Suchergebnisse

An international meeting on Bordetella pertussis assay standardization and harmonization was held at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, GA, 19-20 July 2007. The goal of the meeting was to harmonize the immunoassays used for pertussis diagnostics and vaccine evaluation, as agreed upon by academic and government researchers, regulatory authorities, vaccine manufacturers, and the World Health Organization (WHO). The primary objectives were (1) to provide epidemiologic, laboratory, and statistical background for support of global harmonization; (2) to overview the current status of global epidemiology, pathogenesis and immunology of pertussis; (3) to develop a consensus opinion on existing gaps in understanding standardization of pertussis assays used for serodiagnosis and vaccine evaluation; and (4) to search for a multicenter process for addressing these priority gaps. Presentations and discussions by content experts addressed these objectives. A prioritized list of action items to improve standardization and harmonization of pertussis assays was identified during a group discussion at the end of the meeting. The major items included: (1) to identify a group that will organize, prepare, maintain, and distribute proficiency panels and key reagents such as reference and control sera; (2) to encourage the development and identification of one or more reference laboratories that can serve as an anchor and resource for other laboratories; (3) to define a performance-based assay method that can serve as a reference point for evaluating laboratory differences; (4) to develop guidance on quality of other reagents, e.g., pertussis toxin and other antigens, and methods to demonstrate their suitability; (5) to establish an international working group to harmonize the criteria to evaluate the results obtained on reference and proficiency panel sera; (6) to create an inventory to determine the amount of appropriate and well-characterized sera that are available globally to be used as bridging reagents for vaccine licensure; and (7) to seek specific guidance from regulatory authorities regarding the expectations and requirements for the licensure of new multicomponent pertussis vaccines.

Background The relationship between the presence of antibodies to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and the risk of subsequent reinfection remains unclear. Methods We investigated the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in seropositive and seronegative health care workers attending testing of asymptomatic and symptomatic staff at Oxford University Hospitals in the United Kingdom. Baseline antibody status was determined by anti-spike (primary analysis) and anti-nucleocapsid IgG assays, and staff members were followed for up to 31 weeks. We estimated the relative incidence of PCR-positive test results and new symptomatic infection according to antibody status, adjusting for age, participant-reported gender, and changes in incidence over time. Results A total of 12,541 health care workers participated and had anti-spike IgG measured; 11,364 were followed up after negative antibody results and 1265 after positive results, including 88 in whom seroconversion occurred during follow-up. A total of 223 anti-spike–seronegative health care workers had a positive PCR test (1.09 per 10,000 days at risk), 100 during screening while they were asymptomatic and 123 while symptomatic, whereas 2 anti-spike–seropositive health care workers had a positive PCR test (0.13 per 10,000 days at risk), and both workers were asymptomatic when tested (adjusted incidence rate ratio, 0.11; 95% confidence interval, 0.03 to 0.44; P=0.002). There were no symptomatic infections in workers with anti-spike antibodies. Rate ratios were similar when the anti-nucleocapsid IgG assay was used alone or in combination with the anti-spike IgG assay to determine baseline status. Conclusions The presence of anti-spike or anti-nucleocapsid IgG antibodies was associated with a substantially reduced risk of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection in the ensuing 6 months. (Funded by the U.K. Government Department of Health and Social Care and others.)

This is the final version of the article. Available from Springer Nature via the DOI in this record. ; Raw data were submitted to the European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA) under accession EGAS00001001077. ; X-chromosome inactivation (XCI), i.e., the inactivation of one of the female X chromosomes, restores equal expression of X-chromosomal genes between females and males. However, ~10% of genes show variable degrees of escape from XCI between females, although little is known about the causes of variable XCI. Using a discovery data-set of 1867 females and 1398 males and a replication sample of 3351 females, we show that genetic variation at three autosomal loci is associated with female-specific changes in X-chromosome methylation. Through cis-eQTL expression analysis, we map these loci to the genes SMCHD1/METTL4, TRIM6/HBG2, and ZSCAN9. Low-expression alleles of the loci are predominantly associated with mild hypomethylation of CpG islands near genes known to variably escape XCI, implicating the autosomal genes in variable XCI. Together, these results suggest a genetic basis for variable escape from XCI and highlight the potential of a population genomics approach to identify genes involved in XCI. ; This research was financially supported by several institutions: BBMRI-NL, a Research Infrastructure financed by the Dutch government (NWO, numbers 184.021.007 and 184.033.111); the UK Medical Research Council; Wellcome (www.wellcome.ac.uk; [grant number 102215/2/13/2 to ALSPAC]); the University of Bristol to ALSPAC; the UK Economic and Social Research Council (www.esrc.ac.uk; [ES/N000498/1] to CR); the UK Medical Research Council (www.mrc.ac.uk; grant numbers [MC_UU_12013/1, MC_UU_12013/2 to JLM, CR]); the Helmholtz Zentrum München – German Research Center for Environmental Health, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and by the State of Bavaria; the Munich Center of Health Sciences (MC-Health), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, as part of LMUinnovativ; the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council, European Union (EU), and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)- funded BioResource, Clinical Research Facility, and Biomedical Research Centre based at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with King's College London.

Allergic diseases often occur early in life and persist throughout life. This life-course perspective should be considered in allergen immunotherapy. In particular it is essential to understand whether this al treatment may be used in old age adults. The current paper was developed by a working group of AIRWAYS integrated care pathways for airways diseases, the model of chronic respiratory diseases of the European Innovation Partnership on active and healthy ageing (DG CONNECT and DG Santé). It considered (1) the political background, (2) the rationale for allergen immunotherapy across the life cycle, (3) the unmet needs for the treatment, in particular in preschool children and old age adults, (4) the strategic framework and the practical approach to synergize current initiatives in allergen immunotherapy, its mechanisms and the concept of active and healthy ageing.

Open access journal ; This is the final version of the article. Available from Copernicus Publications via the DOI in this record. ; Accurate assessments of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the climate policy process, and project future climate change. Present-day analysis requires the combination of a range of data, algorithms, statistics and model estimates and their interpretation by a broad scientific community. Here we describe datasets and a methodology developed by the global carbon cycle science community to quantify all major components of the global carbon budget, including their uncertainties. We discuss changes compared to previous estimates, consistency within and among components, and methodology and data limitations. CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production (EFF) are based on energy statistics, while emissions from Land-Use Change (ELUC), including deforestation, are based on combined evidence from land cover change data, fire activity in regions undergoing deforestation, and models. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly and its rate of growth (GATM) is computed from the concentration. The mean ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN) is based on observations from the 1990s, while the annual anomalies and trends are estimated with ocean models. Finally, the global residual terrestrial CO2 sink (SLAND) is estimated by the difference of the other terms. For the last decade available (2002-2011), EFF was 8.3 ± 0.4 PgC yr-1, ELUC 1.0 ± 0.5 PgC yr-1, GATM 4.3 ± 0.1PgC yr-1, SOCEAN 2.5 ± 0.5 PgC yr-1, and SLAND 2.6 ± 0.8 PgC yr-1. For year 2011 alone, EFF was 9.5 ± 0.5 PgC yr -1, 3.0 percent above 2010, reflecting a continued trend in these emissions; ELUC was 0.9 ± 0.5 PgC yr-1, approximately constant throughout the decade; GATM was 3.6 ± 0.2 PgC yr-1, SOCEAN was 2.7 ± 0.5 PgC yr-1, and SLAND was 4.1 ± 0.9 PgC yr-1. GATM was low in 2011 compared to the 2002-2011 average because of a high uptake by the land probably in response to natural climate variability associated to La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 391.31 ± 0.13 ppm at the end of year 2011. We estimate that EFF will have increased by 2.6% (1.9-3.5%) in 2012 based on projections of gross world product and recent changes in the carbon intensity of the economy. All uncertainties are reported as ±1 sigma (68% confidence assuming Gaussian error distributions that the real value lies within the given interval), reflecting the current capacity to characterise the annual estimates of each component of the global carbon budget. This paper is intended to provide a baseline to keep track of annual carbon budgets in the future. © 2013 Author(s). ; We thank all people and institutions who provided data used in this carbon budget, in particular, G. Hurt, L. Chini, and I. Harris. The observations and modelling analysis were possible thanks to funding from multiple agencies around the world. The UK Natural Environment Research Council provided funding to CLQ and the GCP though their International Opportunities Fund specifically to support this publication (project NE/103002X/1). CLQ, PC, SZ, and JS thank the EU FP7 for funding through projects GEOCarbon (283080), COMBINE (226520) and CARBOCHANGE (264879). GPP and RMA acknowledge support from the Norwegian Research Council (221355/E10). SCD acknowledges support from the US National Science Foundation (NSF AGS-1048827). JH was supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship and the Cabot Institute, University of Bristol. RJA and TAB were sponsored by US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research (BER) programs and performed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) under US Department of Energy contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. CH was supported by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology "Science Budget". EK was supported by the Global Environment Research Fund (S-10) of the Ministry of Environment of Japan. GrvdW was supported by the European Research Council. BDS was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. AA acknowledges the Mistra-SWECIA programme and the strategic research areas MERGE, BECC and LUCCI. AKJ is funded by the NASA LCLUC Program (No. NNX08AK75G) and the Office of Science (BER), US Department of Energy (DOE-DE-SC0006706).

The presence of a flammable gas in a combustible dust cloud significantly modifies its explosivity parameters. Thus, a hybrid mixture can become flammable even when both the dust-air and gas-air binary mixtures are under the corresponding lower explosion limits. The pressure-time histories of hybrid mixtures formed by coal dust, methane and air at different concentrations, at 1 bar initial pressure and normal temperature, were studied using the standard 20 L spherical explosion vessel and 5kJ chemical igniters or 10 J permanent sparks. From the early stages of the pressure-time history, when the pressure increase is equal to or less than the initial pressure, the normal burning velocities were evaluated and discussed.

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record. ; The Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) is a synthesis of quality-controlled fCO2 (fugacity of carbon dioxide) values for the global surface oceans and coastal seas with regular updates. Version 3 of SOCAT has 14.7 million fCO2 values from 3646 data sets covering the years 1957 to 2014. This latest version has an additional 4.6 million fCO2 values relative to version 2 and extends the record from 2011 to 2014. Version 3 also significantly increases the data availability for 2005 to 2013. SOCAT has an average of approximately 1.2 million surface water fCO2 values per year for the years 2006 to 2012. Quality and documentation of the data has improved. A new feature is the data set quality control (QC) flag of E for data from alternative sensors and platforms. The accuracy of surface water fCO2 has been defined for all data set QC flags. Automated range checking has been carried out for all data sets during their upload into SOCAT. The upgrade of the interactive Data Set Viewer (previously known as the Cruise Data Viewer) allows better interrogation of the SOCAT data collection and rapid creation of high-quality figures for scientific presentations. Automated data upload has been launched for version 4 and will enable more frequent SOCAT releases in the future. Highprofile scientific applications of SOCAT include quantification of the ocean sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide and its long-term variation, detection of ocean acidification, as well as evaluation of coupled-climate and ocean-only biogeochemical models. Users of SOCAT data products are urged to acknowledge the contribution of data providers, as stated in the SOCAT Fair Data Use Statement. This ESSD (Earth System Science Data) "living data" publication documents the methods and data sets used for the assembly of this new version of the SOCAT data collection and compares these with those used for earlier versions of the data collection (Pfeil et al., 2013; Sabine et al., 2013; Bakker et al., 2014). Individual data set files, included in the synthesis product, can be downloaded here: doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.849770. The gridded products are available here: doi:10.3334/CDIAC/OTG.SOCAT-V3-GRID. ; Research vessel Tiglax in Columbia Bay, Alaska, is shown on the website for SOCAT version 3. The Columbia Glacier can be seen at the head of the bay, as well as calved ice from the glacier. The photo was taken by Wiley Evans. Pete Brown (National Oceanography Centre Southampton, UK) designed the SOCAT logo. IOCCP (via a US National Science Foundation grant (OCE-124 3377) to the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research), IOC-UNESCO (International Oceanographic Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), SOLAS and IMBER provided travel and meeting support. Funding was received from the University of East Anglia (UK), the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research (Norway), the Geophysical Institute at the University of Bergen (Norway) and the University of Washington (US). The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) made important financial contributions via the Climate Observation Division of the Climate Program Office, the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program, the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL), the NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) and the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory. Funding was also received from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US), PANGAEA® Data Publisher for Earth and Environmental Science (Germany), the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (Germany), the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (Australia), the National Institute for Environmental Studies (Japan) and Uni Research (Norway). Research projects making SOCAT possible included the European Union projects CarboChange (FP7 264879), GEOCARBON (FP7 283080) and AtlantOS (633211), the UK Ocean Acidification Research Programme (NE/H017046/1; funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Departments for Energy and Climate Change and for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)) and the UK Shelf Sea Biogeochemistry Blue Carbon project (NE/K00168X/1; funded by NERC and Defra). Numerous government and funding agencies financially supported SOCAT, notably the Australian International Marine Observing System, the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (US), the European Space Agency, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF projects 01LK1224J, 01LK1101C, 01LK1101E, ICOS-D), the Japanese Ministry of the Environment, the Royal Society of New Zealand via the New Zealand–Germany Science and Technology Programme, the Norwegian Research Council (SNACS, 229752), the Swedish Research Council (project 2004-4034) and the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (Formas, project 2004- 797). This is PMEL contribution number 4441. Finally, we thank the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful, constructive and insightful reviews

This study was aimed to implement response surface methodology to optimize the hydrodistillation parameters of the essential oil of the plant species Eucalyptus camaldulensis (RSM). The distillation time, condensation flow rate, and particle size were the desired parameters. To generate factor combinations, a three-factor Box-Behnken design was used. The response surface analysis yielded a linear model, which was used to calculate the top yield of extracted oil based on the optimized conditions. ANOVA shows that the generated polynomial model was highly noteworthy, with R2=0.861. The peak yield was 0.513663 % at the optimal conditions, which were 1mm as particle size, 3.4 mL/min as condensation flow rate, and 210 min as extraction time. The GC/MS analysis revealed the presence of p-cymene (26.22 %), spathulenol (16.71 %), and 1.8-cineole (14.44 %) as major components.