Outer Membrane Vesicles as a Candidate Vaccine against Edwardsiellosis

Infection with Edwardsiella tarda, a Gram-negative bacterium, causes high morbidity and mortality in both marine and freshwater fish. Outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) released from Gram-negative bacteria are known to play important roles in bacterial pathogenesis and host immune responses, but no such roles for E. tarda OMVs have yet been described. In the present study, we investigated the proteomic composition of OMVs and the immunostimulatory effect of OMVs in a natural host, as well as the efficacy of OMVs when used as a vaccine against E. tarda infection. A total of 74 proteins, from diverse subcellular fractions, were identified in OMVs. These included a variety of important virulence factors, such as hemolysin, OmpA, porin, GAPDH, EseB, EseC, EseD, EvpC, EvpP, lipoprotein, flagellin, and fimbrial protein. When OMVs were administrated to olive flounder, significant induction of mRNAs encoding IL-1β, IL-6, TNFα, and IFNγ was observed, compared with the levels seen in fish injected with formalin-killed E. tarda. In a vaccine trial, olive flounder given OMVs were more effectively protected (p<0.0001) than were control fish. Investigation of OMVs may be useful not only for understanding the pathogenesis of E. tarda but also in development of an effective vaccine against edwardsiellosis

Mesoscale phenomena and their contribution to the global response: a focus on the magnetotail transition region and magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling

An important question that is being increasingly studied across subdisciplines of Heliophysics is “how do mesoscale phenomena contribute to the global response of the system?” This review paper focuses on this question within two specific but interlinked regions in Near-Earth space: the magnetotail’s transition region to the inner magnetosphere and the ionosphere. There is a concerted effort within the Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM) community to understand the degree to which mesoscale transport in the magnetotail contributes to the global dynamics of magnetic flux transport and dipolarization, particle transport and injections contributing to the storm-time ring current development, and the substorm current wedge. Because the magnetosphere-ionosphere is a tightly coupled system, it is also important to understand how mesoscale transport in the magnetotail impacts auroral precipitation and the global ionospheric system response. Groups within the Coupling, Energetics and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions Program (CEDAR) community have also been studying how the ionosphere-thermosphere responds to these mesoscale drivers. These specific open questions are part of a larger need to better characterize and quantify mesoscale “messengers” or “conduits” of information—magnetic flux, particle flux, current, and energy—which are key to understanding the global system. After reviewing recent progress and open questions, we suggest datasets that, if developed in the future, will help answer these questions

Photocatalytic Reduction of Nitrobenzene to Aniline in an Aqueous Suspension of Titanium(IV) Oxide Particles in the Presence of Oxalic Acid as a Hole Scavenger and Promotive Effect of Dioxygen in the System

Nitrobenzene was effectively and selectively reduced to aniline in an acidic aqueous suspension of titanium(IV) oxide photocatalyst in the presence of oxalic acid as a hole scavenger and the aniline yield was improved in the presence of a small amount of dioxygen

Synthesis of titanium(IV) oxide of ultra-high photocatalytic activity : high-temperature hydrolysis of titanium alkoxides with water liberated homogeneously from solvent alcohols

Thermal treatment of titanium(IV) alkoxides dissolved in alcohols at temperature of 523–573 K under autogenous pressure yielded microcrystalline anatase titanium(IV) oxide (TiO2) with diameter of 11–31 nm and surface area of 42–138 m2 g−1. Similar treatment in hydrocarbons such as toluene gave no solid products, indicating that both hydrolysis of alkoxides with water liberated homogeneously from solvent alcohols and crystallization of anatase phase occurred simultaneously. These TiO2's were thermally stable, e.g., BET surface area of TiO2 synthesized at 573 K, 63 m2 g−1, was reduced only 30% (45 m2 g−1) even by calcination at 973 K. Their photocatalytic activity was examined in mineralization of acetic acid in aqueous solutions under aerated conditions and dehydrogenation of 2-propanol under deaerated conditions; almost all the samples showed the activity more than twice higher than those of representative active photocatalysts, Degussa P-25 and Ishihara ST-01. The superior activity of the present TiO2 photocatalysts was attributable to compatibility of high crystallinity and large surface area owing to the newly developed synthetic procedure

Scenario speech assignment technique for instant casting movie system

ACCV2009: the 9th Asian Conference on Computer Vision, September 23-27, 2009, Xi'an, China.In this paper, we propose an improved Future Cast System (FCS) that enables anyone to be a movie star while retraining their indivisuality in terms of how they look and how they sound. The proposed system produces voices that are significantly matched to their targets by integrating the results of multiple methods: similar speaker selection and voice morphing. After assigning one CG character to the audience, the system producesvoices in synchronization with the CG character's movement. We constructed the speech sunchronization system using a voice actor database wiht 60 different kinds of voices. Our system achieved higher voice similarity than conventional system; the preference score of our system was 56.5% over other conventional system