Shaking table tests on deformation and failure mechanisms of seismic slope

The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China induced many landslides. Gigantic slope failures have attracted serious concerns in engineering practice; however, small slope failures should also be investigated as they are more common. In particular, the detailed characteristics of slope failures during earthquakes remain unknown. Therefore, the present study carried out 1-G shaking table tests on a straight shape slope model with different shaking intensities and frequencies. The test results showed the amplification of motion, the initiation of failure, and final failure mode of the straight shape slope. Also, the experimental results can be used to investigate the response and amplification behavior of some prototype slopes. The results are helpful to demonstrate the detailed collapsing behavior of the slope under earthquake excitation, and provide useful data to analyze the failure mechanism of landslides and valuable references for seismic design of landslide engineering

The association of triglycerides and total cholesterol concentrations with newly diagnosed diabetes in adults in China

Background: It has already been suggested that high abnormal blood lipid concentration is associated with hyperglycaemia. However, no data is available about the roles of triglycerides (TG) and total cholesterol (TC) levels in diabetes. Here, for the first time we investigated the roles of TG and TC levels, gender and abdominal fat in the development of newly diagnosed diabetes in China. Materials and Methods: Two population-based cross-sectional surveys were conducted from 2006 to 2009 in Qingdao, China. Newly diagnosed diabetes was defined according to FPG and/or 2 h PG criteria. The associations between diabetes and TG, and TC levels were assessed by multi-variable logistic regression models. Results: As compared with non-diabetes, the odds ratio[(95% confidence intervals), OR(95% CI)] for diabetes corresponding to hypertriglyceridemia (HTG) were 1.54 (1.01, 2.35) in men and 2.02 (1.49, 3.10) in women for TG and accompany with Hypercholesterolemia (HTC) 2.93 (1.97, 4.37) and 2.13 (1.49, 3.05) for TC, when both were fitted simultaneously in the model adjusting for age, geographic division, marital status, school years, family history of diabetes, monthly income, systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), waist circumference (WC), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), alanine amino transferase (ALT) and gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT). Conclusions: HTG in both gender, borderline high TC and HTC in men were an independent risk factor for diabetes in this Chinese population, however, HTC was mediated through abdominal fat for diabetes in women. Our findings may help to enhance the current knowledge of diabetes patho-physiology, and the associations between TG, TC level and diabetes is also clinically informative.Peer reviewe

Shaking table tests on deformation and failure mechanisms of seismic slope

The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China induced many landslides. Gigantic slope failures have attracted serious concerns in engineering practice; however, small slope failures should also be investigated as they are more common. In particular, the detailed characteristics of slope failures during earthquakes remain unknown. Therefore, the present study carried out 1-G shaking table tests on a straight shape slope model with different shaking intensities and frequencies. The test results showed the amplification of motion, the initiation of failure, and final failure mode of the straight shape slope. Also, the experimental results can be used to investigate the response and amplification behavior of some prototype slopes. The results are helpful to demonstrate the detailed collapsing behavior of the slope under earthquake excitation, and provide useful data to analyze the failure mechanism of landslides and valuable references for seismic design of landslide engineering

Shaking table tests on deformation and failure mechanisms of seismic slope

The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China induced many landslides. Gigantic slope failures have attracted serious concerns in engineering practice; however, small slope failures should also be investigated as they are more common. In particular, the detailed characteristics of slope failures during earthquakes remain unknown. Therefore, the present study carried out 1-G shaking table tests on a straight shape slope model with different shaking intensities and frequencies. The test results showed the amplification of motion, the initiation of failure, and final failure mode of the straight shape slope. Also, the experimental results can be used to investigate the response and amplification behavior of some prototype slopes. The results are helpful to demonstrate the detailed collapsing behavior of the slope under earthquake excitation, and provide useful data to analyze the failure mechanism of landslides and valuable references for seismic design of landslide engineering

The M-T hook structure increases the potency of HIV-1 fusion inhibitor sifuvirtide and overcomes drug resistance

Objectives Peptides derived from the C-terminal heptad repeat (CHR) of HIV-1 gp41 are potent fusion inhibitors. We have recently demonstrated that the unique M-T hook structure preceding the pocket-binding motif of CHR peptide-based inhibitors can greatly improve their antiviral activity. In this study, we applied the M-T hook structure to optimize sifuvirtide (SFT), a potent CHR-derived inhibitor currently under Phase III clinical trials in China. Methods The peptide MT-SFT was generated by incorporating two M-T hook residues (Met-Thr) into the N-terminus of sifuvirtide. Multiple structural and functional approaches were used to determine the biophysical properties and antiviral activity of MT-SFT. Results The high-resolution crystal structure of MT-SFT reveals a highly conserved M-T hook conformation. Compared with sifuvirtide, MT-SFT exhibited a significant improvement in the ability to bind to the N-terminal heptad repeat, to block the formation of the six helix bundle and to inhibit HIV-1 Env-mediated cell fusion, viral entry and infection. Importantly, MT-SFT was fully active against sifuvirtide- and enfuvirtide (T20)-resistant HIV-1 variants and displayed a high genetic barrier to developing drug resistance. Conclusions Our studies have verified that the M-T hook structure offers a general strategy for designing novel HIV-1 fusion inhibitors and provide new insights into viral entry and inhibitio

Functional neural circuits that underlie developmental stuttering

The aim of this study was to identify differences in functional and effective brain connectivity between persons who stutter (PWS) and typically developing (TD) fluent speakers, and to assess whether those differences can serve as biomarkers to distinguish PWS from TD controls. We acquired resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data in 44 PWS and 50 TD controls. We then used Independent Component Analysis (ICA) together with Hierarchical Partner Matching (HPM) to identify networks of robust, functionally connected brain regions that were highly reproducible across participants, and we assessed whether connectivity differed significantly across diagnostic groups. We then used Granger Causality (GC) to study the causal interactions (effective connectivity) between the regions that ICA and HPM identified. Finally, we used a kernel support vector machine to assess how well these measures of functional connectivity and granger causality discriminate PWS from TD controls. Functional connectivity was stronger in PWS compared with TD controls in the supplementary motor area (SMA) and primary motor cortices, but weaker in inferior frontal cortex (IFG, Broca’s area), caudate, putamen, and thalamus. Additionally, causal influences were significantly weaker in PWS from the IFG to SMA, and from the basal ganglia to IFG through the thalamus, compared to TD controls. ICA and GC indices together yielded an accuracy of 92.7% in classifying PWS from TD controls. Our findings suggest the presence of dysfunctional circuits that support speech planning and timing cues for the initiation and execution of motor sequences in PWS. Our high accuracy of classification further suggests that these aberrant brain features may serve as robust biomarkers for PWS

Multivariate Deep Learning Classification of Alzheimer’s Disease Based on Hierarchical Partner Matching Independent Component Analysis

Machine learning and pattern recognition have been widely investigated in order to look for the biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, most existing methods extract features by seed-based correlation, which not only requires prior information but also ignores the relationship between resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) voxels. In this study, we proposed a deep learning classification framework with multivariate data-driven based feature extraction for automatic diagnosis of AD. Specifically, a three-level hierarchical partner matching independent components analysis (3LHPM-ICA) approach was proposed first in order to address the issues in spatial individual ICA, including the uncertainty of the numbers of components, the randomness of initial values, and the correspondence of ICs of multiple subjects, resulting in stable and reliable ICs which were applied as the intrinsic brain functional connectivity (FC) features. Second, Granger causality (GC) was utilized to infer directional interaction between the ICs that were identified by the 3LHPM-ICA method and extract the effective connectivity features. Finally, a deep learning classification framework was developed to distinguish AD from controls by fusing the functional and effective connectivities. A resting state fMRI dataset containing 34 AD patients and 34 normal controls (NCs) was applied to the multivariate deep learning platform, leading to a classification accuracy of 95.59%, with a sensitivity of 97.06% and a specificity of 94.12% with leave-one-out cross validation (LOOCV). The experimental results demonstrated that the measures of neural connectivities of ICA and GC followed by deep learning classification represented the most powerful methods of distinguishing AD clinical data from NCs, and these aberrant brain connectivities might serve as robust brain biomarkers for AD. This approach also allows for expansion of the methodology to classify other psychiatric disorders

Three new species of soil-inhabiting Trichoderma from southwest China

Fungi in the genus Trichoderma are widely distributed in China, including in Yunnan province. In this study, we report three new soil-inhabiting species in Trichoderma, named as T. kunmingense, T. speciosum and T. zeloharzianum. Their colony and mycelial morphology, including features of asexual states, were described. For each species, their DNA sequences were obtained from three loci, the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions of the ribosomal DNA, the translation elongation factor 1-α encoding gene (tef1) and the gene encoding the second largest nuclear RNA polymerase subunit (rpb2). Our analyses indicated that the three new species showed consistent divergence amongst each other and from other known and closely related species. Amongst the three, T. speciosum and T. kunmingense belong to the Viride Clade. Specifically, T. speciosum is related to three species – T. hispanicum, T. samuelsii and T. junci and is characterised by tree-like conidiophores, generally paired branches, curved terminal branches, spindly to fusiform phialides and subglobose to globose conidia. In contrast, T. kunmingense morphologically resembles T. asperellum and T. yunnanense and is distinguished by its pyramidal conidiophores, ampulliform to tapered phialides, discrete branches and ovoidal, occasionally ellipsoid, smooth-walled conidia. The third new species, T. zeloharzianum, is a new member of the Harzianum Clade and is closely associated with T. harzianum, T. lixii and T. simmonsii but distinguished from them by having smaller, subglobose to globose, thin-walled conidia