Adaptation to Fluconazole via Aneuploidy Enables Cross-Adaptation to Amphotericin B and Flucytosine in Cryptococcus neoformans

Cryptococcosis is a globally distributed invasive fungal infection caused by infections with Cryptococcus neoformans or Cryptococcus gattii . Only three classes of therapeutic drugs are clinically available for treating cryptococcosis: polyenes (amphotericin B), azoles (fluconazole), and pyrimidine analogues (flucytosine).

Antimicrobials and Food-Related Stresses as Selective Factors for Antibiotic Resistance along the Farm to Fork Continuum

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global problem and there has been growing concern associated with its widespread along the animal–human–environment interface. The farm-to-fork continuum was highlighted as a possible reservoir of AMR, and a hotspot for the emergence and spread of AMR. However, the extent of the role of non-antibiotic antimicrobials and other food-related stresses as selective factors is still in need of clarification. This review addresses the use of non-antibiotic stressors, such as antimicrobials, food-processing treatments, or even novel approaches to ensure food safety, as potential drivers for resistance to clinically relevant antibiotics. The co-selection and cross-adaptation events are covered, which may induce a decreased susceptibility of foodborne bacteria to antibiotics. Although the available studies address the complexity involved in these phenomena, further studies are needed to help better understand the real risk of using food-chain-related stressors, and possibly to allow the establishment of early warnings of potential resistance mechanisms.

COMPLEX EFFECT OF CHROME AND SALINATION ON NITROGEN EXCHANGE IN PUMPKIN PLANTS

A specific character of physiological-biochemical stress responses of pumpkin plants to toxic effect of cadmium under conditions of salinity in the course of their long-term cross-adaptation was investigated. Cr and NaCl were added either alone or in combination in Knop solution along with non-treated controls. In 7- and 14- day plants, all the physiological processes studied (shoot and root growth, bioaccumulation of fresh and dry biomass by them and nitrogen-protein metabolism in different plant organs) were found to be more sensitive to inhibitory action of Cr excess than to NaCl effect. However, in 21-day plants, especially in their roots, a some activation of growth and biosynthetic processes was observed in the presence of combined Cr and NaCl treatments than at their lone application. All this indicates that an adaptation of plants to salinity is accompanied by a some reduction in toxic effect of Cr on growth and metabolism of plants

Temporal enhancement of cross-adaptation between density and size perception based on the theory of magnitude

The estimation of spatial distances is one of the most important perceptual outputs of vision and can easily be deduced even with detached objects. However, how the visual system encodes distances between objects and object sizes is unclear. Hisakata, Nishida, and Johnston (2016) reported a new adaptation effect, in which the perceived distance between objects and the size of an object shrink after adaptation to a dense texture. They proposed that the internal representation of density plays a role in a spatial metric system that measures distance and size. According to the theory of magnitude (Walsh, 2003), the estimation of spatial extent (distance and size) shares common metrics with the estimation of temporal length and numerosity magnitudes and is processed at the same stage. Here, we show the existence of temporal enhancement in cross-adaptation between density and size perception. We used the staircase method to measure the temporal property. The test stimuli were two circles, and the adapting stimulus had a dotted texture. The adapting texture refreshed every 100 or 300 ms, or not at all (static), during the adaptation. The results showed that the aftereffects from a refreshing stimulus were larger than those under the static condition. On the other hand, density adaptation lacked such enhancement. This result indicates that repetitive presentation of an adapting texture enhanced the density–size cross-aftereffect. According to the theory of magnitude, a common mechanism encodes spatial and temporal magnitude estimation and the adaptation to temporal density explains this cross-adaptation enhancement.

Face Pareidolia Recruits Mechanisms for Detecting Human Social Attention

Face pareidolia is the phenomenon of seeing facelike structures in everyday objects. Here, we tested the hypothesis that face pareidolia, rather than being limited to a cognitive or mnemonic association, reflects the activation of visual mechanisms that typically process human faces. We focused on sensory cues to social attention, which engage cell populations in temporal cortex that are susceptible to habituation effects. Repeated exposure to “pareidolia faces” that appear to have a specific direction of attention causes a systematic bias in the perception of where human faces are looking, indicating that overlapping sensory mechanisms are recruited when we view human faces and when we experience face pareidolia. These cross-adaptation effects are significantly reduced when pareidolia is abolished by removing facelike features from the objects. These results indicate that face pareidolia is essentially a perceptual phenomenon, occurring when sensory input is processed by visual mechanisms that have evolved to extract specific social content from human faces.

THE FEATURES OF POLYCULTURAL EDUCATION IN THE PROCESS OF FOREIGN STUDENT’S ADAPTATION

ntroduction. The article deals with the es-sential characteristics of multicultural education, which should be applied to the modern methods of foreign stu-dent adaptive preparation, who interacts with the repre-sentatives of the new cultural environment. Purpose. To explore the features of multicultural edu-cation aimed at foreign student’s preparing for practical activities of academic and social nature. Results. It is revealed that multicultural education is manifests in the peculiarities of persons, connections who are the representatives of different linguistic, ethnic or national groups. The concept of global thinking, that char-acterized by the ability of a foreign student to practically apply the existing socio-cultural skills and interpersonal activity, is considered. On the analysis of the researchers findings, the own interpretation of the concepts of «multi-cultural education» and «technology of multicultural educa-tion» is given.Conclusion. On the base of theoretical study, we con-cluded that multicultural education provides the need of adaptation process in the ways that will ensure the full activity of the individual in the academic and social envi-ronments: the preparation of linguistic, cultural and psy-chological character. In addition, the adaptation involves the development of global thinking principles, through which a foreign student is able to use the formed interper-sonal and sociocultural skills in a specific situations of interaction with representatives of another society. In this connection, it is possible to distinguish the main manifes-tations of multicultural education, which should be used in the process of acculturation preparation, such as: the use, with the practical information giving on the character-istics of other cultures, of practical elements, among which the audiovisual means may be used; the students' cultur-al knowledge developing in the way to ensure a uniform interpretation of the actions of other cultures representa-tives and will allow to prepare the foreign students for activities in the host country's cultural space; the practical consolidation of the acquired knowledge both through the cross-adaptation (with the interaction of different cultural groups during the preparation phase), and at the time of the formation of adaptation tasks that will provide a con-nection between the academic and social contacts of the individual.