A probiotic is a viable microbial dietary supplement that has beneficial effects such as prevention and treatment of specific gastrointestinal disorders, including counteracting gut barrier dysfunction associated with inflammation and infection. Probiotic Bacillus polyfermenticus, which is commonly called Bispan strain, has been appropriately used for the treatment of long-term intestinal disorders. The use of B. polyfermenticus for immune-related chronic intestinal disease may be appropriate considering that about 80% of the body's immune system is localized in the gastrointestinal tract. The current study aimed to evaluate the effect of probiotic B. polyfermenticus on the immune response of human subjects through the quantification of immune cell population and serum levels of immunoglobulins (Igs). Twenty-five male subjects, 20-35 years of age, were randomly assigned to either a control group (n =12) supplemented with a placebo or the experimental group (n = 13) supplemented with B. polyfermenticus tablets at a dose of 3.1 x 10(8) colony-forming units/day for 8 weeks. Dietary intake analyses from 3-day dietary records from three consecutive days including one weekend day and two weekdays revealed no significant differences in total energy and nutrient intakes between the two groups. The humoral immune response was monitored by the number of total B lymphocytes and serum concentrations of IgG, IgA, and IgM. To investigate the changes in immune cell populations, percentages of total T lymphocytes, CD4+ helper T cells, CD8+ cytotoxic T cells, and CD56+ natural killer (NK) cells were quantified. The concentration of IgG in the experimental group was 12% higher than in the placebo group after 8 weeks of Bispan supplementation. Also, the percentages of CD4+ helper T cells, CD8+cytotoxic T cells, and CD56+ NK cells in the Bispan strain-supplemented group were 32%, 28%, and 35% higher, respectively, compared with the control group. Because of a higher increment of the CD4+ T cell subset than CD8+ T cells, the ratio of CD4+/CD8+ T cells was greater in the experimental group. This study suggests that the supplementation of B. polyfermenticus has a potentially positive effect on immune function by enhancing IgG production as well as by modulating the number of immune cell population such as CD4+ and CD8+ T cells and NK cells.

Image-space auxiliary features such as surface normal have significantly contributed to the recent success of Monte Carlo (MC) reconstruction networks. However, path-space features, another essential piece of light propagation, have not yet been sufficiently explored. Due to the curse of dimensionality, information flow between a regression loss and high-dimensional path-space features is sparse, leading to difficult training and inefficient usage of path-space features in a typical reconstruction framework. This paper introduces a contrastive manifold learning framework to utilize path-space features effectively. The proposed framework employs weakly-supervised learning that converts reference pixel colors to dense pseudo labels for light paths. A convolutional path-embedding network then induces a low-dimensional manifold of paths by iteratively clustering intra-class embeddings, while discriminating inter-class embeddings using gradient descent. The proposed framework facilitates path-space exploration of reconstruction networks by extracting low-dimensional yet meaningful embeddings within the features. We apply our framework to the recent image- and sample-space models and demonstrate considerable improvements, especially on the sample space. The source code is available at https://github.com/Mephisto405/WCMC.

In this study, we provide the first report of the complete mitochondrial genome of Emydocephalus ijimae. The mitogenome length is 18,259 bp and includes 13 protein-coding genes, two rRNA genes, 22 tRNA genes, and three non-coding regions. The sequence presented could be very useful for further phylogenetic and evolutionary study.

With most sea turtle populations declining, activities to conserve their habitat and nesting grounds and restore their populations are being implemented worldwide. To preserve the Northwestern Pacific populations, the National Marine Biodiversity Institute of Korea has been releasing artificially propagated sea turtles, but whether these individuals join the wild population remains unknown. The present study aimed to determine the movement patterns of artificially propagated juvenile loggerhead (Caretta caretta) and green (Chelonia mydas) turtles fitted with satellite transmitters on their carapaces and released in the waters of Jeju or Yeosu, Republic of Korea, between August 2018 and April 2022. Loggerheads traveled northward to the East Sea, whereas green turtles moved west or southwest. Two 36-month-old and two 48-month-old loggerheads moved toward their potential nursery grounds and toward their feeding grounds, respectively. Three green turtles with a curved carapace length (CCL) of <40 cm moved toward their nursery or feeding grounds, while three individuals (CCL > 45 cm) moved toward their inshore foraging areas. The travel paths were closely related to the direction of local sea currents. Our results implied that releasing artificially propagated sea turtles, considering their age and CCL, can positively contribute to the conservation of Northwestern Pacific populations.

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