Thiol-linked peroxidase activity of human ceruloplasmin

AbstractHuman ceruloplasmin exhibited different antioxidant effects according to the electron donors in a metal-catalyzed oxidation system. Purified ceruloplasmin did not play a significant role in the protection of DNA strand breaks in the ascorbate/Fe3+/O2 system. However, when ascorbates were replaced with a thiol-reducing equivalent such as dithiothreitol, DNA strand breaks were significantly prevented by the same amount of ceruloplasmin. Ceruloplasmin did not catalyze the decomposition of H2O2 in the absence of reduced glutathione. On the contrary, ceruloplasmin showed a potent peroxidase ability to destroy H2O2 in the presence of reduced glutathione. In conclusion, the removal of H2O2 by human ceruloplasmin is not simply stoichiometric but thiol-dependent

Adaptive changes in physiological and perceptual responses during 10-day heat acclimation training using a water-perfused suit

Abstract Background While active heat acclimation strategies have been robustly explored, not many studies highlighted passive heat acclimation strategies. Particularly, little evidence demonstrated advantages of utilizing a water-perfused suit as a passive heating strategy. This study aimed to explore heat adaptive changes in physiological and perceptual responses during 10-day heat acclimation training using a water-perfused suit. Methods Nineteen young males were divided into three experimental groups: exercise condition (N = 6, HAEXE, 1-h exercise at 6 km h−1 followed by 1-h rest in a sitting position), exercise and passive heating condition (N = 6, HAEXE+SUIT, 1-h exercise at 6 km h−1 followed 1-h passive heating in a sitting position), and passive heating condition (N = 7, HASUIT, 2-h passive heating in a sitting position). All heating programs were conducted for 10 consecutive days in a climatic chamber maintained at 33 °C with 60% relative humidity. The passive heating was conducted using a newly developed water-perfused suit with 44 °C water. Results Greater whole-body sweat rate and alleviated perceptual strain were found in HASUIT and HAEXE+SUIT after 5 and/or 10 days (P < 0.05) but not in the exercise-only condition (HAEXE). Lower rectal temperature and heart rate were found in all conditions after the training (P < 0.05). Heat adaptive changes appeared earlier in HASUIT except for sweat responses. Conclusions For heat acclimation in hot humid environments, passive and post-exercise heat acclimation training using the suit (water inflow temperature 44 °C) were more effective than the mild exercise (1-h walking at 6 km h−1). This form of passive heating (HASUIT) may be an especially effective strategy for the elderly and the disabled who are not able to exercise in hot environments

A Case of Streptococcus gallolyticus subsp gallolyticus Infective Endocarditis with Colon Cancer: Identification by 16S Ribosomal DNA Sequencing

Although the association between Streptococcus bovis endocarditis and colon carcinoma is well known, very few cases of S. bovis infection associated with underlying malignancies have been reported in Korea The S. bovis group has been recently reclassified and renamed as Streptococcus gallolyticus and Streptococcus infantarius subspecies under a new nomenclature system. We report a case of infective endocarditis with colon cancer caused by S. gallolyticus subsp. gallolyticus (previously named S. bovis biotype 1). A 59-yr-old woman presented with a 1-month history of fever. Initial blood cultures were positive for gram-positive cocci, and echocardiography showed vegetation on mitral and aortic valves. Antibiotic treatment for infective endocarditis was started. The infecting strain was a catalase-negative and bile-esculin-positive alpha-hemolytic Streptococcus susceptible to penicillin and vancomycin. The strain was identified as S. gallolyticus subsp. gallolyticus with the use of the Vitek 2 GPI and API 20 Strep systems (bioMerieux, USA). The 16S rDNA sequences of the blood culture isolates showed 100% homology with those of S. gallolyticus subsp. gallolyticus reported in GenBank. The identification of the infecting organism, and the subsequent communication among clinical microbiologists and physicians about the changed nomenclature, led to the detection of colon cancer. The patient recovered after treatment with antibiotics, valve surgery, and operation for colon cancer. This is the first report of biochemical and genetic identification of S. gallolyticus subsp. gallolyticus causing infective endocarditis associated with underlying colon cancer in a Korean patient. (Korean J Lib Med 2010;30:160-5)Herrero IA, 2002, J CLIN MICROBIOL, V40, P3848, DOI 10.1128/JCM.40.10.3848-3850.2002Beck M, 2008, J CLIN MICROBIOL, V46, P2966, DOI 10.1128/JCM.00078-08Poyart C, 2002, INT J SYST EVOL MICR, V52, P1247, DOI 10.1099/js.0.02044-0Clarridge JE, 2001, J CLIN MICROBIOL, V39, P1549KOH DW, 2001, KOREAN J GASTROINTES, V23, P503Schlegel L, 2000, INT J SYST EVOL MICR, V50, P1425Ellmerich S, 2000, CARCINOGENESIS, V21, P753KWACK KK, 2000, KOREAN J MED, V59, P198Devriese LA, 1998, J CLIN MICROBIOL, V36, P3520COYKENDALL AL, 1989, CLIN MICROBIOL REV, V2, P315Schlegel L, 2003, INT J SYST EVOL MICR, V53, P631, DOI 10.1099/ijs.0.02361-0UH Y, 2006, KOREAN J CLIN MICROB, V9, P36RUOFF KL, 1989, J CLIN MICROBIOL, V27, P305FARROW JAE, 1984, SYST APPL MICROBIOL, V5, P467WILSON WR, 1981, JAMA-J AM MED ASSOC, V245, P360KLEIN RS, 1979, ANN INTERN MED, V91, P560KLEIN RS, 1977, NEW ENGL J MED, V297, P800MC CW, 1951, J MED ASS STATE ALA, V21, P162

A Generalized Framework for Video Instance Segmentation

The handling of long videos with complex and occluded sequences has recently emerged as a new challenge in the video instance segmentation (VIS) community. However, existing methods have limitations in addressing this challenge. We argue that the biggest bottleneck in current approaches is the discrepancy between training and inference. To effectively bridge this gap, we propose a Generalized framework for VIS, namely GenVIS, that achieves state-of-the-art performance on challenging benchmarks without designing complicated architectures or requiring extra post-processing. The key contribution of GenVIS is the learning strategy, which includes a query-based training pipeline for sequential learning with a novel target label assignment. Additionally, we introduce a memory that effectively acquires information from previous states. Thanks to the new perspective, which focuses on building relationships between separate frames or clips, GenVIS can be flexibly executed in both online and semi-online manner. We evaluate our approach on popular VIS benchmarks, achieving state-of-the-art results on YouTube-VIS 2019/2021/2022 and Occluded VIS (OVIS). Notably, we greatly outperform the state-of-the-art on the long VIS benchmark (OVIS), improving 5.6 AP with ResNet-50 backbone. Code is available at https://github.com/miranheo/GenVIS.Comment: CVPR 202