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The study explores the osteogenic differentiation mechanism and immune response of biodegradable calcium phosphate/calcium sulfate cements reinforced with cellulose.

Jasmonic acid (JA) signaling plays a pivotal role in plant development and defense. MYC2 is a master transcription factor in JA signaling, and was found to be phosphorylated and negatively regulated by MAP kinase and receptor-like kinase. However, the kinases that positively regulate MYC2 through phosphorylation and promote MYC2-mediated activation of JA response have not been identified. Here, we identified CK2 as a kinase that phosphorylates MYC2 and thus regulates the JA signaling. CK2 holoenzyme can interact with MYC2 using its regulatory subunits and phosphorylate MYC2 at multiple sites with its catalytic subunits. Inhibition of CK2 activity in a dominant-negative plant line, CK2mut, repressed JA response. On the other hand, increasing CK2 activity by overexpression of CKB4, a regulatory subunit gene of CK2, enhanced JA response in a MYC2-dependent manner. Substitution of the Ser and Thr residues at phosphorylation sites of MYC2 by CK2 with Ala impaired MYC2 function in activating JA response. Further investigations evidenced that CK2 facilitated the JA-induced increase of MYC2 binding to the promoters of JA-responsive genes in vivo. Our study demonstrated that CK2 plays a positive role in JA signaling, and reveals a previously undiscovered mechanism that regulates MYC2 function.

Osteoporosis is a growing public health concern worldwide. To avoid extra surgeries, developing biodegradable bone cement is critical for the treatment of osteoporosis. Herein, we designed calcium phosphate/calcium sulfate cement reinforced with sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC/OPC). It presents an appropriate physicochemical performance for clinical handling. Meanwhile, CMC/OPC bone cement promotes osteogenic differentiation

Soon enough, autonomous driving systems may not need drivers at all. Ideally, a passenger can ride an autonomous vehicle (AUV) from one location to another without (either partial or complete) huma...

In this study, an air-bearing capacitive linear variable differential transformer (LVDT)-like contact sensor with a rounded diamond tip was mounted to a desktop machine tool to construct an on-machine (OM) measuring system. The measuring system was capable of decoding the digital signals of linear encoders mounted on the machine tool and acquiring the analog signal of the contact sensor. To verify the measuring system, experimental examinations were performed on an oxygen-free copper (OFC) convex aspheric mold with a diameter of 5 mm and a curve height of 0.46 mm. The acquired signals were processed by the implemented Gaussian regression filter (GRF), removing the tilt of measured profile, and compensating for the radius of probe tip. The profile obtained was compared to that measured using a commercially available device, and a maximum deviation of 14.6 μm was found for the rough cutting. The compensation cutting was then performed according to the form error of OM measurement. As a result, the PV form error compared with the designed profile was reduced from 19.2 μm over a measured diameter of 4 mm to 9.7 μm over a measured diameter of 3.1 mm, or a percentage improvement of 35.4% in form accuracy. Through the examination for aspheric machining, the effectiveness of the implemented OM measuring system was demonstrated, and the technical details of system implementation were presented. Further improvement was suggested to reduce the diameter of probe tip and measuring force.

Hawking-Page phase transitions between the thermal anti-de Sitter vacuum and charged black holes surrounded by quintessence are studied in the extended phase space. The quintessence field, with the state parameter , modifies the temperature and the Gibbs free energy of a black hole. The phase transition temperature and the Gibbs free energy are first analytically investigated for the special case of , and then, the results of numerical simulations are shown for general . The phase transition temperature increases with pressure and decreases with electric potential. In addition, significantly decreases owing to the quintessence field, which generates negative pressure around the black hole.

Meroterpenoids isolated from guava (Psidium guajava) and Rhodomyrtus tomentosa possess special skeletons which incorporate terpenoids with phloroglucinol derivatives. Most of these meroterpenoids showed high cytotoxicity against cancer cell lines. However, their chemical diversity is very limited. Herein, we employed a biomimetic hetero-cycloaddition starting from ortho-quinone methides and an abundant natural product, β-caryophyllene, to generate meroterpene-like compounds. Considering that the source plant has hyperglycemic functions, α-glucosidase was selected as a target for bioassay. Nine compounds were screened out for promising activities (IC50 < 15 μM), which were better than the positive controls genistein and acarbose. The best inhibitor 12 (IC50 2.73 μM) possesses two caryophyllene moieties. They represented a new type of skeleton possessing activities against α-glucosidase. The kinetic study exhibited that these inhibitors belong to a non-competitive type. All these inhibitors may provide an opportunity to develop a new class of antidiabetic agents.

The plasmon characteristics of two graphene nanostructures are studied using time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT). The absorption spectrum has two main bands, which result from π and σ + π plasmon resonances. At low energies, the Fourier transform of the induced charge density maps exhibits anomalous behavior, with a π phase change in the charge density maps in the plane of the graphene and those in the plane 0.3 A from the graphene. The charge density fluctuations close to the plane of the graphene are much smaller than those above and beneath the graphene plane. However, this phenomenon disappears at higher energies. By analyzing the electronic properties, we may conclude that the restoring force for the plasmon in the plane of the graphene does not result from fixed positive ions, but rather the Coulomb interactions with the plasmonic oscillations away from the plane of the graphene, which extend in the surface-normal direction. The collective oscillation in the graphene plane results in a forced vibration. Accordingly, the low-energy plasmon in the graphene can be split into two components: a normal component, which corresponds to direct feedback of the external perturbation, and a secondary component, which corresponds to feedback of the Coulombic interaction with the normal component.

With the music culture increasingly penetrating into people’s life and various of musical elements and patterns emerging in endlessly, there is a great variety of music forms in cultural products markets. Facing with so many modern music pieces, people in music circle have devoted themselves into the debate of “elegance” and “popularity” in new style. Elegance and popularity are two essential elements in the art of music, which not only affect the development and trend of the musical practice but also represent the aesthetic features of the public. With the vicissitudes of time, the relations between elegance and popularity in music culture are also changing. In this case, under the impact of modern social culture, what is the development tendency to elegance and popularity in China’s popular music? In this essay, the authors will take the psychological aspect of both social group and individual into thorough consideration.

This paper designed the posture initialization calibration method by the inertial sensor in human limb movement with any attitude toward. By initializing the target specific actions can be implemented to identify timing corresponding sensors and joint, and calculate the coordinate transformation relation of human skeletal coordinates corresponding to each inertial sensor's coordinate system and the 3D human skeleton model. Then through the coordinate conversion of inertial sensor attitude coordinates and depth first traversal calculation on human skeletal tree, real-time update of human motion body attitude data, driven simulation of human skeletal model by human motion, realize the real-time tracking of motion capture.

More reasonable management for water resources use may be critical to survive water crisis and realize sustainable development of urban-water system. This work attempts to set up a assessment model for regional industrial water utilization structure based on synergetics theory and grey method. In this model, both economic benefit and environmental effect are considered.

By measuring the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics in the temperature range of 100 K to 300 K, mechanisms of the forward tunneling current and the reverse leakage current of GaN-based blue light emitting diodes are analyzed. For the forward current, both the temperature-independent current slope and an ideality factor larger than 2 are typical features of the defect-assisted tunneling mechanism. For the reverse leakage current, the linear relationship between I and (V+Vbi)1/2 indicates a hopping conduction mechanism at low bias, while the power law I-V relationship suggests that the space charge limited current dominates the reverse leakage current at high bias.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the influence of experiment methods on limit hole expansion ratio. The experimental material is 5754 aluminum alloy sheet metal with the size of 100 mm x 100mm. A hole with diameter of 10mm was made with different methods at the center of sheet metal. Results show that the method of processing hole has great influence on the limiting hole expansion ratio, hole by punching leads to minimum limit and hole by wire-cutting leads to maximum limit; for hole expanding of 5754 aluminum alloy sheet, using conical punch can get higher limiting hole expansion ratio than using cylindrical punch. With the increase of 5754 aluminum alloy sheet thickness, the limiting hole expansion ratio increases.

The aim of this study was to investigate the association between CYP1A1 gene polymorphism and ischaemic stroke (IS) risk, and the impact of gene-gene interaction on IS risk based on a Chinese Han case-control study. A total of 1162 subjects (612 men and 550 women), with a mean age of 63.1 ± 12.5 years old, were selected, including 580 IS patients and 582 normal controls. Logistic regression was performed to investigate association between single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) and IS risk, and generalized multifactor dimensionality reduction (GMDR) was used to analyze the gene-gene interaction. Logistic regression analysis showed that the frequency for rs4646903 minor alleles was lower in cases than that in normal controls, and C allele of rs4646903 was 20.7 % in ischemic stroke cases and 27.1 % in controls subjects (p

Nowadays, low carbon architecture has become the mainstream trend among the international constructions. However, there are not a effective method in evaluating the low carbon architecture. This paper aimed to built a evaluating model by analysising the low carbon architecture. In the meanwhile, it provided a standard in evaluating the low carbon architecture.

Photorespiration-associated production of H(2) O(2) accounts for the majority of total H(2) O(2) in leaves of C(3) plants and is mainly eliminated by catalases. In Arabidopsis, lack of CAT2, but not CAT1 or CAT3, results in growth suppression and a marked accumulation of H(2) O(2) in leaves. To evaluate the contribution of individual catalase genes and their promoters to catalase function, we investigated the growth suppression and H(2) O(2) accumulation phenotypes of Arabidopsis derivatives expressing catalase genes from heterologous CAT promoters in a cat2 mutant background. The expression of CAT2 from the CAT2 promoter restored the wild-type phenotype in a cat2-1 mutant, while CAT1 and CAT3 promoter-driven expression of CAT2 did not. Ectopic expression of CAT3 from the CAT2 promoter also restored the normal phenotype, unlike that of CAT1 which required replacement of the CAT1 3'-untranslated region (UTR) with that of CAT2. These results demonstrated that the photorespiratory role of CAT2 is determined mainly by the regulation of its promoter activity. The 3'-UTR of CAT2 was vital for controlling CAT2 protein levels under photorespiratory conditions. Identification of component of heterotetramers catalase isoforms suggested that there is some functional redundancy between CAT2 and CAT1 and CAT3.

To assess the genetic diversity between randomly and selectively bred populations, we sequenced 438 bp of the mitochondrial DNA control region from 102 pigs. These samples represented four native pig breeds, one nucleus and one conservation herd from Yunnan, China. Twenty haplotypes with sixteen polymorphic sites were identified. The number of haplotypes in the nucleus herd of Saba pig and the conservation herd of Banna miniature pig were restricted to three and one, respectively, while the randomly bred pig populations exhibited over six haplotypes. Notably, haplotype diversity in randomly bred populations was significantly greater than the selectively bred populations (h=0.732 vs. 0.425 and 0, exact test, P=0.0036). These findings demonstrate that selective breeding generated low genetic diversity compared to randomly bred pig breeds. A timely intervention and well programmed breeding approach would stop further genetic diversity reduction in the nucleus and conservation herds of native pig breeds. Otherwise, selective breeding would dramatically reduce genetic diversity in only several years, indicating that sharp contradictions exist between breeding, conservation and genetic diversity. Genetic relationships are discussed based on net genetic distances among pig populations.

Photorespiration-associated production of H(2) O(2) accounts for the majority of total H(2) O(2) in leaves of C(3) plants and is mainly eliminated by catalases. In Arabidopsis, lack of CAT2, but not CAT1 or CAT3, results in growth suppression and a marked accumulation of H(2) O(2) in leaves. To evaluate the contribution of individual catalase genes and their promoters to catalase function, we investigated the growth suppression and H(2) O(2) accumulation phenotypes of Arabidopsis derivatives expressing catalase genes from heterologous CAT promoters in a cat2 mutant background. The expression of CAT2 from the CAT2 promoter restored the wild-type phenotype in a cat2-1 mutant, while CAT1 and CAT3 promoter-driven expression of CAT2 did not. Ectopic expression of CAT3 from the CAT2 promoter also restored the normal phenotype, unlike that of CAT1 which required replacement of the CAT1 3'-untranslated region (UTR) with that of CAT2. These results demonstrated that the photorespiratory role of CAT2 is determined mainly by the regulation of its promoter activity. The 3'-UTR of CAT2 was vital for controlling CAT2 protein levels under photorespiratory conditions. Identification of component of heterotetramers catalase isoforms suggested that there is some functional redundancy between CAT2 and CAT1 and CAT3.

The phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) regulates plant growth and development as well as stress tolerance. To gain more insights into ABA signalling, a population of chemical-inducible activation-tagged Arabidopsis mutants was screened on the basis of the ABA effect on the inhibition of seed germination. Two novel ABA supersensitive mutants ABA supersensitive during germination1 (absg1) and absg2 were characterized as alleles of Dicer-like1 (DCL1) and HEN1, respectively, as microRNA biogenesis genes, and accordingly, these two mutants were renamed dcl1-11 and hen1-16. The dcl1-11 mutant was an ABA hypersensitive mutant for seed germination and root growth. Reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction assays revealed that the expression of ABA- and stress-responsive genes was increased in dcl1-11, as compared with the wild type (WT). Furthermore, the germination assay showed that dcl1-11 was also more sensitive to salt and osmotic stress. The hen1-16 mutant also showed supersensitive to ABA during seed germination. Further analysis showed that, among the microRNA biogenesis genes, all the other mutants were not only enhanced in sensitivity to ABA, salt and osmotic stress, but also enhanced the expression of ABA-responsive genes. In addition to the mutants in the microRNA biogenesis, the interruption of the production of crucial components of other small RNA pathways such as dcl2, dcl3 and dcl4 also caused ABA supersensitive during germination.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are important regulators in the development of plants and animals. Several hundred have been identified from animals, and about a dozen have been cloned from plants, mainly Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh. We have identified nine miRNAs in Oryza sativa L., an important food crop that has been sequenced in recent years. The nine miRNAs include miRNA171 and miRNA167, which were also identified in Arabidopsis. These had the typical properties of miRNAs, including short length, an ability to form a stem–loop structure with a flanking genomic sequence and they could be identified by northern blot analyses. In addition, m-fold program and computational analyses indicted that the potential targets of six of the nine miRNAs are four known gene families and two unknown protein families, which comprise 16 unique genes.

Aux/IAAs interact with auxin response factors (ARFs) to repress their transcriptional activity in the auxin signaling pathway. Previous studies have focused on gain-of-function mutations of domain II and little is known about whether the expression level of wild-type Aux/IAAs can modulate auxin homeostasis. Here we examined the perturbation of auxin homeostasis by ectopic expression of wild-type IAA15. Root gravitropism and stem cell differentiation were also analyzed. The transgenic lines were less sensitive to exogenous auxin and exhibited low-auxin phenotypes including failures in gravity response and defects in stem cell differentiation. Overexpression lines also showed an increase in auxin concentration and reduced polar auxin transport. These results demonstrate that an alteration in the expression of wild-type IAA15 can disrupt auxin homeostasis.