Effect of passive immunotherapy against Clostridium difficile infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

This systematic review aimed to determine the effect of antibody therapy against Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) using meta-analysis. In total, 28 studies (animals - 12; human - 17) were identified from the database on the basis of inclusion criteria; then selected studies were systematically reviewed and statistically analyzed. In animal experiments, the pooled relative risk of eight potential studies suggested that the antibody treatment could reduce the risk of CDI. However, the methodological heterogeneity was moderately higher. In human subjects, the majority of reports demonstrated the beneficial effect of passive immunotherapy against CDI. However, this systematic review and meta-analysis recommends that more intensive controlled studies are indispensable for legitimate confirmation.

Chronobiological studies of chicken IgY: monitoring of infradian, circadian and ultradian rhythms of IgY in blood and yolk of chickens.

IgY is the functional equivalent of mammalian IgG found in birds, reptiles and amphibians. Many of its biological aspects have been explored with different approaches. In order to evaluate the rhythmicity of serum and yolk IgY, four chickens were examined and reared under the same conditions. To monitor biological oscillations of IgY in yolk and serum, the eggs and blood samples were collected over a 60 day period and the rhythm of yolk and serum IgY was determined by direct-ELISA. Results indicated that, there is a significant circaseptan rhythm in yolk IgY and circaquattran rhythm in serum IgY. The serum IgY concentration reached a peak in the morning, decreased to a minimum during the daytime and increased again at night revealing a significant circadian rhythm was superimposed by an ultradian rhythm. These data are suited to address the controversies concerning the IgY concentration in egg yolk and blood of laying hens. In addition, this study raised new questions, if the different rhythms in yolk and serum are concerned.

[An accurate approach to hyperspectral mineral identification based on naive bayesian classification model].

The spectral absorption features are very similar between some minerals, especially hydrothermal alteration minerals related to mineralization, and they are also influenced by other factors such as spectral mixture. As a result, many of the spectral identification approaches for the minerals with similar spectral absorption features are prone to confusion and misjudgment. Therefore, to solve the phenomenon of "same mineral has different spectrums, and same spectrum belongs to different minerals", this paper proposes an accurate approach to hyperspectral mineral identification based on naive bayesian classification model. By testing and analyzing muscovite and kaolinite, the two typical alteration minerals, and comparing this approach with spectral angle matching, binary encoding and spectral feature fitting, the three popular spectral identification approaches, the results show that this approach can make more obvious differences among different minerals having similar spectrums, and has higher classification accuracy, since it is based on the position of absorption feature, absorption depth and the slope of continuum.