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Neonatal white matter dysplasia (NWMD) is characterized by developmental abnormity of CNS white matter, including abnormal myelination. Besides environmental factors such as suffocation at birth, genetic factors are also main causes. Signaling pathway is an important part of gene function and several signaling pathways play important roles in myelination. Here, we performed genetic analysis on a cohort of 138 patients with NWMD and found that 20% (5/25) cause genes which referred to 28.57% (8/28) patients enriched in mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway. Depletion of mTOR reduced genesis and proliferation of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPC) during embryonic stage and reduced myelination in corpus callosum besides cerebellum and spinal cord during early postnatal stages which is related to not only differentiation but also proliferation of oligodendrocyte (OL). Transcriptomic analyses indicated that depletion of mTOR in OLs upregulated expression of forkhead box O3 (FoxO3), which is a repressor of expression of myelin basic protein, and downregulating expression of FoxO3 by short interfering RNA promoted OPCs develop into MBP+ OLs. Thus, our findings suggested that mTOR signaling pathway is NWMD-related pathway and mTOR is important for myelination of the entire CNS during early developmental stages through regulating expression of FoxO3 at least partially.

It is difficult for traditional circuit-fault feature-extraction methods to accurately distinguish between nonlinear analog-circuit faults and analog-circuit faults with high fault rates and high diagnostic costs. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a method of mathematical morphology fractal dimension (VMD-MMFD) based on variational mode decomposition for soft-fault feature extraction in analog circuits. First, the signal is decomposed into variational modes to suppress the influence of environmental noise, and multiple high-dimensional eigenmode functions with different center frequencies are obtained. The fractal dimension of the signal feature information component IMF is calculated, and then, KPCA (Kernel Principal Component Analysis) is used to remove the overlapping and redundant parts of the data. The fault set obtained is used as the basis for judging the working state and the fault type of the circuit. The experimental results of the simulation circuits show that this method can be effectively used for circuit-fault diagnosis.

Aiming at the problems of nonlinearity and serious confusion of fault characteristics in analog circuits, this paper proposed a fault diagnosis method for an analog circuit based on ensemble empirical pattern decomposition (EEMD) and improved multifractal detrended fluctuations analysis (MF-DFA). This method consists of three steps: preprocessing, feature extraction, and fault classification identification. First, the EEMD decomposition preprocesses (denoises) the original signal; then, the appropriate IMF components are selected by correlation analysis; then, the IMF components are processed by the improved MF-DFA, and the fault feature values are extracted by calculating the multifractal spectrum parameters, and then the feature values are input to a support vector machine (SVM) for classification, which enables the diagnosis of soft faults in analog circuits. The experimental results show that the proposed EEMD-improved MF-DFA method effectively extracts the features of soft faults in nonlinear analog circuits and obtains a high diagnosis rate.

Chemoresistance is one of the major reasons leading to ovarian cancer high mortality and poor survival. Studies have shown that the alteration of cellular autophagy is associated with cancer cell chemoresistance. Here, we investigated whether the ovarian cancer chemoresistance is associated with the autophagy induced by the inhibitor of DNA binding 1 (ID1). By using gene overexpression or silencing, luciferase assay and human specimens, we show that ID1 induces high autophagy and confers cancer cell chemoresistance. The mechanistic study demonstrates that ID1 first activates the NF-κB signaling through facilitating the nuclear translocation of NF-κB p65, which strengthens the expression and secretion of IL-6 from cancer cells to subsequently activate the signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) through the protein phosphorylation at Y705. We further identified that STAT3 functions to promote the transcription of the activating transcription factor 6 (ATF6), which induces endoplasmic reticulum stress to promote cellular autophagy, granting cancer cell resistance to both cisplatin and paclitaxel treatment. Moreover, we found a significant correlation between the expression of ID1 and ATF6 in 1104 high grade serous ovarian cancer tissues, and that patients with the high expression of ID1 or ATF6 were resistant to platinum treatment and had the poor overall survival and progression-free survival. Thus, we have uncovered a mechanism in which ID1 confers cancer cell chemoresistance largely through the STAT3/ATF6-induced autophagy. The involved molecules, including ID1, STAT3, and ATF6, may have a potential to be targeted in combination with chemotherapeutic agents to improve ovarian cancer survival.

BackgroundAcetone ethanol extracts from tobacco leaves have antiviral activity against TMV, but the antiviral effects of their specialized metabolites have not been systematically studied yet, especially the underlying mechanism is still unexplored.ResultsThe tobacco cembranoids α(β)-2,7,11-cembratriene-4,6-diol (α(β)-CBD) were extracted and purified with an effective and green protocol including innovatively added 5% phosphoric acid for elution, one time silica gel chromatographic column separation and impurity removal and further HPLC purification. The results of antiviral activities against tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) with the local lesion counting method showed that α(β)-CBD have in vivo higher protective effects of 73.2% and 71.6%, at 75.0 μM, respectively, than control agent Ningnanmycin (53.1%). Notably, The results of ELISA and and TMV-GFP fluorescent optical imaging assay indicated a obviously reduced viral protein and weaker GFP fluorescence signal and smaller infection area, which confirmed their anti-TMV activities at protein level. Furthermore, the enhanced production of SA and JA and the significantly increased transcription of of JA signaling pathway (COI1 and PDF1.2) and SA signaling pathway genes (PR1, NPR1 and EDS1) in treated plants further conformed that exogenously applied α(β)-CBD can effectively elicit the tobacco plant immunity against TMV.ConclusionsThe α(β)-CBD mainly stimulates disease resistance of tobacco plants to resist TMV and it can be used as bioagents to control TMV in the future.

Sulfur budgets in catchments indicated that about 80% of the deposited sulfur was retained in the subtropical soil, it alleviates the historical acidification caused by elevated deposition. The strong sulfur retention was attributed to the reversible sulfate adsorption in previous studies. Here we report that sulfate reduction is a prominent yet thus far overlooked mechanism for sulfur retention, based upon the comprehensive evidence of soil sulfur storage and multi-isotope within entire soil profile along a hydrological continuum in a typical subtropical catchment of China. Using a dual isotopic mass balance model, we determined that annual flux of reduction accounted for approximately 38% of sulfur retention, which was close to the proportion of reduced species in soil. Consequently, the release of sulfur legacy would be less serious with the decreasing sulfur deposition in China, compared to the projections only considering adsorption.

Mutations of CNTNAP1 were associated with myelination disorders, suggesting the role of CNTNAP1 in myelination processes. Whether CNTNAP1 may have a role in early cortical neuronal development is largely unknown. In this study, we identified 4 compound heterozygous mutations of CNTNAP1 in 2 Chinese families. Using mouse models, we found that CNTNAP1 is highly expressed in neurons and is located predominantly in MAP2+ neurons during the early developmental stage. Importantly, Cntnap1 deficiency results in aberrant dendritic growth and spine development in vitro and in vivo, and it delayed migration of cortical neurons during early development. Finally, we found that the number of parvalbumin+ neurons in the cortex and hippocampus of Cntnap1–/– mice is strikingly increased by P15, suggesting that excitation/inhibition balance is impaired. Together, this evidence elucidates a critical function of CNTNAP1 in cortical development, providing insights underlying molecular and circuit mechanisms of CNTNAP1-related disease., Deficiency of CNTNAP1 causes severe cortical developmental deficits, leading to human lethal perinatal symptoms.

Visual domain adaptation can utilize similar but different source data to solve the scarcity problem of labeled data in target domain, therefore it has received more and more attention. The main difficulty of this task is the distribution discrepancy between target data and source data. Hence, a series of works have been proposed to reduce the distribution discrepancy by seeking cross-domain feature invariant, or reducing the weight of source instances that are not related to the target data. The major disadvantage is that most works fail to consider the intrinsic geometric manifold structure, which is important for effective learning. This paper considers the intrinsic geometric manifold structure, and the obtained domain invariant features can be more discriminating. Our method effectively integrates distribution matching and preserving the structure consistency into one framework, and obtains the optimal solution by solving a generalized eigen-decomposition problem. Comprehensive experimental results verify that proposed method can significantly outperform state-of-the-art methods in cross domain image recognition problems.

Human brain development is a complex process involving neural proliferation, differentiation, and migration that are directed by many essential cellular factors and drivers. Here, using the NetBID2 algorithm and developing human brain RNA sequencing dataset, we identify synaptotagmin-like 3 (SYTL3) as one of the top drivers of early human brain development. Interestingly, SYTL3 exhibits high activity but low expression in both early developmental human cortex and human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-derived neurons. Knockout of SYTL3 (SYTL3-KO) in human neurons or knockdown of Sytl3 in embryonic mouse cortex markedly promotes neuronal migration. SYTL3-KO causes an abnormal distribution of deep-layer neurons in brain organoids and reduces presynaptic neurotransmitter release in hESC-derived neurons. We further demonstrate that SYTL3-KO-accelerated neuronal migration is modulated by high expression of matrix metalloproteinases. Together, based on bioinformatics and biological experiments, we identify SYTL3 as a regulator of cortical neuronal migration in human and mouse developing brains.

Hypoxia and dysregulation of microRNAs (miRNAs) have been identified as crucial factors in carcinogenesis. However, the potential mechanisms of HIF-1α and miR-421 in gastric cancer have not been well elucidated. In this study, we found that miR-421 was up-regulated by HIF-1α. Overexpression of miR-421 promoted metastasis, inhibited apoptosis, and induced cisplatin resistance in gastric cancer in vivo and in vitro. E-cadherin and caspase-3 were identified as targets of miR-421. Besides, relative mRNA expression of miR-421 was significantly increased in gastric cancer tumor tissues compared with non-tumor tissues in a cohort of gastric cancer specimens (n=107). The expression of miR-421 was higher in advanced gastric cancers compared with localized ones. Moreover, Kaplan-Meier analysis illustrated that those patients with low levels of miR-421 had a significant longer overall survival (p = 0.006) and time to relapse (p = 0.007). Therefore, miR-421 could serve as an important prognostic marker and a potential molecular target for therapy in gastric cancer.

Object recognition finds wide application and is a challenge topic in computer vision and pattern recognition. In this paper, a new object detection method is proposed, which depends on active contour models (ACMs) energy function with pattern matching method. Firstly, object detection with shape prior based on energy function is presented to extract candidate targets. A novel geometric feature based on energy function of prior shape is put forward. The object detection method is invariant to scaling of shape and is also suitable for prior shapes set for general cases. Several candidate targets may be extracted when the object detection method is applied in object detection because most objects have similar shape. Then Speed up Robust Features (SURF) algorithm is employed to recognize the desired target from candidate targets. Experimental results show that proposed method is effective and efficient.

Optical observations of jets provide information useful for control of electrospinning of polymer solutions. Combinations of videography, stereography, and methods for illumination of the multiple coils of an electrospinning jet path, that depend on bright glints of reflected light from the jet, recorded quantitative information about the location, vector velocity, and rotation of selected segments of the jet. New bending coils were observed to form at rates of 200–1560 turns per second. This bending frequency decreased as the capillary number of the solutions increased. The polarization of light, in glints reflected at Brewster's angle, allows measurement of the index of refraction of the fluid jet, in flight. Asymmetric illumination of an electrospinning jet made both the handedness and changes in handedness of the electrical bending coils apparent to visual observation and in 2-dimensional images. Evidence was found, in the form of polarized ribbon-like glint traces, for the occurrence of undulations on the surface of some jets.

Electrospun nanofibers were captured directly between two steel rods that functioned as the “grips” of the tensile testing apparatus. Tension was applied to the selected nanofiber by displacing one of the grips at controlled rates or in steps. The stress was revealed by the deflection of a nanofiber, caused by the drag force from a broad stream of air, which flowed perpendicular to the fiber at a known velocity. The deflected position and shape of the nanofiber was observed with a light arrangement optimized to produce bright glints that were photographed with a camcorder. Image analysis of the catenary shapes of the nanofibers was combined with scanning electron microscopy measurements of the diameter of the ends of the tested fibers to evaluate the mechanical properties. Measurements of properties, including tensile strength, tensile modulus and elongation-to-break, of thin electrospun fibers were obtained on six chemically different polymers: nylon 6 , poly(ethylene oxide), polyvinylpyrrolidone, poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline), Tecoflex ® and Tecophilic ® polyurethanes. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of tensile data on single polyvinylpyrrolidone and poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline) nanofibers. These soft nanofibers with low strain to break rarely survive the sample loading procedures where single fiber manipulation is involved. This method complements difficult mechanical measurements of polymer nanofibers and low strength microfibers made on miniature mechanical testing devices. Mechanical hysteresis curves were attained that show the recoverable and non-recoverable tensile deformation of PEO , nylon and Tecophilic ® polyurethane fibers.

Organic light-emitting diode(OLED) has emerged as the new generation technique to mobile displays. Although OLED plane has many advantages compared to LCD, it still accounts for a large amount of the power consumption in mobile devices. In this paper, we propose a log-function power constrained algorithm(LFPC) to save the power of OLED display. We choose superpixel as the basic unit and computer a saliency map of all superpixels. Next, we integrate the human visual characteristic into a log-function which is used to limit the pixel values thus achieving the power saving of OLED. Our experimental results show that LFPC algorithm can achieve 34.6% more OLED power saving for images with high luminance while retaining a high image visual experience. Also, our methodology performs better on power saving and image quality compared to PCCE.

To study the expression of androgen receptor (AR) in the cases of sudden death caused by coronary heart disease (CHD) and relationship between AR and sudden coronary death (SCD) to explore the mechanism of the development of coronary atherosclerosis and provide references for the prevent and treatment of CHD and medicolegal identification of SCD. 53 cases selected from the autopsied cases in our department from 2011 to 2012 were divided into 3 groups: 18 case of SCD, including 11 males and 7 females, as experimental group, another 18 cases, including 11 males and 7 females, with CHD but died of mechanical injuries and poisoning as control group I, and 17 cases without CHD who also died of mechanical injuries and poisoning including 10 males and 7 females, as control group II. After HE-stained and immunohistochemistry-stained (SP) for the slices, the expression of AR in coronary arteries were observed and the average optical density (AOD) of positive signal in each case were detected by using Image-Pro Plus 6.0 software. We found strongly positive expression of AR in control group II, weakly positive expression in control group I and a little weaker in the experimental group. The expression of AR in coronary artery was reduced in CHD patients, which suggested that androgen may have favorable effects on the cardiovascular system.

CdTe nanocrystal (NC)/CdS p–n hetero-junction solar cells with an ITO/ZnO-In/CdS/CdTe/MoO x /Ag-inverted structure were prepared by using a layer-by-layer solution process. The CdS thin films were prepared by chemical bath deposition on top of ITO/ZnO-In and were found to be very compact and pin-hole free in a large area, which insured high quality CdTe NCs thin-film formation upon it. The device performance was strongly related to the CdCl2 annealing temperature and annealing time. Devices exhibited power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 3.08 % following 400 °C CdCl2 annealing for 5 min, which was a good efficiency for solution processed CdTe/CdS NC-inverted solar cells. By carefully designing and optimizing the CdCl2-annealing conditions (370 °C CdCl2 annealing for about 15 min), the PCE of such devices showed a 21 % increase, in comparison to 400 °C CdCl2-annealing conditions, and reached a better PCE of 3.73 % while keeping a relatively high V OC of 0.49 V. This PCE value, to the best of our knowledge, is the highest PCE reported for solution processed CdTe–CdS NC solar cells. Moreover, the inverted solar cell device was very stable when kept under ambient conditions, less than 4 % degradation was observed in PCE after 40 days storage.

A primary amine-derivatized 4-dibenzocyclooctynol (DIBO) was used to initiate the ring-opening polymerization of poly(γ-benzyl-l-glutamate) (DIBO-PBLG). This initiator yields well-defined PBLG polymers functionalized with DIBO at the chain termini. The DIBO end group further survives an electrospinning process that yields nanofibers that were then derivatized post-assembly with azide-functionalized gold nanoparticles. The availability of DIBO on the surface of the fibers is substantiated by fluorescence, SEM, and TEM measurements. Post-assembly functionalization of nanofiber constructs with bioactive groups can be facilitated easily using this process.

Measurement of elongational stresses, stereographic images of jet paths, innovative collection of fluid jets, and utilization of elongational flow for assembly or disassembly of particulate structures, the electron microscopic views inside nanofibers, and the morphological and crystallographic changes that occur during heating of the metastable electrospun fibers illuminate the growing versatility of the electrospinning process.