Mast cells mediate acute inflammatory responses to implanted biomaterials

Implanted biomaterials trigger acute and chronic inflammatory responses. The mechanisms involved in such acute inflammatory responses can be arbitrarily divided into phagocyte transmigration, chemotaxis, and adhesion to implant surfaces. We earlier observed that two chemokines-macrophage inflammatory protein 1alpha/monocyte chemoattractant protein 1-and the phagocyte integrin Mac-1 (CD11b/CD18)/surface fibrinogen interaction are, respectively, required for phagocyte chemotaxis and adherence to biomaterial surfaces. However, it is still not clear how the initial transmigration of phagocytes through the endothelial barrier into the area of the implant is triggered. Because implanted biomaterials elicit histaminic responses in the surrounding tissue, and histamine release is known to promote rapid diapedesis of inflammatory cells, we evaluated the possible role of histamine and mast cells in the recruitment of phagocytes to biomaterial implants. Using i.p. and s. c. implantation of polyethylene terephthalate disks in mice we find: (i) Extensive degranulation of mast cells, accompanied by histamine release, occurs adjacent to short-term i.p. implants. (ii) Simultaneous administration of H1 and H2 histamine receptor antagonists (pyrilamine and famotidine, respectively) greatly diminishes recruitment and adhesion of both neutrophils (<20% of control) and monocytes/macrophages (<30% of control) to implants. (iii) Congenitally mast cell-deficient mice also exhibit markedly reduced accumulation of phagocytes on both i.p. and s.c implants. (iv) Finally, mast cell reconstitution of mast cell-deficient mice restores "normal" inflammatory responses to biomaterial implants. We conclude that mast cells and their granular products, especially histamine, are important in recruitment of inflammatory cells to biomaterial implants. Improved knowledge of such responses may permit purposeful modulation of both acute and chronic inflammation affecting implanted biomaterials.     

Analysis of error-correction constraints in an optical disk

The compact disk read-only memory (CD-ROM) is a mature storage medium with complex error control. It comprises four levels of Reed Solomon codes allied to a sequence of sophisticated interleaving strategies and 8:14 modulation coding. New storage media are being developed and introduced that place still further demands on signal processing for error correction. It is therefore appropriate to explore thoroughly the limit of existing strategies to assess future requirements. We describe a simulation of all stages of the CD-ROM coding, modulation, and decoding. The results of decoding the burst error of a prescribed number of modulation bits are discussed in detail. Measures of residual uncorrected error within a sector are displayed by C1, C2, P, and Q error counts and by the status of the final cyclic redundancy check (CRC). Where each data sector is encoded separately, it is shown that error-correction performance against burst errors depends critically on the position of the burst within a sector. The C1 error measures the burst length, whereas C2 errors reflect the burst position. The performance of Reed Solomon product codes is shown by the P and Q statistics. It is shown that synchronization loss is critical near the limits of error correction. An example is given of miscorrection that is identified by the CRC check.     

Glu227-->Lys substitution in the acidic loop of major histocompatibility complex class I alpha 3 domain distinguishes low avidity CD8 coreceptor and avidity-enhanced CD8 accessory functions

Cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) activation requires specific T cell receptor (TCR)-class I major histocompatibility complex (MHC) antigen complex interactions as well as the participation of coreceptor or accessory molecules on the surface of CTL. CD8 can serve as a coreceptor in that it binds to the same MHC class I molecules as the TCR to facilitate efficient TCR signaling. In addition, CD8 can be "activated" by TCR stimulation to bind to class I molecules with high avidity, including class I not recognized by the TCR as antigenic complexes (non-antigen [Ag] class I), to augment CTL responses and thus serve an accessory molecule function. A Glu/Asp227-->Lys substitution in the class I alpha 3 domain acidic loop abrogates lysis of target cells expressing these mutant molecules by alloreactive CD8-dependent CTL. Lack of response is attributed to the destruction of the CD8 binding site in the alpha 3 domain which is likely to disrupt CD8 coreceptor function. The relative importance of the class I alpha 3 domain acidic loop Glu227 in coreceptor as opposed to accessory functions of CD8 is unclear. To address this issue, we examined CTL adhesion and degranulation in response to immobilized class I-peptide complexes formed in vitro from antigenic peptides and purified class I molecules containing wild-type or Glu227-->Lys substituted alpha 3 domains. The alpha 3 domain mutant class I-peptide complexes were bound by CTL and triggered degranulation, however to much lower levels than wild-type class I-peptide complexes. In further experiments, it is directly demonstrated that the alpha 3 domain mutant class I molecules, which lack the Glu227 CD8 binding site, still serve as TCR-activated, avidity-enhanced CD8 accessory ligands. However, mutant class I peptide Ag complexes failed to effectively serve as CD8 coreceptor ligands to initiate TCR-dependent signals required to induce avidity-enhanced CD8 binding to coimmobilized non-Ag class I molecules. Thus the Glu227-->Lys mutation effectively distinguishes CD8 coreceptor and avidity-enhanced CD8 accessory functions.     

New GOES imager algorithms for cloud and active fire detection and fire radiative power assessment across North, South and Central America

Vegetation fires are a key global terrestrial disturbance factor and a major source of atmospheric trace gases and aerosols. Therefore, many earth-system science and operational monitoring applications require access to repetitive, frequent and well-characterized information on fire emissions source strengths. Geostationary imagers offer important temporal advantages when studying rapidly changing phenomena such as vegetation fires. Here we present a new algorithm for detecting and characterising active fires burning within the imager footprints of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES), including consideration of cloud-cover and calculation of fire radiative power (FRP), a metric shown to be strongly related to fuel consumption and smoke emission rates. The approach is based on a set of algorithms now delivering near real time (NRT) operational FRP products from the Meteosat Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infra-Red Imager (SEVIRI) imager (available from http://landsaf.meteo.pt/), and the GOES processing chain presented here is designed to deliver a compatible fire product to complete geostationary coverage of the Western hemisphere. Results from the two GOES imagers are intercompared, and are independently verified against the well regarded MODIS cloud mask and active fire products. We find that the detection of cloud and active fires from GOES matches that of MODIS very well for fire pixels having FRP > 30 MW, when the GOES omission error falls to less than 10%. The FRP of fire clusters detected near simultaneously by both GOES and MODIS have a bias of only 22 MW, and a similar bias is found when comparing near-simultaneous GOES East and GOES West FRP observations. However, many fire pixels having FRP < 30 MW remain undetected by GOES, probably unavoidably since it has a much coarser spatial resolution than MODIS. Adjustment using data from the less frequent but more accurate views obtained from high spatial resolution polar orbiting imagers could be used to bias correct regional FRP totals. Temporal integration of the GOES FRP record indicates that during the summer months, biomass burning combusts thousands of millions of tonnes of fuel daily across the Americas. Comparison of these results to those of the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFEDv2) indicate strong linear relationships (r² > 0.9), suggesting that the timely FRP data available from a GOES real-time data feed is likely to be a suitable fire emissions source strength term for inclusion in schemes aiming to forecast the concentrations of atmospheric constituents affected by biomass burning.     

Comparison of paper-and-pencil versus Web administration of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS): Participation,data quality,and perceived privacy and anonymity

The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) monitors priority health-risk behaviors among US high school students. To better understand the ramifications of changing the YRBSS from paper-and-pencil to Web administration, in 2008 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a study comparing these two modes of administration. Eighty-five schools in 15 states agreed to participate in the study. Within each participating school, four classrooms of students in grades 9 or 10 were randomly assigned to complete the Youth Risk Behavior Survey questionnaire in one of four conditions (in-class paper-and-pencil, in-class Web without programmed skip patterns, in-class Web with programmed skip patterns, and “on your own” Web without programmed skip patterns). Findings included less missing data for the paper-and-pencil condition (1.5% vs. 5.3%, 4.4%, 6.4%; p < .001), less perceived privacy and anonymity among respondents for the in-class Web conditions, and a lower response rate for the “on your own” Web condition than for in-class administration by either mode (28.0% vs. 91.2%, 90.1%, 91.4%; p < .001). Although Web administration might be useful for some surveys, these findings do not favor the use of a Web survey for the YRBSS.     

Marine Geospatial Ecology Tools: An integrated framework for ecological geoprocessing with ArcGIS,Python, R,MATLAB, and C++

With the arrival of GPS, satellite remote sensing, and personal computers, the last two decades have witnessed rapid advances in the field of spatially-explicit marine ecological modeling. But with this innovation has come complexity. To keep up, ecologists must master multiple specialized software packages, such as ArcGIS for display and manipulation of geospatial data, R for statistical analysis, and MATLAB for matrix processing. This requires a costly investment of time and energy learning computer programming, a high hurdle for many ecologists. To provide easier access to advanced analytic methods, we developed Marine Geospatial Ecology Tools (MGET), an extensible collection of powerful, easy-to-use, open-source geoprocessing tools that ecologists can invoke from ArcGIS without resorting to computer programming. Internally, MGET integrates Python, R, MATLAB, and C++, bringing the power of these specialized platforms to tool developers without requiring developers to orchestrate the interoperability between them.In this paper, we describe MGET’s software architecture and the tools in the collection. Next, we present an example application: a habitat model for Atlantic spotted dolphin (Stenella frontalis) that predicts dolphin presence using a statistical model fitted with oceanographic predictor variables. We conclude by discussing the lessons we learned engineering a highly integrated tool framework.     

The influence of epiphylls on remote sensing of humid forests

Epiphylls - lichens, fungi, liverworts, etc. infesting leaf surfaces - are found throughout humid forests of the world. It is well understood that epiphylls inhibit light interception by host plants, but their effect on remote sensing of colonized forests has not been examined. Incorporating leaf-level spectra from Terra Firme (primary forest) and Amazonian Caatinga (woodlands/forest growing on nutrient-deficient sandy soils), we used the GeoSAIL model to propagate leaf-level measurements to the canopy level and determine their effect on commonly used vegetation indices. In Caatinga, moderate infestations (50% leaf area epiphyll cover), lowered simulated Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) values by 6.1% and 20.4%, respectively, largely due to near infrared dampening. Heavy infestation (100% cover) simulations exhibited decreases 1.5-2 times greater than those of moderate infestations. For Terra Firme, which are generally less affected by epiphylls, moderate (20% leaf area) and heavy infestations (40%) lowered EVI by 4.4% (S.D. 0.8%) and 8.1% (S.D. 1.5%), respectively. Near infrared and green reflectance were most affected at the canopy level, showing mean decreases of 10.6% (S.D. 2.25%) and 9.5% (S.D. 3.49%), respectively, in heavy Terra Firme infestations. Time series of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) data corroborated the modeling results, suggesting a degree of coupling between epiphyll cover and the EVI and NDVI. These results suggest that, without explicit consideration of the presence of epiphylls, remote sensing-based methodologies may underestimate leaf area index, biomass and productivity in humid forests.