Editorial: Selected Papers from the 18th Air Transport Research Society World Conference, Bordeaux (France), 2014

The 18th Air Transport Research Society World Conference (ATRS) was held in Bordeaux, France, from July 17 to July 20, 2014. The conference attracted some 347 participants, and 321 papers were presented. The guest editors have selected six papers to be included in this special issue. These papers cover a wide range of topics presented and discussed at the conference and offer important contribution to the literature on air transport

Deep Learning with S-shaped Rectified Linear Activation Units

Rectified linear activation units are important components for state-of-the-art deep convolutional networks. In this paper, we propose a novel S-shaped rectified linear activation unit (SReLU) to learn both convex and non-convex functions, imitating the multiple function forms given by the two fundamental laws, namely the Webner-Fechner law and the Stevens law, in psychophysics and neural sciences. Specifically, SReLU consists of three piecewise linear functions, which are formulated by four learnable parameters. The SReLU is learned jointly with the training of the whole deep network through back propagation. During the training phase, to initialize SReLU in different layers, we propose a "freezing" method to degenerate SReLU into a predefined leaky rectified linear unit in the initial several training epochs and then adaptively learn the good initial values. SReLU can be universally used in the existing deep networks with negligible additional parameters and computation cost. Experiments with two popular CNN architectures, Network in Network and GoogLeNet on scale-various benchmarks including CIFAR10, CIFAR100, MNIST and ImageNet demonstrate that SReLU achieves remarkable improvement compared to other activation functions.Comment: Accepted by AAAI-1

DHX33 transcriptionally controls genes involved in the cell cycle

The RNA helicase DHX33 has been shown to be a critical regulator of cell proliferation and growth. However, the underlying mechanisms behind DHX33 function remain incompletely understood. We present original evidence in multiple cell lines that DHX33 transcriptionally controls the expression of genes involved in the cell cycle, notably cyclin, E2F1, cell division cycle (CDC), and minichromosome maintenance (MCM) genes. DHX33 physically associates with the promoters of these genes and controls the loading of active RNA polymerase II onto these promoters. DHX33 deficiency abrogates cell cycle progression and DNA replication and leads to cell apoptosis. In zebrafish, CRISPR-mediated knockout of DHX33 results in downregulation of cyclin A2, cyclin B2, cyclin D1, cyclin E2, cdc6, cdc20, E2F1, and MCM complexes in DHX33 knockout embryos. Additionally, we found the overexpression of DHX33 in a subset of non-small-cell lung cancers and in Ras-mutated human lung cancer cell lines. Forced reduction of DHX33 in these cancer cells abolished tumor formation in vivo. Our study demonstrates for the first time that DHX33 acts as a direct transcriptional regulator to promote cell cycle progression and plays an important role in driving cell proliferation during both embryo development and tumorigenesis

Assessment of the therapeutic potential of anti-miR 24 and anti-miR 34 in cardiac diseases

Purpose: To study the therapeutic effects of anti-miR-24 and anti-miR-34 in cardiac diseasesMethods: H9c2 rat cardiomyocyte cell lines were transfected with the synthetic oligonucleotides antimiR-24 and anti-miR-34 which reduced the expressions of miR-24 and miR-34. Proliferation assay, real time-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and immunoblotting were carried out to determine the effect of the transfections on cardiomyocyte proliferation, expressions of miR-24 and miR-34, as well as expressions of the target genes, TGF-β1 and E2F3.Results: The proliferation ability of the transfected cells was decreased significantly, relative to negative control. In contrast, percentage apoptosis was higher in the negative control group than in transfected cells. The expression profiles of anti-miR-24 and anti-miR-34 were significantly reduced, when compared to negative control. These results were further confirmed using immunoblot which revealed that the expression of the target genes, TGF-β1 and E2F3, were upregulated in the transfected cells.Conclusion: These results suggest that the synthetic oligonucleotides (anti-miR-24 and anti-miR-34) might be useful in developing therapeutic drug targets for cardiac diseases by suppressing the expressions of miR-24 and miR-34. Keywords: H9c2rat cardiomyocyte miRNA, Anti-miR-24, Anti-miR-34, Cardiac disease

Regulation of nuclear-cytoplasmic shuttling and function of Family with sequence similarity 13, member A (Fam13a), by B56-containing PP2As and Akt

Recent genome-wide association studies reveal that the FAM13A gene is associated with human lung function and a variety of lung diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, lung cancer, and pulmonary fibrosis. The biological functions of Fam13a, however, have not been studied. In an effort to identify novel substrates of B56-containing PP2As, we found that B56-containing PP2As and Akt act antagonistically to control reversible phosphorylation of Fam13a on Ser-322. We show that Ser-322 phosphorylation acts as a molecular switch to control the subcellular distribution of Fam13a. Fam13a shuttles between the nucleus and cytoplasm. When Ser-322 is phosphorylated by Akt, the binding between Fam13a and 14-3-3 is enhanced, leading to cytoplasmic sequestration of Fam13a. B56-containing PP2As dephosphorylate phospho-Ser-322 and promote nuclear localization of Fam13a. We generated Fam13a-knockout mice. Fam13a-mutant mice are viable and healthy, indicating that Fam13a is dispensable for embryonic development and physiological functions in adult animals. Intriguingly, Fam13a has the ability to activate the Wnt pathway. Although Wnt signaling remains largely normal in Fam13a-knockout lungs, depletion of Fam13a in human lung cancer cells causes an obvious reduction in Wnt signaling activity. Our work provides important clues to elucidating the mechanism by which Fam13a may contribute to human lung diseases

中国の高齢者における自発的な身体活動及び社会との関わりと認知機能の関連研究

この博士論文は内容の要約のみの公開（または一部非公開）になっています筑波大学 (University of Tsukuba)201

中国の高齢者における自発的な身体活動及び社会との関わりと認知機能の関連研究

筑波大学 (University of Tsukuba)201

Research on the Nucleation Mechanism and Early Warning Method of Strain Rockburst in Deep-Buried Tunnel Based on Microseismic Monitoring

AbstractIn order to discuss the nucleation mechanism of strain rockburst, this paper takes the rockburst section of deep diversion tunnel of Jinping Hydropower Project of Yalong River as the research object. Through the study of microseismic monitoring technology and the regularity of microseismic parameters, as well as combining the qualitative and quantitative analysis, the nucleation process and instability failure mechanism of strain rockburst were revealed, and the internal relationship between microseismic evolution law and rockburst process was explored. The monitoring results and analysis showed that the development process of strain rockburst under engineering disturbance can be divided into three stages: tensile crack initiation and development stage, macroscopic shear crack formation stage, and overall instability stage, respectively. The failure process was mainly that two macroscopic shear cracks caused by tensile failure were connected and developed to the tunnel wall and then formed a closed triangle region. The rock mass in this area appeared plate-like splitting, spalling, and wedge-shaped rock mass ejection at a certain initial velocity, which eventually lead to intense rockburst and overall instability failure. The results also showed that the rockburst failure process under engineering excavation was in good agreement with the traditional syllogism of rockburst. Meanwhile, based on the evolution characteristics of source parameters and statistical parameters, including microseismic energy, moment magnitude, cumulative apparent volume, energy index, and b value, the quantitative interpretation of the source parameter provided significant evidence and insight into characterization of strainbursts. In addition, these parameter fluctuation characteristics can be effectively used as the precursor information and early warning index of strain rockburst failure. The results of this study can provide reference for monitoring and early warning of rockburst in deep tunnel and taking effective prevention and support measures in time

Dinitrogen (N2_{2}) pulse emissions during freeze-thaw cycles from montane grassland soil

Short-lived pulses of soil nitrous oxide (N$_{2}$O) emissions during freeze-thaw periods can dominate annual cumulative N$_{2}$O fluxes from temperate managed and natural soils. However, the effects of freeze thaw cycles (FTCs) on dinitrogen (N$_{2}$) emissions, i.e., the dominant terminal product of the denitrification process, and ratios of N$_{2}$/N$_{2}$O emissions have remained largely unknown because methodological difficulties were so far hampering detailed studies. Here, we quantified both N$_{2}$ and N$_{2}$O emissions of montane grassland soils exposed to three subsequent FTCs under two different soil moisture levels (40 and 80% WFPS) and under manure addition at 80% WFPS. In addition, we also quantified abundance and expression of functional genes involved in nitrification and denitrification to better understand microbial drivers of gaseous N losses. Our study shows that each freeze thaw cycle was associated with pulse emissions of both N$_{2}$O andN$_{2}$, with soil N$_{2}$ emissions exceeding N$_{2}$O emissions by a factor of 5–30. Increasing soil moisture from 40 to 80% WFPS and addition of cow slurry increased the cumulative FTC N$_{2}$ emissions by 102% and 77%, respectively. For N$_{2}$O, increasing soil moisture from 40 to 80% WFPS and addition of slurry increased the cumulative emissions by 147%and 42%, respectively. Denitrification gene cnorB and nosZ clade I transcript levels showed high explanatory power for N$_{2}$O and N$_{2}$ emissions, thereby reflecting both N gas flux dynamics due to FTC and effects of different water availability and fertilizer addition. In agreement with several other studies for various ecosystems, we show here for mountainous grassland soils that pulse emissions of N$_{2}$O were observed during freeze-thaw.More importantly, this study shows that the freeze-thaw N$_{2}$ pulse emissions strongly exceeded those of N$_{2}$O in magnitude, which indicates that N$_{2}$ emissions during FTCs could represent an important N loss pathway within the grassland N mass balances. However, their actual significance needs to be assessed under field conditions using intact plant-soil systems