Continuous calorimetry, baker’s yeast metabolism, anabolism, catabolism

The survival and activities of microorganisms depend on water availability. In this work, relationships expressing the dependence of oxygen solubility and oxygen transfer and uptake rates on water activity are considered. The special emphasis is given to the analysis of the effects of dissolved substance concentrations on solubility of gases. The effects of different dissolved salts, sugars and polyols are mentioned and discussed. More attention is given to experimental data and established relationships referring to the aerobic microbial conversion of D-sorbitol into L-sorbose. The proofs supporting the possibility to define the water activity on the basis of oxygen solubility are given by demonstrating them graphically and by mathematical equations

Postvisit Destination Loyalty Judgments: Developing and Testing a Comprehensive Congruity Model

Previous research has established the effect of self-congruity on both pre- and postvisit constructs, but its predictive power has appeared minimal. Departing from both classical and contemporary approaches to human needs and values, this study proposes a comprehensive model explaining more variance in postvisit destination loyalty judgments. The model comprises six explanatory variables, in addition to self-congruity: functional, hedonic, leisure, economic, safety, and m oral congruity. Based on a large-scale web survey among tourists (N = 973), the results provide good support for the proposed model (64% explained variance). Each of the seven congruity components exerts a significant influence on postvisit loyalty, but their relative contributions differ considerably. Other than self-congruity, functional, hedonic, leisure, and safety congruity exert the greatest influence on postvisit loyalty judgments; in contrast, economic and moral congruity have lesser influences. The authors discuss the results in light of their theoretical and practical implications for destination marketing. (author's abstract

Cosmological implications of Compton tails in long duration GRB

The recent suggestion of the possible presence of a significant amount of material (Thomson optical depth ∼ 1) at rest and at a typical distance of ∼ 1015 cm with respect to the GRB is presented. The relevance of such interpretation for GRB energetics and its cosmological implications is outlined

Treatment of allergic asthma: Modulation of Th2 cells and their responses

Atopic asthma is a chronic inflammatory pulmonary disease characterised by recurrent episodes of wheezy, laboured breathing with an underlying Th2 cell-mediated inflammatory response in the airways. It is currently treated and, more or less, controlled depending on severity, with bronchodilators e.g. long-acting beta agonists and long-acting muscarinic antagonists or anti-inflammatory drugs such as corticosteroids (inhaled or oral), leukotriene modifiers, theophyline and anti-IgE therapy. Unfortunately, none of these treatments are curative and some asthmatic patients do not respond to intense anti-inflammatory therapies. Additionally, the use of long-term oral steroids has many undesired side effects. For this reason, novel and more effective drugs are needed. In this review, we focus on the CD4+ Th2 cells and their products as targets for the development of new drugs to add to the current armamentarium as adjuncts or as potential stand-alone treatments for allergic asthma. We argue that in early disease, the reduction or elimination of allergen-specific Th2 cells will reduce the consequences of repeated allergic inflammatory responses such as lung remodelling without causing generalised immunosuppression

Fracture strength of lithium disilicate cantilever resin bonded fixed dental prosthesis

Objectives: Metal and Zirconia cantilever resin bonded fixed dental prosthesis (RBFDPs) are extensively used when missing anterior teeth. Lithium disilicate is not used a lot as it is not indicated by the manufacturers. The aim of this in vitro study was to investigate the fracture strength of lithium disilicate cantilever RBFDPs with different configurations and compare them to metal and zirconium RBFDPs. Methods: Sound extracted human canines (N = 60) were divided into six groups, to be restored with a cantilever RBFDP. Specimen were randomly divided over 6 groups (n = 10): Full crown of lithium disilicate (FCL); Veneer wing of lithium disilicate (VL); Connector of lithium disilicate (CL); Palatal wing of lithium disilicate (PL); Palatal wing of zirconia (PZ) and Palatal wing of metal ceramic (PM). All bridges were bonded with an adhesive system. After thermalcyclic ageing (20 x 10(3)x, 5-55 degrees C) all samples were loaded until fracture occurred. Failure types were classified and representative SEM done. Results: The mean fracture strength results per group were: 588N (FCL) 588N (PM), 550N (CL), 534N (PL), 465N (VL), 38N (PZ). A significant (p = 0.001) difference was found between the groups, all groups had a higher fracture strength than the zirconia RBFDPs. Failure type analysis showed some trends among the groups. Irrepairable fractures of the root were only seen in samples restored with lithium disilicate. Metal and zirconia RBFDPs predominantly failed on the adhesive interface, where 60% of the zirconia samples had pretest debondings. Significance: No differences in fracture strength were found between cantilever RBFDPs made from metal or lithium disilicate. Metal (0% pre-test failures) and zirconium (60% pretest failures) RBFDPs failed predominantly on the adhesive interface whereas the lithium disilicate (0% pre-test failures) samples showed fractures in the contact area. The least invasive connector (CL) and Metal (PM) RBFDP obtained a high fracture strength and optimal fracture pattern

Gene electrotransfer of IL-2 and IL-12 plasmids effectively eradicated murine B16.F10 melanoma

Gene therapy has become an important approach for treating cancer, and electroporation represents a technology for introducing therapeutic genes into a cell. An example of cancer gene therapy relying on gene electrotransfer is the use of immunomodulatory cytokines, such as interleukin 2 (IL-2) and 12 (IL-12), which directly stimulate immune cells at the tumour site. The aim of our study was to determine the effects of gene electrotransfer with two plasmids encoding IL-2 and IL-12 in vitro and in vivo. Two different pulse protocols, known as EP1 (600 V/cm, 5 ms, 1 Hz, 8 pulses) and EP2 (1300 V/cm, 100 µs, 1 Hz, 8 pulses), were assessed in vitro for application in subsequent in vivo experiments. In the in vivo experiment, gene electrotransfer of pIL-2 and pIL-12 using the EP1 protocol was performed in B16.F10 murine melanoma. Combined treatment of tumours using pIL2 and pIL12 induced significant tumour growth delay and 71% complete tumour regression. Furthermore, in tumours coexpressing IL-2 and IL-12, increased accumulation of dendritic cells and M1 macrophages was obtained along with the activation of proinflammatory signals, resulting in CD4 + and CD8 + T-lymphocyte recruitment and immune memory development in the mice. In conclusion, we demonstrated high antitumour efficacy of combined IL-2 and IL-12 gene electrotransfer protocols in low-immunogenicity murine B16.F10 melanoma

A Strong Lexical Matching Method for the Machine Comprehension Test

Machine comprehension of text is theoverarching goal of a great deal of re-search in natural language processing. TheMachine Comprehension Test (Richard-son et al., 2013) was recently proposed toassess methods on an open-domain, exten-sible, and easy-to-evaluate task consistingof two datasets. In this paper we developa lexical matching method that takes intoaccount multiple context windows, ques-tion types and coreference resolution. Weshow that the proposed method outper-forms the baseline of Richardson et al.(2013), and despite its relative simplicity,is comparable to recent work using ma-chine learning. We hope that our approachwill inform future work on this task. Fur-thermore, we argue that MC500 is harderthan MC160 due to the way question an-swer pairs were created

\u3ci\u3eIn Vitro and In Vivo\u3c/i\u3e Correlation of Skin and Cellular Responses to Nucleic Acid Delivery

Skin, the largest organ in the body, provides a passive physical barrier against infection and contains elements of the innate and adaptive immune systems. Skin consists of various cells, including keratinocytes, fibroblasts, endothelial cells and immune cells. This diversity of cell types could be important to gene therapies because DNA transfection could elicit different responses in different cell types. Previously, we observed the upregulation and activation of cytosolic DNA sensing pathways in several non-tumor and tumor cell types as well in tumors after the electroporation (electrotransfer) of plasmid DNA (pDNA). Based on this research and the innate immunogenicity of skin, we correlated the effects of pDNA electrotransfer to fibroblasts and keratinocytes to mouse skin using reverse transcription real-time PCR (RT-qPCR) and several types of protein quantification. After pDNA electrotransfer, the mRNAs of the putative DNA sensors DEAD (AspGlu-Ala-Asp) box polypeptide 60 (Ddx60), absent in melanoma 2 (Aim2), Z-DNA binding protein 1 (Zbp1), interferon activated gene 202 (Ifi202), and interferon-inducible protein 204 (Ifi204) were upregulated in keratinocytes, while Ddx60, Zbp1 and Ifi204 were upregulated in fibroblasts. Increased levels of the mRNAs and proteins of several cytokines and chemokines were detected and varied based on cell type. Mouse skin experiments in vivo confirmed our in vitro results with increased expression of putative DNA sensor mRNAs and of the mRNAs and proteins of several cytokines and chemokines. Finally, with immunofluorescent staining, we demonstrated that skin keratinocytes, fibroblasts and macrophages contribute to the immune response observed after pDNA electrotransfer