A New Risk Factor for Infective Endocarditis

A implantação de piercings corporais tem sido uma prática cada vez mais comum nas últimas décadas, sobretudo entre os mais jovens. No entanto, não se trata de um procedimento inócuo, podendo apresentar complicações tão graves como a endocardite infecciosa, que pode surgir em indivíduos com ou sem cardiopatia de base. Neste artigo relatamos o caso de uma endocardite pós piercing numa jovem com pacemaker definitivo, tendo havido necessidade de intervenção cirúrgica. Fazemos igualmente uma revisão dos casos de endocardite pós piercing descritos na literatura. Agora que as recomendações da American Heart Association para a profilaxia de endocardite infecciosa estão mais restritas, discutimos a necessidade de inclusão dos piercings corporais nos procedimentos a merecerem terapêutica profiláctica nos indivíduos de alto risco

Três rearranjos diferentes, três fenótipos diferentes :Estudo Familiar Cromossoma 14

Introdução – Cromossomas derivativos são o resultado de rearranjos estruturais que tanto podem ocorrer num só, como entre dois ou mais cromossomas. Estes rearranjos dão origem a cromossomas estruturalmente anormais, podendo resultar um fenótipo normal ou mais ou menos grave, dependendo do tipo de anomalia encontrada. Materiais e métodos – Caso índex: homem de 55 anos, referenciado para estudos de citogenética clássica (cariótipo com bandas GTG de alta resolução) e molecular (MLPA – kits P036 e P070 e FISH com sonda subtelomérica especifica para o cromossoma 14) por apresentar um quadro clínico de atraso mental. Posteriormente realizaram-se estudos citogenéticos a uma irmã com atraso cognitivo e baixa estatura, e a mais quatro familiares com fenótipos normais. Resultados – O cariótipo do caso índex revelou a existência de uma anomalia cromossómica estrutural desequilibrada num dos cromossomas 14, sugerindo uma deleção da banda 14q32, e uma duplicação do braço curto localizada na parte terminal do braço longo. Nos estudos de citogenética molecular, a técnica de MLPA identificou uma deleção da região subtelomérica no braço longo do cromossoma 14, em ambos os kits e, posteriormente, a técnica de FISH comprovou essa deleção. Após estudos familiares, concluiu-se que dois dos irmãos apresentavam anomalias cromossómicas distintas do caso índex, envolvendo igualmente o cromossoma 14. Apesar de não ser possível efetuar o cariótipo à mãe (falecida), presume-se que estas alterações tenham tido origem numa anomalia cromossómica materna, uma vez que o pai deste indivíduo apresentava um cariótipo normal. Conclusões – Os autores apresentam os resultados citogenéticos dos vários indivíduos estudados, e realçam a raridade da existência de três rearranjos diferentes (um deles aparentemente equilibrado e dois desequilibrados), envolvendo o cromossoma 14, encontrados numa mesma família

Discrimination of low missing energy look-alikes at the LHC

The problem of discriminating possible scenarios of TeV scale new physics with large missing energy signature at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has received some attention in the recent past. We consider the complementary, and yet unexplored, case of theories predicting much softer missing energy spectra. As there is enough scope for such models to fake each other by having similar final states at the LHC, we have outlined a systematic method based on a combination of different kinematic features which can be used to distinguish among different possibilities. These features often trace back to the underlying mass spectrum and the spins of the new particles present in these models. As examples of "low missing energy look-alikes", we consider Supersymmetry with R-parity violation, Universal Extra Dimensions with both KK-parity conserved and KK-parity violated and the Littlest Higgs model with T-parity violated by the Wess-Zumino-Witten anomaly term. Through detailed Monte Carlo analysis of the four and higher lepton final states predicted by these models, we show that the models in their minimal forms may be distinguished at the LHC, while non-minimal variations can always leave scope for further confusion. We find that, for strongly interacting new particle mass-scale ~600 GeV (1 TeV), the simplest versions of the different theories can be discriminated at the LHC running at sqrt{s}=14 TeV within an integrated luminosity of 5 (30) fb^{-1}.Comment: 40 pages, 10 figures; v2: Further discussions, analysis and one figure added, ordering of certain sections changed, minor modifications in the abstract, version as published in JHE

The Genomic Signature of Crop-Wild Introgression in Maize

The evolutionary significance of hybridization and subsequent introgression has long been appreciated, but evaluation of the genome-wide effects of these phenomena has only recently become possible. Crop-wild study systems represent ideal opportunities to examine evolution through hybridization. For example, maize and the conspecific wild teosinte Zea mays ssp. mexicana, (hereafter, mexicana) are known to hybridize in the fields of highland Mexico. Despite widespread evidence of gene flow, maize and mexicana maintain distinct morphologies and have done so in sympatry for thousands of years. Neither the genomic extent nor the evolutionary importance of introgression between these taxa is understood. In this study we assessed patterns of genome-wide introgression based on 39,029 single nucleotide polymorphisms genotyped in 189 individuals from nine sympatric maize-mexicana populations and reference allopatric populations. While portions of the maize and mexicana genomes were particularly resistant to introgression (notably near known cross-incompatibility and domestication loci), we detected widespread evidence for introgression in both directions of gene flow. Through further characterization of these regions and preliminary growth chamber experiments, we found evidence suggestive of the incorporation of adaptive mexicana alleles into maize during its expansion to the highlands of central Mexico. In contrast, very little evidence was found for adaptive introgression from maize to mexicana. The methods we have applied here can be replicated widely, and such analyses have the potential to greatly informing our understanding of evolution through introgressive hybridization. Crop species, due to their exceptional genomic resources and frequent histories of spread into sympatry with relatives, should be particularly influential in these studies

Gauge-independent MS‾\overline{MS} renormalization in the 2HDM

We present a consistent renormalization scheme for the CP-conserving Two-Higgs-Doublet Model based on $\overline{MS}$ renormalization of the mixing angles and the soft-$Z_2$-symmetry-breaking scale $M_{sb}$ in the Higgs sector. This scheme requires to treat tadpoles fully consistently in all steps of the calculation in order to provide gauge-independent $S$-matrix elements. We show how bare physical parameters have to be defined and verify the gauge independence of physical quantities by explicit calculations in a general $R_{\xi}$-gauge. The procedure is straightforward and applicable to other models with extended Higgs sectors. In contrast to the proposed scheme, the $\overline{MS}$ renormalization of the mixing angles combined with popular on-shell renormalization schemes gives rise to gauge-dependent results already at the one-loop level. We present explicit results for electroweak NLO corrections to selected processes in the appropriately renormalized Two-Higgs-Doublet Model and in particular discuss their scale dependence.Comment: 52 pages, PDFLaTeX, PDF figures, JHEP version with Eq. (5.23) correcte

Environmental variables, habitat discontinuity and life history shaping the genetic structure of Pomatoschistus marmoratus

Coastal lagoons are semi-isolated ecosystems exposed to wide fluctuations of environmental conditions and showing habitat fragmentation. These features may play an important role in separating species into different populations, even at small spatial scales. In this study, we evaluate the concordance between mitochondrial (previous published data) and nuclear data analyzing the genetic variability of Pomatoschistus marmoratus in five localities, inside and outside the Mar Menor coastal lagoon (SE Spain) using eight microsatellites. High genetic diversity and similar levels of allele richness were observed across all loci and localities, although significant genic and genotypic differentiation was found between populations inside and outside the lagoon. In contrast to the FST values obtained from previous mitochondrial DNA analyses (control region), the microsatellite data exhibited significant differentiation among samples inside the Mar Menor and between lagoonal and marine samples. This pattern was corroborated using Cavalli-Sforza genetic distances. The habitat fragmentation inside the coastal lagoon and among lagoon and marine localities could be acting as a barrier to gene flow and contributing to the observed genetic structure. Our results from generalized additive models point a significant link between extreme lagoonal environmental conditions (mainly maximum salinity) and P. marmoratus genetic composition. Thereby, these environmental features could be also acting on genetic structure of coastal lagoon populations of P. marmoratus favoring their genetic divergence. The mating strategy of P. marmoratus could be also influencing our results obtained from mitochondrial and nuclear DNA. Therefore, a special consideration must be done in the selection of the DNA markers depending on the reproductive strategy of the species

Dijet signals of the Little Higgs model with T-parity

The Littest Higgs model with T-parity (LHT), apart from offering a viable solution to the naturalness problem of the Standard Model, also predicts a set of new fermions as well as a candidate for dark matter. We explore the possibility of discovering the heavy T-odd quark Q_H at the LHC in a final state comprising two hard jets with a large missing transverse momentum. Also discussed is the role of heavy flavor tagging.Comment: Changes in text. Some references adde

Antenna subtraction for gluon scattering at NNLO

We use the antenna subtraction method to isolate the double real radiation infrared singularities present in gluonic scattering amplitudes at next-to-next-to-leading order. The antenna subtraction framework has been successfully applied to the calculation of NNLO corrections to the 3-jet cross section and related event shape distributions in electron-positron annihilation. Here we consider processes with two coloured particles in the initial state, and in particular two-jet production at hadron colliders such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We construct a subtraction term that describes the single and double unresolved contributions from the six-gluon tree-level process using antenna functions with initial state partons and show numerically that the subtraction term correctly approximates the matrix elements in the various single and double unresolved configurations.Comment: 71 pages, JHEP3 class; corrected typos, equivalent but more compact version of eq. (5.12), results unchange

Cell walls of the dimorphic fungal pathogens Sporothrix schenckii and Sporothrix brasiliensis exhibit bilaminate structures and sloughing of extensive and intact layers

This work was supported by the Fundação Carlos Chagas de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ), grants E-26/202.974/2015 and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), grants 229755/2013-5, Brazil. LMLB is a senior research fellow of CNPq and Faperj. NG acknowledged support from the Wellcome Trust (Trust (097377, 101873, 200208) and MRC Centre for Medical Mycology (MR/N006364/1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Bigger, Better, Faster, More at the LHC

Multijet plus missing energy searches provide universal coverage for theories that have new colored particles that decay into a dark matter candidate and jets. These signals appear at the LHC further out on the missing energy tail than two-to-two scattering indicates. The simplicity of the searches at the LHC contrasts sharply with the Tevatron where more elaborate searches are necessary to separate signal from background. The searches presented in this article effectively distinguish signal from background for any theory where the LSP is a daughter or granddaughter of the pair-produced colored parent particle without ever having to consider missing energies less than 400 GeV.Comment: 26 pages, 8 Figures. Minor textual changes, typos fixed and references adde