Progress in tuberculosis vaccine development and host-directed therapies-a state of the art review

Tuberculosis continues to kill 1.4 million people annually. During the past 5 years, an alarming increase in the number of patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis has been noted, particularly in eastern Europe, Asia, and southern Africa. Treatment outcomes with available treatment regimens for drug-resistant tuberculosis are poor. Although substantial progress in drug development for tuberculosis has been made, scientific progress towards development of interventions for prevention and improvement of drug treatment outcomes have lagged behind. Innovative interventions are therefore needed to combat the growing pandemic of multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. Novel adjunct treatments are needed to accomplish improved cure rates for multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. A novel, safe, widely applicable, and more effective vaccine against tuberculosis is also desperately sought to achieve disease control. The quest to develop a universally protective vaccine for tuberculosis continues. So far, research and development of tuberculosis vaccines has resulted in almost 20 candidates at different stages of the clinical trial pipeline. Host-directed therapies are now being developed to refocus the anti-Mycobacterium tuberculosis-directed immune responses towards the host; a strategy that could be especially beneficial for patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis or extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. As we are running short of canonical tuberculosis drugs, more attention should be given to host-directed preventive and therapeutic intervention measures.

The CU-HTK Mandarin broadcast news transcription system

This paper discusses the development of the CU-HTK Mandarin Broadcast News (BN) transcription system. The Mandarin BN task includes a significant amount of English data. Hence techniques have been investigated to allow the same system to handle both Mandarin and English by augmenting the Mandarin training sets with English acoustic and language model training data. A range of acoustic models were built including models based on Gaussianised features, speaker adaptive training and feature-space MPE. A multi-branch system architecture is described in which multiple acoustic model types, alternate phone sets and segmentations can be used in a system combination framework to generate the final output. The final system shows state-of-the-art performance over a range of test sets. ©2006 British Crown Copyright.

The art of human rights : enriching the life of the law school through drawings and other visual resource

In the life of the Law School, focus on the “visual” can operate at three different levels: learning, teaching, and examining (legal concepts). My main interest in this paper is to explore the latter level, “examining”, broadly considered so as to encompass evaluation in general. Furthermore, that interest is pinned down here to the area of constitutional rights and human rights in general, even though the conclusions reached can (and should) likely be extrapolated to other areas of the law... In effect, the first logical step regarding the relevance of the visual approach has to do with using it yourself when you study —assuming that you came to the conclusion that you are a “visual learner”. As you know, VARK theorists propose a quadripartite classification of learners. The acronym VARK stands for Visual, Aural, Read/write, and Kinesthetic sensory modalities that are used for learning information. This model was designed in the late 80s by Neil Fleming and it has received some acceptance and a lot of attention...

Peftjauawybast, king of Nen-nesut : genealogy, art history, and the chronology of late libyan Egypt

This paper argues in detail for the identification of Peftjauawybast, King of Nen-nesut (fl. 728/720 BC ), with Peftjauawybast, High Priest of Ptah in Memphis (fl. c. 790–780 BC2), known from the Apis stela of year 28 of Shoshenq III. This identification ties in with a significant lowering of the accepted dates for the kings from Shoshenq III, Osorkon III and Takeloth III to Shoshenq V, and the material culture associated with them. Such a shift seems to be supported by stylistic and genealogical evidence. As a consequence, it is further suggested that the Master of Shipping at Nen-nesut, Pediese i, was perhaps related by descent and marriage to the family of the High Priests of Memphis and King Peftjauawybast.

La sacra doctrina y el gnosticismo : (S. Th., I, q. 1, art. 1)

El estudio de la falsa gnosis es algo de lo cual varios pensadores católicos ya han escrito y lo siguen haciendo. Sin embargo, la consideración de este argumento a la luz del pensamiento de Santo Tomás de Aquino no es algo común. El concepto de gnosis (gnw/sij, conocimiento), en sí mismo, no significa algo peyorativo. Por el contrario, Jesucristo hace referencia a los doctores de la ley que han quitado la llave de la ciencia (Lc 11, 52). Por su parte san Pablo confiesa que «no hay sino un solo Dios y Padre, de quien proceden todas las cosas, y nosotros estamos destinados hacia él; y un solo Señor Jesucrito, por quien son todas las cosas, y nosostros también por él. Pero no en todos se halla esa ciencia (h` gnw/sij)». Este conocimiento o gnosis que toma la Revelación en la fe por regla y guía es la gnosis verdadera Nos proponemos en este trabajo realizar una lectura del art. 1º de la Iª Pars de la Suma Teológica y compararlo ante todo con el fundamento mismo de aquello que san Pablo denomina como «la mal llamada ciencia»...