Closed Int Soft -Ideals and Int Soft c--Ideals

The aim of this paper is to lay a foundation for providing a soft algebraic tool in considering many problems that contain uncertainties. In order to provide these soft algebraic structures, the notions of closed intersectional soft -ideals and intersectional soft commutative -ideals are introduced, and related properties are investigated. Conditions for an intersectional soft -ideal to be closed are provided. Characterizations of an intersectional soft commutative -ideal are established, and a new intersectional soft c--ideal from an old one is constructed

Prevalence of Inducible Clindamycin Resistance in Staphylococcal Isolates at a Korean Tertiary Care Hospital

Clindamycin resistance in Staphylococcus species can be either constitutive or inducible. Inducible resistance cannot be detected by the conventional antimicrobial susceptibility test. In this study, we determined the prevalence of inducible clindamycin resistance in staphylococcal isolates at a Korean tertiary care hospital. Between February and September 2004, 1,519 isolates of Staphylococcus aureus and 1,043 isolates of coagulase-negative staphylococci (CNS) were tested for inducible resistance by the D-zone test. Overall, 17% of MRSA, 84% of MSSA, 37% of MRCNS, and 70% of MSCNS were susceptible to clindamycin. Of the erythromycin non-susceptible, clindamycin-susceptible isolates, 32% of MRSA, 35% of MSSA, 90% of MRCNS, and 94% of MSCNS had inducible clindamycin resistance. Inducible clindamycin resistance in staphylococci was highly prevalent in Korea. This study indicates importance of the D-zone test in detecting inducible clindamycin resistance in staphylococci to aid in the optimal treatment of patients

REX-1 Expression and p38 MAPK Activation Status Can Determine Proliferation/Differentiation Fates in Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells

BACKGROUND: REX1/ZFP42 is a well-known embryonic stem cell (ESC) marker. However, the role of REX1, itself, is relatively unknown because the function of REX1 has only been reported in the differentiation of ESCs via STAT signaling pathways. Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) isolated from young tissues and cancer cells express REX1. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDING: Human umbilical cord blood-derived MSCs (hUCB-MSCs) and adipose tissue-derived MSCs (hAD-MSCs) strongly express REX1 and have a lower activation status of p38 MAPK, but bone marrow-derived MSCs (hBM-MSCs) have weak REX1 expression and higher activation of p38 MAPK. These results indicated that REX1 expression in hMSCs was positively correlated with proliferation rates but inversely correlated with the phosphorylation of p38 MAPK. In hUCB-MSCs, the roles of REX1 and p38 MAPK were investigated, and a knockdown study was performed using a lentiviral vector-based small hairpin RNA (shRNA). After REX1 knockdown, decreased cell proliferation was observed. In REX1 knocked-down hUCB-MSCs, the osteogenic differentiation ability deteriorated, but the adipogenic potential increased or was similar to that observed in the controls. The phosphorylation of p38 MAPK in hUCB-MSCs significantly increased after REX1 knockdown. After p38 MAPK inhibitor treatment, the cell growth in REX1 knocked-down hUCB-MSCs almost recovered, and the suppressed expression levels of CDK2 and CCND1 were also restored. The expression of MKK3, an upstream regulator of p38 MAPK, significantly increased in REX1 knocked-down hUCB-MSCs. The direct binding of REX1 to the MKK3 gene was confirmed by a chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assay. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These findings showed that REX1 regulates the proliferation/differentiation of hMSCs through the suppression of p38 MAPK signaling via the direct suppression of MKK3. Therefore, p38 MAPK and REX-1 status can determine the cell fate of adult stem cells (ASCs). These results were the first to show the role of REX1 in the proliferation/differentiation of ASCs

NICE 2023 Zero-shot Image Captioning Challenge

In this report, we introduce NICE project\footnote{\url{https://nice.lgresearch.ai/}} and share the results and outcomes of NICE challenge 2023. This project is designed to challenge the computer vision community to develop robust image captioning models that advance the state-of-the-art both in terms of accuracy and fairness. Through the challenge, the image captioning models were tested using a new evaluation dataset that includes a large variety of visual concepts from many domains. There was no specific training data provided for the challenge, and therefore the challenge entries were required to adapt to new types of image descriptions that had not been seen during training. This report includes information on the newly proposed NICE dataset, evaluation methods, challenge results, and technical details of top-ranking entries. We expect that the outcomes of the challenge will contribute to the improvement of AI models on various vision-language tasks.Comment: Tech report, project page https://nice.lgresearch.ai

Phylogenetic Characterization of Two Novel Commensal Bacteria Involved with Innate Immune Homeostasis in Drosophila melanogaster▿

During a previous study on the molecular interaction between commensal bacteria and host gut immunity, two novel bacterial strains, A911T and G707T, were isolated from the gut of Drosophila melanogaster. In this study, these strains were characterized in a polyphasic taxonomic study using phenotypic, genetic, and chemotaxonomic analyses. We show that the strains represent novel species in the family Acetobacteraceae. Strain G707T, a highly pathogenic organism, represents a new species in the genus Gluconobacter, “Gluconobacter morbifer” sp. nov. (type strain G707 = KCTC 22116T = JCM 15512T). Strain A911T, dominantly present in the normal Drosphila gut community, represents a novel genus and species, designated “Commensalibacter intestini” gen. nov., sp. nov. (type strain A911 = KCTC 22117T = JCM 15511T)