Search

Fruit flies attack numerous crops, including cherry tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum var. cerasiforme). The potential presence of the immature stages of fruit fly species inside tomatoes during export hinders their international market access. Therefore, phytosanitary treatment must be performed before export to prevent fruit fly species from entering countries where they are not naturally found. We developed a phytosanitary cold disinfestation treatment protocol to eliminate oriental fruit fly (Bactrocera dorsalis Hendel), melon fly (Zeugodacus cucurbitae Coquillett), and pumpkin fruit fly (Zeugodacus tau Walker) concealed inside cherry tomatoes without causing critical damage to the fruit. We determined that the third instar of Z. cucurbitae exhibited the highest cold tolerance among the various development stages of the three fruit fly species. Thus, we performed a small-scale disinfestation test on Z. cucurbitae in two cultivars of tomato. We achieved complete disinfestation after 15 days of cold treatment at 1°C-1.5°C. The confirmatory test revealed the elimination of more than 80,000 treated third instar of Z. cucurbitae in each tomato variety. The developed phytosanitary cold treatment allows the tomatoes to retain their commercial value. This study provides a standard phytosanitary cold treatment protocol for cherry tomatoes, ensuring the disinfestation of fruit flies before their export to international markets., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Entomological Society of America. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.)

In IoT systems, the goal of multiview detection for multiple visual sensor networks is to use multiple camera perspectives to address occlusion challenges with multiview aggregation being a crucial component. In these applications, data from various interconnected cameras are combined to create a detailed ground plane feature. This feature is formed by projecting convolutional feature maps from multiple viewpoints and fusing them using uniform weighting. However, simply aggregating data from all cameras is not ideal due to different levels of occlusion depending on object positions and camera angles. To overcome this, we introduce QMVDet, a new query-based learning multiview detector, which incorporates an innovative camera-aware attention mechanism for aggregating multiview information. This mechanism selects the most reliable information from various camera views, thus minimizing the confusion caused by occlusions. Our method simultaneously utilizes both 2D and 3D data while maintaining 2D-3D multiview consistency to guide the multiview detection network's training. The proposed approach achieves state-of-the-art accuracy on two leading multiview detection benchmarks, highlighting its effectiveness for IoT-based multiview detection scenarios.

Photocatalysts consisting of Z-scheme heterojunctions are commonly used in wastewater treatment due to their exceptional reactivity in photocatalysis and highly efficient visible-light utilization. In this work, Fe 2 O 3 -decorated MoO 3 rods were synthesized through a two-step method and their photodegradation of methylene blue (MB) was evaluated. The Fe 2 O 3 /MoO 3 rods were characterized by XRD, SEM, micro-Raman, XPS, UV-Vis DRS, and PL to investigate their structural, morphological, and optical properties. The results indicate that the photodegradation efficiency of Fe 2 O 3 /MoO 3 improved through a reduction in the gap energy and persistence of a 1D hexagonal prism structure. The degradation rate of MB was enhanced from 31.7 to 91.5% after irradiation for 180 min owing to electron-hole separation and Fenton-like process. Formation of the OH radical is a key factor in the photodegradation reaction and with the addition of H 2 O 2 the efficiency can further improve via a Fenton-like mechanism. Furthermore, the Z-scheme mechanism concurrently delineated. The Fe 2 O 3 /MoO 3 rod composites were also found to retain high photocatalytic efficiency after being reused five times, which may be useful for future applications., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Word frequency is a strong predictor in most lexical processing tasks. Thus, any model of word recognition needs to account for how word frequency effects arise. The Discriminative Lexicon Model (DLM) models lexical processing with mappings between words' forms and their meanings. Comprehension and production are modeled via linear mappings between the two domains. So far, the mappings within the model can either be obtained incrementally via error-driven learning, a computationally expensive process able to capture frequency effects, or in an efficient, but frequency-agnostic solution modeling the theoretical endstate of learning (EL) where all words are learned optimally. In the present study we show how an efficient, yet frequency-informed mapping between form and meaning can be obtained (Frequency-informed learning; FIL). We find that FIL well approximates an incremental solution while being computationally much cheaper. FIL shows a relatively low type- and high token-accuracy, demonstrating that the model is able to process most word tokens encountered by speakers in daily life correctly. We use FIL to model reaction times in the Dutch Lexicon Project by means of a Gaussian Location Scale Model and find that FIL predicts well the S-shaped relationship between frequency and the mean of reaction times but underestimates the variance of reaction times for low frequency words. FIL is also better able to account for priming effects in an auditory lexical decision task in Mandarin Chinese, compared to EL. Finally, we used ordered data from CHILDES to compare mappings obtained with FIL and incremental learning. We show that the mappings are highly correlated, but that with FIL some nuances based on word ordering effects are lost. Our results show how frequency effects in a learning model can be simulated efficiently, and raise questions about how to best account for low-frequency words in cognitive models., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Heitmeier, Chuang, Axen and Baayen.)

This study examined the effect of combining visual and olfactory cues to attract oriental fruit flies (OFFs). Six different colored light-emitting diodes (LEDs) served as a visual attractant and methyl eugenol served as olfactory bait to lure male flies. An internet of things (IoT)-based pest monitoring system, consisting of sensor nodes, a gateway, and automatic counting traps, was deployed in the field to automatically collect environmental data and pest counts. The results of the calibrated experiments indicated that green, yellow, or red LEDs exhibited better performance in attracting flies than white, purple, or blue LEDs or no LEDs. With an accurate combination of visual and olfactory cues, the proposed IoT-based pest monitoring system may be an effective tool in agricultural pest management, given its advantages for efficiently capturing OFFs in a labor and time saving manner, providing accurate information regarding increases in pest populations, and enabling long-term, real-time data collection.

A strategy for the synthesis of dibenz[ a , j ]anthracenes (DBAs) from cyclohexa-2,5-diene-1-carboxylic acids is presented. Our approach involves sequential C-H olefination, cycloaddition, and decarboxylative aromatization. In the key step for DBA skeleton construction, the bis-C-H olefination products, 1,3-dienes, are utilized as substrates for [4 + 2] cycloaddition with benzyne. This concise synthetic route allows for regioselective ring formation and functional group introduction. The structural features and photophysical properties of the resulting DBA molecules are discussed.

Trial-to-trial effects have been found in a number of studies, indicating that processing a stimulus influences responses in subsequent trials. A special case are priming effects which have been modelled successfully with error-driven learning (Marsolek, 2008), implying that participants are continuously learning during experiments. This study investigates whether trial-to-trial learning can be detected in an unprimed lexical decision experiment. We used the Discriminative Lexicon Model (DLM; Baayen et al., 2019), a model of the mental lexicon with meaning representations from distributional semantics, which models error-driven incremental learning with the Widrow-Hoff rule. We used data from the British Lexicon Project (BLP; Keuleers et al., 2012) and simulated the lexical decision experiment with the DLM on a trial-by-trial basis for each subject individually. Then, reaction times were predicted with Generalized Additive Models (GAMs), using measures derived from the DLM simulations as predictors. We extracted measures from two simulations per subject (one with learning updates between trials and one without), and used them as input to two GAMs. Learning-based models showed better model fit than the non-learning ones for the majority of subjects. Our measures also provide insights into lexical processing and individual differences. This demonstrates the potential of the DLM to model behavioural data and leads to the conclusion that trial-to-trial learning can indeed be detected in unprimed lexical decision. Our results support the possibility that our lexical knowledge is subject to continuous changes., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

We present a learning-based approach for removing unwanted obstructions, such as window reflections, fence occlusions, or adherent raindrops, from a short sequence of images captured by a moving camera. Our method leverages motion differences between the background and obstructing elements to recover both layers. Specifically, we alternate between estimating dense optical flow fields of the two layers and reconstructing each layer from the flow-warped images via a deep convolutional neural network. This learning-based layer reconstruction module facilitates accommodating potential errors in the flow estimation and brittle assumptions, such as brightness consistency. We show that the proposed approach learned from synthetically generated data performs well to real images. Experimental results on numerous challenging scenarios of reflection and fence removal demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

This study addresses a series of methodological questions that arise when modeling inflectional morphology with Linear Discriminative Learning. Taking the semi-productive German noun system as example, we illustrate how decisions made about the representation of form and meaning influence model performance. We clarify that for modeling frequency effects in learning, it is essential to make use of incremental learning rather than the end-state of learning. We also discuss how the model can be set up to approximate the learning of inflected words in context. In addition, we illustrate how in this approach the wug task can be modeled. The model provides an excellent memory for known words, but appropriately shows more limited performance for unseen data, in line with the semi-productivity of German noun inflection and generalization performance of native German speakers., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Heitmeier, Chuang and Baayen.)

Pseudowords have long served as key tools in psycholinguistic investigations of the lexicon. A common assumption underlying the use of pseudowords is that they are devoid of meaning: Comparing words and pseudowords may then shed light on how meaningful linguistic elements are processed differently from meaningless sound strings. However, pseudowords may in fact carry meaning. On the basis of a computational model of lexical processing, linear discriminative learning (LDL Baayen et al., Complexity, 2019, 1-39, 2019), we compute numeric vectors representing the semantics of pseudowords. We demonstrate that quantitative measures gauging the semantic neighborhoods of pseudowords predict reaction times in the Massive Auditory Lexical Decision (MALD) database (Tucker et al., 2018). We also show that the model successfully predicts the acoustic durations of pseudowords. Importantly, model predictions hinge on the hypothesis that the mechanisms underlying speech production and comprehension interact. Thus, pseudowords emerge as an outstanding tool for gauging the resonance between production and comprehension. Many pseudowords in the MALD database contain inflectional suffixes. Unlike many contemporary models, LDL captures the semantic commonalities of forms sharing inflectional exponents without using the linguistic construct of morphemes. We discuss methodological and theoretical implications for models of lexical processing and morphological theory. The results of this study, complementing those on real words reported in Baayen et al., (Complexity, 2019, 1-39, 2019), thus provide further evidence for the usefulness of LDL both as a cognitive model of the mental lexicon, and as a tool for generating new quantitative measures that are predictive for human lexical processing.

Chinese mesona ( Platostoma palustre ) plays an important role as special crop in Southeast Asia and Taiwan for the production of herbal tea, grass jelly, and further processed food. In order to assess the potential threat of fungi to Chinese mesona, we surveyed isolates from symptomless plants in the area of mesona production, as well as from leaf spots of potted plants in a garden shop and a plantation in a botanical garden in Taiwan. From leaves, stems, and roots of 15 symptomless plants sampled at five collection events over two years, 154 isolates from 810 surface-sterilized plant fragments were obtained and identified based on DNA sequence data of the internal transcribed spacer region, and partially of the β-tubulin and histone H3 genes. The most common species belonged to the genera Cercospora , Colletotrichum , and Fusarium and were considered to be potential plant pathogens. Latent pathogenicity was confirmed by an infection experiment with an endophytic strain of Corynespora cassiicola . Observation of leaf spot disease associated with Cercospora kikuchii suggested pathogenicity of this fungus, which was also isolated as an endophyte from symptomless leaves. We hypothesize that the most common endophytic fungi are latent pathogens in the host and may cause plant disease when the host becomes weakened by senescence or changed cultivation condition. Leaf spots of plants in the botanical garden were associated with a species of Pseudocercospora , which was not found among the endophytic isolates and is newly described based on morphology and analysis of translation elongation factor 1 alpha gene sequences.

Objectives: There have been few studies regarding the use of a picosecond-domain laser for acne scars in Asians. This prospective study evaluated the efficacy and safety of a high-energy 1,064 nm Nd:YAG picosecond-domain laser for ablation and resurfacing of facial acne scars in Asians., Methods: Subjects were treated with a 1,064 nm picosecond laser (8 mm spot, 0.7-1.0 J/cm 2 , 5 Hz) every 4 weeks for three sessions. Two blinded dermatologists evaluated the pre- and 3-month post-treatment images with a 10-point improvement scale. Subject pain, global improvement, and satisfaction were also assessed. The Facial Acne Scar Quality of Life (FASQoL) questionnaire was used to evaluate the subjects' quality of life., Results: Twenty subjects aged 18-50 years with Fitzpatrick skin type III-V were enrolled. The median dermatologist-rated improvement score was 3 out of 10. Subjects were satisfied to very satisfied with global improvement. Subjects' quality of life significantly improved with a median FASQoL score of 10 after treatment compared with 21 before treatment (P < 0.001). Adverse effects were limited to erythema, pain, and edema without postinflammatory hyperpigmentation., Conclusions: The 1,064 nm picosecond-domain laser with ablative resurfacing parameters is safe and effective for the treatment of acne scars in Asians. Lasers Surg. Med. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., (© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Using computational simulations, this work demonstrates that it is possible to learn a systematic relation between words' sound and their meanings. The sound-meaning relation was learned from a corpus of phonologically transcribed child-directed speech by using the linear discriminative learning (LDL) framework (Baayen, Chuang, Shafaei-Bajestan, & Blevins, 2019), which implements linear mappings between words' form vectors and semantic vectors. Presented with the form vectors of 16 nonwords, taken from a study on word learning (Fitneva, Christiansen, & Monaghan, 2009), the network generated the estimated semantic vectors of the nonwords. As half of these nonwords were created to phonologically resemble English nouns and the other half were phonologically similar to English verbs, we assessed whether the estimated semantic vectors for these nonwords reflect this word category difference. In 7 different simulations, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) successfully discriminated between noun-like nonwords and verb-like nonwords, based on their semantic relation to the words in the lexicon. Furthermore, how well LDA categorized a nonword correlated well with a phonological typicality measure (i.e., the degree of its form being noun-like or verb-like) and with children's performance in an entity/action discrimination task. On the one hand, the results suggest that children can infer the implicit meaning of a word directly from its sound. On the other hand, this study shows that nonwords do land in semantic space, such that children can capitalize on their semantic relations with other elements in the lexicon to decide whether a nonword is more likely to denote an entity or an action. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The bifunctional catalysts assist the complete reversible cycle of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) with low polarization of a lithium-oxygen (Li-O 2 ) battery were known to be critical cathode components. In this work, electrospun nitrogen-doped carbon nanofibers (N-CNFs) were prepared to use as supports to anchor iron phthalocyanine (FePc) bifunctional catalyst for oxygen (O 2 ) electrode in Li-O 2 batteries. By using FePc and N-CNFs, two different bonding composites were fabricated via diazonium reaction by refluxing and physical mixing methods which were resulting into covalent linkage via pyridine (Py) (denoted as FePc/Py/N-CNFs) and noncovalent interaction via π-π stacking (denoted as FePc/N-CNFs). The systematic characterizations confirmed that the spun carbon nanofibers were functionalized by pyridine and the anchored FePc molecule donated the axial ligand for the iron (Fe) center in the FePc/Py/N-CNFs composite. The FePc were embedded in the N-CNFs composites combining the electrocatalytic activity of the FePc with ORR/OER processes and N-CNFs with a three-dimensional (3D) interconnected porous network structure through a connecting link of one-dimensional (1D) porous and N-doping carbon nanofiber which exhibited a high performance when acting as the cathode in Li-O 2 batteries. However, the FePc/Py/N-CNFs composite showed the higher catalytic activity and prominent structural stability due to the FePc being strongly interlinked with the N-CNFs through the Py connection, which could avoid the deformation and agglomeration of FePC molecules during cycling and thus possessed the high electrochemical performance of the composite. This study demonstrated the unique design of FePc/Py/N-CNFs composite structure in this work would be found as a promising O 2 electrode material with enhanced electrochemical performance in rechargeable Li-O 2 batteries., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Enteroviruses generally cause mild and self-limited diseases, but they have been found to affect neonates much differently, and often more severely than older children. Clinical manifestations are difficult to differentiate from those of bacterial sepsis, such as fever, poor feeding, lethargy, respiratory distress and cardiovascular collapse. Severe life threatening complications, including hepatic necrosis with coagulopathy, meningoencephalitis and myocarditis, usually present during the first week of life. Factors affecting severity and outcome include virus serotype, mode of transmission, and presence or absence of passively acquired, serotype-specific maternal antibodies. Echoviruses and coxsackievirus B viruses are most common serotypes associated with the neonatal sepsis. An awareness of the clinical syndromes, recognition of the risk factors and monitoring parameters associated with severe cases and use of rapid reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction test for viral load may help physicians in diagnosing severe cases in a timely manner. Prompt aggressive treatment including early intravenous immunoglobulin treatment may help in reducing morbidity and mortality. Enterovirus infections in neonates are common and should be routinely considered in the differential diagnosis of febrile neonates, particularly during enterovirus season. This article provides an overview of what is known about non-polio enteroviruses in neonates including epidemiology, transmission, clinical presentation, diagnosis, and treatment., (Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Top-down saliency detection aims to highlight the regions of a specific object category, and typically relies on pixel-wise annotated training data. In this paper, we address the high cost of collecting such training data by a weakly supervised approach to object saliency detection, where only image-level labels, indicating the presence or absence of a target object in an image, are available. The proposed framework is composed of two collaborative CNN modules, an image-level classifier and a pixel-level map generator. While the former distinguishes images with objects of interest from the rest, the latter is learned to generate saliency maps by which the images masked by the maps can be better predicted by the former. In addition to the top-down guidance from class labels, the map generator is derived by also exploring other cues, including the background prior, superpixel- and object proposal-based evidence. The background prior is introduced to reduce false positives. Evidence from superpixels helps preserve sharp object boundaries. The clue from object proposals improves the integrity of highlighted objects. These different types of cues greatly regularize the training process and reduces the risk of overfitting, which happens frequently when learning CNN models with few training data. Experiments show that our method achieves superior results, even outperforming fully supervised methods.

Aflatoxins are carcinogenic secondary metabolites of fungi that contaminate many staple crops and foods. Aflatoxin contamination is a worldwide problem, especially in developing countries, posing health hazards, e.g., causing aflatoxicosis and hepatocellular carcinoma, and even death. Biological solutions for aflatoxin detoxification are environmentally friendly and a cheaper alternative than chemical methods. The aims of the current study were to investigate: (1) the ability of MSMEG&#95;5998, an aflatoxin-degrading F 420 H 2 -dependent reductase from Mycobacterium smegmatis , to degrade aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) and reduce AFB1-caused damage in HepG2 cell culture model; and (2) whether a thioredoxin (Trx) linkage of MSMEG&#95;5998 enhanced the enzyme activity. We show that Trx-linked MSMEG&#95;5998 degraded 63% AFB1 and native MSMEG&#95;5998 degraded 31% after 4 h at 22 °C, indicating that the Trx-linked enzyme had a better AFB1-degrading ability. In a HepG2 cell culture model, Trx-linked MSMEG&#95;5998 reduced DNA damage and p53-mediated apoptosis caused by AFB1 to a greater extent than the native enzyme. These findings suggest that Trx-linked MSMEG&#95;5998 could potentially be developed to protect the liver from AFB1 damage, or as a candidate protein to reduce AFB1-related toxicity in animals.

Ouabain, a cardiotonic steroid, was used for the treatment of heart failure and atrial fibrillation and induces cancer cell apoptosis in many human cancer cells including human leukemia cells. However, there are no reports to show the effects on immune responses in a leukemia mouse model. In this study, WEHI-3 cell generated leukemia mice were developed and treated by oral ouabain at 0, 0.75, 1.5, and 3 mg/kg for 15 days. Results indicated that ouabain did not affect body appearance, but decreased liver and spleen weights, B- and T-cell proliferation at all three doses treatment and increased CD19 cells at 3.0 mg/kg treatment, decreased CD3, CD11b, and Mac-3 cells levels compared with positive control. Furthermore, ouabain increased the macrophage phagocytosis from peripheral blood mononuclear cell and peritoneal cavity at all three doses treatment and increased NK cell activities. Ouabain restored GOT, GPT and LDH levels in WEHI-3 leukemia mice in vivo., (© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Background/aim: Laminarin, a typical component of fungal cell walls, has been shown to induce immune responses in both adult and larval locusts. We investigated the effects of laminarin on immune response and glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase (GOT), glutamic pyruvic transaminase (GPT) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) levels in normal mice., Materials and Methods: Thirty-six normal BALB/c mice were randomly divided into four groups and treatments were provided by gavage. Group I mice acted as normal control; mice of groups II-IV received laminarin at different doses (100 μl at 1, 2.5 and 5.0 mg/mouse in double-distilled water, respectively). All animals were treated for 14 days and were weighed, blood was collected for determination of cell markers, liver and spleen samples were weighed. Spleens were used for phagocytosis and determination of natural killer (NK) cell activity and cell proliferation by flow cytometric assay., Results: Laminarin reduced the body weights and weights of liver and spleen. Laminarin increased CD3, CD19 and Mac-3 cell populations at 2.5 and 5 mg/mouse, however, these did not affect CD11b marker levels. Laminarin (1 and 5 mg/mouse) reduced macrophage phagocytosis from peripheral blood mononuclear cells, but did not affect phagocytosis by macrophages from the peritoneal cavity. At an effector:target ratio of 50:1, laminarin reduced NK cell cytotoxic activity at all levels, but at a ratio of 25:1, only at 1 mg treatment. Laminarin did not affect T-cell and B-cell proliferation. Laminarin increased the level of GPT and reduced that of LDH at all doses, indicating laminarin can protect against liver injury. Laminarin is worthy of investigation in future experiments on improving immune responses., (Copyright© 2018, International Institute of Anticancer Research (Dr. George J. Delinasios), All rights reserved.)

Background/aim: Ouabain, a plant-derived product/substance with Na + /K + -ATPase inhibiting properties, has been shown to exert anti-cancer activity on human cancer cells. This is the first study to investigate the effect of ouabain on apoptotic cell death of human osteosarcoma-derived U-2 OS cells., Materials and Methods: Flow cytometry was used to examine cell viability, cell cycle, and reactive oxygen species (ROS), Ca 2+ , mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) and caspase activity. Morphological changes were examined by contrast-phase microscopy, while apoptosis-associated protein levels were analyzed by western blot., Results: Ouabain, at concentrations of 5-60 μM, significantly decreased the total viable cells and induced cell morphological changes in a time-dependent manner. It also time-dependently decreased G 0 /G 1 phase and increased S and G 2 /M phase in U-2 OS cells. The production of ROS and the levels of MMPs (ΔΨ m ) were inhibited, while Ca 2+ production in U-2 OS cells was increased. Regarding cell apoptosis, flow cytometry assay revealed increased caspase-3, -8, and -9 activities in U-2 OS cells. Moreover, western blot results showed that ouabain increased the expression of pro-apoptotic protein Bax and decreased the expression of anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 in U-2 OS cells. Furthermore, results also showed that ouabain increased cytochrome c release, apoptosis-inducing factor (AIF) and endonuclease (Endo) G that is associated with apoptosis through caspase-dependent and -independent pathway in U-2 OS cells., Conclusion: Our findings provide important insight into the cytotoxic effects of ouabain on U-2 OS cells, in vitro, which are mediated at least partly via cell apoptosis induction., (Copyright© 2018, International Institute of Anticancer Research (Dr. George J. Delinasios), All rights reserved.)

Objectives: Clonal complex (CC) 9 is a prevalent livestock-associated (LA) MRSA clone in Asia whose pathogenicity in humans remains unknown., Methods: In 2012, we identified a patient with CC9-MRSA infection linked to livestock. After screening 3328 clinical MRSA isolates from a national database, eight isolates (0.24%) collected between 1998 and 2012 were further confirmed to be of CC9. The detailed molecular features of the nine human CC9 strains and phylogenetic relatedness to animal CC9 strains were characterized with WGS. The antibiotic susceptibilities were determined and the clinical information was abstracted from medical records., Results: WGS grouped the CC9 strains into two clades, which were respectively associated with distinct toxome profiles, resistance gene profiles and staphylococcal cassette chromosomes (SCCmecXII for 7 isolates and SCCmecVT for 2 isolates). The SCCmecXII strains were phylogenetically related to animal CC9-MRSA strains, negative for Panton-Valentine leucocidin and 100% resistant to ciprofloxacin, erythromycin, clindamycin, gentamicin and tigecycline. Four of the seven SCCmecXII isolates were associated with invasive diseases including bacteraemia leading to death (2) and osteomyelitis (2). Two SCCmecXII isolates were from patients with exposure to pigs before development of the MRSA diseases., Conclusions: The CC9-SCCmecXII MRSA prevailing in pigs in Asia is multidrug resistant and potentially pathogenic to humans. It is critical to continuously monitor the local epidemiology of MRSA and implement effective control measures to limit the spread of LA-MRSA between animals, to humans and in healthcare facilities., (© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

In addition to being a human pathogen, Staphylococcus aureus causes an array of infections in economically important livestock animals, particularly pigs. In Asia, there have been few reports on livestock-associated meticillin-resistant S. aureus (LA-MRSA), mostly from developed countries, with very few data available from resource-limited countries, not because of low prevalence but probably due to a shortage of diagnostic facilities. Unlike the wide spread of sequence type 398 (ST398) LA-MRSA in European countries and North America, ST9 predominates in most Asian countries. The prevalence of LA-MRSA among pigs in Asian countries varied widely (0.9-42.5%). The prevalence may vary by geographic location, age of pigs and sampling methodologies. Among pig farmers, the prevalence of nasal MRSA colonisation varied from 5.5% in Malaysia to 15% in China and 19.2% in Taiwan. Although most LA-MRSA isolates in Asia are of the same ST, molecular characteristics are not all the same. Dominant isolates in China were characterised as spa type t899-SCCmec III and t899-SCCmec IVb or V for isolates in Hong Kong, and t899-untypeable SCCmec for Taiwan. Dominant isolates in Malaysia were spa type t4358-SCCmec V and t337-SCCmec IX for isolates in Thailand. In addition, MRSA ST221 was reported in Japan and MRSA ST398 was isolated from commercial pigs in South Korea. Attention should be paid because pigs could become an important reservoir for MRSA and spread them to humans, as observed in many countries. There is a potential risk from the livestock reservoir to community and hospitals., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. and the International Society of Chemotherapy. All rights reserved.)

This paper introduces a scalable algorithm for rendering translucent materials with complex lighting. We represent the light transport with a diffusion approximation by a dual-matrix representation with the Light-to-Surface and Surface-to-Camera matrices. By exploiting the structures within the matrices, the proposed method can locate surface samples with little contribution by using only subsampled matrices and avoid wasting computation on these samples. The decoupled estimation of irradiance and diffuse BSSRDFs also allows us to have a tight error bound, making the adaptive diffusion approximation more efficient and accurate. Experiments show that our method outperforms previous methods for translucent material rendering, especially in large scenes with massive translucent surfaces shaded by complex illumination.

This paper presents a patch-based synthesis framework for stereoscopic image editing. The core of the proposed method builds upon a patch-based optimization framework with two key contributions: First, we introduce a depth-dependent patch-pair similarity measure for distinguishing and better utilizing image contents with different depth structures. Second, a joint patch-pair search is proposed for properly handling the correlation between two views. The proposed method successfully overcomes two main challenges of editing stereoscopic 3D media: (1) maintaining the depth interpretation, and (2) providing controllability of the scene depth. The method offers patch-based solutions to a wide variety of stereoscopic image editing problems, including depth-guided texture synthesis, stereoscopic NPR, paint by depth, content adaptation, and 2D to 3D conversion. Several challenging cases are demonstrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results of user studies also show that the proposed method produces stereoscopic images with good stereoscopics and visual quality.

This paper proposes the VisibilityCluster algorithm for efficient visibility approximation and representation in many-light rendering. By carefully clustering lights and shading points, we can construct a visibility matrix that exhibits good local structures due to visibility coherence of nearby lights and shading points. Average visibility can be efficiently estimated by exploiting the sparse structure of the matrix and shooting only few shadow rays between clusters. Moreover, we can use the estimated average visibility as a quality measure for visibility estimation, enabling us to locally refine VisibilityClusters with large visibility variance for improving accuracy. We demonstrate that, with the proposed method, visibility can be incorporated into importance sampling at a reasonable cost for the many-light problem, significantly reducing variance in Monte Carlo rendering. In addition, the proposed method can be used to increase realism of local shading by adding directional occlusion effects. Experiments show that the proposed technique outperforms state-of-the-art importance sampling algorithms, and successfully enhances the preview quality for lighting design.

In Asia, most reports on the epidemiology of community-associated meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) are from developed countries, with few data from resource-limited countries, not because of low actual prevalence, but probably because of scarce diagnostic facilities. The rate of MRSA in all community-associated S. aureus infections in Asian countries ranges from 2·5% to 39%. Unlike the predominance of USA300-sequence type (ST) 8 staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) type IV in the USA, the molecular epidemiology of CA-MRSA in Asia is characterised by clonal heterogeneity, similar to that in Europe. The emergence of CA-MRSA is a threat in both community and hospital settings because such strains are now more prevalent than are health-care-associated MRSA (HA-MRSA) strains. Many epidemic clones are in circulation in Asia and with scarce data available, concern has arisen that CA-MRSA could have devastating results if it becomes epidemic in resource-poor regions. The epidemiology of CA-MRSA in Asia is closely linked with the health of both developing and developed countries. The present situation of CA-MRSA in Asia is important not only for local public health, but also to provide a better understanding of the successful epidemic clones of this global pathogen., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Gradient computing suffers the noise and ill-definition problems such that local shading is not sufficient for medical imaging to get accurate visualization. However, the current global solutions are either time-consuming or limited to single light source that easily leads misinterpretation. This paper introduces a gradient-free approach to interactively approximate the effects of multiple lights for transparent volume data. Using attenuation maps, our lighting method gets rid of the tricky normal estimation and improves the spatial perception. In addition, the proposed method can be extended to explorative models, ex: plane cutting and modified maximum intensity projection (MPI), to get better inside view of medical applications.

Stylophora pistillata is a widely used coral "lab-rat" species with highly variable morphology and a broad biogeographic range (Red Sea to western central Pacific). Here we show, by analysing Cytochorme Oxidase I sequences, from 241 samples across this range, that this taxon in fact comprises four deeply divergent clades corresponding to the Pacific-Western Australia, Chagos-Madagascar-South Africa, Gulf of Aden-Zanzibar-Madagascar, and Red Sea-Persian/Arabian Gulf-Kenya. On the basis of the fossil record of Stylophora, these four clades diverged from one another 51.5-29.6 Mya, i.e., long before the closure of the Tethyan connection between the tropical Indo-West Pacific and Atlantic in the early Miocene (16-24 Mya) and should be recognised as four distinct species. These findings have implications for comparative ecological and/or physiological studies carried out using Stylophora pistillata as a model species, and highlight the fact that phenotypic plasticity, thought to be common in scleractinian corals, can mask significant genetic variation.

The success of query-by-concept, proposed recently to cater to video retrieval needs, depends greatly on the accuracy of concept-based video indexing. Unfortunately, it remains a challenge to recognize the presence of concepts in a video segment or to extract an objective linguistic description from it because of the semantic gap, that is, the lack of correspondence between machine-extracted low-level features and human high-level conceptual interpretation. This paper studies three issues with the aim to reduce such a gap: 1) how to explore cues beyond low-level features, 2) how to combine diverse cues to improve performance, and 3) how to utilize the learned knowledge when applying it to a new domain. To solve these problems, we propose a framework that jointly exploits multiple cues across multiple video domains. First, recursive algorithms are proposed to learn both interconcept and intershot relationships from annotations. Second, all concept labels for all shots are simultaneously refined in a single fusion model. Additionally, unseen shots are assigned pseudolabels according to their initial prediction scores so that contextual and temporal relationships can be learned, thus requiring no additional human effort. Integration of cues embedded within training and testing video sets accommodates domain change. Experiments on popular benchmarks show that our framework is effective, achieving significant improvements over popular baselines.

Background: Primary cutaneous amyloidosis (PCA) is a relatively common skin disorder among Asians and South Americans. It is usually diagnosed clinically. However, for cases with atypical presentations, the diagnosis can be a challenge and skin biopsy may be necessary. Dermoscopy has been proved to be a valuable, noninvasive tool in the diagnosis of cutaneous pigmented diseases. Most lesions of PCA show hyperpigmentation and the major histopathological abnormalities of PCA occur in the epidermis and dermal papillae. Dermoscopy might be a powerful tool to provide valuable information for the diagnosis of PCA., Objectives: We aimed to find characteristic dermoscopic features of PCA., Materials and Methods: Cases with typical clinical presentations of PCA, either macular or lichen subtypes, were included in this study. All were evaluated using a hand-held, polarized and nonpolarized dermoscope., Results: A total of 35 patients with clinically diagnosed PCA were enrolled. Eighteen patients had lesions consistent with macular amyloidosis and 17 with lichen amyloidosus. We found two major dermoscopic patterns characteristic of PCA. The most common dermoscopic finding of PCA was a central hub, which could be either white or brown, surrounded by various configurations of pigmentation. For cases of lichen amyloidosus with prominent hyperkeratosis, the central hub was replaced by a scar-like morphology., Conclusions: This is the first study to report the characteristic dermoscopic features of PCA. We demonstrate that the use of a dermoscope may assist in achieving an accurate diagnosis of PCA., (© 2012 The Authors. BJD © 2012 British Association of Dermatologists.)

Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), a synthetic antioxidant, has been used in fat and fatty foods to prevent oxidative deterioration. However, the functions of BHA on immune responses in normal mice remain elusive. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of oral treatment of BHA on immune responses in normal mice in vivo. BALB/c mice received various treatments. Blood samples were collected and analyzed. Flow cytometry was used to determine the levels of the cell markers. Results showed that BHA did not significantly affect the weight of the animal body and spleen in normal mice. BHA promoted macrophage phagocytosis from peripheral blood mononuclear cells, but did not alter this process in the peritoneal cavity. Furthermore, BHA did not influence natural-killer cell cytotoxicity in normal mice. Notably, BHA promoted the levels of CD3 (T cells) and decreased the level of CD19 (B cells), but did not significantly affect the levels of CD11b (monocytes) and macrophages (Mac-3) in normal mice. Based on these observations it can be concluded that BHA promotes immune responses by increasing T cells and activating phagocytosis by macrophages in normal mice. However, the molecular mechanisms require further investigation.

We applied the Infinite Basis (IB) set extrapolation and Double Hybrid Density Functional Theory (DHDF) to calculate the databases of atomization energies, ionization energies, electron affinities, reaction barrier heights, proton affinities, alkyl bond dissociation energies, and noncovalent interactions. The Complete Basis Set (CBS) limit is estimated by extrapolating the hybrid density functional theory and PT2 energies using extrapolation functions including exponential, inverse power, modified exponential, and the combination of the these functions. We found that the combination of B2KPLYP/cc-pV[D|T]Z (which is the extrapolation based on the energies calculated in cc-pVDZ and cc-pVTZ) gives results in quadruple-ζ quality. However, if we want to reach the ∼2 kcal/mol chemical accuracy limit, the cc-pV[T|Q]Z is required. Similar results with various extrapolation functions obtained, because the IB parameters were determined by minimizing the averaged mean unsigned error of the calculated databases. We generalized the IB set extrapolation to include more than two basis sets, but we found that extrapolation with two basis sets is satisfactory to give reasonable results. The largest error occurred in the databases of the electron affinities and the weak interactions between the noble gas and the nonpolar molecules. We expect that performing the DHDF-IB scheme with the basis sets augmented by diffuse basis functions will further improve the results., (Copyright © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Danthron (1,8-dihydroxyanthraquinone), is one of component from Rheum palmatum L. (Polygonaceae), has been shown several biological activities but did not show to induce apoptosis in human brain tumor cells. The aim of this study is to investigate the mechanisms by danthron for the induction of apoptotic potential on human brain glioblastoma multiforms GBM 8401 cell line. Danthron showed a marked concentration- and time-dependent inhibition of GBM 8401 cell viability and induced apoptosis in a dose-and time-dependent manner. There was an attenuation of mitochondrial membrane potential (DeltaPsi(m)) with the alterations of Bcl-2/Bax protein ratio in GBM 8401 cells, indicating the participation of a mitochondria-related mechanism. Pretreatment of a caspase-8 inhibitor (Z-IETD-FMK), caspase-9 inhibitor (Z-LEHD-FMK) and caspase-3 inhibitor (Z-DEVE-FMK) significantly increased the viable of GBM 8401 cells implied that the participations of caspases. Western blotting analysis also showed the activation of initiator caspase-8 and caspase-9, and executor caspase-3 in GBM 8401 cells. Meanwhile, danthron also promoted the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and cytosolic Ca(2+) in GBM 8401 cells. Taken together, our data showed that danthron induced apoptosis in GBM 8401 cells through mitochondria-related and caspase-related pathways, and it may be further evaluated as a chemotherapeutic agent for human brain cancer.

In addition to cell cycle arrest, DNA repair or/and apoptosis, ionizing radiation can also induce premature senescence, which could lead to very different biological consequences depending on the cell type. We show in this report that low-dose radiation-induced senescent stromal fibroblasts stimulate proliferation of cocultured breast carcinoma cells. Such effects of senescent fibroblasts appear to result from their ability to induce the expression in carcinoma cells of mitotic genes and subsequent mitotic division. The elevated proliferation of breast carcinoma cells correlates with resistance to radiation as well as to adriamycin. Of interest is the observation that exposure to lower doses (<20 cGy) augments the ability of senescent fibroblasts to promote the survival of cocultured breast carcinoma cells. The resistance appears to be mediated partially by the Akt pathway, because expression of a dominant negative Akt mutant in breast carcinoma cells results in a partial reversal of the radioresistance. The ability of fibroblasts to modulate the radiosensitivity of nearby carcinoma cells implicates the importance of targeting the stroma during therapy.

Pandrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (PDRAB) emerged in Taiwan in the early 2000s but was not identified in the Children's Hospital (Hospital A) until March 2005 when a patient was transferred from a respiratory care hospital (Hospital B). PDRAB was recovered from an eye swab taken on admission; once aware of the culture result, in addition to implementing infection control precautions, an epidemiological investigation was conducted in both hospitals. A total of 212 specimens were taken from 30 hospital inpatients (seven in Hospital A, 23 in Hospital B), clinical equipment and ward environment. Thirteen (15.5%) of 84 specimens obtained from Hospital A and 23 (18%) of 128 specimens obtained from Hospital B were positive for A. baumannii; of these, six isolates from two patients and clinical equipment in Hospital A and five from three patients in Hospital B were PDRAB. One patient stayed in both hospitals, and had one PDRAB isolate detected at each. Of the 36 A. baumannii isolates, there were nine IRS-PCR (infrequent restriction site-polymerase chain reaction) patterns, 12 PFGE (pulsed-field gel electrophoresis) patterns and six antibiogram patterns identified. Twenty-five isolates belonged to a major IRS-PCR type (four PFGE patterns) and presented with either pandrug resistance (all 11 PDRAB isolates clustered in this type) or multidrug resistance (only susceptible to imipenem). A. baumannii is an ubiquitous organism that can be isolated from patients and their equipment. A clone of A. baumannii with multi- or pandrug resistance was circulating in both hospitals.

Modern hard corals (Class Hexacorallia; Order Scleractinia) are widely studied because of their fundamental role in reef building and their superb fossil record extending back to the Triassic. Nevertheless, interpretations of their evolutionary relationships have been in flux for over a decade. Recent analyses undermine the legitimacy of traditional suborders, families and genera, and suggest that a non-skeletal sister clade (Order Corallimorpharia) might be imbedded within the stony corals. However, these studies either sampled a relatively limited array of taxa or assembled trees from heterogeneous data sets. Here we provide a more comprehensive analysis of Scleractinia (127 species, 75 genera, 17 families) and various outgroups, based on two mitochondrial genes (cytochrome oxidase I, cytochrome b), with analyses of nuclear genes (ss-tubulin, ribosomal DNA) of a subset of taxa to test unexpected relationships. Eleven of 16 families were found to be polyphyletic. Strikingly, over one third of all families as conventionally defined contain representatives from the highly divergent "robust" and "complex" clades. However, the recent suggestion that corallimorpharians are true corals that have lost their skeletons was not upheld. Relationships were supported not only by mitochondrial and nuclear genes, but also often by morphological characters which had been ignored or never noted previously. The concordance of molecular characters and more carefully examined morphological characters suggests a future of greater taxonomic stability, as well as the potential to trace the evolutionary history of this ecologically important group using fossils.

Laboratory bioassays and field trials were conducted to evaluate an "attract-and-kill" system using methyl eugenol (ME) with neonicotinoid insecticides against male oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel) (Diptera: Tephritidae). In laboratory bioassays, mortality of male flies resulting from the conventional toxicant, naled was 98.3-100% at 24 through 72 h after treatment, whereas the neonicotinoid insecticides imidacloprid and acetamiprid caused only approximately 60-80% at 24 through 72 h after treatment. In the assays of residual effect, naled was persistent up to 96 wk, whereas imidacloprid or acetamiprid was persistent up to 150 wk, resulting in 38.9 or 61.2% male mortality, respectively. Imidacloprid, in particular, caused a delayed lethal effect on flies. In another experiment, male mortality within 28 wk from clothianidin, another neonicotinoid insecticide, was approximately 80% after exposure for 24 h, suggesting a delayed lethal effect similar to those treated with imidacloprid, and mortality was up to 91.8%, if observed, 72 h after treatment. In field trials, attractiveness was similar between ME alone and ME incorporated with naled or neonicotinoids, indicating that addition of these insecticides to ME in traps is not repellent to B. dorsalis males. Using an improved wick-typed trap with longer attractiveness for simulating field application, addition of imidacloprid or acetamiprid maintained 40.1 or 64.3% male mortality, respectively, when assayed once every 2 wk from traps placed in orchards for 42 wk without changing the poison, whereas incorporation with naled resulted in as high as 98.1% after 34 wk and approximately 80% at 42 wk, indicating that persistence is increased compared with sugarcane fiberboard blocks for carrying poison attractants. This study also suggests that neonicotinoid insecticides could be used as an alternative for broad-spectrum insecticides as toxicants in fly traps.

Variational transition state theory with multidimensional tunneling (VTST/MT) has been used for calculating the rate constants of reactions. The updated Hessians have been used to reduce the computational costs for both geometry optimization and trajectory following procedures. In this paper, updated Hessians are used to reduce the computational costs while calculating the rate constants applying VTST/MT. Although we found that directly applying the updated Hessians will not generate good vibrational frequencies along the minimum energy path (MEP), however, we can either re-compute the full Hessian matrices at fixed intervals or calculate the Block Hessians, which is constructed by numerical one-side difference for the Hessian elements in the "critical" region and Bofill updating scheme for the rest of the Hessian elements. Due to the numerical instability of the Bofill update method near the saddle point region, we have suggested a simple strategy in which we follow the MEP until certain percentage of the classical barrier height from the barrier top with full Hessians computed and then performing rate constant calculation with the extended MEP using Block Hessians. This strategy results a mean unsigned percentage deviation (MUPD) around 10% with full Hessians computed till the point with 80% classical barrier height for four studied reactions. This proposed strategy is attractive not only it can be implemented as an automatic procedure but also speeds up the VTST/MT calculation via embarrassingly parallelization to a personal computer cluster.

Wrch-1 (Wnt-regulated Cdc42 homolog) is a new member of the Rho family that was identified as a gene transcriptionally upregulated by Wnt-1. Wrch-1 has no detectable GTPase activity and displays very high intrinsic guanine nucleotide exchange, implying that it is constitutively GTP-bound. The biological functions of Wrch-1 largely remain to be characterized. Here, we report that Wrch-1 prominently localizes to focal adhesions. Depletion of Wrch-1 by small interfering RNA increases focal adhesion formation, whereas Wrch-1 overexpression disassembles focal adhesions. Wrch-1 depletion inhibits myosin-light-chain phosphorylation, which in turn leads to an increase in the number of focal adhesions and inhibits cell migration in response to wound healing. Depletion of Wrch-1 also inhibits Akt and JNK activation. Although pharmacological inhibitors of Akt and JNK inhibit cell migration, they do not affect focal adhesions. Thus, our data suggest that Wrch-1 regulates cell migration by multiple mechanisms: on the one hand Wrch-1 controls focal adhesions by regulating myosin light chain and on the other hand Wrch-1 stimulates the activation of Akt and JNK.

This article reports a 29-year-old man who came to the Emergency Department because of sudden onset of bilateral lower extremity weakness and inability to walk after intake of a high carbohydrate meal and alcohol. He was found to have severe hypokalemia, with K(+) level at 1.7 mmol/L. However, after administration of potassium chloride (KCl), 10 mEq/h intravenous (i.v.) drip for 4 h, follow-up serum potassium was even lower at 1.5 mmol/L and the patient complained of persistent weakness. Twenty mg of propranolol, a non-selective beta-blocker, was given orally and a dramatic improvement of muscle power to grade 5 was noted after 30 min of administration. On the fifth day after discharge, he had another episode of bilateral lower extremity weakness after ingesting a mouthful of alcohol. Muscle power recovered completely after i.v. drip of KCl, 20 mEq. Laboratory data revealed an underlying primary hyperthyroidism for which he was given anti-thyroid agents and beta-blockers.

A gastroenteritis outbreak of Shigella sonnei involving 122 children occurred between April 2001 and January 2002 in I-lan, Taiwan. The resistant rates of the isolates to nalidixic acid, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, ampicillin and ceftriaxone were 98, 97.5, 32 and 27%, respectively. None of the isolates was resistant to ciprofloxacin. Prolonged bacterial shedding in the feces can occur when an inappropriate antibiotic is used.

Members of the Rho family of small GTPases have been shown to be involved in tumorigenesis and metastasis. Currently, most of the available information on the function of Rho proteins in malignant transformation is based on the use of dominant-negative mutants of these GTPases. The specificity of these dominant-negative mutants is limited however. In this study, we used small interfering RNA directed against either Rac1 or Rac3 to reduce their expression specifically. In line with observations using dominant-negative Rac1 in other cell types, we show that RNA interference-mediated depletion of Rac1 strongly inhibits lamellipodia formation, cell migration and invasion in SNB19 glioblastoma cells. Surprisingly however, Rac1 depletion has a much smaller inhibitory effect on SNB19 cell proliferation and survival. Interestingly, whereas depletion of Rac3 strongly inhibits SNB19 cell invasion, it does not affect lamellipodia formation and has only minor effects on cell migration and proliferation. Similar results were obtained in BT549 breast carcinoma cells. Thus, functional analysis of Rac1 and Rac3 using RNA interference reveals a critical role for these GTPases in the invasive behavior of glioma and breast carcinoma cells.

Toxic shock syndrome (TSS) is an acute, toxin-mediated illness, like endotoxic shock, and is characterized by fever, rash, hypotension, multiorgan involvement, and desquamation. TSS reflects the most severe form of the disease caused by Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pyogenes. A case definition for staphylococcal TSS was well established in the early 1980s and helped in defining the epidemiology. Since the late 1980s, a resurgence of highly invasive streptococcal infections, including a toxic shock-like syndrome, was noted worldwide and a consensus case definition for streptococcal TSS was subsequently proposed in 1993. Both TSS and the toxic shock-like syndrome occur at a lower incidence in children than in adults. Changes in the manufacturing and use of tampons led to a decline in staphylococcal TSS over the past decade, while the incidence of nonmenstrual staphylococcal TSS increased. Nonmenstrual TSS and menstrual TSS are now reported with almost equal frequency. The incidence of streptococcal TSS remains constant after its resurgence, but varies with geographic location. Streptococcal TSS occurs most commonly following varicella or during the use of NSAIDs. Sites of infection in streptococcal TSS are much deeper than in staphylococcal TSS, such as infection caused by blunt trauma, and necrotizing fasciitis. Bacteremia is more common in streptococcal TSS than in staphylococcal TSS. Mortality associated with streptococcal TSS is 5-10% in children, much lower than in adults (30-80%), and is 3-5% for staphylococcal TSS in children.TSS is thought to be a superantigen-mediated disease. Toxins produced by staphylococci and streptococci act as superantigens that can activate the immune system by bypassing the usual antigen-mediated immune-response sequence. The host-pathogen interaction, virulence factors, and the absence or presence of host immunity determines the epidemiology, clinical syndrome, and outcome. Early recognition of this disease is important, because the clinical course is fulminant and the outcome depends on the prompt institution of therapy. Management of a child with TSS includes hemodynamic stabilization and appropriate antimicrobial therapy to eradicate the bacteria. Supportive therapy, aggressive fluid resuscitation, and vasopressors remain the main elements. An adjuvant therapeutic strategy may include agents that can block superantigens, such as intravenous immunoglobulin that contains superantigen neutralizing antibodies.

The small GTPase Rac1 is thought to play an important role in cell migration and invasion. We have previously identified synaptojanin 2, a phosphoinositide phosphatase, as an effector of Rac1. Here, we show that small interfering RNA-mediated depletion of either Rac1 or synaptojanin 2 inhibits invasion of SNB19 and U87MG glioblastoma cells through Matrigel and rat brain slices. Depletion of Rac1 or synaptojanin 2 also inhibits migration of SNB19 and U87MG cells on glioma-derived extracellular matrix. In addition, we found that depletion of Rac1 or synaptojanin 2 inhibits the formation of lamellipodia and invadopodia, specialized membrane structures that are thought to be involved in extracellular matrix degradation. These results suggest that synaptojanin 2 contributes to the role of Rac1 in cell invasion and migration by regulating the formation of invadopodia and lamellipodia. This study also identifies synaptojanin 2 as a novel potential target for therapeutic intervention in malignant tumors.

Aim: To delineate the clinical features of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteraemia in infants hospitalized at the neonatal intensive care unit., Methods: Episodes of MRSA bacteraemia in Chang Gung Children's Hospital neonatal intensive care unit from 1997 to 1999 were reviewed for incidence, predisposing factors, clinical presentations, treatment and outcome., Results: Ninety episodes of MRSA bacteraemia were identified. The overall rate of MRSA bacteraemia was 1.05 per 1000 patient days during the 3-y period. Most of the patients were premature infants (76%), with prior operation or invasive procedures (39%), had an indwelling intravascular catheter (79%) and exposure to antibiotic therapy (96%). A localized cutaneous infection was found in 53.3% of the episodes. The most common clinical diagnoses were catheter-related infections (54.4%), skin and soft tissue infections (21.1%), bacteraemia without a focus (20%) and pneumonia (16.7%). Metastatic infection occurred in 18% of these infants. Among the patients treated with vancomycin for < or = 14 d, 88.7% did not develop any complications, and 11.3% developed a recurrence., Conclusions: MRSA is an established pathogen in our NICU. MRSA bacteraemia in the neonates predominantly presented as catheter-related infections, and metastatic infections were not infrequently seen. In uncomplicated MRSA bacteraemia, treatment with vancomycin for < or = 14 d seems to be adequate.

Rickettsia prowazekii, the causative agent of epidemic typhus, has been responsible for millions of human deaths. Madrid E is an attenuated strain of R. prowazekii, while Breinl is a virulent strain. The genomic DNA sequence of Madrid E has recently been published. To study the genomic variations between Madrid E (reference) and Breinl (test) DNAs, cohybridization experiments were performed on a DNA microarray containing all 834 protein-coding genes of Madrid E. Of the 834 genes assessed, 24 genes showed 1.5- to 2.0-fold increases in hybridization signals in Breinl DNA compared to Madrid E DNA, indicating the presence of genomic variations in approximately 3% of the total genes. Eighteen of these 24 genes are predicted to be involved in different functions. Southern blot analysis of five genes, virB4, ftsK, rfbE, lpxA, and rpoH, suggested the presence of an additional paralog(s) in Breinl, which might be related to the observed increase in hybridization signals. Studies by real-time reverse transcription-PCR revealed an increase in expression of the above-mentioned five genes and five other genes. In addition to the elevated hybridization signals of 24 genes observed in the Breinl strain, one gene (rp084) showed only 1/10 the hybridization signal of Madrid E. Further analysis of this gene by PCR and sequencing revealed a large deletion flanking the whole rp084 gene and part of the rp083 gene in the virulent Breinl strain. The results of this first rickettsial DNA microarray may provide some important information for the elucidation of pathogenic mechanisms of R. prowazekii.