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The aim of this study was to describe and evaluate a novel plate designed specifically for the canine ilium using finite element methods. The cranial portion of the plate had an elliptical shape and contained nine screw holes. The caudal portion of the plate was triangular with three screw holes. Four and three screws were used at the cranial (screw 1 to 4) and caudal (screw 5 to 7) segment of the plate. Finite element models of the plate and canine pelvis were created. A load of 300 N was applied on the femur-hip joint contact area. Values of Von Mises Stress on the plate, screws and the maximum and minimum main stresses in the bone were used to capture the mechanical factors in this study. The novel implant had a plate stress of 51.9 megapascals (MPa) with higher stress in the dorsal part of the plate. Screws 2 and 4 showed similar stress values of 17.3 MPa. Screws 1 and 3 were the most loaded (51.9 MPa and 75 MPa, respectively). Screws 5, 6, and 7 showed similar dissipation and stress values (21.55 MPa). There was traction force in the dorsal region of the pubis and compression in the ventral part, with dissipation and values of 15.4 MPa and 23.9 MPa, respectively, acquiring balance between them. The novel plate is potentially applicable and specifically suitable for iliac fractures in dogs. The screws distribution modeled proved itself strategical since the simulated stresses were evenly distributed throughout the implant construct.

In mid-2015, Salvador, Brazil, reported an outbreak of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), coinciding with the introduction and spread of Zika virus (ZIKV). We found that GBS incidence during April-July 2015 among those ≥12 years of age was 5.6 cases/100,000 population/year and increased markedly with increasing age to 14.7 among those ≥60 years of age. We conducted interviews with 41 case-patients and 85 neighborhood controls and found no differences in demographics or exposures prior to GBS-symptom onset. A higher proportion of case-patients (83%) compared to controls (21%) reported an antecedent illness (OR 18.1, CI 6.9-47.5), most commonly characterized by rash, headache, fever, and myalgias, within a median of 8 days prior to GBS onset. Our investigation confirmed an outbreak of GBS, particularly in older adults, that was strongly associated with Zika-like illness and geo-temporally associated with ZIKV transmission, suggesting that ZIKV may result in severe neurologic complications.

Background Research has shown that exposure to interpersonal violence is associated with poorer mental health outcomes. Understanding the impact of interpersonal violence on mental health in the early postpartum period has important implications for parenting, child development, and delivery of health services. The objective of the present study was to determine the impact of interpersonal violence on depression, anxiety, stress, and parenting morale in the early postpartum. Methods Women participating in a community-based prospective cohort study (n = 1319) completed questionnaires prior to 25 weeks gestation, between 34–36 weeks gestation, and at 4 months postpartum. Women were asked about current and past abuse at the late pregnancy data collection time point. Postpartum depression, anxiety, stress, and parenting morale were assessed at 4 months postpartum using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, the Spielberger State Anxiety Index, the Cohen Perceived Stress Scale, and the Parenting Morale Index, respectively. The relationship between interpersonal violence and postpartum psychosocial health status was examined using Chi-square analysis (p < 0.05) and multivariable logistic regression. Results Approximately 30% of women reported one or more experience of interpersonal violence. Sixteen percent of women reported exposure to child maltreatment, 12% reported intimate partner violence, and 12% reported other abuse. Multivariable logistic regression analysis found that a history of child maltreatment had an independent effect on depression in the postpartum, while both child maltreatment and intimate partner violence were associated with low parenting morale. Interpersonal violence did not have an independent effect on anxiety or stress in the postpartum. Conclusion The most robust relationships were seen for the influence of child maltreatment on postpartum depression and low parenting morale. By identifying women at risk for depression and low parenting morale, screening and treatment in the prenatal period could have far-reaching effects on postpartum mental health thus benefiting new mothers and their families in the long term.

We describe the La Mascota twinning programme between La Mascota paediatric hospital in Managua, Nicaragua, and hospitals in Monza and Milan, Italy, and Bellinzona, Switzerland. The programme was based on the belief that an attempt to reduce the gap in mortality from cancer in childhood between developed and less developed countries should become an integral part of the care and research activity of a haemato-oncological department of a developed country and not simply an exercise in solidarity. This programme for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia shows that intellectual, organisational, and financial resources can be generated by a twinning programme. What is vital for such programmes is a long-term commitment to a comprehensive and holistic strategy that incorporates supply of drugs, training and supervision of health professionals, and the care of the children and of their parents.

Over time, the idea of exploiting voluntary computing resources as additional capacity for experiments at the LHC has given rise to individual initiatives such as the CMS@Home project. With a starting point of R&D prototypes and projects such as “jobs in the Vacuum” and SETI@Home, the experiments have tried integrating these resources into their data production frameworks transparently to the computing infrastructure. Many of these efforts were subsequently rolled into the umbrella LHC@Home project.The use of virtual machines instantiated on volunteer resources, with images created and managed by the experiment according to its needs, provided the opportunity to implement this integration, and virtualization enabled CMS code from a Linux environment to also run on Windows and Macintosh systems, realizing a distributed and heterogeneous computing environment.A prototype of CMS@Home integrated with the CMS workload management CRAB3 was proposed in 2015, demonstrating the possibility of using BOINC as “manager” of volunteer resources and adapting the “vacuum” concept with the HTCondor Glidein system to get CMS pilots and jobs to execute on volunteers' computers. Since then, the integration of volunteer machines with the CMS workload management WMAgent, the official service dedicated to data production, has been seriously considered. The characteristics of volunteer resources regarding bandwidth capacity, connection behavior, and CPU and RAM capacities make them suitable for low-priority workflows with low I/O demands.The poster describes how the configuration of volunteer resources has evolved to keep pace with the development of the CMS computing infrastructure, including using tokens for resource authentication, exploiting regular expressions to accept workflows, manual glideins to initiate pilots, and other implementation details to achieve successful workflows. Currently volunteers are able to execute task chains of multicore jobs and, despite their limitations, are contributing to CMS computing capacity with around 600 cores daily.

During the first run, CMS collected and processed more than 10B data events and simulated more than 15B events. Up to 100k processor cores were used simultaneously and 100PB of storage was managed. Each month petabytes of data were moved and hundreds of users accessed data samples. In this document we discuss the operational experience from this first run. We present the workflows and data flows that were executed, and we discuss the tools and services developed, and the operations and shift models used to sustain the system. Many techniques were followed from the original computing planning, but some were reactions to difficulties and opportunities. We also address the lessons learned from an operational perspective, and how this is shaping our thoughts for 2015.

Background Cycling is a practice that is increasing globally. However, there is a paucity of studies regarding sun protection usage among cyclists. Methods The present study uses a cross‐sectional design. An online survey was conducted using the Google Forms platform, and a self‐administered form was used to gather the participant's sociodemographic details, sporting practices, and sun protection usage habits. The full questionnaire file can be found as Supporting Information. Descriptive statistics were analyzed using Microsoft Excel, and the chi‐square test of independence was performed to determine the association between the variables using a contingency table. Results The study sample comprised 379 cyclists, predominantly men (69.7%), and most cyclists were observed to be using some type of cycling‐related application (81.3%). Approximately 67.3% of the cyclists used sunscreen. The sunscreen was applied once a day (45.4%), and the usage of sunscreen was lower in men (58%) and those with higher phototypes (69.2%). Furthermore, using long‐sleeved shirts and sunglasses while cycling was 49.3% and 75.5% of the participants, respectively. Among the participants who did not use sun protection, 35% cycled for over 7 h a week. Conclusion The results indicate that cyclists must be encouraged to use sun protection, especially men and athletes with higher phototypes. Such use could be optimized in this population, associating the technologies related to the practice of cycling with health promotion.

Adhesion formation involving the genitourinary tract is common following laparoscopic procedures. To evaluate the effectiveness of intraperitoneal lidocaine hydrochloride 1% solution for the prevention of abdominal adhesions, twenty four Santa Ines ewes submitted to laparoscopic ovum pick-up, uterine puncture and local rinsing, were randomly distributed into two groups of 12 animals, according to rinsing solution: normal saline (SG) or 1% lidocaine hydrochloride solution (LG). Laparoscopy for manipulation of the reproductive tract (uterine puncture trauma model and ovum pick-up) was applied. A standard laparoscopic approach using three ports in triangulation was employed. The uterus and ovaries were rinsed at the end of the procedure (using either saline or lidocaine hydrochloride) for removal of blood clots from the ovaries and uterine horn surfaces. Inflammation was assessed postoperatively by plasma fibrinogen, and all animals underwent a second laparoscopic procedure 21days after surgery for macroscopic assessment of adhesion formation. Four cases of adhesion were observed in each group. The plasma fibrinogen did not differ between groups and among different time points, indicating an absence of systemic inflammation following laparoscopic procedures. There were no significant differences between treatments. Both normal saline and 1% lidocaine hydrochloride were similarly effective in the prevention of adhesion formation.

Previous studies have shown that when multibacillary leprosy patients were treated with recombinant human interferon gamma (rhuIFN-gamma) for 6-10 months there was an accelerated reduction in the number of acid-fast bacilli in the skin at the site of injection as well as an accelerated bacillary reduction at distal sites. However, this favorable out-come of IFN-gamma treatment was associated with the development of erythema nodosum leprosum (ENL). The present study was undertaken to investigate whether rhuIFN-gamma-induced bacillary clearance could be disassociated from the induction of ENL. rhuIFN-gamma was administered together with thalidomide and conventional multidrug chemotherapy to newly diagnosed leprosy patients. During treatment with this combination of drugs, the mean reduction in bacterial load was the same as the reduction observed with chemotherapy alone. Moreover, the inclusion of thalidomide in the treatment regimen was associated with a low frequency of ENL episodes. A second group of leprosy patients, who had already completed 2 years of chemotherapy, were treated with rhuIFN-gamma only. In those patients who were skin bacilli negative, ENL did not occur during rhuIFN-gamma treatment. In contrast, in bacilli-positive patients the frequency of ENL during rhuIFN-gamma treatment was higher, as was the occurrence of local erythema and induration. However, rhuIFN-gamma treatment without concomitant chemotherapy did not result in a reduction in the bacterial load in the skin of bacilli-positive patients. These findings, taken together, indicate that rhuIFN-gamma does not, by itself, accelerate bacterial clearance, but requires concomitant chemotherapy to achieve the accelerated reduction in bacillary load. Thalidomide reduces the frequency of IFN-gamma-induced ENL, but also eliminates the IFN-gamma-induced bacillary clearance.

Abstract Interlockings nails (IN) are orthopedic implants with superior mechanical and, potentially, biological qualities. Despite the countless and indisputable advantages of current angle-stable models, there are still limitations for their use in certain scenarios. The objective of the present study was to describe and biomechanically test a new orthogonal angle-stable intramedullary nail model for veterinary use. The proposed orthogonal angle-stable nail has two 3.8-mm threaded cylindrical holes in each of its portions: in the proximal portion, the holes are 11 mm apart; in the distal portion, the penultimate orifice is positioned at 90 degrees in relation to the last one, with a distance of 5.5 mm between them. The novel orthogonal nail (Group 3 – G3) was evaluated and compared biomechanically with the conventional interlocking nail (Group 1 – G1) and the uniplanar angle-stable nail (Group 2 – G2) by means of destructive torsion and axial compression tests. No statistically significant differences were observed in torsion resistance between the groups in the destructive tests. However, statistical differences were found in stiffness values in the compression tests between the orthogonal (G3) and conventional interlocking (G1) nails (p=0.01) and also between the uniplanar (G2) and interlocking (G1) nails (p=0.001). The new orthogonal nail proved to be biomechanically similar to the uniplanar angle-stable model and superior to the conventional nail. This new arrangement of interlocking screws (orthogonal and closer to each other) potentially enables the fixation of small fragments and at the extremities of long bones in dogs. Nonetheless, further clinical studies are necessary to validate such hypotheses. Footnotes * ↵* dayvidmv{at}gmail.com