Background. Clinical studies suggest obesity paradoxically increases survival during bacterial infection and sepsis but decreases it with influenza, but these studies are observational. By contrast, ...animal studies of obesity in infection can prospectively compare obese versus nonobese controls. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of animal investigations to further examine obesity’s survival effect in infection and sepsis. Methods. Databases were searched for studies comparing survival in obese versus nonobese animals following bacteria, lipopolysaccharide, or influenza virus challenges. Results. Twenty-one studies (761 obese and 603 control animals) met the inclusion criteria. Obesity reduced survival in 19 studies (11 significantly) and the odds ratio (95% CI) of survival (0.21(0.13, 0.35); I2 = 64%, p<0.01p < 0.01) but with high heterogeneity. Obesity reduced survival (1) consistently in both single-strain bacteria- and lipopolysaccharide-challenged studies (n = 6 studies, 0.21(0.13, 0.34); I2 = 31%, p=0.20 and n = 5, 0.22(0.13, 0.36); I2 = 0%, p=0.59, respectively), (2) not significantly with cecal ligation and puncture (n = 4, 0.72(0.08, 6.23); I2 = 75%, p<0.01), and (3) significantly with influenza but with high heterogeneity (n = 6, 0.12(0.04, 0.34); I2 = 73%, p<0.01). Obesity’s survival effects did not differ significantly comparing the four challenge types (p=0.49). Animal models did not include antimicrobials or glycemic control and study quality was low. Conclusions. Preclinical and clinical studies together emphasize the need for prospective studies in patients accurately assessing obesity’s impact on survival during severe infection.
•Microaerobic pretreatment (MP) using aerobic bacteria was investigated.•MP using Bacillus Subtilis obtained higher VFAs and glucose accumulation.•Under microaerobic condition, Bacillus Subtilis ...showed lignin hydrolysis ability.•The crystallinities of pretreated groups were lower than that of untreated group.
Thermophilic microaerobic pretreatment has been proved to be efficient in improving methane production of corn straw in previous studies. In this study, the effect of mesophilic (37 °C) microaerobic pretreatment using Bacillus Subtilis on the anaerobic digestion of corn straw was explored. Microaerobic pretreatment with a pure bacteria system was beneficial for the anaerobic digestion of corn straw, which obviously improved the methane yield. The maximum methane yield of 270.8 mL/g VS was obtained at the oxygen load of 5 mL/g VS, which was 17.35% higher than that of untreated group. Groups with mesophilic microaerobic pretreatment obtained higher glucose and VFAs concentrations, as well as higher peroxidase activities after 24 h pretreatment. In addition, the X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis displayed the crystallinity indexes of pretreated groups were also decreased. Therefore, microaerobic pretreatment with a pure bacteria system (Bacillus Subtilis) is an efficient pretreatment method to enhance the anaerobic digestion efficiency of cellulosic biomass.
Shock with
infection is particularly resistant to conventional cardiovascular support and its mortality rate appears higher than with more common bacterial pathogens. As opposed to many bacteria that ...lack exotoxins directly depressing hemodynamic function, lethal and edema toxin (LT and ET respectively) both cause shock and likely contribute to the high lethality rate with
. Selective inhibition of the toxins is protective in infection models, and administration of either toxin alone in animals produces hypotension with accompanying organ injury and lethality. Shock during infection is typically due to one of two mechanisms: (i) intravascular volume depletion related to disruption of endothelial barrier function; and (ii) extravasation of fluid and/or maladaptive dilation of peripheral resistance arteries. Although some data suggests that LT can produce myocardial dysfunction, growing evidence demonstrates that it may also interfere with endothelial integrity thereby contributing to the extravasation of fluid that helps characterize severe
infection. Edema toxin, on the other hand, while known to produce localized tissue edema when injected subcutaneously, has potent vascular relaxant effects that could lead to pathologic arterial dilation. This review will examine recent data supporting a role for these two pathophysiologic mechanisms underlying the shock LT and ET produce. Further research and a better understanding of these mechanisms may lead to improved management of
in patients.
Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is an aggressive and complex disease characterized by wide clinical, phenotypic and molecular heterogeneities. The expression pattern and clinical implication of ...long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) between germinal center B-cell-like (GCB) and activated B-cell-like (ABC) subtypes in DLBCL remain unclear. This study aims to determine whether lncRNA can serve as predictive biomarkers for subtype classification and prognosis in DLBCL.
Genome-wide comparative analysis of lncRNA expression profiles were performed in a large number of DLBCL patients from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), including GSE31312 cohort (N = 426), GSE10846 (N = 350) cohort and GSE4475 cohort (N = 129). Novel lncRNA biomarkers associated with clinically molecular subtype and prognosis were identified in the discovery cohort using differential expression analyses and weighted voting algorithm. The predictive value of the lncRNA signature was then assessed in two independent cohorts. The functional implication of lncRNA signature was also analyzed by integrative analysis of lncRNA and mRNA.
Seventeen of the 156 differentially expressed lncRNAs between GCB and ABC subtypes were identified as candidate biomarkers and integrated into form a lncRNA-based signature (termed SubSigLnc-17) which was able to discriminate between GCB and ABC subtypes with AUC of 0.974, specificity of 89.6% and sensitivity of 92.5%. Furthermore, subgroups of patients characterized by the SubSigLnc-17 demonstrated significantly different clinical outcome. The reproducible predictive power of SubSigLnc-17 in subtype classification and prognosis was successfully validated in the internal validation cohort and another two independent patient cohorts. Integrative analysis of lncRNA-mRNA suggested that these candidate lncRNA biomarkers were mainly related to immune-associated processes, such as T cell activation, leukocyte activation, lymphocyte activation and Chemokine signaling pathway.
Our study uncovered differentiated lncRNA expression pattern between GCB and ABC DLBCL and identified a 17-lncRNA signature for subtype classification and prognosis prediction. With further prospective validation, our study will improve the understanding of underlying molecular heterogeneities in DLBCL and provide candidate lncRNA biomarkers in DLBCL classification and prognosis.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Background
Lethal
B. anthracis
infection produces high proinflammatory peptidoglycan (PGN) burdens in hosts. We investigated whether the lethality and inflammation anthrax PGN can produce are ...related.
Methods
At 6 h before and the start of 24 h anthrax PGN infusions, rats (n = 198) were treated with diluent (controls) or one of three IV-doses of either hydrocortisone (125, 12.5 or 1.25 mg/kg) or TNF-soluble receptor (TNFsr; 2000, 1000 or 333 μg/kg), non-selective and selective anti-inflammatory agents, respectively.
Results
Compared to controls, hydrocortisone 125 and 12.5 mg/kg each decreased 7-day lethality (
p
≤ 0.004). Hydrocortisone 125 mg/kg decreased IL-1β, IL-6, TNFα, MCP, MIP-1α, MIP-2, RANTES and nitric oxide (NO) blood levels at 4 and 24 h after starting PGN (except MCP at 24 h). Each decrease was significant at 4 h (except MIP-1α that was significant at 24 h) (
p
≤ 0.05). Similarly, hydrocortisone 12.5 mg/kg decreased each measure at 4, 24 and 48 h (except TNFα at 24 h and MIP-1α at 24 and 48 h and NO at 48 h). Decreases were significant for IL-6 and NO at 4 h and RANTES at 48 h (
p
≤ 0.05). Hydrocortisone 1.25 mg/kg had non-significant effects. Each TNFsr dose decreased lethality but non-significantly. However, when doses were analyzed together, TNFsr decreased lethality in a potential trend (
p
= 0.16) and IL-6 and NO significantly at 4 h (
p
= 0.05).
Conclusions
Peptidoglycan-stimulated host inflammation may contribute to
B. anthracis
lethality.
•Properties of alkali-excited fly ash aerogel foam concrete were studied.•The microstructure of alkali-excited fly ash aerogel foamed concrete was analyzed.•Test variable included aerogel particles, ...fly ash, foam and polypropylene fiber.•Developed concrete exhibited excellent thermal performance and mechanical strength.•Aerogel used in concrete had excellent thermal insulation performance.
With increasing focus on low-carbon energy conservation and environmental protection, there is a need to consider all aspects of life in future developments. To meet the concept and requirements of energy conservation and environmental protection in the building industry, we have developed alkali-excited aerogel-foamed concrete that exhibits excellent thermal insulation performance and mechanical strength. The variables involved in its production include fly ash, foam, aerogels, and polypropylene fibres. In this study, the microstructure and mechanical and thermal properties of alkali-excited fly ash aerogel foam concrete was analysed. The results indicated that fly ash can replace a portion of the cement, resulting in a reduction in the thermal conductivity of the concrete. The addition of aerogels and foams to the concrete can significantly decrease its thermal conductivity. Specifically, when the aerogel content reaches 12 % and the foam content reaches 75 %, the thermal conductivity of the concrete decreases from 0.498 W/m·K to 0.183 W/m·K and 0.19 W/m·K, respectively. However, this decrease in thermal conductivity comes at a cost of approximately 50 % reduction in the flexural and compressive strengths of the concrete. The findings reveal that the aerogel has excellent thermal insulation performance similar to that of the foam, but it has little influence on the mechanical properties of the concrete. Additionally, an increase in the polypropylene fibre content significantly improves the mechanical properties of alkali-excited fly ash aerogel concrete, but the thermal properties of the concrete remain mostly unaffected.
The detection of objects with multi-orientations and multi-scales in aerial images is receiving increasing attention because of numerous useful applications in computer vision, image understanding, ...satellite remote sensing and surveillance. However, such detection can be exceedingly challenging because of a birds eye view, multi-scale rotating objects with large aspect ratios, dense distributions and extremely imbalanced categories. Despite the considerable progress that has been made, detection performance falls considerably below that required for real-world applications. In this paper, we propose an accurate and fast end-to-end detector to address the aforementioned challenges. Our contributions are threefold. First, inspired by the looking and thinking twice mechanism, recursive neural networks and the DetectoRS detector, we propose a novel encoder-decoder based architecture by introducing the recursive feature pyramid into a single-stage object detection framework. The improved backbone network can generate increasingly powerful multi-scale representations for classification and regression. Second, we propose a refined single-stage detector with feature recursion and refinement for rotating objects. Third, we use instance balance to improve focal loss, thereby optimizing the loss in the correct direction. Extensive experiments on two challenging aerial image object detection public datasets, DOTA and HRSC2016, show that the proposed R4Det detector achieves the state-of-the-art accuracy while running very fast. Moreover, further experiments show that our detector is more robust to adversarial image patch attacks than the previous state-of-art detector.
Due to the highly uncertain nature of the business environment, firms have been increasingly improving their supply chain resilience, especially in the context of supply chain disruptions. In this ...study, we examine supply chain resilience from the perspective of business-IT alignment, and further explore the moderating role of market orientation. Based on data collected from 177 firms in China, we test our model by using polynomial regression analysis and response surface methodology. Results show that a positive relationship between business-IT alignment and supply chain resilience exists, and a such relationship is further strengthened by market orientation. Our study is one of the first attempts to explore the effect of business-IT alignment on supply chain resilience. The theoretical contributions and managerial implications of the current study are also discussed.
The mean shift algorithm has achieved considerable success in target tracking due to its simplicity and robustness. However, the lack of spatial information may result in its failure to get high ...tracking precision. This might be even worse when the target is scale variant and the sequences are gray-levels. This paper presents a novel multiple subtemplates based tracking algorithm for the terminal guidance application. By applying a separate tracker to each subtemplate, it can handle more complicated situations such as rotation, scaling, and partial coverage of the target. The innovations include: (1) an optimal subtemplates selection algorithm is designed, which ensures that the selected subtemplates maximally represent the information of the entire template while having the least mutual redundancy; (2) based on the serial tracking results and the spatial constraint prior to those subtemplates, a Gaussian weighted voting method is proposed to locate the target center; (3) the optimal scale factor is determined by maximizing the voting results among the scale searching layers, which avoids the complicated threshold setting problem. Experiments on some videos with static scenes show that the proposed method greatly improves the tracking accuracy compared to the original mean shift algorithm.
The negative impact of glass fibre-reinforced polymers (GFRP), slag and fly ash on the environment has garnered significant attention; therefore, the aim of this study was to explore the possibility ...of replacing cementitious materials with GFRP powder, slag and fly ash to develop mortar with better thermal insulation and mechanical properties. The use of GFRP powder to replace cementitious materials was investigated. The experimental variables were the substrate, fly ash, and GFRP powder content. To analyse the mortar materials and specimens, various tests including X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and mechanical and thermal property testing were performed. The mortar with 20% GFRP powder using the ordinary Portland cement or alkali-activated slag as cementitious material exhibited excellent mechanical and thermal properties at 0.6 water-cement ratio. The use of fly ash as a substitute for cement resulted in a decrease in flexural strength by approximately 50%, compressive strength by 30%, and thermal conductivity by 66.3%. The use of fly ash and GFRP powder instead of cement reduced thermal conductivity of the mortar but decreased its flexural and compressive strengths by up to 40%.
•Properties and microstructure of insulated concrete with GFRP powder were studied.•Test variables included the substrate, fly ash, and GFRP powder admixture.•Developed insulated concrete showed good mechanical properties.•GFRP powder used in concrete had excellent thermal insulation performance.
PDF
