A Comparative Study of Productivity and Quality Gain Between Post-Editing and Translating From Scratch

Using machine translation (MT) input represents a fundamental change in translators’ work mode. The issue of efficacy of MT uses is worth investigating since it is at the heart of understanding translators’ choices in post-editing MT results or translating from scratch. This study focuses on a comparative study of the impact of post-editing MT on productivity and translation quality of student translator subjects with different levels of translation experiences. This study also looks into the influence of translators’ translation experiences on their performances. The keylogging experiment results show that MT input contributes positively to productivity gain and time savings with some variations caused by translation experiences, and that the overall final text quality is significantly affected when translating with or without MT input though to a varying degree of quality gain. These findings suggest a positive role of post-editing MT in translator training

A High-Accuracy Nonintrusive Networking Testbed for Wireless Sensor Networks

It becomes increasingly important to obtain the accurate and spontaneous runtime network behavior for further studies onwireless sensor networks. However, the existing testbeds cannot appropriately match such requirements. A High-accuracyNonintrusive Networking Testbed (HINT) is proposed. In HINT, the interconnected chip-level signals are passively captured withauxiliary test boards and the captured data are transferred in additional networks to test server. The test server of HINT collects allthe test data and depicts the full network behavior. HINT supports networking test, protocol verification, performance evaluationand so on. The experiments show that HINT transparently gathers accurate runtime data and does not disturb the spontaneousbehavior of sensor networks. HINT is also extendible to different hardware platforms of sensor nodes. Consequently, HINT isan upstanding testbed solution for the future fine-grained and experimental studies on the resource-constrained wireless sensornetworks

Cross-Cultural Comparisons of English Request Speech Acts in Native Speakers of English and Chinese

This paper aims at comparing the uses of the English request speech acts in native speakers of English and Chinese. An oral discourse completion task (ODCT) was used to collect data and the chi-square analysis method was applied to examine the data. From the results, the comparisons of request strategies and internal modifications between Chinese and English native speakers showed no significant differences; both groups frequently used indirect strategies. However, with regard to the use of alerts and external modifications, significant differences were found between these two groups. Further results also indicated the effects of social status and familiarity on both groups. To interlocutor in higher status, both groups showed significantly different usages of internal and external modifications. As to interlocutors in equal status, they performed different request strategies, alerts and external modifications. In addition, significant differences were found in the use of alerts to interlocutors in lower social status. To familiar interlocutors, both groups showed different usages in alerts and external modifications. To unfamiliar interlocutors, significant differences were also found in the use of alerts and external modifications. At last, Chinese native speakers with high and low proficiency levels showed significantly different usages in alerts.Key words: English request speech act; Oral discourse completion task; Chi-square analysis; English native speaker; Chinese native speake

Role of Notch-1 signaling in ethanol induced PC12 apoptosis

Chronic alcoholic dementia has crucial role in progress of neurodegenerative disease and affects a large portion of our aging population. Neuronal cell apoptosis may be a contributing factor of neurodegenerative disease (ND) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Previous researches have indicated that Notch-1 signaling pathway is related with learning and memory ability. Mutations of Notch-1 are reported to accelerate the onset of AD and PD. Despite much investigation, very little is known about the exact role of Notch-1 in ND. In our present study, we used neuronal PC12 cell line to study the regulation role of Notch-1 in ethanol-induced cell apoptosis. 3-(4,5-Dimethythiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay was used for detection of the proliferation of PC12 cells upon ethanol treatment. Changes in PC12 cell nuclear morphology was detected with Hoechst 33258/propidium iodide (PI) double-staining. Western blot was used for detecting the level of cell apoptosis-related protein. At the same time, Notch-1 signaling activity was detected through enzymatic assay and Western blot. Our results demonstrate that PC12 cell apoptosis was induced by ethanol modulated by Notch-1 signaling pathway.Keywords: Neuronal PC12 cell, neurodegenerative disease, ethanol, Notch-

Text detection and recognition based on a lensless imaging system

Lensless cameras are characterized by several advantages (e.g., miniaturization, ease of manufacture, and low cost) as compared with conventional cameras. However, they have not been extensively employed due to their poor image clarity and low image resolution, especially for tasks that have high requirements on image quality and details such as text detection and text recognition. To address the problem, a framework of deep-learning-based pipeline structure was built to recognize text with three steps from raw data captured by employing lensless cameras. This pipeline structure consisted of the lensless imaging model U-Net, the text detection model connectionist text proposal network (CTPN), and the text recognition model convolutional recurrent neural network (CRNN). Compared with the method focusing only on image reconstruction, UNet in the pipeline was able to supplement the imaging details by enhancing factors related to character categories in the reconstruction process, so the textual information can be more effectively detected and recognized by CTPN and CRNN with fewer artifacts and high-clarity reconstructed lensless images. By performing experiments on datasets of different complexities, the applicability to text detection and recognition on lensless cameras was verified. This study reasonably demonstrates text detection and recognition tasks in the lensless camera system,and develops a basic method for novel applications

Age, but not short-term intensive swimming, affects chondrocyte turnover in zebrafish vertebral cartilage

Both age and intensive exercise are generally considered critical risk factors for osteoarthritis. In this work, we intend to establish zebrafish models to assess the role of these two factors on cartilage homeostasis. We designed a swimming device for zebrafish intensive exercise. The body measurements, bone mineral density (BMD) and the histology of spinal cartilages of 4- and 12-month-old zebrafish, as well the 12-month-old zebrafish before and after a 2-week exercise were compared. Our results indicate that both age and exercise affect the body length and body weight, and the micro-computed tomography reveals that both age and exercise affect the spinal BMD. However, quantitative analysis of immunohistochemistry and histochemistry indicate that short-term intensive exercise does not affect the extracellular matrix (ECM) of spinal cartilage. On the other hand, the cartilage ECM significantly grew from 4 to 12 months of age with an increase in total chondrocytes. dUTP nick end labeling staining shows that the percentages of apoptotic cells significantly increase as the zebrafish grows, whereas the BrdU labeling shows that proliferative cells dramatically decrease from 4 to 12 months of age. A 30-day chase of BrdU labeling shows some retention of labeling in cells in 4-month-old spinal cartilage but not in cartilage from 12-month-old zebrafish. Taken together, our results suggest that zebrafish chondrocytes are actively turned over, and indicate that aging is a critical factor that alters cartilage homeostasis. Zebrafish vertebral cartilage may serve as a good model to study the maturation and homeostasis of articular cartilage

Cellular FLICE-like inhibitory protein (cFLIP) critically maintains apoptotic resistance in human lens epithelial cells

The present study aims to understand the mechanism of the lens epithelial cell’s strong anti-apoptotic capacity and survival in the mature human lens that, on the one hand, maintains lens transparency over several decades, while on the other hand, increases the risk of posterior capsule opacification (PCO). Here we compared FHL124 cells and HeLa cells, spontaneously immortalized epithelial cell lines derived from the human lens and cervical cancer cells, respectively, of their resistance to TNFα-mediated cell death. TNFα plus cycloheximide (CHX) triggered almost all of HeLa cell death. FHL124 cells, however, were unaffected and able to block caspase-8 activation as well as prevent caspase-3 and PARP-1 cleavage. Interestingly, despite spontaneous NFκB and AP-1 activation and upregulation of multiple cell survival/anti-apoptotic genes in both cell types, only FHL124 cells were able to survive the TNFα challenge. After screening and comparing the cell survival genes, cFLIP was found to be highly expressed in FHL124 cells and substantially upregulated by TNFα stimulation. FHL124 cells with a mild cFLIP knockdown manifested a profound apoptotic response to TNFα stimulus similar to HeLa cells. Most importantly, we confirmed these findings in an ex vivo lens capsular bag culture system. In conclusion, our results show that cFLIP is a critical gene that is regulating lens epithelial cell survival

A Novel Selective JAK2 Inhibitor Identified Using Pharmacological Interactions

The JAK2/STAT signaling pathway mediates cytokine receptor signals that are involved in cell growth, survival and homeostasis. JAK2 is a member of the Janus kinase (JAK) family and aberrant JAK2/STAT is involved with various diseases, making the pathway a therapeutic target. The similarity between the ATP binding site of protein kinases has made development of specific inhibitors difficult. Current JAK2 inhibitors are not selective and produce unwanted side effects. It is thought that increasing selectivity of kinase inhibitors may reduce the side effects seen with current treatment options. Thus, there is a great need for a selective JAK inhibitor. In this study, we identified a JAK2 specific inhibitor. We first identified key pharmacological interactions in the JAK2 binding site by analyzing known JAK2 inhibitors. Then, we performed structure-based virtual screening and filtered compounds based on their pharmacological interactions and identified compound NSC13626 as a potential JAK2 inhibitor. Results of enzymatic assays revealed that against a panel of kinases, compound NSC13626 is a JAK2 inhibitor and has high selectivity toward the JAK2 and JAK3 isozymes. Our cellular assays revealed that compound NSC13626 inhibits colorectal cancer cell (CRC) growth by downregulating phosphorylation of STAT3 and arresting the cell cycle in the S phase. Thus, we believe that compound NSC13626 has potential to be further optimized as a selective JAK2 drug

Reduced primary cilia length and altered Arl13b expression are associated with deregulated chondrocyte Hedgehog signaling in alkaptonuria

This work was supported by the Medical Research Council (MR/L002876/1), the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Fondazione Telethon Italy (GGP10058), and Associazione Italiana Malati di Alcaptonuria (AimAKU, ORPHA263402