A Rare Case of Co-Infection with Nocardia farcinica, Pneumocystis jirovecii, and Aspergillus fumigatus Due to Tooth Extraction in a Mildly Immunosuppressed Patient.

We report a case of co-infection with Nocardia farcinica, Pneumocystis jirovecii, and Aspergillus fumigatus due to tooth extraction in a mildly immunosuppressed patient. This patient did not respond well to a meropenem-based regimen, and the number of lesions was significantly reduced after switching to imipenem. The patient's trough concentration was insufficient when using conventional doses of voriconazole for the treatment of pulmonary aspergillosis. After adding omeprazole, the concentration reached standard levels and symptoms improved. The patient eventually made a full recovery.

Puerarin ameliorates myocardial remodeling of spontaneously hypertensive rats through inhibiting TRPC6-CaN-NFATc3 pathway.

Puerarin (Pue) has been widely used in the treatment of hypertension and cardiovascular diseases, but the basic mechanism of Pue on myocardial remodeling (MR) of hypertension is not clear. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect and mechanism of Pue on MR and provide the basis for the clinical application. Thirty male spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and six male Wistar Kyoto rats (WKY) aged 3 months were used in this study, SHR rats were randomly divided into 5 groups, Pue (40 or 80 mg/kg/d, ip) and telmisartan (TELMI) (30 mg/kg/d, ig) were administrated for 12 weeks. We used Echocardiography to detect the cardiac function. Morphology and structure of myocardium were observed. H9C2 cells were subjected to 1 µM Ang Ⅱ in vitro, 100 µM Pue, 0.5 µM Calmodulin-dependent calcineurin (CaN) inhibitor Cyclosporin A (CsA) and 1 µM specific transient receptor potential channel 6 (TRPC6) inhibitor SAR7334 were used in H9C2 cells. Long-term administration of Pue could significantly improve cardiac function, improve morphology and structure of myocardium in vivo. Pue could reduce MR related proteins expression (ACTC1, TGF-ß1, CTGF, ß-MHC and BNP), attenuate ROS, restore MMP and decrease Ca2+-overload in vitro. Further study indicated that Pue could decrease TRPC6 expression and inhibit nuclear factor of activated T cells 3 (NFATc3) nuclear translocation in vitro. These results suggested that puerarin could ameliorate myocardial remodeling through inhibiting TRPC6-CaN-NFATc3 in spontaneously hypertensive rats.

Eu3+-Postdoped UIO-66-Type Metal-Organic Framework as a Luminescent Sensor for Hg2+ Detection in Aqueous Media.

Because of its extreme toxicity, the determination of Hg2+ in aqueous solution is an important subject for human health and environmental monitoring. In this study, a novel UIO-66-type metal-organic framework (MOF) doped with Eu3+ (isophthalic acid and 2,6-pyridinedicarboxylic acid and zirconium chloride served as the organic connectors and metal precursor, respectively) was prepared by a hydrothermal method and postsynthetic modification. The obtained lanthanide MOFs exhibited good photothermal and fluorescence stability in aqueous solution. As a luminescent probe, dispersions of the material can specifically recognize Hg2+ in many ions and have a detection limit of 8.26 nM. This novel lanthanide MOF shows great potential applications for biosensing, imaging, environmental analysis, and so on.

A Reconfigurable Tangram Model for Scene Representation and Categorization.

This paper presents a hierarchical and compositional scene layout (i.e., spatial configuration) representation and a method of learning reconfigurable model for scene categorization. Three types of shape primitives (i.e., triangle, parallelogram, and trapezoid), called tans, are used to tile scene image lattice in a hierarchical and compositional way, and a directed acyclic AND-OR graph (AOG) is proposed to organize the overcomplete dictionary of tan instances placed in image lattice, exploring a very large number of scene layouts. With certain off-the-shelf appearance features used for grounding terminal-nodes (i.e., tan instances) in the AOG, a scene layout is represented by the globally optimal parse tree learned via a dynamic programming algorithm from the AOG, which we call tangram model. Then, a scene category is represented by a mixture of tangram models discovered with an exemplar-based clustering method. On basis of the tangram model, we address scene categorization in two aspects: 1) building a tangram bank representation for linear classifiers, which utilizes a collection of tangram models learned from all categories and 2) building a tangram matching kernel for kernel-based classification, which accounts for all hidden spatial configurations in the AOG. In experiments, our methods are evaluated on three scene data sets for both the configuration-level and semantic-level scene categorization, and outperform the spatial pyramid model consistently.

Overview and forecast on forestry productions worldwide.

Our world is largely dependent upon the forestry productions. Through the exploitation of forest reserves, we manufacture various industrial products, furniture, and obtain fuel and energy. Forestry productions should be conducted without large-scale deforestation and environmental degradation. In present study we perform a review and forecast analysis on forestry productions worldwide, with the objectives of providing an insight into the trend for several types of forestry productions in the future, and providing referential data for sustainable forestry productions and environmental management. Polynomial functions are used to fit trajectories of forestry productions since 1961 and forecasts during the coming 20 years are given in detail. If the past pattern continues, world fibreboard production would dramatically grow and reach 224,300,000 +/- 44,400,000 m(3) by the year 2020, an increase up to 240.7 to 408.9% as compared to the present level. Roundwood production of the world would change by -55.5 to 70.4% and reach 3,526,600,000 +/- 2,066,800,000 m(3) by 2020. In 2020 world production of sawlogs and veneer logs would change by -100 to 164.6% and reach 1,212,900,000 +/- 1,242,600,000 m(3). Global wood fuel production would change by -68.9 to 1.4% and reach 1,130,900,000 +/- 600,800,000 m(3) by 2020. Forestry productions in developed countries would largely surpass productions in developing countries in the near future. World forestry production grew since 1961 excluding wood fuel. Roundwood and wood fuel account for the critical proportions in the forestry productions. Wood fuel production has being declined and rapid growing of roundwood production has slowed in recent years. Widespread use of regenerative wood substitutes and worldwide afforestation against deforestation will be among the most effective ways to reduce deforestation and environment degradation associated with forestry productions.

Beta-amyloid induces the production of active, matrix-degrading proteases in cultured rat astrocytes.

The senile and neuritic plaque neuropathology of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is accompanied by an inflammatory response that includes activated astrocytes and microglia. Activated mononuclear phagocytes and reactive astrocytes, in response to inflammatory cytokines, secrete a set of extracellular matrix (ECM)-degrading enzymes that include the matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). The major peptide component of senile plaques of AD, beta-amyloid (Abeta), stimulates the production of several MMPs from cultured rat astrocytes and microglia. The purpose of this study was two-fold: (1) to compare the pattern of MMP induction in rat astrocytes on treatment with 'soluble' and 'fibrillar' Abeta(1-40) and Abeta(1-42), and (2) to examine whether treatment of astrocytes with Abeta results in degraded fragments of ECM. Abeta aggregation differentially affected the production of MMP-2 and MMP-9 in astrocyte cultures. Activation experiments with amino phenyl mercuric acetate suggested that the 52-54 kDa gelatin-degrading activity was an activated form of MMP-2. In addition, Abeta peptide induced both MMP-3 and plasminogen activator-like activity from astrocytes. When medium from Abeta-treated, astrocyte cultures was immunoblotted for fibronectin, several immunopositive, lower molecular weight bands were observed as compared to untreated conditioned medium, suggestive of the presence of an active fibronectin-degrading protease. Thus, Abeta induces the secretion of several matrix-degrading proteases and stimulates matrix degradation in rat astrocytes. Since matrix-degrading proteases are elevated in AD brain, these proteases may influence the stability of ECM or other MMP substrates and thus may play a role in the neurotrophic/neurotoxic events associated with AD.