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Nerve growth factor (NGF), which is required for the survival and differentiation of the nervous system, is also thought to play an important role in the development of mammalian reproductive tissues. To explore the function of NGF in the male reproductive system of non-mammalian animals, we determined the presence of NGF and its receptor, tyrosine kinase receptor A (TrkA), in rooster testes and investigated the regulation of NGF and TrkA expression by follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH). The mRNA and protein levels of NGF and TrkA in 6-week-old rooster testes were lower than those in 12-, 16- or 20-week age groups; levels were highest in the 16-week group. Immunohistochemistry showed that NGF and TrkA were both detected in spermatogonia, spermatocytes and spermatids. NGF immunoreactivity was observed in Leydig cells and strong TrkA signals were present in Sertoli cells. Meanwhile, FSH increased TrkA transcript levels in rooster testes in a dose-dependent manner. We present novel evidence for the developmental and FSH-regulated expression of the NGF/TrkA system, and our findings suggest that the NGF/TrkA system may play a prominent role in chicken spermatogenesis.

Staphylococcus aureus is an important zoonotic pathogen that causes a variety of life-threatening diseases. The increasing emergence of drug resistance further complicates the treatment of S. aureus infections. The critical role of alpha-hemolysin (Hla) in virulence renders this toxin an ideal target for the development of anti-infective agents for S. aureus. Here, We found that resveratrol, a natural compound widely found in fruits without antibacterial activity, could effectively inhibit Hla expression via down-regulating the transcription of hla, the gene that encodes Hla, and RNAIII, the effector molecule of the agr system. The addition of resveratrol to a co-culture system of S. aureus and A549 cells significantly alleviated bacteria-mediated cellular injury. Furthermore, treatment with resveratrol effectively protected mice from S. aureus pneumonia. Our results established resveratrol as an effective Hla inhibitor that reduces Hla expression without antimicrobial activity and can be further developed into novel therapeutics against S. aureus infections.

Generally traditional research methods to crowd evacuation depend on experiences and hand calculation, but the errors of these methods are clear. So computer simulation methods have become popular all over the world. The paper studied crowd evacuation behaviors by building EXODUS developed by University of Greenwich. Evacuation time and behaviors were simulated and some differences were compared with the results by hand and experiences, which can give theoretic and methodological guides to crowd management, crowd facilities design, evacuation analysis in buildings, establishment of emergency preplanning and so on.

Cofilins (CFL), including CFL1 and CFL2, are members of the family of actin-binding proteins in eukaryote. CFL2 is predominantly expressed in mammalian skeletal muscle and heart and is important to muscle fiber formation and muscular regeneration. To study transcriptional regulation of porcine CFL2, a 2.5 kb upstream sequence starting from the major CFL2 transcriptional start site was cloned by genome walking. Twelve DNA fragments of the 5' flank region of the porcine CFL2 gene were further isolated from porcine genomic DNA via PCR and inserted into the luciferase reporter vector pGL4.10 to make 12 CFL2 reporter constructs. All reporter vectors were transfected into C2C12, NIH3T3, or Hela cells and their relative luciferase activity measured after 48 h, respectively. Bioinformatics analysis suggested that there were two TATA-boxes at the -508 bp and -453 bp, as well as a GC-box and a CAAT-box in this sequence. Additional transcription factor binding sites including SP1, AP1, AP2, and GATA-1 sites were also predicted. The transcriptional activity of pGL4.10-1554 (1502 bp to +51 bp) was the strongest, and the promoter's active region was mapped to a region from -1502 bp to -1317 bp. Our data provide a foundation for future studies into transcriptional regulation of CFL2.

Panic is a typical psychological characteristic of crowd in a fire, which can cause serious casualties. By discussing psychology and behavior of crowd in panic, the paper analyzes behavior of crowd evacuation, and utilizes Building EXODUS to simulate crowd behaviors to a library room of a university. Some instructional conclusions are got, which can give theoretic and methodological guides to crowd management, crowd facilities design, evacuation analysis in buildings, establishment of emergency preplanning and so on.

In order to reduce banding and blurry edges produced by the conventional multilevel error diffusion algorithm in the digital halftone process, an improved multilevel error diffusion algorithm using neighborhood growing is proposed. According to human visual properties, the algorithm uses banding edge neighborhood alternately grow toward the center to revise halftone image. Experimental results show that the halftone image obtained by the improved algorithm eliminates banding and a better visual effect is achieved with the enhanced edges.

Lactose intolerance in northern Europeans is strongly associated with a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) located 14 kb upstream of the human lactase gene: -13,910 C/T. We examined whether SNPs in the 5' flanking region of the pig lactase gene are similar to those in the human gene and whether these polymorphisms play a functional role in regulating pig lactase gene expression. The 5' flanking region of the lactase gene from several different breeds of pigs was cloned and analyzed for gene regulatory activity of a luciferase reporter gene. One SNP was found in the enhancer region (-797 G/A) and two were found in the promoter region (-308G/C and -301 A/G). The promoter C-308,G-301(Pro-CG) strongly promotes the expression of the lactase gene, but the promoter G-308,A-301(Pro-GA) does not. The enhancer A-797(Enh-A) genotype for Pro-GA can significantly enhance promoter activity, but has an inhibitory effect on Pro-CG. The Enhancer G-797(Enh-G) has a significant inhibitory effect on both promoters. In conclusion, the order of effectiveness on the pig lactase gene is Enh-A+Pro-GA>Enh-A/G+Pro-CG>Enh-G+Pro-GA.

In order to eliminate the speech signal fading induced by noise, this paper proposes a new variable leaky LMS algorithm on the basis of the adaptive filter in combination with the advantages of the leakage LMS algorithm and the variable step size LMS algorithm, and analyzes its principle. After the new algorithm is used to simulate speech with noise, the result shows that the proposed algorithm has a good ability to suppress Gaussian noise and excellent tracking performance, proving the correctness of the algorithm and the feasibility of simulation.

The MCU system is used to simulate laser signals and the signals received by avalanche transistors so as to conduct signal detection of actual circuit boards.With establishing a library of fault cases through the computer serial port, the MCU and the fault setting module can be based on to realize the fault simulation of actual circuit boards and conduct the training in fault detection and removal. The designed fault setting software and assessment software can be combined to assess the training effects of fault analysis, detection and removal. The developed prototype passes the test of training, showing good results and high training benefits

To analyze the clinical manifestations of affected individuals in a family of congenital fibrosis of the extraocular muscles (CFEOM) with juvenile canities.All affected and unaffected individuals were retrospectively analyzed in this study. The clinical features include genetic aspects, sex, age, ptosis, restriction of eye movement, aberrant innervation and surgical procedures, were evaluated.This pedigree was inherited as autosomal dominant. There were 14 cases suffering from congenital fibrosis of extraocular muscles in four generations. They had congenital blepharoptosis, head-tilt, chin lift and primary gaze fixed in a hypotrophic position. But vertical and horizontal positions of the eye and restriction of eye movement were different among affected individuals. Some of them also had pupillary abnormally, aberrant innervation and juvenile canities. Inferior rectus recession improved hypotropia in patients with infraducted eyes and chin elevation. Horizontal muscle recession corrected horizontal strabismus satisfactorily in most cases. Ptosis was repaired by frontalis sling or levator resection.This is the first report of CFEOM associated with juvenile canities. There was phenotypic heterogeneity in this CFEOM pedigree. So the phenotype alone is not sufficient to distinguish among the 3 genotypically distinct CFEOM syndromes. The combination of clinical characteristics and genetic analysis are the basis for the establishment of diagnosis.

Congenital cranial dysinnervation disorders (CCDDs) are congenital non-progressive, sporadic or familial abnormalities of cranial musculature that result from developmental abnormalities of, or the complete absence of, one or more cranial nerves with primary or secondary muscle dysinnervation. These disorders include vertical disorders of ocular motility, horizontal disorders of ocular motility and disorders with abnormalities of facial motility that were previously referred to as "congenital fibrosis syndromes". The advances in clinical and molecular genetics of congenital cranial dysinnervation disorders are reviewed.

Distributed components, such as CORBA and COM+, implement the two-way invocation between the client and server using RPC in the distributed network. RPC requires that server must be certain and online all the time, which will endow the server with heavy burden and the system with single dependence on the server. The task certification and result certification, based on SPKI, are proposed to transform the RPC to Request/Response of XML-formed Certification. DHT is used to store and look up the certificates, which enable MR2CG (the Method of Coarse-Grained P2P Computing Based on XML Request/Response) to get rid of the limitation of the server and support the different kinds of Coarse-grained P2P computing.