The diagnostic value of hydroxyproline combined with tuberculosis infection T lymphocyte spot assay in pulmonary tuberculosis.

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease which has long threatened human health, and new molecular diagnostic markers for its diagnosis are urgently needed. The study was designed to analyze the expression of hydroxyproline (HYP) in different specimens of pulmonary TB (PTB) and assess its auxiliary diagnostic value alone or in combination with the TB infection T lymphocyte spot assay (TSPOT.TB).

Effect of network nestedness on stability, diversity, and resilience of ecosystems.

The structural nestedness has important effects on the ecosystem's robustness, stability, and species diversity, but quantitative analysis tools are still lacking at present. According to the competitive and mutually beneficial interactions among ecosystems species, we designed a quantitative analysis tool of nestedness on ecosystems metrics by mapping the ecosystems into symbolic networks and calculating the network's competitive nestedness and mutualistic nestedness with an overlap metric, respectively. The results of the real system and network models show that in the competitive and mutualistic coupling network, the competitive nestedness reduces the biodiversity and robustness of the network, but the mutualistic nestedness has the opposite effect.