1,104 research outputs found
Increased Survival of Antibiotic-Resistant Escherichia coli inside Macrophages
Mutations causing antibiotic resistance usually incur a fitness cost in the absence of antibiotics. The magnitude of such costs is known to vary with the environment. Little is known about the fitness effects of antibiotic resistance mutations when bacteria confront the host's immune system. Here, we study the fitness effects of mutations in the rpoB, rpsL, and gyrA genes, which confer resistance to rifampin, streptomycin, and nalidixic acid, respectively. These antibiotics are frequently used in the treatment of bacterial infections. We measured two important fitness traits-growth rate and survival ability-of 12 Escherichia coli K-12 strains, each carrying a single resistance mutation, in the presence of macrophages. Strikingly, we found that 67% of the mutants survived better than the susceptible bacteria in the intracellular niche of the phagocytic cells. In particular, all E. coli streptomycin-resistant mutants exhibited an intracellular advantage. On the other hand, 42% of the mutants incurred a high fitness cost when the bacteria were allowed to divide outside of macrophages. This study shows that single nonsynonymous changes affecting fundamental processes in the cell can contribute to prolonged survival of E. coli in the context of an infection.European Research Council, LAO/ITQB, FCT
Anuros das serras de entorno do Pantanal Sul
O estudo faz parte do projeto de levantamentos faunísticos da Embrapa Pantanal que busca identificar e registrar a riqueza dos anuros das serras que circundam o Pantanal Sul e levantar dados da história natural das espécies encontradas.bitstream/CPAP/55969/1/DOC78.pdfFormato Eletrônic
Listagem dos anuros da Estação Ecológica Nhumirim e arredores, Pantanal Sul.
A fauna de anfíbios brasileira ainda é mal conhecida tanto para a comunidade científica, quanto mais para as demais pessoas, seja pelos seus hábitos geralmente noturnos ou por comportamentos crípticos ou simplesmente por não darem atenção a este grupo que por muitos é considerado repugnante. No Brasil, os anuros (sapos, rãs e pererecas) é o grupo que ocorre em maior número entre os anfíbios. Os anuros são muito importantes no ecossistema e bons indicadores de biodiversidade. O estudo teve o objetivo de registrar a riqueza de anuros na Estação Ecológica Nhumirim e adjacências e levantar dados da história natural das espécies encontradas.bitstream/item/81131/1/DOC58.pd
Anuros da estação ecológica Nhumirim e do entorno do Pantanal Sul.
bitstream/CPAP/56344/1/ADM071.pdfFormato eletrônico
Conditional Image-Text Embedding Networks
This paper presents an approach for grounding phrases in images which jointly
learns multiple text-conditioned embeddings in a single end-to-end model. In
order to differentiate text phrases into semantically distinct subspaces, we
propose a concept weight branch that automatically assigns phrases to
embeddings, whereas prior works predefine such assignments. Our proposed
solution simplifies the representation requirements for individual embeddings
and allows the underrepresented concepts to take advantage of the shared
representations before feeding them into concept-specific layers. Comprehensive
experiments verify the effectiveness of our approach across three phrase
grounding datasets, Flickr30K Entities, ReferIt Game, and Visual Genome, where
we obtain a (resp.) 4%, 3%, and 4% improvement in grounding performance over a
strong region-phrase embedding baseline.Comment: ECCV 2018 accepted pape
An Efficient Approximate kNN Graph Method for Diffusion on Image Retrieval
The application of the diffusion in many computer vision and artificial
intelligence projects has been shown to give excellent improvements in
performance. One of the main bottlenecks of this technique is the quadratic
growth of the kNN graph size due to the high-quantity of new connections
between nodes in the graph, resulting in long computation times. Several
strategies have been proposed to address this, but none are effective and
efficient. Our novel technique, based on LSH projections, obtains the same
performance as the exact kNN graph after diffusion, but in less time
(approximately 18 times faster on a dataset of a hundred thousand images). The
proposed method was validated and compared with other state-of-the-art on
several public image datasets, including Oxford5k, Paris6k, and Oxford105k
Clonal interference and Muller's ratchet in spatial habitats
Competition between independently arising beneficial mutations is enhanced in
spatial populations due to the linear rather than exponential growth of clones.
Recent theoretical studies have pointed out that the resulting fitness dynamics
is analogous to a surface growth process, where new layers nucleate and spread
stochastically, leading to the build up of scale-invariant roughness. This
scenario differs qualitatively from the standard view of adaptation in that the
speed of adaptation becomes independent of population size while the fitness
variance does not. Here we exploit recent progress in the understanding of
surface growth processes to obtain precise predictions for the universal,
non-Gaussian shape of the fitness distribution for one-dimensional habitats,
which are verified by simulations. When the mutations are deleterious rather
than beneficial the problem becomes a spatial version of Muller's ratchet. In
contrast to the case of well-mixed populations, the rate of fitness decline
remains finite even in the limit of an infinite habitat, provided the ratio
between the deleterious mutation rate and the square of the
(negative) selection coefficient is sufficiently large. Using again an analogy
to surface growth models we show that the transition between the stationary and
the moving state of the ratchet is governed by directed percolation
An experimental test on the probability of extinction of new genetic variants
In 1927, J.B.S. Haldane reasoned that the probability of fixation of new beneficial alleles is twice their fitness effect. This result, later generalized by M. Kimura, has since become the cornerstone of modern population genetics. There is no experimental test of Haldane's insight that new beneficial alleles are lost with high probability. Here we demonstrate that extinction rates decrease with increasing initial numbers of beneficial alleles, as expected, by performing invasion experiments with inbred lines of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. We further show that the extinction rates of deleterious alleles are higher than those of beneficial alleles, also as expected. Interestingly, we also find that for these inbred lines, when at intermediate frequencies, the fate of invaders might not result in their ultimate fixation or loss but on their maintenance. Our study confirms the key results from classical population genetics and highlights that the nature of adaptation can be complex.Human Frontiers Science Program grant: (RGP0045/2010)
Sensibilidad de las variaciones en el campo de deformaciones en función de la aparición de daños en palas de aerogeneradores fabricadas en materiales compuestos
Se instrumentó un prototipo de pala de aerogenerador de 150 kW de 13 metros de longitud con 24 FBGs embebidas directamente en el material durante la fabricación. Posteriormente se realizaron mediciones de deformaciones en el prototipo de pala sin ningún daño, con el fin de determinar el baseline de la pala. Luego, se indujeron algunos daños artificiales de diferentes naturalezas y severidades con el fin de estudiar la susceptibilidad de la aparición de cambios en el campo de deformaciones y la rigidez global de la pala, en función de la aparición de dichos daños. Se realizó un estudio de esfuerzos diferenciales con el fin de determinar la variación de la rigidez en la estructura y determinar si los sensores embebidos eran capaces de detectar dicha variación. Los resultados se presentan en este artículo
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