To study the role of the interferon-(IFN) ␥R2

To understand its unprecedented resurgence, we examined the epidemiological, virological, and entomological features of dengue in Guangzhou during 1978Guangzhou during -2009. Cases reported to the Guangzhou Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and data from virological and entomological surveillance were analyzed from three periods : 1978: -1988: , 1989: -1999: -2009: . Although cases decreased over time: 6,649 (1978: -1988: ) to 6,479 (1989: -1999: ) to 2,526 (2000: -2009, geographical expansion resulted in districts with an average incidence >2.5/100,000, increasing from five (1978)(1979)(1980)(1981)(1982)(1983)(1984)(1985)(1986)(1987)(1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999) to seven (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009). Age distribution (mean age: 34.9 years) provided a trend of increasing dengue incidence among adults, and there was a significantly higher incidence among men with a sex ratio of 1.15:1 (P<0.001). Cases occurred from May through November with a peak between August and October, and a long-term trend was characterized by a three to five-year cyclical pattern. The most frequently isolated serotypes were DENV-2 (1978DENV-2 ( -1988 and DENV-1 (1989DENV-1 ( -1999DENV-1 ( and 2000DENV-1 ( -2009. Seasonal fluctuations in immature densities of Aedes albopictus (sole transmission vector in Guangzhou) were consistent with the dengue seasonality. After a 30-year apparent absence, DENV-3 had reemerged in 2009. The current epidemiological situation is highly conducive to periodic dengue resurgences. Thus, a high degree of surveillance and strict control measures in source reduction should be maintained. Journal of Vector Ecology 37 (1): 230-240. 2012.

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Severe malaria is a life-threatening complication of an infection with the protozoan parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which requires immediate treatment. Safety and efficacy concerns with currently used drugs accentuate the need for new chemotherapeutic options against severe malaria. Here we describe a medicinal chemistry program starting from amicarbalide that led to two compounds with optimized pharmacological and antiparasitic properties. SC81458 and the clinical development candidate, SC83288, are fast-acting compounds that can cure a P. falciparum infection in a humanized NOD/SCID mouse model system. Detailed preclinical pharmacokinetic and toxicological studies reveal no observable drawbacks. Ultra-deep sequencing of resistant parasites identifies the sarco/endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ transporting PfATP6 as a putative determinant of resistance to SC81458 and SC83288. Features, such as fast parasite killing, good safety margin, a potentially novel mode of action and a distinct chemotype support the clinical development of SC83288, as an intravenous application for the treatment of severe malaria.

Vision Transformers (ViT) have achieved remarkable success in large-scale image recognition. They split every 2D image into a fixed number of patches, each of which is treated as a token. Generally, representing an image with more tokens would lead to higher prediction accuracy, while it also results in drastically increased computational cost. To achieve a decent trade-off between accuracy and speed, the number of tokens is empirically set to 16x16. In this paper, we argue that every image has its own characteristics, and ideally the token number should be conditioned on each individual input. In fact, we have observed that there exist a considerable number of "easy" images which can be accurately predicted with a mere number of 4x4 tokens, while only a small fraction of "hard" ones need a finer representation. Inspired by this phenomenon, we propose a Dynamic Transformer to automatically configure a proper number of tokens for each input image. This is achieved by cascading multiple Transformers with increasing numbers of tokens, which are sequentially activated in an adaptive fashion at test time, i.e., the inference is terminated once a sufficiently confident prediction is produced. We further design efficient feature reuse and relationship reuse mechanisms across different components of the Dynamic Transformer to reduce redundant computations. Extensive empirical results on ImageNet, CIFAR-10, and CIFAR-100 demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms the competitive baselines in terms of both theoretical computational efficiency and practical inference speed.

A new method for studying wound healing under realistic conditions in vitro was developed. The method involves creating defined patterns of damaged cell debris with poly(dimethyl)siloxane (PDMS) stamping. This novel assay permitted the quantification of wound healing rates in the presence of cell debris. Experimental results with this assay suggest that cell migration in the presence of cell debris is a two step process requiring (1) non-muscle myosin II-dependent cell clearance followed by (2) cell migration into newly cleared wound areas. The novel stamp wound assay allows the study of coupled cell migration and debris clearance and is a more realistic wound healing assay in vitro.

BackgroundLithotomy (LT) and prone jackknife positions (PJ) are routinely used for abdominoperineal resection (APR). The present study compared the clinical, pathological, and oncological outcomes of PJ-APR vs. LT-APR in low rectal cancer patients in order to confirm which position will provide more benefits to patients undergoing APR.MethodsThis is a retrospective study of consecutive patients with low rectal cancer who underwent curative APR between January 2002 and December 2011. Patients were matched 1:2 (PJ-APR = 74 and LT-APR = 37 patients) based on gender and age. Perioperative data, postoperative outcomes, and survival were compared between the two approaches.ResultsHospital stay was shorter with PJ-APR compared with LT-APR (P < 0.05). Compared with LT-APR, duration of anesthesia (234 ± 50.8 vs. 291 ± 69 min, P = 0.022) and surgery (183 ± 44.8 vs. 234 ± 60 min, P = 0.016) was shorter with PJ-APR, and estimated blood losses were smaller (549 ± 218 vs. 674 ± 350 mL, P < 0.001). Blood transfusions were required in 37.8% of LT-APR patients and in 8.1% of PJ-APR patients (P < 0.001). There was no difference in the distribution of N stages (P = 0.27). Median follow-up was 47.1 (13.6–129.7) months. Postoperative complications were reported by fewer patients after PJ-APR compared with LT-APR (14.9% vs. 32.4%, P = 0.030). There were no significant differences in overall survival, disease-free survival, local recurrence, and distant metastasis (P > 0.05).ConclusionsThe PJ position provided a better exposure for low rectal cancer and had a lower operative risk and complication rates than LT-APR. However, there was no difference in rectal cancer prognosis between the two approaches. PJ-APR might be a better choice for patients with low rectal cancer.

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