Cryptosporidium parvum causes life-threatening diarrhoea in immunocompromized, especially AIDS patients and the efficiency of proposed anti-cryptosporidial therapies is limited or doubtful. An immunosuppressed adult rat model of C. parvum infection was developed for screening molecules candidate for curative and preventive activity in human cryptosporidiosis. Among 31 drugs tested, lasalocid (2-10 mg/kg/24 h), and sinefungin (2-10 mg/kg/24 h), exhibited some activity against C. parvum infection. Oral sinefungin therapy resulted in a dose related suppression of oocysts shedding, which correlated with oocyst disappearance from ileum sections and was also efficient in preventing infection. Relapses were observed after discontinuation of curative sinefungin therapy, which suggests that the biliary tract, a major location and parasite reservoir which sustains persisting infection, was not cleared of parasites by the drug. Improved therapeutic procedures with sinefungin (or analogues) will result from current pharmacological studies.
This article presents the problem of improving the classifier of handwritten letters from historical alphabets, using letter classification algorithms and transliterating them to Latin. We apply it on Palmyrene alphabet, which is a complex alphabet with letters, some of which are very similar to each other. We created a mobile application for Palmyrene alphabet that is able to transliterate hand-written letters or letters that are given as photograph images. At first, the core of the application was based on MobileNet, but the classification results were not suitable enough. In this article, we suggest an improved, better performing convolutional neural network architecture for hand-written letter classifier used in our mobile application. Our suggested new convolutional neural network architecture shows an improvement in accuracy from 0.6893 to 0.9821 by 142% for hand-written model in comparison with the original MobileNet. Future plans are to improve the photographic model as well.
The photosynthetic gas-exchange has been assessed traditionally either as O2 evolution or CO2 consumption. In this study, we used a liquid-phase O2 electrode combined with CO2 optodes to examine simultaneously photosynthesis in intact leaves of mangrove Rhizophora mucronata. We verified suitable conditions for leaf photosynthetic rates by assessing pH levels and NaHCO3 concentrations and compared these to the gas-exchange method at various PAR levels. The photosynthetic rate in response to pH exhibited a similar pattern both for O2 evolution and CO2 consumption, and higher rates were associated with intermediate pH compared with low and high pH values. The net photosynthetic quotient (PQ) of R. mucronata leaves ranged from 1.04-1.28. The PQ values, which were never lesser than 1, suggested that photorespiration did not occur in R. mucronata leaves under aqueous conditions. The similar maximum photosynthetic rates suggested that all measurements had a high capacity to adjust the photosynthetic apparatus under a light saturation condition. The simultaneous measurements of O2 evolution and CO2 consumption using the Clark oxygen electrode polarographic sensor with the CO2 optode sensor provided a simple, stable, and precise measurement of PQ under aqueous and saturated light conditions., T. Z. Ulqodry, A. Nose, S.-H. Zheng., and Obsahuje seznam literatury
The presence of common mode error (CME) in the coordinate displacement time series of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) affects geophysical studies using GNSS observations. In order to investigate the effect of CME on the time series in GNSS networks in Shanxi, this paper proposes an improved superposition filtering method by introducing single-day solution accuracy, correlation coefficient, and spherical distance between stations as weights. The filtering effect is evaluated using the GNSS data in Shanxi. By using the improved stacking filtering method, the root mean square (RMS) values for N, E, U are reduced by approximately 27.8%, 29.0%, and 46.0%, respectively. And compared to the traditional stacking filter, our improved method can achieve better results with CME extraction. We investigate the CME spatial-temporal characteristics and its relationship with environmental loading. The results show that the CME between stations decreases as the distance between stations increases. In addition, we analyze the effect of CME on the noise component and velocity estimates. Results show that removing the CME refines the velocity and leads to a significant reduction in the magnitude of noise, indicating that the CME is dominated by the flicker noise in Shanxi Province.
Methotrexate (MTX) was investigated for possible effect on the metabolism of ethoxyresorufin, pentoxyresorufin and ethjxycoumarin, the model substrates of cytochrome P450. The investigation was carried out in liver microsomes of rats pretreated with classical inducers of cytochrome P450 as well as in microsomes of two human livers. Firthermore, we measured the conversion of MTX (100 ^M) to its main metabolite, 7-hydroxymethotrexate (7-OHMTX), in microsomes and cytosolic fractions of rat and human livers. The inhibition of 7-OHMTX formation by menadion (inhibitor of aldehyde oxidase) and allopurinol (inhibitor of xanthine oxidase) was studied in the cytosol of rat and human livers. In both species, MTX in the concentration range 0.5-500 /¿M exerted no inhibitory effect on enzymatic activities associated with cytochrome P450. Moreover, we did not observe any measurable formation of 7-OHMTX in liver microsomes. MTX was metabolized at a similar rate in the cytosol of rat and human liver. Allopurinol (100 /iM) reduced the rate of MTX hydroxylation by 31.5 % in the cytosol of human livers but had no effect in the rat. Menadion (100 y/M) decreased the rate of 7-OHMTX formation in the cytosol of human and rat liver by 69 % and 94 %, respectively. Our results confirmed that MTX is oxidized by a soluble enzymatic system in both the rat and human liver. In human tissues, both aldehyde oxidase and xanthine oxidase may play an important role in the metabolism of MTX. Depression of cytochrome P450 and related enzymatic activities observed in vivo cannot be explained by a direct inhibitory action of MTX on cytochrome P450
The goal of this paper is to present and defend an inferentialist account of the meaning of fictional names on the basis of Sellars-Brandom’s inferentialist semantics and a Brandomian anaphoric theory of reference. On this inferentialist account, the meaning of a fictional name is constituted by the relevant language norms which provide the correctness conditions for its use. In addition, the Brandomian anaphoric theory of reference allows us to understand reference in terms of anaphoric word-word relations, rather than substantial word-world relations. In this paper I argue that this inferentialist account has many important merits over its rival theories. One important merit is that it explains why we can use fictional names to make true statements, even if they lack bearers. As a consequence, this theory allows us to use fictional names without committing ourselves to an implausible ontology of fictional entities. Another important merit is that it provides a uniform semantic account of fictional names across different types of statements in which fictional names are involved.
An influence of changing the humic acids content on soil water repellency and saturated hydraulic conductivity was studied on soil samples of Mollic Gleysol from Cilizska Radvan in the Danubian Lowland. Water repellency was measured with the water drop penetration time (WDPT) test on original soil samples and on soil samples with increased humic acids content. Saturated hydraulic conductivity coefficient was measured on the above-mentioned samples with falling head permeameter. From the results of measuring it follows that an increasing of humic acids content in soil resulted in an decreasing of the coefficient of saturated hydraulic conductivity of the soil under study. Original soil was non-water reppelent soil. Already a small increasing of humic acids content in soil (in 17.9 % at original amount) caused that the soil became slightly or strongly water repellent in the average of soil moisture 15-30 %. At soil moisture less than 15 % time of penetration decreased probably as a result of shrinking and cracking of the soil. Water repellency of soil samples from horizon 0 - 5 cm was usually higher than water repellency of soil samples from horizon 5 - 10 cm both in case of humic acids extracted from peat and in case of humic acids extracted from the same soil from Cilizska Radvan. and Na pôdnej vzorke čiernice glejovej (ČA G) (MKSP, 2000) z lokality Čiližská Radvaň v Podunajskej nížině bol skúmaný pomocou testu času vsaku kvapky vody (WDPT test) vplyv zmeny obsahu humínových kyselin na vodoodpudivosť a nasýtenú hydraulickú vodivosť pôdy. Vodoodpudivosť bola meraná na pôvodných pôdnych vzorkách a vzorkách zo zvýšeným obsahom humínových kyselín. Koeficient nasýtenej hydraulickej vodivosti bol meraný na týchto pôdnych vzorkách metódou premenlivého hydraulického sklonu. Z nameraných výsledkov vyplýva, že nárast obsahu humínových kyselín v pôde mal za následok pokles koeficientu nasýtenej hydraulickej vodivosti študovanej pôdy. Už malé zvýšenie obsahu humínových kyselín v pôde (o 17,9 % pôvodnej hodnoty ) spôsobilo, že pôda sa stala slabo až silne vodoodpudivou vo vlhkostnom rozsahu 15-30 %. Pri pôdnej vlhkosti nižšej ako 15 % sa čas vsakovania zmenšil pravdepodobne v dôsledku zmršťovania pôdy a vzniku puklín. Vodoodpudivosť pôdnych vzoriek z horizontu 0 - 5 cm vo väčšine prípadov bola vyššia než vodoodpudivosť pôdnych vzoriek z horizontu 5 - 10 cm aj v prípade pridania humínových kyselín, extrahovaných z rašeliny, aj v prípade pridania humínových kyselín, extrahovaných z tej istej pôdy.
The main aim of this paper is to present a new possibility for detection and recognition of different categories of electric and conventional (equipped with combustion engine) vehicles. These possibilities are provided by use of thermal and visual video cameras and two methods of machine learning. The used methods are Haar cascade classifier and convolutional neural network (CNN). The thermal images, obtained through an infrared thermography camera, were used for the training database. The thermal cameras can complement or substitute visible spectrum of video cameras and other conventional sensors and provide detailed recognition and classification data needed for vehicle type recognition. The first listed method was used as an object detector and serves for the localization of the vehicle on the road without any further classification. The second method was trained for vehicle recognition on the thermal image database and classifies a localized object according to one of the defined categories. The results confirmed that it is possible to use infrared thermography for vehicle drive categorization according to the thermal features of vehicle exteriors together with methods of machine learning for vehicle type recognition.
Cortisol is secreted by the central hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis and affects many target organs and tissues, particularly in response to stressor demands and infection. Recent data reporting cortisol synthesis in hair follicles have shown the existence of a parallel “peripheral” HPA-axis. However, although there is evidence from in vitro studies and single-observation comparisons between groups that cortisol from hair follicles reflects endocrine changes associated with stressor demands, there are no reports to date of repeated measurements of in vivo cortisol responsivity in hair to transitory stressors. This issue was investigated with three males who underwent 1 min cold pressor test (CP). Cortisol response in hair to stressor demand appears to be (a) swift but transitory, (b) localized to the site of the demand and (c) independent of central HPA-axis activity., C. F. Sharpley, K. G. Kauter, J. R. McFarlane., and Obsahuje seznam literatury