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Background: Escherichia coli (E. coli) serves as a common indicator of gut microbiota and is utilized for monitoring antimicrobial resistance determinants in food-producing animals. This study aimed to investigate antimicrobial resistance patterns in virulence gene-positive E. coli isolates obtained from 340 healthy and diarrheic calves., Methods and Results: A total of 340 fecal swab samples were obtained from diarrheic (n = 170) and healthy (n = 170) calves for 12 months from different farms in Kerman, Iran. The samples were phenotypically analyzed to detect E. coli isolates and antibiotic resistance. Also, antimicrobial resistance genes, diarrheagenic E. coli pathotypes, and phylogenetic background were screened by PCR. Fifteen percent (51/340) of E. coli isolates were positive for at least one of the examined virulence genes (VGs); the prevalence of VGs in E. coli isolates from healthy calves (36/170; 21.17%) was higher than that in diarrheic cases (15/170; 8.82%). Out of the 51 VG-positive isolates, six pathotypes including Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC; 27.45%), enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC; 23.52%), enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC; 19.6%), necrotoxigenic E. coli (NTEC; 19.6%), enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC; 15.68%), enteroinvasive E. coli (EIEC; 1.96%) and three hybrid pathotypes including ETEC/STEC, ETEC/EHEC, and STEC/EIEC were detected among the strains. Antimicrobial resistance (AR) was observed in 98.03% of the VG-positive isolates, which was the same for both healthy and diarrheic calves. The maximum prevalence rate of AR was found against trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (49.01%; 3/51), while the minimum prevalence rate was against gentamycin (5.88%; 25/51). Among the VG-positives, phylotype A was found to be the most prevalent followed by B1 and D phylotypes., Conclusions: The prevalence of VG-positive E. coli isolates was higher in healthy calves compared to diarrheic cases. AR was widespread among VG-positive isolates. These findings suggest that calves may serve as potential reservoirs of antimicrobial-resistant hybrid pathotypes of E. coli., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.)

Background and Objectives: Salmonella species (spp) are the most prevalent zoonotic pathogens that cause outbreaks of gastroenteritis worldwide. Therefore evaluation of the profile of antibiotic resistance, virulence factors, and plasmid replicon types in these bacteria is necessary to control and prevent the spread of potentially pathogenic and drug-resistant strains., Materials and Methods: This study was performed on 39 Salmonella spp. The antibacterial susceptibility of isolates to various antibiotic agents was determined using disk diffusion test. β-lactamases ( bla ) including ESBLs, AmpC, MBLs, and virulence genes were detected by PCR methods. Plasmid incompatibility groups among the isolates were identified using PCR-based replicon typing (PBRT)., Results: The most prevalent virulent gene was phoP/Q (84.6%). slyA, sopB , and stn were identified in 79.4% (n=31), 69.2% (n=27), and 2.5% (n=1) of the isolates, respectively. The antibiotic susceptibility testing showed that 30.7% of the isolates were ESBL-producing. bla TEM (41%; n=16) was the most frequent β-lactamase gene among the isolates followed by bla NDM-1 (15.4%; n=6), bla DHA (7.7%; n=3), and bla CTX-M (1.5%; n=1). Six different plasmid replicon types, including IncP (n=9; 23%), IncFIC (n=3; 7.70%), IncY (n=3; 7.70%), IncI1-Iγ (n=2; 5.12%), IncFIIAs (n=1; 2.56%), and IncN (n=1; 2.56%) were observed among the isolates., Conclusion: Our study showed the emergence of carbapenem-resistant and bla NDM-1 among Salmonella spp. for the first time in Kerman, Iran. Since Salmonella spp. plays an important role in the transmission of resistance genes in livestock and humans in the food chains, so more stringent control policies are recommended to prevent the circulation of drug-resistant and potentially pathogenic strains from animals to humans., (Copyright© 2024 The Authors. Published by Tehran University of Medical Sciences.)

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the pregnancy outcomes in women undergoing IVF using fresh and/or frozen embryo transfer., Methods: In this retrospective patient record study, we reviewed 2,872 infertile women's files, who were candidates for IVF. The patients were classified into two groups, including those who underwent fresh embryo transfer (n=1628) and/or frozen embryo transfer (FET) (n=1244)., Results: Fertility was achieved in 313 (19.23%) and 356 (28.62%) patients, who underwent fresh ET and FET, respectively. The rates of clinical pregnancy, ongoing pregnancy, and live births were significantly higher in the FET group than the fresh ET group. The incidence of multiple pregnancies, perinatal mortality, abortion in the first trimester, preterm delivery, and low birth weight were significantly higher among fresh ET group [38 (35.51%), 15 (14.50%), 72 (23.01%), 26 (8.30%), and 33 (10.54%), respectively] than in the FET group [25 (15.33%), 6 (6.87%), 63 (17.69%), 14 (3.93%), and 20 (5.61%); p<0.05]. In addition, the incidence of ectopic pregnancies, abortion in the second trimester, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, and placenta previa were higher in the fresh ET group, but not significantly so (p>0.05)., Conclusions: Women who underwent IVF via FET showed more successful fertility and pregnancy outcomes compared to those who underwent IVF by fresh ET.

Terminology is the most basic information that researchers and literature analysis systems need to understand. Mining terms and revealing the semantic relationships between terms can help biomedical researchers find solutions to some major health problems and motivate researchers to explore innovative biomedical research issues. However, how to mine terms from biomedical literature remains a challenge. At present, the research on text segmentation in natural language processing (NLP) technology has not been well applied in the biomedical field. Named entity recognition models usually require a large amount of training corpus, and the types of entities that the model can recognize are limited. Besides, dictionary-based methods mainly use pre-established vocabularies to match the text. However, this method can only match terms in a specific field, and the process of collecting terms is time-consuming and labour-intensive. Many scenarios faced in the field of biomedical research are unsupervised, i.e. unlabelled corpora, and the system may not have much prior knowledge. This paper proposes the TermInformer project, which aims to mine the meaning of terms in an open fashion by calculating terms and find solutions to some of the significant problems in our society. We propose an unsupervised method that can automatically mine terms in the text without relying on external resources. Our method can generally be applied to any document data. Combined with the word vector training algorithm, we can obtain reusable term embeddings, which can be used in any NLP downstream application. This paper compares term embeddings with existing word embeddings. The results show that our method can better reflect the semantic relationship between terms. Finally, we use the proposed method to find potential factors and treatments for lung cancer, breast cancer, and coronavirus., Competing Interests: Conflict of interestThe authors declare that they have no conflict of interest., (© Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2020.)

This article presents a unified probabilistic framework that allows both rational and irrational decision-making to be theoretically investigated and simulated in classical and quantum games. Rational choice theory is a basic component of game-theoretic models, which assumes that a decision-maker chooses the best action according to their preferences. In this article, we define irrationality as a deviation from a rational choice. Bistable probabilities are proposed as a principled and straightforward means for modelling (ir)rational decision-making in games. Bistable variants of classical and quantum Prisoner's Dilemma, Stag Hunt and Chicken are analysed in order to assess the effect of (ir)rationality on agent utility and Nash equilibria. It was found that up to three Nash equilibria exist for all three classical bistable games and maximal utility was attained when agents were rational. Up to three Nash equilibria exist for all three quantum bistable games; however, utility was shown to increase according to higher levels of agent irrationality., Competing Interests: We declare we have no competing interest., (© 2020 The Author(s).)

We propose an alternative and unifying framework for decision-making that, by using quantum mechanics, provides more generalised cognitive and decision models with the ability to represent more information compared to classical models. This framework can accommodate and predict several cognitive biases reported in Lieder & Griffiths without heavy reliance on heuristics or on assumptions of the computational resources of the mind.

This article presents a general framework that allows irrational decision making to be theoretically investigated and simulated. Rationality in human decision making under uncertainty is normatively prescribed by the axioms of probability theory in order to maximize utility. However, substantial literature from psychology and cognitive science shows that human decisions regularly deviate from these axioms. Bistable probabilities are proposed as a principled and straight forward means for modeling (ir)rational decision making, which occurs when a decision maker is in "two minds". We show that bistable probabilities can be formalized by positive-operator-valued projections in quantum mechanics. We found that (1) irrational decision making necessarily involves a wider spectrum of causal relationships than rational decision making, (2) the accessible information turns out to be greater in irrational decision making when compared to rational decision making, and (3) irrational decision making is quantum-like because it violates the Bell-Wigner polytope.

Three hundred fifteen bacteriological samples were obtained from feces and both external and visceral cavity surfaces of carcasses of 105 healthy buffalo slaughtered in southwest of Iran. Confirmed Escherichia coli isolates were examined for antimicrobial resistance phenotypically and were screened for stx 1 , stx 2 , and eae genes and their subtypes and assessment of antimicrobial resistance genes by regular PCR and RFLP techniques. One hundred forty-five E. coli were isolated from feces (96 isolates) and external (37) and internal (12) surfaces of carcasses. Results showed that the prevalence of STEC, EPEC, and EHEC pathotypes was 2.8%, 0.7%, and 0.7% respectively. Among 6 (4.13%) positive isolates for examined genes, 4 (2.8%) isolates were positive for stx1, 3 (2.1%) for stx2, and 2 (1.4%) for eae gene. The detected genes were classified into stx 1 a (4 isolates), stx 2 a, stx 2 b, stx 2 c, eae-β, and unknown subtypes. The most prevalent antibiotic resistance gene was sulII (11.03%). The tetB, qnrB, floR, bla TEM , bla SHV , and aad A genes were found to a lesser extent, and all isolates were negative for bla CTX-15 , bla OXA , aac(3)-I, tetA, cat1, qnrA, sulI, dhfrI, and dhfrV genes. Twelve combination patterns of antibiotic-resistant genes were observed. Maximum phenotypically resistance rate was against doxycycline (91.83%), and the minimum was against ceftazidime and florfenicol (2.75%). E. coli isolates from feces and carcasses of slaughtered buffalo can be considered a mild reservoir for stx and eae genes. However, healthy buffaloes could be considered a potential reservoir of multiple antibiotic resistance genes in E. coli isolates.

Nonstructural protein 1 (NS1) plays a crucial function in the replication, spread, and pathogenesis of influenza virus by inhibiting the host innate immune response. Here we report the discovery and optimization of novel pyrazolopyridine NS1 antagonists that can potently inhibit influenza A/PR/8/34 replication in MDCK cells, rescue MDCK cells from cytopathic effects of seasonal influenza A strains, reverse NS1-dependent inhibition of IFN-β gene expression, and suppress the slow growth phenotype in NS1-expressing yeast. These pyrazolopyridines will enable researchers to investigate NS1 function during infection and how antagonists can be utilized in the next generation of treatments for influenza infection., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In this paper we use spinor transformations under local Lorentz transformations to investigate the curvature effect on the quantum-to-classical transition, described in terms of the decoherence process and of the quantum speed limit. We find that gravitational fields (introduced adopting the Schwarzschild and anti-de Sitter geometries) affect both the decoherence process and the quantum speed limit of a quantum particle with spin-1/2. In addition, as a tangible example, we study the effect of the Earth's gravitational field, characterized by the Rindler space-time, on the same particle. We find that the effect of the Earth's gravitational field on the decoherence process and quantum speed limit is very small, except when the mean speed of the quantum particle is comparable to the speed of light.

In this paper, we propose to use multi-folded transformation optics method to design a non-contact illusion device that can distantly and freely manipulate the radiation behavior of antenna located at a certain distance and such manipulation is enabled by the use of mapped electromagnetic medium coated with the transformed medium. The proposed design aims to achieve the radiation pattern of our choice from the antenna that does not possess any electromagnetic medium. Based on this, the functionality of parabolic antenna is distantly achieved from the point source. We further extended our idea to array of antennas in which the proposed device distantly makes the linear array of antennas behave like a geometrically different array of antennas. Our work extends the concept of illusion optics for active scatterer that will be very helpful for future antenna design.

In nonlinear plasmonics, the switching threshold of optical bistability is limited by the weak nonlinear responses from the conventional Kerr dielectric media. Considering the giant nonlinear susceptibility of graphene, here we develop a nonlinear scattering model under the mean field approximation and study the bistable scattering in graphene-coated dielectric nanowires based on the semi-analytical solutions. We find that the switching intensities of bistable scattering can be smaller than 1 MW cm -2 at the working frequency. To further decrease the switching intensities, we show that the most important factor that restricts the bistable scattering is the relaxation time of graphene. Our work not only reveals some general characteristics of graphene-based bistable scattering, but also provides a guidance to further applications of optical bistability in the high speed all-optical signal processing.

Guiding surface states through disorders recently has attracted attention of scientists from diverse backgrounds. In this work, we report a robust method to guide surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) through arbitrary distorted metal surfaces (a kind of disorder), including slopes, bumps, and sharp corners. Almost total transmissions over a broad frequency range can be achieved by use of infinitely anisotropic metamaterials (IAMs). The SPPs are coupled into and out of the bulk modes in the IAMs, where the bulk modes are routed by altering the principle axis of the IAMs. Due to unique non-diffraction property of the IAMs, all processes are of high efficiency, which are explained from both microscopic and macroscopic perspectives. Several functional SPP devices, including adapter, cloak, and sharp bending waveguide, are presented in the simulations. Two proof-of-concept SPP devices are experimentally demonstrated, where the SPPs are mimicked by the designer SPPs at microwave frequency.

The panoramic lens is a special kind of lens, which is applied to observe full view. In this letter, we theoretically present a panoramic lens (PL) using transformation optics method. The lens is designed with inhomogeneous and anisotropic constitutive parameters, which has the ability to gather light from all directions and confine light within the visual angle of observer. Simulation results validate our theoretical design.

Introduction: Breast cancer, the most common cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide among women, is a molecularly and clinically heterogeneous disease. Extensive genetic and epigenetic profiling of breast tumors has recently revealed novel putative driver genes, including p21-activated kinase (PAK)1. PAK1 is a serine/threonine kinase downstream of small GTP-binding proteins, Rac1 and Cdc42, and is an integral component of growth factor signaling networks and cellular functions fundamental to tumorigenesis., Methods: PAK1 dysregulation (copy number gain, mRNA and protein expression) was evaluated in two cohorts of breast cancer tissues (n=980 and 1,108). A novel small molecule inhibitor, FRAX1036, and RNA interference were used to examine PAK1 loss of function and combination with docetaxel in vitro. Mechanism of action for the therapeutic combination, both cellular and molecular, was assessed via time-lapse microscopy and immunoblotting., Results: We demonstrate that focal genomic amplification and overexpression of PAK1 are associated with poor clinical outcome in the luminal subtype of breast cancer (P=1.29×10(-4) and P=0.015, respectively). Given the role for PAK1 in regulating cytoskeletal organization, we hypothesized that combination of PAK1 inhibition with taxane treatment could be combined to further interfere with microtubule dynamics and cell survival. Consistent with this, administration of docetaxel with either a novel small molecule inhibitor of group I PAKs, FRAX1036, or PAK1 small interfering RNA oligonucleotides dramatically altered signaling to cytoskeletal-associated proteins, such as stathmin, and induced microtubule disorganization and cellular apoptosis. Live-cell imaging revealed that the duration of mitotic arrest mediated by docetaxel was significantly reduced in the presence of FRAX1036, and this was associated with increased kinetics of apoptosis., Conclusions: Taken together, these findings further support PAK1 as a potential target in breast cancer and suggest combination with taxanes as a viable strategy to increase anti-tumor efficacy.

In order to study the effect of sowing dates on the yield and yield components of two safflower varieties, an experiment was conducted at Agriculture Research Station of Isfahan Kabotar Abad in 2004. A split plot layout within randomized complete block design with three replications was used in the experimentation. Eight sowing dates were in the main plots, consist March 6, March 21, April 6, April 21, May 6, May 21, June 6 and June 21 and two varieties (Isfahan 14 and I.L111) were in the sub plots. The results showed that the number of seed per capitulum and seed yield were decreased significantly as the sowings dates were delayed. The Isfahan 14 variety in comparison with I.L111 produced more fertile capitulum in square meter and also, respectively seed per capitulum. The second sowing date (March 21) produced the highest seed yield (2306.2 kg ha(-1)), whereas the 7th sowing date (June 6) produced the lowest seed yield (622 kg ha(-1)). The effect of variety for seed yield was not significant. Farmers in the Kabotar Abad of Isfahan and in other areas with similar conditions are recommended to plant the Isfahan 14 variety on March 21.