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Design and fabrication of the nitrogen-doped carbon materials with hierarchically porous structure is crucial for improving the electrochemical performance of supercapacitors. In this study, facile fabrication of the nitrogen-doped hierarchical carbon nanosheets (i.e. HGPC-A) is demonstrated via one-step carbonization and activation strategy using the polyvinyl alcohol/polyaniline (PVA/PANI) hydrogels as precursors in the presence of graphene oxide (GO). Benefiting from the covalent bonding assembly between GO and PVA/PANI polymers, the as-obtained HGPC-A with the hierarchical and interconnected nanosheet structure exhibits the high specific surface area and abundant macro-/meso-/micropore channels. It is also found that the introduction of the graphene has a significant effect on increasing the pyridinic-N ratio and enhancing the structural stability of HGPC-A in comparison to the pristine PVA/PANI hydrogel-derived carbon materials (HPC-A). Remarkably, these fascinating structure features of the HGPC-A enable the high charge storage performance as the electrode for supercapacitor, highlighted by a high specific capacitance of 311 F g−1 with superior rate capability of 64.3% when the current density increased from 0.5 A g−1 to 20 A g−1. Moreover, the integrated symmetric supercapacitor using the HGPC-A electrodes displays superb cycling durability of 88.5% over 10,000 cycles and high charge storage capacity of 7.0 Wh kg−1.

Bacterial protein secretion represents a significant challenge in biotechnology, which is essential for the cost‐effective production of therapeutics, enzymes, and other functional proteins. Here, it is demonstrated that proteomics‐guided engineering of transcription, translation, secretion, and folding of ligninolytic laccase balances the process, minimizes the toxicity, and enables efficient heterologous secretion with a total protein yield of 13.7 g L−1. The secretory laccase complements the biochemical limits on lignin depolymerization well in Rhodococcus opacus PD630. Further proteomics analysis reveals the mechanisms for the oleaginous phenotype of R. opacus PD630, where a distinct multiunit fatty acid synthase I drives the carbon partition to storage lipid. The discovery guides the design of efficient lipid conversion from lignin and carbohydrate. The proteomics‐guided integration of laccase‐secretion and lipid production modules enables a high titer in converting lignin‐enriched biorefinery waste to lipid. The fundamental mechanisms, engineering components, and design principle can empower transformative platforms for biomanufacturing and biorefining.

This study aimed to determine the prevalence of comorbid Internet addiction (IA) and mood symptoms and to identify common and unique risk profiles for individual and comorbid mental health problems among adolescents. A total of 2272 high school students in Changchun, China, were included in a cross-sectional study. Participants were asked to complete paper-based questionnaires on sociodemographic characteristics, lifestyle factors, Internet use, parent-child relationships, IA, and mood symptoms. Multivariate logistic regressions were used to compare the risk profiles for IA, mood symptoms, and their comorbidity. The Bonferroni correction was used for multiple tests. Students who were girls, were current smokers, had more than 1.5 h sleep deprivation per day on weekdays, used the Internet for more than 30 and 240 min per day on weekdays and weekends, respectively, used social networking sites more than 6 times per day, were Internet gamers, and/or reported poor parent-child relationships reported higher rates of comorbid IA and mood symptoms. Adolescents exposed to more of these correlates would have a higher risk of IA, mood symptoms, and their comorbidity. Public strategies for the prevention of mental illnesses should expand their capacity to identify and limit the co-occurrence of IA and mood symptoms.

The red raspberry, Rubus idaeus, is widely distributed in all temperate regions of Europe, Asia, and North America and is a major commercial fruit valued for its taste, high antioxidant and vitamin content. However, Rubus breeding is a long and slow process hampered by limited genomic and molecular resources. Genomic resources such as a complete genome sequencing and transcriptome will be of exceptional value to improve research and breeding of this high value crop. Using a hybrid sequence assembly approach including data from both long and short sequence reads, we present the first assembly of the Rubus idaeus genome (Joan J. variety). The de novo assembled genome consists of 2,145 scaffolds with a genome completeness of 95.3% and an N50 score of 638 KB. Leveraging a linkage map, we anchored 80.1% of the genome onto seven chromosomes. Using over 1 billion paired-end RNAseq reads, we annotated 35,566 protein coding genes with a transcriptome completeness score of 97.2%. The Rubus idaeus genome provides an important new resource for researchers and breeders.

There has been a limited number of systematic reviews conducted to summarize the overview of the relationship between DNA methylation and depression, and to critically appraise the roles of major study characteristics in the accuracy of study findings. This systematic review aims to critically appraise the impact of study characteristics on the association between DNA methylation and depression, and summarize the overview of this association. Electronic databases and gray literatures until December 2017 were searched for English-language studies with standard diagnostic criteria of depression. A total of 67 studies were included in this review along with a summary of their study characteristics. We grouped the findings into etiological and treatment studies. Majority of these selected studies were recently published and from developed countries. Whole blood samples were the most studied common tissues. Bisulfite conversion, along with pyrosequencing, was widely used to test the DNA methylation level across all the studies. High heterogeneity existed among the studies in terms of experimental and statistical methodologies and study designs. As recommended by the Cochrane guideline, a systematic review without meta-analysis should be undertaken. This review has, in general, found that DNA methylation modifications were associated with depression. Subgroup analyses showed that most studies found BDNF and SLC6A4 hypermethylations to be associated with MDD or depression in general. In contrast, studies on NR3C1, OXTR, and other genes, which were tested by only few studies, reported mixed findings. More longitudinal studies using standardized experimental and laboratory methodologies are needed in future studies to enable more systematical comparisons and quantitative synthesis.

The development of high-resolution remote-sensing satellites is paving a promising path towards autonomous orbit determination using optical imagery. In this article, an image-based orbit determination strategy is investigated with a focus on the effects of lighting constraints, image resolution, and pointing accuracy on orbit determination performance. The measurement model is established based on the perspective projection and its observability is demonstrated. To investigate the influence of lighting constraints, four cases of simulations considering no lighting constraints, either cloud-coverage constraint or night-time constraint, or both constraints are conducted for the WorldView-3 satellite. The obtained root-mean square RMS errors of position and velocity in the four cases remain below 10.83 m and 1.42 cm , respectively, at an image resolution of 0.3 m and a pointing accuracy of 0.0005 . By varying the values of image resolution and pointing accuracy, the effects of these two factors and their relative importance are further investigated. The final results indicate that pointing accuracy plays a dominant role in image-based orbit determination for high-resolution remote-sensing satellites.

The creep properties of a nickel-based superalloy at 700 °C and 690 MPa resulting from differing aging heat treatments have been investigated. The heat treatments gave rise to significantly different tertiary γ′ precipitate distributions which in turn influence the propensity for precipitate shearing. The creep life was found to decrease with an increase of volume fraction of tertiary γ′. It is shown that the γ′ precipitates undergo shearing by matrix dislocations resulting in residual stacking faults which have been identified from TEM studies. A physically-based crystal slip model for creep deformation in FGH96 has been developed. A critical γ′ precipitate size is found to exist above which precipitate shearing occurs by strongly-coupled dislocations pairs. The critical size for FGH96 superalloy is less than 15 nm, which is smaller than most of the γ′ precipitates in the aged treated samples. A bimodal precipitate hardening model has been presented from which the slip strength resulting from differing heat treatments may be determined. Creep strain rate is found to decrease with increasing slip strength. The crystal slip model successfully captures the effect of heat treatment (in terms of γ′ precipitate distributions) on resulting creep behaviour in alloy FGH96.

In this paper, a novel semi-analytical approach is developed for solving minimum-time and minimum-fuel low-thrust transfers to geosynchronous orbit. The proposed method is mainly based on two intuitive control strategies, with one focusing on the instantaneous variation of orbit elements, and the other concerning the cumulative effect of thrust force. By optimizing the objective functions of the two strategies, analytical thrust-steering laws are derived for each case. With the use of a refined efficiency factor, thrust arc locations can also be optimized during the transfer. In addition, selection of weights and other parameters further improves the performance of the resulting trajectories. Finally, two examples of transfers are presented. The computed trajectories are very close to, or even better than the optimal results obtained from the traditional direct and indirect techniques. Due to its simplicity and good performance, the proposed method would be particularly useful for preliminary mission analysis.

BackgroundAsymmetric allele expression typically indicates functional and/or structural features associated with the underlying genetic variants. When integrated, RNA and DNA allele frequencies can reveal patterns characteristic of a wide-range of biological traits, including ploidy changes, genome admixture, allele-specific expression and gene-dosage transcriptional response.ResultsTo assess RNA and DNA allele frequencies from matched sequencing datasets, we introduce a method for generating model distributions of variant allele frequencies (VAF) with a given variant read probability. In contrast to other methods, based on whole sequences or single SNV, proposed methodology uses continuous multi-SNV genomic regions. The methodology is implemented in a GeTallele toolbox that provides a suite of functions for integrative analysis, statistical assessment and visualization of Genome and Transcriptome allele frequencies. Using model VAF probabilities, GeTallele allows estimation and comparison of variant read probabilities (VAF distributions) in a sequencing dataset. We demonstrate this functionality across cancer DNA and RNA sequencing datasets.ConclusionBased on our evaluation, variant read probabilities can serve as a dependable indicator to assess gene and chromosomal allele asymmetries and to aid calls of genomic events in matched sequencing RNA and DNA datasets.ContactP.M.Slowinski@exeter.ac.uk

MotivationBy testing for association of DNA genotypes with gene expression levels, expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) analyses have been instrumental in understanding how thousands of single nucleotide variants (SNVs) may affect gene expression. As compared to DNA genotypes, RNA genetic variation represents a phenotypic trait that reflects the actual allele content of the studied system. RNA genetic variation can be measured at expressed genome regions, and differs from the DNA genotype in sites subjected to regulatory forces. Therefore, assessment of correlation between RNA genetic variation and gene expression can reveal regulatory genomic relationships in addition to eQTLs.ResultsWe introduce ReQTL, an eQTL modification which substitutes the DNA allele count for the variant allele frequency (VAF) at expressed SNV loci in the transcriptome. We exemplify the method on sets of RNA-sequencing data from human tissues obtained though the Genotype-Tissue Expression Project (GTEx) and demonstrate that ReQTL analyses show consistently high performance and sufficient power to identify both previously known and novel molecular associations. The majority of the SNVs implicated in significant cis-ReQTLs identified by our analysis were previously reported as significant cis-eQTL loci. Notably, trans ReQTL loci in our data were substantially enriched in RNA-editing sites. In summary, ReQTL analyses are computationally feasible and do not require matched DNA data, hence they have a high potential to facilitate the discovery of novel molecular interactions through exploration of the increasingly accessible RNA-sequencing datasets.Availability and implementationSample scripts used in our ReQTL analyses are available with the Supplementary Material (ReQTL_sample_code).Contacthorvatha@gwu.edu or lfspurr@gwmail.gwu.eduSupplementary InformationRe_QTL_Supplementary_Data.zip

Children's mental health problems substantially impact their functioning. For clinically treated children and adolescents, we explored the impact of mental health treatment on functioning and identified predictors of functional improvement. Outpatient clinical data from a regional publicly funded specialist outpatient treatment clinic were analyzed. The Child and Adolescent Functional Assessment Scale (CAFAS) was used to assess outcomes. Non-parametric tests were used to compare baseline and exit scores. Logistic regression analysis was used separately for children and adolescents to examine predictors of improvement. Total CAFAS scores at exit showed a significant decrease from initial scores for both age groups, indicating improvements in clients’ functioning. Children and adolescents had shared predictors for initial level of dysfunction, length of treatment and the presence of pervasive behavioral impairment (PBI). Primary presenting problem, caregiver support and area of residence were only associated with outcome among children. Clients with higher initial levels of dysfunction and PBI require longer treatment cycles to reach an acceptable outcome. Shortening the length of treatment cycles may improve the efficiency of resource use but can be detrimental to some clients. Personalized treatment should be tailored to the clients with specific characteristics and needs.

Few information of the function of stearoyl-coenzyme A (CoA) desaturase (SCD) in apicomplaxan parasite has been obtained. In this study, we retrieved a putative fatty acyl-CoA desaturase (TGGT1_238950) by a protein alignment with Plasmodium falciparum SCD in ToxoDB. A typical Δ9-desaturase domain was revealed in this protein. The putative desaturase was tagged with HA endogenously in Toxoplasma gondii, and the endoplasmic reticulum localization of the putative desaturase was revealed, which was consistent with the fatty acid desaturases in other organisms. Therefore, the TGGT1_238950 was designated T. gondii SCD. Based on CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology, SCD conditional knockout mutants in the T. gondii TATi strain were obtained. The growth in vitro and pathogenicity in mice of the mutants suggested that SCD might be dispensable for tachyzoite growth and proliferation. The SCD-overexpressing line was constructed to further explore SCD function. The portion of palmitoleic acid and oleic acid were increased in SCD-overexpressing parasites, compared with the RH parental strain, indicating that T. gondii indeed is competent for unsaturated fatty acid synthesis. The SCD-overexpressing tachyzoites propagated slower than the parental strain, with a decreased invasion capability and weaker pathogenicity in mice. The TgIF2α phosphorylation and the expression changes of several genes demonstrated that ER stress was triggered in the SCD-overexpressing parasites, which were more apt toward autophagy and apoptosis. The function of unsaturated fatty acid synthesis of TgSCD was consistent with our hypothesis. On the other hand, SCD might also be involved in tachyzoite autophagy and apoptosis.

Imbalanced expression of somatic alleles in cancer can suggest functional and selective features, and can therefore indicate possible driving potential of the underlying genetic variants. To explore the correlation between allele frequency of somatic variants and total gene expression of their harboring gene, we used the unique data set of matched tumor and normal RNA and DNA sequencing data of 5523 distinct single nucleotide variants in 381 individuals across 10 cancer types obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We analyzed the allele frequency in the context of the variant and gene functional features and linked it with changes in the total gene expression. We documented higher allele frequency of somatic variants in cancer-implicated genes (Cancer Gene Census, CGC). Furthermore, somatic alleles bearing premature terminating variants (PTVs), when positioned in CGC genes, appeared to be less frequently degraded via nonsense-mediated mRNA decay, indicating possible favoring of truncated proteins by the tumor transcriptome. Among the genes with multiple PTVs with high allele frequency, ARID1, TP53 and NSD1 were known key cancer genes. All together, our analyses suggest that high allele frequency of tumor somatic variants can indicate driving functionality and can serve to identify potential cancer-implicated genes.

Different cooling paths from a supersolvus temperature have been applied to FGH96, a polycrystalline nickel base superalloy for turbine disc applications, in order to simulate the different microstructures that exist through the thickness of a disc following an industrial heat treatment. Secondary and tertiary γ′ precipitate size distributions and morphology have been analysed and compared for the different heat treatments using SEM and atom probe tomography (APT). Detailed compositional data for both γ′ precipitate and γ matrix are presented, and compared to equilibrium compositions calculated by Thermo-Calc. For the heat-treatments studied, the secondary γ′ composition indicates a shell of differing composition to that towards the precipitate core. From sequential equilibria compositional calculations, it is suggested that the ‘shell’ forms at a lower temperature than the precipitate core. The fine tertiary precipitates do not show the core-shell compositional differences on continuous cooling. W peaks are noted at the γ/γ′ interfacial region, which is of significance for retarding coarsening. A γ′ depletion zone surrounds the secondary precipitates, within which the γ matrix composition differs significantly to the γ far-field values, Finally, a precipitate nucleation and growth mechanistic model is suggested based on the experimental data and Thermo-Calc calculations.

Different cooling paths from a supersolvus temperature have been applied to FGH96, a polycrystalline nickel base superalloy for turbine disc applications, in order to simulate the different microstructures that exist through the thickness of a disc following an industrial heat treatment. The microstructures have been evaluated in terms of γ’ size distribution, morphology and volume fraction for the different heat treatments using SEM and post digital image software. The results illustrate that γ’ size decreases with cooling rate and interrupted cooling leads to a higher tertiary γ’ but lower secondary γ’ volume fraction. The heat treated samples were creep tested under 690 MPa at 700 °C. It was found that the creep response it inversely proportional to secondary γ’ size. Tertiary γ’ volume fraction was also found having a great impact on the material's creep properties. The TEM micrographs show that matrix dislocations could be the precursor of microtwin formation and creep deformation modes are closely related to tertiary γ’ precipitates. Tertiary γ’ size determines whether a/2 dislocations shear or dissociate before entering tertiary γ’ and the tertiary γ’ volume fraction determines how matrix dislocation dissociates. A CPFE model has been developed based on the experimental results. The simulation results for both the single element and the poly-crystalline model indicated that the modelled secondary stage creep rate is in very good agreement with the experimental results. The modelling enables the consequences of this to be investigated for representative different spatial microstructural disc conditions.

The basic metabolic cytochrome P450 (CYP) proteins are essential for the biotransformation of sterols and xenobiotics. By contrast, the Toxoplasma gondii genome contains only one CYP gene, and the role of this enzyme in the physiology and biochemistry of apicomplexan parasites is unknown. Because it is a potential resistance gene, identifying the functionality of P450 in T. gondii is particularly important. Knocking out Tg-P450 had no significant effect on T. gondii survival, but mice infected with parasites overexpressing Tg-P450 exhibited significantly enhanced pathogenicity. Enzyme activity analyses demonstrated that this protein has mammalian CYP2B and CYP3A enzymatic activity. In addition, T. gondii lacking the P450 gene exhibited reduced resistance to quinine, mefloquine and clarithromycin compared with parasites overexpressing Tg-P450. These results suggest that P450 functions in T. gondii metabolism and detoxification is involved in vitally important processes in parasitic organisms, making this enzyme a potential drug target.

Proteomics studies of fungal systems have progressed dramatically based on the availability of more fungal genome sequences in recent years. Different proteomics strategies have been applied toward characterization of fungal proteome and revealed important gene functions and proteome dynamics. Presented here is the application of shot-gun proteomic technology to study the bio-remediation of environmental hazards by white-rot fungus. Lignin, a naturally abundant component of the plant biomass, is discovered to promote the degradation of Azo dye by white-rot fungus Irpex lacteus CD2 in the lignin/dye/fungus system. Shotgun proteomics technique was used to understand degradation mechanism at the protein level for the lignin/dye/fungus system. Our proteomics study can identify about two thousand proteins (one third of the predicted white-rot fungal proteome) in a single experiment, as one of the most powerful proteomics platforms to study the fungal system to date. The study shows a significant enrichment of oxidoreduction functional category under the dye/lignin combined treatment. An in vitro validation is performed and supports our hypothesis that the synergy of Fenton reaction and manganese peroxidase might play an important role in DR5B dye degradation. The results could guide the development of effective bioremediation strategies and efficient lignocellulosic biomass conversion.

Neospora caninum, of the Apicomplexa phylum, is a common cause of abortions in cattle and nervous system dysfunction in dogs. Rhoptry proteins (ROPs) of Apicomplexa play an important role in virulence. The objectives of this study were to study functions of NcROP5 in N. caninum by deleting the NcROP5 gene from the wild Nc-1 strain. We selected NcROP5 in ToxoDB and successfully constructed an NcROP5 gene-deleted vector, pTCR-NcROP5-CD KO. Then we screened the NcROP5 knockout strains (ΔNcROP5) at the gene, protein and transcription levels. Plaque assay, host cell invasion assay and intracellular proliferation test showed that the ΔNcROP5 strain had less plaque space, weakened invasion capacity and slower intracellular growth. Animal testing showed significantly lower cerebral load of ΔNcROP5 than the load of the Nc-1 strain, as well as a loss of virulence for the ΔNcROP5 strains. Phenotypic analyses using the label-free LC-MS/MS assay-based proteomic method and KEGG pathway enrichment analysis showed a reduction of NcGRA7 transcription and altered expression of multiple proteins including the apicomplexan family of binding proteins. The present study indicated that ROP5 is a key virulence factor in N. caninum in mice. The proteomic profiling of Nc-1 and ΔNcROP5 provided some data on differential proteins. These data provide a foundation for future research of protein functions in N. caninum.

Camera tracking is an important application in the computer vision. With the progress of the tracking-by-detection algorithm, industrial cameras can track targets autonomously. However, during the long-time tracking, it’s prone to miss target owing to heavy object occlusion, environment changing and objects appearance variations. Our camera tracking system is based on the kernelized correlation filter to track object, and we add a self-verification module to judge if the current tracking results are reliable. This can be useful in solving target missing when object meets occlusion or variations, and avoid model drift during long-time detection. Last but not the least, we keep the targets in the corner of the image by controlling our camera, avoiding object’s moving out of view. The kernel correlation filter bounded with self-verification and re-detection modules boost the performance. Extensive experiments on the OTB-2013 benchmark show that it performs better than state-of-the-art methods.

Industrial transformation and upgrading is rich in implications. There are three levels of a complete industrial transformation and upgrade. The first is structural adjustment—or transformation and upgrading within an industry—which is a process of promoting the value chain of enterprises’ products and the accompanying escalation and extension of enterprises’ value chain from manufacturing to development and design, branding, and the marketing of products. The second is cross-industrial upgrading, which entails structural change among different industries and the transformation from traditionally labor-intensive, low processing, low value-added manufacturing to that of emerging industries. The third level is the adjustment of the structures and positions of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries in the national economy. Essentially, industrial transformation and upgrading includes both the rationalization and advancement of the industrial structures overall. It is an ongoing process that starts with the product escalation within an enterprise, proceeds to the flow of resource stocks between industries that impels the changes of industrial scales, to the transformation of industrial structures from the lowest level to the highest level, and finally ends with the adjustment and transition of the industrial organizations and structures.

The nonaqueous-phase liquid (NAPL)–water interfacial area and the mass transfer rate across the NAPL and water interface are often key factors in in situ groundwater pollution treatment. In this study, the NAPL–water interfacial area and residual NAPL saturation were measured using interfacial and partitioning tracer tests in a two-dimensional flow cell. The results were compared with previous column and field experiment results. In addition, the mass transfer rates at various NAPL–water interfacial areas were investigated. Fe2+-activated persulfate was used for in situ chemical oxidation remediation to remove NAPL gradually. The results showed that the reduction of NAPL–water interfacial areas as well as NAPL saturation by chemical oxidation caused a linear decrease in the interphase mass transfer rates (R2 = 0.97), revealing the relationship between mass transfer rates and interfacial areas in a two-dimensional system. The NAPL oxidation rates decreased with the reduction of interfacial areas, owing to the control of NAPL mass transfer into the aqueous phase.

Chlorophytum leaves were treated with three kinds of chemical mutagen, EMS, DES and NaN3 with different concentration to obtain the variation materials with excellent properties. The results showed that the genetic similarity coefficient of variation plants with EMS treatment was between 0.648 and 0.868, with NaN3 treatment was between 0.598 and 0.859, and with DES treatment was between 0.668 and 0.904, of which the mutagenic effects with 0.8% EMS, 250 mg. L-1 NaN3 and 0.3% DES on chloro- phytum were the best. ISSR molecular marker technique was used to analyze their genetic diversities. Total 392 polymorphic bands were obtained through 18 ISSR primers. Polymorphic ratio was 72.4%, which showed that DNA mutation took place in various degrees

The non-magnetostrictive magnetoelectric (ME) effect was realized in a simple ferromagnetic–elastic–piezoelectric (FEP) composite. The FEP composite comprised two piezoceramic Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT) plates and NdFeB magnets elastically coupled by a cantilever beam made of phosphor copper-sheet. The effects of the beam length on the ME coefficient and the linear relationship between the ME voltage output and the applied magnetic field at the resonant frequency were experimentally investigated. A notably superior ME coefficient of 3800 V/cm Oe at extremely low resonant frequency of 5.524 Hz was obtained for the FEP composite with the phosphor copper-sheet beam length of 8 cm. Such a composite structure shows the possibility to obtain a magnetic sensor element with ultrahigh sensitivity in low frequency range. The results are of great importance for the basic understanding of the new way to realize giant ME effect and the optimal design of such a composite structure with high ME coefficient.

Biocompatible, highly interconnected microporous poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA) foams or scaffolds with nano-fibrous structure, containing pores with diameters of 0.1-3.5 μm and fibers with diameters of 300-700 nm scale, were prepared through the thermally induced liquid-liquid phase separation (TIPS) method using N,N'-dimethyl acetamide (DMAc) as solvent. Various foam morphologies were obtained by changing parameters involved in the TIPS process, such as polymer concentration, solvent composition, and quenching temperatures. The morphology of different foams was examined by scanning electron microscopy, whereas the pore size and the pore size distribution were calculated. The results showed that most porous foams presented nano-fibrous structure with interconnected open pores. In the case of using DMAc as solvent, with increasing polymer concentration, either the average pore diameter or the pore size distribution exhibited a maximum value at 0.05 g/mL polymer concentration and quenching temperature of -30°C. It was found that all the pore size distribution fit the F-distribution equation. With increasing the quenching temperature from -30°C to -10°C, the maximum average pore diameter of the foams decreased and the pore size distribution became narrower, whereas the polymer concentration exhibiting the maximum pore size and widest pore size distribution increased from 0.05 g/mL to 0.07 g/mL. In the case of using the mixed solvent of DMAc/DOX (1,4-dioxane) from 9/1 to 7/3 (v/v) there appeared a maximum value of average pore diameter and a widest pore size distribution all at 0.05 g/mL PLLA concentration and quenching temperature of -30°C. The maximum pore size tends to increase with increasing DOX content.

We had studied the purification and characterization of β-glucosidase from Lentinula edodes, and its activity of hydrolyzing genistin and daidzin. The beta-glucosidase was extracted from an edible mushrooms L. edodes fruiting body and concentrated 26.5-fold by (NH4)2SO4 precipitation, followed by CM-Sephadex C-50 and Sephacryl S-300 HR chromatography. The purified enzyme showed a single 66 kd band on SDS-PAGE. The optimal enzyme activity occurred at 60°C and pH 4.0 in hydrolysis of genistin, daidzin and p-NPG. The enzyme activity was completely inhibited by 5 mM Ag+, Cu2+ or Al3+, respectively. The enzyme had apparent the Km values of 0.347, 0.070 and 0.150 mM and Vmax values of 84878, 225 and 639 nkat•mg of protein-1 for the hydrolysis of p-NPG, genistin and daidzin, respectively, at 60°C and pH 5.0. All tested organic solvents inhibited the β-glucosidase activity on hydrolysis of genistin and daidzin. The hydrolysis efficiency of daidzin and genistin could come up to 97 and 92%, respectively with enough enzyme addition. These experiments demonstrate that β-glucosidase from L. edodes has high activities for hydrolysis of daidzin and genistin, and are likely to be used in the transformation of isoflavone glucosides into aglucones. Key words: Lentinula edodes, glucosidase, hydrolysis, daidzin, genistin.

A new mononuclear nickel(II) complex, [NiL2] (HL = ((2-(5-fluoro-2-hydroxybenzyl)(2-(imidazole-2-yl)ethyl))imine), has been synthesized and characterized by IR, UV–vis and X-ray diffraction technique. The X-ray crystal structure of the complex shows that the coordination environment around Ni(II) ion is an approximate octahedron. Each molecule connects with four adjacent neighbors through strong hydrogen bonding interactions (N–H···O, d(N–O) = 2.687 A and ∠N–H···O = 158.3(1)°), forming a supramolecular network. The interaction of the complex with DNA was monitored using agarose gel electrophoresis. The results show that the complex has DNA cleavage activity. The cyclic voltammogram shows one pair of anodic and cathodic peaks with E1/2 = −1.06 V, assigned to the Ni(II)/Ni(I) couple.

Toxoplasma gondii is a major opportunistic pathogen that spreads in a range of animal species and human beings. Quite a few characterizations of apoptosis have been identified in T. gondii treated with apoptosis inducers, but the molecular mechanisms of the pathway are not clearly understood. Metacaspases are caspase-like cysteine proteases that can be found in plants, fungi, and protozoa in which caspases are absent. Metacaspases are multifunctional proteases involved in apoptosis-like cell death, insoluble protein aggregate clearance, and cell proliferation. To investigate whether T. gondii metacaspase (TgMCA) is involved in the apoptosis of the parasites, we generated TgMCA mutant strains. Western blot analysis indicated that the autoproteolytic processing of TgMCA was the same as that for metacaspases of some other species. Indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA) showed that TgMCA was dispersed throughout the cytoplasm and relocated to the nucleus when the parasites were exposed to the extracellular environment, which indicated the execution of its function in the nucleus. The number of apoptosis parasites was significantly diminished in the TgMCA knockout strain and increased in the TgMCA overexpression strain after treatment with extracellular buffer, as determined by the terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) assay. The lack of TgMCA did not affect the parasite propagation in vitro and virulence in vivo, suggesting that it is probably redundant in parasite propagation. But overexpression of TgMCA reduced the intracellular parasites growth in vitro. The TgMCA knockout strain showed more viability in extracellular buffer compared to the parental and overexpression lines. In this study, we demonstrated that TgMCA contributes to the apoptosis of T. gondii.

High mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) is a nuclear factor that usually binds DNA and modulates gene expression in multicellular organisms. Three HMGB1 orthologs were predicted in the genome of Toxoplasma gondii, an obligate intracellular protozoan pathogen, termed TgHMGB1a, b and c. Phylogenetic and bioinformatic analyses indicated that these proteins all contain a single HMG box and which shared in three genotypes. We cloned TgHMGB1a, a 33.9 kDa protein that can stimulates macrophages to release TNF-α, and, we demonstrated that the TgHMGB1a binds distorted DNA structures such as cruciform DNA in electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA). Immunofluorescence assay indicated TgHMGB1a concentrated in the nucleus of intracellular tachyzoites but translocated into the cytoplasm while the parasites release to extracellular. There were no significant phenotypic changes when the TgHMGB1a B box was deleted, while transgenic parasites that overexpressed TgHMGB1a showed slower intracellular growth and caused delayed death in mouse, further quantitative RT-PCR analyses showed that the expression levels of many important genes, including virulence factors, increased when TgHMGB1a was overexpressed, but no significant changes were observed in TgHMGB1a B box-deficient parasites. Our findings demonstrated that TgHMGB1a is indeed a nuclear protein that maintains HMG box architectural functions and is a potential proinflammatory factor during the T.gondii infection. Further studies that clarify the functions of TgHMGB1s will increase our knowledge of transcriptional regulation and parasite virulence, and might provide new insight into host–parasite interactions for T. gondii infection.

We introduce RNA2DNAlign, a computational framework for quantitative assessment of allele counts across paired RNA and DNA sequencing datasets. RNA2DNAlign is based on quantitation of the relative abundance of variant and reference read counts, followed by binomial tests for genotype and allelic status at SNV positions between compatible sequences. RNA2DNAlign detects positions with differential allele distribution, suggesting asymmetries due to regulatory/structural events. Based on the type of asymmetry, RNA2DNAlign outlines positions likely to be implicated in RNA editing, allele-specific expression or loss, somatic mutagenesis or loss-of-heterozygosity (the first three also in a tumor-specific setting). We applied RNA2DNAlign on 360 matching normal and tumor exomes and transcriptomes from 90 breast cancer patients from TCGA. Under high-confidence settings, RNA2DNAlign identified 2038 distinct SNV sites associated with one of the aforementioned asymetries, the majority of which have not been linked to functionality before. The performance assessment shows very high specificity and sensitivity, due to the corroboration of signals across multiple matching datasets. RNA2DNAlign is freely available from http://github.com/HorvathLab/NGS as a self-contained binary package for 64-bit Linux systems.

Traffic congestion in urban road network heavily restricts transportation efficiency.Detecting traffic congestions in the spatio-temporal sense and identifying network bottlenecks become an important task in transportation management.Up to now,many traffic congestion detection methods have been proposed,which have focused on the detection of momentary local congestions.Larger-scale,longer-time and regular congestions can't be detected using these methods.That is because congestions have different temporo-spatial scales,and a characteristic is not considered in those methods.This paper proposes a new kind of urban traffic congestion detection method that deals with spatio-temporal extension of congestion.It is based on spatio-temporal clustering analysis of real-time traffic data.By defining a proper spatio-temporal correlation,the classic DBSCAN algorithm is adapted to tackle spatio-temporal clustering.With it we can detect longer time and regular traffic congestion in the spatio-temporal sense.Experiments have been conducted using real traffic condition data of Chengdu to validate the effectiveness of the method.The experiment shows that the proposed method can detect the congestion areas and identify the spatio-temporal extent of congestions accurately.The detected congestion areas were compared with congestion report from local traffic management authority and found to be consistent with the later.

Generalization of road network is one of the focuses in map generalization.Road network generalization can be considered as the combination of two processes.One is selective omission,and the other is the simplification of selected roads.Selective omission is the key process,in which it is hard to maintain the overall and key local structures of original networks.Many solutions have been proposed for road selective omission.But previous solutions cannot maintain these structures in the process of selective omission.It will solve the problem if we can build the hierarchical structure of road networks and make selection based on the structure.This paper presents a novel method for selective omission.The method first builds the hierarchical structure of road networks.It is based on Hierarchical Random Graph(HRG) which transforms a graph into a dendrogram,which is widely used in complex networks.HRG goes beyond simple clustering and provides clustering information at all levels of granularity for visualization.But HRG is over detailed for multi-scale representation as its dendrogram usually contains tens or even more layers.So,after building HRG of road networks,we propose a measure named Accumulated Probability Number(APN) to simply HRG hierarchy.APN reflects the importance of each road in the whole network.It should be noted that we use road 'strokes' as vertices and the connections between them as edges when transforming a road network into a graph.The proposed approach is validated with case studies of road network generalization.Different patterns of road networks are considered including grid,ring-star-hybrid,grid-star-hybrid,irregular patterns.The corresponding Google Map is used as the reference for evaluation of road selection.The results of APN-based selection match well with the reference.

Road traffic condition constantly changes in both spatial and temporal domains.Traffic information of high spatiotemporal resolution is valuable to the study of road traffic dynamics.However,the massive data volume of high resolution traffic information of large spatiotemporal extent introduces difficulties in data organization and management.Actually,there is no well-accepted spatiotemporal data model specialized for management of such data that is effective in terms of data storage and access efficiencies.To overcome such drawbacks,this paper proposes a base state amendment model(BSAM) for dynamic traffic condition,which is based on linear referencing system.The model utilizes the basic strategy of BSAM to do lossless data compression in the time dimension while compresses data in the spatial domain by utilizing linear referencing system(LRS) and dynamic segmentation.In addition,road stroke instead of road segment is used for route identification in the LRS to further reduce data volume.We validate the effectiveness of the proposed model through its use in traffic condition data modeling in Chengdu urban area.Six variants of the proposed model and their characteristics are analyzed and compared.The six variants of the proposed model are denoted as BSAMa,BSAMb,BSAMc,BSAMd,BSAMe and BSAMf,respectively(see section 3).The main differences between them are in the number of base states,time interval between two base states and the number of non-base states.Data storage and accessing efficiencies of the six variants are qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed.The results indicate that BSAMf(see Fig.4) has the optimal storage and accessing efficiencies for the data used.Furthermore,a method is suggested to estimate the number of non-base states between successive base states in the BSAMf model,which is based on the dynamic characteristics of the traffic condition data.With the data of Chengdu,it is demonstrated that two non-base states between successive base states is the most appropriate pattern for BSAMf in terms of data storage and accessing efficiencies.In sum,the experiment results demonstrate that the proposed BSAM for traffic condition data is effective and efficient.

Supplemental material, Appendix_2-4_Covariance_of_CECA.Q3 for Development and Validation of a Brief Form of the Childhood Adversities Questionnaire Among a Population of Mood Disorders by Muzi Li, Tamara Cassis, Carl D’Arcy, Nancy Low and Xiangfei Meng in Journal of Interpersonal Violence

Supplemental material, Appendix_1_CECA.Q3_psych_abuse for Development and Validation of a Brief Form of the Childhood Adversities Questionnaire Among a Population of Mood Disorders by Muzi Li, Tamara Cassis, Carl D’Arcy, Nancy Low and Xiangfei Meng in Journal of Interpersonal Violence

Supplemental material, Appendix_2-4_Covariance_of_CECA.Q3 for Development and Validation of a Brief Form of the Childhood Adversities Questionnaire Among a Population of Mood Disorders by Muzi Li, Tamara Cassis, Carl D’Arcy, Nancy Low and Xiangfei Meng in Journal of Interpersonal Violence

Supplemental material, Appendix_1_CECA.Q3_psych_abuse for Development and Validation of a Brief Form of the Childhood Adversities Questionnaire Among a Population of Mood Disorders by Muzi Li, Tamara Cassis, Carl D’Arcy, Nancy Low and Xiangfei Meng in Journal of Interpersonal Violence

A simulation strategy based in the finite element model was developed to model the corrosion and mechanical properties of biodegradable Mg scaffolds manufactured by laser power bed fusion after immersion in simulated body fluid. Corrosion was simulated through a phenomenological, diffusion-based model which can take into account pitting. The elements in which the concentration of Mg was below a certain threshold (representative of the formation of Mg(OH)2) after the corrosion simulation were deleted for the mechanical simulations, in which Mg was assumed to behave as an isotropic, elastic-perfectly plastic solid and fracture was introduced through a ductile failure model. The parameters of the models were obtained from previous experimental results and the numerical predictions of the strength and fracture mechanisms of WE43 Mg alloy porous scaffolds in the as-printed condition and after immersion in simulated body fluid were in good agreement with the experimental results. Thus, the simulation strategy is able to assess the effect of corrosion on the mechanical behavior of biodegradable scaffolds, which is critical for design of biodegradable scaffolds for biomedical applications.