Virtual Extensometer Analysis of Martensite Band Nucleation, Growth, and Strain Softening in Pseudoelastic NiTi Subjected to Different Load Cases.

Pseudoelastic NiTi shape memory alloys exhibit different stress⁻strain curves and modes of deformation in tension vs. compression. We have recently shown that under a combination of compression and shear, heterogeneous deformation can occur.

Gentisaldehyde and Its Derivative 2,3-Dihydroxybenzaldehyde Show Antimicrobial Activities Against Bovine Mastitis .

Bovine mastitis is a worldwide disease of dairy cattle associated with significant economic losses for the dairy industry. One of the most common pathogens responsible for mastitis is (.) .

Toward a standard ontology of surgical process models.

Purpose: The development of common ontologies has recently been identified as one of the key challenges in the emerging field of surgical data science (SDS). However, past and existing initiatives in the domain of surgery have mainly been focussing on individual groups and failed to achieve widespread international acceptance by the research community. To address this challenge, the authors of this paper launched a European initiative-OntoSPM Collaborative Action-with the goal of establishing a framework for joint development of ontologies in the field of SDS.

Retinal changes in Parkinson's disease and glaucoma.

Background: The topic of retinal neurodegeneration in PD is controversial, therefore the objective was to compare macular ganglion cell complex (mGCC) and peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (pRNFL) thickness in PD using 2 Spectral-Domain (SD) Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) devices.

Methods: In total, 146 eyes of 130 age-similar patients were included, of these 46 eyes of 30 PD patients, 60 eyes of 60 glaucoma patients and 40 eyes of 40 healthy controls. Peripapillary RNFL and mGCC were measured.

The Effect of Antiseptics in the Prophylaxis of Infection in Orthopaedic Surgery.

Introduction: Over the past decade, the incidence of revision arthroplasty has increased substantially. One of the main reasons for revision arthroplasty is periprosthetic joint infection, often resulting in multiple surgical interventions with variable success and poor clinical outcome. Intraoperative wound irrigation has been proposed to reduce bacterial contamination and thus the risk of periprosthetic infection.

PCR-Stop analysis as a new tool for qPCR assay validation.

Progressively more qPCR assays have been developed in recent years in numerous fields of application. These assays are routinely validated using calibration curves, but essential validation per se such as Poisson analysis is frequently neglected. However, validation is crucial for determination of resolution and quantitative and qualitative limits.

The impact of shelf life on exposure as revealed from quality control data associated with the quargel outbreak.

A cluster of 34 human cases of listeriosis was traced to consumption of contaminated quargel cheese, a sour milk specialty sold in Austria, Germany and Czech Republic. Here, we try to assess how many portions were consumed by the Austrian population at a certain contamination level (CL). In total, 1623 cheese lots were produced during the outbreak period resulting in >3 million portions of cheese delivered to the market.

Exploiting the potential of unlabeled endoscopic video data with self-supervised learning.

Purpose: Surgical data science is a new research field that aims to observe all aspects of the patient treatment process in order to provide the right assistance at the right time. Due to the breakthrough successes of deep learning-based solutions for automatic image annotation, the availability of reference annotations for algorithm training is becoming a major bottleneck in the field. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the concept of self-supervised learning to address this issue.

A dynamic model-based approach to motion and deformation tracking of prosthetic valves from biplane x-ray images.

Purpose: Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) is a minimally invasive procedure in which a prosthetic heart valve is placed and expanded within a defective aortic valve. The device placement is commonly performed using two-dimensional (2D) fluoroscopic imaging. Within this work, we propose a novel technique to track the motion and deformation of the prosthetic valve in three dimensions based on biplane fluoroscopic image sequences.

The Hormone FGF21 Stimulates Water Drinking in Response to Ketogenic Diet and Alcohol.

Alcohol and ketogenic diets increase water consumption. Here, we show that the hormone FGF21 is required for this drinking response in mice. Circulating levels of FGF21 are increased by alcohol consumption in humans and by both alcohol and ketogenic diets in mice.

Public funding for medical research in relation to the burden of disease caused by cardiovascular diseases and neoplasms in Germany.

Background: Public funding for medical research in Germany is primarily provided by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The aim of this study was to analyze the amount of national public funding for medical research on predominant causes of death in Germany, cardiovascular diseases and neoplasms, in relation to the burden of these diseases in Germany.

Methods: Three evaluators categorized medical research projects funded by the DFG or BMBF between 2010 and 2012 into the categories "Diseases of the circulatory system" (with subgroups "Ischemic heart diseases", "Heart failure" and "Cerebrovascular diseases") and "Neoplasms".

Mobile, real-time, and point-of-care augmented reality is robust, accurate, and feasible: a prospective pilot study.

Background: Augmented reality (AR) systems are currently being explored by a broad spectrum of industries, mainly for improving point-of-care access to data and images. Especially in surgery and especially for timely decisions in emergency cases, a fast and comprehensive access to images at the patient bedside is mandatory. Currently, imaging data are accessed at a distance from the patient both in time and space, i.

Ecotoxicological impacts of surface water and wastewater from conventional and advanced treatment technologies on brood size, larval length, and cytochrome P450 (35A3) expression in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Anthropogenic micropollutants and transformation products (TPs) negatively affect aquatic ecosystems and water resources. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) represent major point sources for (micro)pollutants and TPs in urban water cycles. The aim of the current study was to assess the removal of micropollutants and toxicity during conventional and advanced wastewater treatment.

Computer-assisted 3D bowel length measurement for quantitative laparoscopy.

Background: This study aimed at developing and evaluating a tool for computer-assisted 3D bowel length measurement (BMS) to improve objective measurement in minimally invasive surgery. Standardization and quality of surgery as well as its documentation are currently limited by lack of objective intraoperative measurements. To solve this problem, we developed BMS as a clinical application of Quantitative Laparoscopy (QL).

New Aspects on ST5-ECVI Predominance in a Heavily Contaminated Cheese Processing Environment.

The eradication of from food chains is still a great challenge for the food industry and control authorities since some clonal complexes (CCs) are either better adapted to food processing environments (FPEs) or are globally widespread. In this work, we focus on the in-house evolution of genotypes collected from a heavily contaminated FPE whose contamination pattern underwent a massive and yet unexplained change. At the beginning of the sampling in 2010, a high variety of most likely transient genotypes was detected belonging to sequence type (ST) 1, ST7, ST21, ST37.

Ultrafast quantum control of ionization dynamics in krypton.

Ultrafast spectroscopy with attosecond resolution has enabled the real time observation of ultrafast electron dynamics in atoms, molecules and solids. These experiments employ attosecond pulses or pulse trains and explore dynamical processes in a pump-probe scheme that is selectively sensitive to electronic state of matter via photoelectron or XUV absorption spectroscopy or that includes changes of the ionic state detected via photo-ion mass spectrometry. Here, we demonstrate how the implementation of combined photo-ion and absorption spectroscopy with attosecond resolution enables tracking the complex multidimensional excitation and decay cascade of an Auger auto-ionization process of a few femtoseconds in highly excited krypton.

Impact of acquisition and interpretation on total inter-observer variability in echocardiography: results from the quality assurance program of the STAAB cohort study.

Variability related to image acquisition and interpretation is an important issue of echocardiography in clinical trials. Nevertheless, there is no broadly accepted standard method for quality assessment of echocardiography in clinical research reports. We present analyses based on the echocardiography quality-assurance program of the ongoing STAAB cohort study (characteristics and course of heart failure stages A-B and determinants of progression).

The COMT-polymorphism is not associated with the incidence of acute kidney injury after cardiac surgery - a prospective cohort study.

Background: The Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) represents the key enzyme in catecholamine degradation. Recent studies suggest that the COMT rs4680 polymorphism is associated with the response to endogenous and exogenous catecholamines. There are, however, conflicting data regarding the COMT Met/Met phenotype being associated with an increased risk of acute kidney injury (AKI) after cardiac surgery.

The application of rumen simulation technique (RUSITEC) for studying dynamics of the bacterial community and metabolome in rumen fluid and the effects of a challenge with Clostridium perfringens.

The rumen simulation technique (RUSITEC) is a well-established semicontinuous in vitro model for investigating ruminal fermentation; however, information on the stability of the ruminal bacterial microbiota and metabolome in the RUSITEC system is rarely available. The availability of high resolution methods, such as high-throughput sequencing and metabolomics improve our knowledge about the rumen microbial ecosystem and its fermentation processes. Thus, we used Illumina MiSeq 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing and a combination of direct injection mass spectrometry with a reverse-phase LC-MS/MS to evaluate the dynamics of the bacterial community and the concentration of several metabolites in a RUSITEC experiment as a function of time and in response to a challenge with a pathogenic Clostridium perfringens (C.

Metatranscriptome Sequencing Reveals Insights into the Gene Expression and Functional Potential of Rumen Wall Bacteria.

Microbiota of the rumen wall constitute an important niche of rumen microbial ecology and their composition has been elucidated in different ruminants during the last years. However, the knowledge about the function of rumen wall microbes is still limited. Rumen wall biopsies were taken from three fistulated dairy cows under a standard forage-based diet and after 4 weeks of high concentrate feeding inducing a subacute rumen acidosis (SARA).

contamination of ready-to-eat foods and the risk for human health in the EU.

Food safety criteria for in ready-to-eat (RTE) foods have been applied from 2006 onwards (Commission Regulation (EC) 2073/2005). Still, human invasive listeriosis was reported to increase over the period 2009-2013 in the European Union and European Economic Area (EU/EEA). Time series analysis for the 2008-2015 period in the EU/EEA indicated an increasing trend of the monthly notified incidence rate of confirmed human invasive listeriosis of the over 75 age groups and female age group between 25 and 44 years old (probably related to pregnancies).

Autochthonous facility-specific microbiota dominates washed-rind Austrian hard cheese surfaces and its production environment.

Cheese ripening involves the succession of complex microbial communities that are responsible for the organoleptic properties of the final products. The food processing environment can act as a source of natural microbial inoculation, especially in traditionally manufactured products. Austrian Vorarlberger Bergkäse (VB) is an artisanal washed-rind hard cheese produced in the western part of Austria without the addition of external ripening cultures.

Time-Dependent Toxic and Genotoxic Effects of Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles after Long-Term and Repetitive Exposure to Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells.

Zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NP) are widely spread in consumer products. Data about the toxicological characteristics of ZnO-NP is still under controversial discussion. The human skin is the most important organ concerning ZnO-NP exposure.