Research on Role-Centric Collaborative Technology

With the development of e-business, the collaboration between enterprises is increasingly strengthened, which, at the same time, challenges coordination technologies in distributed enterprise transactions. Workflow management has as its priority the support of coordination functions and workflow interoperability points the way towards collaborative business environments. Though WfMC, Workflow Management Coalition, specifies the abstract interoperability, differences such as workflow concept models, ontology etc. cannot be dealt with effectively because the specification is only technical. On the other hand, portal technology focuses on the integration of information and application services customized according to roles. It can provide support for the interoperability of workflows. In this paper, workflows are integrated with portal technology. And a role centric collaborative environment is proposed which is a way out for problems existing in workflow interoperability

The pollen receptor kinase LePRK2 mediates growth-promoting signals and positively regulates pollen germination and tube growth

In flowering plants, the process of pollen germination and tube growth is required for successful fertilization. A pollen receptor kinase from tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), LePRK2, has been implicated in signaling during pollen germination and tube growth as well as in mediating pollen (tube)-pistil communication. Here we show that reduced expression of LePRK2 affects four aspects of pollen germination and tube growth. First, the percentage of pollen that germinates is reduced, and the time window for competence to germinate is also shorter. Second, the pollen tube growth rate is reduced both in vitro and in the pistil. Third, tip-localized superoxide production by pollen tubes cannot be increased by exogenous calcium ions. Fourth, pollen tubes have defects in responses to style extract component (STIL), an extracellular growth-promoting signal from the pistil. Pollen tubes transiently overexpressing LePRK2-fluorescent protein fusions had slightly wider tips, whereas pollen tubes coexpressing LePRK2 and its cytoplasmic partner protein KPP (a Rop-GEF) had much wider tips. Together these results show that LePRK2 positively regulates pollen germination and tube growth and is involved in transducing responses to extracellular growth-promoting signals.Fil: Zhang, Dong. Chinese Academy of Sciences; República de ChinaFil: Wengier, Diego Leonardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Celular. Laboratorio de Fisiología y Biología Molecular; Argentina. University of California at Berkeley; Estados UnidosFil: Shuai, Bin. University of California at Berkeley; Estados UnidosFil: Gui, Cai Ping. Chinese Academy of Sciences; República de ChinaFil: Muschietti, Jorge Prometeo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Celular. Laboratorio de Fisiología y Biología Molecular; ArgentinaFil: McCormick, Sheila. University of California at Berkeley; Estados UnidosFil: Tang, Wei Hua. Chinese Academy of Sciences; República de China. University of California at Berkeley; Estados Unido

Inhibition of Arterial Allograft Intimal Hyperplasia Using Recipient Dendritic Cells Pretreated with B7 Antisense Peptide

Background. Low expression or absence of dendritic cell (DC) surface B7 molecules can induce immune tolerance or hyporesponse. Whether DCs could induce indirect allogeneic-specific cross-tolerance or hyporesponse to recipient T cells remains unclear. Methods. Generated from C3H/He mice bone marrow cells pulsed with donor antigen from C57BL/6 mice, recipient DCs were incubated with B7 antisense peptide (B7AP). Immune regulatory activities were examined in vitro by a series of mixed lymphocyte reactions. Murine allogeneic carotid artery orthotopic transplantation was performed from C57BL/6 to C3H/He. Recipients were given B7AP-treated DCs 7 days before transplantation. Allograft pathological analysis was done 2 months after transplantation. Results. B7AP-pretreated DCs markedly inhibited T-cell proliferation compared with untreated group. Pretreated T cells exhibited markedly reduced response to alloantigen versus third-party antigen. Pathological analysis of arterial allografts demonstrated significant reduction of intimal hyperplasia in B7-AP pretreated group versus control. Conclusion. Blockade of B7 molecules by B7AP could induce indirect allogeneic-specific hyporesponse and inhibit arterial allograft intimal hyperplasia, which may be involved in future strategies for human allograft chronic rejection

Yangjing capsule attenuates cyclophosphamide-induced deficiency of testicular microcirculation in mice

Purpose: To explore the protective effects of Yangjing capsule (YC) on testicular microcirculation in a mouse model of deficiency of testicular microcirculation. Methods: Immunohistochemistry was applied to determine the effects of YC on microvascular density of mice. The protein level of CD34 and vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF A) was measured by western blot. The viability of Testicular cell line (TM4 cells) was examined by CCK-8 assay. Results: Histopathological changes demonstrated that CP-induced decrease of microvascular density of the mice was rescued by YC dose-dependently (p < 0.5). Western blot data showed that the protein levels of CD34 and VEGF A in CP group were significantly decreased, but dose-dependently increased by YC, respectively, following co-administration of CP + YC, compared with those in CP group (p < 0.5). The results from CCK-8 assay showed that the cell viability of TM4 cells increased with the amount of YC administered, and that high concentrations of YC (0.1 and 1 mg/mL) showed significant effects (p < 0.5). Moreover, YC showed little effect on VEGF A mRNA and protein expression in TM4 cells. Conclusion: YC may be considered an alternative therapeutic agent for the management of testicular microcirculation disease. However, further studies are required to ascertain this. Keywords: Yangjing Capsule, Testicular microcirculation, Cyclophosphamide, Vascular endothelial growth factor

Neural-PBIR Reconstruction of Shape, Material, and Illumination

Reconstructing the shape and spatially varying surface appearances of a physical-world object as well as its surrounding illumination based on 2D images (e.g., photographs) of the object has been a long-standing problem in computer vision and graphics. In this paper, we introduce a robust object reconstruction pipeline combining neural based object reconstruction and physics-based inverse rendering (PBIR). Specifically, our pipeline firstly leverages a neural stage to produce high-quality but potentially imperfect predictions of object shape, reflectance, and illumination. Then, in the later stage, initialized by the neural predictions, we perform PBIR to refine the initial results and obtain the final high-quality reconstruction. Experimental results demonstrate our pipeline significantly outperforms existing reconstruction methods quality-wise and performance-wise

Core–Shell Structuring of Pure Metallic Aerogels towards Highly Efficient Platinum Utilization for the Oxygen Reduction Reaction

The development of core-shell structures remains a fundamental challenge for pure metallic aerogels. Here we report the synthesis of PdxAu-Pt core-shell aerogels comprised of an ultrathin Pt shell and a composition-tunable PdxAu alloy core. The universality of this strategy ensures the extension of core compositions to Pd-transition metal alloys. The core-shell aerogels exhibited largely improved Pt utilization efficiency for oxygen reduction reaction and their activities show a volcano-type relationship as a function of the lattice parameter of the core substrate. The maximum mass and specific activities are 5.25 A mg-1Pt and 2.53 mA cm-2, which are 18.7 and 4.1 times higher than those of Pt/C, respectively, demonstrating the superiority of the core-shell metallic aerogels. The proposed core-based activity descriptor provides a new possible strategy for the design of future core-shell electrocatalysts

Prediction of the potentially suitable areas of Ligularia virgaurea and Ligularia sagitta on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau based on future climate change using the MaxEnt model

Ligularia virgaurea and Ligularia sagitta are two species of poisonous plants with strong invasiveness in natural grasslands in China that have caused considerable harm to animal husbandry and the ecological environment. However, little is known about their suitable habitats and the key environmental factors affecting their distribution. Although some studies have reported the distributions of poisonous plants on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) and predicted their potential distributions at local scales in some regions under climate change, there have been few studies on the widespread distributions of L. virgaurea and L. sagitta. In this study, we recorded 276 and 118 occurrence points of L. virgaurea and L. sagitta on the QTP using GPS, and then used the MaxEnt model to predict the distribution of suitable habitats. Results showed that (1) under current climate conditions, L. virgaurea and L. sagitta are mainly distributed in southern Gansu, eastern Qinghai, northwestern Sichuan, eastern Tibet, and southwestern Yunnan, accounting for approximately 34.9% and 39.8% of the total area of the QTP, respectively; (2) the main environmental variables affecting the distribution of suitable habitats for L. virgaurea and L. sagitta are the Human Footprint Index (52.8%, 42.2%), elevation (11%, 4.4%), soil total nitrogen (18.9%, 4.2%), and precipitation seasonality (5.1%, 7.3%); and (3) in the future, in the 2050s and 2070s, the area of habitat of intermediate suitability for L. virgaurea will spread considerably in northwest Sichuan, while that of high suitability for L. sagitta will spread to eastern Tibet and western Sichuan