Lowering and raising operators for the free Meixner class of orthogonal polynomials

We compare some properties of the lowering and raising operators for the classical and free classes of Meixner polynomials on the real line

BRICS COUNTRIES IN INTERNATIONAL INNOVATION RANKINGS

The BRICS countries (China, Russia, Brazil, India and South Africa) are the largest emerging markets which are undergoing the processes of economic modernization and restructuring and taking the leading positions on many indicators on the global arena, extending beyond the regional scale. In the article, the positions of the BRICS countries in the international rankings of innovation capabilities will be considered in comparison with the leaders of the global economy. The recommendations for the best results of the BRICS were presented in the articl

Comparative characteristics of the properties of Halpic Chernozem of the Kursk Region of different land use

Analytical data show that prolonged extensive agricultural use of typical Chernozem of Kursk region (Haplic Chernozem) results in adverse changes in some soil properties. This primarily concerns the humus content and the structural state of the Chernozem. Under the influence of continuous winter wheat growing (for 54 years) the losses of humus made up 24% of its content in virgin soil. The permanent corn growing (for 54 years) led to humus 32% losses, and under the influence of the bare fallow (for 54 years) – 48%. As a result of mineralization of humus, which is one of the main aggregative agents, water resistance of Chernozem structure has deteriorated. The number of water-resistant aggregates in variants with continuous winter wheat and continuous corn decreased in comparison with virgin soil (by 30% and 39% respectively). In terms of water resistance, the structure of Chernozem was transformed in agrocenoses from “extremely high” to “good”. Under the influence of the bare fallow the content of water-resistant units decreased by 75%, and the structure became “non-water resistant”. At the same time, the average diameter of waterproof aggregates decreased 2.8, 3.6 and 4.8 times in variants with continuous winter wheat, corn and permanent bare fallow, respectively, whereas the content of the water peptized clay increased 2.8–4.7-fold, and pH of medium increased by 0.16–0.57. At the same time, the content of soil exchangeable calcium reduced (more than 1.1-fold), as well as hydrolytic acidity (1.1–1.7-fold), the content of organic forms of phosphorus (1.1–1.4-fold) and the ratio of organic forms of phosphorus to mineral ones also decreased 2.1–4.1-fold. When the bare fallow is transferred to the abandoned land, the properties of Chernozem vary with different intensity. The most significant changes occurred with water-resistant aggregates. Their content has increased by 53% over 20 years, and the structure has transformed from “non-water resistant” to “good”, while the content water peptized clay has decreased 2.1 times. During the 20-year period, the content of exchangeable calcium and hydrolytic acidity increased by 1.9 and 1.03 mg-eq/100 g of soil. The content of humus has increased by 0.78%, i. e. humus content restoration occurred with a speed of only 0.04% per year. It is necessary to consider this factor when regulating the humus status of the plowed and eroded soils. In general, the impact of continuous bare fallow on the properties of Chernozem was so profound that 20 years after its transfer to the category of abandoned lands, the properties of Chernozem, in most cases, have been restored only to the level typical of variants with crop cultivation

Effect of Silicon Content on Carbide Precipitation and Low-Temperature Toughness of Pressure Vessel Steels

Cr – Mn – Mo – Ni pressure vessel steels containing 0.54 and 1.55% Si are studied. Metallographic and fractographic analyses of the steels after tempering at 650 and 700°C are performed. The impact toughness at – 30°C and the hardness of the steels are determined. The mass fraction of the carbide phase in the steels is computed with the help of the J-MatPro 4.0 software

Effect of Cu addition on microstructure and impact toughness in the simulated coarse-grained heat-affected zone of high-strength low-alloy steels

The effects of Cu content on microstructure and impact toughness in the simulated coarse-grained heat-affected zone (CGHAZ) of high-strength low-alloy steels were investigated. It has been observed that the microstructure in the simulated CGHAZ of Cu-free steel is dominated by a small proportion of acicular ferrite and predominantly bainite with martensite–austenite constituent. Whereas, in the 0.45 and 1.01% Cu-containing steels, the acicular ferrite increased significantly due to the effective nucleation on intragranular inclusions with outer layer of MnS and CuS. The formation of acicular ferrite is attributed to superior high heat-affected zone impact toughness in the 0.45% Cu-containing steel. Furthermore, the increasing martensite–austenite constituent and ε-Cu precipitates in the simulated CGHAZ of 1.01% Cu-containing steel caused degradation in impact toughness

Diagnosis of IgG4 - related ophthalmic disease in a group of patients with various lesions of the eye and orbits

Purpose of the study. To provide demographic, clinical, laboratory, ultrasound, radiological, morphological/ immunomorphological phenotype of IgG4-related ophthalmic diseases, which allowsmaking a differential diagnosis with granulomatous, autoimmune, inflammatory, endocrine and hematologic diseases affecting the eye and orbits. Materials and methods. From 2004 to 2016 108 (78.2%) of the 138 patients were diagnosed with non-tumoral lesions of eye and orbits. In 48 patients (35%) at admission and 5 patients in the follow were diagnosed IgG4-related ophthalmic disease. In the analysis of 82 (f-44, m-38) patients with IgG4-related disease, localization of lesions in orbit observed in 53 (f-36, m-17) and it was the most frequent involvement in patients with IgG4-related disease (64.5%). Only 7 patients had isolated IgG4-related ophthalmic disease, whereas 46 patients (87%) had involvement of 2-7 locations, as a manifestation of IgG4-related systemic disease.During the examination, the average age of patients with IgG4-related ophthalmic disease was 47.5 years (19-73 years). Median time to diagnosis was 52.8 months before 2004 and 36 months 2004-2016. Results. We noted the predominance of females in the ratio 2: 1 inthe group of patients with IgG4-related ophthalmic disease. Edema of the eyelids, nasal congestion (55-60%), tumor-like formations of the upper eyelids and increased lacrimation prevailed at the onset of the disease, whereas such functional impairment like limited mobility and pain in eyeballs, exophthalmos, ptosis and diplopia appeared later at 15-38% with a loss visual acuity in one case. Bilateral lesion (86%), mainly affecting the lacrimal glands (93.5%), infiltration of the extraocular muscles (83.5%) and retrobulbar tissue with a thickening of the optic nerve in one third of patients were the main localizations IgG4-related ophthalmic disease. Clinical symptoms were accompanied by the appearance of moderate inflammatory activity (38%), increased levels IgG (44%), IgG4(88%) and IgE (61%). Indicators of autoimmune disorders observed in 6-22% of patients, most often in patients with simultaneous involvement of the salivary glands. Significant lymphoplasmacytic infiltration (94%) with a ratio of plasma cells (IgG4/IgG) secreting IgG4> 40% (90%) with fibrosis formation (94%) and follicle formation (71%) with a moderate amount of eosinophils (34%) were the major morphological / immunomorphological manifestations of IgG4-related ophthalmic disease. Signs of vasculitis and obliterative phlebitis were found in a small amount of patients. Conclusion. Determination of elevated levels of IgG-4 / IgE in patients with edema, pseudotumor of the eyelid, sinusitis and increase of the palpebral lobe of the lacrimal gland suggests the presence of IgG4-related ophthalmic disease. Minimally invasive incisional biopsy of lacrimal glands and salivary glands followed by morphological / immunomorphological research is needed for the correct diagnosis. Diagnostic orbitotomy in ophthalmic hospitals in such cases is inexpedient, since it leads to the development of dry eye. Massive lymphoplasmacytic infiltration with IgG4 / IgG ratio more than 40%, advanced fibrosis in biopsiesof the orbits tissue or salivary glands when combined lesions are required for the making the diagnosis of IgG4-related ophthalmic disease

Russian population health-related quality of life indicators calculated using the EQ-5D-3L questionnaire

Objectives. The paper aims was forming the first health-related quality of life population indicators using EQ-5D–3L survey that represents the Russian population by gender and age, as well as by the attained level of education. Material and methods. For compiling population indicators, we use the EQ-5D-3L questionnaire. The study was conducted on the adult Russian population aged 18 to 75 years. A representative sample was 12616 respondents. Results. 59.3 % of the sample is in good health (profile 11111). The proportion of respondents reporting any health problems increases with age. The average score on a 100-point visual analogue scale is 72.4 (standard deviation 18,1; 95 per cent confidence interval from 72,1 to 72,7). Men, on average, tend to assess their health higher than women. However there are no statistically significant differences in health scores among educational groups, taking into account gender and age data. Conclusions. Comparison of health-related quality of life estimations with normative population data allows us to track differences in health between population groups, as well as to analyze the health status and progress in treating patients. The Russian health-related quality indicators from EQ-5D-3L survey are similar to the Hungary population indices, as well as to many European countries, the USA, and Argentina for age cohorts under 45 years of age. For the cohorts of respondents older than 45 years, Russian estimations are much lower than in other countries. This evidence confirms that borrowing scales from other countries for converting EQ-5D-3L values into a preference EQ-5D-3L index is not acceptable for Russian patients, especially for the elderly

NIBBS-Search for Fast and Accurate Prediction of Phenotype-Biased Metabolic Systems

Understanding of genotype-phenotype associations is important not only for furthering our knowledge on internal cellular processes, but also essential for providing the foundation necessary for genetic engineering of microorganisms for industrial use (e.g., production of bioenergy or biofuels). However, genotype-phenotype associations alone do not provide enough information to alter an organism's genome to either suppress or exhibit a phenotype. It is important to look at the phenotype-related genes in the context of the genome-scale network to understand how the genes interact with other genes in the organism. Identification of metabolic subsystems involved in the expression of the phenotype is one way of placing the phenotype-related genes in the context of the entire network. A metabolic system refers to a metabolic network subgraph; nodes are compounds and edges labels are the enzymes that catalyze the reaction. The metabolic subsystem could be part of a single metabolic pathway or span parts of multiple pathways. Arguably, comparative genome-scale metabolic network analysis is a promising strategy to identify these phenotype-related metabolic subsystems. Network Instance-Based Biased Subgraph Search (NIBBS) is a graph-theoretic method for genome-scale metabolic network comparative analysis that can identify metabolic systems that are statistically biased toward phenotype-expressing organismal networks. We set up experiments with target phenotypes like hydrogen production, TCA expression, and acid-tolerance. We show via extensive literature search that some of the resulting metabolic subsystems are indeed phenotype-related and formulate hypotheses for other systems in terms of their role in phenotype expression. NIBBS is also orders of magnitude faster than MULE, one of the most efficient maximal frequent subgraph mining algorithms that could be adjusted for this problem. Also, the set of phenotype-biased metabolic systems output by NIBBS comes very close to the set of phenotype-biased subgraphs output by an exact maximally-biased subgraph enumeration algorithm ( MBS-Enum ). The code (NIBBS and the module to visualize the identified subsystems) is available at http://freescience.org/cs/NIBBS

The FGGY carbohydrate kinase family : insights into the evolution of functional specificities

© The Author(s), 2011. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS Computational Biology 7 (2011): e1002318, doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002318.Function diversification in large protein families is a major mechanism driving expansion of cellular networks, providing organisms with new metabolic capabilities and thus adding to their evolutionary success. However, our understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms of functional diversity in such families is very limited, which, among many other reasons, is due to the lack of functionally well-characterized sets of proteins. Here, using the FGGY carbohydrate kinase family as an example, we built a confidently annotated reference set (CARS) of proteins by propagating experimentally verified functional assignments to a limited number of homologous proteins that are supported by their genomic and functional contexts. Then, we analyzed, on both the phylogenetic and the molecular levels, the evolution of different functional specificities in this family. The results show that the different functions (substrate specificities) encoded by FGGY kinases have emerged only once in the evolutionary history following an apparently simple divergent evolutionary model. At the same time, on the molecular level, one isofunctional group (L-ribulokinase, AraB) evolved at least two independent solutions that employed distinct specificity-determining residues for the recognition of a same substrate (L-ribulose). Our analysis provides a detailed model of the evolution of the FGGY kinase family. It also shows that only combined molecular and phylogenetic approaches can help reconstruct a full picture of functional diversifications in such diverse families.This study was funded by NIH and DOE grants