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Agave fibers (AF) were incorporated either pristine (AFp) or surface treated by ethylene plasma (AFm) in low-density polyethylene (LDPE)/ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) blends at a ratio of 1 : 1 and foamed by chemical means. The role of the AF content (3, 6, 9, 12, and 15 wt.%) and its surface modification on the cellular morphology and mechanical properties of LDPE/EVA/AF foams under compression is investigated herein. Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy, contact angle, and water suspension of AF suggest that plasma treatment using ethylene successfully modifies the surface nature of AF from hydrophilic to hydrophobic. AF and the surface treatment have an important role on the morphological properties of the foams. Composite foams reinforced with 12 wt.% AFm exhibited the highest mechanical properties improvements. At this fiber content, the composite foams enhanced 30% of the compressive modulus and 23% of the energy absorption under compression with respect to the neat polymer blend foam, as a result to the formation of more uniform cells with smaller size and the enhancement of compatibility and spatial distribution of the AFm in the polymer composite foams due to thin clusters of polyethylene-like polymer deposited on the AF surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents three case studies involving amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) without abnormal cytoplasmic accumulation of fused in sarcoma (FUS) mutation. The three cases described ALS-FUS with TATA-binding protein-associated factor 15 (TAF15) and Trn1 accumulation without FUS mutation. Findings in the study showed an older age of onset and different morphological phenotypes in terms of disease duration in ALS-FUS cases without mutations.

White spot syndrome virus ( WSSV) has caused substantial global economic impact on aquaculture, and it has been determined that strains can vary in virulence. In this study, the effect of viral load was evaluated by infecting Litopenaeus vannamei with 10-fold serial dilution of tissue infected with strain WSSV Mx-H, and the virulence of four WSSV strains from north-western Mexico was assessed along with their variable number of tandem repeat ( VNTR) genotypes in ORF75, ORF94 and ORF125. The LD50 of the Mx-H strain was a dilution dose of 10−7.5; the mortality titre was 109.2 LD50 per gram. In shrimp injected with 102.5 to 106.5 LD50, no significant virulence differences were evident. Using mortality data, the four WSSV strains grouped into three virulence levels. The Mx-F strain (intermediate virulence) and the Mx-C strain (high virulence) showed more genetic differences than those observed between the Mx-G (low-virulence) and Mx-H (high-virulence) strains, in ORF94 and ORF125. The application of high-viral-load inocula proved useful in determining the different virulence phenotypes of the WSSV strains from the Eastern Pacific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sánchez-Ferrero E, Coto E, Beetz C, Gámez J, Corao A, Díaz M, Esteban J, del Castillo E, Moris G, Infante J, Menéndez M, Pascual-Pascual SI, López de Munaín A, Garcia-Barcina MJ, Alvarez V on behalf of the Genetics of Spastic Paraplegia study group. SPG7 mutational screening in spastic paraplegia patients supports a dominant effect for some mutations and a pathogenic role for p.A510V. Mutations in the SPG7 gene were initially reported in patients with autosomal recessive hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP). Recent works suggested a dominant effect for some SPG7 mutations. To characterize the SPG7 mutational spectrum in a large cohort of Spanish HSP patients, we sequenced the whole SPG7 gene in a total of 285 Spastic Paraplegia patients. Large gene rearrangements were also ascertained in some patients. We found a total of 14 SPG7 mutations (12 new) in 14 patients; 2 were large deletions. All the mutation carriers had an adult onset age but only five (35%) had a complicated phenotype. We identified a single mutation in 13 patients. Familial analysis suggested a dominant inheritance for one (p.Leu78*) of these mutations. Carriers of the rare p.A510V variant were significantly more frequent in patients vs healthy controls (3% vs 1%), suggesting a pathogenic role for this SPG7 variant. We reported a high frequency of patients with only one SPG7 mutation, and a putative pathogenic role for the p.A510V variant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We determined the response properties of neurons in the primate medial premotor cortex that were classified as sensory or motor during isochronous tapping to a visual or auditory metronome, using different target intervals and three sequential elements in the task. The cell classification was based on a warping transformation, which determined whether the cell activity was statistically aligned to sensory or motor events, finding a large proportion of cells classified as sensory or motor. Two distinctive clusters of sensory cells were observed, i.e. one cell population with short response-onset latencies to the previous stimulus, and another that was probably predicting the occurrence of the next stimuli. These cells were called sensory-driven and stimulus-predicting neurons, respectively. Sensory-driven neurons showed a clear bias towards the visual modality and were more responsive to the first stimulus, with a decrease in activity for the following sequential elements of the metronome. In contrast, stimulus-predicting neurons were bimodal and showed similar response profiles across serial-order elements. Motor cells showed a consecutive activity onset across discrete neural ensembles, generating a rapid succession of activation patterns between the two taps defining a produced interval. The cyclical configuration in activation profiles engaged more motor cells as the serial-order elements progressed across the task, and the rate of cell recruitment over time decreased as a function of the target interval. Our findings support the idea that motor cells were responsible for the rhythmic progression of taps in the task, gaining more importance as the trial advanced, while, simultaneously, the sensory-driven cells lost their functional impact., (© 2015 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)