Involvement of NADH Oxidase in Biofilm Formation in Streptococcus sanguinis

Biofilms play important roles in microbial communities and are related to infectious diseases. Here, we report direct evidence that a bacterial nox gene encoding NADH oxidase is involved in biofilm formation. A dramatic reduction in biofilm formation was observed in a Streptococcus sanguinis nox mutant under anaerobic conditions without any decrease in growth. The membrane fluidity of the mutant bacterial cells was found to be decreased and the fatty acid composition altered, with increased palmitic acid and decreased stearic acid and vaccenic acid. Extracellular DNA of the mutant was reduced in abundance and bacterial competence was suppressed. Gene expression analysis in the mutant identified two genes with altered expression, gtfP and Idh, which were found to be related to biofilm formation through examination of their deletion mutants. NADH oxidase-related metabolic pathways were analyzed, further clarifying the function of this enzyme in biofilm formation

Automatic Article Commenting: the Task and Dataset

Comments of online articles provide extended views and improve user engagement. Automatically making comments thus become a valuable functionality for online forums, intelligent chatbots, etc. This paper proposes the new task of automatic article commenting, and introduces a large-scale Chinese dataset with millions of real comments and a human-annotated subset characterizing the comments' varying quality. Incorporating the human bias of comment quality, we further develop automatic metrics that generalize a broad set of popular reference-based metrics and exhibit greatly improved correlations with human evaluations.Comment: ACL2018; with supplements; Dataset link available in the pape

Implementation of a Bayesian linear regression framework for nuclear prognostics

Steam turbines are an important asset of nuclear power plants (NPPs), and are required to operate reliably and efficiently. Unplanned outages have a significant impact on the ability of the plant to generate electricity. Therefore, predictive and proactive maintenance which can avoid unplanned outages has the potential to reduce operating costs while increasing the reliability and availability of the plant. A case study from the data of an operational steam turbine of a NPP in the UK was used for the implementation of a Bayesian Linear Regression (BLR) framework. An appropriate model for the deterioration under study is selected. The BLR framework was applied as a prognostic technique in order to calculate the remaining useful life (RUL). Results show that the accuracy of the technique varies due to the nature of the data that is utilised to estimate the model parameters

Microbial interactions in the anaerobic oxidation of methane: Model simulations constrained by process rates and activity patterns

Proposed syntrophic interactions between the archaeal and bacterial cells mediating anaerobic oxidation of methane coupled with sulfate reduction include electron transfer through (1) the exchange of H2 or small organic molecules between methane‐oxidizing archaea and sulfate‐reducing bacteria, (2) the delivery of disulfide from methane‐oxidizing archaea to bacteria for disproportionation and (3) direct interspecies electron transfer. Each of these mechanisms was implemented in a reactive transport model. The simulated activities across different arrangements of archaeal and bacterial cells and aggregate sizes were compared to empirical data for AOM rates and intra‐aggregate spatial patterns of cell‐specific anabolic activity determined by FISH‐nanoSIMS. Simulation results showed that rates for chemical diffusion by mechanism (1) were limited by the build‐up of metabolites, while mechanisms (2) and (3) yielded cell specific rates and archaeal activity distributions that were consistent with observations from single cell resolved FISH‐nanoSIMS analyses. The novel integration of both intra‐aggregate and environmental data provided powerful constraints on the model results, but the similarities in model outcomes for mechanisms (2) and (3) highlight the need for additional observational data (e.g. genomic or physiological) on electron transfer and metabolic functioning of these globally important methanotrophic consortia

State of the art in business games

The use of digital games and gamification has demonstrated potential to improve many aspects of how businesses provide training to staff, and communicate with consumers. However, there is still a need for better understanding of how the adoption of games and gasification would influence the process of decision-making in organisations across different industry. This article provides a structured review of existing literature on the use of games in the business environment, and seeks to consolidate findings to address research questions regarding their perception, proven efficacy, and identifies key areas for future work. The findings highlight that serious games can have positive and effective impacts in multiple areas of a business, including training, decision-support, and consumer outreach. They also emphasise the challenges and pitfalls of applying serious games and gamification principles within a business context, and discuss the implications of development and evaluation methodologies on the success of a game-based solution

Budesonide/Glycopyrrolate/Formoterol for the Management of COPD in a UK Primary Care Population : Real-World Use and Early Medication Success

We thank Johann Castaneda for his contribution to protocol development, analysis and interpretation of data. Dr Ruth B Murray (Medscript NZ Ltd) provided medical writing assistance under the direction of the authors, funded by AstraZeneca.Peer reviewe

OpenTEL: lessons from a pandemic for the future of distance education

The move to introduce technology enhanced learning (TEL) is a trend that has been observed for decades. Following the disruption arising from Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a move to remote teaching in universities across the world. This move has put the transformation or digital revolution in the limelight in the media. TEL is of strategic importance to the conduct of teaching, learning and research in education internationally. TEL, when combined with the growing benefits of open approaches to education, leads to a potentially transformational means of learning. In this paper the authors introduce some examples of research projects from the Open University’s OpenTEL research grouping. These examples highlight some of the work conducted relating to supporting students, universities, and communities using TEL during the pandemic. OpenTEL research has identified that Covid-19 has exposed the need for better institutional support for students who are facing stress and disruption in their studies; collaboration among higher educational institutions to share knowledge; better engagement in the online pivot ; and understanding of the possibilities (and limitations) for online tools to maintain existing research communities