Comparative mitogenomic and phylogenetic characterization on the complete mitogenomes of <i>Talaromyces</i> (<i>Penicillium</i>) <i>marneffei</i>

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Central Coherence in relation to Reading in Hong Kong Bilingual Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Poster presentation: Research and EvaluationOrganized by JC A-Connect: Jockey Club Autism Support NetworkBackground When interacting with text, ASD children with different deficits in cognitive processing show different comprehension profiles. Previous research mainly focuses on reading texts in English, an alphabetical writing system, while few studies address how ASD children tackle reading in Chinese, a logographic writing system. Objectives This study investigates whether there are any differences in linguistic strategies in Hong Kong bilingual ASD children in comprehending text in English and Chinese. We also explore whether the ASD bilinguals make use of linguistic context to derive context-dependent meaning, and whether lexical ambiguity in Chinese affects the linguistic judgment of ASD bilinguals when they read. Apart from sentence context and syntactic context, we explore how visual stimulation affects the lexical word choices of ASD children, and how this differs from typical children of the same age. Methods Two subject populations participated in the study, a group of 17 Hong Kong ASD bilinguals and a group of 24 Hong Kong bilinguals with typical language development. All participants are studying at local primary schools from primary 3-6 and have intelligence within the normal range. All the subjects took part in a Homograph Task, Semantic Processing Task, Homophone Task, Lexical Ambiguity Task, Sentence Re-Arrangement Task and Picture and Semantic Task. Conclusion Based on preliminary results, the ASD bilinguals tend to provide the more common interpretation of the homographs, disregarding the context. They performed better when recalling words from the semantically related lists and are able to use the contextual information provided in the sentence together with knowledge of different meanings of the homophones. The results suggest that the lexical ambiguity of Chinese does not much affect the ASD children’s ability to construct a coherent representation of a sentence. However, they perform relatively poorly in arranging the words into a meaningful sentence in both languages.published_or_final_versio

First discovery of two polyketide synthase genes for mitorubrinic acid and mitorubrinol yellow pigment biosynthesis and implications in virulence of Penicillium marneffei.

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Metabolomics Analysis Reveals Specific Novel Tetrapeptide and Potential Anti-Inflammatory Metabolites in Pathogenic Aspergillus species

Infections related to Aspergillus species have emerged to become an important focus in infectious diseases, as a result of the increasing use of immunosuppressive agents and high fatality associated with invasive aspergillosis. However, laboratory diagnosis of Aspergillus infections remains difficult. In this study, by comparing the metabolomic profiles of the culture supernatants of 30 strains of six pathogenic Aspergillus species (A. fumigatus, A. flavus, A. niger, A. terreus, A. nomius and A. tamarii) and 31 strains of 10 non-Aspergillus fungi, eight compounds present in all strains of the six Aspergillus species but not in any strain of the non-Aspergillus fungi were observed. One of the eight compounds, Leu–Glu–Leu–Glu, is a novel tetrapeptide and represents the first linear tetrapeptide observed in Aspergillus species, which we propose to be named aspergitide. Two other closely related Aspergillus-specific compounds, hydroxy-(sulfooxy)benzoic acid and (sulfooxy)benzoic acid, may possess anti-inflammatory properties, as 2-(sulfooxy)benzoic acid possesses a structure similar to those of aspirin [2-(acetoxy)benzoic acid] and salicylic acid (2-hydroxybenzoic acid). Further studies to examine the potentials of these Aspergillus-specific compounds for laboratory diagnosis of aspergillosis are warranted and further experiments will reveal whether Leu–Glu–Leu–Glu, hydroxy-(sulfooxy)benzoic acid and (sulfooxy)benzoic acid are virulent factors of the pathogenic Aspergillus species. © 2015, MDPI AG. All rights Reserved.published_or_final_versio

Investigation of recast and crack formation in laser trepanning drilling of CMSX-4 angled holes

This paper presents an experimental investigation on the influences of laser trepanning drilling process parameters on the recast layer thickness and surface crack formation in CMSX-4 nickel-based superalloy angled holes. The effects of peak power, pulse frequency and the trepanning speed as input parameters were investigated in details by varying the laser drilling conditions using Taguchi orthogonal array-based design of experiment approach. Analysis of variance identifies the significant parameters affecting the output responses. It is found that the output responses are affected mainly by the peak power and trepanning speed. The experimental results reveal that the recast layer thickness increases with the increase of peak power and trepanning speed whereas the crack number density decreases with the increase of peak power only. Pulse frequency has no significant effect on both output responses within the range of values investigated. The knowledge gained in this parametric study could be used to improve the metallurgical characteristics of laser-drilled nickel-based acute angled holes

Impact of outpatient neuraminidase inhibitor treatment in patients infected with influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 at high risk of hospitalization: an Individual Participant Data (IPD) meta-analysis

Background: While evidence exists to support the effectiveness of neuraminidase inhibitors (NAIs) in reducing mortality when given to hospitalized patients with A(H1N1)pdm09 virus infection, the impact of outpatient treatment on hospitalization has not been clearly established. We investigated the impact of outpatient NAI treatment on subsequent hospitalization in patients with A(H1N1)pdm09 virus infection. Methods: We assembled general community and outpatient data from 9 clinical centers in different countries collected between January 2009 and December 2010. We standardized data from each study center to create a pooled dataset and then used mixed-effects logistic regression modeling to determine the effect of NAI treatment on hospitalization. We adjusted for NAI treatment propensity and preadmission antibiotic use, including “study center” as a random intercept to account for differences in baseline hospitalization rate between centers. Results: We included 3376 patients with influenza A(H1N1)pdm09, of whom 3085 (91.4%) had laboratory-confirmed infection. Eight hundred seventy-three patients (25.8%) received outpatient or community-based NAI treatment, 928 of 2395 (38.8%) with available data had dyspnea or respiratory distress, and hospitalizations occurred in 1705 (50.5%). After adjustment for preadmission antibiotics and NAI treatment propensity, preadmission NAI treatment was associated with decreased odds of hospital admission compared to no NAI treatment (adjusted odds ratio, 0.24; 95% confidence interval, 0.20–0.30). Conclusions: In a population with confirmed or suspected A(H1N1)pdm09 and at high risk of hospitalization, outpatient or community-based NAI treatment significantly reduced the likelihood of requiring hospital admission. These data suggest that community patients with severe influenza should receive NAI treatment

Compressed representation of a partially defined integer function over multiple arguments

In OLAP (OnLine Analitical Processing) data are analysed in an n-dimensional cube. The cube may be represented as a partially defined function over n arguments. Considering that often the function is not defined everywhere, we ask: is there a known way of representing the function or the points in which it is defined, in a more compact manner than the trivial one