Keyhole limpet hemocyanin induces innate immunity via Syk and Erk phosphorylation

Hemocyanin is an extracellular respiratory protein containing copper in hemolymph of invertebrates, such as Mollusk and Arthropod. Keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH) is one of hemocyanins and has many years of experience for vaccine developments and immunological studies in mammals including human. However, the association between KLH and the immune systems, especially the innate immune systems, remains poorly understood. The aim of this study is to clarify the direct effects of KLH on the innate immune systems. KLH activated an inflammation-related transcription factor NF-kB as much as lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in a human monocytic leukemia THP-1 reporter cell line. We have found that the KLH-induced NF-kB activation is partially involved in a spleen tyrosine kinase (Syk) pathway. We have also successfully revealed that an extracellular signal-regulated kinase (Erk), a member of mitogen-activated protein kinases, is located in an upstream of NF-kB activation induced by KLH. Furthermore, a Syk phosphorylation inhibitor partially suppressed the Erk activation in KLH-stimulated THP-1. These results suggest that both Syk and Erk associate with the KLH-induced NF-kB activation in the human monocyte

Temperature dependence of photoluminescence spectra of undoped and electron-doped SrTiO3: Crossover from Auger recombination to single-carrier trapping

We report unusual photoluminescence (PL) behaviors in highly photoexcited SrTiO3 crystals at low temperatures. The PL spectrum and dynamics show abrupt changes below 150 K in both nondoped and electron-doped SrTiO3 samples. We clarified that the PL dynamics in both nondoped and electron-doped SrTiO3 is well described by the same simple model involving single-carrier trapping, radiative bimolecular recombination, and nonradiative Auger recombination. The unusual temperature dependence of PL dynamics is caused by the crossover from Auger recombination at high temperatures to single-carrier trapping at low temperatures. We discuss the temperature-dependent PL dynamics in conjunction with the high carrier mobility of SrTiO3 at low temperatures

A Stochastic Variance Reduced Nesterov's Accelerated Quasi-Newton Method

Recently algorithms incorporating second order curvature information have become popular in training neural networks. The Nesterov's Accelerated Quasi-Newton (NAQ) method has shown to effectively accelerate the BFGS quasi-Newton method by incorporating the momentum term and Nesterov's accelerated gradient vector. A stochastic version of NAQ method was proposed for training of large-scale problems. However, this method incurs high stochastic variance noise. This paper proposes a stochastic variance reduced Nesterov's Accelerated Quasi-Newton method in full (SVR-NAQ) and limited (SVRLNAQ) memory forms. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated in Tensorflow on four benchmark problems - two regression and two classification problems respectively. The results show improved performance compared to conventional methods.Comment: Accepted in ICMLA 201

Incidência de infecção por Toxoplasma gondii em cães do município de São Paulo

The incidence of toxoplasmic infection in dogs of São Paulo city, evaluated by the indirect immunofluorescent technique was 63,8% [LC (58,6 — 69,0) = 95%]. There were not observed differences estatistically significant between the proportion of reagents when considered the sex, the seasons and the differents section of São Paulo city. The more frequent value of anti-toxoplasma antibody title was 64.A incidência de infecção toxoplásmica em cães do município de São Paulo, avaliada pela prova de Imunofluorescência  indireta revelou ser igual a 63,8% [LC (58,6— 69,0) = 95%]. Não foram observadas diferenças estatisticamente significantes entre as porcentagens de reagentes quando considerados os sexos, as diferentes estações do ano, bem como as diversas regionais administrativas de São Paulo. O valor mais frequente do título de anticorpo anti-toxoplasma foi igual a 64

Palliative Percutaneous Jejunal Stent for Patients with Short Bowel Syndrome

Gastrointestinal obstruction is a common preterminal event in patients with gastric and pancreatic cancer who often undergo palliative bypass surgery. Although endoscopic palliation with self-expandable metallic stents has emerged as a safe and effective alternative to surgery, experience with this technique remains limited. In particular, a proximal jejunal obstruction requires more technical expertise than a duodenal obstruction. Palliative treatment modalities include both surgical and nonsurgical approaches. In this report, we describe the successful placement of self-expandable metallic stents at the proximal jejunum using a combination of percutaneous endoscopic, intraoperative, and transstomal stenting. Usually endoscopy is not indicated in cases of proximal jejunal obstruction, but some cases may require palliative endoscopy instead of bypass operation

Search for agglutinating antibodies to Leptospira and Leptonema in horses, São Paulo, Brazil

Soros de 922 eqüinos aparentemente sadios, mantidos na Fazenda do Instituto Butantan (São Roque, SP) para produção de soros hiperimunes, foram analisados quanto à presença de anticorpos para sorovares de Leptospira interrogans e para Leptonema illini, através da reação de aglutinação microscópica (MA). Entre os 807 (87,5%) animais positivos, 659 (81,7%) reagiram com mais de um sorovar, com títulos entre 1:100 e 1:6.400, havendo predomínio de títulos baixos (≤ 1:400); 84% dos soros positivos reagiram com representantes do sorogrupo Icterohaemorrhagiae e 79,2% com Leptonema illini. Dos 23 sorovares utilizados, apenas o tarassovi não reagiu.Sera from 922 apparently health equines intended for therapeutic sera production in a farm of the Instituto Butantã in São Roque, State of São Paulo. Brazil, were examined for detection of antibodies to serovars of Leptospira interrogans and to Leptonema illini by the microscopic agglutination (MA) test. Significant antibody titres were found in 807 sera (87.5%) and 659 (81.7%) of those sera reacted to more than one serovar at titres ranging from 1: 100 to 1:6,400 with predominance of low titres (≤ 1:400). From the 23 screening serovars, only tarassovi did not react. The most common reactions among positive sera occurred to antigens from the Icterohaemorrhagiae serogroup (84%) and to Leptonema illini (79.2%)