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Stress can act as a precipitation factor in the onset of emotional disorders, particularly depression. Trans-resveratrol is a polyphenolic compound enriched in polygonum cuspidatum and has been found to exert antidepressant-like effects in our previous studies. In present study, we assessed the effects of trans-resveratrol used in combination with piperine, commonly known as a bioavailability enhancer, on chronic unpredictable mild stress-induced depressive-like behaviors and relevant molecular targets. Trans-resveratrol used alone reduced the immobility time of rats in the forced swimming test, with the maximal effects of trans-resveratrol around 60 % inhibition at the highest dose tested, 40 mg/kg. However, when a subthreshold dose of piperine, 2.5 mg/kg was used in combination with trans-resveratrol, the minimum effective dose of trans-resveratrol in reducing the immobility time was reduced to 20 mg/kg. Further evidence from neurochemical (monoamines in the frontal cortex and the hippocampus), biochemical (monoamine oxidase, MAO activities) and molecular biological (cAMP, PKA, CREB and BDNF) assays supported the findings in the behavioral studies. These results suggest that the co-treatment strategy with trans-resveratrol and piperine might be an alternative therapy that provides efficacious protection against chronic stress.

Furfural (FF) is a valuable ring-containing organic compound in the decomposition of xylose and can be produced massively in hydrothermal condition. In this study, density functional theory (DFT) methods are employed to investigate the formation mechanism of FF from xylose and the solvent effects on FF formation. Kinetic and thermodynamic analyses indicate that xylulose could be the intermediate that leads to the formation of FF in the gas phase and water. The formation of xylulose is initiated by a six-membered transition state with energy barriers of 163.6 and 150.8 kJ mol(-1) in the gas phase and water, respectively. It is found that the strong stabilization of the reactants and transition states and the overall energy barriers of formation pathways of FF are reduced in water. The formation of FF is more thermodynamically favored in water compared with that in the gas phase. In addition, the inclusion of an explicit water molecule transforms four-membered transition states of ring-opening reaction, hydrogenation-cyclization, and dehydrations into less distorted six-membered transition states, which leads to the significant reduction of reaction barriers of FF formation.

Deeper understanding of the anatomical intermediaries for disease and other complex genetic traits is essential to understanding mechanisms and developing new interventions. Existing ontology tools provide functional annotations for many genes in the genome and they are widely used to develop mechanistic hypotheses based on genetic and transcriptomic data. Yet, information about where a set of genes is expressed may be equally useful in interpreting results and forming novel mechanistic hypotheses for a trait. Therefore, we developed a framework for statistically testing the relationship between gene expression across the body and sets of candidate genes from across the genome. We validated this tool and tested its utility on three applications. First, using thousands of loci identified by GWA studies, our framework identifies the number of disease-associated genes that have enriched expression in the disease-affected tissue. Second, we experimentally confirmed an underappreciated prediction highlighted by our tool: variation in skin expressed genes are a major quantitative genetic modulator of white blood cell count - a trait considered to be a feature of the immune system. Finally, using gene lists derived from sequencing data, we show that human genes under constrained selective pressure are disproportionately expressed in nervous system tissues.

Based on two business processing reengineering theories that are the enterprise group's core and subservience, this paper discusses the finance shared service center's establishment process on the ba sis of enterprise group's financial management and control revolution and business processing reconstruction. It also pulls the influencing factors that enterprise group carries out financial shared se rvices core value together, and analyzes from dimensions such as technology, personnel, strategy, organization, service, management and process etc. The following statements present its important value. It covers the shortage that there are too many studies on financial shared services core value's influencing factors but restricted to subservience processing reconstruction to perfect the influencing factors of financial shared services core value's lifting. What's more, it provides support to bring the effect of financial shared services core value and superior function for enterprise group.

Through analyzing the process of failure of computer information systems and confirming the relation of fault, error, symptom and failure, this paper proposes the corresponding prediction methods of diagnosing, detecting, monitoring and tracking, the research and development of failure prediction methods of fault diagnosing, detected error reporting, undetected error evaluating, symptom monitoring and failure tracking are summarized. Finally, the realize principle and fundamental framework of failure prediction methods are given, the failure prediction methods of computer relevant application are analyzed and discussed, the advantages and disadvantages of failure prediction methods are also compared and discussed.

Carbon nanotubes were prepared on silicon wafers deposited with NiFe catalyst films and Ta buffer films by plasma-enhanced hot filament chemical vapor deposition, and growth of the carbon nanotubes under different pressure were investigated by scanning electron microscopy. It is found that the average length of the carbon nanotubes grown at the pressure of 15 Torr is larger than that at the pressure of 30 Torr. But, it is difficult to grow the carbon nanotubes when the pressure is 5 Torr. These indicate that the pressure greatly influences on the growth of carbon nanotubes. Combined with theories related to thermodynamics of alloy and glow discharge, it is analyzed and discussed that the pressure affects the growth of the carbon nanotubes.

This study was undertaken to evaluate the clinical characteristics, prognostic factors, and long-term outcomes of patients with mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphoma in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract.Clinical and pathological features of patients with MALT lymphoma in the GI tract, who were treated consecutively at Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital from 2001 to 2011, were evaluated retrospectively.Among a total of 99 identified cases, 79.79% of lymphomas were localized in the stomach, 20.20% in the intestinal tract, and disseminated disease was detected in 35.4% of cases. The estimated 5-year overall survival (OS) and 5-year progression-free survival (PFS) rates were 73.1% and 65.1%, respectively. The comparison between stomach and intestinal tract lymphomas demonstrated no significant difference in characteristics, but nodal involvement was significantly lower in gastric MALT lymphoma (26.6%) as compared with intestinal tract MALT lymphoma (60%, P = 0.006). The outcomes of gastric and intestinal MALT lymphomas were similar (OS, P = 0.492; PFS, P = 0.408), and so was the survival between proximal and distal gastric lymphomas (OS, P = 0.077; PFS, P = 0.181). Serum lactate dehydrogenase level above normal was identified as the only adverse prognostic factor for both OS and PFS.The clinical characteristics and outcomes demonstrated no significant differences between gastric and intestinal tract MALT lymphomas. Serum lactate dehydrogenase level was an independent prognostic factor for the survival of GI MALT lymphoma.

Recent advances have substantially increased the number of genes that are statistically associated with complex genetic disorders of the CNS such as autism and schizophrenia. It is now clear that there will likely be hundreds of distinct loci contributing to these disorders, underscoring a remarkable genetic heterogeneity. It is unclear whether this genetic heterogeneity indicates an equal heterogeneity of cellular mechanisms for these diseases. The commonality of symptoms across patients suggests there could be a functional convergence downstream of these loci upon a limited number of cell types or circuits that mediate the affected behaviors. One possible mechanism for this convergence would be the selective expression of at least a subset of these genes in the cell types that comprise these circuits. Using profiling data from mice and humans, we have developed and validated an approach, cell type-specific expression analysis, for identifying candidate cell populations likely to be disrupted across sets of patients with distinct genetic lesions. Using human genetics data and postmortem gene expression data, our approach can correctly identify the cell types for disorders of known cellular etiology, including narcolepsy and retinopathies. Applying this approach to autism, a disease where the cellular mechanism is unclear, indicates there may be multiple cellular routes to this disorder. Our approach may be useful for identifying common cellular mechanisms arising from distinct genetic lesions.

Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation is a powerful tool in the design and implementation of microfluidic systems, especially for systems that involve hydrodynamic behavior of objects such as functionalized microspheres, biological cells, or biopolymers in complex structures. In this work, we investigate hydrodynamic trapping of microspheres in a novel microfluidic particle-trap array device by finite element simulations. The accuracy of the time-dependent simulation of a microsphere's motion towards the traps is validated by our experimental results. Based on the simulation, we study the fluid velocity field, pressure field, and force and stress on the microsphere in the device. We further explore the trap array's geometric parameters and critical fluid velocity, which affect the microsphere's hydrodynamic trapping. The information is valuable for designing microfluidic devices and guiding experimental operation. Besides, we provide guidelines on the simulation set-up and release an openly available implementation of our simulation in one of the popular FEM softwares, COMSOL Multiphysics. Researchers may tailor the model to simulate similar microfluidic systems that may accommodate a variety of structured particles. Therefore, the simulation will be of particular interest to biomedical research involving cell or bead transport and migration, blood flow within microvessels, and drug delivery.

After Fukushima nuclear accidents, China timely started national nuclear emergency coordination mechanism, and the national nuclear emergency organizations carried out effective response, strengthened communication with IAEA, widely collected all kinds of related information, carried out the monitoring on the land, sea, air, and ocean, predicted the accident consequence, and increased public communication. On all kinds of nuclear facilities, governments required the urgent circular-self safety assessments by each operators, and organized safety inspection groups to comprehensive on-site safety supervision and inspection. Safety inspection thought China overall nuclear safety condition was controllable, and safety was guaranteed. Meanwhile, safety improvements of NPPs considered the external disaster warning and operational, waterproof ability evaluations and improvements of important buildings, etc. China reported China radiation monitoring data to IAEA emergency center, and organized Chinese nuclear emergency expert delegation to develop technical exchanges with Japanese experts. From fukushima nuclear accident response experiences, China national nuclear emergency response ability should continue to increase according to the national nuclear energy scale: (1) Nuclear emergency response professional capacity needs to increase and professional quantity also need to increase. (2) Nuclear emergency response technique and ability needs to emphasize, and the practicability, systematic and integration of nuclear emergency response system also need to emphasize. (3) The operation mechanism and guarantee conditions of national nuclear emergency response system should be further to take attention and should be continuous to improve.Copyright © 2013 by ASME

Hainan nuclear power plant (HNPP) is the first nuclear power plant built on China’s Hainan Island. Therefore the nuclear fuel assemblies must transport through the Qiongzhou Strait. There are two transportation plans to be used in crossing strait transportation of the fuel assemblies. One plan is railway ferry stretching across sea; the other is road vehicular crossing strait on roll-on/roll-off (Ro/Ro) ships. According to crossing strait transportation scenario and statistical analysis of sea transport accidents in Qiongzhou Strait, three ferrying transportation accidents are considered in this paper. Through research of ship-to-ship collision, fire and sunk, the following conclusions: Collision, fire or foundered are not caused by the leakage of radioactive material, the environmental impact is very small. The accident hazards of crossing strait transportation does not lie in the radiological consequences, but in the effects of public psychology and international repercussions.

We build a microfluidic trap-based microsphere array device. In the device, we design a novel geometric structure of the trap array and employ the hydrodynamic trapping mechanism to immobilize the microspheres. We develop a comprehensive and robust framework to optimize the values of the geometric parameters to maximize the microsphere arrays’ packing density. We also simultaneously optimize multiple criteria, such as efficiently immobilizing a single microsphere in each trap, effectively eliminating fluidic errors such as channel clogging and multiple microspheres in a single trap, minimizing errors in subsequent imaging experiments, and easily recovering targets. Microsphere-trapping experiments have been performed using the optimized device and a device with un-optimized geometric parameters. These experiments demonstrate easy control of the transportation and manipulation of the microspheres in the optimized device. They also show that the optimized device greatly outperforms the un-optimized one.

The central nervous system (CNS) is composed of hundreds of distinct cell types, each expressing different subsets of genes from the genome. High throughput gene expression analysis of complex tissues like the CNS from patients and controls is a common method to screen for potentially pathological molecular mechanisms of psychiatric disease. One mechanism by which gene expression might be seen to vary across samples would be alterations in the cellular composition of the tissue. While there are a few gene ‘markers’ from literature for each cell type, their expression patterns vary significantly resulting in poor sensitivity and specificity. Here, we propose a method utilizing prior information from cell specific transcriptome profiling experiments in mice and co-expression network analysis to select cell type specific gene markers, and further to analytically detect changing cellular composition in human tissues. Our method successfully detects changes in cellularity over time that roughly correspond to known epochs of human brain development.

Understanding the effects of gene-environment interaction on complex human diseases or traits in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) can help uncover novel genes and identify environmental hazards that influence only certain genetically susceptible groups. Thus there is a pressing need to develop efficient and powerful interaction analysis methods. In this paper, we propose a novel meta-analysis method of gene-environment interaction, based on meta-regression (MR-M&I). Compared with existing meta-analysis methods, MR-M&I allows for heterogeneity in the environmental factor (E) by dividing the subjects in each study into groups according to the distribution of E. Moreover, it can readily estimate linear or non-linear interactions, and thus it is more generally applicable to different scenarios. We use numerical examples to demonstrate the performance of MR-M&I and compare it with two commonly used methods in current GWAS. The results show that MR-M&I is more powerful than the other methods.

Microarray devices are powerful for detecting and analyzing biological targets. However, the potential of these devices may not be fully realized due to the lack of optimization of their design and implementation. In this work, we consider a microsphere-trap array device by employing microfluidic techniques and a hydrodynamic trapping mechanism. We design a novel geometric structure of the trap array in the device, and develop a comprehensive and robust framework to optimize the values of the geometric parameters to maximize the microsphere arrays' packing density. We also simultaneously optimize multiple criteria, such as efficiently immobilizing a single microsphere in each trap, effectively eliminating fluidic errors such as channel clogging and multiple microspheres in a single trap, minimizing errors in subsequent imaging experiments, and easily recovering targets. We use finite element simulations to validate the trapping mechanism of the device, and to study the effects of the optimization geometric parameters. We further perform microsphere-trapping experiments using the optimized device and a device with randomly selected geometric parameters, which we denote as the un-optimized device. These experiments demonstrate easy control of the transportation and manipulation of the microspheres in the optimized device. They also show that the optimized device greatly outperforms the un-optimized device by increasing the packing density by a factor of two, improving the microsphere trapping efficiency from 58% to 99%, and reducing fluidic errors from 48% to a negligible level (less than 1%). The optimization framework lays the foundation for the future goal of developing a modular, reliable, efficient, and inexpensive lab-on-a-chip system.

We propose an interpolation algorithm for Division-of-Focal-Plane (DoFP) polarimeters based on the correlation between neighboring pixels. DoFP polarimeters monolithically integrate pixelated nanowire polarization filters with an array of imaging elements. DoFP sensors have been realized in the visible and near-infrared regime. The advantages of DoFP sensors are twofold. First, they capture polarization information at every frame. Second, they are compact and robust. The main disadvantage is the loss of spatial resolution due to the super-pixel sampling paradigm at the focal plane. These sensors produce four low-resolution images, where each image has been recorded by a linear polarization filter offset by 45 degrees. Our algorithm addresses the loss of spatial resolution by utilizing the correlation information between the four polarization pixels in a super-pixel configuration. The method is based on the following premise: if one or more of three polarization parameters (angle of polarization, degree of polarization, and intensity) are known for a spatial neighborhood, then the unknown pixel values for the 0° image, for example, can be computed from the intensity values from the 45°, 90° and 135° images. The proposed algorithm is applied to select cases and found to outperform the bicubic spline interpolation method.

Application of Intelligent Decision Support System (IDSS) in urban roadway traffic management is studied, and four parts are addressed in order to create a viable and useful decision-support system. Firstly, the implementation framework of a Road Traffic Intelligent Decision Support System (RTIDSS) is put forward; the model base, data base and method base are described in detail. Here, the data base of RTIDSS is developed based on the Integrated Traffic Information Platform, which has the function of information collecting, processing, communication and information sharing. In the third part, with the knowledge of traffic engineering, especially traffic flow theories, a traffic model base of RTIDSS is presented. And in the end, the paper takes into account general strategies in urban expressway management such as road traffic monitoring, traffic signal control, ramp metering, variable traffic information guidance and incident management. The aim of the development of RTIDSS is to improve transportation efficiency and realize the intelligent management of urban roadway traffic.

It is an important and challenging problem to tack variant-pose target, especially when the appearance of target changes during the period of occlusion. The traditional feature matching methods can not work well under the situations of target pose varying. This paper analyzes the characteristics of human visual tracking, and proposes a visual tracking model based on feature-imagination. Human tracking is realized by using this model combined with the traditional histogram matching method. The experiment results show that our method can perform feature-imagination from the features of human front to the features of human back. Compared with the traditional histogram matching method, the proposed method has obvious advantages in tracking variant-pose target.

The frame error at the data link layer in high-speed optical access network was investigated. The Gigabit Ethernet test bed was established including a network tester, a variable optical attenuator, optical link and a purpose-built tool which allows us to examine errors on a per-octet basis. The test bed transmits pre-constructed test data frames in a standard format and captures error-containing frames for purpose-built tool and statistical tool later analysis. From the experiment results we find that bit error, fragments and extra-bit frame all lead to frame error, resulting in packet loss in high-speed optical network. The distributions of frame error, byte error and extra-bit frame are distinct on the different attenuation conditions and the same happens with different frame lengths. We also find that regardless of the extra-bit frame effect, the packet loss and bit error obey the Poisson distribution in the different parameters, and that the distribution of extra-bit frame varies depending on the length of the frames transmitted.

In this paper, we propose a programmable digital up and down converter (DUC and DDC) structure, which can be used in digital transmitters and receivers that meets IEEE 802.16d standard in wireless communication system. The structure is based on the idea of software radio technology and the theorem of multi-rate signal processing, we use SignalMaster40000lspsmquadc6713 (QC6713) to design the DDC and DUC which shift the centre frequency of the signal from baseband to digital IF and convert the sampling rate for the channel transmitter and receiver

We propose an analytical framework to build a microfluidic microsphere-trap array device that enables simultaneous, efficient, and accurate screening of multiple biological targets in a single microfluidic channel. By optimizing the traps’ geometric parameters, the trap arrays in the channel of the device can immobilize microspheres of different sizes at different regions, obeying hydrodynamically engineered trapping mechanism. Different biomolecules can be captured by the ligands on the surfaces of microspheres of different sizes. They are thus detected according to the microspheres’ positions (position encoding), which simplifies screening and avoids target identification errors. To demonstrate the proposition, we build a device for simultaneous detection of two target types by trapping microspheres of two sizes. We evaluate the device performance using finite element fluidic dynamics simulations and microsphere-trapping experiments. These results validate that the device efficiently achieves position encoding of the two-sized microspheres with few fluidic errors, providing the promise to utilize our framework to build devices for simultaneous detection of more targets. We also envision utilizing the device to separate, sort, or enumerate cells, such as circulating tumor cells and blood cells, based on cell size and deformability. Therefore, the device is promising to become a cost-effective and point-of-care miniaturized disease diagnostic tool.

Creep and shrinkage are such properties that will occur in concrete when they are under load and exposed to surrounding. Since this property will cause deformation which may decrease the design strength of the concrete, it is necessary to do have more knowledge on this phenomenon. So, we will study the effect of creep on 7 and 14 days of cured time of specimens which sealed or unsealed will be considered, respectively. The specimens have shown how the concrete strains when they are under sustained load with time. Besides, the sealed specimens have shown how the basic creep is different from the total creep of concrete. Further, the specimens of loading at different ages have shown how the age at application of load influences creep. The result of the experiment has shown the relationship of strain under sustained load and time. Moreover, it is shown that creep is mainly related to the strength developed in the concrete.