11,880 research outputs found
Utilización de subproductos industriales en la alimentación de cerdos de engorde en Cuba
Fifty-four pigs averaging 75 days of age and ± 22.0 kg live weight. The pigs were allotted according to a random blocks design in three treatments, two replicas (house side) and nine repetitions for treatment in each replica. The effect of a foodstuffs "B" (balanced feed of medium quality with soybean and corn and 30% of the wheat Cuban byproduct)1 in diets of sugar cane molasses type B (MB), and the inclusion in the diet of 10% of distiller dried grains with soluble obtained from the maize (DDGS)2, on the animal performance traits in comparison with a concentrated feedstuffs3, was studied. There were no significant differences for the consumptions of MB in the diets of feedstuffs B + MB and the diet with 10% of DDGS inclusion; there were significant differences (P< 0.01) for the animals fed with the concentrated feedstuffs. The alimentary conversion was very significant (P< 0.001). The slaughter weight had significant differences (P< 0.01) among treatments. It is concluded, that diets of a feedstuffs B plus MB of sugar cane and diets including 10% of DDGS generate excellent productive indexes and constitute alternative sources under tropical conditions that substitute imports of cereals in the Cuban pig feeding
Aberrant innate immune sensing leads to the rapid progression of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis
Novel approaches are needed to define subgroups of patients with Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) at risk for acute exacerbations and/or accelerated progression of this generally fatal disease. Progression of disease is an integral component of IPF with a median survival of 3 to 5 years. Conversely, a high degree of variability in disease progression has been reported among series. The characteristics of patients at risk of earlier death predominantly rely on baseline HRCT appearance, but this concept that has been challenged. Disparate physiological approaches have also been taken to identify patients at risk of mortality, with varying results. We hypothesized that the rapid decline in lung function in IPF may be a consequence of an abnormal host response to pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), leading to aberrant activation in fibroblasts and fibrosis. Analysis of upper and lower lobe surgical lung biopsies (SLBs) indicated that TLR9, a hypomethylated CpG DNA receptor, is prominently expressed at the transcript and protein level, most notably in biopsies from rapidly progressive IPF patients. Surprisingly, fibroblasts appeared to be a major cellular source of TLR9 expression in IPF biopsies from this group of progressors. Further, CpG DNA promoted profibrotic cytokine and chemokine synthesis in isolated human IPF fibroblasts, most markedly again in cells from patients with the rapidly progressive IPF phenotype, in a TLR9-dependent manner. Finally, CpG DNA exacerbated fibrosis in an in vivo model initiated by the adoptive transfer of primary fibroblasts derived from patients who exhibited rapidly progressing fibrosis. Together, these data suggested that TLR9 activation via hypomethylated DNA might be an important mechanism in promoting fibrosis particularly in patients prone to rapidly progressing IPF
Relation Modeling with Graph Convolutional Networks for Facial Action Unit Detection
Most existing AU detection works considering AU relationships are relying on
probabilistic graphical models with manually extracted features. This paper
proposes an end-to-end deep learning framework for facial AU detection with
graph convolutional network (GCN) for AU relation modeling, which has not been
explored before. In particular, AU related regions are extracted firstly,
latent representations full of AU information are learned through an
auto-encoder. Moreover, each latent representation vector is feed into GCN as a
node, the connection mode of GCN is determined based on the relationships of
AUs. Finally, the assembled features updated through GCN are concatenated for
AU detection. Extensive experiments on BP4D and DISFA benchmarks demonstrate
that our framework significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art methods for
facial AU detection. The proposed framework is also validated through a series
of ablation studies.Comment: Accepted by MMM202
Simultaneous Extraction of the Fermi constant and PMNS matrix elements in the presence of a fourth generation
Several recent studies performed on constraints of a fourth generation of
quarks and leptons suffer from the ad-hoc assumption that 3 x 3 unitarity holds
for the first three generations in the neutrino sector. Only under this
assumption one is able to determine the Fermi constant G_F from the muon
lifetime measurement with the claimed precision of G_F = 1.16637 (1) x 10^-5
GeV^-2. We study how well G_F can be extracted within the framework of four
generations from leptonic and radiative mu and tau decays, as well as from K_l3
decays and leptonic decays of charged pions, and we discuss the role of lepton
universality tests in this context. We emphasize that constraints on a fourth
generation from quark and lepton flavour observables and from electroweak
precision observables can only be obtained in a consistent way if these three
sectors are considered simultaneously. In the combined fit to leptonic and
radiative mu and tau decays, K_l3 decays and leptonic decays of charged pions
we find a p-value of 2.6% for the fourth generation matrix element |U_{e 4}|=0
of the neutrino mixing matrix.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures with 16 subfigures, references and text added
refering to earlier related work, figures and text in discussion section
added, results and conclusions unchange
The time-dependent rearrangement of the epithelial basement membrane in human skin wounds
In 62 human skin wounds (surgical wounds, stab wounds and lacerations after surgical treatment) we analyzed the immunohistochemical localization of collagen IV in the epithelial basement membrane. In 27 of these wounds the distribution of collagen VII, which represents a specific component of the basement membrane of stratified epithelia, was also analyzed. We were able to demonstrate a virtually identical co-distribution of both collagen IV and VII in the wound area with no significant time-dependent differences in the appearance of both collagen types. Fragments of the epithelial basement membrane could be detected in the wound area from as early as 4 days after wounding and after 8 days a complete restitution of the epithelial basement membrane was observed. In all cases with a wound age of more than 21 days the basement membrane was completely reformed over the former lesional area. The period between 8 and 21 days after wounding was characterized by a wide variability ranging from complete restitution to deposition of basement membrane fragments or total lack of the epidermal basement membrane
Time-resolved photometric and spectroscopic analysis of a luminous Ap star HD103498
We present the results on the photometric and spectroscopic monitoring of a
luminous Ap star HD103498. The time-series photometric observations were
carried out on 17 nights using three-channel fast photometer attached to the
1.04-m optical telescope at ARIES, Nainital. The photometric data of five
nights of year 2007 show clear signature of 15-min periodicity. However, the
follow-up observations during 2007--2009 could not repeated any such
periodicity. To confirm the photometric light variations, the time-series
spectroscopic observations were carried out with the 2.56-m Nordic Optical
Telescope (NOT) at La Palma on February 2, 2009. Any radial velocity variations
were absent in this data set which is in full agreement with the photometric
observations taken near the same night. Model atmosphere and abundance analysis
of HD103498 show that the star is evolved from the Main Sequence and its
atmospheric abundances are similar to two other evolved Ap stars HD133792 and
HD204411: large overabundances of Si, Cr, and Fe and moderate overabundances of
the rare-earth elements. These chemical properties and a higher effective
temperature distinguish HD103498 from any known roAp star.Comment: 8 Figures, 2 Tables, 9 Pages, Accepted for publication in MNRA
Genome-Wide Survey of MicroRNA - Transcription Factor Feed-Forward Regulatory Circuits in Human
In this work, we describe a computational framework for the genome-wide
identification and characterization of mixed
transcriptional/post-transcriptional regulatory circuits in humans. We
concentrated in particular on feed-forward loops (FFL), in which a master
transcription factor regulates a microRNA, and together with it, a set of joint
target protein coding genes. The circuits were assembled with a two step
procedure. We first constructed separately the transcriptional and
post-transcriptional components of the human regulatory network by looking for
conserved over-represented motifs in human and mouse promoters, and 3'-UTRs.
Then, we combined the two subnetworks looking for mixed feed-forward regulatory
interactions, finding a total of 638 putative (merged) FFLs. In order to
investigate their biological relevance, we filtered these circuits using three
selection criteria: (I) GeneOntology enrichment among the joint targets of the
FFL, (II) independent computational evidence for the regulatory interactions of
the FFL, extracted from external databases, and (III) relevance of the FFL in
cancer. Most of the selected FFLs seem to be involved in various aspects of
organism development and differentiation. We finally discuss a few of the most
interesting cases in detail.Comment: 51 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables. Supporting information included.
Accepted for publication in Molecular BioSystem
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