Computer vision is presented and discussed under two complementary views. The positivist view provides a formal background under which vision is approached as a problem-solving task. By contrast, the constructivist view considers vision as the opportunistic exploration of a realm of data. The former view is rather well supported by evidence in neurophysiology while the latter view rather relies...

The bacterium Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans has been implicated in the pathogenesis of juvenile periodontitis as the etiologic agent on the basis of several lines of circumstantial evidence. A matter of extensive debate is whether A. actinomycetemcomitans is an exogenous contagious pathogen or an opportunistic pathogen that resides in the normal oral microflora. Here we show evidence of ...

We present two cases of Rhodococcus equi bacteremia as a cause of sepsis in premature infants who had increasing respiratory distress with multiple episodes of apnea. When we investigated these infants for apnea etiology, blood cultures were taken, and R. equi was confirmed based on the colony characteristics on nutrient agar; extended antibiotherapy was started. R. equi has been identified fre...

Klebsiella pneumoniae is a member of the family Enterobacteriaceae, opportunistic pathogens that are among the eight most prevalent infectious agents in hospitals. The emergence of multidrug-resistant strains of K. pneumoniae has became a public health problem globally. To develop an effective antimicrobial agent, we isolated a bacteriophage, named JD001, from seawater and sequenced its genome....

This paper discusses the need to recognize and take advantage of arising opportunities when an agent is autonomously interacting with an environment. We discuss the tasks, methods, model framework, and use it to analyze opportunities across several dimensions: when changing the tasks versus changing the methods, when having a complete knowledge about the methods in the domain versus having part...

This paper presents an architecture for the control of autonomous systems, that allows cooperation among them. This paper focuses on the description of the upper layers of the model. The control structure is based on a general purpose multi-agent architecture based on a two levels approach. One level is composed of reactive skills capable of achieving simple actions by their own. The other one ...

Cryptococcus is a type of opportunistic encapsulated yeast with a worldwide distribution [1]. Cryptococcosis continues to cause significant morbidity and mortality, especially in immunocompromised patients such as those with AIDS, organ transplants, haematological malignancies, and corticosteroid treatment [2]. Primary cutaneous cryptococcosis (PCC), lesions associated with a skin portal of ent...

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the etiological agent of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), is a member of the lentiviruses, a subfamily of retroviruses (1,2). Unlike other retro-oncoviruses, HIV is not known to cause cancer in humans and other animals, but it does present a formidable challenge to the host. The viral genome contains many regulatory elements that allow the virus to ...

Effective prevention, or treatment, of invasive fungal infection in the neutropenic patient has hitherto been unsatisfactory because of either an inadequate anti-fungal spectrum of the agent or important toxicity. Itraconazole is effective against a broad spectrum of the opportunistic pathogens seen in Europe and North America. Prior problems with absorption, e.g. in the marrow transplant recip...