Single nucleotide polymorphism of SREBF-1 gene associated with an increased risk of endometrial cancer in Chinese women.

AIM: Elevated levels of sterol regulatory element-binding protein-1 (SREBP-1) have been found in endometrial cancer (EC), suggesting that it is essential to the development of EC. Obesity and diabetes have been established as known risk factors of EC, while SREBF-1 gene polymorphisms have also been found to be associated with obesity and type II diabetes. Therefore, we hypothesize that single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in SREBF-1 gene may be associated with increased risk of EC. METHOD: We analyzed the sequence of SREBF-1 in tissue samples from 30 EC cases and 6 benign controls using high throughput method. Based on the primary results, we selected one SNP (rs2297508) as a genetic marker to conduct a hospital-based case-control study with 139 EC cases and 129 benign controls. The samples were examined under the microscope to determine their histopathology prior to the SNP analysis using RT-PCR. RESULTS: Through sequence analysis, we found 10 SNPs of SREBF-1 associated with EC, including 3 new SNPs. Fourteen percent of EC showed the rs2297508 SNP with C allele, while only 7% had the C allele was present in benign controls (p = 0.027, OR = 1.983). Additionally, the C allele was associated with cancer differentiation (p CONCLUSION: Our study indicates that SNP (rs2297508) of SREBF-1 may serve as a genetic predisposition factor for the development of EC and screening of such genetic marker may be helpful in its early detection

Establishing the carrier scattering phase diagram for ZrNiSn-based half-Heusler thermoelectric materials

Chemical doping is one of the most important strategies for tuning electrical properties of semiconductors, particularly thermoelectric materials. Generally, the main role of chemical doping lies in optimizing the carrier concentration, but there can potentially be other important effects. Here, we show that chemical doping plays multiple roles for both electron and phonon transport properties in half-Heusler thermoelectric materials. With ZrNiSn-based half-Heusler materials as an example, we use high-quality single and polycrystalline crystals, various probes, including electrical transport measurements, inelastic neutron scattering measurement, and first-principles calculations, to investigate the underlying electron-phonon interaction. We find that chemical doping brings strong screening effects to ionized impurities, grain boundary, and polar optical phonon scattering, but has negligible influence on lattice thermal conductivity. Furthermore, it is possible to establish a carrier scattering phase diagram, which can be used to select reasonable strategies for optimization of the thermoelectric performance.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figure

Dissociation of EphB2 Signaling Pathways Mediating Progenitor Cell Proliferation and Tumor Suppression

SummarySignaling proteins driving the proliferation of stem and progenitor cells are often encoded by proto-oncogenes. EphB receptors represent a rare exception; they promote cell proliferation in the intestinal epithelium and function as tumor suppressors by controlling cell migration and inhibiting invasive growth. We show that cell migration and proliferation are controlled independently by the receptor EphB2. EphB2 regulated cell positioning is kinase-independent and mediated via phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase, whereas EphB2 tyrosine kinase activity regulates cell proliferation through an Abl-cyclin D1 pathway. Cyclin D1 regulation becomes uncoupled from EphB signaling during the progression from adenoma to colon carcinoma in humans, allowing continued proliferation with invasive growth. The dissociation of EphB2 signaling pathways enables the selective inhibition of the mitogenic effect without affecting the tumor suppressor function and identifies a pharmacological strategy to suppress adenoma growth

Evaluating reproducibility of differential expression discoveries in microarray studies by considering correlated molecular changes

Motivation: According to current consistency metrics such as percentage of overlapping genes (POG), lists of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) detected from different microarray studies for a complex disease are often highly inconsistent. This irreproducibility problem also exists in other high-throughput post-genomic areas such as proteomics and metabolism. A complex disease is often characterized with many coordinated molecular changes, which should be considered when evaluating the reproducibility of discovery lists from different studies

Artificial intelligence : A powerful paradigm for scientific research

Y Artificial intelligence (AI) coupled with promising machine learning (ML) techniques well known from computer science is broadly affecting many aspects of various fields including science and technology, industry, and even our day-to-day life. The ML techniques have been developed to analyze high-throughput data with a view to obtaining useful insights, categorizing, predicting, and making evidence-based decisions in novel ways, which will promote the growth of novel applications and fuel the sustainable booming of AI. This paper undertakes a comprehensive survey on the development and application of AI in different aspects of fundamental sciences, including information science, mathematics, medical science, materials science, geoscience, life science, physics, and chemistry. The challenges that each discipline of science meets, and the potentials of AI techniques to handle these challenges, are discussed in detail. Moreover, we shed light on new research trends entailing the integration of AI into each scientific discipline. The aim of this paper is to provide a broad research guideline on fundamental sciences with potential infusion of AI, to help motivate researchers to deeply understand the state-of-the-art applications of AI-based fundamental sciences, and thereby to help promote the continuous development of these fundamental sciences.Peer reviewe

Whole exome sequencing identifies frequent somatic mutations in cell-cell adhesion genes in chinese patients with lung squamous cell carcinoma

Lung squamous cell carcinoma (SQCC) accounts for about 30% of all lung cancer cases. Understanding of mutational landscape for this subtype of lung cancer in Chinese patients is currently limited. We performed whole exome sequencing in samples from 100 patients with lung SQCCs to search for somatic mutations and the subsequent target capture sequencing in another 98 samples for validation. We identified 20 significantly mutated genes, including TP53, CDH10, NFE2L2 and PTEN. Pathways with frequently mutated genes included those of cell-cell adhesion/Wnt/Hippo in 76%, oxidative stress response in 21%, and phosphatidylinositol-3-OH kinase in 36% of the tested tumor samples. Mutations of Chromatin regulatory factor genes were identified at a lower frequency. In functional assays, we observed that knockdown of CDH10 promoted cell proliferation, soft-agar colony formation, cell migration and cell invasion, and overexpression of CDH10 inhibited cell proliferation. This mutational landscape of lung SQCC in Chinese patients improves our current understanding of lung carcinogenesis, early diagnosis and personalized therapy

The Role of Policy Perceptions and Entrepreneurs’ Preferences in Firms’ Response to Industry 4.0: The Case of Chinese Firms

Favorable policy implementation results are due not only to policy makers’ abilities but also to the behavior of those responding to the policies. For example, a CEO’s understanding of a government policy’s content and his or her willingness to respond to it, based on the expectation of profits, plays a vital role. To understand the relationship between how policies are perceived and how enterprises behave in response to innovation policies in the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0), in this study, we use structural equation modeling to investigate the roles of various factors and examine the response mechanisms in enterprises through which entrepreneurs react to Industry 4.0 innovation policies. The hypothesized model is validated empirically using a sample collected from 337 domestic Chinese high-tech firms. The modeling results indicate that positive perceptions of policies have a positive effect on entrepreneurs’ preferences which, in turn, motivate positive behavior toward innovation. Moreover, testing the model showed partial and complete mediation effects, indicating that the perceived practicability of a policy is a factor with a strong impact on response behavior that sometimes exerts its influence by altering the mediator of entrepreneurs’ responsive preferences. The empirical results and management implications of this study can serve as a reference for the effective implementation of and response to government development plans

Joint Dwell Time and Bandwidth Optimization for Multi-Target Tracking in Radar Network Based on Low Probability of Intercept

Radar network systems have been demonstrated to offer numerous advantages for target tracking. In this paper, a low probability of intercept (LPI)-based joint dwell time and bandwidth optimization strategy is proposed for multi-target tracking in a radar network. Since the Bayesian Cramer–Rao lower bound (BCRLB) provides a lower bound on parameter estimation, it can be utilized as the accuracy metric for target tracking. In this strategy, in order to improve the LPI performance of the radar network, the total dwell time consumption of the underlying system is minimized, while guaranteeing a predetermined tracking accuracy. There are two adaptable parameters in the optimization problem: one for dwell time, and the other for bandwidth allocation. Since the nonlinear programming-based genetic algorithm (NPGA) can solve the nonlinear problem well, we develop a method based upon NPGA to solve the resulting problem. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed strategy has superiority over traditional algorithms, and can achieve a better LPI performance of this radar network

LES investigation into the cavity shedding dynamics and cavitation-vortex interaction around a surface-piercing hydrofoil

Recent experiments have found that there is unstable vaporous cavitation around a surface-piercing hydrofoil at high Froude numbers and small yaw angles, and it would promote ventilation formation [R. Huang et al., "Investigations into the ventilated cavities around a surface-piercing hydrofoil at high Froude numbers, " Phys. Fluids 34, 043304 (2022)], but the cavity shedding dynamics and the mechanism of cavitation-vortex interaction are still open problems. In this paper, the unstable vaporous cavities around a surface-piercing hydrofoil are numerically investigated using the large-eddy simulation coupled with the Schnerr-Sauer cavitation model. Numerical simulations can predict the cavity features, including an aerated base cavity aft of the hydrofoil trailing edge, vaporous cavitation at the hydrofoil suction surface, and tip-vortex cavitation. A U-shaped vapor cloud shedding together with a horseshoe vortex is observed during the unsteady cavitation evolution, that is, the cavity development, cutoff, and collapse. This irregular shedding is related to the three-dimensional reentrant jet induced by the velocity reflection at the vaporous cavity closure line. Furthermore, the effects of the vaporous cavitation on the vorticity generation are attributed to vortex stretching, baroclinic torque, and vortex dilatation by using the vorticity transport equation. This study could contribute to the novel hydrofoil designs and their flow control. Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing