OBJECTIVE Following the isolation of a Marseillevirus from the stool of a healthy young Senegalese and a Mimivirus from a Tunisian patient with pneumonia, we attempted to isolate other giant viruses of amoebae from a large human stool collection. METHODS During the period 2010-2011, a total of 1,605 stool samples, including 115 from Tunisian patients with pneumonia, were cultured on amoebae. ...

We present glacier thickness changes over the entire Pamir–Karakoram–Himalaya arc based on ICESat satellite altimetry data for 2003–2008. We highlight the importance of C-band penetration for studies based on the SRTM elevation model. This penetration seems to be of potentially larger magnitude and variability than previously assumed. The most negative rate of region-wide glacier elevation chan...

Accurate and reliable segmentation of nuclei and their compartments is an important step for the quantitative image analysis of nuclear malignancy. To evaluate and analyze the properties of nuclei, such as the shapes, size, membrane, chromatin appearence and textures, nuclear regions need to be extracted and separated from the image background. Accurate segmentation of nuclei is often difficult...

The purpose of this study was to examine the physicochemical properties of TA ointments and conduct a human sensory test to assess the properties of those ointments. Physicochemical assessment was done via near-infrared (NIR) absorption spectroscopy, measurement of water content, microscopy, and measurement of viscoelasticity. The human sensory test examined 5 aspects (texture, cohesiveness, sp...

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my thesis advisors, who have guided me in the presentation of my thesis, and Shan Mei, with whom I have had many insightful discussions.

It is argued that reliable acoustic profiles of speech under stress can only be found if different types of stress are clearly distinguished and experimentally induced. We report first results of a study with 100 speakers from three language groups, using a computer-based induction procedure that allows distinguishing cognitive load due to task engagement from psychological stress. Findings sho...

Grassland ecosystems are an important component of global terrestrial and play a crucial role in the carbon cycle. Therefore, it is to study dioxide (CO2) process Middle Tien Shan grassland ecosystem, which can be regarded as typical representative mountain grasslands Xinjiang. Eddy covariance (EC) fluxes dataset (GCFD) were utilized continuously monitor ecosystem Xinjiang throughout 2018 growi...

Thioacetamide (TA), a potent centrilobular hepatotoxicant, undergoes a two-step bioactivation mediated by microsomal CYP2E1 to TA sulfoxide (TASO), and further to TA-S,S-dioxide (TASO2), a reactive metabolite that initiates cellular necrosis. Our earlier studies showed that bioactivation-mediated liver injury of TA is not dose-proportional. The objective of this study was to examine whether inc...

The appearance of detritus shed from mountain ranges along the northern margin of the Tibetan Plateau heralds the Cenozoic development of high topography. Current estimates of the age of the basal conglomerate in the Qaidam basin place this event in Paleocene-Eocene. Here we present new magnetostratigraphy and mammalian biostratigraphy that refine the onset of basin fill to ∼25.5 Myr and reveal...