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Vibrio cholerae is an inhabitant of aquatic systems and one of the causative agents of severe dehydrating diarrhea in humans. It has also emerged as an important cause of different kinds of inflammatory responses and in particular, V. cholerae strains of the non-O1 non-O139 serogroups (NOVC) have been associated with such infections in human. We analyzed the potential of outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) derived from the NOVC strain V:5/04 to induce inflammatory responses in human host cells. V:5/04 OMVs were taken up by human epithelial cells and induced inflammatory responses. siRNA-mediated gene knock-down revealed that the inflammatory potential of NOVC OMVs was partially mediated by the nucleotide-binding domain, leucine rich repeat containing family member NOD1. Physiochemical analysis of the content of these OMVs, in conjunction with NOD1 and NOD2 reporter assays in HEK293T cells, confirmed the presence of both NOD1 and NOD2 active peptidoglycan in the OMVs. Furthermore, we show that deletion of the quorum sensing regulator HapR which mimics an infective life style, specifically reduced the inflammatory potential of the V:5/04 OMVs and their ability to activate NOD1 and NOD2. In conclusion, our study shows that NOVC OMVs elicit immune responses mediated by NOD1 and NOD2 in mammalian host cells. Moreover, we provide evidence that the quorum sensing machinery plays an important regulatory role in this process by attenuating the inflammatory potential of OMVs in infective conditions. This work thus identified a new facet of how Vibrio affects host immune responses and defines a role for the quorum sensing machinery in this process.

A novel method is proposed for estimation of the mutual coupling matrix of an antenna array. The method extends previous work by incorporating an unknown phase center and the element factor (antenna radiation pattern) in the model, and treating these as nuisance parameters during the estimation of coupling. To facilitate this, a parametrization of the element factor based on a truncated Fourier series is proposed. The Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) for the estimation problem is derived and used to analyze how the required amount of measurement data increases when introducing a more and more flexible model for the element factor. Finally, the performance of the proposed estimator is illustrated using data from measurements on an 8-element antenna array.

NQC

This paper presents on an electrostatically actuated microelectromechanical series switch for DC to RF signals, based on a flexible S-shaped film actuator moving between two electrodes in touch mode actuation. This novel concept, in contrast to most other MEMS switches, allows a low actuation voltage design independent on the off-state gap height, which makes larger switching contact areas for low insertion loss and higher current handling capability possible, by obtaining high isolation. Furthermore, the double anchor principle avoids self-biasing and is favorable of switching higher power signals. The actuation voltages of the first prototype switches are 12 V to open and 15.8 V to close the metal contact. The RF isolation with a gap distance of 14.2 mum is better than -45 dB up to 2 GHz and -30 dB at 15 GHz despite a large switching contact area of 3500 mum(2)., Qc 2010-06-29

The objective of this study was to describe the pulmonary function and pain 4 months after coronary artery bypass graft surgery. Twenty-five male patients performed pulmonary function tests before surgery, on the 4th postoperative day and 4 months after surgery. A severe reduction in pulmonary function was present after surgery. Four months postoperatively, the patients still showed a significant decrease (6-13% of preoperative values) in vital capacity (P<0.001), inspiratory capacity (P<0.001), forced expiratory volume in 1 s (P<0.001) peak expiratory flow rate (P<0.001), functional residual capacity (P=0.05) total lung capacity (P<0.001) and single-breath carbon monoxide diffusing capacity (P<0.01). Residual volume and single-breath carbon monoxide diffusing capacity per litre of alveolar volume had returned to the preoperative level. Four months postoperatively, the median values for sternotomy pain while taking a deep breath was 0.2 and while coughing 0.3 on a 10 cm visual analogue pain scale. In conclusion, a significant restrictive pulmonary impairment persisting up to 4 months into the postoperative period was found after CABG. Measured levels of pain were low and could not explain the impairment.