14,561 research outputs found
Insertion of the CXC chemokine ligand 9 (CXCL9) into the mouse hepatitis virus genome results in protection from viral-induced encephalitis and hepatitis.
The role of the CXC chemokine ligand 9 (CXCL9) in host defense following infection with mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) was determined. Inoculation of the central nervous system (CNS) of CXCL9-/- mice with MHV resulted in accelerated and increased mortality compared to wild type mice supporting an important role for CXCL9 in anti-viral defense. In addition, infection of RAG1-/- or CXCL9-/- mice with a recombinant MHV expressing CXCL9 (MHV-CXCL9) resulted in protection from disease that correlated with reduced viral titers within the brain and NK cell-mediated protection in the liver. Survival in MHV-CXCL9-infected CXCL9-/- mice was associated with reduced viral burden within the brain that coincided with increased T cell infiltration. Similarly, viral clearance from the livers of MHV-CXCL9-infected mice was accelerated but independent of increased T cell or NK cell infiltration. These observations indicate that CXCL9 promotes protection from coronavirus-induced neurological and liver disease
Measuring fitness of Kenyan children with polyparasitic infections using the 20-meter shuttle run test as a morbidity metric.
BACKGROUND: To date, there has been no standardized approach to the assessment of aerobic fitness among children who harbor parasites. In quantifying the disability associated with individual or multiple chronic infections, accurate measures of physical fitness are important metrics. This is because exercise intolerance, as seen with anemia and many other chronic disorders, reflects the body's inability to maintain adequate oxygen supply (VO(2) max) to the motor tissues, which is frequently linked to reduced quality-of-life in terms of physical and job performance. The objective of our study was to examine the associations between polyparasitism, anemia, and reduced fitness in a high risk Kenyan population using novel implementation of the 20-meter shuttle run test (20mSRT), a well-standardized, low-technology physical fitness test.
METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Four villages in coastal Kenya were surveyed during 2009-2010. Children 5-18 years were tested for infection with Schistosoma haematobium (Sh), malaria, filaria, and geohelminth infections by standard methods. After anthropometric and hemoglobin testing, fitness was assessed with the 20 mSRT. The 20 mSRT proved easy to perform, requiring only minimal staff training. Parasitology revealed high prevalence of single and multiple parasitic infections in all villages, with Sh being the most common (25-62%). Anemia prevalence was 45-58%. Using multiply-adjusted linear modeling that accounted for household clustering, decreased aerobic capacity was significantly associated with anemia, stunting, and wasting, with some gender differences.
CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The 20 mSRT, which has excellent correlation with VO(2), is a highly feasible fitness test for low-resource settings. Our results indicate impaired fitness is common in areas endemic for parasites, where, at least in part, low fitness scores are likely to result from anemia and stunting associated with chronic infection. The 20 mSRT should be used as a common metric to quantify physical fitness and compare sub-clinical disability across many different disorders and community settings
Slam excitation scales for a large wave piercing catamaran and the effect on structural response
A unique slamming process is observed on high speed wave piercing catamarans (WPCs) such as those manufactured by INCAT Tasmania (shown in Fig. 1). For conventional catamarans, wet-deck slamming constitutes a significant design load and is managed through proper design of the tunnel height for the proposed operating conditions. While methods have been developed for prediction of wet-deck slam occurrence and slam magnitude in conventional catamarans (for example Ge et al., 2005) the significant differences in geometry limit application to wave piercing catamarans. Although slamming of wave piercing catamarans may be categorised as a wet-deck slam, the INCAT Tasmania wave piercing catamarans include a forward centre bow to prevent deck diving which significantly alters the water entry and slamming characteristics
The Epstein-Barr Virus Episome Maneuvers between Nuclear Chromatin Compartments during Reactivation.
The human genome is structurally organized in three-dimensional space to facilitate functional partitioning of transcription. We learned that the latent episome of the human Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) preferentially associates with gene-poor chromosomes and avoids gene-rich chromosomes. Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus behaves similarly, but human papillomavirus does not. Contacts on the EBV side localize to OriP, the latent origin of replication. This genetic element and the EBNA1 protein that binds there are sufficient to reconstitute chromosome association preferences of the entire episome. Contacts on the human side localize to gene-poor and AT-rich regions of chromatin distant from transcription start sites. Upon reactivation from latency, however, the episome moves away from repressive heterochromatin and toward active euchromatin. Our work adds three-dimensional relocalization to the molecular events that occur during reactivation. Involvement of myriad interchromosomal associations also suggests a role for this type of long-range association in gene regulation.IMPORTANCE The human genome is structurally organized in three-dimensional space, and this structure functionally affects transcriptional activity. We set out to investigate whether a double-stranded DNA virus, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), uses mechanisms similar to those of the human genome to regulate transcription. We found that the EBV genome associates with repressive compartments of the nucleus during latency and with active compartments during reactivation. This study advances our knowledge of the EBV life cycle, adding three-dimensional relocalization as a novel component to the molecular events that occur during reactivation. Furthermore, the data add to our understanding of nuclear compartments, showing that disperse interchromosomal interactions may be important for regulating transcription
Effect of Slam Force Duration on the Vibratory Response of a Lightweight High-Speed Wave-Piercing Catamaran
When the surface of a ship meets the water surface at an acute angle with a high relative velocity, significant short-duration forces can act on the hull plating. Such an event is referred to as a slam. Slam loads imparted on ships are generally considered to be of an impulsive nature. As such, slam loads induce vibration in the global hull structure that has implications for both hull girder bending strength and fatigue life of a vessel. A modal method is often used for structural analysis whereby higher order modes are neglected to reduce computational effort. The effect of the slam load temporal distribution on the whipping response and vertical bending moment are investigated here by using a continuous beam model with application to a 112 m INCAT wave-piercing catamaran and correlation to full-scale and model-scale experimental data. Experimental studies have indicated that the vertical bending moment is dominated by the fundamental longitudinal bending mode of the structure. However, it is shown here that although the fundamental mode is dominant in the global structural response, the higher order modes play a significant role in the early stages of the response and may not be readily identifiable if measurements are not taken sufficiently close to the slam location. A relationship between the slam duration and the relative modal response magnitudes is found, which is useful in determining the appropriate truncation of a modal solution
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Resonances in coupled πk,ηK scattering from lattice QCD
Coupled-channel and scattering amplitudes are determined by
studying the finite-volume energy spectra obtained from dynamical lattice QCD
calculations. Using a large basis of interpolating operators, including both
those resembling a construction and those resembling a pair of
mesons with relative momentum, a reliable excited-state spectrum can be
obtained. Working at , we find a gradual increase in
the phase-shift which may be identified with a broad scalar
resonance that couples strongly to and weakly to . The
low-energy behavior of this amplitude suggests a virtual bound-state that may
be related to the resonance. A bound state with is found
very close to the threshold energy, whose coupling to the
channel is compatible with that of the experimental . Evidence is
found for a narrow resonance in . Isospin--3/2 scattering is
also studied and non-resonant phase-shifts spanning the whole elastic
scattering region are obtained.We thank our colleagues within the Hadron Spectrum
Collaboration. We also thank R. Briceno, M.R. Pennington,
C.J.Shultz and A.P. Szczepaniak for fruitful discussions.
Chroma [63] and QUDA [64, 65] were used to perform
this work on clusters at Jefferson Laboratory under the
USQCD Initiative and the LQCD ARRA project. Gauge
configurations were generated using resources awarded
from the U.S. Department of Energy INCITE program
at Oak Ridge National Lab, the NSF Teragrid at the
Texas Advanced Computer Center and the Pittsburgh
Supercomputer Center, as well as at Jefferson Lab. RGE
and JJD acknowledge support from U.S. Department of
Energy contract DE-AC05-06OR23177, under which Jefferson
Science Associates, LLC, manages and operates
Jefferson Laboratory. JJD acknowledges support from
the U.S. Department of Energy Early Career award contract
DE-SC0006765. CET acknowledges partial support
from the Science and Technology Facilities Council
(U.K.) [grant number ST/L000385/1].This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available at http://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.91.054008
Patient-Specific Prosthetic Fingers by Remote Collaboration - A Case Study
The concealment of amputation through prosthesis usage can shield an amputee
from social stigma and help improve the emotional healing process especially at
the early stages of hand or finger loss. However, the traditional techniques in
prosthesis fabrication defy this as the patients need numerous visits to the
clinics for measurements, fitting and follow-ups. This paper presents a method
for constructing a prosthetic finger through online collaboration with the
designer. The main input from the amputee comes from the Computer Tomography
(CT) data in the region of the affected and the non-affected fingers. These
data are sent over the internet and the prosthesis is constructed using
visualization, computer-aided design and manufacturing tools. The finished
product is then shipped to the patient. A case study with a single patient
having an amputated ring finger at the proximal interphalangeal joint shows
that the proposed method has a potential to address the patient's psychosocial
concerns and minimize the exposure of the finger loss to the public.Comment: Open Access articl
Historic landmarks in clinical transplantation: Conclusions from the consensus conference at the University of California, Los Angeles
The transplantation of organs, cells, and tissues has burgeoned during the last quarter century, with the development of multiple new specialty fields. However, the basic principles that made this possible were established over a three-decade period, beginning during World War II and ending in 1974. At the historical consensus conference held at UCLA in March 1999, 11 early workers in the basic science or clinical practice of transplantation (or both) reached agreement on the most significant contribution of this era that ultimately made transplantation the robust clinical discipline it is today. These discoveries and achievements are summarized here is six tables and annotated with references
Baryon-Baryon Interactions
After a short survey of some topics of interest in the study of baryon-baryon
scattering, the recent Nijmegen energy dependent partial wave analysis (PWA) of
the nucleon-nucleon data is reviewed. In this PWA the energy range for both pp
and np is now 0 < Tlab < 350 MeV and a chi^2_{d.o.f.}=1.08 was reached. The
implications for the pion-nucleon coupling constants are discussed. Comments
are made with respect to recent discussions around this coupling constant in
the literature. In the second part, we briefly sketch the picture of the baryon
in several, more or less QCD-based, quark-models that have been rather
prominent in the literature. Inspired by these pictures we constructed a new
soft-core model for the nucleon-nucleon interaction and present the first
results of this model in a chi^2 -fit to the new multi-energy Nijmegen PWA.
With this new model we succeeded in narrowing the gap between theory and
experiment at low energies. For the energies Tlab = 25-320 MeV we reached a
record low chi^2_{p.d.p.} = 1.16. We finish the paper with some conclusions and
an outlook describing the extension of the new model to baryon-baryon
scattering.Comment: 12 pages LaTeX and one postscript figure included. Invited talk
presented at the XIVth European Conference of Few-Body Problems in Physics,
Amsterdam, August 23-28, 199
The effect of hip joint angle on isometric midthigh pull kinetics
The aim of this study were to compare isometric midthigh pull (IMTP) peak force (PF), time-specific force values (100-, 150-, and 200 ms), rate of force development (RFD) at predetermined time bands (0–100, 0–150, and 0–200 ms) and net forces between 2 commonly adopted hip joint angles (145°[hip145] and 175°[hip175]) with a 145° standardized knee angle.
Twenty-eight collegiate athletes (age: 21.7 ± 1.5 years, height: 1.75 ± 0.08 m, mass: 81.5 ± 8.4 kg) performed 2 IMTP trials at each hip joint angle in a randomized counterbalanced order. A subgroup (n = 10) performed the IMTP testing 7 days later to establish the between-session reliability. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) and coefficient of variation (CV) demonstrated high within-session reliability and acceptable variability for all IMTP kinetics at each posture (ICC ≥ 0.86, CV ≤ 13.7%), excluding hip175 RFD 0–100 ms and net force at 100 ms which demonstrated greater variability (CV = 18.1–18.5%). High between-session reliability and acceptable variability were observed for all IMTP kinetics at each posture (ICC = 0.72–0.97, CV = 4.5–12.8%), excluding RFD 0–100 ms which demonstrated greater variability for both postures. Hip145 produced significantly greater time-specific force values (p ≤ 0.025, g = 0.25–0.28), RFD at predetermined time bands (p ≤ 0.001, g = 0.59–0.78), and net forces (p ≤ 0.001, g = 0.57–0.74) compared with hip175. Trivial nonsignificant differences were demonstrated between postures for PF and force at 100 ms (p > 0.05, g ≤ 0.14). Significantly greater body weights (weighing period force) were observed with hip175 compared with hip145 (p < 0.001, g = 0.74).
Coaches should consider administering a hip145 for IMTP testing as greater IMTP kinetics and lower levels of pretension during the weighing period are achieved with this posture
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