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Purpose of Review In this review, we report on the state of knowledge about human Q fever in Brazil and on the Guiana Shield, an Amazonian region located in northeastern South America. There is a contrast between French Guiana, where the incidence of this disease is the highest in the world, and other countries where this disease is practically non-existent. Recent Findings Recent findings are essentially in French Guiana where a unique strain MST17 has been identified; it is probably more virulent than those usually found with a particularly marked pulmonary tropism, a mysterious animal reservoir, a geographical distribution that raises questions. Summary Q fever is a bacterial zoonosis due to Coxiella burnetii that has been reported worldwide. On the Guiana Shield, a region mostly covered by Amazonian forest, which encompasses the Venezuelan State of Bolivar, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, and the Brazilian State of Amapá, the situation is very heterogeneous. While French Guiana is the region reporting the highest incidence of this disease in the world, with a single infecting clone (MST 117) and a unique epidemiological cycle, it has hardly ever been reported in other countries in the region. This absence of cases raises many questions and is probably due to massive under-diagnosis. Studies should estimate comprehensively the true burden of this disease in the region.

14 pags., 2 figs. -- This article belongs to the Special Issue Nanolithography: A Theme Issue in Honor of Professor José María De Teresa on the Occasion of His 50th Birthday, Electrodeposition has appeared in the last year as a non-expensive and versatile technique for the growth of nanomaterials. We review the main characteristics of electrodeposition that make this technique very suitable for its combination with different nanofabrication tools and the possibilities that this combination offers to fabricate nanowires and more complex tridimensional nanostructures. Finally, we overview the present and future impact of electrodeposition on the fabrication of a novel generation of nanomaterials with potential impact in nanomagnetism and spintronics., This research was funded by the Spanish MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 under grant PID2020-117024GB-C43 and by the Comunidad de Madrid through Project NANOMAGCOST-CM P2018/NMT-4321. Sandra Ruiz-Gómez and Claudia Fernández-Gonzalez gratefully acknowledge the IEEE Magnetic Society Educational Seed Funding. Sandra Ruiz-Gómez also gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation.

To know the epidemiological, clinical and therapeutic characteristics of patients with a diagnosis of HF treated in primary care of 2Health Areas of Albacete, Zone 5 A (characteristics of the Urban Center) and Casas Ibañez (characteristics of the Rural Center) as well as to highlight The main differences between the two.Descriptive and cross-sectional study, corresponding to the first phase of the ALBAPIC study. All patients in the area who met the inclusion criteria have been registered: Having a diagnosis of HF in the TURRIANO program (consultation program in Primary Care of Castilla la Mancha). Demographic-anthropometric and clinical characteristics, analytical data, complementary diagnostic examinations, therapeutic guidelines and hospitalizations were recorded for 12 months prior to inclusion. A physical examination and electrocardiographic and biochemical controls were performed at the inclusion visit.384 patients diagnosed with HF in both Health Zone (161 in urban areas and 223 in rural areas) have participated. Average age 82.24±10.51 years (81.24±9.59 years in urban areas and 83.37±11 years in rural areas with significant differences P.005, 54.3% are women (54% in urban areas and 54.7% in rural areas) We have an incidence of CI of 1% in urban areas and 1.8% in rural areas. The prevalence of CVRF has that hypertension above all and dyslipidemia are the most frequent, with differences depending on the environment in which they live. In the rural environment there are higher rates of heart disease. Patients with HF have a high number of concomitant chronic diseases, being between 4 and 6 more than 60% of cases in the urban environment and between 1 and 4 in the rural environment. Approximately 14% also have an oncological disease in the urban environment compared to 21% in the rural. According to the exploration and analytical data, the main variables are acceptably controlled, the lipid parameters in the rural center being worse controlled. The average number of drugs prescribed by each patient was 6.3 in rural and 7.2 urban. As for the treatments they are taking, it is observed that diuretics and statins.There is an acceptable control of cardiovascular risk factors in both media, there being differences in the diagnostic methods and treatments used.

Este trabalho apresenta uma solução para a detecção de faltas de alta impedância (FAIs) por meio do uso de um dispositivo FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array). A proposição é de vital importância para o funcionamento adequado do sistema elétrico de distribuição de forma a atender aos requisitos dos procedimentos de distribuição (PRODIST), elaborados pela Agência Nacional de Energia Elétrica (ANEEL). Para analisar o comportamento das grandezas elétricas frente a essa falha, uma rede de distribuição primária foi modelada, usando a plataforma MATLAB/Simulink®. Paralelamente à modelagem, um algoritmo em linguagem VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language) foi desenvolvido para a detecção da falta, no qual o monitoramento da corrente fasorial, por meio da Transformada Discreta de Fourier, foi utilizado, além do valor RMS da corrente de sequência zero. Para realizar as simulações e os testes do algoritmo, o software ModelSim® foi utilizado, e, posteriormente, o código foi embarcado no dispositivo de lógica programável FPGA. O algoritmo de detecção de falta de alta impedância foi integrado ao sistema modelado em Simulink® para monitoramento em tempo real e comando de um dispositivo de proteção. Os resultados apontam que o algoritmo foi capaz de detectar as faltas, indicando a fase interrompida e comandando a proteção de forma eficiente.

This paper proposes a novel phase-locked loop (PLL) algorithm based on a fractional order proportional plus integral (FOPI) controller, tuned through Genetic Algorithm (GA), together with an all-pass filter to generate the quadrature signals to overcome the phase peak response of the widely applied double second order generalized integrator PLL (DSOGI-PLL). For comparison criteria, this paper uses the steady-state phase-angle error, speed of response to disturbances and harmonic and unbalance rejection to confirm the viability and superior performance of the proposal.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the effectiveness of corticosteroids on outcomes of patients with COVID-19 pneumonia requiring oxygen without mechanical ventilation. METHODS: We used routine care data from 51 hospitals in France and Luxembourg to assess the effectiveness of corticosteroids at 0.8 mg/kg/day eq. prednisone (CTC group) versus standard of care (no-CTC group) among adults 18 to 80 years old with confirmed COVID-19 pneumonia requiring oxygen without mechanical ventilation. The primary outcome was intubation or death by day 28. In our main analysis, characteristics of patients at baseline (i.e., time when patients met all inclusion criteria) were balanced by using propensity-score inverse probability of treatment weighting. RESULTS: Among the 891 patients included in the analysis, 203 were assigned to the CTC group. Use of corticosteroids was not significantly associated with risk of intubation or death by day 28 (weighted hazard ratio [wHR] 0.92, 95% CI 0.61 to 1.39) or cumulative death rate (wHR 1.03, 95% CI 0.54 to 1.98). However, use of corticosteroids was associated with reduced risk of intubation or death by day 28 in the prespecified subgroups of patients requiring oxygen ≥ 3 L/min (wHR 0.50, 95% CI 0.30 to 0.85) or C-reactive protein level ≥ 100 mg/L (wHR 0.44, 95%CI 0.23 to 0.85). Number of hyperglycaemia events was higher for patients with than without corticosteroids, but number of infections was similar. CONCLUSIONS: We found no association between the use of corticosteroids and intubation or death in the broad population of patients 18 to 80 years old with COVID-19 hospitalized in non-intensive care unit settings. However, the treatment was associated with reduced risk of intubation or death for patients with ≥ 3 L/min oxygen or C-reactive protein level ≥ 100 mg/L at baseline. Further research need to confirm the right timing of corticosteroids for patients with COVID-19 requiring oxygen only.

Mapping utility poles using side-view images acquired with car-mounted cameras is a time-consuming task, mainly in larger areas due to the need for street-by-street surveying. Aerial images cover larger areas and can be feasible alternatives although the detection and mapping of the utility poles in urban environments using top-view images is challenging. Thus, we propose the use of Adaptive Training Sample Selection (ATSS) for detecting utility poles in urban areas since it is a novel method and has not yet investigated in remote sensing applications. Here, we compared ATSS with Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Networks (Faster R-CNN) and Focal Loss for Dense Object Detection (RetinaNet ), currently used in remote sensing applications, to assess the performance of the proposed methodology. We used 99,473 patches of 256 × 256 pixels with ground sample distance (GSD) of 10 cm. The patches were divided into training, validation and test datasets in approximate proportions of 60%, 20% and 20%, respectively. As the utility pole labels are point coordinates and the object detection methods require a bounding box, we assessed the influence of the bounding box size on the ATSS method by varying the dimensions from 30×30 to 70×70 pixels. For the proposal task, our findings show that ATSS is, on average, 5% more accurate than Faster R-CNN and RetinaNet. For a bounding box size of 40×40, we achieved Average Precision with intersection over union of 50% (AP50) of 0.913 for ATSS, 0.875 for Faster R-CNN and 0.874 for RetinaNet. Regarding the influence of the bounding box size on ATSS, our results indicate that the AP50 is about 6.5% higher for 60×60 compared to 30×30. For AP75, this margin reaches 23.1% in favor of the 60×60 bounding box size. In terms of computational costs, all the methods tested remain at the same level, with an average processing time around of 0.048 s per patch. Our findings show that ATSS outperforms other methodologies and is suitable for developing operation tools that can automatically detect and map utility poles.

T cell-mediated immune response plays a crucial role in controlling Trypanosoma cruzi infection and parasite burden, but it is also involved in the clinical onset and progression of chronic Chagas´ disease. Therefore, the study of T cells is central to the understanding of the immune response against the parasite and its implications for the infected organism. The complexity of the parasite-host interactions hampers the identification and characterization of T cell-activating epitopes. We approached this issue by combining in silico and in vitro methods to interrogate patients´ T cells specificity. Fifty T. cruzi peptides predicted to bind a broad range of class I and II HLA molecules were selected for in vitro screening against PBMC samples from a cohort of chronic Chagas´ disease patients, using IFN-γ secretion as a readout. Seven of these peptides were shown to activate this type of T cell response, and four out of these contain class I and II epitopes that, to our knowledge, are first described in this study. The remaining three contain sequences that had been previously demonstrated to induce CD8+ T cell response in Chagas´ disease patients, or bind HLA-A*02:01, but are, in this study, demonstrated to engage CD4+ T cells. We also assessed the degree of differentiation of activated T cells and looked into the HLA variants that might restrict the recognition of these peptides in the context of human T. cruzi infection. Fil: Acevedo, Gonzalo Raúl. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; Argentina Fil: Juiz, Natalia Anahí. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; Argentina Fil: Ziblat, Andrea. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; Argentina Fil: Perez Perri, Lucas. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; Argentina Fil: Girard, Magalí Celeste. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; Argentina Fil: Ossowski, Micaela Soledad. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; Argentina Fil: Fernandez, Marisa Liliana. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud “Dr. C. G. Malbrán”. Instituto Nacional de Parasitología "Dr. Mario Fatala Chaben”; Argentina Fil: Hernández, Yolanda. Dirección Nacional de Instituto de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorio e Instituto de Salud “Dr. C. G. Malbrán”. Instituto Nacional de Parasitología "Dr. Mario Fatala Chaben”; Argentina Fil: Chadi, Raúl. Gobierno de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. Hospital General de Agudos Dr. Ignacio Pirovano; Argentina Fil: Wittig, Michael. Christian Albrechts Universität zu Kiel. Institut für Klinische Molekularbiologie; Alemania Fil: Franke, Andre. Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. Institut für Klinische Molekularbiologie; Alemania Fil: Nielsen, Morten. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas. Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas; Argentina. Technical University of Denmark. Department of Health Technology; Dinamarca Fil: Gomez, Karina Andrea. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; Argentina

PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO COORDENAÇÃO DE APERFEIÇOAMENTO DO PESSOAL DE ENSINO SUPERIOR FUNDAÇÃO DE APOIO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DO RIO DE JANEIRO PROGRAMA DE EXCELENCIA ACADEMICA BOLSA NOTA 10 Esta dissertação objetiva promover uma possibilidade de reflexão filosófica pós-fundacionista em torno das reconstruções da relação entre legitimidade e legalidade na disciplina de Relações Internacionais (RIs), em interseções pontuais desta com o campo do Direito Internacional (DI). Essa investigação é motivada, em particular, por contexto e discursividade que procuraram reconstituir essa relação em termos da diferença (ex: ilegal, porém legítima) ou semelhança potencial (ex: ilegal, porém legítima, porém quase-legal) entre os dois ente-conceitos, tal como em tentativas de ordenamento epistêmico e político dos eventos relacionados ao uso da força pela Organização do Tratado do Atlântico Norte (OTAN) na região do Kosovo em 1998-1999. Ao longo deste trabalho, tal perspectiva teórico-filosófica pós-fundacionista assumirá diferentes facetas, transitando transdisciplinarmente nos campos da Filosofia (Ludwig Wittgenstein e Jacques Derrida), das Relações Internacionais (construtivismo, pós-colonialismo e pós-estruturalismo) e, pontualmente, do Direito Internacional (estudos críticos legais) e da Sociologia do Conhecimento (etnometodologia), com vistas a deslocar as expectativas quanto à condição ontológica da legitimidade e da legalidade - isto é, ao entendimento destas como ente-conceitos plenos de sentido em si mesmos e articulados com estratégias de ordenamento epistêmico e de delimitação da imaginação política internacional - e, com isso, reconstruir (e não abandonar) o conhecimento e a política da relação legitimidade/ legalidade nas RIs. Investiga-se particularmente a possibilidade de uma reflexão sociológica politicamente engajada com essa relação, ou seja, uma forma de engajamento epistêmico-político na qual a suspensão do sentido do legal e/ou do legítimo configura momento-chave de abertura política a uma sensibilidade investigativa contínua em relação aos limites desenhados pelas tentativas de encerramento de um devido ser do mundo; este, por sua vez, limitadamente articulado enquanto uma impressão sociológica contingente através da performance contextual e discursiva do julgamento normativo vinculado à relação legitimidade/legalidade. This Master s thesis seeks to promote a possible post-foundational philosophical investigation on the reconstructions of the relation between legitimacy and legality by International Relations (IR), in specific juxtapositions with the field of International Law (IL). This research is especially motivated by those context and discourse that sought to reconstitute this relation in terms of differentiation (e.g. illegal, yet legitimate) or potential similarity (e.g. illegitimate but legitimate, albeit quasi-legal) between the two concepts/entities, such as the attempts to epistemically and politically order the events concerning the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) s use of force in Kosovo in 1998-1999. Throughout this piece, this postfoundationalist theoretical-philosophical perspective takes on different facets, transdisciplinaryly moving around the fields of Philosophy (Ludwig Wittgenstein e Jacques Derrida), International Relations (constructivism, post-structuralism, and post-colonialism) and, occasionally, International Law (critical legal studies) and Sociology of Knowledge (ethnomethodology), while seeking to displace the expectations on the ontological character of legitimacy and legality - i.e. the understanding of them as meaningful concepts/entities in themselves which are intertwined with strategies of epistemic ordering and circumscription of political imagination - and thus to reconstruct (and not to reject) the knowledge and politics of the legitimacy/ legality in IR. This work particularly investigates a possible sociological form of reflection that is politically engaged with this relation, that is, a form of epistemic-political engagement in which the suspension of the meaning of the legitimate and/or the legal constitutes a key moment for a political opening towards a continuing investigative sensibility vis-à-vis the limits that have been designed by the attempts to delimit a right-being of the world; which is in turn limitedly mobilized as a contingent sociological impression through the contextual and discursive performance of a normative judgement attached to the legitimacy/legality relation.

Hypotrichosis with juvenile macular dystrophy is a rare autosomal recessive disorder characterized by sparse scalp hair caused by hair follicle abnormalities as well as progressive retinal degeneration leading to blindness in the second or third decade of life. It is associated with mutations of the cadherin 3 (CDH3) gene, which result in abnormal expression of P-cadherin. Mutations in CDH3 are related to ectodermal dysplasia, ectrodactyly, and macular dystrophy. In this report, we describe an 11-year-old Iranian boy born with a missing left index fingernail and sparse scalp hair who later displayed macular pigmentary changes. Genetic testing of the CDH3 gene revealed a homozygous gene variant at exon 6 (640A>T). This novel in-frame mutation converts a lysine to a premature stop codon, altering synthesis of P-cadherin on chromosome 16q22. RESUMO Hipotricose com distrofia macular juvenil (HDMJ) é uma doença autossômica recessiva rara caracterizada por rarefação capilar por alteração nos folículos pilosos e degeneracão progressiva da retina levando a cegueira na segunda e terceira década de vida. Associada a mutações no gene CDH3, resultando em expressão anormal de P-caderina. Mutações no gene CDH3 estão relacionados à displasia ectodérmica, ectrodactilia e distrofia macular. Neste relato descrevemos um menino Iraniano de 11 anos de idade, com ausência da unha na mão esquerda e rarefação capilar desde o nascimento, e que posteriormente apresentou alterações pigmentares maculares. Teste genético do gene CDH3 revelou uma variação homozigótica no exon 6 (640A>T). Essa mutação in-frame troca uma lisina por um codon de parada prematura, alterando a síntese da proteína P-caderina no cromossomo 16q22.

A large number of mobile health applications (apps) are currently available with a variety of functionalities. The user ratings in the app stores seem not to be reliable to determine the quality of the apps. The traditional methods of evaluation are not suitable for fast paced nature of mobile technology. In this study, we propose a collaborative multidimensional scale to assess the quality of mHealth apps. During our process, the app quality is assessed in various aspects including medical reliability, legal consistency, ethical consistency, usability aspects, personal data privacy and IT security. A hypothetico-deductive approach was used in various working groups to define the audit criteria based on the various use cases that an app could provide. These criteria were then implemented into a web based self-administered questionnaires and the generation of automatic reports were considered. This method is on the one hand specific to each app because it allows to assess each health app according to its offered functionalities. On the other hand, this method is automatic, transferable to all apps and adapted to the dynamic nature of mobile technology.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) involves the induction of seizures for therapeutic purposes in cases of serious psychiatric disorders. Since the early twentieth century, ECT was one of the most important therapeutic alternatives to treat patients suffering from severe psychiatric disorders, and ECT maintained its therapeutic role despite the emergence of psychoactive drugs by mid-century. However, in the 1970's it fell into disuse due to the emergence of a psychiatric paradigm shift that considered it repressive and unsafe. The introduction of anesthesia as a fundamental part of the ECT has significantly improved the safety of the therapy, which, today, continues to be an effective therapy for its precise indications (Lopez Villaescusa et al., 2011; Rodriguez-Jimenez, 2015).

OBJECTIVE: To describe five cases of giant carotid cavernous aneurysms which evolved with spontaneous thrombosis of internal carotid artery (STICA), with emphasis at epidemiology, clinical presentation, natural history, related factors and neurological outcome. METHOD: There were 711 consecutives patients with 802 aneurysms with and without surgical treatment during a period of 19 years. We selected 35 patients with 40 carotid cavernous aneurysms (5%) of which 20 (50%) were giant aneurysms. Among those cases, 5 patients evolved with STICA (25%). Symptoms and findings at presentation were recorded and compared with those at outcome. RESULTS: Clinical presentation was commonly related to atherosclerotic factors such as elevated blood pressure (80%), diabetes mellitus (40%) and dislipidemy (40%). All patients presented with hemicranial headache, ophthalmparesy and retro bulbar pain, and after STICA all presented improvement of symptoms. After STICA, 4 patients had regression of deficit, 2 partial and 2 complete. Four patients had sensorial trigeminal neuropathy in V1 and V2 territories, also showing improvement of symptoms after STICA. CONCLUSION: STICA is a common outcome in giant carotid cavernous aneurysms, and is related with significant improvement of symptoms; however, it may be catastrophic for those patients without efficient collateral circulation. OBJETIVO: Relatar cinco casos de aneurismas gigantes intracavernosos que evoluíram com trombose espontânea da artéria carótida interna (TEACI), estudando-se: prevalência, apresentação clínica, história natural, fatores associados e prognóstico neurológico. MÉTODO: Análise de 711 pacientes consecutivos com diagnóstico de 802 aneurismas cerebrais submetidos a tratamento clínico ou cirúrgico num período de 19 anos. Foram identificados 40 aneurismas intracavernosos, sendo que 20 desses eram gigantes. Dentre esses, 5 pacientes com aneurismas gigantes intracavernosos que evoluíram com TEACI (25%). Os sintomas e sinais neurológicos da apresentação foram registrados e comparados ao término do acompanhamento. RESULTADOS: Todos pacientes apresentavam cefaléia hemicraniana, apresentavam oftalmoplegia e dor retro-orbitária. Freqüentemente estavam associados a fatores ateroscleróticos como HAS (80%), diabetes melito (40%) e dislipidemia (40%) e após a TEACI evoluíram com melhora desses sintomas. Após a TEACI, 4 pacientes tiveram regressão do déficit, sendo que em 2 a regressão do déficit foi total. Quatro pacientes apresentavam hipostesia no território de V1 e V2. Todos apresentaram melhora desse sintoma. CONCLUSÃO: A TEACI é uma evolução comum em aneurismas intracavernosos gigantes, e está associada à melhora importante dos sintomas. No entanto pode ser catastrófica naqueles pacientes sem circulação colateral eficiente.