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Practical quantum networks require interfacing quantum memories with existing channels and systems that operate in the telecom band. Here we demonstrate low-noise, bidirectional quantum frequency conversion that enables a solid-state quantum memory to directly interface with telecom-band systems. In particular, we demonstrate conversion of visible-band single photons emitted from a silicon-vacancy (SiV) center in diamond to the telecom O band, maintaining low noise (g^{2}(0)

The role of NK cells against HIV-1 infections remains to be elucidated in vivo. While humanized mouse models potentially could be used to directly evaluate human NK cell responses during HIV-1 infection, improved functional development of human NK cells in these hosts is needed. Here, we report the humanized MISTRG-6-15 mouse model, in which NK cells were quick to expand and exhibit degranulation, cytotoxicity, and proinflammatory cytokine production in nonlymphoid organs upon HIV-1 infection but had reduced functionality in lymphoid organs. Although HIV-1 infection induced functional impairment of NK cells, antiretroviral therapy reinvigorated NK cells in response to HIV-1 rebound after analytic treatment interruption. Moreover, a broadly neutralizing antibody, PGT121, enhanced NK cell function in vivo, consistent with antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity. Monoclonal antibody depletion of NK cells resulted in higher viral loads in multiple nonlymphoid organs. Overall, our results in humanized MISTRG-6-15 mice demonstrated that NK cells provided direct anti–HIV-1 responses in vivo but were limited in their responses in lymphoid organs.

With increasing numbers of patients with rheumatoid arthritis achieving sustained remission, medication withdrawal is an important consideration to reduce polypharmacy and associated adverse events. An article from the journal Arthritis & Rheumatology (1) explores the treatment withdrawal options for patients on etanercept and methotrexate combination therapies and suggests methotrexate withdrawal has the least impact on disease worsening. There are limitations in the study, including the use of only one disease activity score and no assessment of radiographic progression, but, overall, the article provides a good framework for future studies on treatment withdrawal options and the possibility of medication reduction for patients.

Ahmet Avcı,1 Mustafa Umut Somuncu,1 Murat Can,2 Ferit Akgul1 1Department of Cardiology, Faculty of Medicine, Zonguldak Bulent Ecevit University, Zonguldak, Turkey; 2Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Zonguldak Bulent Ecevit University, Zonguldak, TurkeyCorrespondence: Ahmet AvcıDepartment of Cardiology, Faculty of Medicine, Zonguldak Bulent Ecevit University, Bülent Ecevit Universitesi Tip Fakultesi Dekanligi Ibn-i Sina Kampusu, Esenköy/Kozlu, Zonguldak 67600, TurkeyTel +90 505 548 2710Email drahmetavci@yahoo.comBackground and Aim: One of the most worrying complications of primary percutaneous coronary interventions is contrast-induced nephropathy (CIN) that is associated with increased mortality and morbidity in myocardial infarction. In this study, we questioned whether soluble suppression of tumorigenesis-2 (sST2), which has thought to play a role in inflammatory processes, cardiac remodeling, and fibrosis could give an idea about the development of CIN in ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients.Patients and Methods: This study is a cross-sectional observational study and includes 357 consecutive STEMI patients. Demographic features, medical history, laboratory parameters, and procedural characteristics were compared according to CIN’s development. The multivariate logistic regression analysis was selected to detect independent risk factors of CIN.Results: In the study, 81 patients (22.7%) who developed CIN were identified. The concentration of sST2 in CIN (+) group was higher than that of CIN (-) group (40.6± 21.0 ng/mL vs 31.5± 13.0 ng/L, p< 0.001). Independent predictors of CIN development were diabetes mellitus (OR, 2.059; 95% CI, 1.093– 3.879; p=0.025), eGFR (OR, 0.983; 95% CI, 0.972– 0.995; p=0.006), lower systolic blood pressure (OR, 0.976; 95% CI, 0.960– 0.993; p=0.006), total procedure time (OR, 1.030; 95% CI, 1.011– 1.049; p=0.002), and sST2 (OR, 1.101; 95% CI; 1.046– 1.160; p< 0.001). Besides, the risk of developing CIN in the high sST2 group is 3.06 times higher than the low group sST2 group regardless of other risk factors.Conclusion: sST2 levels on admission in STEMI patients are useful in predicting CIN development.Keywords: contrast-induced nephropathy, soluble ST2, ST-elevation myocardial infarction, primary percutaneous coronary intervention

The environmental bacterium Legionella pneumophila is an intracellular pathogen of various protozoan hosts and able to cause Legionnaires’ disease, a severe pneumonia in humans. By encoding a wide selection of virulence factors, the infectious agent possesses several strategies to manipulate its host cells and evade immune detection. In the present study, we demonstrate that the L. pneumophila zinc metalloprotease ProA functions as a modulator of flagellin-mediated TLR5 stimulation and subsequent activation of the pro-inflammatory NF-κB pathway. We found ProA to be capable of directly degrading immunogenic FlaA monomers but not the polymeric form of bacterial flagella. These results indicate a role of the protease in antagonizing immune stimulation, which was further substantiated in HEK-BlueTM hTLR5 Detection assays. Addition of purified proteins, bacterial suspensions of L. pneumophila mutant strains as well as supernatants of human lung tissue explant infection to this reporter cell line demonstrated that ProA specifically decreases the TLR5 response via FlaA degradation. Conclusively, the zinc metalloprotease ProA serves as a powerful regulator of exogenous flagellin and presumably creates an important advantage for L. pneumophila proliferation in mammalian hosts by promoting immune evasion.

This paper provides an introduction to this Special Issue on “Family migration processes in a comparative perspective”. Following an introduction to the topic, we provide summaries of the papers in this Special Issue and discuss afterwards some overarching theoretical perspectives. This Special Issue contains papers that explore how family lives and intimate relationships are constituted and re-constituted under conditions of transnationality. The authors of the contributing papers, although they have followed very different theoretical and methodological paths, underscore the effect of conducting and facilitating family life and couple relationships during or after an international migration process. They show that the couples and multigenerational families in transnational contexts are constantly undergoing processes of constitution, negotiation, and reconstitution. We conclude that future research should shift from focusing solely on the individual to examining couples and families, and it should adopt dynamic, rather than static perspectives when studying family migration.

Objective: Bipolar disorder is highly comorbid with anxiety disorders, however current and lifetime comorbidity patterns of each anxiety disorder and their associated features are not well studied. Here, we aimed to conduct a meta-analysis and meta-regression study of current evidence.Method: We searched PubMed to access relevant articles published until September 2015, using the keywords “Bipolar disorder” or “Affective Psychosis” or “manic depressive” separately with “generalized anxiety,” “panic disorder,” “social phobia,” “obsessive compulsive,” and “anxiety.” Variables for associated features and prevalence of anxiety disorders were carefully extracted.Results: Lifetime any anxiety disorder comorbidity in BD was 40.5%; panic disorder (PD) 18.1%, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) 13.3%, social anxiety disorder (SAD) 13.5% and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) 9.7%. Current any anxiety disorder comorbidity in BD is 38.2%; GAD is 15.2%, PD 13.3%, SAD 11.7%, and OCD 9.9%. When studies reporting data about comorbidities in BDI or BDII were analyzed separately, lifetime any anxiety disorder comorbidity in BDI and BDII were 38% and 34%, PD was 15% and 15%, GAD was 14% and 16.6%, SAD was 8% and 13%, OCD was 8% and 10%, respectively. Current any DSM anxiety disorder comorbidity in BDI or BDII were 31% and 37%, PD was 9% and 13%, GAD was 8% and 12%, SAD was 7% and 11%, and OCD was 8% and 7%, respectively. The percentage of manic patients and age of onset of BD tended to have a significant impact on anxiety disorders. Percentage of BD I patients significantly decreased the prevalence of panic disorder and social anxiety disorder. A higher rate of substance use disorder was associated with greater BD–SAD comorbidity. History of psychotic features significantly affected current PD and GAD.Conclusions: Anxiety disorder comorbidity is high in BD with somewhat lower rates in BDI vs BDII. Age of onset, substance use disorders, and percentage of patients in a manic episode or with psychotic features influences anxiety disorder comorbidity.

This article investigates differences between native Germans and Turkish immigrants in the timing of leaving their parental homes in Germany. By using event history models, it is shown that leaving the parental home is closely linked to the intervening life-event of marriage, particularly among Turkish women. Moreover, there are interaction effects of religious norm orientation with gender which differ between native Germans and Turkish immigrants. In contrast to Turkish immigrants, the linkage of marriage and leaving home became much weaker over birth-cohorts with time in the group of German women. Finally, analyses of sequence patterns also show remarkable differences between native Germans and Turkish immigrants in the process of leaving home. Religious norm orientation turns out to be less important in the Turkish group than in the native German group.

Networks analysis has been commonly used to study the interactions between units of complex systems. One problem of particular interest is learning the network's underlying connection pattern given a single and noisy instantiation. While many methods have been proposed to address this problem in recent years, they usually assume that the true model belongs to a known class, which is not verifiable in most real-world applications. Consequently, network modeling based on these methods either suffers from model misspecification or relies on additional model selection procedures that are not well understood in theory and can potentially be unstable in practice. To address this difficulty, we propose a mixing strategy that leverages available arbitrary models to improve their individual performances. The proposed method is computationally efficient and almost tuning-free for network modeling. We show that the proposed method performs equally well as the oracle estimate when the true model is included as individual candidates. More importantly, the method remains robust and outperforms all current estimates even when the models are misspecified. Extensive simulation examples are used to verify the advantage of the proposed mixing method. Evaluation of link prediction performance on more than 500 real-world networks from different domains also demonstrates the universal competitiveness of the mixing method across multiple domains. for this article are available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of NK cells against HIV-1 infections remains to be elucidated in vivo. While humanized mouse models potentially could be used to directly evaluate human NK cell responses during HIV-1 infection, improved functional development of human NK cells in these hosts is needed. Here, we report the humanized MISTRG-6-15 mouse model, in which NK cells were quick to expand and exhibit degranulation, cytotoxicity, and proinflammatory cytokine production in nonlymphoid organs upon HIV-1 infection but had reduced functionality in lymphoid organs. Although HIV-1 infection induced functional impairment of NK cells, antiretroviral therapy reinvigorated NK cells in response to HIV-1 rebound after analytic treatment interruption. Moreover, a broadly neutralizing antibody, PGT121, enhanced NK cell function in vivo, consistent with antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity. Monoclonal antibody depletion of NK cells resulted in higher viral loads in multiple nonlymphoid organs. Overall, our results in humanized MISTRG-6-15 mice demonstrated that NK cells provided direct anti- HIV-1 responses in vivo but were limited in their responses in lymphoid organs., Introduction NK cells recognize ligands presented on the surface of HIV-1-infected cells, including infection-induced self-proteins (1, 2) and possibly the viral envelope protein (3), as well as Fc regions of [...]

The proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controller has three basic parameters: Proportional gain (Kp), Integral gain (Ki) and Derivative gain (Kd). In a conventional PID controller, integral and derivative operators are integer order. The researchers proposed a fractional order PID (PIλDμ) controller by using the fractional integral and derivative operators instead of the integer order integral and derivative operators in the traditional PID controller because it improves the control performance. The PIλDμ controller has an additional fractional integrator degree (λ) and fractional derivative degree (μ). In this study, the focus is on the design of a fractional-order PID controller according to a reference model in the time domain. Bode's ideal transfer function was used as the reference model. It is aimed to obtain PIλDμ parameters by minimizing the error between the time domain response of Bode's ideal transfer function model and the output of the system to be controlled by using the optimization method. Genetic Algorithm (GA) optimization was used as the optimization method. The study was carried out as a simulation study on an inverted pendulum system with a single-input multiple-output (SIMO) structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a type of dementia characterized by a decline in brain function, which leads to the inability to perform activities independently. Many researchers recognize abnormalities related to beta‐amyloid as the main cause of the disease (i.e., the beta‐amyloid hypothesis), but aging, genetics, coronary heart disease, environmental factors, gender, and other risk factors may also contribute to AD development. Three drugs with different mechanisms are available for AD treatment: cholinesterase inhibitors, N‐methyl d‐aspartate, and aducanumab. This study reviewed the therapies that are already applied in clinical practice and those that are currently being investigated for clinical use. These therapies include not only pharmacological treatments but also non‐pharmacological treatments, such as gut flora therapy and music therapy. A comprehensive understanding of these therapies is necessary to enable early intervention, improve patients' physical and mental conditions, delay the occurrence and development of AD, and extend patients' healthy lifespans.

In this study, a ddPCR method for the detection of scale drop disease virus (SDDV) in yellowfin seabream (Acanthopagrus latus) was established based on Real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR detection methods and principles. The reaction conditions were optimized, and the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and reproducibility were assessed. The results showed that threshold line position was determined to be 1900 by the ddPCR method; the optimum annealing temperature for SDDV detection by the ddPCR method was 60°C; the limit of detection was 1.4–1.7 copies/μL; the results of specific detection of other common viruses, except for SDDV specific amplification, were all negative; and the relative standard deviation (RSD) for the reproducibility validation was 0.77%. The samples of yellowfin seabream (Acanthopagrus latus) liver, spleen, kidney, heart, intestine, brain, blood, muscle, skin and ascites with three replicates, respectively, were tested using the ddPCR method, and the results were consistent with clinical findings. The ddPCR method established in this study has the advantages of high sensitivity, high specificity, good reproducibility and simple steps for the quantitative detection of SDDV, which could be used for the nucleic acid detection of clinical SDDV samples, and provided a new quantitative method for the diagnosis of yellowfin seabream SDDV in the early stage of pathogenesis.