10,060 research outputs found

    Comparison between an Enzyme-Linked-ImmunoSorbent-Assay usung a detergent-soluble Leishmania infantum antigen and indirect immunofluorescence for the diagnosis of canine leishmaniasis

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    Serum samples collected from 290 dogs-186 Leishmania-infected and 104 control animals--were screened to detect the presence of specific antibodies to Leishmania infantum antigens in Tuscany, Italy. Two different techniques were compared: an indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA) acid an indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The ELISA was developed using a detergent-soluble antigen of L. infantum promastigotes. Triton X-100 and protease inhibitors were used as detergent and to increase reproducibility of the assay, respectively. A strong correlation between the anti-Leishmania antibody levels obtained by ELISA and those obtained using IFA was observed. The ELISA appeared to be somewhat more sensitive than IFA (99.5% vs. 98.4%), while its specificity was lower (97.1% vs. 100%), even if not significantly different. Immunoblotting analysis, using the detergent-soluble L. infantum antigen, demonstrated that proteins of M(r) 30 and 73 kDa were recognized by all positive sera, regardless of the serum titre. Furthermore, antigens of M(r), 16, 18, 26, 33, 50 and 117 kDa were also frequently reactive with a large proportion of sera from infected dogs. This ELISA demonstrated a high sensitivity and specificity as well as the IFA, and it seems to be a suitable assay for large scale epidemiological studies

    Metadata Representations for Queryable ML Model Zoos

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    Machine learning (ML) practitioners and organizations are building model zoos of pre-trained models, containing metadata describing properties of the ML models and datasets that are useful for reporting, auditing, reproducibility, and interpretability purposes. The metatada is currently not standardised; its expressivity is limited; and there is no interoperable way to store and query it. Consequently, model search, reuse, comparison, and composition are hindered. In this paper, we advocate for standardized ML model metadata representation and management, proposing a toolkit supported to help practitioners manage and query that metadata.Web Information SystemsHuman-Centred Artificial Intelligenc

    A Manifesto of Nodalism

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    This paper proposes the notion of Nodalism as a means describing contemporary culture and of understanding my own creative practice in electronic music composition. It draws on theories and ideas from Kirby, Bauman, Bourriaud, Deleuze, Guatarri, and Gochenour, to demonstrate how networks of ideas or connectionist neural models of cognitive behaviour can be used to contextualize, understand and become a creative tool for the creation of contemporary electronic music
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