Progression and Dissemination of Pulmonary Mycobacterium Avium Infection in a Susceptible Immunocompetent Mouse Model

Pulmonary infections caused by the group of nontuberculosis mycobacteria (NTM), Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC), are a growing public health concern with incidence and mortality steadily increasing globally. Granulomatous inflammation is the hallmark of MAC lung infection, yet reliable correlates of disease progression, susceptibility, and resolution are poorly defined. Unlike widely used inbred mouse strains, mice that carry the mutant allele at the genetic locus sst1 develop human-like pulmonary tuberculosis featuring well-organized caseating granulomas. We characterized pulmonary temporospatial outcomes of intranasal and left intrabronchial M. avium spp. hominissuis (M.av) induced pneumonia in B6.Sst1S mice, which carries the sst1 mutant allele. We utilized traditional semi-quantitative histomorphological evaluation, in combination with fluorescent multiplex immunohistochemistry (fmIHC), whole slide imaging, and quantitative digital image analysis. Followingintrabronchiolar infection with the laboratory M.av strain 101, the B6.Sst1S pulmonary lesions progressed 12–16 weeks post infection (wpi), with plateauing and/or resolving disease by 21 wpi. Caseating granulomas were not observed during the study. Disease progression from 12–16 wpi was associated with increased acid-fast bacilli, area of secondary granulomatous pneumonia lesions, and Arg1+ and double positive iNOS+/Arg1+ macrophages. Compared to B6 WT, at 16 wpi, B6.Sst1S lungs exhibited an increased area of acid-fast bacilli, larger secondary lesions with greater Arg1+ and double positive iNOS+/Arg1+ macrophages, and reduced T cell density. This morphomolecular analysis of histologic correlates of disease progression in B6.Sst1S could serve as a platform for assessment of medical countermeasures against NTM infection.     

Untersuchungen über die Einhärtungstiefe und die für sie maßgeblichen Einflußgrößen beim induktiven Vorschubhärten von Kaltwalzen

Induktions-Vorschubhärten in einer Senkrecht-Härteanlage. Berechnung und Messung des zum Erreichen einer bestimmten Einhärtungstiefe notwendigen Abkühlungsverlaufes in der Walze. Abschreckversuche zur Abschätzung der Wärmeübergangszahl in der Abkühlungszone. Zusammenhang der Vorschubgeschwindigkeit mit der Geometrie der Härteanlage. Auswirkung auf die Einhärtungstiefe unter Berücksichtigung des Umwandlungsverhaltens bei dem Stahl 86 CrMoV 7.     

Novel components for tunable micro-optics

We will present some technologies and devices employed for the fabrication of tunable micro-optics. Tunable liquid lenses and lens arrays as well as polymer membrane-based microlenses and scanning mirrors are of both academic and industrial interest in this area.     

Anticipatory routing of police helicopters

We have developed a decision support application for the Dutch Aviation Police and Air Support unit for routing their helicopters in anticipation of unknown future incidents. These incidents are not known in advance, yet do require a swift response. A response might include the dispatch of a police helicopter to support the police on the ground. If a helicopter takes too long to arrive at the crime scene, it might be too late to assist. Hence, helicopters have to be proximate when an incident happens to increase the likelihood of being able to support the police on the ground in apprehending suspects. We propose the use of a forecasting technique, followed by a routing heuristic to maximize the number of incidents where a helicopter provides a successful assist. We have implemented these techniques in a decision support application in collaboration with the Dutch Aviation Police and Air Support. Using numerical experiments, we show that our application has the potential to improve the success rate with a factor nine. The Dutch Air Support and Aviation Police are now using the application.     

Dynamic prototypicality effects in visual search.

In recent studies, researchers have discovered a larger neural activation for stimuli that are more extreme exemplars of their stimulus class, compared with stimuli that are more prototypical. This has been shown for faces as well as for familiar and novel shape classes. We used a visual search task to look for a behavioral correlate of these findings regarding both simple geometrical shapes and more complex, novel shape classes. The latter stimulus set enabled us to control for the physical properties of the shapes, establishing that the effects are solely due to the positions of the particular stimuli in a particular shape space (i.e., more extreme versus more central in shape space) and not to specific shape features. The results indicate that finding an atypical instance of a shape class among more prototypical ones is easier and faster than the other way around. The prototypical status of a shape in our experiment could change very quickly, that is, within minutes, depending on the subset of shapes that was shown to the participants. Manipulating the degree of familiarity toward the shapes by selectively increasing familiarity for the extreme shapes did not influence our results. In general, we show that the prototypical status of a stimulus in visual search is a highly dynamic property, depending on the distribution of stimuli within a shape space but not on familiarity with the prototype. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)