Transovarial and transstadial transmission of Borrelia valaisiana, the pathogen of Lyme borreliosis, in the sheep tick, Ixodes ricinus L.

In this study, molecular analysis was used to show the possibility of transovarial and transstadial transmission of Borrelia valaisiana in Ixodes ricinus ticks in the natural biotopes of North-Western Russia. Female ticks collected in nature were fed on rabbits; larvae obtained from these females were fed on white mice. Eggs, female ticks after the egg deposition, larvae and nymphs of ticks after overwintering were studied for Borrelia burgdorferi s.

Infinite-dimensional reservoir computing.

Reservoir computing approximation and generalization bounds are proved for a new concept class of input/output systems that extends the so-called generalized Barron functionals to a dynamic context. This new class is characterized by the readouts with a certain integral representation built on infinite-dimensional state-space systems. It is shown that this class is very rich and possesses useful features and universal approximation properties.

Tracing curves in the plane: Geometric-invariant learning from human demonstrations.

The empirical laws governing human-curvilinear movements have been studied using various relationships, including minimum jerk, the 2/3 power law, and the piecewise power law. These laws quantify the speed-curvature relationships of human movements during curve tracing using critical speed and curvature as regressors. In this work, we provide a reservoir computing-based framework that can learn and reproduce human-like movements.

Legionella pneumophila Rhizoferrin Promotes Bacterial Biofilm Formation and Growth within Amoebae and Macrophages.

Previously, we showed that Legionella pneumophila secretes rhizoferrin, a polycarboxylate siderophore that promotes bacterial growth in iron-deplete media and the murine lung. Yet, past studies failed to identify a role for the rhizoferrin biosynthetic gene () in L. pneumophila infection of host cells, suggesting the siderophore's importance was solely linked to extracellular survival.

Macrophage-produced VEGFC is induced by efferocytosis to ameliorate cardiac injury and inflammation.

Clearance of dying cells by efferocytosis is necessary for cardiac repair after myocardial infarction (MI). Recent reports have suggested a protective role for vascular endothelial growth factor C (VEGFC) during acute cardiac lymphangiogenesis after MI. Here, we report that defective efferocytosis by macrophages after experimental MI led to a reduction in cardiac lymphangiogenesis and Vegfc expression.

Chaos on compact manifolds: Differentiable synchronizations beyond the Takens theorem.

This paper shows that a large class of fading memory state-space systems driven by discrete-time observations of dynamical systems defined on compact manifolds always yields continuously differentiable synchronizations. This general result provides a powerful tool for the representation, reconstruction, and forecasting of chaotic attractors. It also improves previous statements in the literature for differentiable generalized synchronizations, whose existence was so far guaranteed for a restricted family of systems and was detected using Hölder exponent-based criteria.

Discrete-Time Signatures and Randomness in Reservoir Computing.

A new explanation of the geometric nature of the reservoir computing (RC) phenomenon is presented. RC is understood in the literature as the possibility of approximating input-output systems with randomly chosen recurrent neural systems and a trained linear readout layer. Light is shed on this phenomenon by constructing what is called strongly universal reservoir systems as random projections of a family of state-space systems that generate Volterra series expansions.

Assay for Assessing Mucin Binding to Bacteria and Bacterial Proteins.

, a Gram-negative bacterium and the causative agent of Legionnaires' disease, exports over 300 effector proteins/virulence factors, through its type II (T2SS) and type IV secretion systems (T4SS). One such T2SS virulence factor, ChiA, not only functions as a chitinase, but also as a novel mucinase, which we believe aids ChiA-dependent virulence during lung infection. Previously published protocols manipulated wild-type strain 130b and its mutant to express plasmid-encoded GFP.

Effect of the structural factors of organic compounds on the acute toxicity toward .

The acute toxicity of organic compounds towards was subjected to QSAR analysis. The two-dimensional simplex representation of molecular structure (2D SiRMS) and the support vector machine (SVM), gradient boosting (GBM) methods were used to develop QSAR models. Adequate regression QSAR models were developed for incubation of 24 h.

Structure and functional analysis of the Legionella pneumophila chitinase ChiA reveals a novel mechanism of metal-dependent mucin degradation.

Chitinases are important enzymes that contribute to the generation of carbon and nitrogen from chitin, a long chain polymer of N-acetylglucosamine that is abundant in insects, fungi, invertebrates and fish. Although mammals do not produce chitin, chitinases have been identified in bacteria that are key virulence factors in severe respiratory, gastrointestinal and urinary diseases. However, it is unclear how these enzymes are able to carry out this dual function.

Coxiella burnetii in ticks and wild birds.

Unlabelled: The study objective was to get more information on C. burnetii prevalence in wild birds and ticks feeding on them, and the potentialities of the pathogen dissemination over Europe by both.

Materials: Blood, blood sera, feces of wild birds and ticks removed from those birds or from vegetation were studied at two sites in Russia: the Curonian Spit (site KK), and the vicinity of St.

Echo state networks are universal.

This paper shows that echo state networks are universal uniform approximants in the context of discrete-time fading memory filters with uniformly bounded inputs defined on negative infinite times. This result guarantees that any fading memory input/output system in discrete time can be realized as a simple finite-dimensional neural network-type state-space model with a static linear readout map. This approximation is valid for infinite time intervals.

Differential diagnosis of Ixodes ricinus and Ixodes persulcatus: nymphs and larvae.

We developed a method for differential diagnosis of nymphs and larvae of sheep (Ixodes ricinus (L.)) and taiga (I. persulcatus Sch.

[Influence of meteorological factors on the activity of the adult taiga tick (Ixodes persulcatus Sch., Ixodinae) in St. Petersburg and its environs].

The article deals with influence of meteorolical factors on the activity of the taiga tick Ixodes persulvatus Sch. in St. Petersburg and its environs.

Efferocytosis and Outside-In Signaling by Cardiac Phagocytes. Links to Repair, Cellular Programming, and Intercellular Crosstalk in Heart.

Phagocytic sensing and engulfment of dying cells and extracellular bodies initiate an intracellular signaling cascade within the phagocyte that can polarize cellular function and promote communication with neighboring non-phagocytes. Accumulating evidence links phagocytic signaling in the heart to cardiac development, adult myocardial homeostasis, and the resolution of cardiac inflammation of infectious, ischemic, and aging-associated etiology. Phagocytic clearance in the heart may be carried out by professional phagocytes, such as macrophages, and non-professional cells, including myofibrolasts and potentially epithelial cells.

MerTK Cleavage on Resident Cardiac Macrophages Compromises Repair After Myocardial Ischemia Reperfusion Injury.

Rationale: Clinical benefits of reperfusion after myocardial infarction are offset by maladaptive innate immune cell function, and therapeutic interventions are lacking.

Objective: We sought to test the significance of phagocytic clearance by resident and recruited phagocytes after myocardial ischemia reperfusion.

Methods And Results: In humans, we discovered that clinical reperfusion after myocardial infarction led to significant elevation of the soluble form of MerTK (myeloid-epithelial-reproductive tyrosine kinase; ie, soluble MER), a critical biomarker of compromised phagocytosis by innate macrophages.

Protocol Design Challenges in the Detection of Awareness in Aware Subjects Using EEG Signals.

Recent studies have evidenced serious difficulties in detecting covert awareness with electroencephalography-based techniques both in unresponsive patients and in healthy control subjects. This work reproduces the protocol design in two recent mental imagery studies with a larger group comprising 20 healthy volunteers. The main goal is assessing if modifications in the signal extraction techniques, training-testing/cross-validation routines, and hypotheses evoked in the statistical analysis, can provide solutions to the serious difficulties documented in the literature.

Nonlinear Memory Capacity of Parallel Time-Delay Reservoir Computers in the Processing of Multidimensional Signals.

This letter addresses the reservoir design problem in the context of delay-based reservoir computers for multidimensional input signals, parallel architectures, and real-time multitasking. First, an approximating reservoir model is presented in those frameworks that provides an explicit functional link between the reservoir architecture and its performance in the execution of a specific task. Second, the inference properties of the ridge regression estimator in the multivariate context are used to assess the impact of finite sample training on the decrease of the reservoir capacity.

[European Registry on the management of Helicobacter pylori infection (Hp-EuReg protocol): The first results of Russian centers].

Aim: To assess the clinical practice of diagnosis and treatment in patients with Helicobacter pylori infection and to compare this practice with the international guidelines in the European Registry on the management of Helicobacter pylori infection, Hp-EuReg protocol), a multicenter prospective observational study initiated by the European Helicobacter and Microbiota Study Group. MATERIALs AND METHODS: The data of 813 patients infected with H. pylori and entered in the Hp-EuReg register by the Russian centers in 2013-2015 were analyzed.

Life cycle of the taiga tick Ixodes persulcatus (Acari: Ixodidae) in the North-West of Russia.

The life cycle of Ixodes persulcatus lasts 3 years in the conditions of the Leningrad province (North-West Russia), the development of each phase taking a year. The normal age of the taiga tick is 3 years. The calendar age of larvae and nymphs reaches 11-12 months under favorable abiotic and biotic factors, while the calendar age of adults does not exceed 11 months.

Bedside Evaluation of the Functional Organization of the Auditory Cortex in Patients with Disorders of Consciousness.

To measure the level of residual cognitive function in patients with disorders of consciousness, the use of electrophysiological and neuroimaging protocols of increasing complexity is recommended. This work presents an EEG-based method capable of assessing at an individual level the integrity of the auditory cortex at the bedside of patients and can be seen as the first cortical stage of this hierarchical approach. The method is based on two features: first, the possibility of automatically detecting the presence of a N100 wave and second, in showing evidence of frequency processing in the auditory cortex with a machine learning based classification of the EEG signals associated with different frequencies and auditory stimulation modalities.

[The use of the antioxidant drink by healthy workers exposed to chemical factors].

In chemical manufacturing along with alimentary factors, workers are exposed to occupational hazards resulting in reduced antitoxic protective properties of the organism. The purpose of the present work was to develop a preventive method for reducing antitoxic functions of the body of healthy workers exposed to chemical factors. We have produced the drink containing carrot juice, honey, olive oil.

Optimal nonlinear information processing capacity in delay-based reservoir computers.

Reservoir computing is a recently introduced brain-inspired machine learning paradigm capable of excellent performances in the processing of empirical data. We focus in a particular kind of time-delay based reservoir computers that have been physically implemented using optical and electronic systems and have shown unprecedented data processing rates. Reservoir computing is well-known for the ease of the associated training scheme but also for the problematic sensitivity of its performance to architecture parameters.