1β via NFATc1 in OUMS-27 chondrosarcoma cells and in human chondrocytes

ADAMTS9 is a member of the disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin motifs (ADAMTS) genes, with aggrecan-degrading activity. It has also been characterized to be reactive and highly activated ADAMTS by IL-1β in both chondrosarcoma cells and human chondrocytes (Demircan et al. Arthritis Rheum 52:1451–1460, 2005). In order to understand the regulation of ADAMTS9 gene expression a functional 3.0 kb human ADAMTS9 promoter has been cloned and characterized. A sequence analysis of the promoter revealed the presence of putative binding sites for Nuclear Factor of Activated T cells (NFAT), which is commonly found in the ADAMTS4 and ADAMTS5 promoters. NFATc1 was up-regulated in an activated form by IL-1β in human chondrocytes. The IL-1β inducible ADAMTS9 expression was inhibited by NFAT inhibitors, FK506 and 11Arg (11R)-VIVIT. Furthermore, direct binding of NFATc1 on distal and proximal promoters of ADAMTS9 was demonstrated by a chromatin immunoprecipitation assay. Promoter-reporter assays supported those results. These findings may provide a better understanding of the regulation of ADAMTS9 expression induced by inflammatory cytokines.