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Background In this retrospective study, we explore the clinical risk factors correlated to the prognosis of patients who suffered from central nervous system infection after a neurosurgical procedure. Methods The study included 113 patients diagnosed with a postoperative intracranial infection. Several factors with clinical relevance were identified and analyzed by univariate analyses. The risk factors that showed any significant difference between the cases were analyzed by multivariate logistic regression analyses. Results Here we show that the duration of the drainage before infection (measured in days; Beta [B]: –0.113; odds ratio [OR]: 0.893; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.805–0.991; p = 0.033), the number of antibiotics used for the treatment (B: –1.470; OR: 0.230; 95% CI: 0.072–0.738; p = 0.013), and the number of leucocytes in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF; B: –0.016; OR: 0.984; 95% CI: 0.970–0.998; p = 0.027) are risk factors for the prognosis of patients with an intracranial infection. In contrast, the duration of antibiotic treatment (measured in days; B: 0.176; OR: 1.193; 95% CI: 1.063–1.339; p = 0.003) turned out to be a positive factor for recovery from infection. Conclusions Our results suggest that early identification of the correlated risk factors can improve the prognosis of patients with intracranial infection after neurosurgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the incompressible flow of the active hydrodynamics of liquid crystals with inhomogeneous density in the Beris-Edwards hydrodynamics framework. The Landau-de Gennes Q -tensor order parameter is used to describe the liquid crystalline ordering. Faedo-Galerkin's method is adopted to construct the solutions for the initial-boundary value problem. Two levels of approximations are used and the weak convergence is obtained through compactness estimates by new techniques due to the active terms. The existence of global weak solutions in dimension two and three is established in a bounded domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effect of nalbuphine on patient-controlled intravenous analgesia (PCIA) after radical resection of colon cancer was explored. Retrospective analyses of 100 patients who underwent elective laparoscopic radical resection of colon cancer in Xiang Yang No. 1 People's Hospital, Hubei University of Medicine from June 2014 to December 2016 were made. Forty-seven patients were treated with nalbuphine as experimental group and 53 cases were treated with morphine as control group. All patients received PCIA after surgery. According to visual analogue scale (VAS), pain degree at 2, 4, 8, 12 and 24 h after surgery, total dosage of analgesia pump, total times and effective times of pressing were evaluated. Analgesic satisfaction rate, and adverse reactions such as nausea, vomiting, dizziness and headache at the same time were observed and recorded. The postoperative VAS in the experimental group was evidently lower than that in the control group (P<0.05) at 8, 12 and 24 h after surgery, which was statistically significant. There was no significant difference in postoperative VAS between experimental group and control group at 2 and 4 h after surgery (P>0.05). The incidence of adverse reactions to nausea and vomiting in the experimental group was low. There was no significant difference in the total dosage of analgesia pump, total times and effective times of pressing and analgesic satisfaction rate (P>0.05). After laparoscopic radical resection of colon cancer, nalbuphine is effective in PCIA, with low incidence of adverse reactions and high safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clinical analgesic effect of different doses of nalbuphine combined with remifentanil on postoperative gastric cancer patients was explored. One hundred cases of gastric cancer patients treated from December 2014 to December 2016 in the Xiangyang No. 1 People's Hospital were selected and separated into group A and group B. The dose in group A was 0.2 mg/kg of nalbuphine plus 0.2 µg/kg of remifentanil, and 0.3 mg/kg of nalbuphine plus 0.1 µg/kg of remifentanil in group B. Analgesia was performed by self-controlled intravenous injection. The Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) pain scores and the Brinell Comfort Score (BCS) at 2, 6, 12, 24 and 48 h after operation, and the incidence of adverse reactions were compared between the two groups. The VAS scores in group A were higher than those in group B, but the BCS scores in group A were lower (P<0.05). Postoperative patient-controlled intravenous analgesia (PCIA) press times in group A were lower than those in group B (P<0.05); the incidence of adverse reactions such as nausea and vomiting in group A was higher than that in group B (P<0.05). The analgesic effect of intravenous analgesia scheme of 0.3 mg/kg of nalbuphine and 0.1 µg/kg of remifentanil on gastric cancer patients after operation is better than that of 0.2 mg/kg of nalbuphine and 0.2 µg/kg of remifentanil, which reduces the incidence of adverse reactions, has greater security, and can be promoted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the robust room-temperature ferromagnetic behavior and electromagnetic microwave absorption property of Cr-doped MoS2 nanosheets synthesized by hydrothermal method. The static and dynamic measurement results indicate that the Cr dopants can effectively improve the ferromagnetic behavior of MoS2 nanosheets as well as their microwave attenuation performance in the frequency range from 2 to 18 GHz. An minimal reflection loss value of − 43 dB is achieved with 2 mm thickness and the Cr dopants of 4.24 at.%. This study demonstrates the capability of Cr-doped MoS2 nanosheets to be an outstanding candidate for high-efficiency microwave absorption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scene flow estimation based on disparity and optical flow is a challenging task. We present a novel method based on adaptive anisotropic total variation flow-driven method for scene flow estimation from a calibrated stereo image sequence. The basic idea is that diffusion of flow field in different directions has different rates, which can be used to calculate total variation and anisotropic diffusion automatically. Brightness consistency and gradient consistency constraint are employed to establish the data term, and adaptive anisotropic flow-driven penalty constraint is employed to establish the smoothness term. Similar to the optical flow estimation, there are also large displacement problems in the estimation of the scene flow, which is solved by introducing a hierarchical computing optimization. The proposed method is verified by using the synthetic dataset and the real scene image sequences. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) has been considered a promising photoactive material in photoelectrochemical (PEC) water-splitting systems. However, the performance of BiVO4-based photoanodes is currently unsatisfactory, indicating the need for new architectural designs to improve their efficiency. In this paper, a porphyrin-phosphazene polymer (THPP-HCCP) was synthesized with a sizeable conjugated structure, and Ag particles were deposited on its surface as an organic–inorganic composite interface improvement layer. The deposition of the composite polymer film on BiVO4 resulted in a significant increase in photocurrent density, reaching up to 2.2 mA cm−2 (1.23 V vs. RHE), almost three times higher than pristine BiVO4, which benefits from the synergistic effect of Ag nanoparticles and porphyrin-phosphazene. Furthermore, photophysical and intensity-modulated photocurrent analysis demonstrated that the Ag–THPP-HCCP heterostructures could broaden the light-absorbing range and facilitate hole transfer to the semiconductor surface, resulting in an improved water oxidation process. The dynamic charge transport behavior of Ag–THPP-HCCP/BiVO4 was investigated using scanning photoelectrochemical microscopy, which showed that the rate constant (Keff) exhibits an almost 4-fold increase compared to pristine BiVO4, indicating a significant improvement in the transport of photogenerated holes. This experiment presents a novel strategy for designing high-efficiency polymer-based photoanodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a general energy method to prove the optimal time decay rates of the solutions to the compressible Navier-Stokes-Korteweg system in the whole space. In particular, the optimal decay rates of the higher-order spatial derivatives of solutions are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Real-time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) has become one of the most commonly used techniques for RNA expression. To obtain more reliable results with biological significance, it requires data normalization using an appropriate internal control gene. Here, we cloned partial sequence of elongation factor 1α (EF1α) gene from grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella). The stabilities of four commonly used internal control genes encoding 18S rRNA, β-actin, EF1α, and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) were integratedly assessed using the geNorm, NormFinder and BestKeeper programs. Integrative analyses of qRT-PCR data indicated that the stability ranking of the examined genes was 18S rRNA > EF1α > GAPDH > β-actin in gill, head kidney, heart, intestine, liver, muscle, skin, spleen, and trunk kidney tissues in untreated grass carp. When the same calculations were done in spleen tissue at different time points post grass carp reovirus (GCRV) infection, the gene ranking was 18S rRNA > β-actin > GAPDH > EF1α. The rank ordering of expression stability was EF1α > β-actin > 18S rRNA > GAPDH in C. idella kidney (CIK) cell culture stimulated by poly(I:C). The recommended ranking was EF1α > GAPDH > β-actin > 18S rRNA in CIK cells infected by GCRV. The results indicated that 18S rRNA was the best invariant internal control gene in individual level in grass carp, EF1α was the most suitable in CIK cell culture stimulated by poly(I:C) or infected by GCRV. As an assay, EF1α was employed to examine the changes of Toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3) and melanoma differentiation associated gene 5 (MDA5) after virus infection in CIK cells. These data laid the foundation for more precise results in qRT-PCR studies of gene expression in grass carp. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This is a survey article for this special issue providing a review of the recent results in the mathematical analysis of active hydrodynamics. Both the incompressible and compressible models are discussed for the active liquid crystals in the Landau-de Gennes Q-tensor framework. The mathematical results on the weak solutions, regularity, and weak-strong uniqueness are presented for the incompressible flows. The global existence of weak solution to the compressible flows is recalled. Other related results on the inhomogeneous flows, incompressible limits, and stochastic analysis are also reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, optical flow estimation benefits greatly from deep learning based techniques. Most approaches use encoder-decoder architecture (U-Net) or spatial pyramid network (SPN) to learn optical flow. Both U-Net and SPN can extract multi-scale features and can predict optical flow directly. However, existing networks ignore to exploit the global information among channel features and inter-spatial relationship of features. In this paper, we propose a dual self-attention pyramid network, which adaptively integrates local features with their global dependencies and focuses on important features and suppresses unimportant features. Specifically, we introduce two types of attention modules into SPN, which emphasizes meaningful features along channel and spatial axes. The channel attention can adaptively re-weight channel-wise features by considering interdependencies among channels. Moreover, the spatial attention can utilize global contextual information to emphasize or suppress features in different spatial locations. In addition, two attention modules are embedded into each pyramidal level, which can refine features at different scale. We evaluate our method on MPI-Sintel and KITTI. The experimental results show that using the dual self-attention module can improve the representation power of network and further increase the accuracy of optical flow estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional approaches for optical flow estimation always build an energy function which contains data term and smoothness term. However, optimizing the complex function is usually time-consuming. Nowadays, convolution neural networks have been applied in optical flow area. Most of them use large dataset for learning optical flow end-to-end, which can learn motion information from a large amount of prior information prepared in advance. However, these methods rely excessively on the learning ability of the network while ignoring some of well-proven assumptions in traditional approaches. In this paper, inspired by traditional methods, we present a network for learning optical flow, which combines traditional constraints with a supervised network. In the process of network optimization, the brightness constancy, gradient constancy and spatial smoothness assumptions are used to guide the training of network. Moreover, we stack several sub-networks integrated with prior constraints to form a large network for iterative refinement. Our method is tested on several public datasets, such as MPI-Sintel, KITTI2012, KITTI2015, Middlebury. The experimental results show that adding the prior constraints during training can obtain more refined and accurate flow. Compared with other recent methods, our method can achieve state-of-the-art performance on several public benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Limited charge separation/transport efficiency remains the primary obstacle of achieving satisfying photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting performance. Therefore, it is essential to develop diverse interfacial engineering strategies to mitigate charge recombination. Despite obvious progress having been made, most works only considered a single‐side modulation in either the electrons of conduction band or the holes of valence band in a semiconductor photoanode, leading to a limited PEC performance enhancement. Beyond this conventional thinking, we developed a novel coupling modification strategy to achieve a composite electrode with bidirectional carrier transport for a better charge separation, in which Ti2C3Tx MXene quantum dots (MQDs) and α‐Fe2O3 nanodots (FO) are anchored on the surface of ZnIn2S4 (ZIS) nanoplates, resulting in markedly improved PEC water splitting of pure ZIS photoanode. Systematic studies indicated that the bidirectional charge transfer pathways were stimulated due to MQDs as "electron extractor" and S−O bonds as carriers transport channels, which synergistically favors significantly enhanced charge separation. The enhanced kinetic behavior at the FO/MQDs/ZIS interfaces was systematically and quantitatively evaluated by a series of methods, especially scanning photoelectrochemical microscopy. This work may deepen our understanding of interfacial charge separation, and provide valuable guidance for the rational design and fabrication of high‐performance composite electrodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Limited charge separation/transport efficiency remains the primary obstacle of achieving satisfying photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting performance. Therefore, it is essential to develop diverse interfacial engineering strategies to mitigate charge recombination. Despite obvious progress having been made, most works only considered a single‐side modulation in either the electrons of conduction band or the holes of valence band in a semiconductor photoanode, leading to a limited PEC performance enhancement. Beyond this conventional thinking, we developed a novel coupling modification strategy to achieve a composite electrode with bidirectional carrier transport for a better charge separation, in which Ti2C3Tx MXene quantum dots (MQDs) and α‐Fe2O3 nanodots (FO) are anchored on the surface of ZnIn2S4 (ZIS) nanoplates, resulting in markedly improved PEC water splitting of pure ZIS photoanode. Systematic studies indicated that the bidirectional charge transfer pathways were stimulated due to MQDs as "electron extractor" and S−O bonds as carriers transport channels, which synergistically favors significantly enhanced charge separation. The enhanced kinetic behavior at the FO/MQDs/ZIS interfaces was systematically and quantitatively evaluated by a series of methods, especially scanning photoelectrochemical microscopy. This work may deepen our understanding of interfacial charge separation, and provide valuable guidance for the rational design and fabrication of high‐performance composite electrodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning optical flow based on convolutional neural networks has made great progress in recent years. These approaches usually design an encoder-decoder network that can be trained end-to-end. In encoder part, high-level feature information is extracted through a series of strided convolution, which is similar to most image classification networks. In contrast to classification task, spatial feature maps are then enlarged to full scale of input by conducting successive deconvolution layer in decoder part. However, optical flow estimation is a pixel-level task, and blurry flow fields are usually generated, which is caused by unrefined features and low-resolution. To address this problem, we propose a novel network, which combines attention mechanism and dilated convolutional neural network. In this network, the channel-wise features are adaptively weighted by building interdependencies among channels, which can weaken the weights of useless features and can enhance the directivity of feature extraction. Meanwhile, spatial precision is achieved by employing dilated convolution which improves the receptive field without large computational source and keeps the spatial resolution of feature map unchanged. Our network is trained on FlyingChairs and FlyingThings3D datasets in a supervised manner. Extensive experiments are conducted on MPI-Sintel and KITTI datasets to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The experimental results show that attention mechanism and dilated convolution are beneficial for optical flow estimation. Moreover, our method achieves better accuracy and visual improvements comparing to most of recent approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hamiltonella defensa is well known for its protective roles against parasitoids for its aphid hosts, but its functional roles in insect‐plant interactions are less understood. Thus, the impact of H. defensa infections on life‐history characters and the underlying genetic variation for the grain aphid, Sitobion avenae (Fabricius), was explored on three plants (i.e., wheat, oat, and rye). Compared to cured lines, H. defensa infected lines of S. avenae had lower fecundity on wheat and oat, but not on rye, suggesting an infection cost for the aphid on susceptible host plants. However, when tested on rye, the infected lines showed a shorter developmental time for the nymphal stage than corresponding cured lines, showing some benefit for S. avenae carrying the endosymbiont on resistant host plants. The infection of H. defensa altered genetic variation underlying its host S. avenea's life‐history characters, which was shown by differences in heritabilities and genetic correlations of life‐history characters between S. avenae lines infected and cured of the endosymbiont. This was further substantiated by disparity in G‐matrices of their life‐history characters for the two types of aphid lines. The G‐matrices for life‐history characters of aphid lines infected with and cured of H. defensa were significantly different from each other on rye, but not on oat, suggesting strong plant‐dependent effects. The developmental durations of infected S. avenae lines showed a lower plasticity compared with those of corresponding cured lines, and this could mean higher adaptability for the infected lines.Overall, our results showed novel functional roles of a common secondary endosymbiont (i.e., H. defensa) in plant‐insect interactions, and its infections could have significant consequences for the evolutionary ecology of its host insect populations in nature. The presumably protective (against parasitoids for aphids) endosymbiont Hamiltonella defensa was found to play important roles in insect‐plant interactions through altering its host aphid's life‐history traits and their plasticity on multiple plants, and the underlying genetic variation as well, indicating novel functional roles of endosymbionts in evolutionary ecology of aphids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Allergic rhinitis (AR) is characterized by distinct clinical heterogeneity and allergic sensitization patterns. We aimed to quantify rhinitis symptoms in patients with self‐reported allergic rhinitis according to the potential sensitization patterns for relevant allergens in China. Methods: We used latent class analysis (LCA; a subset of structural equation modeling) to independently cluster patients into different patterns of atopic sensitization in an unsupervised manner, based on specific immunoglobulin E tests. AR symptom severity was assessed by the visual analogue scale. We evaluated the association between the severity of AR and the allergen sensitization patterns. Results: LCA revealed four phenotypes of atopic sensitization among 967 patients with self‐report AR. We labeled latent classes as: Class 1, weed pollens and indoor sensitization (n = 74 [7.7%]); Class 2, weed pollen with low indoor sensitization (n = 275 [28.4%]); Class 3, low or no sensitization (n = 350 [36.2%]); and Class 4, house dust mite‐dominated sensitization (n = 268 [27.7%]). AR was more severe in Class 2 compared to the other 3 classes, indicating that upper respiratory symptoms are more severe among patients with isolated seasonal rhinitis. Conclusion: We have identified four sensitization patterns in patients with self‐reported AR, which were associated with different clinical symptoms and comorbidities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • A smart strategy, interface "repairing", was proposed to effectively boost the photogenerated charge separation. • BV/NiO x /CoFe achieves a remarkably photocurrent density of 4.58 mA cm−2 at 1.23 V RHE , which is more than three-fold higher than BV photoanode. • The interface charge recombination and intrinsic photocorrosion can be efficiently suppressed through "fast" hole transfer kinetics. Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is an attractive strategy to convert and store of intermittent solar power into fuel energy. However, the detrimental charge recombination of photogenerated electrons and holes severely limits its efficiency. Despite electrocatalyst loading can obviously improve the PEC conversion efficiency, current systems still suffer from high recombination owing to the surface states. Herein, an interface "repairing" strategy is proposed to suppress the recombination at the semiconductor/electrocatalyst interface. NiO x layer acts as an interfacial repairing layer to efficiently extract photogenerated charge carriers and eliminate the surface states via high hole-transfer kinetics rather than as a traditional electrocatalyst. As expected, the resulting repaired system yields an impressive photocurrent density of 4.58 mA cm−2 at 1.23 V (vs. RHE), corresponding to a more than three-fold increase compared to BiVO 4 (1.40 mA cm−2). Our work offers an appealing maneuver to improve the water oxidation performance for the semiconductor/electrocatalyst coupling system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Construct validity of the teacher version of the Children's Behavior Questionnaire-Very Short Form (CBQ-VSF-TF) examined with Mexican teachers of Mexican preschoolers. • New factor emerges likely representing child self-regulation through self-soothing. • Caution in use of CBQ for populations that differ from norming sample. The purpose of this study was to examine the construct validity of the teacher version of the Children's Behavior Questionnaire-Very Short Form (CBQ-VSF-TF)-a measure of temperament-with a sample of low-income Latinx preschool children. Forty-three teachers (95.3% female; 88.4% Latinx) of 247 preschool children completed the CBQ-VSF-TF. The development sample was primarily Caucasian and lower middle class. Results of our confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) with a sample of Latinx low-income children suggested a six-factor solution, whereas Allan et al. (2013) who adapted the parent version of CBQ-VSF to create the teacher version found a five-factor structure for CBQ-VSF-TF in their exploratory factor analyses. While in our CFA analyses we were able to largely replicate the five factors for CBQ-VSF-TF in Allan et al. (2013) , the items that loaded on the Effortful Control, Sensitivity, and Shyness factors were different in our CFA analyses versus those in the EFA analyses of Allan et al. (2013) , and we found an additional factor likely related to cultural perceptions in the teacher student match. Results of this study suggest caution in the use of the CBQ-VSF-TF as differences in the dimensionality of the CBQ-VSF-TF can emerge from its use with populations or raters that differ from development sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the hydrodynamics of active liquid crystals in the Beris–Edwards hydrodynamic framework with the Landau–de Gennes Q -tensor order parameter to describe liquid crystalline ordering. The existence of global weak solutions in two and three spatial dimensions is established. In the two-dimensional case, by the Littlewood–Paley decomposition, the higher regularity of the weak solutions and the weak-strong uniqueness are also obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: ADAR (adenosine deaminase acting on RNA) is an RNA editing enzyme that targets both coding and noncoding dsRNAs (double stranded RNAs) and converts adenosine to inosine, which is read by translation machinery and by polymerases during RNA-dependent RNA replication as if it is guanosine. This editing is a widespread post-transcriptional modification event in animals. In this study, we identified the full-length cDNA sequence of Ctenopharyngodon idella ADAR1 (designated as CiADAR1) and detected the mRNA expression patterns in response to dsRNA (polyinosinic-polycytidylic acid sodium salt, poly(I:C)) and grass carp reovirus (GCRV). CiADAR1 is a large gene in size, consisting of 4833 nucleotides encoding a protein of 1392 amino acids. The deduced amino acid sequence contains seven putative domains: one proline-rich region (Pro-R), two Z-DNA-binding domains (Zalpha), three dsRNA binding motifs (DSRM) and one tRNA-specific and dsRNA adenosine deaminase domain (ADEAMc). It is most homologous to Danio rerio ADAR (E-value = 0.0, identities = 80% (1110/1395)), also close homology to Homo sapiens ADAR1 (E-value = 0.0, identities = (47%) 530/1122). CiADAR1 mRNA was investigated in fifteen tissues, and was low expressed in muscle and head kidney tissues, high in blood and spleen tissues by quantitative real-time RT-PCR (qRT-PCR). mRNA expressions of CiADAR1 were significantly up-regulated and reached peak at 24 h post GCRV challenge in vivo and in vitro (P < 0.05). After poly(I:C) stimulation at different concentrations, CiADAR1 transcripts were rapidly and significantly up-regulated and recovered in dose-dependent and time-dependent manners (P < 0.05). The results indicate CiADAR1 was implicated in the antiviral immune response and laid the foundation for further studies on functions and mechanisms of RNA editing in fishes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: RIG-I (retinoic acid inducible gene-I) is a key mediator of antiviral immunity, able to couple detection of infection by RNA and DNA viruses to the induction of interferons. In the present study, a RIG-I gene from grass carp Ctenopharyngodon idella (CiRIG-I) was isolated and characterized. The full-length cDNA of CiRIG-I was of 3198 bp and encoded a polypeptide of 947 amino acids with an estimated molecular mass of 108,730 Da and a predicted isoelectric point of 5.85, including six main overlapping structural domains: two CARDs (caspase activation and recruitment domain), one ResIII (conserved restriction domain of bacterial type III restriction enzyme), one DEXDc (DEAD/DEAH box helicase domain), one HELICc (helicase superfamily c-terminal domain) and one RD (regulatory domain). The CiRIG-I mRNA was widespread expression in the tested 15 tissues by semi-quantitative RT-PCR (sqRT-PCR) assay. The CiRIG-I expressions in spleen and liver were significantly induced following grass carp reovirus (GCRV) infection. CiRIG-I mRNA expression was rapidly and significantly up-regulated in vitro after GCRV infection, and the CiRIG-I transcripts were also significantly enhanced in vitro post the synthetic double stranded RNA polyinosinic–polycytidylic potassium salt (poly(I:C)) stimulation. These results collectively suggested that CiRIG-I was an inducible protein, involved in the antiviral innate immune defense to GCRV in grass carp, and laid the foundation for the further mechanism research of RIG-I in fishes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: IPS-1 (interferon-β promoter stimulator 1), also known as MAVS/VISA/Cardif, plays a central role in antiviral immunity. In this manuscript, we cloned and characterized IPS-1 from grass carp Ctenopharyngodon idella (designated as CiIPS-1). The CiIPS-1 cDNA is 2412 bp long and consists of a 5′ untranslated region (UTR) of 124 bp, a 3′ UTR of 497 bp with three cytokine RNA instability motifs (ATTTA) and a polyadenylation signal (AATAAA), and an open reading frame (ORF) of 1791 bp encoding a polypeptide of 596 amino acids with a calculated molecular mass of 64.1 kDa and a theoretical isoelectric point of 4.79. Structural analysis showed that the CiIPS-1 protein contained an N-terminal CARD (caspase activation and recruitment domain), a central proline-rich domain, a putative TRAF2-binding motif and a C-terminal transmembrane domain. Similarity analysis of the deduced amino acid sequence of the CiIPS-1 by MatGAT software revealed that the CiIPS-1 shared 27.8–76.4% identity and 47.4–85.2% similarity with other known piscine IPS-1 sequences. The CiIPS-1 mRNA was constitutively expressed in the examined tissues, higher in spleen, and was induced by grass carp reovirus (GCRV) injection by semi-quantitative RT-PCR assay. Quantitative real-time RT-PCR analysis revealed that the CiIPS-1 mRNA expression was rapidly and significantly up-regulated in vivo and in vitro after GCRV infection, and the CiIPS-1 transcripts were also significantly enhanced in vitro post the synthetic double stranded RNA polyinosinic–polycytidylic potassium salt (poly(I:C)) stimulation. These results indicated that CiIPS-1 was an inducible acute-phase protein and involved in the immune reaction to GCRV in grass carp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: LGP2 (laboratory of genetics and physiology 2), a homologue of RIG-I (Retinoic acid inducible gene-I) and MDA5 (Melanoma differentiation associated gene 5) without the CARD (caspase activation and recruitment domain) required for signaling, plays a pivotal role in modulating signaling by RIG-I and MDA5 for interferon (IFN) synthesis. In this study, a novel LGP2 gene from grass carp Ctenopharyngodon idella (designated as CiLGP2) was isolated and characterized. The full-length cDNA of CiLGP2 was of 2920 bp with five instability motifs (ATTTA). The open reading frame was of 2043 bp and encoded a polypeptide of 680 amino acids, including five main overlapping structural domains: two DEXDc (DEAD/DEAH box helicase domain), one ResIII (conserved restriction domain of bacterial type III restriction enzyme), one HELICc (helicase superfamily c-terminal domain) and one RD (regulatory domain). There was one more α-helix in the RD, compared with that in human. The CiLGP2 mRNA was ubiquitous expression in the tested tissues, was high level in spleen, skin, heart and intestine tissues, and was up-regulated by grass carp reovirus (GCRV) injection by semi-quantitative RT-PCR (sqRT-PCR) assay. The CiLGP2 expression in spleen was significantly up-regulated at 12 h (14.5 folds, P < 0.05), reached the crest at 24 h (19.0 folds, P < 0.05), and then dropped a little at 48 h (10.4 folds) post-injection of GCRV and kept this level in the following test period (P < 0.05). In liver, the temporal expression of CiLGP2 mRNA was significantly increased at 24 h (3.8 times, P < 0.05), reached peak at 48 h (10.7 times, P < 0.05), and then decreased a little bit at 72 h (5.8 times, P < 0.05) and kept this high level by the end of the test (P < 0.05). These results collectively suggested that CiLGP2 was a novel member of RLR gene family, engaging in the early stage of antiviral innate immune defense in grass carp, and laid the foundation for the further mechanism research of LGP2 in fishes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The cytoplasmic helicase protein MDA5 (melanoma-differentiation-associated gene-5) recognizes long molecules of viral double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) and single-stranded RNA with 5′ triphosphate and mediates type I interferon secretion. In the present study, the first MDA5 gene in fish was cloned and characterized from grass carp Ctenopharyngodon idella. The full length of the C. idella MDA5 (CiMDA5) cDNA is 3233 nucleotides in length and encodes a polypeptide of 961 amino acids. The deduced amino acid sequence contained six main structural domains: a CARD (caspase activation and recruitment domain), a DEXDc (DEAD/DEAH box helicase domain), a ResIII (conserved restriction domain of bacterial type III restriction enzyme), two HELICc (helicase superfamily c-terminal domain) and an RD (regulatory domain). The CiMDA5 mRNA was widespread expression in the tested tissues, was high level in spleen, skin and gill tissues, and was up-regulated by GCRV injection by semi-quantitative RT-PCR assay. The CiMDA5 transcripts in spleen were significantly up-regulated at 12 h (1.80 folds, P < 0.05), reached the crest at 24 h (7.48 folds, P < 0.05), and then recovered to normal level at 48 h post-injection (P > 0.05) of grass carp reovirus (GCRV). In liver, the temporal expression of CiMDA5 mRNA was significantly increased at 48 h (5.00 folds, P < 0.05) and returned to control level at 72 h (P > 0.05) after GCRV challenge. These data implied that CiMDA5 involved in the early stage of antiviral innate immune defense to GCRV in grass carp, and provided new insight into the evolution research of RLR (RIG-I like receptor) gene family. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Manipulating electronic and magnetic properties of two-dimensional transitional-metal dichalcogenides has raised a lot of attention recently. Herein we report the synthesis and ferromagnetic properties of phase-transfer induced room temperature ferromagnetic behavior in 1 T@2H-MoSe2 nanosheets. Experimental results indicate the saturated magnetization of the 1 T@2H-MoSe2 compound increases first and then decreases as the increasing of 1 T-MoSe2 phase, where 65.58% 1 T-MoSe2 phase incorporation in 2H-MoSe2 could enhance the saturated magnetization from 0.32 memu/g to 8.36 memu/g. Besides, obvious magnetoresistance behaviors are observed in these samples, revealing their potential applications in future spintronics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]