Induction of heat shock protein expression in cervical epithelial cells by human semen.

OBJECTIVE: The 70kD heat shock protein (Hsp70), induced when cells are subjected to environmental stress, prevents the denaturation and incorrect folding of polypeptides and may expedite replication and transmission of DNA and RNA viruses. We analyzed whether messenger RNA (mRNA) for Hsp70 was expressed following exposure of a cultured human cervical cell line (HeLa cells) to human semen or in cervical cells from sexually active women. STUDY DESIGN: HeLa cells were co-cultured with a 1:50 dilution of semen from four men or with purified spermatozoa or cell-free seminal fluid. Endocervical swabs were acquired at mid-cycle from 53 women. Heat shock protein 70 mRNA was detected by a reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction utilizing specific primer pairs and analysis on agarose gels. In cervical cells Hsp70 mRNA was measured identically followed by hybridization with an Hsp70-specific internal probe and detection by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Cervical immunoglobulin A (IgA) antibodies to the human Hsp70 were determined by ELISA. RESULTS: HeLa cell-semen co-culture resulted in the induction of Hsp70 mRNA. In addition, cell-free seminal plasma and motile sperm incubated individually with HeLa cells also induced this mRNA. Heat shock protein 70 mRNA was detected in 28 (52.8%) of 53 endocervical samples obtained from women at various time points following intercourse. The percentage of samples expressing this mRNA was 37.5% at less than 10 hours, 64.3% at 10 hours, 70% at 11 hours, and between 36% and 50% at later times after semen exposure. The detection of cervical IgA antibodies to the Hsp70 was highly associated with Hsp70 gene transcription. CONCLUSION: Human semen induces transcription of Hsp70 in cervical epithelial cells

Few-Shot Single-View 3-D Object Reconstruction with Compositional Priors

The impressive performance of deep convolutional neural networks in single-view 3D reconstruction suggests that these models perform non-trivial reasoning about the 3D structure of the output space. However, recent work has challenged this belief, showing that complex encoder-decoder architectures perform similarly to nearest-neighbor baselines or simple linear decoder models that exploit large amounts of per category data in standard benchmarks. On the other hand settings where 3D shape must be inferred for new categories with few examples are more natural and require models that generalize about shapes. In this work we demonstrate experimentally that naive baselines do not apply when the goal is to learn to reconstruct novel objects using very few examples, and that in a \emph{few-shot} learning setting, the network must learn concepts that can be applied to new categories, avoiding rote memorization. To address deficiencies in existing approaches to this problem, we propose three approaches that efficiently integrate a class prior into a 3D reconstruction model, allowing to account for intra-class variability and imposing an implicit compositional structure that the model should learn. Experiments on the popular ShapeNet database demonstrate that our method significantly outperform existing baselines on this task in the few-shot setting

Pregnancy Outcome Following Pelvic Infection

To determine whether a previous pelvic infection has an effect on the outcome of a subsequent pregnancy, we identified women with a diagnosis of pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), amnionitis, and postpartum or postabortal endometritis-salpingitis by a retrospective chart review of all patients admitted to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center between 1975 and 1977 and between 1985 and 1988. Antimicrobial regimens effective against Chlamydia trachomatis were initiated in 1985. Controls were randomly selected patients presenting during the same time period for routine examinations who had normal Pap smears and no infections. Both groups were comparable for age, race, gravity, and parity. Differences were evaluated by chi square analysis, using the Yates correction factor. We identified 183 women with a history of the above infections who subsequently conceived, and 82 controls. There were no differences in outcome between the two index groups. Term vaginal deliveries occurred in 14.2% of the women with a prior pelvic infection and in 56% of the controls (P < 0.001). Among the 97 women who had had PID, 21 (21.6%) had a spontaneous abortion in the subsequent pregnancy, as opposed to 6 (7.3%) of the controls (P = 0.013). In addition, eight of the women with PID (but no controls) went into preterm labor (P = 0.021). An increased incidence of preterm labor (P = 0.001) was also observed in women with a history of amnionitis. A history of endometritis was not associated with an increased prevalence of abnormal outcome in subsequent pregnancies. PID and amnionitis may adversely affect the outcome of subsequent pregnancies

Functional Maps Representation on Product Manifolds

We consider the tasks of representing, analyzing and manipulating maps between shapes. We model maps as densities over the product manifold of the input shapes; these densities can be treated as scalar functions and therefore are manipulable using the language of signal processing on manifolds. Being a manifold itself, the product space endows the set of maps with a geometry of its own, which we exploit to define map operations in the spectral domain; we also derive relationships with other existing representations (soft maps and functional maps). To apply these ideas in practice, we discretize product manifolds and their Laplace--Beltrami operators, and we introduce localized spectral analysis of the product manifold as a novel tool for map processing. Our framework applies to maps defined between and across 2D and 3D shapes without requiring special adjustment, and it can be implemented efficiently with simple operations on sparse matrices.Comment: Accepted to Computer Graphics Foru

Vulvar Vestibulitis—A Complex Clinical Entity

Objective: This study aims to determine the pathophysiology of vulvar vestibulitis and to evaluate currently used treatment options

Relation between recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis, vaginal concentrations of mannose-binding lectin, and a mannose-binding lectin gene polymorphism in latvian women

Funding Information: Financial support: FIGO/Schering Research Foundation Fellowship (O.B.).Vaginal concentrations of mannose-binding lectin (MBL) and possession of a polymorphism in codon 54 of the MBL gene were determined in 42 women with recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis (RVVC) and 43 control subjects. Reduced vaginal MBL levels and an increased occurrence of the polymorphism were present in women with RVVC.Peer reviewe

Letters to the Editor Regarding NASW Press Censorship Issue

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR REGARDING NASW PRESS CENSORSHIP Marcia B. Cohen, Co-editor, Journal of Progressive Human Services Richard Hoefer, Editor, Journal of Policy Practice Tony Tripodi, Former Editor of Social Work Research Former Co-editor of Journal of Social Work Research and Evaluation Stanley L. Witkin, Former Editor-in-Chief, Social Work Elizabeth J. Clark, Executive Director, National Association of Social Workers (NASW

Detection of Trichomonas vaginalis Using the Polymerase Chain Reaction in Pregnant and Non-Pregnant Women

Objective: Trichomonas vaginalis vaginal infections are often both asymptomatic and difficult to detect by current methods. We evaluated the ability of a newly developed polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay to identify T. vaginalis in vaginal samples from pregnant and non-pregnant women

A medium throughput rodent model of relapse from addiction with behavioral and pharmacological specificity

One of most formidable problems in the treatment of addiction is the high rate of relapse. The discovery of medicines to help mitigate relapse are aided by animal models that currently involve weeks of training and require surgical preparations and drug delivery devices. The present set of experiments was initiated to investigate a rapid 8-day screening method that utilizes food instead of intravenous drug administration. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were trained in a reinstatement paradigm in which every lever press produced a 45 mg food pellet concurrently paired with a light and tone. Behavior was subsequently extinguished with lever responses producing neither food nor food-associated stimuli. Reinstatement of responding was evaluated under conditions in which the first three responses of every 5 min time bin produced a food pellet along with food-associated stimuli. The mGlu5 receptor antagonists MPEP and MTEP produced a significant reduction in reinstatement while failing to alter responding where every response produced food. The cannabinoid CB1 receptor antagonist rimonabant and the mGlu2/3 receptor agonist LY379268 also selectively reduced reinstatement. Other compounds including clozapine, d-amphetamine, chlordiazepoxide, ABT-431, naltrexone and citalopram were without effect. The results suggest that relapse-like behavioral effects can be extended to non-pharmacological reinforcers. Drug effects demonstrated both behavioral and pharmacological specificity. The present experimental design thus allows for efficient and rapid assessment of the effects of drugs that might be useful in the treatment of addiction-associated relapse