Candida albicans is an opportunistic fungi that is able to thrive in many host niches, including the skin, mucosal, surfaces, the blood stream and internal organs. Agglutinin-like sequence (ALS) genes which could play a role in forming biofilms, adherence to host surfaces as a virulence factor and antifungal drug resistant. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the presence ALS1 and ...

Micromachined polymer surfaces often lack smooth optical finish. Here we present a simple device for polishing these surfaces by stream of vapor of aggressive solvent. Depending on exposition, the initial roughness may be partially or completely removed, at the expense of slight smoothing of sharp angles within the modified area. Unlike the industrial techniques of vapor treatment of large area...

We present a technique whereby a single camera can be used as a high precision visual odometry sensor in a range of practical settings using simple, computationally efficient techniques. Taking advantage of the local planarity of common floor surfaces, we use real-time dense alignment of a 30Hz video stream as the camera looks down from a fast-moving robot, making use of the whole texture avail...

A catastrophic storm that struck the central Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains in June 1995 delivered over 775 mm (30.5 in) of rain in 16 h. The deluge triggered more than 1000 slope failures; and stream channels and debris fans were deeply incised, exposing the stratigraphy of earlier mass movement and fluvial deposits. The synthesis of data obtained from detailed pollen studies and 39 radiometric...

assiganga stream is an important tributary of bhagirathi river in central himalaya (india). the stream is characterized by heterogeneity in habitat and substratum features harboring diverse fish fauna. at present this stream is facing threat of being fragmented by the construction of two hydro-electric projects. present study aimed to study fish diversity and their habitat use in assiganga stre...

In recent studies, collaborative intelligence (CI) has emerged as a promising framework for deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based services on mobile/edge devices. CI, the AI model (a deep neural network) is split between edge and cloud, intermediate features are sent from sub-model to cloud sub-model. this paper, we study bit allocation feature coding in multi-stream CI systems. We t...

Stream mesoscale habitats have systematic topographic relationships to hyporheic flow patterns, which may create predictable temperature variation between mesoscale habitat types. We investigated whether systematic differences in temperature metrics occurred between mesoscale habitats within reaches of small streams tributary to the upper Little Tennessee River, southern Appalachians. Surface w...

In recent years there has been a growing interest in reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) as enablers for the realization of smart radio propagation environments which can provide performance improvements with low energy consumption future wireless networks. However, to reap potential gains RIS it is crucial jointly design both transmit precoder and phases elements. Within this context, p...

Catheter-related blood stream infections increase morbidity, mortality, and costs. This study investigated whether Certofix(®) protect antimicrobial catheters carry a surface charge and whether this inhibits biofilm formation. The capacitance of the catheter surfaces was measured and, to determine if the catheters released ions, distilled water was passed through and current measured as a funct...