The burden of aspergillosis, especially Chronic Pulmonary Aspergillosis, is increasingly recognized, and the increasing presence of azole-resistant environmental
has been highlighted as a health ...risk. However, a sizable minority of aspergillosis is caused by
, which is assumed to be sensitive to azoles but is infrequently included in surveillance. We conducted environmental sampling at 150 locations in a rural province of southern Vietnam.
isolates were identified morphologically, their identity was confirmed by sequencing of the beta-tubulin gene, and then they were tested for susceptibility to azoles and amphotericin B according to EUCAST methodologies. We found that over 85% of
isolates were resistant to at least one azole, and half of them were resistant to itraconazole. This unexpectedly high prevalence of resistance demands further investigation to determine whether it is linked to agricultural azole use, as has been described for
. Clinical correlation is required, so that guidelines can be adjusted to take this information into account.
To investigate the prevalences of reproductive tract infections (RTI)/sexually transmitted infections (STI) among married women in a rural district of Vietnam, and analyse the influence of ...socioeconomic, sociodemographic, and other determinants possibly related to RTI/STI.
A community-based cross-sectional study. Married women aged 18-49 years (n = 1012) were interviewed and underwent a gynaecological examination. Specimens were collected for laboratory diagnosis of chlamydia, gonorrhoea, trichomonas, bacterial vaginosis (BV), candidiasis, hepatitis B, HIV, and syphilis.
In total, 37% of the women were clinically diagnosed with an RTI/STI. Aetiologically confirmed RTI/STI was identified in 39% of the women (including 6% with STI). Endogenous infections were most prevalent (candidiasis 26%, BV 11%) followed by hepatitis B 8.3%, Chlamydia trachomatis 4.3%, Trichomonas vaginalis 1%, Neisseria gonorrhoeae 0.7%, genital warts 0.2%, and HIV and syphilis 0%. Fifty per cent of the STI cases were asymptomatic. Younger age and intrauterine devices were significantly associated with an increased risk of BV. Determinants of candidiasis were vaginal douching, high education level and low economic status, whereas a determinant of chlamydia was high economic status. Outmigration of the husband was associated with an increased risk of hepatitis B surface antigen seroposivity among women.
RTI/STI were prevalent among married women in a rural population of Vietnam. Syndromic algorithms should be consistently supplemented by risk assessment in order to reduce under and overtreatment. Microscopic diagnosis could be applied in primary care settings to achieve more accurate diagnoses. The promotion of health education aimed at reducing RTI/STI prevalences is an important tool in STI/HIV control programmes. Vaccination to prevent hepatitis B for migrants should be considered.
Digital elevation model (DEM) is an important geospatial data, which can provide a lot of topographic information. Currently, most commonly DEM data is derived from SAR images acquired before 2011, ...which has poor timeliness and is difficult to reflect the latest topographic features in many areas, especially in urban areas where the topographic features are rapidly updated. Therefore, it is necessary to explore DEM generation methods in urban areas to provide technical support for further studies on municipal planning and surface deformation in urban areas.This paper used two SAR images with bistatic mode, single-polarization (HH), and single look complex as experimental data from TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X. The imaging time was January 30, 2013. The spatial baseline was 248.467 m. The research obtained good timeliness and high-resolution DEM of Maanshan area based on the iteration and fusion technology using two TerraSAR-X/Tandem-X SAR images and AW3D30 DEM from JAXA/EORC.With a comparison of 90m SRTM and 30 m AW3D30, this paper found that the DEM based on iteration and fusion technology could show more ground details, especially for the large single buildings at the sparse area. However, the extracted DEM at the dense-buildings area had the low reliability and still needed to further explore the solution, due to the obstruct of sensor line of sight and the distribution of shadow.In conclusion, this paper confirmed that it is feasible to obtain high-resolution and high time efficiency DEM using the iteration and fusion technology. It is able to improve the resolution of DEM and update the topographic from the original DEM by iteratively fused with AW3D30 to eliminate overlay and shadow.
Cancer stem cells (CSCs) have been shown to contribute to the resistance and relapse in a range of cancer types such as breast cancer and glioma. However, colon cancer stem cells remain poorly ...characterized. Here we reported that CD24+ subpopulation in colon cancer cell lines HCT116 and SW480 exhibited cancer stem cell-like characteristics. Using flow cytometry candidate CSCs markers were selected after initial screening of known CSCs markers from other types of cancer on colon cancer cell lines HCT116, SW480 and HT29. CD24 was expressed in the minority of bulk cell population of HCT116 and SW480 cell lines. Moreover, functional tests demonstrated that CD24+ cells exhibited enhanced chemotherapy-resistance, self-renewal and tumorigenic capacity both in vitro and in vivo, compared to CD24- subpopulations. These results suggest that CD24+ subpopulation in colon cancer cell lines HCT116 and SW480 exhibits CSCs like characteristics, and represents a nice model to study and develop effective strategies to overcome chemo-resistance and relapse of colon cancer.
Guanine-rich oligonucleotides often show a strong tendency to form supramolecular architecture, the so-called G-quadruplex structure. Because of the biological significance, it is now considered to ...be one of the most important conformations of DNA. Here, we describe the direct visualization and single-molecule analysis of the formation of a tetramolecular G-quadruplex in KCl solution. The conformational changes were carried out by incorporating two duplex DNAs, with G-G mismatch repeats in the middle, inside a DNA origami frame and monitoring the topology change of the strands. In the absence of KCl, incorporated duplexes had no interaction and laid parallel to each other. Addition of KCl induced the formation of a G-quadruplex structure by stably binding the duplexes to each other in the middle. Such a quadruplex formation allowed the DNA synapsis without disturbing the duplex regions of the participating sequences, and resulted in an X-shaped structure that was monitored by atomic force microscopy. Further, the G-quadruplex formation in KCl solution and its disruption in KCl-free buffer were analyzed in real-time. The orientation of the G-quadruplex is often difficult to control and investigate using traditional biochemical methods. However, our method using DNA origami could successfully control the strand orientations, topology and stoichiometry of the G-quadruplex.
The characteristics and evolution of the solidification microstructure of a Fe-0·7C-22Mn (wt-%) TWIP steel was experimentally analysed. The primary dendrite arm space was about 1-2 mm while the ...diameter of equiaxed grains was about 2-4 mm. Decreasing the Mn concentration was proved beneficial to grains refinement and interdendrite soundness improvement. The tensile strength and yield strength of the concerning TWIP steel were found to be higher than that of C-Mn HSLA steel under as cast conditions above 1073 K, according to the comparison of hot tensile experiment results. It is inferred the solution strengthening effect should be the main explanation for that. The hot ductility of this TWIP steel was observed to be not very favourable, since most of the reduction rates of area were lower than 40%. Obvious drop of the hot ductility within the temperature range from 1073 to 1223 K of this Fe-0·7C-22Mn TWIP steel was determined. Intragranular MnS inclusions and grain boundaries sliding at elevated temperatures should be the main reason, according to the experimental results of optical microscope (OM), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Besides, both strength and ductility increased linearly as logarithmic strain rate increased, attributed to the combined effect of strain hardening, dynamic strain aging and dynamic recrystallisation.
In this study, a method for developing a quantitative prediction of river bank erosion in Bien Hoa district in Dong Nai River is presented. The river bank erosion hazard index (BEHI) was estimated to ...assess the stability of the river bank erosion in consultation with bank height, bank slope, rooting depth, rooting density and surface protection. The estimated BEHI of Dong Nai River in Bien Hoa district are high which indicates the riverbank instability. The estimated BEHI along the left bank is about 25-30. The satellite data of LANSAT TM 5, LANDSAT ETM 7 for the year 1995, 2005 and 2015 were used to assess the nature of shifting of the river bank and to estimate the land loss from river bank. All the derived images were transported on GIS environment to extract the course of the river. 13 sites were considered along the Dong Nai River in Bien Hoa District to estimate the leftward shifting of the bank line and to assess the shifting distance of the river bank line. There is a strong relationship between bank instability BEHI, shifting distance of the bank line and eroded bank area in this study.
Adenoid hypertrophy is a pathological hyperplasia of the adenoids, which may cause snoring and apnea, as well as impede breathing during sleep. The lateral cephalogram is commonly used by dentists to ...screen for adenoid hypertrophy, but it is tedious and time-consuming to measure the ratio of adenoid width to nasopharyngeal width for adenoid assessment. The purpose of this study was to develop a screening tool to automatically evaluate adenoid hypertrophy from lateral cephalograms using deep learning. We proposed the deep learning model VGG-Lite, using the largest data set (1,023 X-ray images) yet described to support the automatic detection of adenoid hypertrophy. We demonstrated that our model was able to automatically evaluate adenoid hypertrophy with a sensitivity of 0.898, a specificity of 0.882, positive predictive value of 0.880, negative predictive value of 0.900, and F1 score of 0.889. The comparison of model-only and expert-only detection performance showed that the fully automatic method (0.07 min) was about 522 times faster than the human expert (36.6 min). Comparison of human experts with or without deep learning assistance showed that model-assisted human experts spent an average of 23.3 min to evaluate adenoid hypertrophy using 100 radiographs, compared to an average of 36.6 min using an entirely manual procedure. We therefore concluded that deep learning could improve the accuracy, speed, and efficiency of evaluating adenoid hypertrophy from lateral cephalograms.
Background. Penicillium marneffei is an important human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)—associated opportunistic pathogen in Southeast Asia. The epidemiology and the predictors of penicilliosis outcome ...are poorly understood. Methods. We performed a retrospective study of culture-confirmed incident penicilliosis admissions during 1996-2009 at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. Seasonality of penicilliosis was assessed using cosinor models. Logistic regression was used to assess predictors of death or worsening disease based on 10 predefined covariates, and Cox regression was performed to model time-to-antifungal initiation. Results. A total of 795 patients were identified; hospital charts were obtainable for 513 patients (65%). Cases increased exponentially and peaked in 2007 (156 cases), mirroring the trends in AIDS admissions during the study period. A highly significant seasonality for penicilliosis (P < .001) but not for cryptococcosis (P = .63) or AIDS admissions (P = .83) was observed, with a 27% (95% confidence interval, 14%—41%) increase in incidence during rainy months. All patients were HIV infected; the median CD4 cell count (62 patients) was 7 cells/μL (interquartile range, 4-24 cells/μL). Hospital outcome was an improvement in 347 (68%), death in 101 (20%), worsening in 42 (8%), and nonassessable in 23 (5%) cases. Injection drug use, shorter history, absence of fever or skin lesions, elevated respiratory rates, higher lymphocyte count, and lower platelet count independently predicted poor outcome in both complete-case and multiple-imputation analyses. Time-to-treatment initiation was shorter for patients with skin lesions (hazard ratio, 3.78; 95% confidence interval, 2.96-4.84; P < .001). Conclusions. Penicilliosis incidence correlates with the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Viet nam. The number of cases increases during rainy months. Injection drug use, shorter history, absence of fever or skin lesions, respiratory difficulty, higher lymphocyte count, and lower platelet count predict poor in-hospital outcome.
Steam reforming of bio-oil was an available low carbon technology to produce biomass-syngas. In this article, a series of catalysts have been prepared; the activity of catalysts was examined in a ...fluidized bed reactor. In these tests, carbon conversion, the mole fraction of H
2
, the mole of CO, and the ratio of H
2
/CO were taken as an index of the catalyst activity and the nickel/modified dolomite catalyst was chosen as the best catalyst for the bio-oil steam reforming to prepare biomass-syngas. The effects of reaction conditions, such as reaction temperature, steam-to-carbon mole ratio (S/C), and weight hourly space velocity (WHSV), on catalytic reforming were studied and the results indicated that the optimum conditions were obtained at 700°C, S/C was 14, and WHSV was 0.5 h
−1
. The mole ratio of H
2
/CO was more than 2 and carbon conversion was near 80% at the optimum conditions.
PDF
