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
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 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 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
This paper deals with the identification of BIFs and associated sulphide mineralisation. An integrated approach, including the use of Landsat ETM-plus and Cartosat DEM data, GIS analysis, and geological data, is adopted for this purpose in the Nagavi area of Gadag Schist Belt (GSB), India. This integrated approach has enabled in identifying BIFs and structures. Band-7 of the ETM-plus sensor of Landsat-7 is used to identify BIFs and Band-5 for lineaments and shear zones. As a result of this study, the presence of gold mineralisation in sheared zones is noticed. BIFs are the economically prominent litho-units in the GSB hosting high-grade iron ore deposits along with sulphide mineralised shear zones. The strata bound ore is hosted primarily by BIF, consisting of chlorite, alternating chert and magnetite, sulphides and carbonate bands of a millimetre to centimetre scale.