Electronic Structure and Energy Band of IIIA Doped Group ZnO Nanosheets

The electronic and magnetic properties of IIIA group doped ZnO nanosheets (ZnONSs) are investigated by the first principles. The results show that the band gap of ZnO nanosheets increases gradually along with Al, Ga, and In ions occupying Zn sites and O sites. The configuration of Al atoms replacing Zn atoms is more stable than other doped. The system shows half-metallic characteristics for In-doped ZnO nanosheets

Numerical Analysis of Stress Intensity Factors of a Crack in the Composite Patch Repair

The composite patch repair technology can be utilized to provide upgrades, such as higher design requirements and life extensions. However, in this case, failures easily happen on the edge interface between the substrate material and the restorative material, because of the incompatible of different properties. Failures such as flaws or cracks lying along the interface reduce the strength of the structure significantly. In this paper, the numerical solutions of hypersingular integro-differential equations are discussed in the analysis of three dimensional interfacial cracks subjected to general internal pressure,and the problem is formulated on the basis of the body force method.The stress intensity factors are given with varying material combinations. It is found that the stress intensity factors and are determined by the bi-materials constant alone, independent of elastic modulus ratio and Poisson\u27s ratio.25th International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference (ISOPE-2015), Kona, Big Island, Hawaii, USA, June 21-26, 201

Model dostosowywania dawki i analiza czynnika współzależnego u chińskich pacjentów z cukrzycą typu 2 leczonych podstawową dawką insuliny — wyniki badania ORBIT (Observational Registry of Basal Insulin Treatment)

Introduction: This study evaluates an insulin dose titration model and factors that impact insulin dose adjustment in Chinese adults with type-2 diabetes, who receive basal insulin in real-world settings. Material and methods: A total of 19,894 patients from the ORBIT study were included. These patients were divided into four groups, according to the type of insulin dose adjustment: no insulin titration (group A), self-titration (group B), physician-led insulin titration (group C), and combined physician and patient-led insulin titration (group D). Data were collected and compared at baseline and after six months of treatment. Results: A total of 12,865 patients completed the visits and were included in the analysis. Among these patients, 3187 (24.8%), 1971 (15.3%), 5165 (40.1%), and 2542 (19.8%) patients were included in groups A, B, C, and D, respectively. The multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that the duration of diabetes, body mass index, microvascular complications, inpatient days, HbA1C level, and self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) were positively correlated with insulin titration in group B, C, and D, compared with group A. The number of inpatient days and outpatient visits were positively correlated with dose adjustment for physician-led titration, while this was negatively correlated for self-titration. Self-titration encouraged by physicians and home blood glucose monitoring were positively correlated with self-titration and the combined physician and patient-led titration. Conclusions: High HbA1C level, SMBG, long disease duration, microvascular complications, and the encouragement of physicians while initiating insulin use prompt patients to perform dose adjustments in real-world settings.Wstęp: Badanie ma na celu ocenę modelu dostosowywania dawki insuliny i czynników, mających wpływ na dostosowanie dawki insuliny u chińskich dorosłych pacjentów z cukrzycą typu 2 leczonych podstawową dawką insuliny w warunkach rzeczywistych. Materiał i metody: W badaniu udział wzięło 19 894 pacjentów z badania ORBIT, którzy zostali podzieleni na 4 grupy, w zależności od typu dostosowywania dawki insuliny: brak dostosowywania dawki insuliny (grupa A), samodzielne dostosowywanie dawki (grupa B), dostosowywanie dawki przez lekarza (grupa C) oraz dostosowywanie dawki zarówno przez lekarza jak i przez pacjenta (grupa D). Dane zostały zebrane i porównane na początku badania i po 6 miesiącach leczenia. Wyniki: Łącznie 12 865 pacjentów ukończyło wizyty i zostało uwzględnionych w analizie. Spośród tych pacjentów, 3187 (24,8%), 1971 (15,3%), 5165 (40,1%) i 2542 (19,8%) badanych włączono odpowiednio do grup A, B, C i D. Wieloczynnikowa analiza regresji logistycznej wykazała, że czas trwania cukrzycy, wskaźnik masy ciała, powikłania mikronaczyniowe, dni hospitalizacji, stężenie HbA1C i samokontrola stężenia glukozy we krwi (self-monitoring of blood glucose; SMBG) były dodatnio skorelowane z dostosowywaniem insuliny w grupach B, C i D w porównaniu z grupą A. Liczba dni hospitalizacji i wizyt ambulatoryjnych były dodatnio skorelowane z dostosowywaniem dawek przez lekarza i ujemnie skorelowane z samodzielnym dostosowywaniem dawki. Zachęcanie przez lekarzy do samodzielnego do­stosowywania dawki i monitorowanie stężenia glukozy we krwi w warunkach domowych były dodatnio skorelowane z samodzielnym dostosowywaniem dawki oraz dostosowywaniem dawki zarówno przez lekarza, jak i przez pacjenta. Wnioski: Wysokie stężenie HbA1C, samokontrola stężenia glukozy we krwi, długi czas trwania choroby, powikłania mikronaczyniowe oraz zachęta lekarzy podczas inicjowania podawania insuliny skłaniają pacjentów do dostosowywania dawek w warunkach rzeczywistych

Visualizing the dynamic behavior of poliovirus plus-strand RNA in living host cells

Dynamic analysis of viral nucleic acids in host cells is important for understanding virus–host interaction. By labeling endogenous RNA with molecular beacon, we have realized the direct visualization of viral nucleic acids in living host cells and have studied the dynamic behavior of poliovirus plus-strand RNA. Poliovirus plus-strand RNA was observed to display different distribution patterns in living Vero cells at different post-infection time points. Real-time imaging suggested that the translocation of poliovirus plus-strand RNA is a characteristic rearrangement process requiring intact microtubule network of host cells. Confocal-FRAP measurements showed that 49.4 ± 3.2% of the poliovirus plus-strand RNA molecules diffused freely (with a D-value of 9.6 ± 1.6 × 10(−10) cm(2)/s) within their distribution region, while the remaining (50.5 ± 2.9%) were almost immobile and moved very slowly only with change of the RNA distribution region. Under the electron microscope, it was found that virus-induced membrane rearrangement is microtubule-associated in poliovirus-infected Vero cells. These results reveal an entrapment and diffusion mechanism for the movement of poliovirus plus-strand RNA in living mammalian cells, and demonstrate that the mechanism is mainly associated with microtubules and virus-induced membrane structures

Phage display mediated immuno-PCR

Immuno-PCR (IPCR) is a powerful detection technology in immunological study and clinical diagnosis due to its ultrasensitivity. Here we introduce a new strategy termed phage display mediated immuno-PCR (PD-IPCR). Instead of utilization of monoclonal antibody (mAb) and chemically bond DNA that required in the conventional IPCR, a recombinant phage particle is applied as a ready reagent for IPCR experiment. The surface displayed single chain variable fragment (scFv) and phage DNA themselves can directly serve as detection antibody and PCR template, respectively. The aim of the design is to overcome shortcoming of low detection sensitivity of scFv so as to largely facilitate the real application of scFv in immunoassay. The idea has been demonstrated by applying hantaan virus nucleocapsid protein (NP) and prion protein (PrP) as detection targets in three experimental protocols (indirect, sandwich and real-time PD-IPCR assays). The detection sensitivity was increased 1000- to 10 000-folds compared with conventional enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs). This proof-of-concept study may serve as a new model to develop an easy to operate, low cost and ultrasensitive immunoassay method for broad applications

CytoSVM: an advanced server for identification of cytokine-receptor interactions

The interactions between cytokines and their complementary receptors are the gateways to properly understand a large variety of cytokine-specific cellular activities such as immunological responses and cell differentiation. To discover novel cytokine-receptor interactions, an advanced support vector machines (SVMs) model, CytoSVM, was constructed in this study. This model was iteratively trained using 449 mammal (except rat) cytokine-receptor interactions and about 1 million virtually generated positive and negative vectors in an enriched way. Final independent evaluation by rat's data received sensitivity of 97.4%, specificity of 99.2% and the Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) of 0.89. This performance is better than normal SVM-based models. Upon this well-optimized model, a web-based server was created to accept primary protein sequence and present its probabilities to interact with one or several cytokines. Moreover, this model was applied to identify putative cytokine-receptor pairs in the whole genomes of human and mouse. Excluding currently known cytokine-receptor interactions, total 1609 novel cytokine-receptor pairs were discovered from human genome with probability ∼80% after further transmembrane analysis. These cover 220 novel receptors (excluding their isoforms) for 126 human cytokines. The screening results have been deposited in a database. Both the server and the database can be freely accessed at http://bioinf.xmu.edu.cn/software/cytosvm/cytosvm.php

Screening and analysis of soda saline-alkali stress induced up- regulated genes in sugar sorghum

Soil salinization severely constrains the growth of crops, which ultimately leads to reduced yields. Because Sorghum dochna (common name sugar sorghum) has the advantageous properties of excellent salt stress resis- tance, high biomass, and tremendous flexibility for utilization as food, livestock feed, and industrial products, this species holds great potential to be further developed as a primary alternative crop. To elucidate the molecular mechanism that governs sugar sorghum’s adaptation to high salinity environments, we constructed a suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) cDNA library from sugar sorghum transcripts that contains the soda saline-alkali induced up-regulated genes from the resistant variety M-81E. The SSH cDNA library was screened by using the colony hybridization method, and the ESTs obtained were sequenced and analyzed. A total of 200 EST clones were identified, representing 127 unigenes (6 contigs and 121 singlets). A Blast analysis showed that 48 ESTs (46.6%) have annotated functions in GenBank, 55 ESTs (53.4%) have unknown functions (or encode hypothetical proteins), and 24 ESTs (18.9%) have no blast hits. The majority of the hypothetical ESTs from the cDNA library displayed very high sequence similarity with their homologs found through GenBank. A clustering analysis of the ESTs with known functions indicated that a wide variety of genes were induced during the salt stress treatment. These genes were found to function in photosynthesis, material and energy metabolism (carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids, co-enzymes, ions, etc.), synthesis or maintenance of constituents of the cell wall and cell membrane, signal transduction, transcriptional regulation, and as water channels. This indicates that sugar sorghum tolerance to soda saline-alkali stress results from the coordinated functions of many genes