Peritoneal dialysis (PD) is a well established method of depuration in uremic patients. Standard dialysis solutions currently in use are not biocompatible with the peritoneal membrane. Studying effects of dialysate on peritoneal membrane in humans is still a challenge. There is no consensus on the ideal experimental model so far. We, therefore, wanted to develop a new experimental non-uremic rabbit model of peritoneal dialysis, which would be practical, easy to conduct, not too costly, and convenient to investigate the long-term effect of dialysis fluids. The study was done on 17 healthy Chinchilla male and female rabbits, anesthetized with Thiopental in a dose of 0.5 mg/kg body mass. A catheter, specially made from Tro-soluset (Troge Medical GMBH, Hamburg, Germany) infusion system, was then surgically inserted and tunneled from animals' abdomen to their neck. The planned experimental procedure was 4 weeks of peritoneal dialysate instillation. The presented non-uremic rabbit model of peritoneal dialysis is relatively inexpensive, does not require sophisticated technology and was well tolerated by the animals. Complications such as peritonitis, dialysis fluid leakage, constipation and catheter obstruction were negligible. This model is reproducible and can be used to analyze the effects of different dialysis solutions on the rabbit peritoneal membrane., S. Zunic-Bozinovski, Z. Lausevic, S. Krstic, N. Jovanovic, J. Trbojevic-Stankovic, B. Stojimirovic., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy
Senile dementia of Alzheimer´s type (AD) is commonly characterized as a neurodegenerative disorder, which exhibits gradual changes of consciousness, loss of memory, perception and orientation as well as loss of personality and intellect. AD prevalence increases dramatically with age and is the fourth cause of death in Europe and in the USA. Currently, there are no available biological markers, which gives clinicians no other alternative than to rely upon clinical diagnosis by exclusion. There is no assay of objective ante mortem biochemical phenomena that relate to the pathophysiology of this disease. The pathophysiology of AD is connected with alterations in neurotransmission, plaque formation, cytoskeletal abnormalities and disturbances of calcium homeostasis. The search for a test, which is non-invasive, simple, cheap and user-friendly, should be directed at accessible body fluids. Only abnormalities replicated in large series across different laboratories fulfilling the criteria for a biological marker are likely to be of relevance in diagnosing AD. To date, only the combination of cerebrospinal fluid t and Ab42 most closely approximate an ideal biomarker of Alzheimer´s disease. A short review on the role of biological markers in AD on the basis of the literature, contemporary knowledge and our own recent findings are presented., D. Řípová, A. Strunecká., and Obsahuje bibliografii
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 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.
This paper presents an object-oriented two-dimensional (2-D) overland flow model and its application in simulating flood flows over Ulus basin, located in the north of Turkey adjacent to the Black Sea. A new coding implementation according to the class environment created in object oriented C++ programming language is carried out in structuring and building the solver. The model is based on the Godunov type finite volume scheme on unstructured triangular meshes. A mass balance preserving wet/dry boundary solution algorithm is integrated in the numerical scheme to satisfy the positive-depth condition and minimize the numerical instability when treating the propagation of wave front in regions of dry bed. The balance between bed slope and flux terms is also preserved for still water conditions on irregular topography. The 2-D solver is verified by simulating selected dam break cases, where good agreement with measured data is achieved. For the simulation of flood flows in the Ulus basin, in general, the simulated outflow hydrograph is found to compare well with the recorded data. A selected inundation map that is extracted from the model results is also presented to show the water surface level in the Floodplain.
The hormone leptin, which is thought to be primarily produced by adipose tissue, is a polypeptide that was initially characterized by its ability to regulate food intake and energy metabolism. Leptin appears to signal the status of body energy stores to the brain, resulting in the regulation of food intake and whole-body energy expenditure. Subsequently, it was recognized as a cytokine with a wide range of peripheral actions and is involved in the regulation of a number of physiological systems including reproduction. In the fed state, leptin circulates in the plasma in proportion to body adiposity in all species studied to date. However other factors such as sex, age, body mass index (BMI), sex steroids and pregnancy may also affect leptin levels in plasma. In pregnant mice and humans, the placenta is also a major site of leptin expression. Leptin circulates in biological fluids both as free protein and in a form that is bound to the soluble isoform of its receptor or other binding proteins such as one of the immunoglobulin superfamily members Siglec-6 (OBBP1). Although the actions of leptin in the control of reproductive function are thought to be exerted mainly via the hypothalamicpituitary-gonadal axis, there have also been reports of local direct effects of leptin at the peripheral level, however, these data appear contradictory. Therefore, there is a need to summarize the current status of research outcomes and analyze the possible reasons for differing results and thus provide researchers with new insight in designing experiments to investigate leptin effect on reproduction. Most importantly, our recent experimental data suggesting that reproductive performance is improved by decreasing concentrations of peripheral leptin was unexpected and cannot be explained by hypotheses drawn from the experiments of excessive exogenous leptin administration to normal animals or ob/ob mice., M. Herrid, S. K. A. Palanisamy, U. A. Ciller, R. Fan, P. Moens, N. A. Smart, J. R. McFarlane., and Obsahuje bibliografii