Thermocline fluctuations in the equatorial Pacific related to the two types of El Niño events

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 30 (2017): 6611-6627, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0291.1.The interannual fluctuations of the equatorial thermocline are usually associated with El Niño activity, but the linkage between the thermocline modes and El Niño is still under debate. In the present study, a mode function decomposition method is applied to the equatorial Pacific thermocline, and the results show that the first two dominant modes (M1 and M2) identify two distinct characteristics of the equatorial Pacific thermocline. The M1 reflects a basinwide zonally tilted thermocline related to the eastern Pacific (EP) El Niño, with shoaling (deepening) in the western (eastern) equatorial Pacific. The M2 represents the central Pacific (CP) El Niño, characterized by a V-shaped equatorial Pacific thermocline (i.e., deep in the central equatorial Pacific and shallow on both the western and eastern boundaries). Furthermore, both modes are stable and significant on the interannual time scale, and manifest as the major feature of the thermocline fluctuations associated with the two types of El Niño events. As good proxies of EP and CP El Niño events, thermocline-based indices clearly reveal the inherent characteristics of subsurface ocean responses during the evolution of El Niño events, which are characterized by the remarkable zonal eastward propagation of equatorial subsurface ocean temperature anomalies, particularly during the CP El Niño. Further analysis of the mixed layer heat budget suggests that the air–sea interactions determine the establishment and development stages of the CP El Niño, while the thermocline feedback is vital for its further development. These results highlight the key influence of equatorial Pacific thermocline fluctuations in conjunction with the air–sea interactions, on the CP El Niño.This work is jointly supported by the Funds for Creative Research Groups of China (Grant 41521005), the Special Fund for Public Welfare Industry (GYHY201506013), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant XDA11010301), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 41406033, 41475057, 41376024, 41676013) and the CAS/SAFEA International Partnership Program for Creative Research Teams.2018-01-2

A Proton Conductive Porous Framework of an 18-Crown-6-Ether Derivative Networked by Rigid Hydrogen Bonding Modules

A rigid hydrogen-bonded organic framework (HOF) was constructed from a C3-symmetric hexatopic carboxylic acid with a hydrophilic 18-crown-6-ether (18C6) component. Despite the flexible macrocyclic structure with many conformations, the derivative with three 4,4’-dicarboxy-o-terphenyl moieties in the periphery yielded a rigid layered porous framework through directional intermolecular hydrogen bonding. Interestingly, the HOF possesses 1D channels with bottleneck composed of 18C6 rings. The HOF shows proton conductivity (1.12×10−7 S cm−1) through Grotthuss mechanism (Ea=0.27 eV) under 98 %RH. The present unique water channel structure provides an inspiration to create molecular porous materials.This is the accepted version of the following article:Chen X., Huang R.K., Takahashi K., et al. A Proton Conductive Porous Framework of an 18-Crown-6-Ether Derivative Networked by Rigid Hydrogen Bonding Modules. Angewandte Chemie - International Edition 61, e202211686 (2022), which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202211686. This article may be used for non-commercialpurposes in accordance with the Wiley Self-ArchivingPolicy [https://authorservices.wiley.com/author-resources/Journal-Authors/licensing/self-archiving.html

Individual-based morphological brain network organization and its association with autistic symptoms in young children with autism spectrum disorder

Individual-based morphological brain networks built from T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reflect synchronous maturation intensities between anatomical regions at the individual level. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a socio-cognitive and neurodevelopmental disorder with high neuroanatomical heterogeneity, but the specific patterns of morphological networks in ASD remain largely unexplored at the individual level. In this study, individual-based morphological networks were constructed by using high-resolution structural MRI data from 40 young children with ASD (age range: 2-8 years) and 38 age-, gender-, and handedness-matched typically developing children (TDC). Measurements were recorded as threefold. Results showed that compared with TDC, young children with ASD exhibited lower values of small-worldness (i.e., sigma) of individual-level morphological brain networks, increased morphological connectivity in cortico-striatum-thalamic-cortical (CSTC) circuitry, and decreased morphological connectivity in the cortico-cortical network. In addition, morphological connectivity abnormalities can predict the severity of social communication deficits in young children with ASD, thus confirming an associational impact at the behavioral level. These findings suggest that the morphological brain network in the autistic developmental brain is inefficient in segregating and distributing information. The results also highlight the crucial role of abnormal morphological connectivity patterns in the socio-cognitive deficits of ASD and support the possible use of the aberrant developmental patterns of morphological brain networks in revealing new clinically-relevant biomarkers for ASD.China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, Grant/Award Number: 2019M660236; National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant/Award Numbers: 61901129, 62036003, 81871432, U1808204; The Basque Foundation for Science and from Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad (Spain) and FEDER, Grant/Award Number: DPI2016-79874-R; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Grant/Award Numbers: 2672018ZYGX2018J079, ZYGX2019Z017; the Sichuan Science and Technology Program, Grant/Award Number: 2019YJ018

A comprehensive diagnostic scheme of morphological combined molecular methylation under bronchoscopy

Methylated SHOX2 and RASSF1A genes are potential biomarkers for lung cancer diagnosis. Therefore, we explored the role of methylation detection combined with morphological bronchoscopic evaluation for lung cancer diagnosis. Bronchoscopy, methylation outcome, and pathological data were collected from 585 patients with lung cancer and 101 controls. The methylation status of the SHOX2 and RASSF1A genes were detected using real-time polymerase chain reaction quantification. Further, the sensitivity and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of the three methods were analyzed. Among 686 patients, 57.1% had new lesions detected through bronchoscopy and 93.1% of these patients were diagnosed with malignant tumors. Besides, 42.9% of patients had no visible changes under bronchoscopy but there were still 74.8% of them diagnosed with malignant tumors. Bronchoscopy revealed that lung adenocarcinoma, lung squamous cell carcinoma, and small cell lung cancer mainly occurred in the upper and middle lobes. The sensitivity and specificity of methylation detection were 72.8% and 87.1% (vs. cytology 10.4% & 100%), respectively. Therefore, methylated SHOX2 and RASSF1A genes may be promising tumor markers in lung cancer diagnosis. Methylation detection can be an excellent supplementary tool for cytological diagnosis and, combined with bronchoscopy, could form a more effective diagnostic process

Impact of stress hyperglycemia ratio on mortality in patients with critical acute myocardial infarction: insight from American MIMIC-IV and the Chinese CIN-II study

Background: Among patients with acute coronary syndrome and percutaneous coronary intervention, stress hyperglycemia ratio (SHR) is primarily associated with short-term unfavorable outcomes. However, the relationship between SHR and long-term worsen prognosis in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients admitted in intensive care unit (ICU) are not fully investigated, especially in those with different ethnicity. This study aimed to clarify the association of SHR with all-cause mortality in critical AMI patients from American and Chinese cohorts. Methods: Overall 4,337 AMI patients with their first ICU admission from the American Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care (MIMIC)-IV database (n = 2,166) and Chinese multicenter registry cohort Cardiorenal ImprovemeNt II (CIN-II, n = 2,171) were included in this study. The patients were divided into 4 groups based on quantiles of SHR in both two cohorts. Results: The total mortality was 23.8% (maximum follow-up time: 12.1 years) in American MIMIC-IV and 29.1% (maximum follow-up time: 14.1 years) in Chinese CIN-II. In MIMIC-IV cohort, patients with SHR of quartile 4 had higher risk of 1-year (adjusted hazard radio [aHR] = 1.87; 95% CI: 1.40–2.50) and long-term (aHR = 1.63; 95% CI: 1.27–2.09) all-cause mortality than quartile 2 (as reference). Similar results were observed in CIN-II cohort (1-year mortality: aHR = 1.44; 95%CI: 1.03–2.02; long-term mortality: aHR = 1.32; 95%CI: 1.05–1.66). In both two group, restricted cubic splines indicated a J-shaped correlation between SHR and all-cause mortality. In subgroup analysis, SHR was significantly associated with higher 1-year and long-term all-cause mortality among patients without diabetes in both MIMIC-IV and CIN-II cohort. Conclusion: Among critical AMI patients, elevated SHR is significantly associated with and 1-year and long-term all-cause mortality, especially in those without diabetes, and the results are consistently in both American and Chinese cohorts

Biological and genomic analysis of a symbiotic nitrogen fixation defective mutant in Medicago truncatula

Medicago truncatula has been selected as one of the model legume species for gene functional studies. To elucidate the functions of the very large number of genes present in plant genomes, genetic mutant resources are very useful and necessary tools. Fast Neutron (FN) mutagenesis is effective in inducing deletion mutations in genomes of diverse species. Through this method, we have generated a large mutant resource in M. truncatula. This mutant resources have been used to screen for different mutant using a forward genetics methods. We have isolated and identified a large amount of symbiotic nitrogen fixation (SNF) deficiency mutants. Here, we describe the detail procedures that are being used to characterize symbiotic mutants in M. truncatula. In recent years, whole genome sequencing has been used to speed up and scale up the deletion identification in the mutant. Using this method, we have successfully isolated a SNF defective mutant FN007 and identified that it has a large segment deletion on chromosome 3. The causal deletion in the mutant was confirmed by tail PCR amplication and sequencing. Our results illustrate the utility of whole genome sequencing analysis in the characterization of FN induced deletion mutants for gene discovery and functional studies in the M. truncatula. It is expected to improve our understanding of molecular mechanisms underlying symbiotic nitrogen fixation in legume plants to a great extent

Active fuzzing for testing and securing cyber-physical systems

National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under its National Satellite of Excellence Programm

Increased Glutathione Synthesis Following Nrf2 Activation by Vanadyl Sulfate in Human Chang Liver Cells

Jeju ground water, containing vanadium compounds, was shown to increase glutathione (GSH) levels as determined by a colorimetric assay and confocal microscopy. To investigate whether the effects of Jeju ground water on GSH were specifically mediated by vanadium compounds, human Chang liver cells were incubated for 10 passages in media containing deionized distilled water (DDW), Jeju ground water (S1 and S3), and vanadyl sulfate (VOSO4). Vanadyl sulfate scavenged superoxide anion, hydroxyl radical and intracellular reactive oxygen species. Vanadyl sulfate effectively increased cellular GSH level and up-regulated mRNA and protein expression of a catalytic subunit of glutamate cysteine ligase (GCLC), which is involved in GSH synthesis. The induction of GCLC expression by vanadyl sulfate was found to be mediated by transcription factor erythroid transcription factor NF-E2 (Nrf2), which critically regulates GCLC by binding to the antioxidant response elements (AREs). Vanadyl sulfate treatment increased the nuclear translocation of Nrf2 and the accumulation of phosphorylated Nrf2. Extracellular regulated kinase (ERK) contributed to ARE-driven GCLC expression via Nrf2 activation. Vanadyl sulfate induced the expression of the active phospho form of ERK. Taken together, these results suggest that the increase in GSH level by Jeju ground water is, at least in part, due to the effects of vanadyl sulfate via the Nrf2-mediated induction of GCLC

Development of silk-based scaffolds for tissue engineering of bone from human adipose derived stem cells

Silk fibroin is a potent alternative to other biodegradable biopolymers for bone tissue engineering (TE), because of its tunable architecture and mechanical properties, and its demonstrated ability to support bone formation both in vitro and in vivo. In this study, we investigated a range of silk scaffolds for bone TE using human adipose-derived stem cells (hASCs), an attractive cell source for engineering autologous bone grafts. Our goal was to understand the effects of scaffold architecture and biomechanics and use this information to optimize silk scaffolds for bone TE applications. Silk scaffolds were fabricated using differ- ent solvents (aqueous vs. hexafluoro-2-propanol (HFIP)), pore sizes (250–500 um vs. 500–1000 um) and structures (lamellar vs. spherical pores). Four types of silk scaffolds combining the properties of interest were systematically compared with respect to bone tissue outcomes, with decellularized trabecular bone (DCB) included as a ‘‘gold standard’’. The scaffolds were seeded with hASCs and cultured for 7 weeks in osteogenic medium. Bone formation was evaluated by cell proliferation and differentiation, matrix production, calcification and mechanical properties. We observed that 400–600 um porous HFIP-derived silk fibroin scaffold demonstrated the best bone tissue formation outcomes, as evidenced by increased bone protein production (osteopontin, collagen type I, bone sialoprotein), enhanced calcium deposition and total bone volume. On a direct comparison basis, alkaline phosphatase activity (AP) at week 2 and new calcium deposition at week 7 were comparable to the cells cultured in DCB. Yet, among the aqueous- based structures, the lamellar architecture induced increased AP activity and demonstrated higher equi- librium modulus than the spherical-pore scaffolds. Based on the collected data, we propose a conceptual model describing the effects of silk scaffold design on bone tissue formation.FCT: SFRH/BD/42316/2007NIH: DE161525 and EB0252