Search

Background The rapid emergence and global spread of COVID-19 have caused substantial global disruptions that have impacted malaria programs worldwide. Innovative strategies to enable countries aiming to eliminate malaria as well as those that are already certified as malaria-free, are needed to address malaria importation in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. China was certified as malaria-free in 2021 and now aims to prevent the malaria re-establishment. Nonpharmaceutical interventions such as entry screening, quarantining, and health education for individuals returning from international travel during the COVID-19 pandemic present both opportunities and challenges to the management of imported malaria. This study aimed to describe and analyze the operational challenges associated with an integrated surveillance and case management program in which malaria re-establishment prevention measures were incorporated into the COVID-19 program in China. Methods After the integration of malaria re-establishment prevention activities into the COVID-19 program for 10 months in Jiangsu Province, China, a focus-group discussion of public health workers working on preventing malaria re-establishment and controlling COVID-19 was held in June 2021, aiming to explore the operational challenges and lessons learned from the integrated approach. Results From 01 August 2020 to 31 May 2021, 8,947 overseas travelers with Yangzhou as the final destination underwent 14-day managed quarantine and 14-day home isolation. Of these travelers, 5,562 were from malaria-endemic regions. A total of 26,026 education booklets and materials were distributed to expand malaria-related knowledge. Twenty-two patients with unknown fever were screened for malaria with rapid diagnostic tests, and one patient was confirmed to have imported malaria. The challenges associated with the implementation of the integrated malaria surveillance and case management program include neglect of malaria due to COVID-19, lack of a standard operating procedure for malaria screening, mobility of public health providers, and difficulties in respecting the timeline of the “1–3-7” surveillance strategy. Conclusions China’s experience highlights the feasibility of integrated case surveillance and management of existing infectious diseases and new emerging infections. It also demonstrates the importance of a sound public health infrastructure with adequate, trained field staff for screening, testing, contact tracing, and providing health education, all of which are crucial for the success of both malaria re-establishment prevention program and the effective control of COVID-19.

Background Early recurrence is the major cause of poor prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are deeply involved in HCC prognosis. In this study, we aimed to establish a prognostic lncRNA signature for HCC early recurrence. Methods The lncRNA expression profile and corresponding clinical data were retrieved from total 299 HCC patients in TCGA database. LncRNA candidates correlated to early recurrence were selected by differentially expressed gene (DEG), univariate Cox regression and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression analyses. A 25-lncRNA prognostic signature was constructed according to receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC). Kaplan-Meier and multivariate Cox regression analyses were used to evaluate the performance of this signature. ROC and nomogram were used to evaluate the integrated models based on this signature with other independent clinical risk factors. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was used to reveal enriched gene sets in the high-risk group. Tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) levels were analyzed with single sample Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (ssGSEA). Immune therapy response prediction was performed with TIDE and SubMap. Chemotherapeutic response prediction was conducted by using Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer (GDSC) pharmacogenomics database. Results Compared to low-risk group, patients in high-risk group showed reduced disease-free survival (DFS) in the training (p p = 0.0132). The 25-lncRNA signature, AFP, TNM and vascular invasion could serve as independent risk factors for HCC early recurrence. Among them, the 25-lncRNA signature had the best predictive performance, and combination of those four risk factors further improves the prognostic potential. Moreover, GSEA showed significant enrichment of “E2F TARGETS”, “G2M CHECKPOINT”, “MYC TARGETS V1” and “DNA REPAIR” pathways in the high-risk group. In addition, increased TILs were observed in the low-risk group compared to the high-risk group. The 25-lncRNA signature negatively associates with the levels of some types of antitumor immune cells. Immunotherapies and chemotherapies prediction revealed differential responses to PD-1 inhibitor and several chemotherapeutic drugs in the low- and high-risk group. Conclusions Our study proposed a 25-lncRNA prognostic signature for predicting HCC early recurrence, which may guide postoperative treatment and recurrence surveillance in HCC patients.

Melon is a popular fruit vegetable crop worldwide with diverse morphological variation. We report a high-density genetic map of melon and nine major QTLs with physical region ranging from 43.47 kb to 1.89 Mb. Importantly, two seed-related trait QTLs were repeatedly detected in two environments, and the mapping region was narrowed to 522 kb according to a regional linkage analysis. A total of 40 annotated genes were screened for nonsynonymous variations, of which EVM0009818, involved in cytokinin-activated signaling, was differentially expressed in the young fruits of parents based on RNA-seq. Selective sweep analysis identified 152 sweep signals for seed size, including the two seed-related QTLs and nine homologs that have been verified to regulate seed size in Arabidopsis or rice. This work illustrates the power of a joint analysis combining resequencing-based genetic map for QTL mapping and a combination of KASP genotyping and RNA-seq analysis to facilitate QTL fine mapping.

Rotating components often run continuously at high speed under heavy load, resulting in variable failure modes. Because a priori not-considered fault may occur during the actual operation, it is significant to develop methods that can identify both pre-known types of faults and unknown types of faults. In this study, an ensemble framework based on partial dense convolutional neural networks with multiple diversity enhancement strategies (MDE PD-CNN ensemble) is proposed. Firstly, PD-CNN is employed to improve the generalization ability of the base model. Variety PD-CNN are constructed under multiple diversity enhancement strategies. Furthermore, differences in the output of samples on different base models are measured to detect unknown faults. Both known and unknown faults can be accurately diagnosed based on the ensemble procedure with the difference indicator. Experiments on bearing and gear datasets are conducted to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed ensemble framework.

With the increasing requirement of array antenna performance, the failure rate of array antenna is also increasing. In this paper, a pattern-coupled hierarchical Gaussian prior model is constructed by exploiting the block-sparse structure of the array under test (AUT). The model shares hyperparameters by capturing the pattern dependencies among neighboring coefficients. Thus, under the Bayesian framework, Pattern-coupled sparse Bayesian learning (PCSBL) is proposed. Besides, generalized approximate message passing (GAMP) is used to reduce the computation time. Experimental results show that this method has high precision and low computational complexity in the array fault diagnosis.

Wireless power transfer system usually has the problems of low efficiency and small mutual inductance, and a scheme of variable mutual inductance coupling based on quantitative adjustable magnetic powder is described in this paper. Firstly, the relationship among mutual inductance, magnetic permeability and transmission efficiency between two coils is concluded according to the transformer principle and magnetic Ohm’s law; secondly, simulation analysis of the magnetic powder filled in the gap between the two coils is carried out to illustrate the best design. An experimental prototype is constructed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed WPT topology and the optimal magnetic circuit. The system efficiency is the highest with filling the magnetic powder uniformly in the transmitter’s center and the receiver’s edge, which is 16.4% higher than the traditional system. The theoretical calculation and simulation results are consistent with the previous optimization scheme, which provides a theoretical basis for the study of coil tuning and enhancing coil mutual inductance.

The issue of magnetic flux leakage has received considerable critical attention, which severely reduces the transmission efficiency and loses a lot of energy in wireless power transmission (WPT) systems. To solve the problem, this paper proposes pot ferrite core (PFC) to improve efficiency and anti-offset. And the relationship between transmission efficiency and magnetic conductivity is given, which is based on the magnetic circuit and the electric circuit formula of WPT system with PFC. Then, under the same resonance and transmission distance, Maxwell is utilized to compare the magnetic field strength and anti-offset ability between the PFC structure and the plane structure. Thus, A 100-W prototype is designed and implemented to validate the proposed PFC system. Compared to the traditional planar system, the efficiency of the proposed PFC system increases by 30.24%, which sheds new light on the magnetic field and misalignment performance.

Hypoglycemic drugs such as metformin increase glucose uptake and utilization by peripheral tissues to maintain glucose homeostasis, and the AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) signaling pathway is an important component of this pharmacological activity. Liver kinase B1 (LKB1) acts as a kinase upstream of AMPK and plays an important regulatory role in glucose metabolism. In recent years, as a tumor suppressor, LKB1's antitumor activity has been widely studied, yet its hypoglycemic activity is not clear. Here, using biochemical and cell viability assays, site-directed mutagenesis, immunoblotting, and immunofluorescence staining, we found that a natural product, antroalbol H isolated from the basidiomycete mushroom Antrodiella albocinnamomea, increases cellular glucose uptake in murine L6 myotubes and 3T3-L1 adipocytes. Of note, our results indicated that this effect is related to LKB1-mediated Thr-172 phosphorylation of AMPKα. Furthermore, we observed that antroalbol H induces the phosphorylation of LKB1 specifically at Thr-189 and changes subcellular localization of LKB1. Finally, antroalbol H treatment strikingly promoted glucose transporter type 4 (GLUT4) translocation to the plasma membrane. We conclude that antroalbol H promotes Thr-189 phosphorylation of LKB1, leading to AMPK activation, revealing this residue as a potential target for increasing glucose uptake, and that antroalbol H therefore has potential for managing hyperglycemia.

Objective This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of comprehensive hysteroscopic evaluation and lesion resection combined with progestin therapy in young patients with endometrial atypical hyperplasia (EAH) and early stage endometrial cancer (EEC) who wished to preserve their fertility. Methods Patients with EAH (n = 120) or well-differentiated EEC (n = 40, FIGO stage IA, without myometrial invasion) were retrospectively included. All patients received constant oral progestin combined with hysteroscopic evaluation every 3 months until achieving complete response (CR). The location, number and size of each suspected lesion or cluster were detailly recorded during the hysteroscopy. Results The median age was 32.0 year-old (range, 22–47 year-old). Totally 148 patients (97.4%) achieved CR while 3 EAH and 1 EEC patients presented with disease progression, and 8 patients were still in treatment. The mean treatment duration for achieving CR was 6.7 ± 0.3 months (range, 1–18 months). After adjusting for patient age, body mass index (BMI), history of pregnancy and type of conservative therapies, lesion size ≤2 cm (OR, 0.701; 95% CI, 0.496–0.991; P = 0.045) was significantly correlated with shorter treatment time to achieve CR. Among 60 patients attempted to conceive after achieving CR, 45.0% (15/60) had been pregnant, 25.0% (15/60) delivered live birth, 13.3% (8/60) are still in pregnancy, while 6.7% experienced spontaneous abortion. Conclusion Comprehensive hysteroscopic evaluation and lesion resection plus progestin therapy seem to be an effective and safe fertility sparing therapy for patients with EAH or EEC. Endometrial lesion size ≤2 cm correlated with a shorter treatment period to achieve CR.

Insulin-responsive glucose transporter type 4 (GLUT4) translocation plays a major role in controlling glucose uptake in adipose tissue and muscle, maintaining homeostasis and preventing hyperglycemia. Screening for chemicals enhancing GLUT4 translocation is an approach for identifying hits of drug development for type 2 diabetes. Here we developed a novel functional dual-color probe, pHluorin-GLUT4-mOrange2, and constructed 3T3-L1 adipocytes based screening system to simply and efficiently screen new compounds stimulating GLUT4 translocation. Based on this system, we successfully identified a few hits facilitating GLUT4 translocation. In conclusion, we developed an easy-to-apply dual color GLUT4 probe to monitor GLUT4 translocation in insulin-responsive cells, which could be alternatively employed to high-throughput screen compounds regulating GLUT4 translocation and glucose uptake, even to dissect GLTU4 approaching, docking and fusion with the plasma membrane (PM), and to reveal relevant molecular mechanisms involved in these steps as expected.

Sensors play an important role in the automated management system of the intelligent greenhouse, but sensor node energy consumption and charging issues have always been a bottleneck to constrain the development of intelligent greenhouses. To solve this problem, the paper proposes the “Enclose-Loop” sensor using wireless power supply technology, analyzes the efficiency formula for the magnetic resonance coupling method and the relationship with the energy power, and designs the “Enclose-Loop” magnetic resonance wireless power supply system. The system can form a large uniform magnetic spatial field, and evenly distribute the power in the case of a plurality of secondary coils. In addition, the use of the primary and secondary coils on the same plane balances the relationship between efficiency and distance. Simulation experiments are conducted to simulate the power of the “Enclose-Loop” magnetic resonance wireless power transmission. With the primary and secondary coils of different sizes in the same plane, distance and efficiency wireless power transmission achieves satisfactory results. Finally, an experimental verification platform is built. The experimental results show that the proposed control algorithm can provide 40 W power for the load and effectively solve the power supply problem of the sensor. This paper provides new ideas for the power supply of sensors and promotes the development of intelligent greenhouses to some extent.

One important goal of fish genetic breeding is to identify valuable loci and genes that can facilitate growth and thereby productivity. Few such loci or genes have been identified in golden pompano (Trachinotus ovatus), a species of significant economic value. In this study, we produced a high-quality chromosome-level genome assembly of the golden pompano by de novo sequencing and assemblies for 2 parents and 200 F1 offspring by genome re-sequencing. We exploited these assemblies to identify loci and genes by QTL mapping, Kompetitive Allele Specific PCR (KASP) genotyping, and haplotype-based regional association analysis based on growth records of a 64 biparental and 147 individuals from a naturally occurring population. At a locus 291kb from BSNP21031, we identified a somatostatin receptor type 1-like (designated as gpsstr1) gene in which the BSNP1369 of the promoter region was highly associated with growth. Loss of sstr1a, the homolog of gpsstr1 in zebrafish, caused growth retardation. Sstr1a mediated growth via sstr2 and Wnt-gsk-3β signaling pathways. Our findings provide new insights into the underlying mechanisms controlling growth. Our strategy can serve as an effective way to uncover novel genomic information and facilitate improvement of fish growth.

Background Lycium Linn. (Solanaceae) is a genus of economically important plants producing fruits and leaves with high nutritional value and medicinal benefits. However, genetic analysis of this plant and molecular breeding for quality improvement are limited by the lack of sufficient molecular markers. Results In this study, two parental strains, ‘Ningqi No. 1’ (Lycium barbarum L.) and ‘Yunnan Gouqi’ (Lycium yunnanense Kuang et A.M. Lu), and 200 F1 hybrid individuals were resequenced for genetic analysis. In total, 8,507 well-selected SNPs were developed, and a high-density genetic map (NY map) was constructed with a total genetic distance of 2,122.24 cM. A consensus genetic map was established by integrating the NY map and a previously published genetic map (NC map) containing 15,240 SNPs, with a total genetic distance of 3,058.19 cM and an average map distance of 0.21 cM. The 12 pseudochromosomes of the Lycium reference genome were anchored using this consensus genetic map, with an anchoring rate of 64.3%. Moreover, weak collinearities between the consensus map and the pepper, potato, and tomato genomes were observed. Twenty-five stable QTLs were identified for leaf- and fruit-related phenotypes, including fruit weight, fruit longitude, leaf length, the fruit index, and the leaf index; these stable QTLs were mapped to four different linkage groups, with LOD scores ranging from 2.51 to 19.37 and amounts of phenotypic variance explained from 6.2% to 51.9%. Finally, 82 out of 188 predicted genes underlying stable QTLs for fruit-related traits were differentially expressed according to RNA-seq analysis. Conclusions A chromosome-level assembly can provide a foundation for further functional genomics research for wolfberry. The genomic regions of these stably expressed QTLs could be used as targets for further fine mapping and development of molecular markers for marker-assisted selection (MAS). The present study provided valuable information on saturated SNP markers and reliable QTLs for map-based cloning of functional genes related to yield and morphological traits in Lycium spp.

Conservation of natural resources is a vital and challenging task. Numerous animal genetic resources have been effectively conserved worldwide. However, the effectiveness of conservation programmes and the variation information of species have rarely been evaluated. Here, we performed whole-genome and whole-genome bisulfite sequencing of 90 Chinese indigenous chickens, which belonged to the Tibetan, Wenchang and Bian chicken breeds, and have been conserved under different conservation programmes. We observed that low genetic diversity and high DNA methylation variation occurs during ex situ in vivo conservation, while higher genetic diversity and differentiation occurs during in situ conservation. Further analyses revealed that most DNA methylation signatures are unique within ex situ in vivo conservation. Moreover, a high proportion of differentially methylated regions is found in genomic selection regions, suggesting a link between the effects of genomic variation and DNA methylation. Altogether our findings provide valuable information about genetic and DNA methylation variations during different conservation programmes, and hold practical relevance for species conservation.

Medicinal plants are the chief components in the different oriental formulations in different traditional medical systems worldwide. As a thriving source of medicine, the medicinal plants with antituberculosis (TB) properties inspire the pharmacists to develop new drugs based on their active components or semimetabolites. In the present review, the anti-TB medicinal plants were screened from the scientific literatures, based on the botanical classification and the anti-TB activity. The obtained anti-TB medicinal plants were categorized into three different categories, viz., 159 plants critically examined with a total 335 isolated compounds, 131 plants with their crude extracts showing anti-TB activity, and 27 plants in literature with the prescribed formula by the traditional healers. Our systemic analysis on the medicinal plants can assist the discovery of novel and more efficacious anti-TB drugs.

Existing deep learning based methods for 3D human pose estimation cannot be deployed on resource-constrained devices. In this paper, we propose a Tiny-HourglassNet for 3D human pose estimation that improves the efficiency of Stacked Hourglass Networks with a guarantee of estimation performance. To be concrete, we develop an efficient Tiny-Hourglass backbone with two different types of ShuffleNet V2 blocks. At the meantime, we present a Simple Estimation Head (SEH) to reduce the resource utility for depth prediction. Furthermore, we develop two feature enhancement modules, namely Feature Enhancement Module (FEM) and Intermediate Enhancement Module (IEM), to improve the feature representation ability of Tiny-HourglassNet without evident increment of resource usage and computational complexity. Experimental results demonstrate that Tiny-HourglassNet achieves equivalent accuracy with a reduction of 80% complexity (FLOPs) in comparison to the baselines.

Federated learning has successfully mitigated the privacy concerns for deep learning over distributed data, but suffers from performance decay led by the non-identical distribution of data. In this paper, we propose a novel framework, namely FedExg, to improve federated learning for non-IID data with model exchange. Two strategies, i.e., FedExg-S and FedExg-A, are developed to realize model exchange in a privacy-preserving fashion. FedExg-S randomly shuffles the models for broadcasting, while FedExg-A improves FedExg-S with partial aggregation to avoid model inversion attack. Theoretical analysis demonstrates that FedExg achieves a reduced upper bound of average regret in comparison to traditional model averaging methods. Experimental results show that FedExg improves image classification tasks on MNIST and CIFAR-10 dataset.

This study investigated the morphology and potentially toxic metal concentrations of paper waste-based biochar (PB) and kitchen waste-based biochar (KB) obtained at 500 and 700 °C. The morphology and potentially toxic metals (Cr, Mn, Cu, Cd, Pb, Zn, Ag, and Ba) concentrations in the biochars were determined by SEM and FT-IR analysis. The Cr, Mn, Cu, and Cd concentrations in PB were low, while the Ba content was relatively high at 0.1 mg∙kg−1. An increase in the terminal temperature led to an increase in the concentrations of Fe/Mn oxide-bound potentially toxic metals of PB, and a decrease in the concentrations of organic matter-bound potentially toxic metals. The Fe/Mn oxide-bound Cr, Mn, Cu, Pb, and Zn concentrations of KB decreased with an increase in the terminal temperature. Therefore, increasing the terminal temperature could reduce the bioavailability of potentially toxic metals in PB and KB. The environmental risk of the different biochars when used for soil remediation was assessed by the potential ecological risk index (RI), and a case study of a Tibetan soil was also conducted. The potentially toxic metal concentrations leached from both PB and KB were lower than the relevant standards. The findings showed that both PB and KB can be safely used for soil remediation.

Flower type is an important and extremely complicated trait of chrysanthemum. The corolla tube merged degree (CTMD) and the relative number of ray florets (RNRF) are the two key factors affecting chrysanthemum flower type. However, few reports have clarified the inheritance of these two complex traits, which limits directed breeding for flower-type improvement. In this study, 305 F1hybrids were obtained from two parents with obvious differences in CTMD and RNRF performance. Using specific-locus amplified fragment sequencing (SLAF-seq) technology, we constructed a high-density genetic linkage map with an average map distance of 0.76 cM. Three major QTLs controlling CTMD and four major QTLs underlying RNRF were repeatedly detected in the 2 years. Moreover, the synteny between the genetic map and other Compositae species was investigated, and weak collinearity was observed. In QTL regions with a high degree of genomic collinearity, eight annotated genes were probed in theHelianthus annuusL. andLactuca sativaL. var. ramosa Hort. genomes. Furthermore, 20 and 11 unigenes were identified via BLAST searches between the SNP markers of the QTL regions and theC. vestitumandC. lavandulifoliumtranscriptomes, respectively. These results lay a foundation for molecular marker-assisted breeding and candidate gene exploration in chrysanthemum without a reference assembly.

To enable DNNs on edge devices like mobile phones, low-rank approximation has been widely adopted because of its solid theoretical rationale and efficient implementations. Several previous works attempted to directly approximate a pretrained model by low-rank decomposition; however, small approximation errors in parameters can ripple over a large prediction loss. As a result, performance usually drops significantly and a sophisticated effort on fine-tuning is required to recover accuracy. Apparently, it is not optimal to separate low-rank approximation from training. Unlike previous works, this paper integrates low rank approximation and regularization into the training process. We propose Trained Rank Pruning (TRP), which alternates between low rank approximation and training. TRP maintains the capacity of the original network while imposing low-rank constraints during training. A nuclear regularization optimized by stochastic sub-gradient descent is utilized to further promote low rank in TRP. The TRP trained network inherently has a low-rank structure, and is approximated with negligible performance loss, thus eliminating the fine-tuning process after low rank decomposition. The proposed method is comprehensively evaluated on CIFAR-10 and ImageNet, outperforming previous compression methods using low rank approximation., Accepted by IJCAI2020, An extension version of arXiv:1812.02402

Background: Gene expression is necessary for regulation in almost all biological processes, at the same time, it is related to the prognosis for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). The prognosis of late-staged HNSCC is important because of its guiding significance on the therapy strategies. Methods: In this work, we analyzed the relationship between gene expression and HNSCC in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) cohort, and optimized the panel with random forest survival analysis. Subsequently, a Cox multivariate regression-based model was developed to predict the clinical outcome of HNSCC. The performance of the model was assayed in the training cohort and validated in another three independent cohorts (GSE41614, E-TABM-302, E-MTAB-1328). The underlying pathways significantly associated with the model were identified. According to the results, patients of low-score group (median survival months: 27.4, 95% CI: 18.2–43) had a significant poor survival than those of high-score group (median survival months: 69.4, 95% CI: 58.7–72.1, P=2.7e-5), and the observation was repeatable in the other validation cohorts. Further analysis revealed that the model performed better than the other clinical indicators and is independent of these indicators. Results: Comparison revealed that the model performed better than existing models for late HNSCC prognosis. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) elucidated that the model was significantly associated with various cell processes and pathways.

Generative model has emerged as a disruptive alternative for lossy compression of natural images, but suffers from the low-fidelity reconstruction. In this paper, we propose a noise-to-compression variational antoencoder (NC-VAE) to achieve efficient rate-distortion optimization (RDO) for end-to-end optimized image compression with a guarantee of fidelity. The proposed NC-VAE improves rate-distortion performance by adaptively adjusting the distribution of latent variables with trainable noise perturbation. Consequently, high-efficiency RDO is developed based on the distribution of latent variables for simplified decoder. Furthermore, robust end-to-end learning is developed over the corrupted inputs to suppress the deformation and color drift in standard VAE based generative models. Experimental results show that NC-VAE outperforms the state-of-the-art lossy image coders and recent end-to-end optimized compression methods in low bit-rate region, i.e., below 0.2 bits per pixel (bpp).

Flower type is an important and extremely complicated trait of chrysanthemum. The corolla tube merged degree (CTMD) and the relative number of ray florets (RNRF) are the two key factors affecting chrysanthemum flower type. However, few reports have clarified the inheritance of these two complex traits, which limits directed breeding for flower-type improvement. In this study, 305 F1 hybrids were obtained from two parents with obvious differences in CTMD and RNRF performance. Using specific-locus amplified fragment sequencing (SLAF-seq) technology, we constructed a high-density genetic linkage map with an average map distance of 0.76 cM. Three major QTLs controlling CTMD and four major QTLs underlying RNRF were repeatedly detected in the 2 years. Moreover, the synteny between the genetic map and other Compositae species was investigated, and weak collinearity was observed. In QTL regions with a high degree of genomic collinearity, eight annotated genes were probed in the Helianthus annuus L. and Lactuca sativa L. var. ramosa Hort. genomes. Furthermore, 20 and 11 unigenes were identified via BLAST searches between the SNP markers of the QTL regions and the C. vestitum and C. lavandulifolium transcriptomes, respectively. These results lay a foundation for molecular marker-assisted breeding and candidate gene exploration in chrysanthemum without a reference assembly.

Urate oxidase (uricase, Uox) is a big obstacle for scientists to establish stable animal models for studying hyperuricemia and associated disorders. Due to the low survival rate of uricase-deficient mice, we generated a Uox-knockout model animal from Sprague Dawley (SD) rats using the CRISPR/Cas9 technique by deleting exons 2 to 4 of the Uox gene. The uricase-deficient rats were named “Kunming-DY rats”, and were apparently healthy with more than a 95% survival up to one year. The male rats’ serum uric acid (SUA) increased to 48.3 ± 19.1 µg/ml, significantly higher than those of wild-type rats. Some indexes of the blood fat like total triglyceride, low density lipoprotein, and renal function indexes including blood urea nitrogen and serum creatinine were significantly different from those of wild-type rats, however, all the indexes were close to or in normal ranges. Histological renal changes including mild glomerular/tubular lesions were observed in these uricase-deficient rats. Thus, “Kunming-DY rats” with stable uricase-deficiency were successfully established and are an alternative model animal to study hyperuricemia and associated diseases mimicking human conditions.

Intermittent fasting is a safe strategy to improve health, but its specific mechanisms are not fully understood. Considering that transcription factors (TFs) determine the response to environmental signals, here, we profiled the circadian transcriptome of 600 samples in mice to provide an atlas of TFs in biological space, time, and feeding regimen. Results showed that 80% of TFs display daily rhythms in expression. Intermittent fasting triggered more than 90% of TFs to oscillate somewhere in the body and repartitioned their tissue-specific expression. A single round of fasting and repeated fasting caused evidently different effects on TFs. Intriguingly, 196 TFs illustrated a duration-dependent linear correlation in expression with fasting or refeeding time at the cutoff of the determination coefficient (R2) in linear regression > 0.7. This atlas offers a reference and resource to understand how TFs and intermittent fasting may contribute to circadian rhythm oscillation and bring about specific health benefits.

The sodium-dependent glucose transporters 2 (SGLT2) plays important role in renal reabsorption of urinal glucose back to plasma for maintaining glucose homeostasis. The approval of SGLT2 inhibitors for treatment of type 2 diabetes highlights the SGLT2 as a feasible and promising drug target in recent years. Current methods for screening SGLT2 inhibitors are complex, expensive and labor intensive. Particularly, these methods cannot directly measure nonradioactive glucose uptake in endogenous SGLT2-expressing kidney cells. In present work, human kidney cells, HK-2, was incubated with a fluorescent d-glucose derivant 2-[N-(7-nitrobenz-2-oxa-1,3-diazol-4-yl) amino]-2-deoxy-d-glucose (2-NBDG) and the fluorescent intensity of 2-NBDG was employed to measure the amount of glucose uptake into the cells. By optimizing the passages of HK-2 cells, 2-NBDG concentration and incubation time, and by measuring glucose uptake treated by Dapagliflozin, a clinical drug of SGLT2 inhibitors, we successfully developed a new assay for measuring glucose uptake through SGLT2. The nonradioactive microplate and microscope-based high-throughput screening assay for measuring glucose can be a new method for screening of SGLT2 inhibitors and implied for other cell assays for glucose measurement extensively. Graphical Abstract Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s13659-018-0188-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

SETTING: Shambhala is a 5-day electronic dance music (EDM) festival held in rural British Columbia that annually hosts between 15,000 and 18,000 people on a 500-acre ranch. The AIDS Network Outreach & Support Society (ANKORS) has provided harm reduction services throughout the duration of the festival since 2003, including point-of-care drug checking, which allows real-time testing of illicit substances to assess their composition. Drug checking results are provided directly to clients and displayed in aggregate on a screen for all attendees to see. INTERVENTION: In 2017, ANKORS added fentanyl checking to their repertoire of drug checking technologies for festivalgoers. Volunteers used a brief survey to collect information on what clients expected the samples to contain. Volunteers carried out drug checks and subsequently logged test results. ANKORS provided an amnesty bin at the tent for clients who chose to discard their substances. OUTCOMES: Of the 2683 surveys, 2387 included data on both the client’s belief and the actual test result. Clients were more likely to discard when the test result differed from their belief (5.16%) than when their belief was confirmed (0.69%). Discarding increased to 15.54% when the test could not clearly identify a substance and to 30.77% if the client did not have a prior belief of the substance. Of 1971 samples tested for fentanyl, 31 tested positive and 16.13% of clients discarded compared to 2.63% in the negative group. IMPLICATIONS: Drug checking services appeal to festivalgoers who, when faced with uncertainty, may discard their substances. This innovative harm reduction service allows for a personalized risk discussion, potentially reaching others via word-of-mouth and early warning systems. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.17269/s41997-018-0126-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Quantization is known as an effective compression method for deploying neural networks on mobile devices. However, most existing works train from scratch a quantized network with universal bitwidth for all layers, making it hard to find the optimal trade-off between compression ratio and inference accuracy. In this paper, we propose a novel post-training quantization approach which derives a flexible bitwidth scheme. Our algorithm progressively downgrades bitwidth of chosen layer in the network and performs feature map alignment with pre-trained model. The algorithm comprises a meter of layer sensitivity and an iterative quantizer. Specifically, the meter dynamically estimates for every layer the error of quantization on its output feature map, meanwhile the error serves as an objective function to be minimized by the quantizer. Extensive experiments on CIFAR-10 and ImageNet ILSVRC2012 datasets demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves impressive results for mainstream neural networks.

Quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping of sugar yield-related traits can promote the discovery of new sugar yield-related genes. Subsequently, marker-assisted selection (MAS) can be used to breed new high-yield sugar beet varieties. In this study, we observed the F1 population (219 individuals) from a cross of 3a (high-yield, low-sugar, diploid, monogerm, sterile line) and 3b (low-yield, high-sugar, diploid, polyembryonic, pollinated line) parents located in Gaomi City, Shandong Province, China. A total of four traits (root length, root perimeter, root weight, and sugar content) exhibited a normal distribution. Based on a high-density genetic map, including 3287 specific-length amplified fragment markers and nine linkage groups (LGs) with an overall genetic distance of 1554.64 cM, a total of 32 QTLs were identified for the four aforementioned traits. The QTLs were distributed on LG2, LG3, LG5, LG7, and LG9. The root length was mapped to six regions of LG2. The phenotypic variance explained (PVE) ranged from 6.30% to 8.03%. The root perimeter was mapped to five regions of LG5 and 12 regions of LG7. The largest PVE was on LG5 (7.23%). The root weight was mapped to two regions of LG3 and three regions of LG7. The four sugar content-related QTLs located on LG5 and LG9 had a threshold logarithm of odds (LOD) value of 4.35 and a max PVE of 10.13%, indicating a potentially important QTL for future gene cloning. Using trait-based QTL mapping and chromosomal marker distribution data, we identified 3690 candidate genes including 191 root length, 918 root perimeter, 409 root weight, and 2172 sugar content genes. Our results provide valuable information for additional research in fine mapping, gene functional analysis, pyramid breeding, and MAS.

ObjectiveLymphovascular space invasion (LVSI) has been defined as a significant adverse prognostic factor in early-stage endometrial cancer, primarily because of its high association with nodal metastases. This study aimed to determine if LVSI provides any prognostic significance in pathologic node-negative surgically staged (T1N0) endometrial cancer patients.Methods/MaterialsThis retrospective cohort study included all patients with pathologic stage T1N0 endometrial carcinoma treated at The Ottawa Hospital Cancer Centre from 1998 to 2007. Patient demographics, pathologic findings, treatment, and outcome data were collected. Univariate and multivariate cox regression modeling was used to assess significance and adjust for demographic and histopathologic covariates. Kaplan-Meier curves were used to estimate the 5-year overall and recurrence-free survival.ResultsOur study included 400 pathologic stage T1N0 patients who received an initial total hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy with lymphadenectomy. The median age at diagnosis was 62 years, and the median follow-up was 66 months. Fifty-four patients (13.5%) had a positive LVSI status, and 346 (86.5%) had a negative LVSI status. The 5-year overall survival was 97.3% in patients without LVSI and 90.9% in those with LVSI (P < 0.001). The 5-year recurrence-free survival was 95.2% in patients without LVSI and 85.9% in those with LVSI (P = 0.006). Univariate analysis identified grade, stage, and LVSI as the covariates significantly associated with time to recurrence, and identified age, grade, stage, and LVSI to be significantly associated with overall survival. There were no significant covariates for recurrence-free survival by multivariate analysis, and only age and LVSI were significant for overall survival.ConclusionsLymphovascular space invasion is an overall poor prognostic factor in T1N0 endometrial cancer. After adjusting for other factors, LVSI remains an independent risk factor for worse overall survival. Therefore, estimation of overall survival in patients with early-stage, node-negative endometrial cancer should take into account LVSI status.

Blue-violet wavelength multiplexing offers the capability to enhance the operational capacity and efficiency in optical information processing, underwater communications, biology, and medicine. Here we present a specially designed atomic scheme of cesium for simultaneously generating two blue-violet lasers at 456 and 459 nm via four-wave-mixing (FWM)-based upconversion processes. We experimentally and theoretically show that a double-diamond-type coherent system pumped with 852 and 921 nm lasers is responsible for the efficient generation of the two blue-violet lasers. In this system, the large population inversions lead to self-amplified spontaneous emissions at 15.6 and 12.1 µ m , which, in turn, serve as the seeds for enhanced double FWM processes with dual-wavelength upconversions.

A saturated genetic map can greatly promote the efficiency of gene mapping and marker-assisted selection (MAS) in plants. In the present study, we constructed an ultra-dense genetic map based on an F1 population derived from a cross between 3a (high-yield, low-sugar, sterile, monogerm, diploid line) and 3b (low-yield, high-sugar, pollinated, polyembryonic, diploid line) using Specific-Locus Amplified Fragment sequencing (SLAF-seq) technology. A total of 201.10 million high-quality pair-end reads were generated by Illumina high-throughput sequencing and a total of 171,637 SLAFs were developed, of which 48,478 were polymorphic. Finally, 3287 polymorphic SLAFs were mapped into an ultra-dense genetic map containing nine linkage groups (LGs). These markers had average depths of 105.84-, 104.16-, and 9.03-fold in the male parent, female parent, and progeny, respectively. The genetic map spanned 1554.64 cM with an average distance of 0.47 cM between adjacent markers. There were on an average 365 markers per linkage group and marker numbers ranging from 214 on LG 1 to 513 on LG 7. This genetic map will make great improvement for fine mapping QTLs and MAS in sugar beet.

The melon (Cucumis melo) genome and genetic maps with hundreds to thousands of single nucleotide polymorphism markers were recently released. However, a high-resolution genetic map was lacking. Gummy stem blight (Gsb) is a destructive disease responsible for considerable economic losses during melon production. We herein describe the development of an ultra-dense genetic map consisting of 12,932 recombination bin markers covering 1,818 cM, with an average distance of 0.17 cM between adjacent tags. A comparison of the genetic maps for melon, watermelon, and cucumber revealed chromosome-level syntenic relationships and recombination events among the three Cucurbitaceae species. Our genetic map was useful for re-anchoring the genome scaffolds of melon. More than 92% assembly was anchored to 12 pseudo-chromosomes and 90% of them were oriented. Furthermore, 1,135 recombination hotspots revealed an unbalanced recombination rate across the melon genome. Genetic analyses of the Gsb-resistant and -susceptible lines indicated the resistance phenotype is mediated by a single dominant gene. We identified Gsb-resistance gene candidates in a 108-kb region on pseudo-chromosome 4. Our findings verify the utility of an ultra-dense genetic map for mapping a gene of interest, and for identifying new disease resistant genes.

Obesity is crucially involved in many metabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Regulating the number or size of adipocytes has been suggested to be a potential treatment for obesity. In this study, we investigated the effect of pyrocincholic acid 3β-O-β-d-quinovopyranosyl-28-O-β-d-glucopyranoside (PAQG), a 27-nor-oleanolic acid saponin extracted from Metadina trichotoma, on adipogenesis and lipid metabolism in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. The 3T3-L1 pre-adipocytes were incubated with vehicle or PAQG for 6 days in differentiation process. PAQG significantly reduced the adipogenesis, adiponectin secretion and the expression level of key transcription factors related to adipogenesis, such as PPARγ, C/EBPβ, C/EBPα, and FABP4. Moreover, PAQG increased the levels of FFA and glycerol in medium and reduced TG level in mature adipocytes. Interestingly, PAQG not only promoted the activation of AMPK and genes involved in fatty oxidation including PDK4 and CPT1a, but also inhibited those genes involved in fatty acid biosynthesis, such as SREBP1c, FAS, ACCα and SCD1. In conclusion, PAQG inhibits the differentiation and regulates lipid metabolism of 3T3-L1 cells via AMPK pathway, suggesting that PAQG may be a novel and promising natural product for the treatment of obesity and hyperlipidemia. Graphical Abstract Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13659-017-0127-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

To accelerate DNNs inference, low-rank approximation has been widely adopted because of its solid theoretical rationale and efficient implementations. Several previous works attempted to directly approximate a pre-trained model by low-rank decomposition; however, small approximation errors in parameters can ripple over a large prediction loss. Apparently, it is not optimal to separate low-rank approximation from training. Unlike previous works, this paper integrates low rank approximation and regularization into the training process. We propose Trained Rank Pruning (TRP), which alternates between low rank approximation and training. TRP maintains the capacity of the original network while imposing low-rank constraints during training. A nuclear regularization optimized by stochastic sub-gradient descent is utilized to further promote low rank in TRP. Networks trained with TRP has a low-rank structure in nature, and is approximated with negligible performance loss, thus eliminating fine-tuning after low rank approximation. The proposed method is comprehensively evaluated on CIFAR-10 and ImageNet, outperforming previous compression counterparts using low rank approximation. Our code is available at: https://github.com/yuhuixu1993/Trained-Rank-Pruning., overlap with arXiv:1812.02402, in order to merge the two submissions such that withdraw this version

Wolfberry (Lycium Linn. 2n = 24) fruit, Gouqizi, is a perennial shrub, traditional food and medicinal plant resource in China. Leaf and fruit related characteristics are economically important traits that are the focus for genetic improvement, but few studies into the molecular genetics of this crop have been reported to date. Here, an F1 population (302 individuals) derived from a cross between “NO.1 Ningqi” (Lycium barbarum L.) and “Chinese gouqi” (Lycium chinese Mill.) was constructed. We recorded fruit weight, longitude, diameter and index along with leaf length, width and index for three consecutive years from 2015 to 2017. Based on this population and these phenotypic data, we constructed the first high-density genetic map of Lycium using specific length amplified fragment sequencing (SLAF-seq) and analyzed quantitative trait loci (QTLs). The map contains 6733 single nucleotide polymorphisms and 12 linkage groups (LG) with a total map distance of 1702.45 cM and an average map distance of 0.253 cM. A total of 55 QTLs were mapped for more than 2 years, of which 18 stable QTLs for fruit index on LG 11, spanning an interval of 73.492–90.945 cM, were detected. qFI11-15 for fruit index was an impressive QTL with logarithm of odds (LOD) and proportion of variance explained (PEV) values reaching 11.07 and 19.7%, respectively. The QTLs on LG 11 were gathered tightly, having an average interval of less than 1 cM per QTL, suggesting that there might be a cluster region controlling fruit index. Remarkably, qLI10-2 and qLI11-2 for leaf index were detectable for 3 years. These results give novel insight into the genetic control of leaf and fruit related traits in Lycium and provide robust support for undertaking further positional cloning studies and implementing marker-assisted selection in seedlings.

Adenanthin, a natural ent-kaurane diterpenoid extracted from the herb Isodon adenantha, has been reported to increase intracellular reactive oxygen species in leukemic and hepatocellular carcinoma cells. However, the function and mechanism of the compound in adipogenesis and the development of obesity is still unknown. In this study, we demonstrated that adenanthin inhibited adipogenesis of 3T3-L1 and mouse embryonic fibroblasts, and the underlying mechanism included two processes: a delayed mitotic clonal expansion via G0/G1 cell cycle arrest by inhibiting the RB-E2F1 signaling pathway and a reduced C/EBP&beta, signaling by inhibiting the expression and activity of C/EBP&beta, during mitotic clonal expansion. Furthermore, adenanthin significantly reduced the growing body weight and adipose tissue mass during high-fat diet-inducing obesity of mice, indicating the beneficial effects of adenanthin as a potential agent for prevention of obesity.

With the rapid development of e-commerce, the online shopping market becomes more and more competitive. How to design sales models to retain consumers and make them become continuous buying is the biggest concern of most e-commerce companies. This study was under the situation of Dutch auction model, using a large number of real auction data in Gongtianxia’s “7 days auction” and “15 min auction”. We use quantitative research method combining statistical analysis and panel data regression model, to study the influencing factors of consumers’ repeat purchase. The results show that auction methods, consumers’ perceived performance and bidding structure can affect consumers repurchase. At the same time, we established random effects regression models of the rate of consumers repurchase in 7 days and 30 days. According to the conclusion of the research in this article, we can provide some practical suggestions for Gongtianxia and a reference for other e-commerce.

A lot of information in the social network is accompanied by the continuous transmission of users, and there are many forms of propagation, fermentation, evolution, emergence and outbreaks, which make it difficult for analysts to predict the information dissemination situation at the next moment. However, if the information dissemination can be effectively predicted and perceived, it plays a very important role in hot event discovery, personalized information recommendation, bad information early warning and so on. Therefore, the study of this problem is of great practical value. This paper first study of situational awareness information transmission method, including the definition of information dissemination situational awareness problem and expounds the basic thought, and analyzes the information dissemination situation and level of the modularity, the relationship between the three exponential smoothing is used for information dissemination model for situational awareness, and to evaluate the application effect of the model has carried on the detailed; In addition, this chapter also studies the prediction method of information spread outburst, including the definition of information explosion, the analysis of related factors that affect the prediction of information dissemination, and the modeling and evaluation of the information outburst prediction model. In addition, some issues related to which features are more sensitive to information explosion prediction are also studied.