A pathway analysis of genome-wide association study highlights novel type 2 diabetes risk pathways.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been widely used to identify common type 2 diabetes (T2D) variants. However, the known variants just explain less than 20% of the overall estimated genetic contribution to T2D. Pathway-based methods have been applied into T2D GWAS datasets to investigate the biological mechanisms and reported some novel T2D risk pathways. However, few pathways were shared in these studies. Here, we performed a pathway analysis using the summary results from a large-scale meta-analysis of T2D GWAS to investigate more genetic signals in T2D. Here, we selected PLNK and VEGAS to perform the gene-based test and WebGestalt to perform the pathway-based test. We identified 8 shared KEGG pathways after correction for multiple tests in both methods. We confirm previous findings, and highlight some new T2D risk pathways. We believe that our results may be helpful to study the genetic mechanisms of T2D

Negative exponential behavior of image mutual information for pseudo-thermal light ghost imaging: Observation, modeling, and verification

When use the image mutual information to assess the quality of reconstructed image in pseudo-thermal light ghost imaging, a negative exponential behavior with respect to the measurement number is observed. Based on information theory and a few simple and verifiable assumptions, semi-quantitative model of image mutual information under varying measurement numbers is established. It is the Gaussian characteristics of the bucket detector output probability distribution that leads to this negative exponential behavior. Designed experiments verify the model.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure

Binary sampling ghost imaging: add random noise to fight quantization caused image quality decline

When the sampling data of ghost imaging is recorded with less bits, i.e., experiencing quantization, decline of image quality is observed. The less bits used, the worse image one gets. Dithering, which adds suitable random noise to the raw data before quantization, is proved to be capable of compensating image quality decline effectively, even for the extreme binary sampling case. A brief explanation and parameter optimization of dithering are given.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

Surfactant-aided exfoliation of molydenum disulphide for ultrafast pulse generation through edge-state saturable absorption

We use liquid phase exfoliation to produce dispersions of molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) nanoflakes in aqueous surfactant solutions. The chemical structures of the bile salt surfactants play a crucial role in the exfoliation and stabilization of MoS2. The resultant MoS2 dispersions are heavily enriched in single and few (<6) layer flakes with large edge to surface area ratio. We use the dispersions to fabricate free-standing polymer composite wide-band saturable absorbers to develop mode-locked and Q- switched fibre lasers, tunable from 1535-1565 and 1030-1070 nm, respectively. We attribute this sub-bandgap optical absorption and its nonlinear saturation behaviour to edge-mediated states introduced within the material band-gap of the exfoliated MoS2 nanoflakes.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Two NHX-type transporters from Helianthus tuberosus improve the tolerance of rice to salinity and nutrient deficiency stress.

The NHX-type cation/H+ transporters in plants have been shown to mediate Na+ (K+ )/H+ exchange for salinity tolerance and K+ homoeostasis. In this study, we identified and characterized two NHX homologues, HtNHX1 and HtNHX2 from an infertile and salinity tolerant species Helianthus tuberosus (cv. Nanyu No. 1). HtNHX1 and HtNHX2 share identical 5'- and 3'-UTR and coding regions, except for a 342-bp segment encoding 114 amino acids (L272 to Q385 ) which is absent in HtNHX2. Both hydroponics and soil culture experiments showed that the expression of HtNHX1 or HtNHX2 improved the rice tolerance to salinity. Expression of HtNHX2, but not HtNHX1, increased rice grain yield, harvest index, total nutrient uptake under K+ -limited salt-stress or general nutrient deficiency conditions. The results provide a novel insight into NHX function in plant mineral nutrition