(
) is a gram-negative bacterium that infects approximately 4.4 billion individuals worldwide. However, its prevalence varies among different geographic areas, and is influenced by several factors. ...The infection can be acquired by means of oral-oral or fecal-oral transmission, and the pathogen possesses various mechanisms that improve its capacity of mobility, adherence and manipulation of the gastric microenvironment, making possible the colonization of an organ with a highly acidic lumen. In addition,
presents a large variety of virulence factors that improve its pathogenicity, of which we highlight cytotoxin associated antigen A, vacuolating cytotoxin, duodenal ulcer promoting gene A protein, outer inflammatory protein and gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase. The host immune system, mainly by means of a Th1-polarized response, also plays a crucial role in the infection course. Although most
-positive individuals remain asymptomatic, the infection predisposes the development of various clinical conditions as peptic ulcers, gastric adenocarcinomas and mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphomas. Invasive and non-invasive diagnostic methods, each of them with their related advantages and limitations, have been applied in
detection. Moreover, bacterial resistance to antimicrobial therapy is a major challenge in the treatment of this infection, and new therapy alternatives are being tested to improve
eradication. Last but not least, the development of effective vaccines against
infection have been the aim of several research studies.
Repetitive industrial tasks can be easily performed by traditional robotic systems. However, many other works require cognitive knowledge that only humans can provide. Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) ...emerges as an ideal concept of co-working between a human operator and a robot, representing one of the most significant subjects for human-life improvement.The ultimate goal is to achieve physical interaction, where handing over an object plays a crucial role for an effective task accomplishment. Considerable research work had been developed in this particular field in recent years, where several solutions were already proposed. Nonetheless, some particular issues regarding Human-Robot Collaboration still hold an open path to truly important research improvements. This paper provides a literature overview, defining the HRC concept, enumerating the distinct human-robot communication channels, and discussing the physical interaction that this collaboration entails. Moreover, future challenges for a natural and intuitive collaboration are exposed: the machine must behave like a human especially in the pre-grasping/grasping phases and the handover procedure should be fluent and bidirectional, for an articulated function development. These are the focus of the near future investigation aiming to shed light on the complex combination of predictive and reactive control mechanisms promoting coordination and understanding. Following recent progress in artificial intelligence, learning exploration stand as the key element to allow the generation of coordinated actions and their shaping by experience.
COVID-19 gastrointestinal manifestations: a systematic review Silva, Filipe Antônio França da; Brito, Breno Bittencourt de; Santos, Maria Luísa Cordeiro ...
Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina Tropical,
01/2020, Letnik:
53
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has greatly challenged public health worldwide. A growing number of studies have reported ...gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms. We performed a systematic review of GI symptoms associated with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as well as of the serum levels of biomarkers related to liver function and lesion in SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals.
We surveyed relevant articles published in English, Spanish, and Portuguese up to July, 2020 in the PubMed, MEDLINE, SciELO, LILACS, and BVS databases. Moreover, we surveyed potentially important articles in journals such as the NEJM, JAMA, BMJ, Gut, and AJG.
This systematic review included 43 studies, including 18,246 patients. Diarrhea was the most common GI symptom, affecting 11.5% of the patients, followed by nausea and vomiting (6.3%) and abdominal pain (2.3%). With regard to clinical severity, 17.5% of the patients were classified as severely ill, whereas 9.8% of them were considered to have a non-severe disease. Some studies showed increased aspartate transaminase and alanine aminotransferase levels in a portion of the 209 analyzed patients and two studies.
Our results suggest that digestive symptoms are common in COVID-19 patients. In addition, alterations in cytolysis biomarkers could also be observed in a lesser proportion, calling attention to the possibility of hepatic involvement in SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals.
Recombinant proteins are generally fused with solubility enhancer tags to improve the folding and solubility of the target protein of interest. However, the fusion protein strategy usually requires ...expensive proteases to perform in vitro proteolysis and additional chromatographic steps to obtain tag‐free recombinant proteins. Expression systems based on intracellular processing of solubility tags in Escherichia coli, through co‐expression of a site‐specific protease, simplify the recombinant protein purification process, and promote the screening of molecules that fail to remain soluble after tag removal. High yields of soluble target proteins have already been achieved using these protease co‐expression systems. Herein, we review approaches for controlled intracellular processing systems tailored to produce soluble untagged proteins in E. coli. We discuss the different genetic systems available for intracellular processing of recombinant proteins regarding system design features, advantages, and limitations of the various strategies.
Recombinant protein production in different Escherichia coli strains is a cornerstone of modern biotechnology. Controlled intracellular processing (CIP) of recombinant passenger proteins that are fused to solubility enhancer proteins has been proposed as an alternative to obtaining satisfactory yields of soluble recombinant proteins without the need for significant post‐processing steps. In this manuscript, we review different genetic systems currently available for controlled intracellular processing of fusion recombinant proteins, regarding system design features, significant advantages, and limitations of the various strategies.
Recent advances in the field of collaborative robotics aim to endow industrial robots with prediction and anticipation abilities. In many shared tasks, the robot’s ability to accurately perceive and ...recognize the objects being manipulated by the human operator is crucial to make predictions about the operator’s intentions. In this context, this paper proposes a novel learning-based framework to enable an assistive robot to recognize the object grasped by the human operator based on the pattern of the hand and finger joints. The framework combines the strengths of the commonly available software MediaPipe in detecting hand landmarks in an RGB image with a deep multi-class classifier that predicts the manipulated object from the extracted keypoints. This study focuses on the comparison between two deep architectures, a convolutional neural network and a transformer, in terms of prediction accuracy, precision, recall and F1-score. We test the performance of the recognition system on a new dataset collected with different users and in different sessions. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods, while providing valuable insights into the factors that limit the generalization ability of the models.
The inflammatory pattern during
(
) infection is changeable and complex. During childhood, it is possible to observe a predominantly regulatory response, evidenced by high concentrations of key ...cytokines for the maintenance of Treg responses such as TGF-β1 and IL-10, in addition to high expression of the transcription factor FOXP3. On the other hand, there is a predominance of cytokines associated with the Th1 and Th17 responses among
-positive adults. In the last few years, the participation of the Th17 response in the gastric inflammation against
infection has been highlighted due to the high levels of TGF-β1 and IL-17 found in this infectious scenario, and growing evidence has supported a close relationship between this immune response profile and unfavorable outcomes related to the infection. Moreover, this cytokine profile might play a pivotal role in the effectiveness of anti-
vaccines. It is evident that age is one of the main factors influencing the gastric inflammatory pattern during the infection with
, and understanding the immune response against the bacterium can assist in the development of alternative prophylactic and therapeutic strategies against the infection as well as in the comprehension of the pathogenesis of the outcomes related to that microorganism.
Hand gesture recognition from images is a critical task with various real-world applications, particularly in the field of human-robot interaction. Industrial environments, where non-verbal ...communication is preferred, are significant areas of application for gesture recognition. However, these environments are often unstructured and noisy, with complex and dynamic backgrounds, making accurate hand segmentation a challenging task. Currently, most solutions employ heavy preprocessing to segment the hand, followed by the application of deep learning models to classify the gestures. To address this challenge and develop a more robust and generalizable classification model, we propose a new form of domain adaptation using multi-loss training and contrastive learning. Our approach is particularly relevant in industrial collaborative scenarios, where hand segmentation is difficult and context-dependent. In this paper, we present an innovative solution that further challenges the existing approach by testing the model on an entirely unrelated dataset with different users. We use a dataset for training and validation and demonstrate that contrastive learning techniques in simultaneous multi-loss functions provide superior performance in hand gesture recognition compared to conventional approaches in similar conditions.
Nephrotoxicity in cancer treatment: An overview Santos, Maria Luísa Cordeiro; de Brito, Breno Bittencourt; da Silva, Filipe Antônio França ...
World journal of clinical oncology,
2020-Apr-24, 2020-4-24, 20200424, Letnik:
11, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Odprti dostop
Anticancer drug nephrotoxicity is an important and increasing adverse drug event that limits the efficacy of cancer treatment. The kidney is an important elimination pathway for many antineoplastic ...drugs and their metabolites, which occurs by glomerular filtration and tubular secretion. Chemotherapeutic agents, both conventional cytotoxic agents and molecularly targeted agents, can affect any segment of the nephron including its microvasculature, leading to many clinical manifestations such as proteinuria, hypertension, electrolyte disturbances, glomerulopathy, acute and chronic interstitial nephritis, acute kidney injury and at times chronic kidney disease. The clinician should be alert to recognize several factors that may maximize renal dysfunction and contribute to the increased incidence of nephrotoxicity associated with these drugs, such as intravascular volume depletion, the associated use of nonchemotherapeutic nephrotoxic drugs (analgesics, antibiotics, proton pump inhibitors, and bone-targeted therapies), radiographic ionic contrast media or radiation therapy, urinary tract obstruction, and intrinsic renal disease. Identification of patients at higher risk for nephrotoxicity may allow the prevention or at least reduction in the development and severity of this adverse effect. Therefore, the aim of this brief review is to provide currently available evidences on oncologic drug-related nephrotoxicity.
Providing energy from fusion and finding ways to scale up the fusion process to commercial proportions in an efficient, economical, and environmentally benign way is one of the grand challenges for ...engineering. Controlling the burning plasma in real-time is one of the critical issues that need to be addressed. Plasma Position Reflectometry (PPR) is expected to have an important role in next-generation fusion machines, such as DEMO, as a diagnostic to monitor the position and shape of the plasma continuously, complementing magnetic diagnostics. The reflectometry diagnostic uses radar science methods in the microwave and millimetre wave frequency ranges and is envisaged to measure the radial edge density profile at several poloidal angles providing data for the feedback control of the plasma position and shape. While significant steps have already been given to accomplish that goal, with proof of concept tested first in ASDEX-Upgrade and afterward in COMPASS, important, ground-breaking work is still ongoing. The Divertor Test Tokamak (DTT) facility presents itself as the appropriate future fusion device to implement, develop, and test a PPR system, thus contributing to building a knowledge database in plasma position reflectometry required for its application in DEMO. At DEMO, the PPR diagnostic's in-vessel antennas and waveguides, as well as the magnetic diagnostics, may be exposed to neutron irradiation fluences 5 to 50 times greater than those experienced by ITER. In the event of failure of either the magnetic or microwave diagnostics, the equilibrium control of the DEMO plasma may be jeopardized. It is, therefore, imperative to ensure that these systems are designed in such a way that they can be replaced if necessary. To perform reflectometry measurements at the 16 envisaged poloidal locations in DEMO, plasma-facing antennas and waveguides are needed to route the microwaves between the plasma through the DEMO upper ports (UPs) to the diagnostic hall. The main integration approach for this diagnostic is to incorporate these groups of antennas and waveguides into a diagnostics slim cassette (DSC), which is a dedicated complete poloidal segment specifically designed to be integrated with the water-cooled lithium lead (WCLL) breeding blanket system. This contribution presents the multiple engineering and physics challenges addressed while designing reflectometry diagnostics using radio science techniques. Namely, short-range dedicated radars for plasma position and shape control in future fusion experiments, the advances enabled by the designs for ITER and DEMO, and the future perspectives. One key development is in electronics, aiming at an advanced compact coherent fast frequency sweeping RF back-end 23-100 GHz in few μs that is being developed at IPFN-IST using commercial Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits (MMIC). The compactness of this back-end design is crucial for the successful integration of many measurement channels in the reduced space available in future fusion machines. Prototype tests of these devices are foreseen to be performed in current nuclear fusion machines.
Allergic diseases figure among the most common immune-mediated diseases worldwide, affecting more than 25% of the world's population. Allergic reactions can be triggered by house dust mite (HDM) ...allergens, of which the so-called group 21 of allergens is considered as clinically relevant.
Herein, we used a structural bioinformatics and immunoinformatics approach to design hypoallergenic mutant variants of the Der p 21 allergen of Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus, which were then recombinantly expressed in bacteria and tested for their IgE-reactivities. For this, we scanned the wild-type Der p 21 protein for all possible single amino acid substitutions in key IgE-binding regions that could render destabilization of the major epitope regions.
Four main substitutions (D82P, K110G, E77G, and E87S) were selected to build mutant variants of the Der p 21 allergen, which were produced in their recombinant forms; two of these variants showed reduced reactivity with IgE. Molecular dynamic simulations and immune simulations demonstrated the overall effects of these mutations on the structural stability of the Der p 21 allergen and on the profile of immune response induced through immunotherapy.
When produced in their recombinant forms, two of the Der p 21 mutant variants, namely proteins K110G and E87S, showed significantly reduced IgE reactivities against sera from HDM-allergic individuals (n = 20; p < 0.001).
This study successfully translated a rational in silico mutagenesis design into low IgE-binding mutant variants of the allergen rDer p 21. These novel hypoallergens are promising to compose next-generation allergen-immunotherapy formulations in near future.
•IgE-mediated allergic reactions affect a significantly high proportion of the world population.•Hypoallergens represent a promising alternative for safer and more effective immunotherapy.•Protein engineering can be used to produce hypoallergenic mutant derivatives of major allergens.•Through a rational in silico mutagenesis design we developed hypoallergenic variants of Der p 21.
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