Peter Hotez On “The Most Important Diseases You've Never Heard Of”
Emerging And Re-emerging Rickettsioses: Endothelial Cell Infection And Early Disease Events
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Low Salmon Prices Put Salmones Camanchaca In The Red For Second Straight Quarter
Puerto Montt, Chile-based salmon farmer Salmones Camanchaca increased its Atlantic salmon harvest to 17,760 metric tons (MT) in Q3 2023, a 24 percent year-over-year increase, but the jump in production was not enough to keep the company from falling into the red for the second straight quarter.
"This was a very challenging quarter due to the weakness of global demand and its effects on prices, added to costs that included higher prices of food inputs, inflation on [prices of] services, and outbreaks of SRS [salmonid rickettsial septicemia] and Caligus that hurt the costs of fish harvested from two centers," Salmones Camanchaca Vice President Ricardo García Holtz said.
The higher harvest volume did not fully translate into higher sales during the period, and the company's Atlantic salmon sales volumes totaled 11,311 MT whole-fish equivalent (WFE) in the period, slipping 3.4 percent year over year. The lower sales, coupled with the company selling off frozen products which reduced inventory rotation, resulted in the company accumulating an inventory of more than 9,000 MT WFEat the end of the quarter.
The inventory surplus and lower sales, coupled with a 12.9 percent decrease in Atlantic salmon sales prices, led to its third-quarter revenue falling 14.5 percent year over year to USD 83 million (EUR 76.1 million). Year to date, the company's operating revenue has reached USD 259.3 million (EUR 236.9 million), a 5 percent decrease compared to the same period of 2022.
Cost of sales in Q3 2023, meanwhile, increased 10.5 percent year over year to USD 77.7 million (EUR 71.2 million), resulting in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) before fair-value adjustments of just USD 2.9 million (EUR 2.6 million), an 88.6 percent drop from Q3 2022.
Net losses for Q3 2023 reached USD 5.49 million (EUR 5.03 million), compared to USD 18.5 million (EUR 16.9 million) in net profits for the same quarter in 2022.
The company added in its earning report that its EBIT per kilogram of Atlantic salmon fell to USD 0.05 (EUR 0.04), compared to USD 1.78 (EUR 1.62) per kilogram in Q3 2022.
Salmones Camanchaca did not harvest coho salmon during the period as it is not in season, but sales volumes of that species jumped 307 percent when compared to last year, reaching 438 MT WFE.
However, the average price of its coho fell 24.3 percent during the quarter, dropping to ...
Photo courtesy of Salmones Camanchaca
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Laboratory Of Infectious Disease Epidemiology
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Investigating parasitism-induced immune dysregulation and susceptibility to acute rheumatic fever in childrenRheumatic heart disease (RHD) is the leading cause of acquired cardiac morbidity and mortality in young people worldwide. RHD, a complication of acute rheumatic fever (ARF), develops as a result of strep throat (causative agent Streptococcus pyogenes). While strep throat is common in pediatric populations, only a small percentage of infected patients will progress to the severe clinical complications of ARF and RHD. Currently, we cannot predict which children will progress to the more severe form of disease. The epidemiology and clinical pathology of RHD is complex and ill-defined. The incidence of RHD in the United States has sharply declined since the early 1900s, though the incidence of strep throat has remained constant. In high-income countries, even when strep throat is not appropriately treated, ARF and RHD are extremely rare. Conversely, RHD and strep throat both remain significant problems in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Many LMICs, such as Malawi, continue to struggle with a high burden of parasitic infections and RHD within their population. Parasitic infections cause several systemic health problems such as nutritional deficiencies, cognitive impairment, and increased susceptibility to secondary infections. Most importantly, certain parasitic infections skew the immune profile towards Th2 innate and adaptive responses. This project aims to investigate the role of immune modulation due to co-infection with gastrointestinal parasites in the progression of strep throat to ARF. Our aims are as follows: (1) Identify the prevalence of parasite infections in children with acute rheumatic fever who present to health care centers in Malawi compared to age-matched controls, (2) Examine the extent of immune dysregulation in children with ARF compared to age-matched controls. The project will generate important data to inform larger prospective studies to identify targets for public health intervention and treatment strategies.
Next-generation mosquito control through technology-driven trap development and artificial intelligence-guided detection of mosquito breeding habitatsEach year, approximately 400 million people are infected with an arboviral disease from the bite of an Aedes spp mosquito. Aedes spp. Mosquitoes are a leading public health threat due to their high competency to vector multiple pathogens, their preference to bite humans, and their ability to adapt to new domestic environments. In the US, reintroduction and establishment of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquito populations has resulted in local epidemics of Zika, dengue and chikungunya in the past decade. Unfortunately, mosquito control programs in the US generally operate with limited budgets, forcing the majority of insecticide spraying to be conducted in reaction to population exposure instead of targeted prevention, which has also contributed to considerable growth of insecticide-resistant populations, yielding a widening gap of infrastructure vulnerability. Our current proposal aims to leverage existing technolog
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