Синкретизм квантитативних конструювань (на матеріалі числівників англійської мови)

У статті осмислюється явище синкретизму на матеріалі англійських квантитативних слів, нумеральних і денумеральних словосполучень. Мають місце порівняння з димензіональною лексико. Синкрети розглядаються на матеріалі синкретсемії. Актуальність теми мотивується зростаючим інтересом учених до нової наукової парадигми – синергетики.Объектом исследования является феномен синкретизма на материале квантитативных единиц в модусах языка, речи и речевого поведения (предмет исследования). Цель исследования состоит в осмыслении упомянутой парадигмы, ее идей, процессов самоорганизации и саморазвития. В работе верифицируются гипотезы: - номинативные единицы являются билатеральными и синкретичными; - их системная организация и эволюция интегрируется триадой материала, энергии, информации; - основным методологическим механизмом является онтогносиологический подход к исследуемым референтам. Ценным вкладом в синергетику представляется дальнейшая разработка основных положений и понятий новой научной парадигмы – лингвосинергетики.The article in question deals with the English quantitative units, i.e. numerals, numeric words, on the one hand, and dimension units – words of weight and measure, on the other hand. This object is dealt with in the endozones of language, speech and speech behaviour. The aim of investigation consists in identification of the markers of systematic arrangement of the paradigm – its selforganization and evolution: - verification of hypotheses that: - bilateral and syncretic; - aspects of words go together; - incorporated subject mater, energy and information of syncretas make the triad go; - ontognosiological method is at work. Topicality of the theme is objectivized by the growing interest to the problem by scientists of this country and abroad. This is a new scientific paradigm (synergetics), let alone many a lacunar items within its domain. Valour scenes remain undiscovered yet and await their solution in terms of mayor ideas and categories. Lacunarity is indebted to the process of cognition, cognized and non-cognized phenomenas. The choise of complex ontognosiological approach is determined by the nature of referents. Missing items come into being due to the problem of nothingness. The syncretas come archaic due to losses in the vocabulary or fall out of concepts. Some words are prohibited by taboo. Some syncretas work in the speech behaviour (silence, hesitation, pauses)

Feasibility of a liver transcriptomics approach to assess bovine treatment with the prohormone dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Within the European Union the use of growth promoting agents in animal production is prohibited. Illegal use of natural prohormones like dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) is hard to prove since prohormones are strongly metabolized <it>in vivo</it>. In the present study, we investigated the feasibility of a novel effect-based approach for monitoring abuse of DHEA. Changes in gene expression profiles were studied in livers of bull calves treated orally (PO) or intramuscularly (IM) with 1000 mg DHEA versus two control groups, using bovine 44K DNA microarrays. In contrast to controlled genomics studies, this work involved bovines purchased at the local market on three different occasions with ages ranging from 6 to 14 months, thereby reflecting the real life inter-animal variability due to differences in age, individual physiology, season and diet.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>As determined by principal component analysis (PCA), large differences in liver gene expression profiles were observed between treated and control animals as well as between the two control groups. When comparing the gene expression profiles of PO and IM treated animals to that of all control animals, the number of significantly regulated genes (p-value <0.05 and a fold change >1.5) was 23 and 37 respectively. For IM and PO treated calves, gene sets were generated of genes that were significantly regulated compared to one control group and validated versus the other control group using Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA). This cross validation, showed that 6 out of the 8 gene sets were significantly enriched in DHEA treated animals when compared to an 'independent' control group.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study showed that identification and application of genomic biomarkers for screening of (pro)hormone abuse in livestock production is substantially hampered by biological variation. On the other hand, it is demonstrated that comparison of pre-defined gene sets versus the whole genome expression profile of an animal allows to distinguish DHEA treatment effects from variations in gene expression due to inherent biological variation. Therefore, DNA-microarray expression profiling together with statistical tools like GSEA represent a promising approach to screen for (pro)hormone abuse in livestock production. However, a better insight in the genomic variability of the control population is a prerequisite in order to define growth promoter specific gene sets that can be used as robust biomarkers in daily practice.</p

Bioavailability and biodistribution of differently charged polystyrene nanoparticles upon oral exposure in rats

The likelihood of oral exposure to nanoparticles (NPs) is increasing, and it is necessary to evaluate the oral bioavailability of NPs. In vitro approaches could help reducing animal studies, but validation against in vivo studies is essential. Previously, we assessed the translocation of 50 nm polystyrene NPs of different charges (neutral, positive and negative) using a Caco-2/HT29-MTX in vitro intestinal translocation model. The NPs translocated in a surface charge-dependent manner. The present study aimed to validate this in vitro intestinal model by an in vivo study. For this, rats were orally exposed to a single dose of these polystyrene NPs and the uptake in organs was determined. A negatively charged NP was taken up more than other NPs, with the highest amounts in kidney (37.4 µg/g tissue), heart (52.8 µg/g tissue), stomach wall (98.3 µg/g tissue) and small intestinal wall (94.4 µg/g tissue). This partly confirms our in vitro findings, where the same NPs translocated to the highest extent. The estimated bioavailability of different types of NPs ranged from 0.2 to 1.7 % in vivo, which was much lower than in vitro (1.6–12.3 %). Therefore, the integrated in vitro model cannot be used for a direct prediction of the bioavailability of orally administered NPs. However, the model can be used for prioritizing NPs before further in vivo testing for risk assessment. © 2015, The Author(s)

Less Medication Use in Inpatients With Severe Mental Illness Receiving a Multidisciplinary Lifestyle Enhancing Treatment. The MULTI Study III

Besides having an unhealthy lifestyle contributing to premature mortality, inpatients with severe mental illness (SMI) use high dosages of medication. Previous research has shown improved health after lifestyle improvements in SMI. In addition, we aimed to retrospectively study whether a multidisciplinary lifestyle enhancing treatment (MULTI) was associated with changes in medication use after 18 months, as compared with patients that continued treatment as usual (TAU) and explored mediation by a change in physical activity. We conducted an observational study within a cohort of inpatients with SMI, who received MULTI (N = 65) or continued TAU (N = 49). Data on their somatic and psychotropic medications were collected, converted into defined daily dose (DDD), and analyzed using linear multilevel regression, correcting for baseline value and differences between groups in age, diagnosis, and illness severity. Compared with TAU, the DDD for psychotropic medication significantly decreased with MULTI (B = −0.55, P = 0.02). Changes in total activity did not mediate this association, suggesting that multiple components of MULTI contributed. Corrected between-group analyses for subgroups of medication were not possible due to lack of power and skewed distributions. Within-group data showed a decreased proportion of users as well as median DDD in both groups for almost all medications. In addition to previously reported health improvements after 18 months of MULTI, we observed a significant decrease in dose of psychotropic medication in MULTI compared to TAU. This first study evaluating a wide range of medications indicates a possible effect of lifestyle improvements on medication use in inpatients with SMI. Findings need to be confirmed in future controlled studies, however

International Spread of Multidrug-resistant Salmonella Schwarzengrund in Food Products

This serovar was isolated from persons, food, and food animals in Thailand, Denmark, and the United States

Text-derived concept profiles support assessment of DNA microarray data for acute myeloid leukemia and for androgen receptor stimulation

BACKGROUND: High-throughput experiments, such as with DNA microarrays, typically result in hundreds of genes potentially relevant to the process under study, rendering the interpretation of these experiments problematic. Here, we propose and evaluate an approach to find functional associations between large numbers of genes and other biomedical concepts from free-text literature. For each gene, a profile of related concepts is constructed that summarizes the context in which the gene is mentioned in literature. We assign a weight to each concept in the profile based on a likelihood ratio measure. Gene concept profiles can then be clustered to find related genes and other concepts. RESULTS: The experimental validation was done in two steps. We first applied our method on a controlled test set. After this proved to be successful the datasets from two DNA microarray experiments were analyzed in the same way and the results were evaluated by domain experts. The first dataset was a gene-expression profile that characterizes the cancer cells of a group of acute myeloid leukemia patients. For this group of patients the biological background of the cancer cells is largely unknown. Using our methodology we found an association of these cells to monocytes, which agreed with other experimental evidence. The second data set consisted of differentially expressed genes following androgen receptor stimulation in a prostate cancer cell line. Based on the analysis we put forward a hypothesis about the biological processes induced in these studied cells: secretory lysosomes are involved in the production of prostatic fluid and their development and/or secretion are androgen-regulated processes. CONCLUSION: Our method can be used to analyze DNA microarray datasets based on information explicitly and implicitly available in the literature. We provide a publicly available tool, dubbed Anni, for this purpose

Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy plus surgery versus active surveillance for oesophageal cancer: A stepped-wedge cluster randomised trial

Background: Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) plus surgery is a standard treatment for locally advanced oesophageal cancer. With this treatment, 29% of patients have a pathologically complete response in the resection specimen. This provides the rationale for investigating an active surveillance approach. The aim of this study is to assess the (cost-)effectiveness of active surveillance vs. standard oesophagectomy after nCRT for oesophageal cancer. Methods: This is a phase-III multi-centre, stepped-wedge cluster randomised controlled trial. A total of 300 patients with clinically complete response (cCR, i.e. no local or disseminated disease proven by histology) after nCRT will be randomised to show non-inferiority of active surveillance to standard oesophagectomy (non-inferiority margin 15%, intra-correlation coefficient 0.02, power 80%, 2-sided α 0.05, 12% drop-out). Patients will undergo a first clinical response evaluation (CRE-I) 4-6 weeks after nCRT, consisting of endoscopy with bite-on-bite biopsies of the primary tumour site and other suspected lesions. Clinically complete responders will undergo a second CRE (CRE-II), 6-8 weeks after CRE-I. CRE-II will include 18F-FDG-PET-CT, followed by endoscopy with bite-on-bite biopsies and ultra-endosonography plus fine needle aspiration of suspected lymph nodes and/or PET- positive lesions. Patients with cCR at CRE-II will be assigned to oesophagectomy (first phase) or active surveillance (second phase of the study). The duration of the first phase is determined randomly over the 12 centres, i.e., stepped-wedge cluster design. Patients in the active surveillance arm will undergo diagnostic evaluations similar to CRE-II at 6/9/12/16/20/24/30/36/48 and 60 months after nCRT. In this arm, oesophagectomy will be offered only to patients in whom locoregional regrowth is highly suspected or proven, without distant dissemination. The main study parameter is overall survival; secondary endpoints include percentage of patients who do not undergo surgery, quality of life, clinical irresectability (cT4b) rate, radical resection rate, postoperative complications, progression-free survival, distant dissemination rate, and cost-effectiveness. We hypothesise that active surveillance leads to non-inferior survival, improved quality of life and a reduction in costs, compared to standard oesophagectomy. Discussion: If active surveillance and surgery as needed after nCRT leads to non-inferior survival compared to standard oesophagectomy, this organ-sparing approach can be implemented as a standard of care

Phylogeographical analysis of the dominant multidrug-resistant H58 clade of Salmonella Typhi identifies inter- and intracontinental transmission events.

The emergence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) typhoid is a major global health threat affecting many countries where the disease is endemic. Here whole-genome sequence analysis of 1,832 Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S. Typhi) identifies a single dominant MDR lineage, H58, that has emerged and spread throughout Asia and Africa over the last 30 years. Our analysis identifies numerous transmissions of H58, including multiple transfers from Asia to Africa and an ongoing, unrecognized MDR epidemic within Africa itself. Notably, our analysis indicates that H58 lineages are displacing antibiotic-sensitive isolates, transforming the global population structure of this pathogen. H58 isolates can harbor a complex MDR element residing either on transmissible IncHI1 plasmids or within multiple chromosomal integration sites. We also identify new mutations that define the H58 lineage. This phylogeographical analysis provides a framework to facilitate global management of MDR typhoid and is applicable to similar MDR lineages emerging in other bacterial species

Global phylogeography and ancient evolution of the widespread human gut virus crAssphage

Microbiomes are vast communities of microorganisms and viruses that populate all natural ecosystems. Viruses have been considered to be the most variable component of microbiomes, as supported by virome surveys and examples of high genomic mosaicism. However, recent evidence suggests that the human gut virome is remarkably stable compared with that of other environments. Here, we investigate the origin, evolution and epidemiology of crAssphage, a widespread human gut virus. Through a global collaboration, we obtained DNA sequences of crAssphage from more than one-third of the world's countries and showed that the phylogeography of crAssphage is locally clustered within countries, cities and individuals. We also found fully colinear crAssphage-like genomes in both Old-World and New-World primates, suggesting that the association of crAssphage with primates may be millions of years old. Finally, by exploiting a large cohort of more than 1,000 individuals, we tested whether crAssphage is associated with bacterial taxonomic groups of the gut microbiome, diverse human health parameters and a wide range of dietary factors. We identified strong correlations with different clades of bacteria that are related to Bacteroidetes and weak associations with several diet categories, but no significant association with health or disease. We conclude that crAssphage is a benign cosmopolitan virus that may have coevolved with the human lineage and is an integral part of the normal human gut virome