The contribution of IFN gamma, IL-10, and TGF beta in Mycobacterium paratuberculosis infection

The purpose of this work was to investigate the interaction of the pro-inflammatory cytokine, IFN-gamma, and the anti-inflammatory cytokines, TGF-beta and IL-10, in the subclinical and clinical stages of Johne\u27s disease. A retrospective quantitative analysis of IFN-gamma, IL-10 and TGF-beta mRNA gene expression in tissues such as ileum, ileal-cecal junction, ileal-cecal node, and mesenteric lymph node obtained from cows naturally infected with Mycobacterium paratuberculosis and healthy non-infected control cows revealed an upregulation of IL-10 and TGF-beta in tissues obtained from clinically infected animals but not in tissues obtained from healthy or subclinically infected cows. Analysis of IFN-gamma mRNA gene expression in these tissues showed that expression of this cytokine is upregulated only in subclinical cows. We further evaluated the effects of exogenous IFN-gamma, IL-10 and TGF-beta in an extended culture system (7--12 days) using unfractionated PBMC cultures from naturally infected and healthy non-infected cows after infection with live M. paratuberculosis. We determined that the presence of IL-10 and TGF-beta in culture supernatants was correlated with decreased ability of monocyte-derived macrophages in the unfractionated cell cultures to kill M. paratuberculosis in vitro, with a resultant decrease in IFN-gamma production in these cultures. IL-10 and TGF-beta were upregulated in response to in vitro infection in cell cultures from infected animals regardless of their disease status. Prior to in vitro infection with M. paratuberculosis TGF-beta levels were lower in subclinically infected animals compared to clinically infected or healthy animals. After in vitro infection, TGF-beta levels in culture supernatants of subclinically infected animals were similar to that of healthy animals. This is the first study to investigate the interactive roles of IFN-gamma, IL-10 and TGF-beta in natural and experimental M. paratuberculosis infections. The data presented here suggest an important regulatory role of anti-inflammatory cytokines IL-10 and TGF-beta on IFN-gamma production and the ability of macrophages to kill M. paratuberculosis in vitro

The role of T-cell-mediated immune response in the development and resolution of colitis induced by Serpulina hyodysenteriae

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/4146297

A simple and efficient preprocessing step for convex hull problem

The present paper is concerned with a recursive algorithm as a preprocessing step to find the convex hull of $n$ random points uniformly distributed in the plane. For such a set of points, it is shown that eliminating all but $O(\log n)$ of points can derive the same convex hull as the input set. Finally it will be shown that the running time of the algorithm is $O(n

Lysosomal and Dopaminergic D2 Inhibition Reversed the Effect of Morphine on Learning and Memory in Male Wistar Rats Relating Mitochondrial Biogenesis

Introduction: Opiates dependence has many side effects on body especially brain neuroplasticity leading to changes in behavior. In this study, we evaluated the effects of morphine dependence on learning and memory as well as on Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator -1 alpha (PGC-1α) protein level as a key regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis. Also, by using Chloroquine (lysosomal inhibitor) and dopaminergic system inhibitor (Sulpiride), the molecular mechanism, underling morphine addiction related to lysosome, dopamine receptors and mitochondria, has been considered in this study. Materials and Methods: Male albino Wiastar rats received morphine in their water for 21 days; during the ending 4 days, they received daily intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) injection of Chloroquine diphosphate (50 mM). Also, i.c.v. injection of Sulpiride (0.25µg/rat) was done before behavioral test. Shuttle box apparatus was used for learning and memory evaluation. After behavioral test, the brains of rats were extracted and the level of PGC-1α protein was investigated by western blotting. Results: Results indicated that morphine oral administration has reduced learning and memory-like behavior. Pre-training i.c.v. injection of Chloroquine and Sulpiride improved learning and memory. PGC-1α protein level in rats which received Chloroquine and also in the morphine group increased and there was a more significant increase in rats which received morphine, Chloroquine and  Sulpiride altogether. Conclusion: Morphine has an adverse effect on learning and memory as it has been shown with spending more time in dark rooms of Shuttle box apparatus, which was reversed by Chloroquine (lysosomal inhibitor) and dopamine inhibitor (Sulpiride).  Increasing PGC-1α protein level may imply the important role of mitochondrial biogenesis in morphine-dependent learning changes. Overall, data suggest dopaminergic system along with lysosome and mitochondrial activity play an important role in morphine addiction status

The effect of crocin on total sleep-deprivation induced amnesia in male Wistar rats

Introduction: In recent years, Crocin has been used for its pharmacological functions, such as memory and learning enhancement. The aim of the present study was to assess the effect of Crocin on total sleep deprivation (TSD)-induced amnesia in male Wistar rats. Materials and Methods: The water box apparatus was used to induce sleep deprivation followed by Y- maze task as an index of learning and memory (the percentage of time in the novel arm during the retention phase was reported as an index of memory performances). The rats were divided into 12 groups, 8 rats in each group, including four control groups, four sham groups, and four TSD groups. Each group received saline and Crocin at doses of 1, 5 or 15 mg/kg twice a day. Results: The findings revealed that TSD for 24 h impaired memory function. In addition, the intra-peritoneal injection of Crocin at all doses (1, 5 and 15 mg/kg) did not change the percentage of time spent in the novel arm of Y-maze in sham of TSD, whereas it abolished the responses induced by the TSD groups. Conclusion: The findings showed a close interaction between the Crocin and SD. Based on the findings, Crocin seems to possess a modulatory effect on SD-induced amnesia

A study of thin rod dynamical stability

The stability loss mechanism is associated with the excitation of periodic longitudinal waves in the rod, arising from the sudden application of a load, which, in turn, leads to transverse parametric resonances. A longitudinal impact on a thin elastic rod, generating in it a periodic system of longitudinal waves, is considered. For certain values ​​of the parameters of the problem in the linear approximation, these waves generate parametric resonances, accompanied by an unlimited increase in the amplitude of transverse oscillations. To obtain finite amplitudes, we consider a quasilinear system, which takes into account the influence of transverse oscillations on the longitudinal. Earlier, this system was numerically solved by the Bubnov – Galerkin method. Here an approximate analytical solution of this system, based on two-scale expansions, is constructed

The Effect of Happiness on Social and Economic Decision-Making Utility

Introduction: Neuroeconomics is a field of study that brings together economics, psychology and neuroscience. Human economic and rational decision making is affected by mood and feelings like happiness, sadness, etc.  In the current study, effects of happiness in economic decision making was examined, using the Prisoner’s Dilemma game. Materials and Methods: Male participants were chosen for each group based on self-rating about their feeling of happiness in life, followed by Oxford Happiness Questionnaire. Two groups were considered: group one who felt happy and group two who did not feel happy.  The ability of making rational decision was examined in Prisoner’s Dilemma game. Two players simultaneously decide their strategy: betray the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, or cooperate with the other by remaining silent.  Results: The influence of feeling happy on social and economic decision-making was detected in two different groups; the percentage of cooperation in the group which did not feel happy (group two) was 1.5 fold (***P<0.001) which was more than other group. This data manifests non-rational decision making in group two (unhappy) compared to group one. Conclusion: The main finding of the present study is the significant relationship between happiness and economic decision making. Game theory paradigms suggested that cooperation is not considered as a rational decision. Current data shows that cooperative choices were significantly more in the group which was not happy, showing the effect of happiness in rational decision making

Towards a collaborative context-aware offloading scheme in mobile cloud computing

The use of modern mobile devices over traditional desktop and tab devices is dramatically increased. Mobile devices have limited resources regarding computation power, storage and battery. Moreover, mobile apps market is a huge market with billions of applications. Some of those applications like gaming and pattern recognition are attracted users to be installed. This kind of apps are known as resource-hungry apps due to the need for a powerful device to normally run such apps. From here, researchers work to present efficient solutions to augment the resource-poor mobile devices to be more powerful. One of those solutions is to collaborate among neighboring devices to offload some part(s) of an application. Mobile device cloud (MDC) comes with this idea in order to save time and energy. Moreover, new studies aim to investigate for social factors among mobile devices. Devices sharing some kind of friendship or some common interests are more likely to meet and exchange information. We study the social factors in a comprehensive way in order to see which factor or combination of factors are the best in conserving execution time and energy. In our investigation study we exploit for some of well-known tracefiles (like Sigcomm09 and Unical14). For those tracefiles we do sanity check and clean the datasets form noise. Then, we define a set of connectivity metrics for a pair of nodes, including: number of contacts, duration of a contact and intercontact time. After that, we quantify for the datasets observations to know which strategy is the best in terms of the number of contacts and total gain acquired by applying the connectivity metrics. The output of this study indicates that a pair of nodes with at least 4 common interests have the highest number of contacts with about 63% among all contacts. Moreover, adding direct friendship to the pair with at least 4 common interest gives the highest gain regarding the connectivity metrics. with about 64%. Thus, we think that exploiting for the two outputs from this study will give best results in the case of task offloading in a way to save time and energy. Furthermore, we test for our investigation study numerically against some of proposed offloading algorithm in order to get better understanding of the effects of social factors. Here we use some profiles based on real devices and consider some task capabilities based on real test-beds. Moreover, we design a set of offloading algorithms one of them is based on our investigation study (S-based) and the other algorithms exploit for one social factors. Indeed, we test for the replication factor on the offloading performance. Furthermore, we test for medium and high computation tasks against local execution and against our proposed algorithms to see which strategy is the best in terms of number of contact and the gain regarding the connectivity metrics. This help us in answering 2 questions: (i) when to offload a task?, and (ii) what kind of tasks is good to be offloaded?. Numerically, the algorithm based on our investigation study works fine and gives good results regarding time and success rate. The same algorithm saves more than 65% of time regarding local execution and more than 40% regarding Random offloading. Moreover, S-based gives results close to the lower-bound of the offloading (i.e. Flooding). Respect to replication factor, only 2 replicas are enough to reach the maximum performance and to overcome for tasks loss or failure problems. Finally, we run the whole set of algorithms in real simulation environment using the ONE simulator. Here, we test for number of hosts equivalent to Sigcomm09 (i.e. 76 hosts). In the ONE simulator, we propose that around one-third of the nodes are offloaders each with u tasks and the other hosts are offloadees. Moreover, we propose two cases: the first one considering all devices of the same profile (homogeneous case) while the other consider the offloadee profiles are higher (heterogeneous case). Simulation results under the ONE simulator are very close to the results obtained by numerical simulation