Severe pulmonary hypertension reversed by antibiotics in a patient with Whipple's disease

The case is described of a 58 year old man with systemic Whipple's disease with pericardial and pleural effusions and severe pulmonary hypertension. After three months of antibiotic treatment there was a complete resolution, not only of the symptoms known to be associated with Whipple's disease (diarrhoea, arthralgia, pericardial and pleural effusions), but also of pulmonary hypertension.     

The shape of feature code: an analysis of twenty C-preprocessor-based systems

Feature annotations (e.g., code fragments guarded by #ifdef C-preprocessor directives) control code extensions related to features. Feature annotations have long been said to be undesirable. When maintaining features that control many annotations, there is a high risk of ripple effects. Also, excessive use of feature annotations leads to code clutter, hinder program comprehension and harden maintenance. To prevent such problems, developers should monitor the use of feature annotations, for example, by setting acceptable thresholds. Interestingly, little is known about how to extract thresholds in practice, and which values are representative for feature-related metrics. To address this issue, we analyze the statistical distribution of three feature-related metrics collected from a corpus of 20 well-known and long-lived C-preprocessor-based systems from different domains. We consider three metrics: scattering degree of feature constants, tangling degree of feature expressions, and nesting depth of preprocessor annotations. Our findings show that feature scattering is highly skewed; in 14 systems (70 %), the scattering distributions match a power law, making averages and standard deviations unreliable limits. Regarding tangling and nesting, the values tend to follow a uniform distribution; although outliers exist, they have little impact on the mean, suggesting that central statistics measures are reliable thresholds for tangling and nesting. Following our findings, we then propose thresholds from our benchmark data, as a basis for further investigations.     

A methodology for screening of microalgae as a decision making tool for energy and green chemical process applications

The increasing interest for biotechnological use of microalgae demands a methodology for selection of species suitable to support the development of technologies based on the use of such non-conventional renewable raw material, i.e., green industrial applications. The vast and expanding collection of experimental data on both cell growth and biomass composition available in the literature can be used to reduce the cost of the experimental investigations required to support process engineering and optimization. Selecting the appropriate organism requires extracting useful information from such data, a cumbersome task since various multidisciplinary factors must be considered. This paper presents a computer-aided methodology for selecting appropriate algal species given an energy or green chemical process application employing microalgae as a renewable raw material. The approach is “system oriented”, based on biomass composition and chemical processing of the biomass downstream of the CO₂ biofixation and harvesting operations. Quantitative performance results are supported by professional process simulation. Besides comparison of a set of species performances, the proposed methodology also allows the discrimination among distinct algal compositions resulting from different growth conditions for a given species. Furthermore, three categories of screening metrics are proposed to be maximized by the decision making procedure in order to elicit the relevant information. To demonstrate the potential of the proposed methodology, a databank of both biochemical and elemental compositions of microalgal biomass was used in three green applications: Assessment of biomass heating value; production of syngas by gasification of the biomass; and production of Bio-H₂. Within the accuracy of the databank employed to illustrate the procedure, the methodology selected Botryococcus braunii and Isochrysis galbana as potential promising candidates, for the three examined applications.     

Effects of carob bean gum on performance,nutrient digestibility and Salmonella enterica var. Enteritidis colonisation in chickens

Salmonella is presently one of the microorganisms of higher concern for food safety in poultry products. The present study examined the effect of feeding galactomannans from carob bean gum on nutrient digestibility and performance in chickens, and on the prevalence of Salmonella enterica var. Enteritidis in challenged animals. Four experiments were performed with either broiler or leghorn chickens, challenged with 10⁶ CFU (colony-forming units) of S. Enteritidis at 1 day of life, and feeding carob bean gum at different concentrations (25, 50 or 100 g/kg, depending on the experiment), alone or in combination with β-mannanase, cellulase or α-galactosidase at 8.3 U/g; or feeding D-mannose at 25 g/kg, or depolymerized carob bean gum or guar gum at 100 mg/kg. Trials lasted 3 or 4 weeks. Body weight and feed intake were determined and feed conversion ratio calculated (feed:gain). Faeces were collected during the last week on trial for evaluation of nutrient balance (energy, lipids and protein), using chromium oxide as inert marker. Viscosity of the ileal content was also determined at the end of the second experiment. Salmonella presence in caeca was determined two and 3 weeks after challenge. Performance and nutritive value of diets were impaired in birds fed carob bean gum, with higher effect at higher inclusion rates. D-mannose impaired performance variables only whereas depolymerized gums did not affect bird performance or nutritive value of the diets. Of the enzymes tested, only β-mannanase significantly decreased the viscosity of the intestinal contents of birds fed carob bean gum and partly counteracted the impairment in bird performance and the reduction in the nutritive value of the diets. The number of Salmonella-positive birds varied among experiments and was lower in the third week post-challenge compared to the second week post-challenge. However, the reduction in the number of Salmonella-positive birds was more constant and marked when carob bean gum was present in the diet. The inclusion of carob bean gum in the diet of chickens at the high concentrations used in the present experiment reduced the presence of Salmonella in challenged birds, but it also impaired performance and nutrient digestibility. These impairments were partially counteracted by the addition of β-mannanase to the diet. Carob bean gum might be used to reduce the incidence of Salmonella in chickens, while its negative effects on performance and nutrient digestibility could be counteracted by β-mannanase.     

Energy harvesting with pairs of variable capacitors without control circuits

This work describes several electronic electrostatic generators that can be built using two pairs of complementary variable capacitors, in a way that dispenses control circuits for their operation. In all cases, a basic unstable generator based on an electrostatic charge multiplier is used to bias variable capacitors, and the current generated by these capacitors is then rectified and sent to the load. Experimental versions of the proposed generators were built using variable capacitors made with 3D-printing techniques, moved in a back-and-forth way by a small motor. As these generators operate at high impedance level, always with small currents, they are insensitive to the resistivity of the conductive plastic used to make the variable capacitors. Several new structures are presented, and their properties are evaluated theoretically and experimentally.     

Ecological efficiency and thermoeconomic analysis of a cogeneration system at a hospital

This work aims with an approach for cogeneration plants evaluation based on thermoeconomic functional diagram analysis. The second law of thermodynamics is used to develop a methodology to analyse cogeneration systems, based on exergoeconomics evaluation. The thermoeconomic optimisation method developed is applied to allow a better configuration of the cogeneration plant associated to a university hospital. Also ecological efficiency is evaluated. The method was efficient and contributes for thermoeconomics modelling and analysis and can be applied to any sort of thermal system, especially those with combined heat and power in thermal parity.     

The effect of monoethylene glycol on the stability of water-in-oil emulsions

It is important from both a strategic and economic standpoint to study the mechanism of formation of water/oil emulsions, to predict their increase of viscosity with respect to that of the crude oil, and to obtain information about the stability vs separation of these substances (since their presence can impair oil processing and distribution). The objective of this work was to ascertain the influence of monoethylene glycol (MEG) on these parameters and its action mechanism. The addition of MEG in different proportions in the oil emulsions significantly changed the flow curve of the emulsion, passing from a quasi-Newtonian one to a shear thinning behaviour. Besides this, when MEG was present at low concentrations, the demulsification process was slow and an increase in concentration made the emulsions more stable than samples containing the same aqueous phase proportion. Under the conditions studied, the addition of MEG did not reduce the quantity of the aqueous phase separated compared to the emulsions free of MEG, but significantly delayed the demulsification process. Rheology provided important information regarding the phase separation process of the aqueous phase in oil phase emulsions, and dynamic testing suggested that the most relevant effect of the addition of MEG is an increase of the emulsion elasticity that can be correlated with the increase in the emulsion stability observed by bottle test and Turbiscan.