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Type II Abernethy malformation is an extremely reported congenital extrahepatic portosystemic shunt in complication with nephrotic syndrome. We present the case of an 8-year-old boy who presented with symptoms of type II Abernethy malformation and nephrotic syndrome. This diagnosis of this type II Abernethy malformation was based on physical examination, blood tests, urinalysis, nephrotic and hepatic function tests, routine clinical lipid measurements, abdominal ultrasonography, and computed tomographic angiography. A kidney biopsy revealed the pathological features of nephrotic syndrome. This is the second reported patient diagnosed with type II Abernethy malformation and nephrotic syndrome. Captopril treatment was effective in improving the symptoms of this case. A patient with type II Abernethy malformation related to immune complex-mediated glomerular injury was effectively improved with medication. Type II Abernethy malformation is a causative factor of immune complex-mediated glomerular injury in nephrotic syndrome. Captopril treatment significantly improved the symptoms in this case.

This paper presents a property-directed approach to verifying recurrent neural networks (RNNs). To this end, we learn a deterministic finite automaton as a surrogate model from a given RNN using active automata learning. This model may then be analyzed using model checking as a verification technique. The term property-directed reflects the idea that our procedure is guided and controlled by the given property rather than performing the two steps separately. We show that this not only allows us to discover small counterexamples fast, but also to generalize them by pumping toward faulty flows hinting at the underlying error in the RNN. We also show that our method can be efficiently used for adversarial robustness certification of RNNs.

Angluin's L$^*$ algorithm learns the minimal deterministic finite automaton (DFA) of a regular language using membership and equivalence queries. Its probabilistic approximatively correct (PAC) version substitutes an equivalence query by numerous random membership queries to get a high level confidence to the answer. Thus it can be applied to any kind of device and may be viewed as an algorithm for synthesizing an automaton abstracting the behavior of the device based on observations. Here we are interested on how Angluin's PAC learning algorithm behaves for devices which are obtained from a DFA by introducing some noise. More precisely we study whether Angluin's algorithm reduces the noise and produces a DFA closer to the original one than the noisy device. We propose several ways to introduce the noise: (1) the noisy device inverts the classification of words w.r.t. the DFA with a small probability, (2) the noisy device modifies with a small probability the letters of the word before asking its classification w.r.t. the DFA, (3) the noisy device combines the classification of a word w.r.t. the DFA and its classification w.r.t. a counter automaton, and (4) the noisy DFA is obtained by a random process from two DFA such that the language of the first one is included in the second one. Then when a word is accepted (resp. rejected) by the first (resp. second) one, it is also accepted (resp. rejected) and in the remaining cases, it is accepted with probability 0.5. Our main experimental contributions consist in showing that: (1) Angluin's algorithm behaves well whenever the noisy device is produced by a random process, (2) but poorly with a structured noise, and, that (3) is able to eliminate pathological behaviours specified in a regular way. Theoretically, we show that randomness almost surely yields systems with non-recursively enumerable languages., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2209.10315

Background Pregnancy-associated listeriosis is a severe infectious disease and potentially leading to fetal/neonatal fatal. Limited information on pregnancy-associated listeriosis is available in China. Methods We performed a retrospective study on maternal and neonatal patients with pregnancy-associated listeriosis. The clinical characteristics of pregnancy-associated listeriosis were studied, and the outcome determinants of neonatal listeriosis were explored. Results 14 cases of pregnancy-associated listeriosis were identified. The incidence of pregnancy-associated listeriosis in our hospital was 16.69/100,000 births. All of the 14 maternal patients eventually recovered after delivery shortly with no sequelae. None of the 12 mothers who delivered in this hospital received antepartum first-line empirical treatment. Among the 14 neonatal cases, 1 was late onset listeriosis and 13 were early onset cases; 11 survived and 3 died. Fatality rates were significantly higher in outborn neonates (P=0.005). Besides, higher mortality rates were observed in neonates with lower birth weight (P=0.038), gestational ageP=0.056), and Apgar score (5th min) P=0.056), with marginally significant differences. Conclusions There is a neglected burden of pregnancy-associated listeriosis in our hospital. Timely and optimal resuscitative measures are considered to be important to reduce mortality of neonatal listeriosis. Listeriosis should be considered in the differential diagnosis of pregnancy-associated infections.

Colon cancer is associated with high death rates worldwide and poses a serious threat to public health. GINS complex subunit 2 (GINS2) serves a carcinogenic role in many cancers, including gastric adenocarcinoma, ovarian cancer and pancreatic cancer. However, the specific function of GINS2 in the development of colon cancer has not been described in detail. The present study aimed to clarify the role of GINS2 in colon cancer. A Cell Counting Kit‑8 assay, EdU staining, TUNEL and flow cytometry analyses were performed to determine the levels of cell viability, proliferation and apoptosis and to evaluate the cell cycle. Through the analysis of BioGrid, a Protein‑Protein Interaction database, it was hypothesized that protein tyrosine phosphatase 4A1 (PTP4A1) is a protein that might interact with GINS2, which was then validated using a co‑immunoprecipitation assay. mRNA and protein levels were measured using reverse transcription‑quantitative PCR and western blotting, respectively. The results of the present study demonstrated that GINS2 expression levels were increased in colon cancer cells. Furthermore, GINS2 knockdown inhibited the proliferation of colon cancer cells, while the levels of cell cycle arrest and apoptosis were increased. By interacting with PTP4A1, GINS2 promoted the expression of PTP4A1, a novel p53 target. GINS2 knockdown was increased, while PTP4A1 overexpression decreased the protein level of p53. Notably, PTP4A1 overexpression partly reversed the effects of GINS2 downregulation on colon cancer cells. Therefore, the present study demonstrated that GINS2 regulated the proliferation and apoptosis of colon cancer cells through PTP4A1/p53 pathway, highlighting that GINS2 may serve as a novel molecular marker for colon cancer prevention and therapy.

Fault diagnosability (allowing one to determine with certainty whether a given fault has effectively occurred based on the available observations) is a crucial and challenging property in complex system automatic control, which generally requires a high number of sensors, increasing the system cost, since it is quite a strong property. In this paper, we analyze a new system property called manifestability, that is a weaker requirement on system observations for having a chance to identify on-line faults: that a faulty system cannot always appear healthy. We propose an algorithm with PSPACE complexity to automatically verify it for finite automata, and prove that the problem of manifestability verification itself is PSPACE-complete. The experimental results show the feasibility of our algorithm from a practical point of view. Then, we extend our approach to verify manifestability of real-time systems modeled by timed automata, proving that it is undecidable in general but under some restricted conditions it becomes PSPACE-complete. Finally, we encode this property into an SMT formula, whose satisfiability witnesses manifestability, before presenting experimental results showing the scalability of our approach.

International audience; Web services provide a general basis of convenient access and operation for cloud applications. However, such services become very vulnerable when being attacked, especially in the situation where service continuity is one of the most important requirements. This issue highlights the necessity to apply reliable and formal methods to attack tolerance in Web services. In this paper, we propose a Coloured Petri Nets based method for attack tolerance by modelling and analysing basic behaviours of attack-network interaction, attack detectors and their tolerance solutions. Furthermore, complex attacks can be analysed and tolerance solutions deployed by identifying these basic attack-network interactions and composing their solutions. The validity of our method is demonstrated through a case study on attack tolerance in cloud-based medical information storage.

Staphylococcus epidermidis is frequently associated with biofilm-related infections. Biofilms drastically reduce the efficacy of conventional antibiotics and the host immune system. In S. epidermidis biofilm formation, a major role is played by the YycG/YycF two-component system, and previous findings have indicated that inhibitors targeting the cytoplasmic HATPase_c domain of YycG kinase in S. epidermidis exhibit bactericidal and biofilm-killing activities. Therefore, we hypothesized that monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against YycG extracellular (YycGex) domain would block the signal transduction and influence the biofilm formation of S. epidermidis. In this study, we screened out two YycGex-specific mAbs showing the highest affinity for the target, mAbs 2F3 and 1H1. These mAbs inhibited S. epidermidis biofilm formation in a dose-dependent manner, and at a concentration of 160 μg/mL, mAbs 2F3 and 1H1 caused 78.3 and 93.1% biofilm reduction, respectively, relative to normal mouse IgG control. When co-cultivated with YycGex mAbs, S. epidermidis cells showed diminished initial-adherence capacity, and the antibody treatment further led to a marked decrease in the synthesis of polysaccharide intercellular adhesin and in the transcriptional level of genes encoding proteins involved in biofilm formation. Lastly, we determined that the epitopes recognized by the two YycGex mAbs are located within aa 59–70 of the YycGex domain. It indicates that the YycGex domain may be a potential candidate as a vaccine for the prevention of S. epidermidis biofilm infections.

Infections of emerging and reemerging viruses (SARS-CoVs, influenza H1N1, etc.) largely and globally affect human health. Animal models often fail to reflect a physiological status because of species tropism of virus infection. Conventional cell lines are usually genetically and phenotypically different from primary cells. Developing an in vitro physiological model to study the infection of emerging viruses will facilitate our understanding of virus-host cell interactions, thereby benefiting antiviral drug discovery. In the current work, we first established normal airway epithelial cells (upper and lower airway track) in 2D and 3D culture systems using conditional reprogramming (CR) and air-liquid interface (ALI) techniques. These long-term cultures maintained differentiation potential. More importantly, these cells express two types of influenza virus receptors, α2-6-Gal- and α2-3-Gal-linked sialic acids, and angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), a receptor for SARS-CoVs as well. These cells were permissive to the infection of pandemic influenza H1N1 (H1N1pdm). In contrast, the lung cancer cell line A549 and immortalized airway epithelial cells (16HBE) were not susceptible to H1N1 infection. A virus-induced cytopathic effect (CPE) on 2D CRC cultures developed in a time-dependent manner. The pathological effects were also readily observed spreading from the apical layer to the basal layer of the 3D ALI culture. This integrated 2D CRC and 3D ALI cultures provide a physiological and personalized in vitro model to study the infection of emerging viruses. This novel model can be used for studying virus biology and host response to viral infection and for antiviral drug discovery.

Highly ordered LaTb x O y :Eu3+ nanowire arrays have been synthesised in anodic aluminium oxide template by chemical co-deposition at negative pressure suction, it is amorphous and with homogeneous morphologies. There are two peaks at 619 and 704 nm with excitation wavelength of 394 nm, which have red shift slightly relative to the 5D0–2F2 and 5D0–7F4 energy level transition of Eu3+, and Tb3+ exhibits strong fluorescence enhancement and sensitisation in LaTb x O y :Eu3+ nanowire arrays with the existence of La3+. The fluorescence intensity of LaTb x O y :Eu3+ nanowire arrays is related to the doping concentration of Eu3+ ion. When the doping concentration of Eu3+ is 8%, the fluorescence intensity reaches a maximum, and remarkably decreases at higher concentrations.

Fault diagnosis is a crucial and challenging task in the automatic control of complex systems, whose efficiency depends on a system property called diagnosability. Diagnosability describes the capability of a system to determine with certainty whether a fault has effectively occurred based on a sequence of observations. The diagnosability problem of discrete event systems has received considerable attention in the literature. However, up to now little work takes into account explicit time constraints during this analysis, which are however naturally present in real-life systems and thus cannot be neglected considering their impact on this property. In this paper, we first rephrase diagnosability definition for timed automata before showing the impact of time constraints on this property. Then we propose a new SMT-based approach to verify bounded time diagnosability on timed automata. The idea is to encode the sufficient and necessary condition for diagnosability in SMT. Finally, the experimental results are presented to show the efficiency of the SMT-based paradigm.

У статті описано результати дослідження, присвяченого формуванню педагогічної толерантності майбутніх учителів іноземних мов початкової школи. Зокрема подано дефініцію педагогічної толерантності майбутніх учителів іноземних мов початкової школи, описано концепцію моделі її формування, визначено етапи педагогічного експерименту, підібрано методики для діагностики рівня сформованості кожного компонента педагогічної компетентності. Описано авторський тренінг, розроблений з метою підготовки викладачів англійської мови до аудиторної роботи зі студентами у межах проблеми дослідження,обґрунтовано переваги тренінгу у порівнянні з іншими методами роботи, підібрано відповідний навчальний і методичний матеріал, перевагу надано інтерактивним методам та формам взаємодії. Схарактеризовано особливості практичних занять як основної форми організації навчальної діяльності студентів, визначено їх структурні елементи. Дано опис змістового компонента моделі формування педагогічної толерантності, а саме оновлено зміст дисциплін гуманітарного циклу, основне навчальне навантаження зосереджено на авторському спецкурсі “Практика толерантної англомовної комунікації”, визначено його мету, розподілено змістове наповнення на шість модулів, які дали можливість студентам поступово ознайомитися із сутністю педагогічної толерантності та основами практичної толерантної взаємодії у межах педагогічної діяльності, створено ефективні педагогічні умови для підготовки компетентного і толерантного учителя іноземних мов, описано методичний аспект формування педагогічної толерантності у роботі зі студентами. Подано результати кількісного та якісного аналізу рівнів сформованості педагогічної толерантності на констатувальному і формувальному етапах педагогічного експерименту. Доведено ефективність авторської моделі за допомогою критерію однорідності «хі-квадрат». The results of the study on the formation of pedagogical tolerance of future teachers of foreign languages in primary school have been described in the article. In particular, the definition of pedagogical tolerance has been given, the concept of the model of its formation has been described, the stages of the pedagogical experiment have been defined, methods for diagnosing the level of formation of each component of pedagogical competence have been selected. The author's training, designed to prepare English teachers for classroom work with students in the framework of the research problem, has been described, appropriate educational and methodological materials have been selected, the interactive methods and forms of collaboration have been favored. Features of practical classes as the basic form of organization of educational activity of students have been characterized, their structural elements have been determined. The content component of the model of the formation of pedagogical tolerance has been described, namely, the content of the disciplines of the humanitarian cycle has been updated, the main educational load has been concentrated on the author's special course "Practice of tolerant English-language communication", its purpose has been determined, its content has been composed to develop students’ perception of pedagogical tolerance and basis for tolerant interaction in teaching, effective pedagogical conditions for the preparation of a competent and tolerant teacher of foreign languages have been created, methodological and content aspects of teaching tolerance have been outlined. The results of quantitative and qualitative analysis of the levels of the formation of pedagogical tolerance at different stages of the pedagogical experiment have been presented. The efficiency of the author's model has been proved.

Fault diagnosis is a crucial and challenging task in the automatic control of complex systems, whose efficiency depends on the diagnosability property of a system. Diagnosability describes the system property allowing one to determine with certainty whether a given fault has effectively occurred based on the available observations. However, this is a quite strong property that generally requires a high number of sensors. Consequently, it is not rare that developing a diagnosable system is too expensive. In this paper, we analyze a new discrete event system property called manifestability, that represents the weakest requirement on observations for having a chance to identify on line fault occurrences and can be verified at design stage. Intuitively, this property makes sure that a faulty system cannot always appear healthy, i.e., has at least one future behavior after fault occurrence observably distinguishable from all normal behaviors. Then, we prove that manifestability is a weaker property than diagnosability before proposing an algorithm with PSPACE complexity to automatically verify both properties. Furthermore, we prove that the problem of manifestability verification itself is PSPACE-complete. The experimental results show the feasibility of our algorithm from a practical point of view. Finally, we compare our approach with related work.

The two-component signal transduction system PhoP/PhoQ is an important regulator for stress responses and virulence in most Gram-negative bacteria, but characterization of PhoP/PhoQ in Shigella has not been thoroughly investigated. In the present study, we found that deletion of phoPQ (ΔphoPQ) from Shigella flexneri 2a 301 (Sf301) resulted in a significant decline (reduced by more than 15-fold) in invasion of HeLa cells and Caco-2 cells, and less inflammation (- or +) compared to Sf301 (+++) in the guinea pig Sereny test. In low Mg2+ (10 μM) medium or pH 5 medium, the ΔphoPQ strain exhibited a growth deficiency compared to Sf301. The ΔphoPQ strain was more sensitive than Sf301 to polymyxin B, an important antimicrobial agent for treating multi-resistant Gram-negative infections. By comparing the transcriptional profiles of ΔphoPQ and Sf301 using DNA microarrays, 117 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified, which were involved in Mg2+ transport, lipopolysaccharide modification, acid resistance, bacterial virulence, respiratory, and energy metabolism. Based on the reported PhoP box motif [(T/G) GTTTA-5nt-(T/G) GTTTA], we screened 38 suspected PhoP target operons in S. flexneri, and 11 of them (phoPQ, mgtA, slyB, yoaE, yrbL, icsA, yhiWX, rstA, hdeAB, pagP, and shf-rfbU-virK-msbB2) were demonstrated to be PhoP-regulated genes based on electrophoretic mobility shift assays and β-galactosidase assays. One of these PhoP-regulated genes, icsA, is a well-known virulence factor in S. flexneri. In conclusion, our data suggest that the PhoP/PhoQ system modulates S. flexneri virulence (in an icsA-dependent manner) and stress responses of Mg2+, pH and antibacterial peptides.

Two series of copper tetraarylporphyrins containing β,β′-fused tetrabutano or tetrabenzo groups were synthesized and characterized as to their electrochemistry and spectroelectrochemistry in nonaqueous media. The examined compounds are represented as butano-(TpYPP)CuII and benzo-(TpYPP)CuII, where TpYPP is the porphyrin dianion and Y is a CH3, H or Cl substituent on the para-position of the four meso-phenyl rings of the compound. Each neutral porphyrin in the two series is ESR active and shows a typical d9 Cu(II) signal in frozen CH2Cl2 solution. Each Cu(II) porphyrin also undergoes two reversible one-electron reductions and two reversible one-electron oxidations in DMF or CH2Cl2 containing 0.1 M tetra-n-butylammonium perchlorate to give a π-anion radical and dianion upon reduction and a π-cation radical and dication upon oxidation. A third one-electron oxidation is also observed for butano-(TpYPP)Cu (Y = CH3 and H) and benzo-(TPP)Cu in PhCN and this process is assigned to the CuII/CuIII transition. The reversible half-wave potential for the first oxidation of each compound in both series is shifted negatively by about 500 mV as compared to E1/2 values for oxidation of the related copper tetraarylporphyrin without the four fused benzo or butano rings while smaller positive shifts of 60 and 300 mV are seen for reduction of the tetrabenzotetraarylporphyrins and tetrabutaotetraarylporphyrins, respectively, as compared to the same redox reactions of the related tetraarylporphyrins. The electrochemically measured HOMO–LUMO gap averages 1.76 ± 0.05 V for benzo-(TpYPP)CuII, 2.04 ± 0.06 V for butano-(TpYPP)CuII and 2.33 ± 0.03 for (TpYPP)Cu in CH2Cl2.

In this work, we have successfully synthesized ultrasmall Cu2O nanocrystals with uniform sizes through a solution-based method. By virtue of the ideal Cu2O building blocks, 2D or 3D Cu2O superstructures can be easily achieved by tailoring the assembly process. The results indicate that diethyl carbonate (DEC) plays a crucial role for controlled self-assembly of Cu2O nanoparticles into a range of superstructures. Interestingly, the aggregative growths of Cu2O nanocrystals in the self-assembly process are accompanied by oriented attachment and Ostwald ripening. Furthermore, Cu2O and Cu2O–Au 3D colloidal spheres can be also obtained by an emulsion-based bottom-up self-assembly strategy. The results show that, compared with pure Cu2O nanospheres, the as-obtained Cu2O–Au nanospheres exhibit remarkable photocatalytic activities in the photodegradation of methyl orange (MO).

The two-component signal transduction system PhoP/PhoQ is an important regulator for stress responses and virulence in most Gram-negative bacteria, but characterization of PhoP/PhoQ in Shigella has not been thoroughly investigated. In the present study, we found that deletion of phoPQ (ΔphoPQ) from Shigella flexneri 2a 301 (Sf301) resulted in a significant decline (reduced by more than 15-fold) in invasion of HeLa cells and Caco-2 cells, and less inflammation (− or +) compared to Sf301 (+++) in the guinea pig Sereny test. In low Mg2+ (10 μM) medium or pH 5 medium, the ΔphoPQ strain exhibited a growth deficiency compared to Sf301. The ΔphoPQ strain was more sensitive than Sf301 to polymyxin B, an important antimicrobial agent for treating multi-resistant Gram-negative infections. By comparing the transcriptional profiles of ΔphoPQ and Sf301 using DNA microarrays, 117 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified, which were involved in Mg2+ transport, lipopolysaccharide modification, acid resistance, bacterial virulence, respiratory, and energy metabolism. Based on the reported PhoP box motif [(T/G) GTTTA-5nt-(T/G) GTTTA], we screened 38 suspected PhoP target operons in S. flexneri, and 11 of them (phoPQ, mgtA, slyB, yoaE, yrbL, icsA, yhiWX, rstA, hdeAB, pagP, and shf–rfbU-virK-msbB2) were demonstrated to be PhoP-regulated genes based on electrophoretic mobility shift assays and β-galactosidase assays. One of these PhoP-regulated genes, icsA, is a well-known virulence factor in S. flexneri. In conclusion, our data suggest that the PhoP/PhoQ system modulates S. flexneri virulence (in an icsA-dependent manner) and stress responses of Mg2+, pH and antibacterial peptides.

Verifying behavioral or safety properties of hybrid systems, either at design stage such as state reachability and diagnosability, or on-line such as fault detection and isolation is a challenging task. We are concerned here with abstractions oriented towards hybrid systems diagnosability checking. The verification can be done on the abstraction by classical methods developed for discrete event systems extended with time constraints, which provide a counterexample in case of non-diagnosability. The absence of such a counterexample proves the diagnosability of the original hybrid system. In the presence of a counterexample, the first step is to check if it is not a spurious effect of the abstraction and actually exists for the hybrid system, witnessing thus non-diagnosability. Otherwise, we show how to refine the abstraction, guided by the elimination of the counterexample, and continue the process of looking for another counterexample until either a final result is obtained or we reach an inconclusive verdict. We make use of qualitative modeling and reasoning to compute discrete abstractions. Abstractions as timed automata are particularly studied as they allow one to handle time constraints that can be captured at a qualitative level from the hybrid system.

У статті розглянуто динаміку розвитку гендерних студій у сучасній вітчизняній та зарубіжній лінгвістиці. Усі сучасні студії умовно поділені на есенціалістський та антиесенціалістський напрями. З позицій першого напряму, мовлення є частиною соціальної ролі, у межах якої гендерна ідентичність як соціальна категорія передує її мовному вираженню. У контексті другого – гендер є продуктом дискурсу, відповідно, мовлення не визначається гендерною ідентичністю, а конструює її. Обидва напрями представлені лінгвістичними дослідженнями гендеру з позицій парадигм гомогенності, аналогії й гетерогенності. Кожна парадигма розглянута крізь призму певних теорій та підходів: фольклорлінгвістичного підходу, теорії дефіцитності, теорією домінування, теорією розбіжностей, теорією субкультур, теорія перформативності, теорія інтерактивності. Основну цікавість викликають конструювання гендерної ідентичності, тобто сконструйовані версії фемінності та маскулінності. The article focuses on the dynamics of the development of gender studies in modern native and foreign linguistics. All modern studies are conventionally divided into essentialistic and antiessentialistic concepts. According to the first concept speech is a part of the social role, within which gender identity as a social category takes priority over its language expression. As far as the second concept is concerned, gender is a discourse product, consequently speech is not defined by gender identity, but constructing it. Both concepts are represented by linguistic gender studies from the perspective of analogy paradigm, homogeneity paradigm and heterogeneity paradigm. Each paradigm is analyzed in the light of certain theories and approaches: folklinguistics, deficit approach, domination approach, subcultures approach, performative and interactive approaches. The point of real interest is gender identity constructing that is constructed versions of feminity and masculinity

Diagnosability is an important property that determines at the design stage how accurate any diagnosis algorithm can be on a partially observable system and thus has significant economic impact on the improvement of performance and reliability of complex systems. Very recently distributed approaches for diagnosability began to be investigated since centralized approaches are not realistic for large systems due to the combinatorial explosion of the search space. In this paper, we propose a new optimized algorithm for pattern diagnosability analysis of distributed systems with modular structure, where we obtain the original pattern diagnosability information from the relative components before abstracting the sufficient and necessary information to be propagated to other connected components. Then, the diagnosability decision can be made after global consistency checking at the proper level of the subsystem involved. Our experimental results and complexity analysis illustrate the correctness and efficiency of our approach both in a practical and theoretical way. Finally, we distinguish our work by presenting related works before the conclusion.

Staphylococcus epidermidis is one of the most important opportunistic pathogens in nosocomial infections. The main pathogenicity associated with S. epidermidis involves the formation of biofilms on implanted medical devices, biofilms dramatically decrease the efficacy of conventional antibiotics and the host immune system. This emphasizes the urgent need for designing novel anti-staphylococcal biofilm agents. Based on the findings that compound 5, targeting the histidine kinase domain of S. epidermidis YycG, possessed bactericidal activity against staphylococci, 39 derivatives of compound 5 with intact thiazolopyrimidinone core structures were newly designed, 7 derivatives were further screened to explore their anti-bacterial and anti-biofilm activities. The seven derivatives strongly inhibited the growth of S. epidermidis and Staphylococcus aureus in the minimal inhibitory concentration range of 1.56–6.25 μM. All the derivatives reduced the proportion of viable cells in mature biofilms. They all displayed low cytotoxicity on mammalian cells and were not hemolytic to human erythrocytes. The biofilm inhibition activities of four derivatives (H5-32, H5-33, H5-34, and H5-35) were further investigated under shearing forces, they all led to significant decreases in the biofilm formation of S. epidermidis. These results were suggestive that the seven derivatives of compound 5 have the potential to be developed into agents for eradicating biofilm-associated infections.

The article deals with a research of verbal mechanisms of manipulative utterance organization, in particular implicature and presupposition. A characteristic feature of manipulative message is deliberate formation of an implicit content. Special attention is given to the gender aspect of manipulative influence. In our corpus of samples implicit manipulative mechanisms are mostly applied by men in order to make threats or reproaches. Форма маніпулятивного повідомлення розуміється як спосіб організації інформації, яка зазнає викривлення. Головною характерною рисою маніпулятивного висловлення є навмисність породження імпліцитного змісту. Характерною рисою маніпулятивного висловлення є навмисність породження імпліцитного змісту. До засобів імпліцитної передачі інформації з метою маніпуляції у більшості випадків удаються чоловіки, як правило, імплікуючи докір або погрозу.

International audience; Choreographies are contracts specifying from a global point of view the legal interactions that must take place among a set of services. Such a contract may serve as a reference in the development of concurrent distributed system, whether it is achieved following a top-down or a bottom-up approach. In this article, we present VerChor, a generic, modular, and extensible framework for supporting the development based on choreographies. It relies on a choreography intermediate format (CIF) into which several existing choreography description languages can be transformed. VerChor builds around a set of formal properties whose verification is central to choreography-based development. To support this development process, we propose a connection between CIF and the CADP verification toolbox, which enables the full automation of the aforementioned properties. Finally, we illustrate a practical use of the VerChor framework through its integration with the Eclipse BPMN 2.0 designer.

International audience; Analyzing systems communicating asynchronously via reliable FIFO buffers is an undecidable problem. A typical approach is to check whether the system is bounded, and if not, the corresponding state space can be made finite by limiting the presence of communication cycles in behavioral models or by fixing the buffer size. In this paper, our focus is on systems that are likely to be unbounded and therefore result in infinite systems. We do not want to restrict the system by imposing any arbitrary bound. We introduce a notion of stability and prove thatonce the system is stable for a specific buffer bound, it remains stable whatever larger bounds are chosen for buffers. This enables one to check certain properties on the system for that bound and to ensure that the system will preserve them whatever larger bounds are used for buffers. We also prove that computing this bound is undecidable but we show how we succeed in computing these bounds for many examples using heuristics and equivalence checking.

Стаття присвячується аналізу комунікативно-прагматичного рівня мовленнєвої маніпуляції в англомовному діалогічному дискурсі. Соціальна ситуація судового допиту розглянута як типова соціальна ситуація, що провокує використання маніпулятивних стратегій і тактик. Особлива увага приділяється гендерному аспекту маніпулятивного впливу. The article deals with the analysis of the communicative and pragmatic level of verbal manipulation in English dialogical discourse. Social situation of the examination in the court is regarded as a typical social situation which provokes the usage of manipulative strategies and tactics. Dialogical manipulative situations have been revealed on the basis of their cognitive discursive and communicative pragmatic characteristics. K. Serazhym’s communicative model is taken as the basis for the simulating of the dialogical manipulative situation structure.Social situation of flirting (living environment) and social situation of the examination in the court (official environment) are typical social situations which are impossible without manipulative influence.

Diagnosability of a discrete event system with respect to a pattern is a system property that guarantees its ability to detect the occurrence of the pattern with certainty based on a finite sequence of observations. This paper is the first work to study this problem in a distributed way. The previous work concerning pattern diagnosability problem proposes a centralized approach that do not consider the distributed nature of complex systems.We propose a theoretical framework to analyze pattern diagnosability in a distributed way. We present the way to construct local diagnosers for local components with respect to a given pattern. We show how to propagate diagnosability information between components as well as local twin plant construction. Then we provide a new distributed algorithm for pattern diagnosability verification, where global consistency is taken into account.

International audience; Predictability is considered as a crucial system property that determines with certainty the future occurrence of a fault based on a sequence of observations on system model. There are very few works done on the predictability problem for discrete event systems, which is however extremely important for developing critical complex systems. In this paper, we propose a formal sufficient and necessary condition for this property before presenting a new algorithm based on it, which is extendible from a centralized framework to a distributed one. Both are formally presented, as well as experimental results that show the efficiency of our approach.

Стаття присвячується аналізу комунікативно-прагматичного рівня мовленнєвої маніпуляції в англомовному діалогічному дискурсі. Соціальна ситуація судового допиту розглянута як типова соціальна ситуація, що провокує використання маніпулятивних стратегій і тактик. Особлива увага приділяється гендерному аспекту маніпулятивного впливу. The article deals with the analysis of the communicative and pragmatic level of verbal manipulation in English dialogical discourse. Social situation of the examination in the court is regarded as a typical social situation which provokes the usage of manipulative strategies and tactics. Dialogical manipulative situations have been revealed on the basis of their cognitive discursive and communicative pragmatic characteristics. K. Serazhym’s communicative model is taken as the basis for the simulating of the dialogical manipulative situation structure. The central components of the dialogical manipulative situation are an addresser, an addressee, a message, an addresser’s world, an addressee’s world, an imaginative world of an addresser, an imaginative world of an addressee, social situation (temporal and physical space of communication). Illustrative material shows that manipulative interaction may be provoked by certain local and temporal conditions of communication. Social situation of flirting (living environment) and social situation of the examination in the court (official environment) are typical social situations which are impossible without manipulative influence. Court discourse is traditionally considered to be a type of argumentative verbal influence. Following G. Lakoff and O.S. Lunyova’s point of view we consider court discourse as such that contains most of strategies and tactics of manipulation. Special attention is given to the gender aspect of manipulative influence. Men are appeared to be manipulators in all situations of the examination in the court. In our corpus studies a lawyer or public prosecutor is represented by this gender identity only. An addressee of manipulation is represented by both male and female gender identities.

Two meso-dichlorophenyl substituted metallocorroles were synthesized and characterized as to their electrochemical and spectroelectrochemical properties in dichloromethane, benzonitrile, and pyridine containing 0.1 M tetra-n-butylammonium perchlorate (TBAP) as supporting electrolyte. The examined compounds are represented as (Cl2Ph)3CorFeIVCl and (Cl2Ph)3CorMnIVCl where (Cl2Ph)3Cor is the trianion of 5,10,15-tri(2,4-dichlorophenyl)corrole. Each metallocorrole was examined as to its catalytic activity for the electoreduction of dioxygen when coated on an edge-plane pyrolytic graphite electrode in 1.0 M HClO4. Cyclic voltammetry combined with linear sweep voltammetry at a rotating disk electrode (RDE) and a rotating ring disk electrode (RRDE) was utilized to evaluate the catalytic activity for the electroreduction of O2. The main O2 reduction product is hydrogen peroxide under the given experimental conditions.

Аналізується комунікативна стратегія як засіб маніпулятивної комунікації. Остання представлена як особливий вид когнітивно-прагматичної діяльності. Охарактеризовано різноманітні підходи до вивчення комунікативних стратегій і тактик, здійснено порівняльний аналіз комунікативної та маніпулятивної стратегій. Досліджуючи феномен комунікативної стратегії, доходимо висновку, що, з одного боку, стратегію розуміють як ланцюг рішень мовця, комунікативний вибір тих чи інших мовленнєвих дій і мовних засобів. Ключовим у встановленні відмінностей між комунікативною і маніпулятивною стратегіями стало розрізнення двох видів цілей – прагматичних та конструктивних (за О. М. Мороховським). Аналіз поняття «стратегії» доводить, що маніпулятивна комунікативна стратегія визначається наявністю двох прагматичних цілей, одна з яких лише функціонально виконує роль такої, тобто є проміжною, інша – справжньою метою маніпулятора. Маніпулятивна стратегія в цій роботі розглядається як інтегративне поняття, що поєднує два аспекти стратегічної дії – когнітивний та мовленнєвий. The article deals with the analysis of a communicative strategy as a device for manipulative communication. The latter is represented in the article as a special type of cognitive and pragmatic activity. The characteristics of various approaches to the study of comm unicative strategies and tactics is given. The comparative analysis of communicative and manipulative strategies is performed. The differentiation of two types of goals: pragmatic and constructive (defined by O. M. Morohovskyi) has become the key element in the determination of distinction between communicative and manipulative strategies. The analysis of a notion of strategy proves that manipulative communicative strategy is determined by the existence of two pragmatic aims – one of which fulfils the role only functionally, i.e. is a transitionary aim, the second one is regarded as a the real aim of a manipulator. In the study manipulative strategy is regarded as an integrative notion that combines two aspects of strategic action – cognitive and verbal.

To solve the real-time property trouble of the generation of the virtual Reality scene with the traditional particle systems algorithms. Firstly, the traditional particle systems technique is introduced in the paper, then an improved algorithms of particle systems which is used in the raining simulation is brought forward, and in the end an vivid raining visual effect is obtained. The improved particle systems algorithms is proved to be very simple and useful,and it is can be conveniently introduced into the various kinds of

International audience; Designing and developing distributed and concurrent applications has always been a tedious and error-prone task. In this context, formal techniques and tools are of great help in order to specify such concurrent systems and detect bugs in the corresponding models. In this paper, we propose a new framework for debugging value-passing process algebra through coverage analysis. We illustrate our approach with LNT, which is a recent specification language designed for formally modelling concurrent systems. We define several coverage notions before showing how to instrument the specification without affecting original behaviors. Our approach helps one to improve the quality of a dataset of examples used for validation purposes, but also to find ill-formed decisions, dead code, and other errors in the specification. We have implemented a tool for automating our debugging approach, and applied it to several real-world case studies in different application areas.