Introduction: Recent work on bats flying over long distances has revealed that single hippocampal cells have multiple place fields of different sizes. At the network level, a multi-scale, multi-field place cell code outperforms classical single-scale, single-field place codes, yet the performance boundaries of such a code remain an open question. In particular, it is unknown how general multi-field codes compare to a highly regular grid code, in which cells form distinct modules with different scales.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFToxoplasmosis is a worldwide zoonosis caused by the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii. Although this infection is generally asymptomatic in immunocompetent individuals, it can cause serious clinical manifestations in newborns with congenital infection or in immunocompromised patients. As current treatments are not always well tolerated, there is an urgent need to find new drugs against human toxoplasmosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNext generation on-skin electrodes will require soft, flexible, and gentle materials to provide both high-fidelity sensing and wearer comfort. However, many commercially available on-skin electrodes lack these key properties due to their use of rigid hardware, harsh adhesives, uncomfortable support structures, and poor breathability. To address these challenges, this work presents a new device paradigm by joining biocompatible electrospun spider silk with printable liquid metal to yield an incredibly soft and scalable on-skin electrode that is strain-tolerant, conformable, and gentle on-skin.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInvited for this month's cover is the group of Professor Sonja Herres-Pawlis at the RWTH Aachen (Germany). The cover image illustrates the complex yet flexible circular economy of (bio)plastics and the role of a Zn-based catalyst therein. The Research Article itself is available at 10.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCircular replicase-encoding single-stranded (CRESS) DNA viruses and other circular DNA agents are increasingly found in various samples and animals. A specific class of these agents-termed bovine meat and milk factors (BMMF)-has been supposed to act as a factor in indirect carcinogenesis in humans. Initial observations attributed the BMMF to European cattle breeds and foodstuffs produced thereof.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA new aliphatic hybrid guanidine N,O-donor ligand (TMGeech) and its zinc chloride complex ([ZnCl (TMGeech)]) are presented. This complex displays high catalytic activity for the ring-opening polymerization (ROP) of lactide in toluene, exceeding the toxic industry standard tin octanoate by a factor of 10. The high catalytic activity of [ZnCl (TMGeech)] is further demonstrated under industrially preferred melt conditions, reaching high lactide conversions within seconds.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnrofloxacin has been shown to be appropriate to treat bacterial eye infections in mammals. However, the anatomy and physiology of the avian eye substantially differ from those in mammals, and pharmacokinetic data substantiating the clinical efficacy of enrofloxacin in birds are still lacking. In total, 40 chickens (, Lohman Selected Leghorn) received single intramuscular administration of enrofloxacin at a dosage of 25 mg/kg body weight (BW).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFrequency-modulated continuous wave radar sensors play an essential role for assisted and autonomous driving as they are robust under all weather and light conditions. However, the rising number of transmitters and receivers for obtaining a higher angular resolution increases the cost for digital signal processing. One promising approach for energy-efficient signal processing is the usage of brain-inspired spiking neural networks (SNNs) implemented on neuromorphic hardware.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn recent years, a lack of stability of dairy products with extended shelf life (e.g., yoghurt products, UHT desserts) has occurred, with the corresponding products liquefying significantly after days or weeks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOne of the multiple factors determining the onset of the diarrhoeal disease caused by enteropathogenic Bacillus cereus is the ability of the bacteria to actively move towards the site of infection. This ability depends on flagella, but it also varies widely between different strains. To gain more insights into these strain-specific variations, polyclonal rabbit antisera as well as monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) were generated in this study, which detected recombinant and natural B.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClin Exp Dent Res
February 2022
is a ubiquitous soil bacterium responsible for two types of food-associated gastrointestinal diseases. While the emetic type, a food intoxication, manifests in nausea and vomiting, food infections with enteropathogenic strains cause diarrhea and abdominal pain. Causative toxins are the cyclic dodecadepsipeptide cereulide, and the proteinaceous enterotoxins hemolysin BL (Hbl), nonhemolytic enterotoxin (Nhe) and cytotoxin K (CytK), respectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe ubiquitous soil bacterium presents major challenges to food safety. It is responsible for two types of food poisoning, the emetic form due to food intoxication and the diarrheal form emerging from food infections with enteropathogenic strains, also known as toxico-infections, which are the subject of this review. The diarrheal type of food poisoning emerges after production of enterotoxins by viable bacteria in the human intestine.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHemolysin BL is a tripartite toxin responsible for a diarrheal type of food poisoning. Open questions remain regarding its mode of action, including the extent to which complex formation prior to cell binding contributes to pore-forming activity, how these complexes are composed, and the properties of the pores formed in the target cell membrane. Distinct complexes of up to 600 kDa were found on native gels, whose structure and size were primarily defined by Hbl B.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe present the Keggin-type polyoxometalate H[PVMoO] as a switchable catalyst being able to catalyze the transformation of both glucose and glyceraldehyde to formic acid (42%) and lactic acid (40%), respectively, within 1 h reaction time by simply changing the reaction atmosphere at 160 °C from oxygen to nitrogen in one reactor setup. In detail, we report the influence of different gas atmospheres and reaction temperatures on various vanadium-containing catalysts in the selective transformation of several biogenic substrates to carboxylic acids with a special emphasis on reaction pathways and switchability of the catalyst systems. All investigations were carried out in parallel using either an oxygen or a nitrogen atmosphere of 20 bar performing time-resolved experiments between 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSuccinate dehydrogenase inhibitor (SDHI) fungicides are widely used for the control of a broad range of fungal diseases. This has been the most rapidly expanding fungicide group in terms of new molecules discovered and introduced for agricultural use over the past fifteen years. A particular pattern of differential sensitivity (resistance) to the stretched heterocycle amide SDHIs (SHA-SDHIs), a subclass of chemically-related SDHIs, was observed in naïve Zymoseptoria tritici populations not previously exposed to these chemicals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFModern threats of bioterrorism force the need for multiple detection of biothreat agents to determine the presence or absence of such agents in suspicious samples. Here, we present a rapid electrochemical fiveplex biochip screening assay for detection of the bioterrorism relevant low molecular weight toxins saxitoxin, microcystin-LR, T-2 toxin, roridin A and aflatoxin B1 relying on anti-idiotypic antibodies as epitope-mimicking reagents. The proposed method avoids the use of potentially harmful toxin-protein conjugates usually mandatory for competitive immunoassays.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFComputational techniques are widely used to reduce costs associated with new drug development with the ability to bind a specific molecular target. These studies need a Brookhaven protein data bank structure sample of the enzyme interaction with an inhibitor of adequate size. In this context, a new computational methodology is postulated to be used when there are no published samples fulfilling this requirements.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe diarrheal type of food poisoning caused by enteropathogenic Bacillus cereus has been linked to various exotoxins. Best described are the non-hemolytic enterotoxin (Nhe), hemolysin BL (Hbl), and cytotoxin K (CytK). Due to the ubiquitous prevalence of B.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA major virulence factor involved in food poisoning is the three-component enterotoxin hemolysin BL. It consists of the binding component B and the two lytic components L and L. Studying its mode of action has been challenging, as natural culture supernatants additionally contain Nhe, the second three-component enterotoxin, and purification of recombinant (r) Hbl components has been difficult.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStrains of the group have been widely used as probiotics for human beings, food animals, plants, and environmental remediation. Paradoxically, is responsible for both gastrointestinal and nongastrointestinal syndromes and represents an important opportunistic food-borne pathogen. Toxicity assessment is a fundamental issue to evaluate safety of probiotics.
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