This study compared the efficacy and tolerability of three enteral formulas in critically ill patients with COVID-19 who were ventilated and in the prone position: (a) immunomodulatory (IMM), (b) ω3 and (c) maltodextrins (MD). Primary outcome was the percentage of patients who received both 80 % of their protein and calorie targets at 3 d after enrolment. Secondary, mechanical ventilation-free time, ICU mortality and markers of nutritional status. Tolerance of enteral nutrition was evaluated by diarrhoea and gastroparesis rate. A total of 231 patients were included, primary outcome achieved was in ω3 group (76·5 % v. 59·7 and 35·2 %, P < 0·001) v. IMM and MD groups. Mechanical ventilation-free time was longer in ω3 and MD groups: 23·11 (sd 34·2) h and 22·59 (sd 42·2) h v. 7·9 (sd 22·6) h (P < 0·01) in IMM group. Prealbumin final was 0·203 ± 0·108 g/L and 0·203 ± 0·095 g/L in IMM and ω3 groups v 0·164 ± 0·070 g/L (p < 0·01) MD group. Transferrin were 1·515 ± 0·536 g/L and 1·521 ± 0·500 g/L in IMM and ω3 groups v 1·337 ± 0·483 g/L (p < 0·05) MD group. Increase of lymphocytes was greater in ω3 group: 1056·7 (sd 660·8) cells/mm3 v. 853·3 (sd 435·9) cells/mm3 and 942·7 (sd 675·4) cells/mm3 (P < 0·001) in IMM and MD groups. Diarrhoea and gastroparesis occurred in 5·1 and 3·4 %, respectively. The findings of this study indicate that enteral nutrition is a safe and well-tolerated intervention. The ω3 formula compared with IMM and MD did improve protein and calorie targets.

Alumina is produced from bauxite, which contains a mixture of various oxides, such as aluminum (Al), iron (Fe), silicon (Si), and titanium (Ti). Bauxite can also be considered a source of several other valuable metals, such as scandium (Sc), vanadium (V), and gallium (Ga). The composition and mineralogy of alumina determine their economic value, but their characteristics vary by locality. The physicochemical characteristics of bauxites can also be influenced largely by weathering processes, even within the same locality. For this reason, the present study was undertaken with the objective of comparing the characterization data of three bauxite samples collected, which will be referred to as D, E, and F, from the Cruz Alta do Pará plateau in northern Brazil. The samples were solubilized by multi-acid digestion and fusion with lithium metaborate to quantify their metal compositions by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). The mineralogical characterization was conducted by X-ray diffraction (XRD), and the phase changes of minerals in bauxite were detected by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA/DTG). The total organic carbon (TOC) technique was used to quantify the C in the samples, and the moisture content was also measured. Alumina was 30 wt.% on average for all samples, good for producing high-purity alumina by hydrometallurgical processes. The results, however, showed high (~20 at.%) silica concentrations in two samples and ~3 wt.% Fe in one sample, which can pose a challenge in the Bayer process. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis showed that gibbsite (Gbs), kaolinite (Kln), anatase (Ant), and hematite (Hem) were the major mineral phases in these samples. The study showed that the samples from the same mine vary in their metal content, especially with regard to Si, and they, thus, need to be processed selectively to maximize their economic value.

A new species of trematode of anaporrhutine gorgoderid, from the gill chambers of the Munda round ray Urotrygon munda in Costa Rica is described, based on an integrative taxonomic approach that includes the use of light and scanning electron microscopy, ITS2 and 28S rDNA sequencing, and phylogenetic analysis. Anaporrhutum mundae sp. nov. can be distinguished from congeneric species by a combination of morphological traits and particularly by having the genital pore opening at the level of the intestinal bifurcation. The new species also can be distinguished from all other species of Anaporrhutum, except A. euzeti Curran, Blend & Overstreet, 2003, by having fewer testicular follicles per testis. Anaporrhutum mundae sp. nov. also differs from A. euzeti in its forebody shape and by having different morphology and location of the vitellaria. The study of the tegumental surface of A. mundae sp. nov., as revealed by scanning electron microscopy, allowed detection of new morphological characters for a member of Anaporrhutinae that may be of taxonomic value. These are: a stylet cavity dorsal to the oral sucker with a large penetration gland opening on each side of the cavity and small penetration gland openings located ventral to the stylet cavity, arranged in a circle around the mouth. This represents the first record of an Anaporrhutum species from Costa Rica. Further, A. mundae sp. nov. represents the first parasite described or reported in this host.

Image-processing pipelines require the design of complex workflows combining many different steps that bring the raw acquired data to a final result with biological meaning. In the image-processing domain of cryo-electron microscopy single-particle analysis (cryo-EM SPA), hundreds of steps must be performed to obtain the three-dimensional structure of a biological macromolecule by integrating data spread over thousands of micrographs containing millions of copies of allegedly the same macromolecule. The execution of such complicated workflows demands a specific tool to keep track of all these steps performed. Additionally, due to the extremely low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the estimation of any image parameter is heavily affected by noise resulting in a significant fraction of incorrect estimates. Although low SNR and processing millions of images by hundreds of sequential steps requiring substantial computational resources are specific to cryo-EM, these characteristics may be shared by other biological imaging domains. Here, we present Scipion, a Python generic open-source workflow engine specifically adapted for image processing. Its main characteristics are: (a) interoperability, (b) smart object model, (c) gluing operations, (d) comparison operations, (e) wide set of domain-specific operations, (f) execution in streaming, (g) smooth integration in high-performance computing environments, (h) execution with and without graphical capabilities, (i) flexible visualization, (j) user authentication and private access to private data, (k) scripting capabilities, (l) high performance, (m) traceability, (n) reproducibility, (o) self-reporting, (p) reusability, (q) extensibility, (r) software updates, and (s) non-restrictive software licensing.

This work studies quantitative measures for ranking judicial decisions by the Brazilian Supreme Court [Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF)] and selecting leading cases, which are understood as those with broadness of influence on different legal fields. The measures are based on a network built over decisions whose cases were finalized in the Brazilian Supreme Court between 01/2001 and 12/2019, which were obtained by crawling publicly available STF records. Three ranking measures are proposed; two are adaptations of the PageRank algorithm, and one adapts Kleinberg’s algorithm. Such measures are compared with respect to agreement on top 100 rankings; we also analyze each robustness measure based on self-agreement under perturbation.

We examine whether the resulting quantitative ranking is congenial to a qualitative intuition of what the legal community usually considers as relevant precedents. We also discuss some possible criteria of relevance in the seek for patterns that suggest how quantitative and qualitative measures would better align. The ranking of leading cases and relevant decisions improved after building decision networks without irrelevant appeals and decisions that overflow the court offers a starting point to discuss the role of STF in the Brazilian judicial system.

In our last work, both versions of PageRank and Kleinberg algorithms produced different rankings and all of them were robust with respect to 10% and 20%-perturbation levels, but none of them retrieved leading cases at the top of these rankings. Then, we took a further step in the studies of the STF decision network and we introduced better filtering of network nodes guided by legal expertise on the works of the Supreme Court. We also introduced more fine-grained perturbance levels to understand the impact of such filters in the STF decision network. We concluded that after filtering low-relevance decision types, the STF decision network is still robust under 10%-perturbation, but it presents higher degradation by increasing perturbation levels. The two versions of PageRank still produce different rankings. Kleinberg’s algorithm provides a different ranking, with many relevant criminal cases. Although we improved algorithms rankings filtering decisions from the network, which represents an important methodological step, there is still room for improvement. Given that relevant decisions are well ranked after filtering out a large amount of irrelevant decisions, the results set a starting point to discuss the role of STF in the Brazilian judicial system.

In 2006, Kenyon and Okounkov Kenyon and Okounkov [12] computed the moduli space of Harnack curves of degree d in ${\mathbb {C}\mathbb {P}}^2$. We generalise their construction to any projective toric surface and show that the moduli space ${\mathcal {H}_\Delta }$ of Harnack curves with Newton polygon $\Delta $ is diffeomorphic to ${\mathbb {R}}^{m-3}\times {\mathbb {R}}_{\geq 0}^{n+g-m}$, where $\Delta $ has m edges, g interior lattice points and n boundary lattice points. This solves a conjecture of Crétois and Lang. The main result uses abstract tropical curves to construct a compactification of this moduli space where additional points correspond to collections of curves that can be patchworked together to produce a curve in ${\mathcal {H}_\Delta }$. This compactification has a natural stratification with the same poset as the secondary polytope of $\Delta $.

Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus is a chronic diseases with very high morbidity and mortality worldwide; associated with obesity and hypertension and representing at least 90% of all cases of diabetes. It is characterized by insulin resistance in peripheral tissues and a deterioration in its secretion by the pancreatic β-cell. The control and treatment of these patients is a low-carbohydrate diet, for which non-nutritive sweeteners such as sucralose and stevia are being used, maintaining the sweet taste. It is known that these sweeteners are harmless, but the results so far are still controversial. To identify alterations in the secretion of cytokines and adipokines in db/db mice with consumption of sweeteners. We conducted a randomized, controlled study, with 24 eight week-old male db/db mice. They were divided into 4 groups: a) Control (CL), b) Sucrose (SUC), c) Sucralose (SUCL) and c) Stevia (ST). The animals were fed a normal diet and water ad libitum. The sweeteners were administered for 8 weeks diluted in purified water at 41.66 mg/mL of Sucrose and 4.16 mg/mL of Sucralose or Stevia. Blood glucose was quantified daily; water consumption with and without sweetener, food, and BMI, were quantified weekly. The concentration of IL-4, IL-5, IL-6, IL-10, IL-12, IL-17, INF-γ, TGF-β and TNF-α, insulin, adiponectin, resistin and peptide-C in plasma were determined by luminometry. Glucose was found increased at the end of 8 weeks in the SUC group, compared to CL. They consumed more food, water with and without sweetener in the SUC group (p < 0.001), compared with the controls. BMI was higher in the SUC group, compared with the ST group (p < 0.019). ST decreased the secretion of IL-4, IL-5, IL-6, IL-10, IL-12, IL-17, INF-γ and TNF-α, adiponectin and insulin (p < 0.001), but it increased TGF-β, without modifications in resistin (p < 0.051). On the other hand, SUC decreased the secretion of IL-4, IL-5, IL-10, IL-12, INF-γ, TNF-α, adiponectin, insulin and C-peptide (p < 0.028), but increased IL-6, IL-17 and resistin (p < 0.001), without modifications in TGF-β. Sucralose is a non-nutritive sweetener that caused an increase in the BMI of db/db mice, this because it increased the consumption of food. It also modified the secretion of adipokines; while Stevia decreased the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-4, IL-5, IL-6, IL-10, IL-12, IL-17, INF-γ and TNF-α. Our results suggest that sweetener consumption may alter the inflammatory profile and the production of adipokines in subjects with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Graphene Carbon Quantum Dots (GCQDs) are multi-layered carbon nanostructures that have attracted considerable attention due to its unique properties. Many technological applications, such as batteries, biological imaging, capacitors, solar cells, light emitting diodes, among others, could benefit from the low toxicity and the chemical and physical stability of these nanostructures. Despite much research, many optical properties, such as absorption and photoluminescence, of GCQDs are not completely understood yet. GCQD absorption spectra show a number of different bands whose origin is still on discussion. Many interpretations are made considering a single graphene layer. In this work, GCQD samples synthesized by the pyrolysis of citric acid was characterized by absorption spectroscopy measurements and Density Functional Theory simulations considering multi-layered structures. Density of States and electronic response functions calculations were also performed. From the results of these calculations, the absorption band associated to a π-π* (CC) transition could be also associated to a transition between different graphene layers.

This article describes a project intended to promote access to electroacoustic music for children and teenagers aged 6 to 15 years in a socially and educationally disadvantaged rural community in Michoacán, Mexico. It explores an educational model of teaching, learning and creation of electroacoustic music through the use of music technology and pedagogy based on constructivism and Paulo Freire’s ideas on education as a practice of freedom. It provides a pedagogical reflection on the processes of learning and appreciation of this new music. The project includes the use of an interactive music system – implemented in MaxMSP using a mobile phone OSC app to control space and its interaction with timbre, pitch and duration – as an aid in the classroom and its implementation in an educational programme with a social impact. The research covered in this article could be taken into account to deliver new music education in rural communities with similar socioeconomic circumstances.

The aim of this study was to assess the associations of intake of different types of meat with semen parameters and reproductive hormones in healthy young men. This cross-sectional study included 206 men, 18–23 years, from Southern Spain. All men completed a validated FFQ, underwent a physical examination, and provided blood and semen samples. Multivariable linear regression was used to evaluate the associations between meat intake with semen quality parameters and reproductive hormones. Total meat intake was unrelated to semen quality or reproductive hormone levels. When subgroups of meat were separately considered, however, shellfish intake was positively related to progressive motility. The adjusted percentages of progressively motile spermatozoa for men in increasing quartiles of shellfish intake were 45·2, 42·0, 49·4 and 53·2 % with a significant linear trend across quartiles (Ptrend≤0·001). In contrast, men who consumed organ meats had significantly lower progressive sperm motility (51·5 v. 42·8 %; P = 0·001) and higher luteinising hormone levels (4·0 v. 4·6 IU/l; P = 0·03) compared with men who did not consume organ meats. Intake of shellfish and organ meats was low in this population, however. Given the scarcity of data on the relation between specific types of meat with semen quality and reproductive hormone levels, additional research is needed to confirm or refute these findings.