The Porphyromonas gingivalis hemagglutinins HagB and HagC are major mediators of adhesion and biofilm formation

Porphyromonas gingivalis is a bacterium associated with chronic periodontitis that possesses a family of genes encoding hemagglutinins required for heme acquisition. In this study we generated ΔhagB and ΔhagC mutants in strain W83 and demonstrate that both hagB and hagC are required for adherence to oral epithelial cells. Unexpectedly, a double ΔhagB/ΔhagC mutant had less severe adherence defects than either of the single mutants, but was found to exhibit increased expression of the gingipain-encoding genes rgpA and kgp, suggesting that a ΔhagB/ΔhagC mutant is only viable in populations of cells that exhibit increased expression of genes involved in heme acquisition. Disruption of hagB in the fimbriated strain ATCC33277 demonstrated that HagB is also required for stable attachment of fimbriated bacteria to oral epithelial cells. Mutants of hagC were also found to form defective single and multi-species biofilms that had reduced biomass relative to biofilms formed by the wild-type strain. This study highlights the hitherto unappreciated importance of these genes in oral colonization and biofilm formation

CuRL: Neural curve layers for global image enhancement

We present a novel approach to adjust global image properties such as colour, saturation, and luminance using human-interpretable image enhancement curves, inspired by the Photoshop curves tool. Our method, dubbed neural CURve Layers (CURL), is designed as a multi-colour space neural retouching block trained jointly in three different colour spaces (HSV, CIELab, RGB) guided by a novel multi-colour space loss. The curves are fully differentiable and are trained end-to-end for different computer vision problems including photo enhancement (RGB-to-RGB) and as part of the image signal processing pipeline for image formation (RAW-to-RGB). To demonstrate the effectiveness of CURL we combine this global image transformation block with a pixel-level (local) image multi-scale encoder-decoder backbone network. In an extensive experimental evaluation we show that CURL produces state-of-the-art image quality versus recently proposed deep learning approaches in both objective and perceptual metrics, setting new state-of-the-art performance on multiple public datasets. Our code is publicly available at: https://github.com/sjmoran/CURL

BIOMECHANICS OF RUNNING - Electromyographic Analysis of the Hip during Jogging, Running and Sprinting

The patterns of muscle action during human locomotion have been investigated for several decades. Lower extremity electromyographic activity in walking was investigated by Bartholomew and the Prosthetic Research Group at Berkeley in 1953. (1) Others investigated the actions of specific muscles during various leg movements. Basmajian and LeBan et al. (6) examined the electromyographic action of the iliopsoas muscle. These studies have led to the investigation of running. Saito et aI., (10) presented temporal data on the gait cycle of running. James and Brubaker (5) presented a descriptive analysis of running. Other researchers have directed their work toward sprinting: Fenn (4) investigated frictional and kinetic factors in 1930, and Dillman (3) and Ralph Mann (7) used kinetic analysis. Mann and Hagy (9) and Mann et aI. (8) investigated temporal and electromyographic patterns of walking, running and sprinting. This study investigates and describes the electromyographic activity ofthe lower extrJmities and trunk musculature duringjogging, running, and sprinting

Preparation and Characterization of Cerium (III) Doped Captopril Nanoparticles and Study of their Photoluminescence Properties

Indexación: Web of Science. DOAJ.In this research Ce3+ doped Captopril nanoparticles (Ce3+ doped CAP-NP) were prepared by a cold welding process and have been studied. Captopril may be applied in the treatment of hypertension and some types of congestive heart failure and for preventing kidney failure due to high blood pressure and diabetes. CAP-NP was synthesized by a cold welding process. The cerium nitrate was added at a ratio of 10% and the optical properties have been studied by photoluminescence (PL). The synthesized compounds were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The size of CAP-NP was calculated by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The size of CAP-NP was in the range of 50 nm. Morphology of surface of synthesized nanoparticles was studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Finally the luminescence properties of undoped and doped CAP-NP were compared. PL spectra from undoped CAP-NP show a strong pack in the range of 546 nm after doped cerium ion into the captopril appeared two bands at 680 and 357 nm, which is ascribed to the well-known 5d–4f emission band of the cerium.http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/chem.2016.14.issue-1/chem-2016-0008/chem-2016-0008.xm

String effects and the distribution of the glue in mesons at finite temperature

The distribution of the gluon action density in mesonic systems is investigated at finite temperature. The simulations are performed in quenched QCD for two temperatures below the deconfinment phase. Unlike the gluonic profiles displayed at T=0, the action density iso-surfaces display a prolate-spheroid like shape. The curved width profile of the flux-tube is found to be consistent with the prediction of the free Bosonic string model at large distances.Comment: 14 pages,10 figure

PREPARATION, IDENTIFICATION AND BIOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF NEW FLUORIDE NANOCOMPOUNDS

Indexación: Web of Science; Scopus.Nanoparticles (NPs) of new fluoride (SrF2 and MgF2) nanocompounds were synthesized by the simple chemical method of precipitation in ethanol. Synthesis of the strontium fluoride (SrF2)-magnesium oxide (MgO) nanocomposite was achieved through the ultrasonic method. These prepared nanopowders were characterized through Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy, Powder X-ray Diffraction (PXRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). FT-IR confirmed the purity of the synthesized fluoride NPs by evaluation of the vibrations, and UV-Visible showed the intense absorption peaks of NPs. PXRD analysis indicated the average of particle size, and SEM demonstrated a nearly spherical morphology of the NPs. The antibacterical properties of the nanopowders on Staphylococcus Aureus, Bacillus Subtilis and E. Aklay bacteria were studied, with the strongest effect by the magnesium fluoride (MgF2) NPs and the SrF2-MgO nanocomposite.http://ref.scielo.org/yfr3f

Precision electromagnetic structure of decuplet baryons in the chiral regime

The electromagnetic properties of the baryon decuplet are calculated in quenched QCD on a 20^3 x 40 lattice with a lattice spacing of 0.128 fm using the fat-link irrelevant clover (FLIC) fermion action with quark masses providing a pion mass as low as 300 MeV. Magnetic moments and charge radii are extracted from the electric and magnetic form factors for each individual quark sector. From these, the corresponding baryon properties are constructed. We present results for the higher order moments of the spin-3/2 baryons, including the electric quadrupole moment E2 and the magnetic octupole moment M3. The world's first determination of a non-zero M3 form factor for the Delta baryon is presented. With these results we provide a conclusive analysis which shows that decuplet baryons are deformed. We compare the decuplet baryon results from a similar lattice calculation of the octet baryons. We establish that the environment sensitivity is far less pronounced in the case of the decuplet baryons compared to that in the octet baryons. A surprising result is that the charge radii of the decuplet baryons are generally smaller than that of the octet baryons. The magnetic moment of the Delta^+ reveals a turn over in the low quark mass region, making it smaller than the proton magnetic moment. These results are consistent with the expectations of quenched chiral perturbation theory. A similar turn over is also noticed in the magnetic moment of the Sigma^*0, but not for Xi^* where only kaon loops can appear in quenched QCD. The electric quadrupole moment of the Omega^- baryon is positive when the negative charge factor is included, and is equal to 0.86 +- 0.12 x 10^-2 fm^2, indicating an oblate shape.Comment: 30 pages, 32 figure

Biological characteristics and mortality of western butterfish (Pentapodus vitta), an abundant bycatch species of prawn trawling and recreational fishing in a large subtropical embayment

The western butterfish (Pentapodus vitta) is numerous in the bycatch of prawn trawling and recreational fishing in Shark Bay, Western Australia. We have thus determined crucial aspects of its biological characteristics and the potential impact of fishing on its abundance within this large subtropical marine embayment. Although both sexes attained a maximum age of 8 years, males grow more rapidly and to a larger size. Maturity is attained at the end of the first year of life and spawning occurs between October and January. The use of a Bayesian approach to combine independent estimates for total mortality, Z, and natural mortality, M, yielded slightly higher point estimates for Z than M. This result indicates that P. vitta is lightly impacted by fishing. It is relevant that, potentially, the individuals can spawn twice before recruitment into the fishery and that 73% of recreationally caught individuals are returned live to the water