Effects of Lactobacillus johnsonii and Lactobacillus reuteri on gut barrier function and heat shock proteins in intestinal porcine epithelial cells

Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are a set of highly conserved proteins that can serve as intestinal gate keepers in gut homeostasis. Here, effects of a probiotic, Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG), and two novel porcine isolates, Lactobacillus johnsonii strain P47-HY and Lactobacillus reuteri strain P43-HUV, on cytoprotective HSP expression and gut barrier function, were investigated in a porcine IPEC-J2 intestinal epithelial cell line model. The IPEC-J2 cells polarized on a permeable filter exhibited villus-like cell phenotype with development of apical microvilli. Western blot analysis detected HSP expression in IPEC-J2 and revealed that L. johnsonii and L. reuteri strains were able to significantly induce HSP27, despite high basal expression in IPEC-J2, whereas LGG did not. For HSP72, only the supernatant of L. reuteri induced the expression, which was comparable to the heat shock treatment, which indicated that HSP72 expression was more stimulus-specific. The protective effect of lactobacilli was further studied in IPEC-J2 under an enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) challenge. ETEC caused intestinal barrier destruction, as reflected by loss of cell-cell contact, reduced IPEC-J2 cell viability and transepithelial electrical resistance, and disruption of tight junction protein zonula occludens-1. In contrast, the L. reuteri treatment substantially counteracted these detrimental effects and preserved the barrier function. L. johnsonii and LGG also achieved barrier protection, partly by directly inhibiting ETEC attachment. Together, the results indicate that specific strains of Lactobacillus can enhance gut barrier function through cytoprotective HSP induction and fortify the cell protection against ETEC challenge through tight junction protein modulation and direct interaction with pathogens

The "Free from housing accessibility problems" app

Publisher Copyright: © 2016 The authors and IOS Press.The present study concerns the development of a computerized tool targeting housing accessibility issues. A user-centered approach involving professionals from the housing sector and senior citizens from four European countries resulted in a fully functional prototype of a mobile application (app) including an apartment database. The app raises awareness on housing accessibility and has the potential to support decision making and strengthen all citizens regardless of functional capacity to be more active in their endeavors for a satisfying housing solution. Further refinements and additional features are needed to enhance the potential benefits; they include addressing potential challenges facing senior citizens, developing interactive features that allow users to provide input and adapting to different national contexts to make the app applicable for the European market.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Проволочные антенны, решетки и рассеиватели. Численное моделирование и новые конструкции

Автореферат диссертации на соискание ученой степени доктора технических наук

Importance of plasticity and local adaptation for coping with changing salinity in coastal areas: a test case with barnacles in the Baltic Sea

Background:Salinity plays an important role in shaping coastal marine communities. Near-future climate predictions indicate that salinity will decrease in many shallow coastal areas due to increased precipitation; however, few studies have addressed this issue. The ability of ecosystems to cope with future changes will depend on species’ capacities to acclimatise or adapt to new environmental conditions. Here, we investigated the effects of a strong salinity gradient (the Baltic Sea system – Baltic, Kattegat, Skagerrak) on plasticity and adaptations in the euryhaline barnacle Balanus improvisus. We used a common-garden approach, where multiple batches of newly settled barnacles from each of three different geographical areas along the Skagerrak-Baltic salinity gradient were exposed to corresponding native salinities (6, 15 and 30 PSU), and phenotypic traits including mortality, growth, shell strength, condition index and reproductive maturity were recorded.ResultsWe found that B. improvisus was highly euryhaline, but had highest growth and reproductive maturity at intermediate salinities. We also found that low salinity had negative effects on other fitness-related traits including initial growth and shell strength, although mortality was also lowest in low salinity. Overall, differences between populations in most measured traits were weak, indicating little local adaptation to salinity. Nonetheless, we observed some population-specific responses – notably that populations from high salinity grew stronger shells in their native salinity compared to the other populations, possibly indicating adaptation to differences in local predation pressure.ConclusionsOur study shows that B. improvisus is an example of a true brackish-water species, and that plastic responses are more likely than evolutionary tracking in coping with future changes in coastal salinity

Diagnostic properties of metabolic perturbations in rheumatoid arthritis

Introduction: The aim of this study was to assess the feasibility of diagnosing early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) by measuring selected metabolic biomarkers. Methods: We compared the metabolic profile of patients with RA with that of healthy controls and patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsoA). The metabolites were measured using two different chromatography-mass spectrometry platforms, thereby giving a broad overview of serum metabolites. The metabolic profiles of patient and control groups were compared using multivariate statistical analysis. The findings were validated in a follow-up study of RA patients and healthy volunteers. Results: RA patients were diagnosed with a sensitivity of 93% and a specificity of 70% in a validation study using detection of 52 metabolites. Patients with RA or PsoA could be distinguished with a sensitivity of 90% and a specificity of 94%. Glyceric acid, D-ribofuranose and hypoxanthine were increased in RA patients, whereas histidine, threonic acid, methionine, cholesterol, asparagine and threonine were all decreased compared with healthy controls. Conclusions: Metabolite profiling (metabolomics) is a potentially useful technique for diagnosing RA. The predictive value was without regard to the presence of antibodies against cyclic citrullinated peptides

Authentic examination for programming courses

This paper describes our experience with an authentic examination system for programming courses. We briefly describe the architecture of the system, and present results of evaluating the system in real examination situations. Some of the factors studied in detail are the on-line interactions between the students and examiners, the response times and their effects on the pressure experienced by student, the acceptance of the method among the students, and whether the examination form is gender-neutral

Collecting and analyzing Tor exit node traffic

Background. With increased Internet usage occurring across the world journalists, dissidents and criminals have moved their operations online, and in turn, governments and law enforcement have increased their surveillance of their country’s networks. This has increased the popularity of programs masking users’ identities online such as the Tor Project. By encrypting and routing the traffic through several nodes, the users’ identity is hidden. But how are Tor users utilizing the network, and is any of it in the plain text despite the dangers of it? How has the usage of Tor changed compared to 11 years ago? Objectives. The thesis objective is to analyze captured Tor network traffic that reveals what data is sent through the network. The collected data helps draw conclusions about Tor usage and is compared with previous studies. Methods. Three Tor exit nodes are set up and operated for one week in the US, Germany, and Japan. We deploy packet sniffers performing a deep packet inspection on each traffic flow to identify attributes such as application protocol, number of bytes sent in a flow, and content-type if the traffic was sent in plain text. All stored data is anonymized. Results. The results show that 100.35 million flows were recorded, with 32.47%of them sending 4 or fewer packets in total. The most used application protocol was TLS with 55.03% of total traffic. The HTTP usage was 15.91% and 16% was unknown protocol(s). The countries receiving the most traffic were the US with over45% of all traffic, followed by the Netherlands, UK, and Germany with less than 10%of recorded traffic as its destination. The most frequently used destination ports were 443 at 49.5%, 5222 at 12.7%, 80 with 11.9%, and 25 at 9.3%.Conclusions. The experiment shows that it is possible to perform traffic analysis on the Tor network and acquire significant data. It shows that the Tor network is widely used in the world but with the US and Europe accounting for most of the traffic. As expected there has been a shift from HTTP to HTTPS traffic when compared to previous research. However, there is still unencrypted traffic on the network, where some of the traffic could be explained by automated tools like web crawlers. Tor users need to increase their awareness in what traffic they are sending through the network, as a user with malicious intent can perform the same experiment and potentially acquire unencrypted sensitive data

Thin foil analysis in the SEM

This paper explores the possibilities for imaging and chemical analysis of thin foil specimens in the SEM. Bright field and dark field imaging provide high resolution imaging with crystallographic information within the grains. In multiphase materials with varying electron transmission the dark field images generally provide a more even contrast in all phases. It is possible to obtain high-quality quantitative EDX data with high spatial resolution