4,977 research outputs found

    Expressions of toll-like receptors 2 and 4, and relative cellular factors in HIV patients with tuberculosis infection

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    Purpose: To investigate the expressions of toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2), toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), IFN-γ (IFN- gamma), interleukin 2 (IL-2), interleukin 6 (IL-6) and interleukin 10 (IL-10) in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) patients with tuberculosis (TB) infection.Methods: Two groups of HIV patients (68 in each group) were used for this study. These were HIV with TB (HIV/TB) group and HIV without TB group. A third group (68 healthy people) served as control. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) was adopted to measure TLR-2 and TLR-4 expressions in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), while the serum levels of TNF-α, IFN-γ, IL-2, IL-6 and IL-10 were determined by ELISA.Results: The △Ct values of TLR-2 and TLR-4 in HIV/TB and HIV groups were significantly lower than those in the control group (p < 0.05). Compared to control group, the serum levels of TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-10 significantly increased, while IFN-γ and IL-2 in HIV/TB and HIV groups significantly decreased (p < 0.05). However, IFN-γ and IL-2 decreased significantly in HIV/TB group (p < 0.05). Expression of TLR2 correlated positively with serum levels of TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-10, but negatively with IFN-γ and IL-2 (p < 0.05).Conclusion: TLR2 signal pathway plays a role in HIV patients with TB infection by promoting the expressions of TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-10, while inhibiting IFN-γ and IL-2 cellular factors, and thus may provide a new pathway for the treatment of patients with HIV/TB.Keywords: HIV, Tuberculosis, Toll-like receptor, Cellular factors, Tumor necrosis factor, Interleuki

    Development of a Piezoelectric Vacuum Sensing Component for a Wide Pressure Range

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    In this study, we develop a clamped-clamped beam-type piezoelectric vacuum pressure sensing element. The clamped-clamped piezoelectric beam is composed of a PZT layer and a copper substrate. A pair of electrodes is set near each end. An input voltage is applied to a pair of electrodes to vibrate the piezoelectric beam, and the output voltage is measured at the other pair. Because the viscous forces on the piezoelectric beam vary at different air pressures, the vibration of the beam depends on the vacuum pressure. The developed pressure sensor can sense a wide range of pressure, from 6.5 × 10(-6) to 760 Torr. The experimental results showed that the output voltage is inversely proportional to the gas damping ratio, and thus, the vacuum pressure was estimated from the output voltage

    Personalized Audio Quality Preference Prediction

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    This paper proposes to use both audio input and subject information to predict the personalized preference of two audio segments with the same content in different qualities. A siamese network is used to compare the inputs and predict the preference. Several different structures for each side of the siamese network are investigated, and an LDNet with PANNs' CNN6 as the encoder and a multi-layer perceptron block as the decoder outperforms a baseline model using only audio input the most, where the overall accuracy grows from 77.56% to 78.04%. Experimental results also show that using all the subject information, including age, gender, and the specifications of headphones or earphones, is more effective than using only a part of them

    Electronic spectra and photophysics of platinum(II) complexes with α-diimine ligands. Mixed complexes with halide ligands

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    Emission properties have been studied for a series of compounds of the formula (L_2)PtC1_2, where L_2 is N,N,N',N'-tetramethylethylenediamine, 2,2'-bipyridine (bpy), 4,4'-Me_2bpy, 5,5'-Me_2bpy, 4,4'-(t-Bu)_2bpy, 3,3'-(CH_3OCO)_2bpy, and 1,10-phenanthroline, and also for the compound Pt(bpy)I_2. Most of them exhibit orange to red luminescence from a triplet ligand-field (^3LF) state, both as solids and in glassy solution. These emissions are very broad (fwhm 2300-3400 cm^(-1) at 10 K) and structureless and are strongly Stokes-shifted from absorption. The two exceptions are the solid "red" form of Pt(bpy)Cl_2, which exhibits a relatively narrow (fwhm 1050 cm^(-1) at 10 K), vibronically structured (Δν ~ 1500 cm^-1)) red emission, and Pt(3,3'-(CH_3OCO)_2bpy)Cl_2, which exhibits a broad (fwhm 2500 cm^(-1) at 10 K) but structured (Δν ~1300 cm^(-1)) orange emission. Both of these emissions are assigned to triplet metal-to-ligand charge-transfer (^3MLCT) excited states. For the former compound, a linear-chain structure has destabilized a dσ*(d_(z^2)) level, yielding a dσ* → π*(bpy) state as the lowest energy excited state, while for the latter, the strongly electron-withdrawing substituents have stabilized a bpy π* level, yielding a dσ* → π*(bpy) state as the lowest energy excited state. The relative energies of the various types of excited states, including ligand 3_(ππ*) states, are discussed in detail. The crystal structures of Pt(5,5'-Me_2bpy)Cl_2 (monoclinic Cc, Z = 4, a = 13.413(7) Å, b = 9.063(4) Å, c = 12.261(9) Å, 0 = 121.71(6)') and Pt(3,3'-(CH_3OCO)_2bpy)Cl_2 (triclinic P1, Z = 2, a = 7.288(2) Å, b = 9.932(3) Å, c = 11.881(5) Å, α = 98.04(3)°, β = 103.56(3)°, γ = 106.54(3)°) are reported
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