Cellular mechanisms of intestine regeneration in the sea cucumber, Holothuria glaberrima Selenka (Holothuroidea:Echinodermata)

Echinoderms are the deuterostome group with the most striking capacity to regenerate lost body parts. In particular, members of the class Holothuroidea are able to regenerate most of their internal organs following a typical evisceration process. Such formation of new viscera in an adult organism provides a unique model to study the process of organogenesis. We have studied this process in the sea cucumber Holothuria glabberrima by describing the spatial and temporal pattern of cellular events that occur during intestine regeneration following chemically induced evisceration. Regeneration begins as a thickening of the mesenteries that supported the autotomized organs to the body wall. The mesenterial thickening consists of tissues where most of the cellular populations found in the normal intestine are already present. However, the cell numbers differ, particularly those of hemocytes and amoebocytes, suggesting that some of these cells play an important role in the formation of the solid rod of hypertrophic mesentery that characterizes the intestinal primordia. The appearance of the luminal epithelium, together with the formation of the lumen, occurs during the second week of regeneration by proliferation and extensive migration of cells from the esophagus and cloacal ends into the thickenings. At this stage all tissue layers are present, but it takes an additional week for them to exhibit the proportions typical of the normal organ. Cell division, as determined by BrdU labeling, mainly occurs in the coelomic epithelia of the hypertrophic mesentery and in the regenerating luminal epithelium. Our study provides evidence that the process of new organ formation in holothurians can be described as an intermediate process showing characteristics of both epimorphic and morphallactic phenomena.     

Obstetric analgesia using continuous epidural perfusion of bupivacaine, adrenaline, and fentanyl

OBJECTIVES: To determine the efficacy and complications of continuous epidural perfusion of bupivacaine, adrenaline and fentanyl in the relief of pain during first and second stage labour during vaginal birth. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Between January 1990 and March 1993 we used continuous epidural perfusion for control of pain during labor in 1307 women. The solution administered through an epidural catheter and maintained until expulsion was one 10 ml bolus of bupivacaine 0.25% with adrenaline 1:200,000 and fentanyl 25 micrograms followed by continuous perfusion of bupivacaine 0.0625% with adrenaline 1:200,000 and fentanyl 2 micrograms/ml at an infusion rate of 12 ml/h. When analgesia was insufficient, a bolus of local anesthetic was administered or a pudendal block was carried out. RESULTS: Ninety-two percent of the birthing women reported good analgesic effect during the first stage; for 7% the effect was fair and for 0.55% it was poor. During the second stage 88% reported satisfactory analgesia, and 8% fair or poor. Assessment was not possible for the remaining women, who underwent cesarean sections. Complications were few and easily controllable. CONCLUSIONS: Maintenance of epidural perfusion with 0.0625% bupivacaine with adrenaline 1:200,000 and fentanyl 2 micrograms/ml provides sufficient analgesia during all stages of childbirth.     

New species of Aeromonas isolated in Cuba

One hundred and fifty-five strains of Aeromonas isolated in the stools of children under 5 years presenting with acute diarrheal disease were studied. Using the Aerokey II system for the identification of species, 47 strains were identified as Aeromonas caviae, 58 as Aeromonas hydrophila, 23 as Aeromonas veronii biovar sobria, 14 as Aeromonas trota, 9 as Aeromonas veronii biovar veronii, 2 as Aeromonas jandaei and 2 as Aeromonas shubertii, Emphasis is placed on the advantages of this method which allowed for the classification of new species not identified previously in our country.     

Deploying deep learning approaches to left ventricular non-compaction measurement

The Journal of Supercomputing - Left ventricular non-compaction (LVNC) is a rare cardiomyopathy characterized by abnormal trabeculations in the left ventricle cavity. Although traditional computer...     

A panoramic view and swot analysis of artificial intelligence for achieving the sustainable development goals by 2030: progress and prospects

Applied Intelligence - The17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations Agenda 2030 constitute a global blueprint agenda and instrument for peace and prosperity...     

Algorithms for processing the group K nearest-neighbor query on distributed frameworks

Distributed and Parallel Databases - Given two datasets of points (called Query and Training), the Group (K) Nearest-Neighbor (GKNN) query retrieves (K) points of the Training with the smallest sum...     

Does maintainability relate to the energy consumption of software? A case study

Software Quality Journal - Energy consumption of software has been becoming increasingly significant, since it can vary according to how the software has been developed. In recent years, developers...     

The GPU on the simulation of cellular computing models

Membrane Computing is a discipline aiming to abstract formal computing models, called membrane systems or P systems, from the structure and functioning of the living cells as well as from the cooperation of cells in tissues, organs, and other higher order structures. This framework provides polynomial time solutions to NP-complete problems by trading space for time, and whose efficient simulation poses challenges in three different aspects: an intrinsic massively parallelism of P systems, an exponential computational workspace, and a non-intensive floating point nature. In this paper, we analyze the simulation of a family of recognizer P systems with active membranes that solves the Satisfiability problem in linear time on different instances of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). For an efficient handling of the exponential workspace created by the P systems computation, we enable different data policies to increase memory bandwidth and exploit data locality through tiling and dynamic queues. Parallelism inherent to the target P system is also managed to demonstrate that GPUs offer a valid alternative for high-performance computing at a considerably lower cost. Furthermore, scalability is demonstrated on the way to the largest problem size we were able to run, and considering the new hardware generation from Nvidia, Fermi, for a total speed-up exceeding four orders of magnitude when running our simulations on the Tesla S2050 server.     

Effect of breed-type on the relationships between intramuscular and total body fat in steers

The partitioning of total dissectible body fat and the amounts of intramuscular fat in Psoas major, Semitendinosus and Biceps brachii muscles were determined in two groups of A. Angus and AA × Nelore steers with similar averages of total dissectible fat (27·7 kg). In addition, the fatty acid composition of total fat and the triglyceride fraction from dissectible and intramuscular fats were determined.

The AA × Nelore steers have higher levels of subcutaneous fat and lower levels of intermuscular fat than the A. Angus but contain lower levels of intramuscular fat in the three muscles. The allometric regressions varied according to the muscle and breed type. The fatty acid composition of subcutaneous and kidney fats were similar but differences in the percentages of 14:0, 18:0, 18:2 and 20:4 fatty acids in intramuscular fats between the two genetic groups were detected.     

A comparison of distribution and composition of intramuscular fat in Duroc Jersey and Hampshire pigs at 100 kg liveweight

The intramuscular fat content, its fatty acid composition and that from the triglyceride fraction, were determined in several muscles from the right sides of four Duroc Jersey and four Hampshire castrated male pigs slaughtered at 100 kg liveweight. The Hampshires had heavier muscles than the Duroc Jersey pigs, but did not show significant differences in the percentages of intramuscular fat. The concentrations of linoleic acid were, in general, higher in the Hampshire than in the Duroc Jersey pigs and in many muscles the differences were highly significant (p < 0·05) The concentrations of linoleic acid (18:2) in the triglyceride fraction did not differ among muscles within breeds but were higher in Hampshire than in Duroc Jersey pigs.