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We aimed to analyze the antimicrobial resistance phenotypes and to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying resistance to cephalosporins, ciprofloxacin, and azithromycin in Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium isolates identified from patients with diarrhea in Shanghai. The isolates showed high rates of resistance to traditional antimicrobials, and 20.6, 12.7, and 5.5% of them exhibited decreased susceptibility to cephalosporins, ciprofloxacin, and azithromycin, respectively. Notably, 473 (84.6%) isolates exhibited multidrug resistance (MDR), including 161 (28.8%) isolates that showed an ACSSuT profile. Twenty-two MDR isolates concurrently exhibited decreased susceptibility to cephalosporins and ciprofloxacin, and six of them were co-resistant to azithromycin. Of all the 71 isolates with decreased susceptibility to ciprofloxacin, 65 showed at least one mutation (D87Y, D87N, or D87G) in gyrA, among which seven isolates simultaneously had mutations of parC (S80R) (n = 6) or parC (T57S/S80R) (n = 1), while 49 isolates with either zero or one mutation in gyrA contained plasmid-mediated quinolone resistance (PMQR) genes including qnrB, qnrS, and aac(6′)-Ib-cr. Among the 115 cephalosporin-resistant isolates, the most common ESBL gene was blaCTX-M, followed by blaTEM-1, blaOXA-1, and blaSHV -12. Eight subtypes of blaCTX-M were identified and blaCTX-M-14 (n = 22) and blaCTX-M-55 (n = 31) were found to be dominant. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of the presence of blaCTX-M-123 and blaCTX-M-125 in S. Typhimurium. Besides, mphA gene was identified in 15 of the 31 azithromycin-resistant isolates. Among the 22 isolates with reduced susceptibility to cephalosporins and ciprofloxacin, 15 contained ESBL and PMQR genes. Coexistence of these genes lead to the emergence of MDR and the transmission of them will pose great difficulties in S. Typhimurium treatments. Therefore, surveillance for these MDR isolates should be enhanced.

Salmonella Senftenberg is an important nontyphoidal Salmonella serovar that causes gastrointestinal disease worldwide. In total, 130 Salmonella Senftenberg strains obtained from humans, food, and the environment in Shanghai, People's Republic of China, were characterized for antimicrobial susceptibility and subjected to molecular typing. Our findings indicated that most (96 of 130, 73.8%) of the strains were susceptible to all 13 antimicrobial compounds tested, whereas only two strains (1.5%) were resistant to two antimicrobial compounds. In total, 56 pulsed-field gel electrophoresis profiles were identified, including four main pulsed-field gel electrophoresis profiles (X2, X3, X4, and X5) that showed 95.7% genetic similarity. Our study revealed that the strains of Salmonella Senftenberg from food and the environment shared a high correlation of genetic similarity with those from humans, highlighting the potential links that exist among the strains recovered from different sources in Shanghai.

Prevention and control of childhood diarrhea is a global priority. We conducted a case-control study of childhood diarrhea in Shanghai.We prospectively recruited diarrheal children in an outpatient setting. Nondiarrheal controls were individually matched to cases. Rotavirus, norovirus and bacterial pathogens were examined. Clinical and epidemiologic data were obtained at enrollment and follow-up.Potential pathogens identified in 680 diarrheal cases and 680 controls were rotavirus (19.0% vs. 1.3%), norovirus (13.4% vs. 4.7%), nontyphoidal Salmonella (9.3% vs. 1.9%), enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (8.4% vs. 6.9%) and enteroaggregative Escherichia coli (7.2% vs. 6.2%) and Campylobacter (5.1% vs. 1.2%), enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (1.2% vs. 0.6%), enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (0.3% vs. 0%) and Shigella (0.15% vs. 0%), respectively. The specificity and sensitivity of fecal leukocytes5 per high-power field for the diagnosis of bacterial diarrhea were 94.2% and 22.8%. Salmonella were susceptible to ciprofloxacin, ceftriaxone and amoxicillin-clavulanate and showed low frequency of resistance to azithromycin. Campylobacter showed low frequency of resistance to azithromycin and high frequency of resistance to ciprofloxacin. Diarrheagenic Escherichia coli was highly susceptible to ciprofloxacin and amoxicillin-clavulanate. Contact with diarrheal patients was a risk factor for rotavirus [adjusted odds ratio (aOR): 11.7], norovirus (aOR: 7.5) and Campylobacter (aOR: 27.1) infections. Mother's education was positively associated with Salmonella infection (aOR: 2.1). Good hand hygiene was protective against rotavirus (aOR: 0.6), norovirus (aOR: 0.5) and Salmonella (aOR: 0.3) infections.Rotavirus, norovirus, nontyphoidal Salmonella and Campylobacter are significantly associated with diarrhea in Chinese children. Fecal leukocytes5 per high-power field can predict bacterial diarrhea. Target prevention and appropriate treatment of diarrhea should consider the potential pathogen and resistance pattern.

Aim: To investigate whether the Staphylococcus argenteus is present in Eastern China and to verify the utility of a new screening process. Materials & methods: Phenotype observation, PCR assay targeting a hypothetical nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) gene, phylogenetic analysis of rpoB and multilocus sequence typing were used to screen and identify strains of S. argenteus from 839 presumptive S. aureus isolates. Results: Eighty-nine (89/839, 10.6%) of the presumptive S. aureus isolates produced white colonies on tryptone soya agar plates. Of the white-colony isolates, six (6/89, 7%) were S. argenteus, 75 (75/89, 84%) were S. aureus and eight (8/89, 9%) were other bacteria. Conclusion: The PCR-based method targeting the NRPS gene can simultaneously identify and distinguish S. argenteus and S. aureus. All representative sequences of rpoB generated in this study were deposited in GenBank under accession numbers SJTU F20002, KT767581; SJTU F20269, KT767582; SJTU F20419, KT767583; SJTU F20420, KT767584; SJTU F20124, KT767585; SJTU F21164, KT767586; SJTU F21285, KT767587; SJTU F21224, KT767588; SJTU F21155, KT767589; SJTU F21294, KT767590; SJTU F20030, KT767591; SJTU F20044, KT767592; SJTU F20135, KT767593; SJTU F20123, KT767594; SJTU F21319, KT767595, respectively. All the new sequence types (STs) were submitted to a multilocus sequence typing database and the assigned ST numbers are ST3261 (151-469-20-101-145-150-131), ST3262 (12-3-1-1-4-4-410) and ST3267 (2-471-2-2-6-3-2).

Salmonella enterica infections continue to be a significant burden on public health worldwide. The ability of S. enterica to produce hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is an important phenotypic characteristic used to screen and identify Salmonella with selective medium; however, H2S-negative Salmonella have recently emerged. In this study, the H2S phenotype of Salmonella isolates was confirmed, and the selected isolates were subjected to antimicrobial susceptibility testing and molecular identification by multilocus sequence typing, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) analysis. The phs genetic operon was also analyzed. A total of 160 S. enterica serovar Aberdeen isolates were detected between 2005 and 2013 in China. Of them, seven non-H2S-producing isolates were detected. Notably, four samples yielded four pairs of isolates with different H2S phenotypes, simultaneously. The data demonstrated that H2S-negative isolates were genetically closely related to H2S-positive isolates. Three new spacers (Abe1, Abe2, and Abe3) were identified in CRISPR locus 1 in four pairs of isolates with different H2S phenotypes from the same samples. Sequence analysis revealed a new nonsense mutation at position 208 in the phsA gene of all non-H2S-producing isolates. Additionally, we describe a new screening procedure to avoid H2S-negative Salmonella, which would normally be overlooked during laboratory and hospital screening. The prevalence of this pathogen may be underestimated; therefore, it is important to focus on improving surveillance of this organism to control its spread.

To conduct the first comprehensive analysis of Shigella flexneri serotype 4s, a novel serotype found in 2010, we identified 24 serotype 4s isolates from 1973 shigellosis cases in China (2002–2014). The isolates were characterized by single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) phylogenetic analysis, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and multilocus sequence typing (MLST) to determine their genetic relatedness and analysed further for their antimicrobial susceptibilities and antimicrobial resistance determinants. The PFGE and SNP phylogenetic analyses suggest that S. flexneri serotype 4s strains are derived from multiple serotypes, including two predominant serotypes in China: serotype X variant and serotype II. Three new sequence types were identified by MLST. All isolates were resistant to ticarcillin, ampicillin and tetracycline, with high-level resistance to third-generation cephalosporins. Notably, all the isolates were multidrug resistant (MDR), with the highest levels of resistance observed for eight antimicrobials classes. Most isolates contain various antimicrobial resistance determinants. In conclusion, we found that serotype 4s isolates have multiple evolutionary sources, diverse biochemical characteristics and genomes and highly prevalent multidrug resistance and antimicrobial-resistant determinants. With few clinical treatment options, continuous monitoring and timely intervention against this emerging MDR serotype is essential. The possibility that serotype 4s will become the next predominant serotype exists.

Terrapins and turtles are known to transmit Salmonella to humans. However, little was known about the occurrence of this pathogen in soft-shelled terrapin that is a popular delicacy in Chinese and other East Asian cuisines. We isolated and characterized 82 (24.4%) isolates of Salmonella from 336 fecal samples of soft-shelled terrapins (51 of 172; 29.7%) and pet turtles (31 of 164; 18.9%) in Shanghai. Salmonella Thompson was the most common serotype (17.1%) among others. Many isolates (84.1%) were resistant to multiple antimicrobials (≥3). Molecular analysis of Salmonella Thompson and Salmonella Typhimurium using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis unveiled a close genetic relationship between several human and terrapin isolates. Our results highlight the risk associated with the handling and consumption of turtles and their role in the spread of Salmonella in the human salmonellosis.

Diarrheagenic Escherichia coli (DEC) is a major cause of bacterial gastroenteritis in children. Also, antibiotic resistance among DEC is becoming a critical area of concern in clinical settings.This study was conducted in 4 hospitals in Shanghai from June 2012 to October 2013. DEC isolates from stool samples of patients with diarrhea were examined to determine their antimicrobial susceptibilities and presence of virulence genes, in order to identify high risk clones.A total of 735 (10.2%) DEC isolates were identified from 7204 stool samples from patients with diarrhea, including 374 enteropathogenic E. coli, 318 enterotoxigenic E. coli, 36 Shigella/enteroinvasive E. coli and 7 Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC). Among the 735 DEC isolates, 299 (40.7%) were isolated from children less than 5 years old. High resistance rates were observed to streptomycin (90.7%), ampicillin (63.4%), nalidixic acid (61.1%), sulfisoxazole (49.1%), tetracycline (41.2%), trimethoprim (35.6%), trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (35.4%), followed by amoxicillin-clavulanic acid (27.2%), cefotaxime (24.5%), cefepime (23.5%), gentamicin (16.7%), ceftazidime (12.4%), chloramphenicol (10.6%), ciprofloxacin (7.2%) and ofloxacin (3.4%). All the isolates were susceptible to imipenem. In addition, potential virulence genes were screened by polymerase chain reaction. A total of 15 enterotoxigenic E. coli belonging to the same clone were identified to be associated with nosocomial neonatal diarrhea and resistant to greater than 10 antimicrobials.Our findings suggest that active surveillance programs combining both phenotypic and genetic data would help identify disease outbreaks and strengthen antibiotic management.

The reactions of lanthanide nitrates with a Schiff-base ligand HL (2-[(2-hydroxypropylimino)methyl] phenol) have produced five new complexes with formula as [Ln(2)(L)(3)(NO3)(3)]CH3OH(Ln =Gd 1, Tb 2, Dy 3, Ho 4, Er 5). These new complexes are characterized by elemental analysis, IR and X-ray diffraction, as well as fluorescence spectra. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis reveals that all the complexes crystallize in the trigonal system, space group R-3. Fluorescence spectroscopy of Tb(III) and Dy(III) complexes display strong characteristic metal-centered fluorescence in solid state, which demonstrates that luminescence is sensitized by the effective energy-transfer from ligand to the metals. The fluorescence lifetimes of complex 2 and 3 are also determined. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

In this paper, we propose a novel approach to recognize human actions. Action recognition from videos has not been addressed extensively and effectively, primarily due to the tremendous variations that result from background and scale, etc. In order to classify the videos, at first we use very deep Convolution Neural Networks(CNNs) to extract the features of the frame in videos. Then, we use multilayerd Recurrent Neural Networks(RNNs) with a type of Long Short-Term Memory(LSTM) units to process the sequence of the extracted features by CNNs. Finally, we integrate both of the CNNs and RNNs for our model. We evaluate the model on UCF-11(YouTube Action) dataset and analyze which type of the model is fit for classify the videos. And the model we trained gets a higher accuracy.

To investigate the infection status and virulent genes of Aeromonas in patients with acute diarrhea in Pudong New Area, Shanghai.In 2012, stool samples were collected from diarrhea patients in 12 sentinel hospitals in Pudong for the detections of 13 pathogens causing diarrhea, and the detections of 5 diarrhea related virulent genes were conducted for Aeromonas isolates.A total of 101 patients were infected with Aeromonas in 2533 patients (4.0%). A total of 101 Aeromonas strains were isolated, including 17 Aeromonas hydrophila strains (18.8%), 44 Aeromonas veronii biovar sobria strains (52.5%) and 12 Aeromonas caviae strains (29.7%). And 44 coinfections with other pathogens were detected. Aeromonas infection mainly occurred in summer and in people aged ≥20 years. Among the patients infected with Aeromonas, 71 (70.3%) had watery diarrhea, 20 (19.8%) had vomiting and 11 (10.9%) had fever. Virulent genes detection showed that 95.0% of the Aeromonas. strains carried virulent genes, and the detection rates of hlyA, aerA, act, alt, and ast genes were 5.9%, 6.9%, 67.3%, 42.6% and 13.9%, respectively.High incidence of Aeromonas infection was found in the patients with acute diarrhea in Pudong, and a high proportion of coinfections with other pathogens was detected too. Most Aeromonas strains carried virulent genes, and the distribution varied.

To understand the distribution of diarrheagenic Escherichia (E.) coli in population in Shanghai and discuss the practice model of cooperation in enteric infectious disease prevention and control between public health institution and hospital.Sentinel hospitals were assigned, standard detection and identification of diarrheagenic E. coli were conducted, incidence curve of diarrheagenic E. coli infection was drawn and epidemiologic survey and laboratory detection were conducted for suspect diarrheagenic E. coli infection outbreaks.A total of 7 204 stool specimens were collected from diarrhea patients in 4 hospitals during 2012-2013, in which 712 (9.9% ) were diarrheagenic E. coli positive, including 351 enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC) strains, 292 enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) strains, 32 enteroinvasive E. coli(EIEC) strains and 6 Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC/EHEC) strains, as well as 31 mixed strains. EPEC infection mainly occurred in children aged 1-5 years; and all of these infections were caused by aEPEC. The incidence peak of ETEC infection was during August, the positive rate was20%. The ETEC infection mainly occurred in infants aged 1-28 days in 2012 and in people aged 20-60 years in 2013 (P0.05). ST was the major type (59.6%), followed by LT (27.8%) and ST/LT (12.6%). EIEC infection increased in children obviously in 2013 (P0.01). No EHEC O157:H7 case was detected, but two EHEC O26:H11 (eae-hlyA-stx1a) cases in children were reported for the first time in Shanghai. The survey result indicated that the multidrug-resistant ETEC (STh-CS21-CFA/I-ClyA-EatA-ST2332-SHNL0005) strain causing outbreak in 15 newborns in Shanghai in 2012 was in the same clone as the strain detected in Zigong in Sichuan province.Significant change has occurred in diarrheagenic E. coli distribution in Shanghai in recent years, ETEC has potential risk to cause outbreak of hospital acquired infection in neonates and food borne infection. The active surveillance on ETEC and other enteric pathogens by both public health institutions and hospitals need to be improved.

Lipreading techniques have shown bright prospects for speech recognition under noisy environments and for hearing-impaired listeners. In this paper, we discuss a feature extraction method based on the homeomorphic manifold analysis for lipreading. Given a set of image sequences, we think there is an underlying low dimensional unified manifold embedded in the visual space, and each image sequence can be considered as a homeomorphic manifold twisted or even self-intersected in this space. In order to extract the motion features, each sequence is embedded and aligned to the unified manifold, and a mapping matrix is learned from the aligned embedding. Then we adopt the two-dimensional linear discriminant analysis on these mapping matrices to achieve low dimensional features. The proposed method is tested on the OuluVS database, and simulation experiments have shown it can achieve quite satisfying results.

Salmonella Newport (S. Newport) is a major serotype associated with human salmonellosis. A total of 79 S. Newport recovered from humans and other sources in China were characterized for antimicrobial susceptibility, virulence gene profiles and molecular subtypes using pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Approximately 63.3% of the isolates were susceptible to all of 16 antimicrobials tested. Nearly one third of the isolates (31.6%) were resistant to sulfisoxazole, 20.3% to tetracycline and 13.9% to nalidixic acid. Twelve isolates (15.2%) were resistant to three or more antimicrobials. Among 10 virulence genes detected, Salmonella pathogenicity island genes avrA, ssaQ, mgtC, siiD, and sopB and fimbrial gene bcfC were present in most of the isolates (93.7% to 100%). Overall, we observed nine distinct virulence gene profiles, three of which (VP1, VP2 and VP3) were most common (86.1%). A total of 56 PFGE patterns were identified and mainly grouped into seven clusters (A to G) with 80% pattern similarity. Isolates from aquatic product shared a high similarity with those from humans in several clusters, highlighting a potential risk of aquatic product as a source of S. Newport that infect humans. Furthermore, there was a strong association between certain PFGE clusters and virulence gene profiles, suggesting virulence subtyping can be a useful epidemiological tool to discriminate S. Newport isolates.

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) has the potential to cause nosocomial infantile diarrhea in a hospital setting. We detected 12 ETEC serotype O128:H45 isolates from diarrheal neonates in our neonatal unit from July through October 2012. These infants developed hospital-acquired and epidemiologically related diarrhea. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis analysis and multilocus sequence typing of these 12 isolates suggested that a specific clone of ETEC serotype O128:H45-CS21-ST2332 caused nosocomial diarrhea among neonates. Of concern, this ETEC clone strain was resistant to multiple drugs, particularly third-generation cephalosporins.

Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium ST34 co-expressing bla NDM-5 and bla CTX-M-55 isolated in China

Salmonella enterica serotype Agona (Salmonella Agona) has been among the top 10 serotypes that cause human diarrheal diseases in China. A total of 95 Salmonella Agona (67 from humans, and 28 from animals, food of animal origins, and environmental sources) recovered in Shanghai, China from 2005 to 2011 were subjected to antimicrobial susceptibility testing and molecular subtyping using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Approximately 68.4% of the Salmonella Agona isolates were pansusceptible to 15 antimicrobial agents tested, and 4 isolates (4.21%) were resistant to at least 3 antimicrobials. PFGE analysis resulted in 41 unique patterns, of which 4 major PFGE patterns (X3, X4, X5, and X6) were grouped together at 96.1% similarity. Isolates of the four patterns included those from food (pork, beef, and chicken) and humans. Our findings showed that the same clones of Salmonella Agona were recovered from human patients and food, and that food of animal origin was potentially a major vehicle of Salmonella Agona in human salmonellosis in Shanghai.

To study the epidemiological characteristics and antibiotic resistance of Salmonella enterica serovar Pomona (S. Pomona).Antimicrobial susceptible testing (AST) and pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) methods were used to analyze on S. Pomona strains that were isolated from diarrhea cases through the diarrhea network monitoring program, environment and food samples in Shanghai as well as from reptiles in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.4 553 clinic Salmonella (S.) strains were isolated from the Shanghai network laboratories from 2005 to 2012. The top 10 serotypes would include 20 serotypes all belonged to A-F groups, while S. Pomona was next to S. Wandsworth, according to the non- A-F groups. Young children seemed to be susceptible to S. Pomona, and might cause bloody stools and super-infection. The top 10 serotypes from 1 805 foodborne Salmonella strains were significantly more extensive than those from the human S. Pomona strains, followed by those rare serotypes which were mostly isolated from turtle, sea-shellfish and reptiles. Antibiotic resistance of S. Pomona strains from other sources were significantly more severe than those from human samples, and belonged to A and B clones by means of PFGE. Clone A strains were non-epidemic strains which showed multi-drug resistance (MDR) to antimicrobials. Clone B was the main epidemic-causing strain that not resistant to drugs, which consisting B- I from young-age-groups and B-II were from the seniors. B-I strains were homologous to those from shellfish, tortoises and lizards, while B-II strains only showing homology to those from shellfish. One S. Pomona strain-MDR, isolated from human was homologous to 8 antimicrobials.S. Pomona was a quite common serotype among those rare serotypes, which showed higher pathogenicity to infants while genetic evolution might take place when comparing them with the strains isolated from the clinics in 2005. Surveillance programs should be intensified along with the early warnings systems on infections which were from seafood and reptiles.

A total of 123 enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) isolates from diarrheal patients from June to December 2012 in Shanghai, China, were examined to determine their genetic relatedness using multilocus sequence typing and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and for the presence of virulence genes and antimicrobial susceptibility. Twenty-nine sequence types (STs) and 63 PFGE patterns were identified, and results from the 2 subtyping methods correlated well. The 12 isolates of PFGE cluster B all belonged to ST-2332 and were associated with nosocomial neonatal diarrhea. Isolates of a cluster usually had the same set of virulence factors, whereas isolates of different PFGE clusters carried diverse combinations of virulence determinants. Isolates belonging to ST-2332 and ST-182 (n=9) were resistant to at least 6 antimicrobials. Our findings highlighted the need of active surveillance programs for infectious diseases collecting data at both epidemiological and genetic levels that can detect high-risk lineages of pathogens in order to rapidly identify disease outbreaks.

Staphylococcus aureus is a recognized pathogen in humans, which causes nosocomial infections and food poisoning. The transmission of antibiotic resistant S. aureus (ARSA), especially methicillin-resistant S. aureus, between food products and humans has become a serious problem. Hence, it is necessary to monitor S. aureus through the food supply chain. In this study, the disk diffusion method and epsilometer test were performed to determine the prevalence of ARSA in 78 foodborne isolates using 18 antibiotics. The highest resistance frequency was found for penicillin G (74.4%), followed by erythromycin (59.0%) and clindamycin (44.9%), whereas no vancomycin-resistant isolates were found. The 78 isolates could be subtyped into 31 resistance profiles and 11 clusters based on their antimicrobial susceptibility. Furthermore, Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) screening for the presence of 13 genes conferring antibiotic resistance was conducted. The presence of resistance genes was relatively high: blaTEM (80.8%), ermB (41.0%), grlA (38.5%), ermC (35.9%), and aac6'/aph2" (35.9%). The incidence of antibiotic resistance was significantly correlated to food types (p = 0.018), with isolates from meat and raw milk more resistant to antibiotics than those from frozen food and vegetables.

Glioblastoma is the most common and fatal human brain malignancy in adults with highly proliferative capacity. Despite advances in surgery and adjuvant therapy, the median survival of patients has changed little over recent decades. Identifying molecules critical for glioma development is significant for devising effective targeted therapy. We previously reported that Bex2, a member of the brain expressed X-linked gene family, promoted the progression of glioma by promoting cell proliferation. In the present study, we investigated the main mechanism of Bex2 promoting the proliferation of glioblastoma cells. We found that Bex2 downregulation inhibited glioma cell proliferation and the expression of NF-κB p65, but Bex2 overexpression promoted them. Similarly, the proliferation of glioma cells was inhibited by p65 downregulation but increased by p65 overexpression. In addition, Bex2 overexpression-induced cell proliferation was abolished by p65 downregulation. Furthermore, Bex2 with nuclear localization signal deleted no longer promoted p65 expression. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that Bex2 promotes proliferation of human glioblastoma cells via NF-κB signaling pathway and Bex2 nuclear location is critical for p65 expression.

Salmonellosis contributes significantly to the public health burden globally. Salmonella enterica serotype Newport is among Salmonella serotypes most associated with food-borne illness in the United States and China. It was thought to be polyphyletic and to contain different lineages. We report draft genomes of four S . Newport strains isolated from humans in China.

Salmonellosis has been one of the major contributors to the global public health burden. Salmonella enterica serotype Agona has ranked among the top 10 and top 20 most frequent Salmonella serotypes isolated from human sources in China and the United States, respectively. We report draft genomes of three S. Agona strains from China.

The function of Bex2, a member of the Brain Expressed X-linked gene family, in glioma is controversial and its mechanism is largely unknown. We report here that Bex2 regulates cell proliferation and apoptosis in malignant glioma cells via the c-Jun NH2-terminal kinase (JNK) pathway. The expression level of Bex2 is markedly increased in glioma tissues. We observed that Bex2 over-expression promotes cell proliferation, while down-regulation of Bex2 inhibits cell growth. Furthermore, Bex2 down-regulation promotes cell apoptosis and activates the JNK pathway; these effects were abolished by administration of the JNK specific inhibitor, SP600125. Thus, Bex2 may be an important player during the development of glioma.

The reaction of Dy(NO(3))(3)·6H(2)O with the ligand 2-((1-hydroxybutan-2-ylimino)methyl)phenol (H(2)L, ) generates the nonanuclear compound [Dy(9)L(8)(μ(3)-OH)(8)(μ(4)-OH)(2)(CH(3)OH)(8)](OH)(CH(3)OH)(3) (Dy(9)), whose single-crystal X-ray structure reveals the presence of two square pyramidal pentanuclear units assembled via the apical metal center. The square pyramidal core of a previously reported [Dy(5)(μ(4)-OH)(μ(3)-OH)(4)(μ-η(2)-Ph(2)acac)(4)(η(2)-Ph(2)acac)(6)] (Dy(5); Ph(2)acac = dibenzoylmethanide), is structurally related to those herein described; however, the magnetic properties of Dy(9) and Dy(5) are drastically different. Indeed, Dy(5) shows slow relaxation of magnetization while no out-of-phase ac signal is noticed for Dy(9). The underlying mechanism is not clear due to the complexity of such systems; however, the different anisotropy of the respective structures, which is dictated by the combination of the metal topology, the ligands involved and the structural parameters of the molecule, is mostly responsible for the distinctive relaxation dynamics observed.

Reactions of lanthanide(III) perchlorate (Ln = Dy, Tb, and Gd), nickel(II) acetate, and ditopic ligand 2-(benzothiazol-2-ylhydrazonomethyl)-6-methoxyphenol (H(2)L) in a mixture of methanol and acetone in the presence of NaOH resulted in the successful assembly of novel Ln(2)Ni(2) heterometallic clusters representing a new heterometallic 3d-4f motif. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction reveals that all compounds are isostructural, with the central core composed of distorted [Ln(2)Ni(2)O(4)] cubanes of the general formula [Ln(2)Ni(2)(mu(3)-OH)(2)(OH)(OAc)(4)(HL)(2)(MeOH)(3)](ClO(4))center dot 3MeOH [Ln = Dy (1). Tb (2), and Gd (3)]. The magnetic properties of all compounds have been investigated. Magnetic analysis on compound 3 indicates ferromagnetic Gd center dot center dot center dot Ni exchange interactions competing with antiferromagnetic Ni center dot center dot center dot Ni interactions. Compound 1 displays slow relaxation of magnetization, which is largely attributed to the presence of the anisotropic Dy(III) ions, and thus represents a new discrete [Dy(2)Ni(2)] heterometallic cubane exhibiting probable single-molecule magnetic behavior.

We propose a model to construct the phase diagram for type-II superconductors through molecular-dynamics simulation. In this model, the Abrikosov vortices interact with long-range repulsion and short-range attraction. We are able to obtain the phase diagrams consisting of the vortex lattice, the intermediate-mixed phase (IMP), and the disordered vortex phase in the B-T, B-?, and B-q planes, where B is induction, ? is the Ginzburg-Landau parameter, and q is the relative strength of the attraction to repulsion interactions between vortices. The IMP is in the form of a superlattice of either vortex bubbles or parallel vortex stripes, agreeing excellently with experimental results that have not yet been explained by existing models.

Environmental waters are an important reservoir for Vibrio cholerae , and effective surveillance of the pathogen can help to warn of and prevent infection with this potentially fatal pathogen. An immunofluorescent-aggregation (IFAG) assay to detect V. cholerae O1 and O139 was established and evaluated with estuarine water samples. The practical application of this assay was compared with the conventional culture method and real-time PCR. The IFAG method had a sensitivity of 10 3 CFU/ml for detection of V. cholerae O1 and O139 strains in a suspension containing 10 different species of enterobacterial strains (total, 10 5 CFU/ml). Ten fluorescent bacterial aggregate colonies were randomly picked and tested positive in serum agglutination tests for the V. cholerae O1 and O139 strains, showing a high specificity. The enrichment broths of 146 samples of estuarine water were tested, and the percentage positive by the IFAG assay was 19.9% (29/146), which was significantly higher than that of the conventional culture method (10.3%, 15/146; P < 0.01) but lower than that of real-time PCR (29.5%, 43/146; P < 0.01). The coincidence rates of real-time PCR and IFAG detection were decreased with the reduction of the V. cholerae concentration. The IFAG method, with a high specificity and a relatively high sensitivity, may be used for detection and isolation of V. cholerae in environmental water samples.

To improve the normal medical image fusion algorithm in order to avoid the loss of the detailed information in the processes of medical image fusion, a multiscale medical image fusion method based on nonsubsampled contourlet transform(NSCT) is proposed in this paper. First, the source images(MRI and CT images) are decomposed by using nonsubsampled contourlet transform. Then, the details of contourlet coefficients are fused on each corresponding levels with a vision feature fusion operator. Finally, the fused image will be obtained by taking the inverse nonsubsampled contourlet transformation. The experimental results show that the effect of the nonsubsampled contourlet-based method is obviously improved, and the proposed method can effectively preserve the detailed information of the source images.

The theoretical studies indicate digital curvelet transform to be an even better method than wavelets for optical application. In this paper, a multiscale biometric recognition method based on digital curvelet transform via wrapping is surveyed and studied. First, all images are decomposed by using curvelet transform. As a result of performing curvelet transform, curvelet coefficients of low frequency and high frequency in different scales and various angels will be obtained. Then, low frequency coefficients as study samples to the BP neural network are applied. Finally, low frequency coefficients of testing image are used to simulate neural network, then recognition results will be obtained. The experiments are performed on the Cambridge University ORL database, and the results show that the recognition rate of the curvelet-based method is obviously improved.

Naive Bayes (NB) based on the attribute independence assumption has been widely applied in many domains for its simplicity and efficiency. However, the independence assumption is often violated in many real-world applications. In response to this problem, a mount of research has been carried out to improve NBpsilas accuracy by mitigating the attribute independence assumption, for example Lazy learning of Bayesian Rules(LBR), Tree Augmented Naive Bayes (TAN) and Averaged One-Dependence Estimator(AODE). AODE which averages all Super Parent One-dependence Estimators (SPODE) has attracted widely attention for its outstanding performance. Because of the different role of every SPODEs, the performance will be expected to be improved significantly if different weights are assigned to these SPODEs. We proposed the framework of linear weighted SPODE ensemble and efficient learning strategy of weights based on differential evolution. The experience has shown that the proposed algorithm can generate better performance in most case than NB, AODE, WAODE, TAN and LBR.

The ridgelet transformation was introduced as a sparse expansion for functions on continuous spaces that are smooth away from discontinuities along lines. Focusing on the face detection problem, a novel face detection method using ridgelet transform and BP neural network was proposed. Two stages are involved in this method. Firstly, the pretreated face images are decomposed by the ridgelet transformation. Then the corresponding ridgelet coefficients are set as the input samples for a well-designed BP neural network. The good results are thus obtained.

Shape-based matching is mainly emphasized in this paper for actual workpiece applications based HALCON, a new machine vision software. First a measuring ROI, i.e., the region of interest is determined to create a model. Then the matching and locating of the search object is achieved by using affine transform. Experiment result indicates that this method can find objects starting based on a single model image and localize objects with subpixel accuracy.

Directing to specular reflection surface a SFS algorithm-based RBF specular model is surveyed and studied to reconstruct a profile. In this paper detailed algorithm and discrete equations are discussed and practical application results on synthetic images demonstrate the algorithm performance, ever when the lighting conditions or camera parameters are uncertain.

Firstly by analyzing comprehensively the different sensor acquisitions based on normal distribution, a mathematical model is established to attain the basic probability assignments. Following this a multisensor data fusion method-based Dempster-Shafer reasoning is proposed to resolve object recognition problems. Offered by multilevel accumulation of assignments recursively the fusion estimates based on global information is obtained to testify the recognition performance. It is optimal than that of a single sensor with an average decline 74 percent of uncertainty value in a case study of pyrites recognition system, thereby demonstrating the effectiveness and correctness of this approach.

An adaptive genetic search algorithm was developed which applied to fused image blocks for clear restoration of two spatially registered multifocus images from same scene. In this method, the size of image block is defined as chromosome, after crossover and mutation, the global optimal solution would be got. Three kinds of quantitative evaluation criteria are used on the analysis and effect evaluation of different fused images, such as root mean square error, entropy and mutual information. Two cases are discussed and experiments demonstrate that in one case most fused images can achieve perfect reconstruction to the reference image when the focus objects are not overlapped blurred, and in another case this method performs better when the focus objects are overlapped blurred than that of the other two methods.

Typically any single sensor instrument suffers from physical/observation constraints. This paper discusses a generalized framework, called polysensometric visual information fusion framework (PVIF) that enables information from multiple sensors to be fused and compared to gain broader understanding of a target of observation. An automate software shell supporting comparative cognition has been developed to form 3D models based on the datasets from different sensors. This fusion framework not only provides an informatic engineering tool to overcome the constraints of individual sensor’s observation scope but also provides a means where theoretical understanding surrounding a complex target can be mutually validated and incrementally enhanced by comparative cognition about the object of interest.

We identified 2912 Shigella isolates from diarrhoeal patients in China during 2003–2013. The most common species was Shigella flexneri (55.3%), followed by Shigella sonnei (44.1%); however, S. sonnei is becoming increasingly prevalent. Among the S. flexneri isolates, serotypes 2a and X variant (-:7,8, E1037) were the two most prevalent serotypes, and serologically atypical isolates were also commonly identified. Overall, S. sonnei, S. flexneri 2a and S. flexneri X variant (-:7,8, E1037) accounted for 76.1% of all Shigella isolates, and their prevalence increased from 54.0% during 2003–2004 to 84.1% during 2011–2013. A change was observed in the serotype distribution of Shigella in China during this period, and we propose an ideal strategy to inform the development of a broadly effective Shigella vaccine candidate.