RegRNA: an integrated web server for identifying regulatory RNA motifs and elements

Numerous regulatory structural motifs have been identified as playing essential roles in transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. RegRNA is an integrated web server for identifying the homologs of regulatory RNA motifs and elements against an input mRNA sequence. Both sequence homologs and structural homologs of regulatory RNA motifs can be recognized. The regulatory RNA motifs supported in RegRNA are categorized into several classes: (i) motifs in mRNA 5′-untranslated region (5′-UTR) and 3′-UTR; (ii) motifs involved in mRNA splicing; (iii) motifs involved in transcriptional regulation; (iv) riboswitches; (v) splicing donor/acceptor sites; (vi) inverted repeats; and (vii) miRNA target sites. The experimentally validated regulatory RNA motifs are extracted from literature survey and several regulatory RNA motif databases, such as UTRdb, TRANSFAC, alternative splicing database (ASD) and miRBase. A variety of computational programs are integrated for identifying the homologs of the regulatory RNA motifs. An intuitive user interface is designed to facilitate the comprehensive annotation of user-submitted mRNA sequences. The RegRNA web server is now available at

Replication Attack Detection in Mobile Wireless Sensor Network with LEACH-ME Routing Protocol

Because the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) nodes are low-cost devices, attackers may capture some nodes in this network and then duplicate these nodes to eavesdrop the transmitted messages or even control the network gradually without difficulty. This is the so-called node replication attack. This type of attacks could cause the huge threat to information security of WSNs. Therefore, in this paper, we would like to suggest a detection approach which can offer good performance but with higher energy consumption. Hence, it can provide an alternative solution for some specific applications that need better precision but do not care energy or lifespan too much

Vocal cord dysfunction diagnosed by four-dimensional dynamic volume computed tomography in patients with difficult-to-treat asthma: A case series

Patients with asthma may also have vocal cord dysfunction (VCD), which leads to poor control of the asthma. Once patients are diagnosed with difficult-to-treat asthma with poor control, VCD should be excluded or treated accordingly. The gold standard for diagnosis of VCD is to perform a laryngoscopy. However, this procedure is invasive and may not be suitable for patients with difficult-to-treat asthma. Four-dimensional (4D) dynamic volume computed tomography (CT) is a noninvasive method for quantification of laryngeal movement, and can serve as an alternative for the diagnosis of VCD. Herein, we present a series of five cases with difficult-to-treat asthma patients who were diagnosed with VCD by 4D dynamic volume CT. Clinicians should be alert to the possibility of VCD when poor control is noted in patients with asthma. Early diagnosis by noninvasive 4D dynamic volume CT can decrease excessive doses of inhaled corticosteroids

A Reinforcement Learning Badminton Environment for Simulating Player Tactics (Student Abstract)

Recent techniques for analyzing sports precisely has stimulated various approaches to improve player performance and fan engagement. However, existing approaches are only able to evaluate offline performance since testing in real-time matches requires exhaustive costs and cannot be replicated. To test in a safe and reproducible simulator, we focus on turn-based sports and introduce a badminton environment by simulating rallies with different angles of view and designing the states, actions, and training procedures. This benefits not only coaches and players by simulating past matches for tactic investigation, but also researchers from rapidly evaluating their novel algorithms.Comment: Accepted by AAAI 2023 Student Abstract, code is available at https://github.com/wywyWang/CoachAI-Projects/tree/main/Strategic%20Environmen

Spatiotemporal analysis of air pollution and asthma patient visits in Taipei, Taiwan

[[abstract]]Background: Buffer analyses have shown that air pollution is associated with an increased incidence of asthma, but little is known about how air pollutants affect health outside a defined buffer. The aim of this study was to better understand how air pollutants affect asthma patient visits in a metropolitan area. The study used an integrated spatial and temporal approach that included the Kriging method and the Generalized Additive Model (GAM). Results: We analyzed daily outpatient and emergency visit data from the Taiwan Bureau of National Health Insurance and air pollution data from the Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration during 2000-2002. In general, children (aged 0-15 years) had the highest number of total asthma visits. Seasonal changes of PM10, NO2, O3 and SO2 were evident. However, SO2 showed a positive correlation with the dew point (r = 0.17, p < 0.01) and temperature (r = 0.22, p < 0.01). Among the four pollutants studied, the elevation of NO2 concentration had the highest impact on asthma outpatient visits on the day that a 10% increase of concentration caused the asthma outpatient visit rate to increase by 0.30% (95% CI: 0.16%??.45%) in the four pollutant model. For emergency visits, the elevation of PM10 concentration, which occurred two days before the visits, had the most significant influence on this type of patient visit with an increase of 0.14% (95% CI: 0.01%??.28%) in the four pollutants model. The impact on the emergency visit rate was non-significant two days following exposure to the other three air pollutants. Conclusion: This preliminary study demonstrates the feasibility of an integrated spatial and temporal approach to assess the impact of air pollution on asthma patient visits. The results of this study provide a better understanding of the correlation of air pollution with asthma patient visits and demonstrate that NO2 and PM10 might have a positive impact on outpatient and emergency settings respectively. Future research is required to validate robust spatiotemporal patterns and trends

Ginsenoside-Rg1 Protects the Liver against Exhaustive Exercise-Induced Oxidative Stress in Rats

Despite regular exercise benefits, acute exhaustive exercise elicits oxidative damage in liver. The present study determined the hepatoprotective properties of ginsenoside-Rg1 against exhaustive exercise-induced oxidative stress in rats. Forty rats were assigned into vehicle and ginsenoside-Rg1 groups (0.1 mg/kg bodyweight). After 10-week treatment, ten rats from each group performed exhaustive swimming. Estimated oxidative damage markers, including thiobarbituric acid reactive substance (TBARS) (67%) and protein carbonyls (56%), were significantly (P < 0.01) elevated after exhaustive exercise but alleviated in ginsenoside-Rg1 pretreated rats. Furthermore, exhaustive exercise drastically decreased glutathione (GSH) content (∼79%) with concurrent decreased superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) activities. However, these changes were attenuated in Rg1 group. Additionally, increased xanthine oxidase (XO) activity and nitric oxide (NO) levels after exercise were also inhibited by Rg1 pretreatment. For the first time, our findings provide strong evidence that ginsenoside-Rg1 can protect the liver against exhaustive exercise-induced oxidative damage

Campaign Investigation of Ionospheric Plasma Irregularities in Sporadic E Region Using FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC Satellite and Chung-Li 30 MHz Coherent Radar

In this article, we present an electron density profile retrieved from total electron density estimated from the difference in phase path excess between GPS frequencies L1 and L2 measured by the FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC satellite, in which the radio occultation inversion technique is employed for retrieval. Except for a regular F layer peak located at a height of about 290 km and a minor peak centered at a height of 140 km, a pronounced sporadic E layer was observed at a height of about 105 km. This intense electron density layer with thickness of about 10 km has very sharp boundaries on the top and bottom sides with scale lengths of -22 and 13 km, respectively. At the time when COSMIC GPS radio occultation took place in the vicinity of Taiwan, the Chung-Li 30 MHz coherent radar detected strong backscatter from 5-meter plasma irregularities. The peak radar backscatter is situated at a height of about 110 km in the topside of the Es layer with a very steep electron density gradient. Interferometry measurement made by the four separate and independent receiving channels of the Chung-Li 30 MHz radar indicates that the configuration of the large scale plasma structure constituted by 5-meter scale field-aligned irregularities is patch-like, and a 2-minute oscillation in zonal displacement of the plasma structure was found. From the temporal displacement of the echo patterns from the plasma irregularities in the bottom side of the layer, the plasma structure in the bottom side of the Es layer was found to move westward at a trace velocity of about 6.2 ms-1. The exceedingly small drift velocity combined with the relatively large scale length of the electron density gradient seem to suggest that the 5-meter plasma irregularities are very unlikely generated through the non-linear cascade process of the large plasma structure at kilometer scale induced by gradient drift instability. Moreover, in light of the fact that both the observed drift velocity (less than 15 m s-1) of the kilometer-meter scale plasma wave and the measured Doppler velocity (about 50 m s-1) of the 5-m plasma irregularities are much smaller than the 280 m s-1 that is required to directly excite plasma waves through gradient drift instability, it suggests that the 5-m plasma irregularities observed by the Chung-Li 30 MHz radar are very unlikely the result of direct excitation through gradient drift instability

miRTarBase: a database curates experimentally validated microRNA–target interactions

MicroRNAs (miRNAs), i.e. small non-coding RNA molecules (∼22 nt), can bind to one or more target sites on a gene transcript to negatively regulate protein expression, subsequently controlling many cellular mechanisms. A current and curated collection of miRNA–target interactions (MTIs) with experimental support is essential to thoroughly elucidating miRNA functions under different conditions and in different species. As a database, miRTarBase has accumulated more than 3500 MTIs by manually surveying pertinent literature after data mining of the text systematically to filter research articles related to functional studies of miRNAs. Generally, the collected MTIs are validated experimentally by reporter assays, western blot, or microarray experiments with overexpression or knockdown of miRNAs. miRTarBase curates 3576 experimentally verified MTIs between 657 miRNAs and 2297 target genes among 17 species. miRTarBase contains the largest amount of validated MTIs by comparing with other similar, previously developed databases. The MTIs collected in the miRTarBase can also provide a large amount of positive samples to develop computational methods capable of identifying miRNA–target interactions. miRTarBase is now available on http://miRTarBase.mbc.nctu.edu.tw/, and is updated frequently by continuously surveying research articles

Syndromic Recognition of Influenza A Infection in a Low Prevalence Community Setting

BACKGROUND: With epidemics of influenza A virus infection, people and medical professionals are all concerned about symptoms or syndromes that may indicate the infection with influenza A virus. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A prospective study was performed at a community clinic of a metropolitan area. Throat swab was sampled for 3-6 consecutive adult patients with new episode (<3 days) of respiratory tract infection every weekday from Dec. 8, 2005 to Mar. 31, 2006. Demographic data, relevant history, symptoms and signs were recorded. Samples were processed with multiplex real time PCR for 9 common respiratory tract pathogens and by virus culture. Throat swab samples were positive for Influenza A virus with multiplex real time PCR system in 12 of 240 patients. The 12 influenza A positive cases were with more clusters and chills than the other 228. Certain symptoms and syndromes increased the likelihood of influenza A virus infection. The syndrome of high fever plus chills plus cough, better with clustering of cases in household or workplace, is with the highest likelihood (positive likelihood ratio 95; 95% CI 12-750). Absence of both cluster and chills provides moderate evidence against the infection (negative likelihood ratio 0.51; 95% CI 0.29-0.90). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Syndromic recognition is not diagnostic but is useful for discriminating between influenza A infection and common cold. In addition to relevant travel history, confirmatory molecular test can be applied to subjects with high likelihood when the disease prevalence is low