Helicobacter pylori infection and insulin resistance in diabetic and nondiabetic population

Helicobacter pylori (HP) is a common worldwide infection with known gastrointestinal and nongastrointestinal complications. One of the gastrointestinal side effects posed for this organism is its role in diabetes and increased insulin resistance. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between HP and insulin resistance in type 2 diabetic patients and nondiabetics. This cross-sectional study was carried out from May to December 2013 on 211 diabetic patients referred to diabetes clinic of Shahid Beheshti Hospital of Qom and 218 patients without diabetes. HP was evaluated using serology method and insulin resistance was calculated using HOMA-IR. The prevalence of H. pylori infection was 55.8% and 44.2% in diabetics and nondiabetics (P=0.001). The study population was divided into two HP positive and negative groups. Among nondiabetics, insulin resistance degree was 3.01±2.12 and 2.74±2.18 in HP+ and HP- patients, respectively P=0.704. Oppositely, insulin resistance was significantly higher in diabetic HP+ patients rather than seronegative ones (4.484±2.781 versus 3.160±2.327, P=0.013). In diabetic patients, in addition to higher prevalence of HP, it causes a higher degree of insulin resistance. © 2014 Jamshid Vafaeimanesh et al

The State of Religion in China

The People\u27s Republic of China has a complicated relationship with religion, which became even tenser within the past decade. This paper will analyze the history of religion within China while contrasting it with the current state of religion within the nation. In so doing, it will describe and highlight the experiences of Chinese people who are religious

Large-Scale Modelling of the Environmentally-Driven Population Dynamics of Temperate Aedes albopictus (Skuse)

The Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, is a highly invasive vector species. It is a proven vector of dengue and chikungunya viruses, with the potential to host a further 24 arboviruses. It has recently expanded its geographical range, threatening many countries in the Middle East, Mediterranean, Europe and North America. Here, we investigate the theoretical limitations of its range expansion by developing an environmentally-driven mathematical model of its population dynamics. We focus on the temperate strain of Ae. albopictus and compile a comprehensive literature-based database of physiological parameters. As a novel approach, we link its population dynamics to globally-available environmental datasets by performing inference on all parameters. We adopt a Bayesian approach using experimental data as prior knowledge and the surveillance dataset of Emilia-Romagna, Italy, as evidence. The model accounts for temperature, precipitation, human population density and photoperiod as the main environmental drivers, and, in addition, incorporates the mechanism of diapause and a simple breeding site model. The model demonstrates high predictive skill over the reference region and beyond, confirming most of the current reports of vector presence in Europe. One of the main hypotheses derived from the model is the survival of Ae. albopictus populations through harsh winter conditions. The model, constrained by the environmental datasets, requires that either diapausing eggs or adult vectors have increased cold resistance. The model also suggests that temperature and photoperiod control diapause initiation and termination differentially. We demonstrate that it is possible to account for unobserved properties and constraints, such as differences between laboratory and field conditions, to derive reliable inferences on the environmental dependence of Ae. albopictus populations

The impact of mutation and gene conversion on the local diversification of antigen genes in African trypanosomes

Patterns of genetic diversity in parasite antigen gene families hold important information about their potential to generate antigenic variation within and between hosts. The evolution of such gene families is typically driven by gene duplication, followed by point mutation and gene conversion. There is great interest in estimating the rates of these processes from molecular sequences for understanding the evolution of the pathogen and its significance for infection processes. In this study, a series of models are constructed to investigate hypotheses about the nucleotide diversity patterns between closely related gene sequences from the antigen gene archive of the African trypanosome, the protozoan parasite causative of human sleeping sickness in Equatorial Africa. We use a hidden Markov model approach to identify two scales of diversification: clustering of sequence mismatches, a putative indicator of gene conversion events with other lower-identity donor genes in the archive, and at a sparser scale, isolated mismatches, likely arising from independent point mutations. In addition to quantifying the respective probabilities of occurrence of these two processes, our approach yields estimates for the gene conversion tract length distribution and the average diversity contributed locally by conversion events. Model fitting is conducted using a Bayesian framework. We find that diversifying gene conversion events with lower-identity partners occur at least five times less frequently than point mutations on variant surface glycoprotein (VSG) pairs, and the average imported conversion tract is between 14 and 25 nucleotides long. However, because of the high diversity introduced by gene conversion, the two processes have almost equal impact on the per-nucleotide rate of sequence diversification between VSG subfamily members. We are able to disentangle the most likely locations of point mutations and conversions on each aligned gene pair

Feasibility study of the solar scientific instruments for Spacelab/Orbiter

The feasibility and economics of mounting and operating a set of solar scientific instruments in the backup Skylab Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM) hardware was evaluated. The instruments used as the study test payload and integrated into the ATM were: the Solar EUV Telescope/Spectrometer; the Solar Active Region Observing Telescope; and the Lyman Alpha White Light Coronagraph. The backup ATM hardware consists of a central cruciform structure, called the "SPAR', a "Sun End Canister' and a "Multiple Docking Adapter End Canister'. Basically, the ATM hardware and software provides a structural interface for the instruments; a closely controlled thermal environment; and a very accurate attitude and pointing control capability. The hardware is an identical set to the hardware that flow on Skylab