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We cloned the GbABR1 gene from highly resistant Gossypium barbadense Xinhai15 based on the candidate genes screened by transcriptome sequencing that were related to resistance to Verticillium wilt. A sequence characteristic analysis showed that GbABR1 was an ERF subfamily B4 member and was a new member of the AP2 family of sea-island cotton. The GbABR1 gene was expressed highly in roots compared with the levels in leaves and stems in cotton. Expression was enhanced significantly in cotton after infection by Verticillium dahliae, indicating that GbABR1 probably plays an important role in the response to biotic stress. The results of subcellular localisation showed that GFP:GbABR1 was localised to the nucleus. GbABR1 silencing via the virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) method indicated that the incidence of disease and the disease index in VIGS-silenced plants were much higher than in the control after infection by Verticillium dahliae. The GbABR1-overexpressing Arabidopsis plants showed similar resistance to Verticillium dahliae compared to the wild type. These results indicate that the GbABR1 gene plays a positive role in resistance to Verticillium wilt. The GbABR1-overexpressing Arabidopsis plants presented dwarfism, early maturation and early bolting compared with wild-type plants, suggesting that GbABR1 also participates in growth and development.

In insects, juvenile hormone (JH) and the steroid hormone ecdysone have opposing effects on regulation of the larval–pupal transition. Although increasing evidence suggests that JH represses ecdysone biosynthesis during larval development, the mechanism underlying this repression is not well understood. Here, we demonstrate that the expression of the Kruppel homolog 1 (Kr-h1), a gene encoding a transcription factor that mediates JH signaling, in ecdysone-producing organ prothoracic gland (PG) represses ecdysone biosynthesis by directly inhibiting the transcription of steroidogenic enzymes in both Drosophila and Bombyx. Application of a JH mimic on ex vivo cultured PGs from Drosophila and Bombyx larvae induces Kr-h1 expression and inhibits the transcription of steroidogenic enzymes. In addition, PG-specific knockdown of Drosophila Kr-h1 promotes—while overexpression hampers—ecdysone production and pupariation. We further find that Kr-h1 inhibits the transcription of steroidogenic enzymes by directly binding to their promoters to induce promoter DNA methylation. Finally, we show that Kr-h1 does not affect DNA replication in Drosophila PG cells and that the reduction of PG size mediated by Kr-h1 overexpression can be rescued by feeding ecdysone. Taken together, our data indicate direct and conserved Kr-h1 repression of insect ecdysone biosynthesis in response to JH stimulation, providing insights into mechanisms underlying the antagonistic roles of JH and ecdysone.

Motivated by the stringent requirements on delay performance in data center networks, we study a connection-level model for bandwidth sharing among data transfer flows, where file sizes have phase-type distributions and proportionally fair bandwidth allocation is used. We analyze the expected number of files in steady-state by setting the steady-state drift of an appropriately chosen Lyapunov function equal to zero. We consider the heavy-traffic regime and obtain asymptotically tight bounds on the expected number of files in the system. Our results show that the expected number of files under proportionally fair bandwidth allocation is insensitive in heavy traffic to file size distributions, thus complementing the diffusion approximation result of Vlasiou et al. [20].

The second and third types of boundary conditions were mixed to simulate the change rule for the subgrade temperature field under the actual climate condition in a seasonal frozen region. The temperature difference between sunny and shady slopes was also analyzed. The freezing and thawing coefficients were introduced to compute the subgrade deformation caused by temperature differences considering the location and shape of the freezing fringe. Then, the mechanism of subgrade deformation was discussed. Results show the following conditions. (1) When groundwater exists, an uneven horizontal deformation is strongly affected by the temperature difference caused by slopes. (2) The deformations of the shoulder and bottom of the northern slope are greater during the freezing process than during the thawing process, and maximum deformation occurs at the top of the northern slope during the thawing process. Meanwhile, tension damage is likely to appear on both sides of the slope and at the top of the subgrade near the northern slope. Thus, for subgrade design and maintenance in a seasonal frozen region, the northern slope and the shoulder near the northern slope can be treated separately. Different designs and maintenance procedures can be applied to decrease temperature difference.

With the objective of developing new near-infrared fluorescent probes and understanding the effect molecular structure exerts on physical properties, a series of aniline-based squaraine dyes with different number and position of methoxy substituents adjacent to the squaraine core were synthesized and investigated. Using both computational and experimental methods, we found that the subtle changes of the number or position of the methoxy substituents influenced the twisting angle of the structure and led to significant variations in optical properties. Moreover, the methoxy substituent also affected aggregation behavior due to steric effects. The X-ray crystal structure of one of the key members of the series, SD-2a, clearly demonstrates the distortion between the four-membered squaraine core and the adjacent aniline ring due to methoxy substitution. Structure-related fast relaxation processes were investigated by femtosecond pump–probe experiments and transient absorption spectra. Quantum chemical calcula...

Ligand-functionalized nanoparticles have replaced bare nanoparticles from most biological applications. These applications require tight control over size and stability of nanoparticles in aqueous medium. Understanding the mechanism of interaction of nanoparticle surfaces with functional groups of different organic ligands such as carboxylic acids is confounding despite the two decades of research on nanoparticles because of the inability to characterize their surfaces in their immediate environment. Often the surface interaction is understood by correlating the information available, in a piecemeal approach, from surface sensitive spectroscopic information on ligands and the bulk and surface information on nanoparticles. In present study we report the direct interaction of 5–7 nm cerium oxide nanoparticles surface with acetic acid. An in-situ XPS study was carried out by freezing the aqueous solution of nanoparticles to liquid nitrogen temperatures. Analysis of data collected concurrently from the ligand...

Piecewise constant signals and images, which are sampled from piecewise constant functions, are an important kind of data. Typical examples include bar code signals, images of texts, hand-written signatures, Quick Response codes (QR codes), logos and cartoons. Selective averaging method is a powerful technique for this kind of signal and image denoising. In this paper, we propose a general selective averaging method (GSAM) to use more flexible weights compared to the previous one. Some convergence results and a probabilistic interpretation are provided for its iterated version. For the choice of the weight parameter, we discuss its influence on the asymptotic rate of convergence. We also study its influence on the denoising results with a moderate number of iterations. Then, our method is compared to the iterated neighborhood filter in signal denoising. In 2D case, we propose a novel extension called the alternating GSAM (AGSAM). We similarly introduce an alternating neighborhood filter. Experimental results demonstrate that our method is especially effective for Gaussian noise removal from noisy piecewise constant signals and images.

The large-scale volume fracturing development of shale oil horizontal wells, and the production is affected by seasonal cycle and emergencies, resulting in the complexity of production prediction. Aiming at the problem of poor actual effect or heavy workload of shale oil production prediction by classical reservoir engineering, reservoir numerical simulation and other methods, a new shale oil production prediction method based on Prophet algorithm is proposed It is easier to find the inherent law from a small amount of data. In this paper, we use the production data of production wells in Huanjiang A reservoir in 2015 to predict the production, and compare the prediction results with long-term and short-term memory neural network (LSTM) and ARPS production decline model. The results show that the prediction accuracy of Prophet algorithm is higher, and it is more accurate for the production of complex shale oil.

BACKGROUND Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is a worldwide concern. This study looked at the relationship between the expression of differential proteins and the clinicopathological data and survival rate of ESCC patients to identify potential tumor markers for the growth and metastasis of ESCC. MATERIAL AND METHODS This study included 162 patients who underwent surgical excision for management of ESCC. Fresh ESCC tissue and adjacent normal tissue specimens were collected. Protein expressions were detected by western blotting. The expression of Hsp27 and P38MAPK were detected by immunohistochemistry in formalin-fixed paraffin embedded primary tissue specimens. RESULTS The rate of positive Hsp27 and P38MAPK expression in ESCC tissue were higher than in normal esophageal tissue (p

To better understand the formation mechanism of oligomeric hydroxyalkyl hydroperoxides HOROO(SCI) n H composed of stabilized Criegee intermediate (SCI) as a chain unit, the reactions of SCI with hydroxyalkyl hydroperoxides (HOROOH) and hydroxyalkylperoxy radical (HORO 2 ) as well as HO 2 radical were investigated. For the reactions of HORO 2 + SCI, two preferred pathways involving a SCI insertion in HOROOH hydroperoxide bond can be found, and the formation of HOROO(SCI)H is the dominant pathway in the reaction of HOCH 2 (CH 3 ) 2 COOH + (CH 3 ) 2 COO. The structures of the HORO 2 , HOROOH as well as the SCIs play a crucial role in determining the reactivity of the oligomerization. Both the reactions of HORO 2 + SCI + HO 2 and HOROOH + SCI could be the source of the processors to the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA). But from the point of free energy barriers, the formation of HOROO(SCI)H prefers to follow the mechanism involving initiation by the reaction of a HORO 2 and a SCI, sequential addition of SCIs, and termination by reaction with the HO 2 radical. The rate coefficients show negative temperature dependence and vary in different systems depending on the reactants. The reaction process and constituents of the products can be regulated by temperature and reactants.

Stock price forecasting is the most difficult field owing to irregularities. Therefore, the stock price forecasting and recommendation is an extremely challenging task. In this paper, a big data framework for stock price forecasting using fuzzy time series is proposed in user-friendly form. The method fully capitalizes on the two key technologies, fuzzy set theory and classical time series forecasting methods, to deal with the stock price forecasting. First, using the fuzzy time series the method predicts the fuzzy trend of the forecasted data based on historical stock big data. Then, an autoregressive model is utilized to determine the fluctuation quantity of the forecasted data. Finally, the forecasted stock price is obtained by integrating trend prediction with fluctuation quantity. TAIEX are employed to illustrate the proposed forecasting framework and to compare the forecasting accuracy between the proposed forecasting framework and the existing methods. The experimental results indicate that the proposed forecasting framework produces better forecasting performance.

A comprehensive theoretical study on the bimolecular reaction of C2H5O2 with OH radicals was performed at the CCSD(T)/6-311++G(2df,2p)//B3LYP/6-311+G(d,p) level of theory. The calculation results show that C2H5O2 + OH reaction proceeds on both the singlet and the triplet potential energy surfaces(PESs). On the singlet PES, the favorable pathway is the addition of OH radical to the terminal oxygen atom of C2H5O2 radical, leading to the formation of trioxide C2H5O3H with a barrierless process. Then, the trioxide directly decomposes to the products C2H5O and HO2 radicals. On the triplet PES, the predominant pathways are α and β hydrogen atom abstractions of C2H5O2 radical by OH radical-forming products 3CH3CHO2+H2O and 3CH2CH2O2+H2O, and the corresponding barriers are 12.02(3TS8) and 19.19 kJ/mol(3TS9), respectively. In addition, the comprehensive properties of trioxide C2H5O3H were investigated for the first time. The results indicate that the trioxide complex RC1 can exist stably in the atmosphere owing to a significantly large and negative enthalpy of formation(‒118.44 kJ/mol) as well as a high first excitation energy(5.94 eV).

The search for active semiconductor photocatalysts that can utilize adequately solar-energy remains to be an open issue. CdTe nanoflakes and nanowires with a range of texture coefficients of (111) have been synthesized. Photocatalytic activities of the CdTe nanocrystals in degradation of malachite green, methyl orange, acid red 88 and ciprofloxacin can be enhanced by increasing the texture coefficients of (111) and reducing texture coefficient of (220). The exposed polar {111} facets were found to be the active facets, and a charge separation model between polar Cd-CdTe (111) and Te-CdTe ( 1 ¯ 1 ¯ 1 ¯ ) surfaces is proposed. An internal electric field is created between polar Cd-CdTe (111) and Te-CdTe ( 1 ¯ 1 ¯ 1 ¯ ) surfaces by the spontaneous polarization, and the internal electric field drives separation of the photoinduced electrons and holes. Therefore, the CdTe nanoflakes with exposed polar {111} facets synthesized by using oleylamine as a morphology controlling agent show superior photocatalytic activity, compared with CdTe nanowires, nanocrystals with irregular shapes and commercial powders as well as CdS branched nanostructures. The charge separation model provides a clear opinion into charge transfer in the semiconductor nanocrystals with exposed active facets, and affords guidance to design more effective photocatalysts, solar cells and other photoelectronic devices.

The prices of the stock are influence by many factors and emerge extremely nonlinear structure. Therefore, the stock trading prediction and recommendation is an extremely challenging task. In this paper, a novel stock trading prediction and recommendation system is proposed in user-friendly form. The recommendation system can inform the user whether is to buy or sell the stocks in the next step. Information granulation is applied to transform raw time series into meaningful and interpretable granules, and the more effective non-uniform partitioning method for prediction is presented. The system first determines the intervals based on information granules, and then define the fuzzy sets and fuzzify the historical data. Third, construct fuzzy relationships and assign weights to each period. Finally, the prediction and recommendation is implemented. The experimental results show the proposed system yields better prediction performance, and increases profit-making opportunities.

The resilient modulus of the subgrade is an important material parameter for pavement design. This paper presents an unconfined laboratory testing method for resilient modulus under repeated freeze-thaw cycles. The method was validated by a standard testing method. Specimens of three types of fine-grained subgrade soil with a low plasticity index with five different levels of moisture were tested by the proposed testing procedure. The size of the specimen was 50 mm in diameter and 50 mm in height to more accurately illustrate the freeze-thaw conditions. The numbers of freeze-thaw cycles were designated 0, 3, 6, 9 and 12. The results indicate that all the soils exhibited a substantially reduced resilient modulus after the first three freeze-thaw cycles. After six freeze-thaw cycles, the decrease in the resilient modulus was not obvious. The resilient modulus due to six cycles was suggested for use in pavement design. The reduction coefficients for the freeze-thaw effect were also recommended. These reducti...

Shrinkage has been proven to be an important property of early age concrete. The shrinkage strain leads to inherent engineering problems, such as cracking and loss of prestress. Atmospheric temperature is an important factor in shrinkage strain. However, current research does not provide much attention to the effect of atmospheric temperature on shrinkage of early age concrete. In this paper, a laboratory study was undertaken to present the time-dependent shrinkage of early age concrete under temperature variation. A newly developed Material Deformation Tester (MDT), which can simulate consecutive variation of atmospheric temperature, was used to collect the shrinkage strain of specimens and temperature data. A numerical model was established to describe the thermoelastic strain of a specimen. The results show that (1) there are several sharp shrinkages up to 600 μfor early age concrete in the first 3 days; (2) the absolute value of shrinkage strain is larger than thermal strain; and (3) the difference of shrinkage strain under temperature variation or constant temperature is up to 500 μ.

The reactions of four hydroxyl-substituted alkylperoxy (RO2) radicals with four stabilized Criegee intermediates (SCIs) were investigated. Due to the existence of various reactive sites in both RO2 and SCI, various reaction modes were obtained. By adjusting the relative orientation of the two components of the reactants, different pathways were predicted. The addition of RO2 radical terminal oxygen atom to SCI carbonyl carbon is a favorable reaction mode. For RO2 radicals, increasing the number of methyl substituents in β-carbon will promote the addition reaction. Carbonyl oxides with hydrogen atoms as substituents in the anti-position react faster than the corresponding carbonyl oxides with hydrogen atom substituents in the syn-position. Thus, the reaction barrier can be “tuned” by the substitution of alkyl groups. The analysis of the transition states have revealed that there were correlations between the reaction barrier heights, NPA charges and electron spin population of the terminal oxygen of RO2, as well as between the interatomic distances of O–C in transition states. As the oligomers formed by the sequential addition of SCIs to RO2 radicals are the common components of secondary organic aerosols, the investigation was able to contribute to understand the formation of SOA.

Verticillium wilt causes devastating loss of yield and quality in many crops, including cotton. To determine the molecular mechanism of resistance to verticillium wilt in cotton, we isolated a new cytochrome P450 gene, CYP94C1, and analysed its function. We obtained the complete open reading frame, which encodes a protein of 500 amino acids. The results of the functional analysis showed that resistance to verticillium wilt was enhanced when the gene was silenced using the virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) method in cotton. GbCYP94C1-overexpressing Arabidopsis was more susceptible to Verticillium dahliae compared with the wild-type. In addition, GbCYP94C1 played a role in plant wound responses and in the expression of certain jasmonic acid (JA) signalling pathway. The results suggest that GbCYP94C1 plays a role in verticillium wilt resistance in cotton via the JA signalling pathway.

Elucidating the mechanism of resistance to biotic and abiotic stress is of great importance in cotton. In this study, a gene containing the NAC domain, designated GbNAC1, was identified from Gossypium barbadense L. Homologous sequence alignment indicated that GbNAC1 belongs to the TERN subgroup. GbNAC1 protein localized to the cell nucleus. GbNAC1 was expressed in roots, stems, and leaves, and was especially highly expressed in vascular bundles. Functional analysis showed that cotton resistance to Verticillium wilt was reduced when the GbNAC1 gene was silenced using the virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) method. GbNAC1-overexpressing Arabidopsis showed enhanced resistance to Verticillium dahliae compared to wild-type. Thus, GbNAC1 is involved in the positive regulation of resistance to Verticillium wilt. In addition, analysis of GbNAC1-overexpressing Arabidopsis under different stress treatments indicated that it is involved in plant growth, development, and response to various abiotic stresses (ABA, mannitol, and NaCl). This suggests that GbNAC1 plays an important role in resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses in cotton. This study provides a foundation for further study of the function of NAC genes in cotton and other plants.

Synergy between molecules is ubiquitous in atmospheric clusters and significantly affects new particle formation (NPF). Herein, the effects of the synergy between base molecules on the stability and evaporation of MSA–X–Y (MSA = methanesulfonic acid; X, Y = ammonia (A), methylamine (M), or dimethylamine (D)) trimers were investigated via density functional theory (DFT) and the atmospheric clusters dynamic code (ACDC) method. The results show that proton transfer from MSA to X is exothermal and barrierless due to the synergy between X and Y molecules in MSA–X–Y trimers compared with MSA-X dimers. Cyclic hydrogen bonds are a typical characteristic of the stable trimers. Topological analysis using atoms in molecules (AIM) theory indicates that the electron density (ρ) and Laplacian of the electron density (∇2ρ) at the bond critical points (BCPs) in the trimers exceed the standard range of hydrogen bonds. The affinity for attaching a Y molecule to the MSA–X dimers and the substitution of Y1 (Y = A and MA) by Y2 (Y2 = MA and DMA) in the MSA–X–Y trimers are thermodynamically spontaneous. In addition, the cyclic stabilization energy of the MSA–X–Y trimers increased as the alkalinities of X and Y increased. The total evaporation rate of the trimers decreased as the alkalinities of X and Y increased. Low temperature and high pressure significantly facilitate the formation of trimers. It is further confirmed that synergy plays an important role in atmospheric NPF events.

Background MiR-199a-3p (miR-199a) can enhance the chemosensitivity of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Because of the easy degradation of miRNA by direct infusion, effective vehicle-mediated delivery of miR-199a may represent a new strategy for improving HCC chemotherapy. Considering mesenchymal stem cell (MSC)-derived exosomes as promising natural nanovectors for drug and molecule delivery, we aimed to determine whether exosomes from adipose tissue-derived MSCs (AMSCs) could be used to deliver miR-199a and improve HCC chemosensitivity. Methods MiR-199a-modified AMSCs (AMSC-199a) were constructed by miR-199a lentivirus infection and puromycin selection. MiR-199-modified exosomes (AMSC-Exo-199a) were isolated from the supernatant of AMSC-199a and were assessed by transmission electron microscopy, nanoparticle tracking analysis, and flow cytometry analysis. The expression levels of miR-199a in HCC samples, AMSCs, exosomes, and HCC cells were quantified by real-time PCR. The effects of AMSC-Exo-199a on HCC chemosensitivity were determined by cell proliferation and apoptosis assays and by i.v. injection into orthotopic HCC mouse models with doxorubicin treatment. MTOR, p-4EBP1 and p-70S6K levels in HCC cells and tissues were quantified by Western blot. Results AMSC-Exo-199a had the classic characteristics of exosomes and could effectively mediate miR-199a delivery to HCC cells. Additionally, AMSC-Exo-199a significantly sensitized HCC cells to doxorubicin by targeting mTOR and subsequently inhibiting the mTOR pathway. Moreover, i.v.-injected AMSC-Exo-199a could distribute to tumor tissue and markedly increased the effect of Dox against HCC in vivo. Conclusions AMSC-Exo-199a can be an effective vehicle for miR-199a delivery, and they effectively sensitized HCC to chemotherapeutic agents by targeting mTOR pathway. AMSC-Exo-199a administration may provide a new strategy for improving HCC chemosensitivity.

Background Conventional MRI cannot be used to identify H3 K27M mutation status. This study aimed to investigate the feasibility of predicting H3 K27M mutation status by applying an automated machine learning (autoML) approach to the MR radiomics features of patients with midline gliomas. Methods This single-institution retrospective study included 100 patients with midline gliomas, including 40 patients with H3 K27M mutations and 60 wild-type patients. Radiomics features were extracted from fluid-attenuated inversion recovery images. Prior to autoML analysis, the dataset was randomly stratified into separate 75% training and 25% testing cohorts. The Tree-based Pipeline Optimization Tool (TPOT) was applied to optimize the machine learning pipeline and select important radiomics features. We compared the performance of 10 independent TPOT-generated models based on training and testing cohorts using the area under the curve (AUC) and average precision to obtain the final model. An independent cohort of 22 patients was used to validate the best model. Results Ten prediction models were generated by TPOT, and the accuracy obtained with the best pipeline ranged from 0.788 to 0.867 for the training cohort and from 0.60 to 0.84 for the testing cohort. After comparison, the AUC value and average precision of the final model were 0.903 and 0.911 in the testing cohort, respectively. In the validation set, the AUC was 0.85, and the average precision was 0.855 for the best model. Conclusions The autoML classifier using radiomics features of conventional MR images provides high discriminatory accuracy in predicting the H3 K27M mutation status of midline glioma.

We study a model where a data collector obtains data from users through a payment mechanism to learn the underlying state from the elicited data. The private signal of each user represents her individual knowledge about the state. Through social interactions, each user can also learn noisy versions of her friends’ signals, which is called group signals. Based on both her private signal and group signals, each user makes strategic decisions to report a privacy-preserved version of her data to the data collector. We develop a Bayesian game theoretic framework to study the impact of social learning on users’ data reporting strategies and devise the payment mechanism for the data collector accordingly. Our findings reveal that, the Bayesian-Nash equilibrium can be in the form of either a symmetric randomized response (SR) strategy or an informative non-disclosive (ND) strategy. A generalized majority voting rule is applied by each user to her noisy group signals to determine which strategy to follow. When a user plays the ND strategy, she reports privacy-preserving data completely based on her group signals, independent of her private signal, which indicates that her privacy cost is zero. Both the data collector and the users can benefit from social learning which drives down the privacy costs and helps to improve the state estimation at a given payment budget. We derive bounds on the minimum total payment required to achieve a given level of state estimation accuracy.

Objectives Hypoxia is a hallmark of the tumor microenvironment, and hypoxia regions are frequently found in gastrointestinal cancers, which are associated with worse patients’ survival and therapy resistance. However, the potential mechanisms of hypoxic tumor microenvironment still need to be further elucidated, especially about the roles of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in hypoxic tumor regions. In recent years, a great mount of independent research showed that many lncRNAs were modulated by hypoxia, and these lncRNAs were named as “hypoxia-regulated lncRNAs”. In this review, the recent developments in the expression, regulation and functions of hypoxia-regulated lncRNAs in gastrointestinal cancers were summarized. Materials and methods In this review, we summarized and figured out recent studies concerning the expression and biological mechanisms of hypoxia-regulated lncRNAs in gastrointestinal cancers. The related studies were obtained through a systematic search of PubMed, Embase and Cochrane Library. Results Hypoxia-regulated lncRNAs have various roles in the regulation of metabolism, autophagy, invasion and metastasis in the hypoxic microenvironment. More importantly, hypoxic-regulated lncRNAs have a variety of potential mechanisms in gastrointestinal tumors, including epigenetic, lncRNA-miRNA interaction, lncRNA-protein interactions. Conclusions Hypoxia-regulated lncRNAs will undoubtedly be developed as targets and promote the progress in ideal therapies for gastrointestinal cancer patients.

Laryngeal carcinoma is one of the most common malignant tumors of the head, neck, and respiratory tract. The aim of the present study is to explore the biological function of SRY-related HMG-box 18 (SOX18) in laryngeal carcinoma cells and study the molecular mechanism involved. Initial findings indicate that the expression of SOX18 was increased in laryngeal carcinoma cell lines and tissues. The effect of SOX18 on laryngeal carcinoma cell proliferation, cell cycle, apoptosis, invasion, and migration was also identified. The results indicated that down-regulation of SOX18 significantly inhibited cell proliferation, migration, and invasion, and induced cell-cycle arrest in G0/G1 phase and apoptosis of laryngeal carcinoma cells. However, overexpression of SOX18 promoted cell proliferation, invasion, and migration, and inhibited cell apoptosis. The expression of cyclin D1, active-caspase-3, N-cadherin, MTA1, MMP-2, and MMP-7 was also regulated by the overexpression of siSOX18 or SOX18. In addition, it was found that SOX18 could also accelerate the phosphorylation of JAK2/STAT3 signaling in laryngeal carcinoma cells. Furthermore, our study indicated that SOX18 could stimulate cell proliferation, migration, and invasion of laryngeal carcinoma cells via regulation of JAK2/STAT3 signaling, which could provide a new strategy for laryngeal carcinoma diagnosis and molecular therapies.

Previous studies have shown that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with dysfunction of the limbic system, in which the amygdala plays an important role. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the neurochemical concentrations assessed by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) in the amygdala are abnormal in children and adolescents with PTSD. Twenty-eight pediatric PTSD patients (11 boys, 17 girls) and 24 matched trauma-exposed control subjects (9 boys, 15 girls) underwent magnetic resonance brain imaging and 1H-MRS of the bilateral amygdalae. The concentrations of N-acetylaspartate (NAA), myo-inositol (mI), total creatine (tCr) and total choline (tCho) in the right amygdala were significantly increased in PTSD patients compared with trauma-exposed control subjects. There were significant group-by-age interactions in the left amygdala NAA and right amygdala mI concentrations: older pediatric patients with PTSD had higher left amygdala NAA concentration and younger patients had higher right amygdala mI concentration than trauma-exposed control subjects. There was also a significant correlation between right mI concentration and time since trauma in PTSD patients. Finally, there was significant group-by-age interaction in the left amygdala volume; intragroup analysis revealed that the right amygdala volume was significantly lower than the left in the PTSD group, but not in the control group. These neurochemical abnormalities of the amygdala may indicate that dysfunctions of both neurons and glial cells are involved in the pathology of pediatric PTSD.

Anillin is an actin binding protein and plays crucial roles during mitotic cell cycle progression in metazoan. However, the sequence and functions of the

The OH-initiated oxidation of vinyl alcohol (VA) produced by phototautomerization of acetaldehyde is thought to be a source of formic acid (FA) in the atmosphere. A recent theoretical study predicted that the VA + OH + O

We study a model where a data collector obtains data from users through a payment mechanism, aiming to learn the underlying state from the elicited data. The private signal of each user represents her knowledge about the state; and through social interactions each user can also learn noisy versions of her social friends' signals, which is called `learned group signals'. Thanks to social learning, users have richer information about the state beyond their private signals. Based on both her private signal and learned group signals, each user makes strategic decisions to report a privacy-preserved version of her data to the data collector. We develop a Bayesian game theoretic framework to study the impact of social learning on users' data reporting strategies and devise the payment mechanism for the data collector accordingly. Our findings reveal that, in general, the desired data reporting strategy at the Bayesian-Nash equilibrium can be in the form of either a symmetric randomized response (SR) strategy or an informative non-disclosive (ND) strategy. Specifically, a generalized majority voting rule is applied by each user to her noisy group signals to determine which strategy to follow. Further, when a user plays the ND strategy, she reports privacy-preserving data completely based on her group signals, independent of her private signal, which indicates that her privacy cost is zero. We emphasize that the reported data when a user plays the ND strategy is still informative about the underlying state because it is based on her learned group signals. As a result, both the data collector and the users can benefit from social learning which drives down the privacy costs and helps to improve the state estimation at a given payment budget. We further derive bounds on the minimum total payment required to achieve a given level of state estimation accuracy., 22 pages, 7 figures

Juvenile xanthogranuloma (JXG) is a benign, self-limiting histiocytic disorder of infancy and early childhood, usually presented as a single or multiple cutaneous lesions. The central nervous system is rarely affected by JXG. There were only a few reports of intracranial JXG cases which described its features on MR spectroscopy (MRS) and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), but its features on susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) and perfusion-weighted imaging (PWI) have not been reported yet. Here, we reported an intracranial JXG case which underwent multimodal MRI examinations including DWI, SWI, and PWI. The multimodal MRI provided a thorough insight into this disease and we found that intense enhancement and high perfusion may be important clues for the diagnosis.

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a severe psychiatric disorder with high mortality. The underlying neurobiological mechanisms are not well understood, and high-resolution structural magnetic resonance brain imaging studies have given inconsistent results. Here we aimed to psychoradiologically define the most prominent and replicable abnormalities of gray matter volume (GMV) in AN patients, and to examine their relationship to demographics and clinical characteristics, by means of a new coordinate-based meta-analytic technique called seed-based d mapping (SDM). In a pooled analysis of all AN patients we identified decreased GMV in the bilateral median cingulate cortices and posterior cingulate cortices extending to the bilateral precuneus, and the supplementary motor area. In subgroup analysis we found an additional decreased GMV in the right fusiform in adult AN, and a decreased GMV in the left amygdala and left anterior cingulate cortex in AN patients without comorbidity (pure AN). Thus, the most consistent GMV alterations in AN patients are in the default mode network and the sensorimotor network. These psychoradiological findings of the brain abnormalities might underpin the neuropathophysiology in AN.

Introduction and objectives Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death around the world. Despite improvement in the prevention and treatment of HCC, the clinical prognosis is still poor with increasing mortality. Non-coding RNAs play pivotal roles in HCC oncogenesis, but the detailed mechanism is poorly known. Therefore, the functions and interaction of lncRNA NORAD and miR-211-5p in HCC was investigated in this study. Methods Quantitative real-time PCR method was used to analyze the expression of NORAD and miR-211-5p in clinical HCC tissues and cultured cell lines. Knockdown of NORAD and overexpression of miR-211-5p were then carried in HCC cells. Moreover, bioinformatics analysis and luciferase report assays were further employed to analyze the interaction between miR-211-5p and NORAD or FOXD1. Results Increased lncRNA NORAD and decreased miR-211-5p expression were first detected in HCC compared with the peritumorial area. Further studies showed that knockdown of NORAD or overexpression of miR-211-5p impaired the proliferation, migration and angiogenesis of HCC cells. Mechanistically, we found that NORAD functions as a sponge for miR-211-5p. Moreover, it was revealed that decreased miR-211-5p induced the expression of FOXD1 as well as its downstream target VEGF-A, thereby contributes to enhanced angiogenesis of HCC. Conclusion Elevated NORAD works as a sponge for miR-211-5p in HCC, thus release the inhibition effect of the latter on its downstream target FOXD1 and VEGF-A, which finally promotes angiogenesis. These results provide new insights into the interaction between NORAD and miR-211-5p in HCC and their potential usage as targets for the development of novel therapeutics against HCC.

Biomimetic polyelectrolyte of Dopa modified poly(acrylic acid) (PAADopa) was synthesized taking advantage of Dopa, the major unit of marine adhesive proteins. Zinc crosslinked PAADopa (PAADopa-Zn) were formed at acidic pH for more compact structure and assembled with the positively charged polyethylenimine (PEI) to build robust polyelectrolyte multilayers at high salt concentration. Effects of pH, crosslinking degree, and salt concentration on polymer structure, film building process, and morphology were investigated, respectively. An “odd-even” effect was observed by quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation and AFM in the presence of zinc ion, which becomes more obvious with an optimum crosslinking degree (Zn/Dopa = 2.0) under high salt concentration (0.6 M NaCl). It indicates the different swollen properties of PEI chain and PAADopa-Zn complexes during the layer-by-layer building process under optimum crosslinking degree of PAADopa-Zn at high salt concentration. Such odd-even phenomenon of the biocompatible system is of critical importance for understanding the mechanism of layer formation and film structures. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2017, 55, 245–255

This paper investigates the relation between three different notions of privacy: identifiability, differential privacy, and mutual-information privacy. Under a unified privacy-distortion framework, where the distortion is defined to be the expected Hamming distance between the input and output databases, we establish some fundamental connections between these three privacy notions. Given a maximum allowable distortion $D$ , we define the privacy-distortion functions $\epsilon _{\mathrm{ i}}^{*}(D)$ , $\epsilon _{\mathrm{ d}}^{*}(D)$ , and $\epsilon _{\mathrm{ m}}^{*}(D)$ to be the smallest (most private/best) identifiability level, differential privacy level, and mutual information between the input and the output, respectively. We characterize $\epsilon _{\mathrm{ i}}^{*}(D)$ and $\epsilon _{\mathrm{ d}}^{*}(D)$ , and prove that $\epsilon _{\mathrm{ i}}^{*}(D)-\epsilon _{X}\le \epsilon _{\mathrm{ d}}^{*}(D)\le \epsilon _{\mathrm{ i}}^{*}(D)$ for $D$ within certain range, where $\epsilon _{X}$ is a constant determined by the prior distribution of the original database $X$ , and diminishes to zero when $X$ is uniformly distributed. Furthermore, we show that $\epsilon _{\mathrm{ i}}^{*}(D)$ and $\epsilon _{\mathrm{ m}}^{*}(D)$ can be achieved by the same mechanism for $D$ within certain range, i.e., there is a mechanism that simultaneously minimizes the identifiability level and achieves the best mutual-information privacy. Based on these two connections, we prove that this mutual-information optimal mechanism satisfies $\epsilon $ -differential privacy with $\epsilon _{\mathrm{ d}}^{*}(D)\le \epsilon \le \epsilon _{\mathrm{ d}}^{*}(D)+2\epsilon _{X}$ . The results in this paper reveal some consistency between two worst case notions of privacy, namely, identifiability and differential privacy, and an average notion of privacy, mutual-information privacy.

Vascular inflammation is an important hallmark of high-fat-induced atherosclerosis. Oxidized low-density lipoprotein (ox-LDL) is a key initiator of inflammation as it induces inflammatory gene expression in vascular endothelial cells. Sodium ferulate (SF), an active component from Chinese medicine, demonstrated anti-atherosclerotic potency. However, the mechanism is unknown. Here we investigated how SF changed the cellular gene expression profile and restored ox-LDL-triggered inflammation in HUVECs. Gene expression profile, inflammatory gene expression and NF-κB activation were investigated in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) with or without SF (5 μM) treatment after precondition with ox-LDL (50 μg/mL). Ox-LDL treatment increased the production of IL-1β, CCL20, IL-6, IL-8 and CXCL1. SF stimulation modulated the translocation of NF-κB between cytoplasm and nucleus, and alleviated the inflammatory response induced by ox-LDL. Collectively, SF could suppress the expression of inflammatory factors in ox-LDL-stimulated endothelial cells, and transcription factor NF-κB might be involved in such process.

Tumourous stem mustard, a variant of Brassica juncea (Cruciferae), is an economically important crop. In a preliminary study, the expression of a fragment of a MYB (v-myb avian myeloblastosis viral oncogene homolog) gene was screened out during stem swelling. The four complete cDNA sequences of novel MYB genes were cloned by rapid amplification of cDNA ends based on the MYB sequence fragment. These sequences, which represent distinct alternatively spliced transcripts of a BjMYB1 (Brassica juncea var. tumida Tsen et Lee MYB gene 1), possessed a similar alternative splicing pattern to several reported MYB genes of other species. RT-PCR analysis revealed different expression patterns for these four spliced transcripts in various tissues. However, stem expression of BjMYB1 gene was detected in the non-swelling growth phase, and different expression patterns were detected at other stages during stem swelling. The expression levels of the transcripts differed after treatment with various phytohormones (e.g., ABA) and NaCl. In addition, prokaryotic expression and Western blotting showed that BjMYB1-2 encodes a 5.3 kDa protein while BjMYB1-3 encodes a 21.6 kDa protein. The overexpression of BjMYB1-3 and BjMYB1-4 in Arabidopsis thaliana showed earlier germination, promoting growth and having tolerance to abiotic stress such as osmotic stress or high salt. The research of this article set the foundation for further study of the function of MYB genes in tumourous stem mustard and other Brassica plants.

A series of new donor–acceptor (D–A)-type semiconducting conjugated polymers (SCPs), which can form cross-linked structural and supramolecular assembly films by hydrogen-bonding, is successfully synthesized. The microstructures of supramolecular assembly films are further investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), high- resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), and variable-temperature Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) absorption spectra. As electronic transmission (ET) materials, the SCPs demonstrate superior properties by means of fabricating electron-only devices with the configuration of ITO/ET (SCPs)/Ca/Al. According to space-charge-limited current (SCLC) measurements, fluorine-containing SCPs exhibit much smaller threshold voltages and much higher electron mobilities than Alq3. Meanwhile, a significant enhancement for their luminescence properties is verified by the photoluminescence (PL) and electroluminescent (EL) spectra of cross-linked-type SCPs, compared to non-cross-linked-type SCPs. The fabricated polymer light-emitting diodes (PLEDs) with the configuration of ITO/PEDOT:PSS/EML (SCPs)/BCP/LiF/Al are able to emit the color from green to red with moderately low turn-on voltages. These results suggested that cross-linked D–A-type SCP can become a potential candidate as a kind of multifunctional materials applied in the field of optoelectronic devices.

In MapReduce, placing computation near its input data is considered to be desirable since otherwise the data transmission introduces an additional delay to the task execution. This data locality problem has been studied in the literature. Most existing scheduling algorithms in MapReduce focus on improving performance through increasing locality. In this paper, we view the data locality problem from a network perspective. The key observation is that if we make appropriate use of the network to route the data chunk to the machine where it will be processed in advance, then processing a remote task is the same as processing a local task. In other words, instead of bringing computation close to data, we can also bring data close to computation to improve the system performance. However, to benefit from such a strategy, we must (i) balance the tasks assigned to local machines and those assigned to remote machines, and (ii) design the routing algorithm to avoid network congestion. Taking these challenges into consideration, we propose a scheduling/routing algorithm, named the Joint Scheduler, which utilizes both the computing resources and the communication network efficiently. To show that the Joint Scheduler has superior performance, we prove that the Join Scheduler can support any load that can be supported by some other algorithm, i.e., achieve the maximum capacity region. Simulation results demonstrate that with popularity skew, the Joint Scheduler improves the throughput significantly (more than 30% in our simulations) compared to the Hadoop Fair Scheduler with delay scheduling, which is the de facto industry standard. The delay performance is also evaluated through simulations, where we can see a significant delay reduce under the Joint Scheduler with moderate to heavy load.

MapReduce/Hadoop framework has been widely used to process large-scale datasets on computing clusters. Scheduling map tasks with data locality consideration is crucial to the performance of MapReduce. Many works have been devoted to increasing data locality for better efficiency. However, to the best of our knowledge, fundamental limits of MapReduce computing clusters with data locality, including the capacity region and theoretical bounds on the delay performance, have not been well studied. In this paper, we address these problems from a stochastic network perspective. Our focus is to strike the right balance between data locality and load balancing to simultaneously maximize throughput and minimize delay. We present a new queueing architecture and propose a map task scheduling algorithm constituted by the Join the Shortest Queue policy together with the MaxWeight policy. We identify an outer bound on the capacity region, and then prove that the proposed algorithm can stabilize any arrival rate vector strictly within this outer bound. It shows that the outer bound coincides with the actual capacity region, and the proposed algorithm is throughput-optimal. Furthermore, we study the number of backlogged tasks under the proposed algorithm, which is directly related to the delay performance based on Little's law. We prove that the proposed algorithm is heavy-traffic optimal, i.e., it asymptotically minimizes the number of back-logged tasks as the arrival rate vector approaches the boundary of the capacity region. Therefore, the proposed algorithm is also delay-optimal in the heavy-traffic regime. The proofs in this paper deal with random processing times with heterogeneous parameters and nonpreemptive task execution, which differentiate our work from many existing works on MaxWeight-type algorithms, so the proof techniques themselves for the stability analysis and the heavy-traffic analysis are also novel contributions.

Trimethylacetic acid (TMAA) adsorption on stoichiometric and oxygen-deficient CeO2(111) surfaces was investigated using density functional theory that accounts for the on-site Coulomb interaction via a Hubbard term (DFT+U) and long-range dispersion correction. Both the molecular state and dissociative state (TMAA → TMA– + H+) were identified on stoichiometric and oxygen-deficient CeO2(111) surfaces. For the stoichiometric surface, two thermodynamically favorable configurations with adsorption energies of the order of −30 kcal/mol are identified; one is a molecule adsorption state, and the other one is a dissociative state. For the oxygen-deficient surface, dissociative states are more favorable than molecular states. The most favorable configuration is the dissociative adsorption of TMAA with the adsorption energy of the order of −77 kcal/mol. The dissociated TMA moiety takes the position of oxygen vacancy, forming three Ce–O bonds. The signature vibrational frequencies for these thermodynamically stable ...

A perylene bisimide (PBI) derivative (C-PBI-Py) of pyrene (Py) and cholesteryl residue (C) possessing intra-molecular energy transfer properties and three reference compounds (C-Py, C-PBI, PBI-Py) were designed and synthesized, where C was introduced in order to enhance the solubility of the relevant compounds in organic solvents. UV-vis absorption, steady-state fluorescence, cyclic voltammetric and theoretical calculation studies revealed that: (1) the PBI unit and Py moiety of C-PBI-Py could act as two individual chromophores, (2) the excited state energy of Py could transfer to PBI within a single molecule of the compound, and (3) the PBI moiety of the compound tends to form aggregates and shows PBI excimer emission. Time-resolved and temperature-dependent emission spectroscopy studies revealed the presence of both H-type excimer and J-type excimer, and formation of them via either the Birks' scheme or the pre-formed scheme due to strong π-π stacking that was elucidated by concentration-dependent (1)H NMR spectroscopy measurement. In addition, the studies also indicated that the energy transfer occurs via an electron exchange mechanism (Dexter scheme). Results of this study will be useful in the development of new solvatochromic and other environment-sensitive fluorophores based on alteration of intra-molecular energy transfer efficiency.

Point cloud denoising has been an attractive problem in geometry processing. The main challenge is to eliminate noise while preserving different levels of features and preventing unnatural effects (such as over-sharpened artifacts on smoothly curved faces and cross artifacts on sharp edges). In this paper, we propose a novel feature-preserving framework to achieve these goals. Firstly, we newly define some discrete operators on point clouds, which can be used to construct a second order regularization for restoring a point normal field. Then, based on the filtered normals, we perform a feature detection step by a bi-tensor voting scheme. As will be seen, it is robust against noise and can locate underlying geometric features accurately. Finally, we reposition points with a multi-normal strategy by using a simple yet effective RANSAC-based algorithm. Intensive experimental results show that the proposed method performs favorably compared to other state-of-the-art approaches.

Background Limb ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) is a common clinical process that frequently induces acute lung injury (ALI). Tetrahydropalmatine (THP) is a major bioactive constituent of various traditional Chinese medicine with protective effects on inflammation and oxidation. In this study, we aimed to investigate the possible protective effect of THP on ALI induced by limb I/R. Methods Rats were used to establish ALI through limb I/R. After administration of three doses of THP, the lung injury was evaluated by hematoxylin-eosin staining, tissue wet/dry weight ratio and ELISA examination of myeloperoxidase (MPO), malondialdehyde (MDA) and Super Oxide Dismutase (SOD). Additionally, PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway and autophagy markers were determined by Western blot. To confirm the role of autophagy in the effect of THP on ALI, 3-methyladenine (3-MA), THP or THP + rapamycin (RAPA) was given to the model rats, and then evaluated the parameters above mentioned. Results The pulmonary histological lesions and wet/dry were significantly induced after limb I/R. Concurrently, I/R significantly increased MPO and MDA, and decreased SOD in lung tissues. These changes were reversed after THP treatment. Additionally, THP exerted inhibitory effect on the I/R-induced decrease of phosphorylation of PI3K/AKT/mTOR and increase of autophagy activity. The effects by THP on lung injury, PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling and autophagy were also observed after treatment with 3-MA, an autophagy inhibitor, whereas were blocked by combinational treatment with RAPA, an autophagy inducer. Conclusion Our data suggested that THP had significant protection against ALI and this might be achieved by autophagy inhibition through rescuing PI3K/AKT/mTOR activity.

In this paper, we introduce a Mumford–Shah framework to restore the face normal field on the triangulated surface. To effectively discretize Γ -convergence approximation of the Mumford–Shah model, we first define an edge function space and its associated differential operators. They are helpful for directly diffusing the discontinuity function over mesh edges instead of computing the approximated discontinuity function via pointwise diffusion in existing discretizations. Then, by using the operators in the proposed function space, two Mumford–Shah-based denoising methods are presented, which can produce denoised results with neat geometric features and locate geometric discontinuities exactly. Our Mumford–Shah framework overcomes the limitations of existing techniques that blur the discontinuity function, be less able to preserve geometric features, be sensitive to surface sampling, and require a postprocessing to form feature curves from located discontinuity vertices. Intensive experimental results on a variety of surfaces show the superiority of our denoising methods qualitatively and quantitatively.

Specimens of the genus Loimia (Annelida, Terebellidae) deposited in the Marine Biological Museum of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (MBMCAS) together with materials newly collected from China seas were examined. Based on morphological comparisons and molecular analysis, some specimens collected from the coasts of Shandong province and Guangxi province were confirmed as two new Loimia species respectively (Loimia borealis sp. n. and Loimia macrobranchia sp. n.). Morphologically, L. borealis sp. n. is distinguished from previously known species of this genus by having seven equal sized ventral shields, with length five times the width; this species was retrieved as sister to the clades of Loimia arborea Moore, 1903 and Loimia bandera Hutchings, 1990 in the phylogenetic tree, which was reconstructed based on mitochondrial COI gene. Loimia macrobranchia sp. n. differs from congeners by the large size of its first pair of branchiae with a thick main stem and about 18 dendritic branches arranged in two levels. A key to identifying Loimia species found in Chinese seas is given.

The comprehensive mechanism and kinetics for CH2OO with methacrolein (CH2 = C(CH3)CHO, MACR) reaction were investigated at the CCSD(T)/6-311+G(2df,2p)//M06-2X/6-311+G(2df,2p) level of theory. The results show that three kinds of mechanisms including cycloaddition, oxidation and insertion have been identified. Among them, the cycloaddition of CH2OO adding to C O bond of MACR is more favorable, which occurs via a deeply submerged barrier leading to the formation of energized secondary ozonide (SOZ). The nascent SOZ mainly further decomposes into methacrylic acid and formaldehyde or formic acid and methacrolein, in which formic acid generation follows stepwise and concerted mechanism involving a catalysis for rearrangement of CH2OO by methacrolein. The calculated rate constant for the title reaction at 300 K using canonical variational transition state theory with small curvature tunneling correction is 1.00 × 10−12 cm3 molecule−1 s−1, which is close to the experimental value of (4.4 ± 1.0) × 10−13 cm3 molecule−1 s−1. The results reveal that the reaction provides a new pathway to produce organic acids. However, the contribution of acids from this reaction is small as its relative lower rate, compared to atmospheric CH2OO loss occurring through the hydrolysis of CH2OO + (H2O)n (n = 1–2).