MicroRNA-320a inhibits cell proliferation, migration and invasion by targeting BMI-1 in nasopharyngeal carcinoma

AbstractIn the present study, we investigated the roles and molecular mechanisms of miR-320a in human nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). miR-320a expression was strongly reduced in NPC tissues and cell lines. Overexpression of miR-320a significantly suppressed NPC cell growth, migration, invasion and tumor growth in a xenograft mouse model. A luciferase reporter assay revealed that miR-320a could directly bind to the 3′ UTR of BMI-1. Overexpression of BMI-1 rescued miR-320a-mediated biological function. BMI-1 expression was found to be up-regulated and inversely correlated with miR-320a expression in NPC. Collectively, our data indicate that miR-320a plays a tumor suppressor role in the development and progression of NPC and may be a novel therapeutic target against NPC

Scattering of 7^{7}Be and 8^{8}B and the astrophysical S17_{17} factor

Measurements of scattering of $^{7}$Be at 87 MeV on a melamine (C$_{3}$N$_{6}$H$_{6}$) target and of $^{8}$B at 95 MeV on C were performed. For $^{7}$Be the angular range was extended over previous measurements and monitoring of the intensity of the radioactive beam was improved. The measurements allowed us to check and improve the optical model potentials used in the incoming and outgoing channels for the analysis of existing data on the proton transfer reaction $^{14}$N($^{7}$Be,$^{8}$B)$^{13}$C. The resultslead to an updated determination of the asymptotic normalization coefficient for the virtual decay $^{8}$B $\to$ $^{7}$Be + $p$. We find a slightly larger value, $C_{tot}^{2}(^{8}B)=0.466\pm 0.047$ fm$^{-1}$, for the melamine target. This implies an astrophysical factor, $S_{17}(0)=18.0\pm 1.8$ eV$\cdot$b, for the solar neutrino generating reaction $^{7}$Be($p$,$\gamma$)$^{8}$B.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Network evolution of regional brain volumes in young children reflects neurocognitive scores and mother's education

The maturation of regional brain volumes from birth to preadolescence is a critical developmental process that underlies emerging brain structural connectivity and function. Regulated by genes and environment, the coordinated growth of different brain regions plays an important role in cognitive development. Current knowledge about structural network evolution is limited, partly due to the sparse and irregular nature of most longitudinal neuroimaging data. In particular, it is unknown how factors such as mother’s education or sex of the child impact the structural network evolution. To address this issue, we propose a method to construct evolving structural networks and study how the evolving connections among brain regions as reflected at the network level are related to maternal education and biological sex of the child and also how they are associated with cognitive development. Our methodology is based on applying local Fréchet regression to longitudinal neuroimaging data acquired from the RESONANCE cohort, a cohort of healthy children (245 females and 309 males) ranging in age from 9 weeks to 10 years. Our findings reveal that sustained highly coordinated volume growth across brain regions is associated with lower maternal education and lower cognitive development. This suggests that higher neurocognitive performance levels in children are associated with increased variability of regional growth patterns as children age.publishedVersio

Low-mass dark matter search results from full exposure of PandaX-I experiment

We report the results of a weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter search using the full 80.1\;live-day exposure of the first stage of the PandaX experiment (PandaX-I) located in the China Jin-Ping Underground Laboratory. The PandaX-I detector has been optimized for detecting low-mass WIMPs, achieving a photon detection efficiency of 9.6\%. With a fiducial liquid xenon target mass of 54.0\,kg, no significant excess event were found above the expected background. A profile likelihood analysis confirms our earlier finding that the PandaX-I data disfavor all positive low-mass WIMP signals reported in the literature under standard assumptions. A stringent bound on the low mass WIMP is set at WIMP mass below 10\,GeV/c$^2$, demonstrating that liquid xenon detectors can be competitive for low-mass WIMP searches.Comment: v3 as accepted by PRD. Minor update in the text in response to referee comments. Separating Fig. 11(a) and (b) into Fig. 11 and Fig. 12. Legend tweak in Fig. 9(b) and 9(c) as suggested by referee, as well as a missing legend for CRESST-II legend in Fig. 12 (now Fig. 13). Same version as submitted to PR