Bacterial community profiles and Vibrio parahaemolyticus abundance in individual oysters and their association with estuarine ecology

Oysters naturally harbor the human gastric pathogen Vibrio parahaemolyticus, but the nature of this association is unknown. Because microbial interactions could influence the accumulation of V. parahaemolyticus in oysters, we investigated the composition of the microbiome in water and oysters at two ecologically unique sites in the Great Bay Estuary, New Hampshire using 16s rRNA profiling. We then evaluated correlations between bacteria inhabiting the oyster with V. parahaemolyticus abundance quantified using a most probable number (MPN) analysis. Even though oysters filter-feed, their microbiomes were not a direct snapshot of the bacterial community in overlaying water, suggesting they selectively accumulate some bacterial phyla. The microbiome of individual oysters harvested more centrally in the bay were relatively more similar to each other and had fewer unique phylotypes, but overall more taxonomic and metabolic diversity, than the microbiomes from tributary-harvested oysters that were individually more variable with lower taxonomic and metabolic diversity. Oysters harvested from the same location varied in V. parahaemolyticus abundance, with the highest abundance oysters collected from one location. This study, which to our knowledge is the first of its kind to evaluate associations of V. parahaemolyticus abundance with members of individual oyster microbiomes, implies that sufficient sampling and depth of sequencing may reveal microbiome members that could impact V. parahaemolyticus abundance

Game-theoretic versions of strong law of large numbers for unbounded variables

We consider strong law of large numbers (SLLN) in the framework of game-theoretic probability of Shafer and Vovk (2001). We prove several versions of SLLN for the case that Reality's moves are unbounded. Our game-theoretic versions of SLLN largely correspond to standard measure-theoretic results. However game-theoretic proofs are different from measure-theoretic ones in the explicit consideration of various hedges. In measure-theoretic proofs existence of moments are assumed, whereas in our game-theoretic proofs we assume availability of various hedges to Skeptic for finite prices

Rehospitalizacje w niewydolności serca z upośledzoną funkcją lewej komory — strategie zapobiegania

   Niewydolność serca (HF) w krajach rozwiniętych dotyczy ponad 10% populacji powyżej 70. roku życia, stanowiąc tym samym ważny problem za­równo zdrowotny, społeczny, jak i ekonomiczny. Szacuje się, że obecnie w Polsce na HF cier­pi 600 000–700 000 osób. Mimo postępu, jaki się dokonał w ostatnich 30 latach w zakresie farmakoterapii niewydolności serca z istotnie upośledzoną funkcją skurczową lewej komo­ry (HFrEF) (wdrożenie inhibitorów konwertazy angiotensyny [ACEI], blokerów receptora an­giotensyny II [ARB], antagonistów receptora mineralokortykoidowgo [MRA] oraz iwabrady­ny) rokowanie pacjentów z tej grupy pozostaje niekorzystne. Jednym z głównych czynników istotnie zwiększających współczynnik śmier­telności w tej grupie chorych jest wysoki odse­tek ponownych hospitalizacji (w ciągu roku dla ostrej HF — 43,9%; dla przewlekłej HF — 31,9%). Tym samym HF stanowi również wiodącą przy­czynę rehospitalizacji pacjentów powyżej 65. roku życia. W sytuacji nadmiernego obciążenia oddziałów kardiologicznych i niedostatecznego finansowania hospitalizacji pacjentów z HF ist­nieje bardzo duże niebezpieczeństwo skracania okresu pobytu w szpitalu poniżej bezpieczne­go minimum. Przy czym powszechny i wczesny dostęp do kardiologa wciąż stanowi problem dla wielu pacjentów z HF. W efekcie wczesne rehospitalizacje są w wielu przypadkach wyni­kiem nieoptymalnego wyrównania w trakcie ho­spitalizacji, utrudnionego wczesnego dostępu do specjalisty po wypisaniu ze szpitala, a także braku sprecyzowanego planu dalszej opieki ambulatoryjnej zarówno w zakresie terminu naj­bliższej wizyty, jak i eskalacji farmakoterapii. Świadomość problemów codziennej opieki nad pacjentem z HFrEF oraz czynników ryzyka reho­spitalizacji i gorszego rokowania może stanowić nieocenioną pomoc w wyłonieniu z szerokiej grupy chorych z HFrEF tych, którzy wymagają wzmożonej czujności i częstszych kontroli w po­radni specjalistycznej

Molecular interaction between bacterial antigens and macrophage receptors studied by atomic force microscopy

Atomic force spectroscopy was used to study interaction strengths between bacterial antigens and receptors on macrophages. This method allowed for a direct comparison of the interaction strengths in different systems studied at the level of single molecules

Assessment of pathological response to therapy using lipid mass spectrometry imaging.

In many cancers, the establishment of a patient's future treatment regime often relies on histopathological assessment of tumor tissue specimens in order to determine the extent of the 'pathological response' to a given therapy. However, histopathological assessment of pathological response remains subjective. Here we use MALDI mass spectrometry imaging to generate lipid signatures from colorectal cancer liver metastasis specimens resected from patients preoperatively treated with chemotherapy. Using these signatures we obtained a unique pathological response score that correlates with prognosis. In addition, we identify single lipid moieties that are overexpressed in different histopathological features of the tumor, which have potential as new biomarkers for assessing response to therapy. These data show that computational methods, focusing on the lipidome, can be used to determine prognostic markers for response to chemotherapy and may potentially improve risk assessment and patient care

Temperature-driven single-valley Dirac fermions in HgTe quantum wells

We report on temperature-dependent magnetospectroscopy of two HgTe/CdHgTe quantum wells below and above the critical well thickness $d_c$. Our results, obtained in magnetic fields up to 16 T and temperature range from 2 K to 150 K, clearly indicate a change of the band-gap energy with temperature. The quantum well wider than $d_c$ evidences a temperature-driven transition from topological insulator to semiconductor phases. At the critical temperature of 90 K, the merging of inter- and intra-band transitions in weak magnetic fields clearly specifies the formation of gapless state, revealing the appearance of single-valley massless Dirac fermions with velocity of $5.6\times10^5$ m$\times$s$^{-1}$. For both quantum wells, the energies extracted from experimental data are in good agreement with calculations on the basis of the 8-band Kane Hamiltonian with temperature-dependent parameters.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures and Supplemental Materials (4 pages

Temperature-dependent magnetospectroscopy of HgTe quantum wells

We report on magnetospectroscopy of HgTe quantum wells in magnetic fields up to 45 T in temperature range from 4.2 K up to 185 K. We observe intra- and inter-band transitions from zero-mode Landau levels, which split from the bottom conduction and upper valence subbands, and merge under the applied magnetic field. To describe experimental results, realistic temperature-dependent calculations of Landau levels have been performed. We show that although our samples are topological insulators at low temperatures only, the signature of such phase persists in optical transitions at high temperatures and high magnetic fields. Our results demonstrate that temperature-dependent magnetospectroscopy is a powerful tool to discriminate trivial and topological insulator phases in HgTe quantum wells

Almost-Euclidean subspaces of ℓ1N\ell_1^N via tensor products: a simple approach to randomness reduction

It has been known since 1970's that the N-dimensional $\ell_1$-space contains nearly Euclidean subspaces whose dimension is $\Omega(N)$. However, proofs of existence of such subspaces were probabilistic, hence non-constructive, which made the results not-quite-suitable for subsequently discovered applications to high-dimensional nearest neighbor search, error-correcting codes over the reals, compressive sensing and other computational problems. In this paper we present a "low-tech" scheme which, for any $a > 0$, allows to exhibit nearly Euclidean $\Omega(N)$-dimensional subspaces of $\ell_1^N$ while using only $N^a$ random bits. Our results extend and complement (particularly) recent work by Guruswami-Lee-Wigderson. Characteristic features of our approach include (1) simplicity (we use only tensor products) and (2) yielding "almost Euclidean" subspaces with arbitrarily small distortions.Comment: 11 pages; title change, abstract and references added, other minor change